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You really owe it to yourself.
I need you to delete one or more, if not all, of your Facebook Business Pages right now.
Every Conference. Every Webinar. Every Blogger.
For the last three years I have witnessed and taught more classes on Facebook than any other topic, by a mile.
Most of the classes included strategies and ideas on how to create and run a successful Facebook Business Page.
Start one for your neighborhoods, start one for your city, start one for your niche, start one for your brokerage and while you are at it, start one where you talk about 365 things to do around town.
It’s what you all wanted by the way, the elusive line in the sand between the personal use and business use of Facebook.
We failed. Now please take action.
90% of new restaurants close their doors in the first year because for whatever reason their venture fails.
By taking a dime a dozen approach to Facebook Pages by the real estate industry, at both the teaching and implementation levels, I am positive that MORE than 90% of Pages started in the last three years have failed.
How long has it been since your last post?
Have you gotten any business you can directly attribute to your efforts?
Screw that. You know if you need to do this.
Unlike a brick and mortar go at it, failing online, especially with a free Facebook Business Page, is cheap in regards to the hard dollar cost.
The more important question to think about is what does the cost of that failure subtract from your brand?
What does it subtract from your focus?
What does it subtract from your time?
When a restaurant fails they pack up, they take down all of their branding, they give back the keys and they CLOSE FOR GOOD.
I am asking you to also do that.
Please close your Facebook Pages that failed.
Facebook provides step by step instructions here on how to do so quickly.
I am hoping that this message resonates and then spreads far and wide, sorry Zuck.
If you disagree, I would imagine there are some strong opinions from the “gurus” on this topic, the comments are open and I would love to hear what you think.
It will be, by all accounts, the greatest sports team ever assembled.
''Nobody has ever seen anything like this group of players,'' said Indiana Pacers General Manager Donnie Walsh, a member of the selection committee that will announce its choices Saturday for the top 10 spots on the 1992 U.S. Olympic men`s basketball team, the first time National Basketball Association professionals will compete in the Olympics.
Patrick Ewing, the Jazz`s Karl Malone and John Stockton, the Warriors` Chris Mullin and the Celtics` Larry Bird.
Consider the possibilities: Air flying and Magic doing his tricks, Larry offering the stuff of legend, the Mailman delivering and the Admiral steering a course.
It`s the man with the highest career scoring average in the history of the NBA playing alongside the best playmaker in the game`s history. Then there`s the game`s best ever at his position, Bird, while Robinson already may be the most versatile ever to play center.
With Jordan, Johnson and Bird, the team will have the league`s last eight MVP award winners; Johnson and Stockton give it the leaders in assists the last six seasons; and Jordan gives it the league`s leader in scoring the last five seasons.
So who are the backups here? Barkley, who`ll be bumping bodies into the Pyrenees, or Malone, who casually averages 30 points and 10 rebounds annually and has armies turn away when he`s running at full speed in their direction?
The Soviet people needn`t have risen up. These guys certainly would have destroyed the Communist party on the way to their own victory party.
And that`s really how all of this began.
And they were. Teams from the Soviet Union, East Germany and Yugoslavia were comprised of athletes paid by their nations and trained for such events. The U.S. continued to use 19- and 20-year-old collegians.
The collegians were good enough until the world caught up. And now they were beating the U.S. at the game the U.S. invented. It all became too much, and the NBA cavalry was called.
Its players certainly were the best, as were its coaches. That is why the Pistons` Chuck Daly is head coach and collegiate coaches are assistants. It was made pretty clear to the collegians that the pros were taking over.
Of course, the big question remains, Is it all necessary? Isn`t a fly swatter enough to kill a pesky insect? Why a sledge hammer?
And that`s certainly what this team will do. It will turn opponents into granulated crystals. They`ll sparkle only if one looks close enough. The international community is bringing cubic zirconia to the bazaar while the NBA offers only sparkling, 64-carat diamonds. And it`s not even the best team the NBA could assemble.
This is a team of stars with the likes of Jordan, Johnson, Bird, Barkley, Malone and Mullin. And why not? It`s the first time NBA players will compete in the Olympics, and perhaps the principal area of expansion on the NBA agenda is international. The NBA wants to sell its game and its merchandise overseas. So why not bring its biggest stars? It`s a walking billboard for the NBA. And are they going to lose?
This is the invasion of Grenada all over again.
For not only is an NBA talent infusion unnecessary for a U.S. team to win in the Olympics, despite the events of recent history, but the world has changed dramatically in the last year.
First off, the 1988 Olympic team coached by anyone other than John Thompson would have won a gold medal. With talent like Robinson, Danny Manning and Mitch Richmond, among other current NBA stars, only Thompson`s dictatorial ways robotized the team enough to cost it a victory. That`s why one thing was made clear to the college coaches when the NBA players got involved: You guys don`t know how to coach great talent. So stay in the background. They will.
And even though the U.S. has not won in recent competitions like the Pan Am Games, none of those competitions, other than the Olympics, drew the best among the U.S. collegiate players.
In fact, it would be hard to imagine this team not winning in the 1992 Olympics: Shaquille O`Neal, Christian Laettner, Clarence Weatherspoon, Jim Jackson and Todd Day, with the likes of Alonzo Mourning, Calbert Cheaney and Terry Dehere playing a backup role.
They might give an NBA All-Star team fits. And now the U.S. faces the 1992 Olympics in men`s basketball playing, what, Serbia or Croatia instead of Yugoslavia? Lithuania and Latvia instead of the Soviet Union.
International reordering has reduced the competition to mere annoyances. That also takes the luster off the event. Ask anyone their greatest Olympic Games thrill, and you`re likely to hear about the 1980 U.S. hockey team that defeated the Soviets. Americans love David and Goliath stories. Now, however, the U.S. in basketball is the angry Goliath and everyone else the brave Davids.
The U.S. team only can lose in these games. A victory is expected-almost demanded-with pros. And who`s interested in seeing the big guys win every time? How much fun was baseball when the Yankees won every year? The world basketball community has been reduced to a bunch of also-rans.
Which is why this isn`t even the best team the NBA could offer. It should be the most well known, if also the most reluctant, with Jordan and Bird, assuming they finally accept the call in the national TV show Saturday, as members. That`s why the team is talking about having its practices in Monte Carlo, close to both the gaming tables and the golf courses. Ho-hum. The gimmes are the two-footers and the opponents.
If you were building the team to win, you might want some role players, some defenders. Put Bird, Barkley, Mullin and Johnson on the floor at the same time, and it will be like the autobahn. Nobody gets stopped.
Will Malone be willing to rebound and not score? How about Barkley?
Ewing? Someone will have to. Is Mullin there to set screens? Pippen? It won`t matter.
Jordan probably is the team`s best defensive player as well as offensive player. But does the team need him to win? Of course not.
The talent is overwhelming and the opposition dubious. And the corporate sponsors who hire these people will be wearing the widest grins.
If you just want to grab some paper, here is a list of papers. I also have on line my CV and professional statement (the latter overlapping, to some extent, with this page).
In the last few years my main research theme has been to develop, and practice, what I call practice-oriented provable security. This line of work bridges the gap between cryptographic theory and cryptographic practice. The approach falls within the provable-security tradition of modern cryptography, as first carried out by [Goldwasser, Micali 1982]. But there are some differences between the way that I like to carry out provable security and the way that it has customarily been done. These differences stem from a shift in goals: I am no longer interested in investigating the provable-security relationships between different cryptographic goals (since the most interesting questions in this domain have now been answered); instead, I want to see reductions become powerful tools for the design and analysis of practical cryptographic protocols. This shift in the use of reductions gives rise to a theory with a somewhat different flavor, a theory that is more pragmatic and, I believe, more accessible. I'll outline a few characteristics of it.
Recurring themes in my work include: (1) bringing provable security to bear on practical problems like entity authentication and session-key distribution; (2) using finite pseudorandom functions (or finite pseudorandom permutations) as a way to bring provable-security to constructions based on confusion/diffusion (ie., DES-like) primitives; (3) paying close attention to concrete security analysis, not only to understand how good an analysis is, but also to provide guidance in choosing among practical protocols, to lead to better protocols, and even to lead to better or sharper notions; and (4) using the random oracle paradigm when obtaining provable security in the standard model would involve a loss of efficiency or simplicity so great as to render the methods undesirable in the real world. I'm one of the one of the few cryptographers who actually likes working on (5) definitions, and I believe that good definitions (all by themselves!) can be of lasting value.
Building on sensibilities, paradigms, and techniques that have arisen from the provable security tradition, I have worked to fashion a line of research that is simultaneously useful and foundationally strong. In large part, this line of research was developed in collaboration with Mihir Bellare, of UCSD. We have built on our experiences from MIT and IBM.
Practice-oriented provable security has steadily gained in importance, and my own papers have been cited about 14,000 times. At every major conference one now sees papers that seem to follow our approach. Nowadays, concrete security analysis is about as popular as asymptotic analysis; the random-oracle model is extensively used; the OAEP encryption technique has been standardized; and PSS-PSS/R and DHIES (formerly named DHAES) are, likewise, in standards and draft standards. Just a handful of years ago many people considered provable-security cryptography to be an esoteric idea from the STOC/FOCS crowd; now the term provable security has such a cachet that one hears people claim that their schemes are provably secure even when they have no understanding what the term means!
Symmetric encryption. In 1982 Goldwasser and Micali introduced the provable-security approach to cryptography by treating asymmetric (public key) encryption. • In [se] we give a concrete, systematic analysis of symmetric encryption. We describe four definitions, all of them equivalent from the point of view of polynomial-time reductions, but inequivalent with respect to concrete security. We give upper and lower bounds on the concrete complexity of reductions among these notions. This allows one to select the strongest definition for existence results. We give a concrete-security analysis for two modes of operation of a block cipher: CBC and CTR modes. We establish tight bounds on the success of adversaries attacking these schemes as a function of the resources they employ. This paper introduces the idea of classifying definitions based on the concrete security of their reductions. • In [relations] we compare the relative strengths of popular notions of security for encryption schemes. We consider the goals of indistinguishability and non-malleability, each under chosen-plaintext attack and two kinds of chosen-ciphertext attack. The paper focuses on the case of asymmetric encryption, but the results immediately lift to the symmetric setting. • In [vil] we consider the problem of constructing ciphers that operate on strings of variable (and arbitrary) length. • In [encode] we investigate the following approach to symmetric encryption: first encode the message via some keyless transform, and then encipher the encoded message, meaning apply a permutation F(K,.) based on a shared key K. We provide conditions on the encoding functions and the cipher which ensure that the resulting encryption scheme meets strong privacy (eg. semantic security) and/or authenticity goals. This paper also introduces the notion of an authenticated-encryption scheme. • In [ocb] we introduce OCB, a block-cipher mode of operation that combines privacy and authenticity, and has many desirable efficiency characteristics. This is a slick mode of operation that is already in a draft standard of IEEE 802.11 (Wireless LANs), and it is a proposal to NIST. The OCB homepage gives further information.
Message authentication. Message authentication lets communicating partners who share a secret key verify that a received message originates with the party who claims to have sent it. The sender computes, as a function of the message and the shared key, a "tag" (or "MAC", for "message authentication code") which he attaches to the message. The receiver can check the validity of the message using the tag. • In [cbcmac] we provide the first analysis for the most widespread technique for message authentication, the CBC MAC. This is a US and International Standard, but it never received any sort of provable-security treatment. Roughly, we show that if the underlying block cipher is secure then so is the CBC MAC of that block cipher. Actually we do more: we present a quantitative analysis under which the security of the CBC MAC can be measured as a function of the strength of the underlying block cipher. This introduces a new approach to the analysis of block-cipher based constructions, based on modeling them as finite pseudorandom functions. • In [xormac] we introduce a new approach to MACing with a block ciphers. Unlike the CBC MAC, an XOR MAC is fully parallelizable, so that it is suitable, for example, for link-layer authentication on gigabit networks. The security is analyzed assuming the block cipher is a finite pseudorandom function. • In [bucket] I introduce bucket hashing, a fast-to-compute family of universal hash functions. The paper also advocates Wegman-Carter MACs for the next-generation of software-optimized MACs. • In [umac] we describe UMAC, which authenticates messages (in software, on contemporary machines) roughly an order of magnitude faster than current practice (eg, HMAC-SHA1). To achieve such speeds UMAC uses a variant of the Carter-Wegman paradigm, employing a new universal-hash-function, NH, that can exploit SIMD instruction of modern processors. The "cryptographic" work of UMAC is done using standard primitives. The security of UMAC is proven, in the sense of giving exact and quantitatively strong results which demonstrate an inability to forge UMAC-authenticated messages assuming an inability to break the underlying cryptographic primitive. • In [rfc4418] we give a full specficiation of UMAC. • In [3key] we suggest some simple variants of the CBC MAC that let you efficiently MAC messages of arbitrary lengths. Our constructions use three keys, K1, K2, K3, to avoid unnecessary padding and MAC any binary string M in the larger of 1 and the ceiling of |M|/n applications of the underlying n-bit block cipher. Our favorite construction, the XCBC, has been proposed to NIST as a block-cipher mode of operation. We prove the security of our constructions. Our analysis exploits new ideas which simplify proofs compared to prior work. • In [pmac] we describe a new block-cipher mode which is fully parallelizable and provides the functionality of a pseudorandom function. It is similar in spirit to the XOR MAC, but it is more efficient. PMAC was designed and analyzed using the provable-security paradigm. It has been proposed as a mode of operation to NIST, and is under consideration by an IETF working group.
Fast cryptography. One of the reasons that cryptography is not used more pervasively is the assumed-to-be-high computational cost for doing bulk software encryption and bulk software message authentication. • The SEAL algorithm we proposed in '93 remains the fastest published method for symmetric encryption. It encrypts at a rate of less than five machine instructions per byte. This is my only paper not in the provable-security tradition. But I do pick up one contribution from theoretical cryptography: the type of cryptographic primitive which SEAL is. It is neither block cipher nor stream cipher, but a (length-increasing) pseudorandom function family. Such an object seems easier to use than a stream cipher, yet more amenable than a block cipher (it seems) for achieving extreme software speeds. After SEAL we now knew how to encrypt messages faster than we knew how to authenticate them. • In [bucket] we describe and analyze a new universal hash-function family, bucket hashing, and we advocate the Carter-Wegman approach as the most promising means for achieving software-efficient. message authentication. • Our UMAC algorithm incorporates a completely different universal hash-function family, one designed to exploit SIMD instructions of modern architectures. With UMAC we carried out all of the ``crypto engineering'' necessary to turn the hash-function family into a fully specified MAC. The final algorithm authenticates messages at roughly 1.0 cycles per byte (for 2^-60 forgery probability), which is about ten times faster than any other MAC that has been specified in the literature. On the downside, UMAC is complex, requires large key-setup time, and needs one to carefully select a variety of parameters. • The PMAC algorithm overcomes these problems, and is fully parallelizable, though its speed, in software, will not come close to that of UMAC's. PMAC has been proposed to NIST as a block-cipher mode of operation, and it is also being considered by an IETF working group that is defining standards for high-speed storage.
Asymmetric encryption. The RSA primitive f(x) = x^e mod N is not used (and should not be used) directly to encrypt a string; instead, asymmetric encryption is accomplished by an (often ignored) protocol which sits on top of the RSA primitive. For example, RSA-based encryption is often done using "Public Key Cryptography Standard #1" (RSA PKCS #1), which specifies how to format messages prior to applying the RSA primitive. • In [oaep] we provide a formatting approach which has come to be known as "OAEP". We prove, in the random-oracle model, that OAEP achieves semantic security, as well as a weak form of "plaintext awareness". Earlier techniques had no such guarantees. Recent work by others has shown that RSA-OAEP also achieves the strongest form of chosen-ciphertext security. OAEP is in the IEEE P1363 standard, and in other standards/draft standards. It is in recent versions of SET/TLS, which implies that you are almost certainly reading this web page using a browser that has OAEP implemented within it. • Moving on "El Gamal-style" encryption, our DHIES algorithm does for the Diffie-Hellman primitive what OAEP did for RSA: we describe a simple way to use the primitive so as to provably achieve standard security goals (like the strongest form of chosen-ciphertext security), under specified hardness assumptions, within the random-oracle model. DHIES is in standards/draft standards of ANSI, IEEE, ISO, and SEC, and implementations are sold by companies such as Certicom. • In [relations] we compare the relative strengths of popular notions of security for public-key encryption schemes. We consider the goals of indistinguishability and non-malleability, each under chosen-plaintext attack and two kinds of chosen-ciphertext attack. For each of the resulting definitions we prove either an implication (every scheme meeting one notion must meet the other) or a separation (there is a scheme meeting one notion but not the other, assuming the first notion can be met at all). In this way the paper provides a rather complete picture of the relationship among popular notions of encryption-scheme security.
Random oracles. Many cryptographic goals have been solved in the provable-security tradition, but only by virtue of protocols too inefficient to be competitive with what ad. hoc techniques already provide. Indeed this is one of the reasons that provable security has often been ignored by security practioners. • In [ro] we suggest that the random-oracle paradigm can, in many cases, provide a way bridge cryptographic theory and cryptographic practice. The method (which has it's roots in [Fiat Shamir 86] and a variety of folklore) says to: (1) Assume the existence of a public random oracle; (2) Do provable security (both the definition and the protocol) in this enriched model of computation; (3) Finally, instantiate the random oracle with an object like a cryptographic hash function. It is the thesis underlying the approach that, despite the heuristic instantiation step, substantial assurance benefits remain (far better assurance than protocols that don't have admit any sort of provable security). We explain the random-oracle paradigm and give many examples which make clear the power and generality of the method. • Subsequent papers of ours in the random-oracle model include [oaep], [pss], and some of [dhies]. The popularity of the random-oracle model continues to grow, despite limitations discussed by [Canetti, Goldreich, Halevi]. The [ro] paper is now my most cited paper, with about 700 citations.
Authenticated key exchange. The problem is how two parties can authenticate each other across the network and/or obtain a joint session key (the latter problem is the more useful.) The adversarial model envisages an active adversary who can, among other abilities, start multiple sessions of different entities. Many protocols for these problems have been proposed, but lots of them have turned out to be wrong. For the most part, the entire field had been rather ad. hoc and unscientific. In a new approach to this subject, we brought provable security to entity authentication and associated problems of key distribution. This is a large area of research in which protocols either were given no justification for correctness whatsoever, or were justified in a rather weak sense, by first passing to a non-cryptographic abstraction about the underlying cryptography (e.g., the "logical approach"). • In [eakd] we cover the two party symmetric case, where the parties hold a long-lived shared key either (1) want to authenticate one another, or (2) authenticate one another and simultaneously derive a shared session key. Then in [3pkd] we treat three party key distribution (the Needham-Schroeder, or Kerberos, setting), where each party shares a long-lived key with a trusted server, and they want to derive a shared session key. • In [dict] we cover key exchange in a setting where long-lived keys are user-selected passwords, and may therefore be subject to ``dictionary attack.'' In all cases, we provide a model, definitions, and protocols which are proven secure. In all cases, the protocols are as practical as currently implemented ones.
Formal encryption. In joint work with Martín Abadi, our paper "Reconciling Two Views of Cryptography" spans two very different ways to look at cryptography. One way (Martín's world) relies on a simple but effective formal approach. The other way (my world) relies on a detailed computational model that considers complexity and probability. These views spring from different (and basically disjoint) communities, and there has been an uncomfortable gap between these two approaches. Here we start to bridge the gap, by providing a computational justification for a formal treatment of encryption. Our main result says that, under appropriate complexity assumptions, formal ciphertexts which are equivalent with respect to a simple set of rules correspond to computationally indistinguishable ensembles. This is a rather new direction for me (and for my field), and it is early to tell if it will take off. We hope that this work engenders much follow-on work, and eventually helps to facilitate the use of "higher-level reasoning" as a way to get security guarantees in the computational setting.
Secure function evaluation. I have not worked in this area for a long time, but the secure function evaluation (SFE) problem is certainly interesting. In this problem a group of "players", each of whom holds his own private input, wish to evaluate some function on these private inputs in a way that reveals only the correctly-computed answer. In the presence of a trusted party, each player could send his input to the trusted party, who would compute the function and return the answers. We want to make communication protocols which accomplish the same thing (in the absence of a trusted party). This is a classical problem, first proposed by [Yao82], and many lovely protocols have been devised, beginning with [GMW87] and [BGW88,CCD88]. My work in this domain has been in two directions. • In one direction, Micali and I developed formal definitions for the goal (described in a CRYPTO '91 paper, but see [Dodis, Micali] for a better view of how our definitions evolved.) The other direction that I followed was to look at the efficiency of SFE protocols. • In our STOC '90 paper (and in my Ph.D thesis), we show how SFE can be achieved in a constant number of rounds (computational setting with a complete network of private channels, broadcast, and honest majority). To do this, we abandon the gate-by-gate approach and employ the generally-useful paradigm of issuing a "garbled circuit".
Complexity theory. I haven't been doing complexity theory of late, but perhaps I will return to it. • In [qp] we show that, under a complexity assumption, there is no polynomial-time approximation algorithm (even with a terrible guarantee) for the problem of QUADRATIC PROGRAMMING. Compared to what came later, the techniques here are simple. But the result was one of the first non-approximability results following [FGLSS], and the particular problem considered is of great interest to the mathematical programming community. • The other complexity theory paper I have is shows that everything provable (the class IP) is provable in (computational) zero knowledge, either (1) under a complexity assumption, or (2) in the "envelope model." This result has a somewhat confused history, with [Ben-Or] and [Impagliazzo, Yung 87] also deserving credit for (1).
Maurizio Sarri has cranked up the Chelsea charm offensive aimed at keeping Eden Hazard at the club by insisting the Belgian can win everything by staying at Stamford Bridge.
And one Chelsea supporter has played his part by paying £7,000 to try to help the club convince Hazard to sign a new contract.
The fan, who wants to remain anonymous, has personally funded a 100x50ft banner, which reads ‘Eden Hazard we want you to stay’ and will be displayed during Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off against Manchester United.
Chelsea fanzine cfcuk was approached by the fan, who supplied the image of Hazard’s knee-slide celebration and the wording he wanted to be used, to organise the making of the banner that will be displayed in the Lower Matthew Harding Stand.
Hazard is waiting to see whether or not Real Madrid promise to make a big push to sign him next summer, before deciding whether or not to re-sign with Chelsea. He last week claimed that a move to Spain may help his chances of winning the Ballon d’Or, despite going into the United game on the back of eight goals in his last eight Blues appearances.
Another player Chelsea may face a battle to keep is Andreas Christensen, who will ask to leave Chelsea if he is not playing by Christmas, according to the central defender’s father and agent Sten.
Danish international Christensen has only played three times for Chelsea this season and is yet to make a single appearance in the Premier League.
Christensen spent two successful seasons on loan at Borussia Monchengladbach, but Sten added: “For me it’s not a loan again. Either it’s Chelsea or else he needs to leave. I don’t think a loan is the optimal situation for Andreas. It’s sort of either or.
“I think, unfortunately, Chelsea have too many players who just go out on loan if [the club] isn’t going to use them and I don’t think Andreas should get caught in that.
My youngest, now 19 months, wasn’t so much into the trick or treating. She followed her brother dutifully behind. She kept him from racing from house to house in his quest for candy since we told him that he (Obi Wan Kenobi) had to have his sidekick (Yoda) with him when doorbell ringing commenced.
I have, at this point, hidden all the Halloween books. Well, they aren’t hidden too far, just on one end of my son’s bookshelf. He would actually have to look for them instead of just grabbing randomly.
I have some hope of switching gears in the next week or so to Thanksgiving.
Stephanopoulos reports—without comment—that Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), who is the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee and serves on the Deficit Reduction Commission, favors extending all the Bush tax cuts as part of his plan to reduce the deficit. On this score, Conrad echoes the Republican “Pledge for America.” One problem: cutting taxes makes the deficit go up.
In theory, of course, there is a point at which lowering the tax rate actually should increase tax revenues, by encouraging people to work and earn more. But there is little reason to believe we are at that point. In fact, as Ruth Marcus points out, tax revenue fell from 21% of GDP in 2000, the year before the Bush tax cuts were enacted, to 17.5% of GDP in 2008. Tax revenues were substantially lower as a percentage of GDP throughout the 2000s than they were in the 1990s. That wasn’t entirely the result of the Bush tax cuts, which didn’t cause the dot-com bubble burst or the recession that followed. But it's hard to believe the tax cuts did that much to stimulate growth—they certainly didn’t prevent the economy from having its worst decade since the Great Depression. Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation argues that entitlement programs and not tax cuts are the main source of the deficit, but he still calculates that the Bush tax cuts cost us $1.7 trillion and will account for 14% in the increase of the deficit between 2002 and 2011. And the non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimates that extending the Bush tax cuts would lower tax revenues $1.1 trillion over the next 5 years.
So far from helping eliminate the deficit, extending the Bush tax cuts would make it much worse. The idea that tax cuts will reduce the deficit—shared by politicians on both sides of the aisle—is pure have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too fantasy. The same can be said of the idea that we can reduce the deficit by cutting non-defense discretionary spending or reducing earmarks. Even eliminating non-defense discretionary spending entirely—essentially shutting the entire government except for the Defense Department down—wouldn’t be enough to balance next years budget as it is. In fact, we’d need to cut non-defense discretionary spending 25% just to make up for extending the Bush tax cuts.
Politicians get elected by selling the idea that we can avoid hard choices, and that we can get government for free. The hard truth they want to avoid is that if we want to have the best military in the world and keep entitlements programs like Medicare, we’re going to have to pay for them.
Art Institute's section winner, Jonathan Ayala.
Can’t you see it? They show up every time a well is drilled or fracked next to a school or park. They record the noise and play it back outside city council members’ homes at 2 a.m. Instead of Anonymous masks, they wear the visages of mayors and Chesapeake Energy officials and the Texas Railroad Commission executives who have done the most to turn this into a dirty ol’ town, as Don Young says. They orchestrate flash mob events in which members lie down on cue at public events to represent the victims of asthma and cancers brought on by drilling-related air pollution. When the Christmas tree goes up downtown or the big rodeo begins, the Occupistas would be nearby, offering a guerrilla theater option, with volunteers playing the parts of homeowners as they try to drink the flaming water coming out of their faucets or take a shower without succumbing to the gas vapors. Couldn’t hurt, might help, and it would give all the dedicated, long-suffering regular critics a night off.
Longtime TV news anchor Gloria Campos is a household name in the Metroplex. In March, she walked away from a 30-year career at WFAA. Covering everything from political conventions, presidential inaugurations, and the funerals of Ann Richards and Ronald Reagan to local tragedies and triumphs, Campos was always in the moment but never tried to appear bigger than the story. For many people hereabouts, she has been the face of broadcast news since their childhoods. She will be missed.
Sure, his “laugh” is annoying. Coming from his mouth instead of his belly, it sounds forced. And like nearly every other sports pundit in North Texas, he only pays lip service to the Dallas Stars. But the 30-plus-year broadcast veteran approaches football, baseball, and basketball (and the ponies) with an equal mix of childlike enthusiasm and professorial sobriety. His all-business-all-the-time ethos (except when he’s doing “Knucklehead of the Week”) is a refreshing respite from the station’s often-ingratiating cool-kid feel. Catch him 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. weekdays.
Tragically, many newspaper journalists could never make it as movie stars or underwear models –– we have faces (and bodies) for print, to paraphrase the old saw about radio personalities. But then longtime Star-Telegram sports writer Mac “Big Mac” Engel started doing regular YouTube vids with Randy Galloway, as well as his own “Mac Attacks” segments. This dude’s casual masculinity, classically handsome features (those cheekbones! that rugged lantern jaw!), and a damn fine head of hair have established his hotness as a welcome fact of online media life in North Texas.
Local morning news shows tend to rely on acerbic, slightly goofy male anchors, a la Tim Ryan, Ron Corning, and Brendan Higgins (well, at least until Higgins got fired after getting drunk and rowdy in Aspen last month). The male anchors mostly rely on smart and pretty female co-anchors to chuckle and pretend to be shocked at their jokes. Bankert has the “straight woman” part down, and she’s certainly a hottie, but she can be just as caustic and funny as the boys.
There’s no mistaking that pterodactyl laugh once “The Hardline” gets rolling on The Ticket. Since taking the co-host slot in 2007 after years as producer, Corby Davidson has been on his game. In his early years, Davidson was thought of as a funny guy who stepped aside when the sports talk got too deep. Now he displays his surprisingly vast knowledge of local and national sports, college and professional, on a daily basis. Davidson has matured into a personality at the top of his craft without losing his edge — and he’s still funny.
No matter what’s on the front page of the Star-Telegram, Sanders’ column almost always provides meaningful food for thought. His topics run the gamut from botched state executions to immigration issues, and he’s not afraid to tell it like it is. In addition, Sanders is an active and entertaining public speaker. His current focus on the “new Jim Crow” is a sober examination of criminal laws (mostly drug-related) that target minorities.
First Congregational United Church of Christ practiced what it preached about inclusion and hired Arlington native Lee Ann Bryce as its minister, making her perhaps the only openly lesbian minister leading a mainstream church in North Texas. Bryce does a beautiful job of promoting peaceful, loving coexistence without beating people over the heads about sexuality issues during sermons. Her gentle touch seems the perfect fit for this congregation that includes various cultures, races, and sexual persuasions all worshipping side by side.
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While I am honored to be a recipient of the 2014 Critic’s Award in the Watchdog category, I would like to correct a couple of details. While the railing against gas drilling for several years at Arlington City Hall is true, I would like to clarify that I was not a key player in the Dalworthington Gardens case of XTO’s illegal taking of water from Pappy Elkins Lake. The Pappy Elkins Restoration Group is currently working on that issue. Regarding the water, however, I did catch Chesapeake red-handed when they violated the terms of their permit by hauling water from Arlington into Grand Prairie for fracking during the epic drought of 2011. Also, while I did participate in the process for the Rush Creek Drill Site, I cannot in good conscience accept full responsibility for that victory since the members of that community organized a strong coalition against the zoning of that drill site. We did, however, win a case just last week at a Planning & Zoning public hearing. EnerVest’s request to amend a Special Use Permit to establish a drill zone in south Arlington where they planned to drill at least three more gas wells was denied, and we blocked XTO from setting up frac pools on a south Arlington drill site last year. All of these stories and more may be found on our community blog at http://fishcreekmonitor.blogspot.com where citizen journalism happens.
Jane, you deserve all the kudos there are. You stepped up years ago, pushed through your quiet, reserved nature and transformed yourself into a force that cannot be ignored. You have helped shepherd many others into that role also. You are a leader and a light.
Yeah I nominated Jane Lynn last year for the GreenSourceDFW community activist award…she has the heart and will of a beast!!!
Long a recognized figure in the music industry — she was head of the Music and Entertainment Marketing at Pepsi before joining Beats by Dre in 2014, which was purchased by Apple shortly after she arrived — Saint John stepped onto the global stage a year ago at the Apple WWDC, where she grooved to Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” while demonstrating Apple Music’s new user interface, prompting an enthusiastic reaction in the press and social media. She also stepped in front of the camera in a commercial for Apple Music featuring James Corden and Apple executives Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine, which premiered on the 2016 Emmy Awards.
Her new role makes a high-profile statement for Uber, which has faced accusations of sexual harassment from female employees in recent months.
While at Apple, Saint John worked on such campaigns as the ad for Taylor Swift’s workout wipdeout and another starring Mary J. Blige, Kerry Washington and Taraji P. Henson. At Pepsi, led teams that created partnerships with film studios for product placement, record labels for commercial deals, and the sports industry with the NFL for the Super Bowl Halftime Show (featuring Beyonce in 2013, Bruno Mars in 2014, and Katy Perry in 2015).
Prior to Pepsi, Boz served as Vice President of Marketing for Ashley Stewart (a women’s fashion brand) and managed accounts at advertising agencies Arnold Worldwide and Spike Lee’s SpikeDDB. It was in the latter job that her professional relationship with Beyonce began, through a 2002 Pepsi commercial, which culminated in Saint John’s major role in bringing the singer to the Super Bowl halftime show in 2013.
Born in Connecticut and raised in Kenya, Ghana, Washington DC and Colorado, she was named 2016’s Female Executive of the Year by Billboard Magazine, featured in Fortune Magazine’s Disruptors, Innovators & Stars 40 Under 40 feature, Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People, Ad Age’s 50 Most Creative People, Ebony Magazine’s 100 Powerful Executives, among other honors.