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Fact-checking Donald Trump's Tim Kaine attack on 'Meet the Press'
NBC's Chuck Todd interviews Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for the July 24 edition of "Meet the Press" about Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders and his comments about NATO. (NBC)
By Lauren Carroll July 24, 2016
By Warren Fiske July 24, 2016
By Katie Sanders July 24, 2016
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton spent the weekend between political party conventions knocking the other nominee’s choice in a running mate.
As Clinton attacked Indiana Gov. Mike Pence over education, Trump painted Clinton’s pick, former governor and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., as corrupt for accepting "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in gifts as governor from 2006 to 2010.
Trump compared Kaine to his successor, former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, saying McDonnell nearly went to prison for accepting far less.
McDonnell stood trial for accepting $177,000 in undisclosed personal gifts from an entrepreneur who was seeking business with the state. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned McDonnell’s bribery convictions in June.
"Bob McDonnell took a fraction of what Kaine took," said Trump, the GOP presidential nominee. "And I think, to me, it’s a big problem. Now, how do you take all these gifts? Hundreds of thousands of dollars."
McDonnell actually accepted more gifts than Kaine, and there were more problems on top of that. Trump’s statement rates Pants on Fire!
Kaine accepted $162,083 in gifts as lieutenant governor and governor, all of which was disclosed as required by state law.
Most of the money was for political travel, such as $45,000 that Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign paid for Kaine’s airline and lodging expenses as a surrogate speaker. Kaine also accepted some personal gifts. The largest was use of a political donor’s home in the Caribbean for a vacation shortly after Kaine was elected governor in 2005. On a disclosure form, Kaine estimated the in-kind value of the lodging at $18,000.
All of these gifts were disclosed. There have been no allegations that Kaine accepted undisclosed gifts.
McDonnell disclosed accepting $275,707 in gifts as attorney general and governor, according to the online files of the Virginia Public Access Project. And there was another $177,000 that he didn’t disclose.
The undisclosed gifts and special loans were from a businessman who was seeking the state’s help in marketing a dietary supplement. These gifts included a $6,000 Rolex watch; use of the businessman’s vacation home at Smith Mountain Lake; $15,000 for the catering bill at the wedding of McDonnell’s oldest daughter, as well as a $10,000 wedding check to her; and a designer gown for McDonnell’s wife.
All told, McDonnell’s disclosed and undisclosed gifts come to $452,707, almost three times as much as Kaine.
On the Democratic side, Clinton on Saturday at Florida International University contrasted Kaine’s gubernatorial record with Pence.
"And while Mike Pence slashed education funding in Indiana — and gave more tax cuts to the wealthiest — Tim Kaine cut his own salary and invested in education from pre-K through college and beyond," Clinton said.
For this fact-check, we focused on whether Pence "slashed" education funding as Kaine invested in it.
This frame-up on education policy doesn’t hold up, so it rates False.
In fact, Indiana’s education funding has been on the rise every year since Pence took office in 2013.
Not adjusting for inflation, Indiana state spending for K-12 and higher education combined hit record highs in 2014 through the current year, according to data compiled by Larry DeBoer, a professor of agricultural economics at Indiana’s Purdue University.
When adjusted for inflation, the rise isn’t so dramatic, but it’s still there.
The Clinton campaign pointed that Pence asked universities to cut their state spending by 2 percent in fiscal year 2014 to account for a revenue shortfall. And the 2015 state budget took money from some urban school districts and redistributed them to suburban districts, which some commentators saw as disproportionately benefiting wealthier students.
Education spending in Virginia actually went down under Kaine, who served as governor from 2006 through 2010.
In raw dollars, state spending on K-12 and higher education under Kaine increased in 2007, 2008 and 2009, to a high of $7.5 billion, according to figures compiled by Chris Duncombe, a policy analyst at the Commonwealth Institute, a liberal Virginia think tank. There was a very slight dip in 2008 when adjusting the figures for inflation.
Then in 2010, it fell to $6.8 billion, and that includes $365 million from the federal government to support the economic recovery.
"Sen. Kaine was dealt a poor hand to fund public education, or anything else for that matter," said Richard Salmon, a professor emeritus and expert in public education at Virginia Tech.
See fact-checks.
More by Lauren Carroll
stated on June 22, 2017 a meeting with small business owners:
Says of Georgia, "for four years in a row, we are the No. 1 state to do business in."
By Lauren Carroll • July 19, 2017
stated on July 6, 2017 a press conference in Poland:
Says Barack Obama found out about Russia "in August. Now, the election was in November. That's a lot of time. He did nothing about it."
Marc Short
stated on July 2, 2017 an episode of "Fox News Sunday":
7 million people the Congressional Budget Office says won't have health insurance coverage under the Senate health care bill "don't exist."
By Lauren Carroll • July 5, 2017
stated on June 13, 2017 a congressional hearing:
"It's a longstanding policy of the Department of Justice not to comment on conversations that the attorney general has had with the president of the United States."
By Lauren Carroll • June 14, 2017
Kimberley Strassel
stated on May 28, 2017 "Meet the Press" on NBC:
In 2008, "candidate Obama, he's not even president-elect, sends William Miller over to Iran to establish a back channel and let the Iranians know that should he win the election, they will have friendlier terms."
By Lauren Carroll • June 2, 2017
Uspoln Website
stated on May 23, 2017 an online article:
"Rubio: ‘Rape victims should be in custody if there is suspicion that they’re planning abortion.’ "
stated on May 21, 2017 an episode of "Fox and Friends":
Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich "apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. ... It turns out, it wasn’t the Russians."
By Lauren Carroll • May 23, 2017
stated on May 17, 2017 an episode of the "Rush Limbaugh Show":
"What Trump is alleged to have done is actually no different than what Barack Obama did in April last year when he made it known that he didn’t want Hillary prosecuted."
Richard Blumenthal
stated on May 9, 2017 a press conference:
"What does Trumpcare do? Yank tax credits away from veterans unlike any other American."
stated on May 4, 2017 blog headlines:
Under the House Republican health plan, sexual assault is a pre-existing condition.
By Lauren Carroll • May 5, 2017
stated on May 2, 2017 her book "Women Who Work":
"40 percent of American households have female primary breadwinners."
stated on April 30, 2017 an interview on CBS:
"General Flynn got his clearance from the Obama administration."
stated on April 28, 2017 the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting:
"For the first time in the modern political era, we have confirmed a new justice in the first 100 days."
By Lauren Carroll • April 28, 2017
stated on April 25, 2017 the daily White House press briefing:
Trump has "worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since Truman."
stated on April 26, 2017 a tweet:
The Ninth Circuit has an overturned record "close to 80%."
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Encounters With Ethanol
Capt. Patrick Sciacca
In 2003 several states switched their on-the-water gasoline from the traditional methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) blend to one containing ten-percent ethanol, called E10. Ethanol is derived from agricultural products such as corn and sugar cane, and its purported ability to reduce greenhouse gases has led, in part, to its use at both on- and off-highway fueling stations.
Scientists and some politicians claim this new blend can reduce American dependence on foreign oil, while critics note that producing it requires petroleum-based products like pesticides, fertilizers, and fuel for farm equipment. Ethanol supporters believe that as agricultural technology improves and a greater number of ethanol-friendly crops are grown, the need for these petroleum-heavy products will be reduced, making ethanol both truly green and cost-effective.
Of course it's hip to be green, and boaters want to help—anything to reduce our carbon footprint. But in states where ethanol has been implemented for several years (around half of the United States now uses E10 fuel), another one of this fuel's other talents has come to light: it's an excellent solvent. It even has the disconcerting habit of partially dissolving fiberglass fuel tanks and rubber hoses.
This problem has been well-documented by organizations such as BoatUS, which has done a wealth of research and testing regarding the effects of blended fuel on various boat components. (You can see the results of its testing at BoatUS.) And to date, boaters have filed millions of dollars in class-action lawsuits against oil companies for failing to fully disclose the potential ill-effects that E10 fuel could have had on their vessels.
PMY recently caught up with two Northeast-based boaters who have personally felt the sting of ethanol and agreed to share their stories with us.
HE JUST WANTED HIS NEW BOAT TO WORK
A boat owner from Long Island, New York, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased a brand-new 36-foot center console, complete with triple 275-hp Mercury Verado four-stroke gasoline outboards in 2007. He'd stepped down from a Viking 50, and had dreams of catching big wahoo on his brain. In particular he was looking forward to the warm Northeast summer boating season followed by winter-wahoo chasing in the Bahamas.
His Florida-built boat had just arrived in the Empire State for the spring, and I saw her at my marina over several weeks as an array of top-notch electronics were installed. She looked ready to prowl the deep, and her owner beamed like a proud father. But the pride didn't last.
Within five months of taking delivery, his engines started to stall and sputter. An investigation into the cause followed. He eventually discovered residue floating around in the two, nine-foot-long, 175-gallon integral fiberglass fuel tanks, which are shaped and contoured to the hull to maximize their capacity. (The boat's 175-gallon center fuel tank is aluminum.)
The residue, which he described as looking like small chips, turned out to be resin from those integral tanks. In less than 180 days, the ten-percent ethanol-blend gasoline had separated out the resin, which worked its way through the fuel system and eventually fouled his motors.
This owner, distraught about his new pride and joy being sidelined, was concerned about how to properly fix the problem. He knew he couldn't go to the engine manufacturer because, as he says, "They didn't do anything wrong."
After working out a deal with the builder, the boat was returned to the factory where the fuel tanks were repaired and a liner was installed in them to prevent a repeat performance. The motors were given the green light, and the boat was re-sold by the builder.
The owner is currently awaiting a new boat from the same builder, which is expected to be delivered sometime early this year and will be outfitted with three aluminum fuel tanks. (Aluminum and polyethylene fuel tanks shouldn't be affected by E10.) His new boat should be trouble-free running on the current ten-percent ethanol gasoline, but it comes at a cost of fuel capacity. The two outside aluminum tanks will accommodate 100 fewer gallons since they can't be shaped like integral fiberglass tanks. And of course, this results in reduced range for his 36-footer. Moreover, he's been forced to spend the last two seasons dockside, only dreaming of wahoo.
This article originally appeared in the January 2009 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
Encounters With Ethanol Page 2
Ethanol: Should You Panic?
Water Worries
Ethanol: Should You Panic? Page 2
Walker Engineering
Your Boat's Fuel in Winter
Magnetizing Your Diesel Fuel Page 3
Mixing Business With Pleasure
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The first new rail station to be built in London since 2011 has been approved for Beam Park as part of a new housing development.
Beam Park station, the first new station since Stratford International opened in 2011, will provide a 20-minute link with Fenchurch Street.
It will be located on the London, Tilbury and Southend Line as part of the Essex Thameside franchise, operated by c2c, between Dagenham Dock and Rainham.
It is to be built in partnership with Network Rail, Transport for London and c2c, with £9m of the funding coming from TfL’s growth fund.
TfL’s director of borough planning, Alex Williams, said: “Excellent transport links are key to supporting growth and regeneration across London. Beam Park is a prime example of how TfL is using its Growth Fund to work with the GLA and the boroughs to secure the delivery of transport schemes that will unlock development.”
The 29-hectare site in Beam Park, bisected by the Beam River, is one of the largest areas of land earmarked for new development . It is thought that the area could host close to 2,000 new homes with the potential for up to 5000 in associated nearby developments.
Cllr Roger Ramsay, leader of Havering Council, said: “The news from the Mayor of London that the Beam Park development is set to go ahead is wonderful. I am delighted that residents in the Rainham area will see a dramatic improvement in the provision of homes and jobs, and significantly improved transport links.”
Tell us what you think – have your say below or email [email protected]
Corringham in Essex is also in plans to have a new train station even its next door to Stanford-le-Hope and the station in Stanford-le-Hope is nearly a mile away from Corringham and the new station could be built before Thurrock Council could get the planning permission to build 300 new homes even the land its closer to the A13 as well the railway line.
New Chesterton station to provide rail boost for Cambridge
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Robert Macdonald beats Ben Chin in runoff to win third term as Lewiston mayor
With more than 8,200 voters casting ballots, the two-term incumbent beats his Democratic challenger, 53 percent to 47 percent.
By Eric RussellStaff Writer
Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald speaks to voters at the James Longley Elementary School during Tuesday's runoff election. Macdonald was re-elected with 53 percent of the vote. Whitney Hayward/Staff Photographer
LEWISTON — Voters in Lewiston returned two-term mayor Robert Macdonald to office Tuesday, ending a spirited campaign between the incumbent and his Democratic upstart challenger Ben Chin.
The results were announced shortly after 9:15 p.m. by City Clerk Kathy Montejo in the gymnasium of the Governor James B. Longley Elementary School. Some of the ballot counters applauded.
Ben Chin speaks with his supporters Tuesday night after losing the Lewiston mayoral runoff election against Robert Macdonald. He said he hasn't given much thought to his future in politics. Whitney Hayward/Staff Photographer
Votes are counted for Ben Chin and Robert Macdonald after the polls closed in Lewiston on Tuesday night. Whitney Hayward/Staff Photographer
Macdonald received 4,398 votes, about 53 percent, to Chin’s 3,826 votes, 47 percent.
Reached at his home after the results were announced, Mayor Macdonald said his re-election felt like a “reward.”
“It felt good. A lot of people came up to me and said, ‘Even if you don’t win, we think you have done a lot of good,’ ” he said.
Chin, 30, said he expected the race to be close and was proud of his campaign.
“Our standard was to run the campaign we wanted and talk about the issues we felt were important, and I think we did that,” he said late Tuesday, surrounded by supporters at Guthries, a local restaurant and pub.
The story of Tuesday’s runoff election was turnout, which was steady all day and ended up at 8,229 to nearly match the total for the November general election.
In addition to nearly 3,000 absentee ballots, more than 5,000 voters showed up in person on Tuesday, which translated to about 32 percent. Lewiston has roughly 25,000 registered voters.
“Interest in this race has been really strong,” Montejo said Tuesday afternoon. “We’re seeing people today who didn’t vote last month.”
Chin was the top vote-getter in the five-way general election on Nov. 3, with 44 percent support, followed by Macdonald at 37 percent.
However, because no candidate got 50 percent, the top two moved on to Tuesday’s special election.
THIRD TERM FOR RETIRED DETECTIVE
Macdonald, 68, has been Lewiston’s mayor for the past four years. He was first elected in 2011, also in a runoff, although his opponent in that race, Mark Paradis, died before the special election.
Macdonald was re-elected in 2013, handily defeating former Mayor Larry Gilbert.
Macdonald, a retired police detective whose tenure as mayor has been marked by sometimes controversial statements about welfare recipients and immigrants, raised the race’s profile in September when he proposed creating an online registry for those collecting welfare benefits.
Earlier Tuesday, he said that if he won, he would continue to make his case for welfare reform. He also mentioned housing as a top priority.
“We need to create better housing for our working class people,” he said.
This race was different from the last two he has run, Macdonald said, citing Chin’s aggressive fundraising.
“I think that probably ended up hurting him in the long run because Lewiston isn’t used to that type of campaign,” Macdonald said.
CHIN HAD BIG FUNDRAISING EDGE
Chin, a 2006 Bates College graduate and political director for the Maine People’s Alliance, declared his candidacy in February and raised nearly $88,000 for his campaign – a 15-to-1 fundraising edge over Macdonald.
Chin said he was touched by all the support he received, but hadn’t given much thought to his future in politics.
“I’m just looking forward to having four weeks off for paternity leave,” he said. Chin’s daughter was born just a few days before the November election.
This year’s race was hotly contested for several months and has drawn interest from beyond Lewiston.
At the polls Tuesday, voters were pretty clearly divided between Chin, the liberal Democrat representing change, and Macdonald, the conservative firebrand whose ideas and style are reminiscent of another Lewiston native, Gov. Paul LePage.
Amid the steady stream of voters, there were many younger men and woman, including Bates College students, and many immigrants. Overwhelmingly, those groups favored Chin.
Emma Marchetti, 20, a Bates College student from Whitefish, Montana, was shuttling voters from campus to the polling place.
A group of five female students who arrived shortly after 3 p.m. all voted for Chin.
Claire Sullivan, 18, of Montville, New Jersey, said Chin’s views more closely align with her own.
Becca Havian, 18, of California agreed and said she wanted to vote in the Lewiston race because she feels more connected to the community than she does to her own hometown.
“I want this community to change and I like the idea of being an agent of change,” she said.
Marchetti said some student voters had not been welcomed with open arms on Tuesday.
“I was in line and a woman was talking about how because she lives here, she knows what’s going on and students couldn’t possibly be informed,” Marchetti said. “I just don’t think that’s true.”
RETIREES FAVORED INCUMBENT
Abdi Ahmed, who has spent the past 12 years in Lewiston, said he voted for Chin because he thinks the city is changing. Chin, he said, represents that change, while Macdonald resists it.
The other big bloc of voters was retirees, who appeared to favor Macdonald.
Larry and Janine Roy, both lifelong Lewiston residents, said they voted for Macdonald.
“I’m afraid of this young buck who has no life experience,” Janine Roy said of Chin.
“I like what Macdonald has done so far,” Larry Roy added.
The Maine Republican Party congratulated Macdonald on his victory.
“Tonight’s results should send a strong signal to Maine Democrat leadership – Lewiston is not for sale, and you are out of step with common-sense, mainstream views of Maine voters,” Maine Republican Party Chairman Rick Bennett said in a statement.
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William Ruckelshaus, who refused to join in Nixon’s ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ dies at 87
As deputy attorney general in 1973, Ruckelshaus refused a presidential order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in.
By Timothy R. SmithThe Washington Post
In this May 15, 1973, photo, then-acting FBI director William Doyle Ruckelshaus pauses during a news conference in Washington. In 2008, Time magazine rated Ruckelshaus among the best Cabinet secretaries in U.S. history. Charles Gorry/Associated Press
William Ruckelshaus, a pragmatic and resolute government official who shaped the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s as its first administrator and returned to the agency a decade later to restore its shattered morale after its watchdog powers had been muzzled, died Nov. 27 at his home in Seattle. He was 87.
The death was confirmed by a friend, Philip Angell. The cause was not immediately known.
In a long career in government and private industry, Ruckelshaus was widely promoted as “Mr. Clean” as much for his uprightness as for his role with the EPA. He cemented his reputation for unshakable integrity when, in 1973, as Richard Nixon’s deputy attorney general, he refused a presidential order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in.
Decades later, as chief executive of Houston-based Browning-Ferris Industries, the second-largest trash-disposal company in the country, he expanded the company’s presence into New York and worked with law enforcement agencies to help break mob control of the city’s trash removal business.
Ruckelshaus, the scion of a prominent Indianapolis legal family, was a moderate, Princeton- and Harvard-educated Republican who rose in the Nixon-era Justice Department before guiding the EPA at its birth in 1970.
Hulking, rawboned and bespectacled, Ruckelshaus shepherded several federal environmental entities into a robust regulatory agency and did as much as anyone to mold the EPA’s mission.
During his three-year tenure, he created policies that forced cities to adopt anti-pollution laws, held automakers to strict emissions standards and banned the harmful pesticide DDT.
J. Patrick Dobel, a University of Washington public affairs professor who has written about Ruckelshaus’s leadership abilities, said he focused the agency’s mission and drew early media attention to the EPA.
“He got the EPA a lot of public support and built up visibility,” Dobel said.
Around the time Ruckelshaus stepped down from the EPA in April 1973, the Nixon administration was foundering amid accusations that it had obstructed justice by covering up its involvement in the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington.
Ruckelshaus, who had no connection to the scandal, was made acting FBI director and then deputy attorney general in an effort by the Nixon administration to rebuild public confidence.
On Oct. 20, 1973, Archibald Cox, a Harvard law professor appointed by Attorney General Elliot Richardson to investigate the break-in, had requested complete access to Oval Office tape recordings of the time immediately after the break-in. Nixon rebuffed the request and ordered Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned.
Shortly afterward, Gen. Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief of staff, phoned Ruckelshaus and instructed him to fire Cox.
“Your commander in chief has given you an order,” Haig said.
, who had promised the Senate during confirmation hearings that he would protect Cox, refused carry out Nixon’s order and then resigned. The duties of the attorney general were transferred to Solicitor General Robert Bork, who agreed to fire Cox.
The event became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” and precipitated the downfall of the Nixon presidency in August 1974.
Of his role, Ruckelshaus later said, “It was not a heroic act.”
After promising Cox the freedom to investigate the Watergate scandal, he said, “What I was requested to do was violate that promise.” The decision to quit, he said, was “very easy.”
Ruckelshaus was serving as vice president of legal affairs for Washington state-based timber giant Weyerhaeuser when President Ronald Reagan asked him to return as EPA administrator in 1983.
An earlier Reagan appointee, Colorado conservative Anne Gorsuch Burford (the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch) had depleted the agency by asking Congress to cut the EPA budget, eliminating jobs, halting enforcement activities and spinning off many regulatory functions to the states.
Some of her senior staffers kept a list of career appointees deemed disloyal to Reagan and let the entire staff know of the list. During Burford’s tenure, Congress suspected the EPA was misspending hazardous waste cleanup funds and ordered that financial documents be turned over. Burford refused. She and 12 senior EPA officials were fired or resigned.
Reagan appointed Ruckelshaus to revive the demoralized agency. On his first on the job, agency officials unfurled a banner, “How do you spell relief? R-U-C-K-E-L-S-H-A-U-S,” a reference to a popular Rolaids commercial.
On his second day, he fired four people to make room for his own management team. Ruckelshaus set out to improve the agency’s image and, during his two years leading the EPA, received Reagan’s support and opened relations with Congress.
In 2008, Time magazine rated Ruckelshaus among the best Cabinet secretaries in U.S. history. (The EPA was given Cabinet-level status in 1990.)
William Doyle Ruckelshaus was born in Indianapolis on July 24, 1932. His family had long been active in the state Republican party. His father had once considered running for the Senate but declined, believing a Catholic would never win in Indiana.
Ruckelshaus attended Princeton University, where he was a lackluster student. To discipline his inattentive son, his father, who was chairman of the local draft board, got his son drafted. He returned to Princeton after two years in the Army and graduated cum laude in 1957.
Ruckelshaus received a law degree from Harvard in 1960, then joined his family’s Indianapolis law firm. Later that year, he was appointed state deputy attorney general and worked as counsel with the Indiana Board of Health, where he took legal action against companies polluting state waterways. It was his first foray into environmental policy and contributed to his later EPA appointment.
His first wife, Harvard Law School classmate Ellen Urban, died in childbirth in 1961. The next year he married Jill Strickland, who later served on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. In addition his wife, survivors include twin daughters from his first marriage; and three children from his second marriage. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
Ruckelshaus was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1966 and became the first freshman legislator to serve as majority leader. In 1968, he mounted an unsuccessful challenge against incumbent Sen. Birch Bayh, a Democrat.
After the election, Ruckelshaus was asked by the Nixon White House to become head of the Justice Department’s civil division. He quickly impressed Nixon and Mitchell by deftly handling student protests against the Vietnam War’s expansion into Cambodia.
Ruckelshaus persuaded the attorney general and the president to allow the demonstrators to protest near the White House grounds, resolving the tensions without violence. Nixon later asked him to tour college campuses to communicate the administration’s line with students.
By 1970, Congress had passed several environmental bills, including the Clean Air Act. The federal government, however, lacked an individual agency to enforce the laws. Regulation was spread across 15 separate agencies, which blunted the government’s influence on environmental policy.
Nixon created the EPA by executive order and appointed Ruckelshaus as its first administrator. Nine days into his tenure, he ordered the mayors of Atlanta, Cleveland and Detroit to develop plans to correct water-quality violations or face the prospect of legal action. Within months, he ordered cities to enact clean-air standards by 1975, and factory owners were required to provide detailed reports on materials dumped into waterways.
“We did come out pretty fast,” Ruckelshaus told USA Today in June 2010. “There were a lot of handy targets around. And I felt we needed to show the public that we were serious.”
The 1970 Clean Air Act also included strict auto emissions guidelines that were to be met by 1975. The law required automakers reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 90 percent from the levels of 1970-model cars. As a result, the emissions-reducing catalytic converter became standard on American cars.
One of Ruckelshaus’s most significant moves at EPA, University of Arizona professor J.E. “Ed” de Steiguer said in an interview, was to ban the harmful pesticide DDT.
The pesticide became a target of the environmental movement after biologist Rachel Carson called it the “elixir of death” in her influential 1962 book “Silent Spring.” Because DDT was virtually nondegradable, it was transferred through the food chain. It was particularly devastating to birds and contributed to the near extinction of the bald eagle, the national symbol of the United States. The bald eagle eventually rebounded and was taken off the endangered-species list in 2007.
In 1988, Ruckelshaus became chief executive of Browning-Ferris Industries, a trash-removal company with a spotty environmental and legal record. After a headline in the publication Industry Week – ” ‘Mr. Clean’ turns ‘Garbage Man’ ” – Ruckelshaus replied in a letter to the editor: “You did your usual thorough and fair job. My only complaint is that I did not come out as a combination of Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill and Clint Eastwood.”
Under his administration, BFI expanded into New York City. The company’s trucks and trash collectors were often escorted by guards, but eventually BFI was able to break organized crime’s grip on trash removal.
“They’d steal the containers if we had containers out,” Ruckelshaus told “Dateline NBC” in 1998. “They even stole a truck one time, and just general harassment – the kind of thing that actually doesn’t go on in other marketplaces in our business.”
A longtime Seattle resident, Ruckelshaus served from 2007 to 2010 as the first head of the Puget Sound Partnership, an environmental agency in Washington state. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Bill tackling robocalls likely bound for quick passage in the House
Former Polish president defends Hunter Biden, Ukrainian gas company
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Mercer Advisors Acquires McGee Wealth Management, Inc.
Acquisition of McGee Wealth Management, Inc. (Registered Investment Adviser), Expands Mercer Advisors' Presence in Oregon and Pacific Northwest
Mercer Global Advisors Inc.
DENVER, Jan. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ("Mercer Advisors"), a national Registered Investment Adviser ("RIA"), today announced the acquisition of McGee Wealth Management, Inc. ("MWM"), a respected wealth management firm located in Portland, Oregon. MWM serves approximately 800 clients with assets under management ("AUM") of approximately $815 million. MWM was founded by Judith A. McGee, L.H.D., CFP®, ChFC® ("Judith") joined by her daughter D. Linette Dobbins, CFP® ("Linette"), focusing on delivering comprehensive wealth management services to their high net worth (HNW) clients. MWM has four shareholders that include Judith, Linette, Jennifer Currin Gutridge, CFP® ("Jennifer"), and Sarah Elise Berry, Vice President ("Sarah"). In all, fifteen (15) MWM team members will be joining the Mercer Advisors' team. The MWM transaction closed December 31, 2020.
MWM is a woman led and founded RIA that has been an industry leader for decades. A multi-family office of financial experts providing industry leading financial guidance for their clients. Judith A. McGee, L.H.D., CFP®, ChFC® has been recognized among the nation's top wealth managers by leading industry publications. Among other recognitions, Judith was inducted into Research Magazine's Advisor Hall of Fame in 2015.
Commenting on the transaction, Judith A. McGee, Founder, stated: "Throughout our history, McGee Wealth Management has been dedicated to making a positive, enduring difference in our clients' lives by employing our knowledge, experience, wisdom and passion for financial planning and wealth management. We serve our clients at the highest level and act as a generational advisor. Thus, in looking for a partner to discuss possible succession planning, finding one that shared our mission, vision and values was most important. After speaking with David Barton, Vice Chairman and head of Mergers and Acquisitions at Mercer Advisors, I knew we had found the right partner." Linette Dobbins, Co-Founder added, "I've worked closely with Dave Barton and the team over the last several months and they have guided us well through the sale and transition process. We couldn't be more excited about joining the Mercer Advisors' Team."
David Barton, who led this transaction on behalf of Mercer Advisors, added: "Judith, Linette, Jennifer, and Sarah have built an exceptionally strong and growing business in a highly desirable and competitive market. McGee Wealth Management's reputation is beyond reproach and Judith is a recognized leader in a myriad of women's initiatives across the United States. Judith and Linette also realized they needed a succession plan, and they wanted scale and leverage to better compete. They were referred to me by an industry colleague and we addressed those concerns in detail and developed a game plan to accomplish our joint objectives. Our business combination is a true win-win."
Dave Welling, Chief Executive Officer of Mercer Advisors said, "Judith McGee is a well-known advocate of women's issues including financial literacy, independence, and equality. We share her passion on these subjects and look forward to her adding her voice to our nationally recognized InvestHERs and Women & Wealth programs which focus on the advancement of women professionals in our industry and tailoring our services for our female clients. We are proud to partner with Judith and Linette and the rest of the MWM team augmenting our existing presence in Portland, Oregon."
About Mercer Advisors
Established in 1985, Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ("Mercer Advisors") is a full service wealth management firm that specializes in providing investment advice, financial and estate planning, and taxes, and corporate trustee and trust administration services. It is one of the largest Registered Investment Advisers and financial planning firms in the U.S. with over $25.5 billion in client assets. Headquartered in Denver, Mercer Advisors is privately held, has approximately 500 employees, and operates nationally across the country with 45+ locations. Mercer Advisors, Inc. is a parent company of Mercer Global Advisors Inc. (RIA), majority owned by both Oak Hill Capital and Genstar Capital. Mercer Global Advisors has a related insurance agency. Mercer Advisors Insurance Services, LLC (MAIS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mercer Advisors Inc. Employees of Mercer Global Advisors serve as officers of MAIS. For Mercer Global Advisors clients who wish to purchase insurance products, MAIS has entered into a non-exclusive referral agreement with Strategic Partner(s). More information about MAIS and our Strategic Partners may be found in our Form ADV 2A. Visit us at www.merceradvisors.com.
Data as of December 31, 2020. AUM includes affiliates and wholly owned subsidiaries announced to date.
Contact: Chris Tofalli
Chris Tofalli Public Relations, LLC
SOURCE Mercer Global Advisors Inc.
http://www.merceradvisors.com
Mercer Advisors Acquires Rowland Carmichael Advisors, Inc....
Mercer Advisors Acquires Atlanta Financial Associates, LLC...
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Professor Peter Higgins - LIVE!
Watch Professor Peter give a wonderful and engaging talk on his life in mathematics for the London Mathematics Society. Click here
Ramanujan Project goes International
The educational resource will soon be available via the online platform NAGWA
Author, public speaker, and inventor of Circular Sudoku
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Essex, Peter Higgins has long sought to fight the idea that the Mathematics we learn is either irrelevant or the concepts incomprehensible. Through a series of 5 popular mathematics titles, the professor encourages everyone to explore the glorious mathematics that governs the universe and appears in our everyday lives.
Winner of the Premio Peano Prize (awarded to the best book published about mathematics in Italian) in 2013, Peter Higgins is a regular speaker at Literary Festivals, bringing popular mathematics to life in an engaging and entertaining manner. Also the inventor of the Circular Sudku puzzle, as featured in The Sunday Times.
Professor Peter has also gained a reputation among his students for being quite the puzzle master - instead of the usual class homework, he would set intricate maths puzzles and problems, often for prizes. Think you can beat his students? Head over to the "Puzzles and Problems" page! Right now it features the video - "Derivative vs Integral, the final slapdown"...
ENTER THE BOOKSTORE NOW
By the end, one feels a renewed sense of what the author calls the "mystery" of numbers, and what they are doing there at all.
Steven Poole, The Guardian, "Numbers: A Very Short Introduction"
… the exposition is outstanding. Higgins’s background as a research mathematician and as a mathematics writer clearly shows in his prose. He writes with a casual flair that sacrifices nothing in clarity and makes the book engaging at every turn.
The American Mathematical Society, "Numbers: A Very Short Introduction"
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CCH Film Festival to Feature Screenings, Industry Panels, and Keynote by Writer/Director Boots Riley
The 2018 CCH Film Festival, a free event that will present and honor original films by Columbia College Hollywood’s students and graduates, will be held on 11/9 and 10.
Hollywood, CA (PRUnderground) October 24th, 2018
The 2018 CCH Film Festival, a free event that will present and honor original films by Columbia College Hollywood’s students and graduates, will be held on November 9 and 10. Along with the screenings of 44 films, the event will also feature conversations with industry professionals, demonstrations of products by leading manufacturers, door prizes/raffles, and a keynote address by award winning writer, director, activist, and rapper Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”/Annapurna Pictures).
“The CCH Film Festival is our opportunity to showcase emerging filmmakers to the industry and celebrate their talent with family and friends,” says Chrissy Shannon, Director of Career Development & Alumni Relations at Columbia College Hollywood. “The opportunity to learn from industry guest speakers, participate in demos of cutting edge gear, and enjoy the work of our diverse body of students and graduates will keep attendees busy throughout the entire two day event.”
The 2018 CCH Film Festival will feature a variety of presentations and activities, including:
Screenings of 44 films by CCH students and alumni in four categories: Drama, Comedy, Femme, Horror/SciFi, and Soundsations.
A keynote address by writer, director, activist, and rapper Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 2018 film “Sorry to Bother You” (Annapurna Pictures).
Discussions with writer/animator Annah Feinberg (“Ballroom Room”, “Veep”, “Arrested Development”); film industry disabilities advocate and motivational speaker Becky Curran (Disability:IN); editor Michael P. Shawver (“Black Panther”, “Creed”, “Fruitvale Station”); and VP of Feature Film Development Ryan Turek (Blumhouse Productions).
Tech demos by RED Camera and Digital Sputnik.
Vendor exhibitions by the Motion Picture Editors Guild, Birns & Sawyer Hollywood, Wrapal, and NewFilmmakers Los Angeles.
An awards ceremony for the top three screened films (selected by CCH faculty and entertainment industry judges)
Panels at the Festival will include:
“Producing LGBTQ+ Content for Web Series and Shorts”
“Acting in the Age of Streaming”
“Advancing Your Career as an Emerging Film Industry Professional”
The 2018 CCH Film Festival is sponsored by Avid, Final Draft, LA Femme Film Festival, New Filmmakers Los Angeles, Backstage, and HB. It will take place at Columbia College Hollywood (18618 Oxnard Street in Los Angeles) on Friday, November 9 and Saturday, November 10 from 9:00am to 6:00pm. For free registration, visit the Festival’s Eventbrite page.
About Columbia College Hollywood
Founded in 1952, Columbia College Hollywood is a nonprofit, regionally accredited liberal arts college with a focus on creative media.
Columbia College Hollywood educates students in the art and science of communications and the diverse media of contemporary storytelling within an exploration of the liberal arts.
Columbia College Hollywood is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) to offer Bachelor of Fine Arts and Associate of Fine Arts degree programs in Cinema with an emphasis in acting, cinematography, directing, editing and visual effects, new media, producing, sound, and writing.
Rafe Gomez
Tags: "film school hollywood" "film production school hollywood" "l.a. film school"
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Framed by forensics
Aeon: In 1992, Juan Rivera was arrested for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Waukegan, Illinois. On the night of the murder, Rivera was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet in connection with unrelated burglary charges, and this bracelet showed he’d been at home. Yet, based on a More
NSF Proposals for I/UCRCs in Areas Relevant to the Forensic Sciences
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) have partnered as co-sponsors to welcome proposals for establishment of Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers in areas relevant to the forensic sciences. With permission from the Principal Investigator (PI), NIJ will share in evaluation of forensics-related I/UCRC proposals, and More
Forensic experts ‘biased towards side which pays them’
The Telegraph: Although forensic experts are meant to be completely impartial when giving an expert opinion to the jury, they tend to favour the side which employs them. A study found that while the experts believed they were being impartial, there was an “allegiance effect” which appeared to colour their More
Bias in the Court
Pacific Standard: On November 14, 1978, a Texas jury found Thomas Barefoot guilty of the murder of Bell County police officer Carl Levin. Based on the gravity of the crime and the testimony of two psychiatrists who claimed that Barefoot would pose a continued menace to society, that same jury More
Forensic Experts May Be Biased By the Side That Retains Them
Forensic psychologists and psychiatrists are ethically bound to be impartial when performing evaluations or providing expert opinions in court. But new research suggests that courtroom experts’ evaluations may be influenced by whether their paycheck comes from the defense or the prosecution. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal More
False Confessions Confuse Forensics
Scientific American: Confessing to a crime usually is not enough to throw you behind bars. Many states require independent evidence to corroborate a confession. But if a suspect confesses and forensic investigators know, it can cause them to favor evidence in support of a guilty verdict—even if the confession is More
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The Uses of an Ecumenical Seminary
by Donald W. Shriver, Jr.
Dr. Shriver was president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1987.
This article appeared in the Christian Century, February 1-8, 1984, p. 106. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
All denominations can be strengthened by the ecumenical education of some of their clergy. The strong students whom church leaders send to ecumenical seminaries will come back to them even stronger.
I remember the day in 1955 when, as a newly arrived graduate student, I talked with Professor H. Richard Niebuhr about my academic trek leading to Yale Divinity School. When I told him that I had graduated from North Carolina’s Davidson College and Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, he exclaimed, “Ah, the royal road for Southern Presbyterians!”
The denominational educational road was well traveled in those days. For many theological students of the 1980s, it is still a good route. But some could serve their denominations better if they chose a more ecumenical path -- or so I want to argue here.
My argument is directed to students from all the denominations, to those who send them to seminary, and to those who by word and deed influence their choices of seminaries. I address myself to national church leaders; to leaders of dioceses, synods, presbyteries and conferences; and to leaders of congregations -- all those who have a special stake in and special responsibility for strengthening a particular church and a particular denomination.
I speak as one who has a special interest in the strength of a particular ecumenical seminary, but also as one who knows that he, too, has both a stake in and responsibility for the life of particular churches. Theologically, I know that the Christian community encompasses far more than the Presbyterians. And institutionally, I know that the vitality of my school, New York’s Union Theological Seminary, has a deep connection with the vitality of the denominations themselves.
Conventional wisdom often suggests to ministerial candidates that three years in a denominational seminary are professionally and pragmatically essential for their future careers. The formula goes, “You need to know the church that will ordain you.
Yes, one does. But where will one come to know it? For some the answer is in the ecumenical seminary.
“I never felt more a United Methodist than I have here,” said one of our recent students at Union. I have heard similar remarks from students at Yale, Harvard and University of Chicago divinity schools.
At such a seminary, Lutherans, for example, see their church allegiance illuminated and enriched by their dialogue with Baptists and Roman Catholics. In a way often impossible in a denominational setting, they become critically conscious of what is unique to their heritages. In classroom and dormitory, they confront the varieties of Christian experience, and they must think through their reasons for believing in the truth of their own traditions.
To be sure, the trend in denominational seminaries these days is away from the huge predominance of students from the one tradition and toward a broader representation of students from other denominations. A Presbyterian seminary, for example, may have 30 to 50 per cent of its students coming from non-Presbyterian churches. There is a great difference, however, when (as at Union) the largest denominational student group (which happens to be Presbyterian) totals only 17 per cent of the student body. In such a school, no particular group comes close to being in the majority. This sense that “everyone is a minority” profoundly marks the culture of an ecumenical seminary. Everyone has reason to search for some justification of his or her own ecclesiastical particularity.
Contrary to what some church leaders have assumed about educational results in the ecumenical setting, our students do not emerge as adherents of some homogenized set of lowest-common-denominator beliefs. Nor is denomination-hopping common. Rather, our students graduate as thoughtful loyalists holding to the affiliations they arrived with. In this tendency they are often following the pattern of faculty members who have remained vigorous contributors, professionally and personally, to the lives of their respective denominations.
A variation on the conventional wisdom appeals to the anxieties of students about their career prospects: “You need to get to know the people who will be your colleagues in the ministry for the rest of your life.”
Yes, one does. But the question is who those colleagues will and ought to be. In ecumenical seminaries students naturally seek out peers and faculty members of their own denominations for shared worship, discussion, study and action. They take on fieldwork in congregations or other organizations of their own faith traditions. They take courses not only in general church history but also in their own denominational history, theology and polity. But with every step of their educational trek goes a company of diverse companions who alert them to the diversity of the Christian movement itself. Their colleagues of the future include these adherents of other traditions.
It is a pragmatic as well as a theological point. To identify one’s future colleagues as the members of one’s own denomination is not only narrow; it is unrealistic, especially for the life of a local parish minister. Unless they are totally sectarian, the ministers of any American town or city meet one another, learn from one another, recognize their need of one another, and develop collaborations accordingly. Only in this way can they have a perceptible impact on such pastoral-prophetic local issues as how sick people can get better care, how the homeless can find decent housing, and how the voice of the church can be heard in the din of competing voices at city hall.
For a minister to be a leader -- or even a valuable member -- of these local collaborations, he or she needs to respect, to understand, and to empathize with brother and sister clergy across the spectrum.
Such a minister needs also to perceive the problems of pluralism, as well as its values -- and all this is easier for one already educated in ecumenical encounter. To be effective, a modern minister needs to have moved beyond holding stereotypical views of the “mainline Protestant,” the “Catholic priest” and the “black preacher.” That movement has already taken place for the ecumenically educated, before the first day of the first job in a congregation.
There is a congregational version of this local ecclesial reality. Few thriving congregations today consist wholly of members born and bred in the same denominational tradition. A minister whose career is suffused with a perception of the “great church,” whose thinking bears the imprint of his or her acquaintance with living members of many church traditions, will be a minister who understands and knows how to welcome people searching for a new church home, those who have married into a new denomination, and those who feel that they must turn away from some aspect of their own history.
These ministerial qualities are also essential to regional, national and international denominational life. In view of the multiple challenges of secularism and social change in the modern world, no denomination can afford to fuel its mission with energies and perspectives drawn only from its own historical tradition. Now as seldom before in history, Christians need each other as they confront the issues of war, hunger, oppression and totalitarianism. Denominations need specialists with the talent, training and instinct for knowing how ecumenical collaborations develop, on the most local to the most global levels. It is one service of the ecumenical seminary to offer to the churches persons with just these qualities.
All of this argument comes down to three claims. The first is this: An ecumenical education can help cure us all of our natural ecclesiastical provincialism.
Provinces are places where all humans have to begin. Without some province to call home, none of us is whole in political, social or churchly terms. But our real growth -- our education -- as fully formed persons comes as we connect with people from other provinces, thereby ceasing to be merely provincial.
Only a narrow political persuasion convinces people of any national culture today that they are the representatives of the only true humanity. Only a very narrow sectarianism convinces any Christian that the “true church” is bottled under only one historic label. The great denominational schools of America are among the first to admit this; but few of them are in a position to press their perception of the diversity of the Christian community as systematically, as hourly, as are the great ecumenical seminaries. When 15 traditions crowd into a faculty of 30, when 40 traditions crowd into a student body of 400, there is a rapid critical heightening of the awareness that, among Christians, the parts make up an awesome whole. After three years of rubbing mind and spirit with people from all those other spiritual provinces, students can never again assume that every “real Christian” is just like them. And they will return to their own province not only with a certain sense of security, but with the understanding of education embodied in T. S. Eliot’s line:
the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
[“Little Gidding, “Four Quartets].
A second claim: All Christian denominations can be strengthened by the ecumenical education of some of their clergy. Should all students preparing for the ministry, then, be educated solely in ecumenical seminaries? No, indeed. Applicants for seminary study come from a great variety of church backgrounds these days, some from no background at all. We occasionally meet a student who is becoming acquainted with the faith, the church and the ministry more or less simultaneously. The ecumenical seminaries are probably ill equipped to educate such a person well. For a student who was brought up a Unitarian but has just decided to become an Episcopalian, the case for absorbing the Episcopal “ecclesial culture” in one of that denomination’s seminaries is strong. To understand and serve any particular group of church members, a minister must appreciate the shaping power of the polities, theologies, liturgies and customs that are normative for, that group.
Who are the “some” among denominational students who should most be encouraged to come to the ecumenical seminary? My answer, directed to denominational leaders, may surprise them: Don’t urge your candidates with marginal denominational loyalties to come to our place for three years of M.Div. study. Rather, send us those who are most solidly rooted in your heritage, those who best represent you, those who will bring their strengths, and yours, to us and our strengths back to you.
And my third claim is a corollary: While some students can profit greatly from a full three years at an ecumenical seminary, all ministers can gain much from having a segment of their preparation for ministry there. Even if the ecumenical schools had the capacity to absorb a majority of the 55,000 students in American and Canadian seminaries -- and they do not -- they should not want to do so. But leaders on both sides of this educational network should not foreclose the possibility that, sometime in their careers, all ministers of a church should have an educational experience outside that church.
My year in pursuit of a master’s degree in theology at Yale was for me not just a preparation for further academic study, but, rather, an essential rounding out of my education for the Presbyterian ministry. Nine years as president of an ecumenical seminary have not lessened my loyalty to that denomination.
In sum, my word to church leaders is that the strong students whom they send to ecumenical seminaries will come back to them even stronger. Such ministers will enrich and renew their denominations. And they will provide leadership in the struggle to bring the “great church” into the hearts and relationships of their constituents.
When I accepted the presidency of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, Fred Stair, Jr., the president of the other Union Seminary, in Virginia, said to me: “You should remember that the whole church needs that school in Manhattan. You can do things educationally that we cannot do, just as we can do what you cannot do. The truth is that we need each other.”
Previous PostPrevious Many Mansions or One Way? The Crisis in Interfaith Dialogue
Next PostNext Placing Blame in a Religious State
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Collateral Kindness - Paul Holton
Summary: As a loving father and compassionate family man, Paul Holton found it hard to reconcile his innate goodwill with his role as a steel-nerved interrogator for the Army National Guard.
Until one day, deep in Iraqi territory, surrounded by the horrors of war, he realized how he could make a small but significant difference in the lives of the children all around him. On impulse, he began asking friends and family to send him little things like toys and toothbrushes to share with children devastated by deadly conflicts.
From that small gesture, his efforts have grown into an international humanitarian organization that now blesses children across the globe. And in the process, Holton learned that the more he focused on helping the people around him, the more he was able to cheerfully endure the hardships of his duty.
This fascinating account from the front lines illustrates the simple truth that kindness can heal even the deepest wounds. (Image and summary from collateralkindness.com. I was provided a complimentary copy of Collateral Kindness in exchange for an honest review.)
My Review: Chief Warrant Officer Paul Holton found more purpose on his second tour than he bargained for. Amid the stress, the uncertainty, the goals of the United States Military and the personal goals of Chief Holton, an unexpected and abiding love for the Iraqi people grew. He found himself wanting to give back, and found it in the most unlikely place.
I was so touched by this book. Let me be up front, Chief Holton is not a literary scholar, he's a military man with a story to tell. Sometimes, the grammarian in me started to surface, but the story he was telling was powerful enough to allow me to just go with it. I was so touched, not only by his ability to see a need others were overlooking and find a way to relieve that need, but by the generosity and the kindness of strangers and of those he came into contact with. So many were willing to help alleviate the uncertainty with a donation of toys, with a shared meal, a hug, or with donated time. I loved witnessing the evolution of Chief Holton's secondary mission Operation Give. He wrote this story to tell of the acts of kindness that were so common and so unreported during the war.
Holton does bring up the scrutiny that Operation Give placed him under, and unfortunately, the amount of resources and time it took led to a potential court martial. I felt like the mention and the resolution of it came out of left field, and I wish that it had been a little more clear how it resolved, and why the scrutiny was issued. But that's only because I have an insatiable curiosity, and you just can't dangle a carrot like that and then snatch it away!
The work that grew of its own volition continues today, and while at times, Collateral Kindness felt like one big ad for the project, I truly feel it's a story that needs to be shared. I remember when I was in a Statistics and Elections class at the start of the war. I had a very, VERY liberal professor. One evening, as he was going on about the Iraqi war, I noticed that the man sitting next to me getting more and more tense. I wasn't the only one to notice, and soon, the professor couldn't ignore the ring of students paying more attention to this particular, tensed student than to him. This brave student stood, apologized to our professor, and then told him he had no idea what he was talking about. He had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, and proceeded to tell us what CNN wouldn't: the sacrifices the troops were making for the people; the businesses. schools, hospitals, roads, waterworks, and other structures that the military was voluntarily repairing; the support they were providing single mothers as they struggled to support their families. He told us of the love that returning soldiers had for the people--not for Hussein, but for those he'd abused for so long. I learned more in the few minutes this soldier spoke than I did during the 1/3 of the semester I was in that professor's class. Collateral Kindness was the same testament of what truly happened over there-so much good that was left unseen.
If you're looking for a quick, feel-good read, this is definitely one to check out!
My Rating: Three and a half stars
For the Sensitive Reader: For a war book, this is quite clean. Chief Holton is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and makes no effort to hide that, frequently talking about his faith.
Posted by Marsh Mayhem 0 comments
Labels: *Elizabeth's Reviews, Adult Non-Fiction, LDS Authors, Memoir/Biography
Death's Academy - Michael Best
Summary: The Death’s Academy entrance exam for Midnight Smith is quickly approaching. There’s just one problem: Midnight is the worst exam taker the academy has ever seen. If Midnight wants to ever step foot inside the school, he’ll have to join forces with the hated Guardian Angels, and together face the deadliest creatures in the world—the dreaded Unicorns. Becoming a Grim Reaper has never been more hilarious! (Image and summary from goodreads.com. I was provided a copy of Death's Academy in exchange for my honest review.)
My Review: Poor Midnight. He's a totally normal Reaper kid who just wants to be amazing. Unfortunately, he happens to be saddled with a dad who did something so humiliating, SO embarrassing that he's the laughing stock of the entire Reaper community. And the Angels. It's so bad Midnight doesn't even know what it is, he just knows he's doomed to carry the burden. Determined as he is to make a name for himself, Midnight takes ridiculous chances with his own safety and the safety of his friends.
Oh, goodness, I really enjoyed this book! It was exactly what the summertime prescribed - creative, silly, and too much fun to put down. It definitely felt a little Harry Potter-eque to me ... the draw toward boarding school, the magical elements, a threat not quite understood ... but there were some aspects that I felt Best nailed. Midnight is a twelve-year old boy. And he has an ego of one. He's pretty sure he's awesome, and he's more sure of his abilities than any kid should be, but I found it endearing, probably because he's also aware when he's in over his head. Unfortunately, that ego also means that he's a little bit of a smart aleck, and I found myself wishing he would show his parents a little bit more respect. (Or, you know, any.) I can see where Best is coming from - Midnight has suffered from the mistakes of his father his whole life. HIS own life has been and will continue to be affected because of it, but no one ever bothered to tell him what happened. His mother is downright derogatory to his father, his father has given up any gumption ... what a confusing place for a child to be.
However, Best has done a great job weaving intrigue into the sad tale. Midnight stumbles onto a plot too crazy to be imagined, but too real to be ignored. Before he knows what he's really doing, Midnight finds himself teamed with his best Reaper friend, his arch-nemesis on the Skullball court, and fighting .... unicorns?! Bits and pieces of his father's history are sprinkled quietly throughout the book, and Midnight starts to discover that perhaps his dad isn't as humiliating as he thought. I find myself anxiously awaiting the second book to get the full story. This is definitely a series I'll be keeping my eye on!
My Rating: Four stars
For the Sensitive Reader: Parental disrespect, fantastical violence. And unicorns are epically evil.
Labels: *Elizabeth's Reviews, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction
The Ruby Red Trilogy/The Precious Stone Trilogy - Kerstin Gier
Summary: Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!
Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon--the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.
(Summary and image from Goodreads.com)
My summary: These books are so much fun! First off, look at that cover art. Just look at it. Stunning! Okay. So we have a teenage girl who finds out she is a time-traveler and becomes part of a society that aids and uses the time travelers to right wrongs that have occurred in the past. Naturally, the only other time traveler is a dashing, arrogant, teenage boy. They must dress the part, dance the dances, and time travel together in a race against time to save humanity.
Gwyn is a fantastic heroine. She is smart, funny, and a total teenage girl. I have not read a book or watched even a TV show in a long time that showed teenagers thinking and behaving like teenagers do. It's a strange shadow world between childhood and adulthood and the characters in the book showcase both the childishness and immaturity as well as the bravery of teens.
The three books demand to be read back-to-back. The books often break rather abruptly. There are chapter breaks with more closure. So get 'em all lined up and pray for a rainy weekend. If you're really curious, there are German movies of this series, so if you don't mind subtitles, they'd be fun to watch, too.
For the sensitive reader: some teenage "snogging," a few olden-day duels, and a dash of language, but nothing R-rated.
Posted by Lara Zierke 0 comments
Labels: *Past Reviewers, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction
Shadow and Bone (Grisha Book 1) by Leigh Bardugo
Summary: The Shadow Fold, a swathe of impenetrable darkness, crawling with monsters that feast on human flesh, is slowly destroying the once-great nation of Ravka.
Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the lavish world of the kingdom’s magical elite—the Grisha. Could she be the key to unravelling the dark fabric of the Shadow Fold and setting Ravka free?
The Darkling, a creature of seductive charm and terrifying power, leader of the Grisha. If Alina is to fulfill her destiny, she must discover how to unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.
But what of Mal, Alina’s childhood best friend? As Alina contemplates her dazzling new future, why can’t she ever quite forget him?
My review: Let me start by saying that the producers who made the Harry Potter movies have purchased the rights to the Grisha trilogy. You will be seeing a lot about Shadow and Bone. Might as well read it now.
Alina and Mal are two orphans now learning their trades for the king's army. Alina is a cartographer in training and Mal is a soldier. But on their first trip into the the Shadow Fold, a swath of blackness separating their dying country from its trade ports, they are attacked by flesh-eating monsters created by dark magic. In a moment of desperation, Alina discovers a unique and powerful gift--she can summon the light of the sun.
She is immediately welcomed into the ranks of the Grisha—an elite group who has mastered the "small science" and manipulate atoms and elements of this world in a way that seems magical. There are the tide makers, the healers, the squallers, the fabrikators, and heartrenders. They make up the King's second army. An army that terrifies all others because of what they do without weapons. Alina is now the darling of the king and of the Darkling—the leader of the Grisha of unknown origin who has an intoxicating pull over her.
She says goodbye to her childhood friend Mal—who she always secretly crushed on—and learns to use her power—a power that could destroy the Shadow Fold and save all of Ravka. Yet she yearns for the simple girl she once was and the boy who could always make her laugh. Mal doesn't return her letters. And the Darkling keeps spending more and more time with her. Alina's magnificent future is right before her, yet she can't let go of her past.
I loved the different spin on magic in this book. It's not some cosmic power, but just a very advanced manipulation of earthly elements. I loved the Russian influence of this fantasy. So many fantasies are set in a generic western-European type world. I loved the Russian linguistics, architecture, wardrobes, and food. So fun. I've heard some critics complain that the genders of the last names are wrong and the drink kvas is portrayed incorrectly (in Russia, kvas is as mild as root beer, apparently. In the book, it's a strong drink). But it's fantasy, people. Not historical fiction. Let it slide.
The middle section of the book with Alina learning to use her powers was a little slow and boring. In the movie, it will be a one-minute montage and it will be perfect.
I could not understand her draw to Mal. Their friendship and her crush did not seem real. There were few examples that sold me on it. I had to believe in it simply because the author said it existed. So when the Darkling comes along with his all-powerful, hotness, I was totally Team Darkling. For anyone worried about a love triangle, there really isn't one. You'll have to read it to see what I mean, but this isn't the typical YA "two boys love me at the same time and I don't know who to pick" kind of thing.
The word and lore is very well-developed. I devoured this book and the entire series. Check it out. I think it's going to make a gripping and visually stunning movie in the right hands.
My rating: 4.5
For the sensitive reader: mild language, a few passionate kisses, and violence that is never too graphically described.
The Darkest Minds - Alexandra Bracken
Summary: When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp." She might have survived the mysterious disease that's killed most of America's children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.
When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she's on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her-East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.
When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living. (Summary and image from goodreads.com)
My Review: Ruby is not brave. She's dangerous. She's terrified of people finding out who she is and what she can do, but she's even more terrified of herself.
The premise of this book grabbed me from the first few pages. Alexandra Bracken has approached the dystopian genre with fresh eyes -- instead of the typical "start in the middle", Bracken begins where it should, at the beginning. Society hasn't fallen apart yet, but it's about to, and Ruby and her misunderstood, newly-found powers have a front row seat.
I started this book in the middle of a reading drought. I'm ashamed to admit that I've been reading the same book for over a month. It's fascinating. But I'm just stuck in such a busy rut I can't devote the brain power to finish it. I picked this up one lazy and grumpy day, thinking I may finish it before summer, and couldn't put it down. At all. (I finished it that day.) I have so many questions I'm dying to get answered - why did the absence of powers affect the children so dramatically? What in the WORLD does the government think is going to happen to the next generation? Is there a way to fix Ruby's powers? When, oh, when, will the next book come out?!
If you're needing a good, quick, fun read, grab this one on your next trip out. Trust me.
My Rating: Four and a half stars.
For the Sensitive Reader: Children are placed in concentration camps. Although the first two thirds of the book are shockingly cuss word free, there is a profanity-laced speech at the end that makes up for the restraint in the first part of the book.
Labels: *Elizabeth's Reviews, Dystopian Fiction, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Summary: After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family . . .
Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages. (Image and summary from Goodreads.com)
My Review: While his family is being murdered, a diaper-clad toddler wanders out of the open front door and disappears into the night. The murderer's target was always the child, but he wanted the entire family dead to keep things clean. The murderer sees that the only logical place for the child to wander to is the graveyard down the street. As he goes to investigate, he is greeted by a groundskeeper who assures the man that there is no baby in the graveyard.
The baby wandered into the graveyard. Silas, a frequent visitor of the graveyard, misled the murderer, giving the residents of the graveyard time to decide what to do with the child. Still in diapers and unable to do much more than babble, he is helpless. Mrs. Owens--a long-dead ghost who never had children during her life--immediately takes to the child. When the disturbed specters of the boy's recently murdered parents give Mrs. Owen their blessing for her to raise him, the graveyard decides to consider the matter. It's decided--Mrs. and Mr. Owens will raise the boy, but only because Silas has agreed to be his guardian. After all, Silas is the only one who can leave the cemetery.
The boy--Nobody, nicknamed "Bod"--has a strange childhood, learning to read off of headstones and being educated by long-dead scholars. He befriends a young girl who often visits the graveyard. He encounters mischievous ghouls and severe werewolves. He knows little about his past, but his guardian and ghost family never forget that there is still a man out there who wants Bod dead. Bod has yet to understand the complexities and the risks of the real world. As he grows into a young man and learn of his past, he begins to realize that he can't always stay in the protected walls of the graveyard. He must confront the man who murdered his family and he must begin to live with the living.
“You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.”
My Rating: Five stars
To Sum It Up: This charming story reads like a fairy tale and Mr. Gaiman admitted to being inspired by Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Each chapter is its own complete short story while still contributing to the overarching, chronological plot of the book. I have never read any book like this and I absolutely loved it. Graveyards, ghosts, ghouls, and other mythical demons unite to help a lost child. He definitely has an unconventional childhood, yet still learns sacrifice, love, bravery, and friendship. It was simultaneously fascinating, silly, macabre, and heart-rending. I am not ashamed to admit that I could hardly read the final pages through my tears. This book has been optioned for a Hollywood movie. Discover it in print first.
For the Sensitive Reader: This is a children's book and is fit for that audience. There is the murder of Bod's family and the fact that a murderer is still after him, but the violence is very mild and age-appropriate for this YA book. No bad language. No sex. Pretty clean overall.
Labels: *Past Reviewers, Award Winners, Made for TV/Movie, Young Adult Fiction
Sense and Sensibility A Latter-Day Tale - Rebecca H. Jamison
Summary: As if it wasn't bad enough to be getting food from Church welfare, I had to meet one of the Ferreros--and a good-looking Ferrero, at that.
Elly Goodwin, a brilliant programmer, is so desperate for a job that she takes one from her ex-fiance--the same man who put her family out of business. Then she meets Ethan Ferrero, who seems too good to be true. But Elly is far too sensible to unexpectedly fall in love--especially with her ex's brother-in-law.
But when Elly's sister, Maren, dates the wrong guy, Elly must intercede before Maren's passion clouds her common sense. Together, Elly and Maren must learn that a mixture of sense and sensibility is the perfect recipe for love.
Fans of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility will love this modern retelling of the classic romance novel. (Summary from back of the book, image from www.rebeccahjamison.com. Book sent free for review.)
My Review: Before going any further, I think it's important to note that this is LDS literature. With that said, it's not over the top LDS lit. Things are mentioned, spoken about in passing, but not overdone.
This book truly hit the spot for me. I've been needing a good fiction-fast-read. I needed a story where the story-line drew me in and boy did the ride went quickly over the two days I read! I've always loved the story-line of Sense and Sensibility, and this version is so realistic but stays true to the original plot of the story. I loved seeing how Jamison carried the structure of the story while making it new at the same time. And I loved the characters. Typically I have a harder time to relating to Maren's character, but even in this story it was believable and understandable her reactions with how Jamison crafted the tale. I think what made this story so satisfying was the depth and complexity of each character and their lives. They felt like people I know in real life, people I love and can't understand all at the same time. And the plot felt the same--things happened that didn't make sense, but that's how life goes; you don't always know what hand you'll be dealt or how exactly you'll deal with it. But, Jamison writes a smooth tale that takes you from start to finish effortlessly. I truly enjoyed this.
If you're needing a Jane Austen fix, but something a little different you definitely want to pick up this book. It has the right mix of romance, comedy, realistic plot twists, and conflict to be enjoyable. If you know the plot of Sense and Sensibility, the ending won't be a surprise, but it's enjoyable nonetheless.
For the sensitive reader: Only kissing--and this isn't much.
Sum it up: A well-done spin off of a classic tale.
Posted by Kari 1 comments
Labels: *Kari's Reviews, Adult Fiction, LDS Authors, Romantic
If You Were Me and Lived in ... Australia - Carole P. Roman
Summary: Former social studies teacher Carole P. Roman has penned a new addition in her exiting explorations of foreign cultures and customs with “If You Were Me and Lived in … Australia". In her years as a teacher, parent and grandparent, Roman noticed that there were few, if any, books about other cultures for young children. Roman has remedied the deficit and now introduces the new Australia installment in a series that educates kids, parents and teachers, alike. Roman recognizes that children love to discover the differences and similarities of other people and places in far-off lands. In this series, she describes details that kids can relate to. Tailored to children from 3-to-8-years old, her writing is simple but does not talk down to youngsters. Among the topics that are introduced in this journey to Australia are the unusual indigenous animals, the extraordinary Great Barrier Reef, the currency, the beloved game of cricket and the national holiday, Australia Day, as well as the special nicknames people have for one another and the curious taste sensation, Vegemite. “This series is just enough facts to begin a discussion without overwhelming the child and can be expanded or contracted to fit the age group,” Roman explains. "Carole P. Roman has created a marvelous premise for her series of educational children's books: young readers are given the opportunity to realistically envision a foreign country without leaving their homes, libraries, or classrooms....Roman's formula allows for so much lovely variety in each book of this series that it hardly seems like a formula at all...If You Were Me and Lived in ...Kenya is a short, vibrant picture book, brightly illustrated in cartoon style. The text is scant, appropriate, and does not deviate from the central theme." ForeWord Reviews Clarion Review (Summary and Cover image from amazon.com. I was provided a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.)
My Review: If You Were Me and Lived in ... Australia follows the same pattern as Carole Roman has laid out in the rest of the series. It's full of wonderful, basic information regarding the Great Barrier reef, local treats and diet, games, and currency. However, I felt like there was a little missing from this installment. Perhaps it's me, but I would have loved to see some mention of kangaroos and koalas, and I missed seeing the Sydney Opera House. It's just synonymous with Australia for me!
However, from a child's perspective, this is a great addition to the If You Were Me ... series. I giggled when I saw that the pronunciation guides took into account the Australian accent -- and I found myself reading in an accent for the rest of the book. I wonder if my kids will start calling me mummy, now ...
Labels: *Elizabeth's Reviews, Children's Non-Fiction, Travelogue
Dangerous - Shannon Hale
Summary: Maisie Danger Brown just wanted to get away from home for a bit, see something new. She never intended to fall in love. And she never imagined stumbling into a frightening plot that kills her friends and just might kill her, too. A plot that is already changing life on Earth as we know it. There's no going back. She is the only thing standing between danger and annihilation.
From NY Times bestselling author Shannon Hale comes a novel that asks, How far would you go to save the ones you love? And how far would you go to save everyone else? (Summary and image from goodreads.com)
My Review: Maisie has lived a small life. She's 15, homeschooled, her best friend is homeschooled, her parents are great, if a little protective, and while she dreams of being an astronaut, she's aware that with one arm, it's a long shot. That all changes when she wins a three-week Astronaut Camp Experience.
Her fireteam (she and three other sweepstakes winners) wins a grand prize - a chance to see Dr. Howell's innovative Space Elevator in action. Without realizing it, such a prize will not only change their lives, but the world.
Before I actually review this, I'd like to formally apologize to my Thursday classes ... I was so distracted thinking about where Hale was going to take Maisie and the fireteam, we may have overdone some muscle groups. And underdone others. Oh, and then there was that whole Zumba kerfuffle. I blame Shannon Hale!!
Shannon Hale is simply too talented for fairness. She launches into the YA/Sci-fi genre with no awkwardness, I felt like she'd been writing this genre forever. Her story stuck with me (hence the oopsies in class!), moving so quickly that putting the book down wasn't an option in case the characters did something without me. Her characters are believable, flawed, real, and relatable. Even her side characters had amazing backstories. It really felt as though they were real people with real experiences.
I would have happily read an entire series in the thread of The Hunger Games, Divergent, or Legend to get the complete story - that's how hooked I was. However, I was pleasantly surprised to get the whole story the first time around. I don't like HAVING to read another book for a conclusion (I'm looking at you, Jacky Faber!). But were Maisie ever to return? Yeah, I'd be the first in line to read that. I'm excited to see what else Shannon has up her sleeve (because, in my mind, we're on a first-name basis now). She never ceases to amaze!
My Rating: Four and a half stars
For the sensitive reader: There is quite a bit of violence, some death, and some serious kissing that Maisie stops before it goes too far.
Counting By 7s - Holly Goldberg Sloan
Summary: In the tradition of Out of My Mind, Wonder, and Mockingbird, this is an intensely moving middle grade novel about being an outsider, coping with loss, and discovering the true meaning of family.
Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasn’t kept her from leading a quietly happy life... until now.
Suddenly Willow’s world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. Her journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to read. (Summary and image from goodreads.com)
My Review: Counting by 7s is the first book I’ve read in a long time that has actually got me itching to write a review. The funny thing about taking a blogging hiatus is that you think you’re going to have all this free time to, I don’t know, count daisies or something, take walks in the sunshine with your children, maybe even squeeze in a nap or two, but life doesn’t usually work out that way. For a variety of reasons, I’m busier than ever, and while reading for sanity’s sake has always been a priority, reviewing has not. I’ve mostly been plowing through uninspiring chick lit just to make it through the day, and haven’t had anything remarkable to say, but this book – this book is worth dusting off the laptop.
Willow is a twelve year old prodigy with an insatiable intellect and an intense desire to make sense of the world around her. She is endearing, meticulous, and straight up awkward and – as is so often the case with the incredibly brilliant – is nearly incapable of fitting in with her fellow classmates. I was riveted by her unique, often amusing perspective, and all the rest of Sloan’s well-crafted characters. Reading them felt like home – a completely different home than I’ve ever experienced, but home nonetheless.
Early on in the story, Willow suffers an earth-shattering loss that leaves her reeling, somewhat homeless, and struggling to find new ways to cope with a life she never imagined. You’d think that reading a book that deals with such profound heartache would be depressing, but it was rather moving and strangely cathartic, as if, throughout the course of the story, our hearts were shredded and healed together. I highly recommend this book to any and all readers, as a subtle lesson in acceptance, love, and how to appreciate the beauty of our differences.
For the sensitive reader: Read on.
Labels: *Mindy's Reviews, Disability / Disorder, Mental Health, Young Adult Fiction
Forbidden Sea - Sheila A. Nielson
Summary: A mermaid haunts Adrianne's dreams . . . is she coming to warn her, save her, or drag her down into the depths of the briny sea forever?
When Adrianne comes face-to-face with the mermaid of Windwaithe Island, of whom she has heard terrible stories all her life, she is convinced the mermaid means to take her younger sister. Adrianne, fierce-willed and courageous, is determined to protect her sister from the mermaid, and her family from starvation. However, the mermaid continues to haunt Adrianne in her dreams and with her song. (Picture and summary from goodreads.com)
My Review: You know how you're just reading along and thinking "Hmm…I think I may be too old for this book" and then the next thing you know, you're all "But what happened to the pretty green mermaid!?"
That was totally me.
I've read quite a few books in this new genre that rehashes fairy tales for JFic and YAFic, so I'm no newcomer. I enjoy the retelling of the stories, and sometimes I really like the fun twists. This one does not disappoint. First of all, it's got a really old school fun feel; think more along the lines of Keturah and Lord Death than, say The Lunar Chronicles. And I liked this style, actually, because it's fun to have that old-timey feel when there are mythical creatures and deep-seated lore involved. Also, having it take place on an island gave it a feel of isolation and fear from a secluded population who know that they're just sitting there, waiting to be captured by the mermaid.
The author is a children's librarian and you can totally tell that she knows her way around a good story and is a really competent writer. I've found that sometimes authors feel they have to dumb things down for kids or make the writing more basic than it needs to be. Not in this case. The author writes clearly and accessibly both for kids and adults alike. It is clear, concise reading, and I also loved that the love story was age appropriate. I'm totally over the whole "I'm 16 and he's my destiny!" scenario that so many books, especially in YAFic, sport today.
And mermaids! How fun is that? I don't think I've read a book about mermaids yet, and we all know there have been quite a few mythical creatures marching around in book land these days. I liked these mermaids, too. I wish I could tell you more about them, but you're just going to have to read it. There is so much mythology and lore surrounding mermaids in many cultures, and although this book gives a nod to those, it also takes its own path to create some really cool new mermaid lore.
The story is fun—it's got all the elements of a good story. Strong characters. Plenty of opposition. Nearly impossible odds. A good ending. Really, it's something you should read if you like this kind of thing. My book club just recently read it and we all enjoyed it. It's a fast, fun read, and due to its depth and thought-provoking themes can be enjoyed by old and young alike.
For the sensitive reader: This book is squeaky clean.
Posted by Ashleey Rayback 0 comments
Labels: *Ashley's Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, Fairytale, Young Adult Fiction
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Fave Book Club Recipes
I am part of two book clubs and have been for years. The first book club my sister-in-law and I started and it has been almost ten years. We've had people come and go over the years, but for the past several years it's been the same six people. The second book club was pre-existing when I moved into my neighborhood and I've been part of that one for almost eight years. I love both my book clubs! In both book clubs we take turns choosing a book and then host the meeting at our house, and with all fun things, food is involved. Over the years I've hosted a lot of times, and I have three tried and true really easy, really deelish recipes that I'd like to share with you that I've made lots of times over the years, and not only for book clubs. They're good for any occasion. In fact, feel free to go make one right now! I did not create these or anything (so hold off on all that foodie fan mail!), but they're recipes that everybody loves, whether I'm the one to make them or not. I wouldn't say they're necessarily really unique or different (and certainly not low cal or healthy), but they are recipes that I feel comfortable making for anything because I know they'll turn out well and everyone will like them. Plus they're fast and easy and the ingredients are easy to find in any grocery store. Enjoy!
Artichoke Dip:
1 can artichokes, chopped and drained
1 cup mayo
1 cup mozzarella cheese
Pinch of garlic or garlic salt
1 can chopped chiles
Mix everything together. Put in a buttered an and bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Serve with crackers.
Apple Dip:
1 T vanilla
1/2 package heath bar or skor bar chips
Mix all ingredients together, chill for 2 hours. Serve with sliced apples.
Stuffed Mushrooms:
1 1/2 pounds mushrooms
3 oz parmesan cheese
drops of worcestershire sauce
Remove stems of mushrooms and thoroughly wash and clean mushrooms. Chop off the woody part of the mushroom stem and discard. Chop up the rest of the mushroom stems into small pieces. Mix cream cheese, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg, worcestershire sauce, and chopped mushrooms stems together. Stuff into the cleaned mushroom caps. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
Labels: *Ashley's Reviews
Literary Travels
If there's one thing I like to do, it's read. I also love to travel, and while that's not really accessible right now (this whole thing called life keeps getting in the way!) I'd love to take a literary vacation.
Check out the amazing info graphic the folks over at ebookfriendly.com posted ... where would you go?
Labels: Infographics/Memes
The Ruby Red Trilogy/The Precious Stone Trilogy - ...
Sense and Sensibility A Latter-Day Tale - Rebecca ...
If You Were Me and Lived in ... Australia - Carole...
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Rediff.com » News » Thapar among 12 asked to submit CVs: JNU admin
Thapar among 12 asked to submit CVs: JNU admin
Source: PTI
September 02, 2019 16:38 IST
Former Jawaharlal Nehru University vice-chancellor Asis Datta, noted scientist R Rajaraman and historian Romila Thapar are among 12 emeritus professors whose CVs have been sought by Jawaharlal Nehru University administration for a review of their work.
The professor emeritus is an honorary position given to noted faculty members after their retirement. The emeritus professors are free to do academic work in the departments they are attached to and may supervise research scholars as a core supervisor along with regular faculty members.
The JNU administration's decision to ask historian Thapar to submit her CV for assessment for her continuation as professor emerita drew sharp criticism from various quarters.
However, the JNU registrar on Monday said that there are 11 others who have also been asked to submit their CVs.
The human resource development ministry on Monday clarified that there was no move to discontinue Professor Emeritus status to anyone by JNU and only standard procedures are being followed.
"Professors H S Gill, C K Varshney, Ashok Sanjay Guha, Asis Datta, R Rajaraman, Romila Thapar, Yogendra Singh, D Banerji, T K Oommen, Amit Bhaduri and Shiela Bhalla have been sent letters by the varsity administration. They attained the age of 75 before March 31, 2019," JNU registrar Pramod Kumar told PTI.
He said some of them have already sent their replies, including Thapar. Those who have not sent their replies, will be sent reminders and after their replies are received, a committee will review their CVs.
Kumar said that even internationally, the professor emeritus position is not a permanent position.
"...the decision (to ask for their CVs) was taken by the university's Executive Council," he said.
Former JNU VC Datta is an eminent molecular biologist and educationist who was conferred the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan, the country's third-highest civilian award, in 2008.
He is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and the Priyadarshini Award.
Prof Datta is an elected fellow of all three major Indian Science Academies as well as the "Third World Academy of Sciences". He was the eighth vice-chancellor of the varsity and the founder director of the National Institute of Plant Genome Research.
Professor Rajaraman did his PhD under Nobel laureate Hans Bethe. Bethe had won Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association had said on Sunday that the JNU administration's decision to ask 87-year-old Thapar to submit her CV was "politically motivated".
Soon after the JNUTA statement, the university said it was following its ordinance "in letter and spirit" in the appointment of professor emeritus at JNU.
"As per the ordinance, the university is required to write to all those who have attained the age of 75 years to know their availability and their willingness to continue their association with the university. Letters have been written only to those emeritus professors who fall in this category," it said.
It explained writing these letters is not for discontinuation but for an informed review by the Executive Council, the highest statutory body of the university, and it is consistent with the practices at other reputed universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University.
Source: PTI© Copyright 2021 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.
The many shades of Left and Right in JNU
'JNU reduced to a hotbed of politics, very sad thing'
'There's no free speech; we're in a state worse than Emergency'
'The rise of Hindutva is going to put us back by at least a century'
Historian Romila Thapar awarded doctorate of letters by Oxford University
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Equality of life
While it is commonplace for the left to argue that greater equality is desirable, it is less common to see a huge evidence base used to make the case. Matt Sellwood spoke to Richard Wilkinson, who has done just that in his book The Spirit Level
December 11, 2009 · 8 min read
When Richard Wilkinson retired as professor of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham in 2008, it might have seemed that his platform to explain the effects of inequality on society had been diminished. On the contrary, The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better, the book he has recently written with fellow academic Kate Pickett, has captured the public imagination in a most unexpected fashion.
As he explained it to me, the central premise of The Spirit Level is that ‘more unequal societies – with bigger differences between rich and poor – have a greater incidence of a whole range of health and social problems, from violence to obesity to mental illness.
‘The more unequal a society becomes, the more common these problems become. Crucially, even the better off do less well in a more unequal society, as they are unable to insulate themselves from the wider consequences. Colleagues at Harvard described inequality as a social “pollutant”, because its damaging effects spread to almost everyone, right across the social hierarchy. The biggest effects are at the bottom of the social ladder, but even at the top people do better in more equal societies.’
It is not the first time that Professor Wilkinson has argued such views from the epidemiological evidence. In The Impact of Inequality and a number of other books in previous decades, he has made the case that relative inequality has a vital and often overlooked influence on overall societal health and wellbeing. The impact of the recession, however, and the desire for explanation and solutions, has led to this latest work becoming much more popular than his previous attempts.
Inequality, Wilkinson explains, increases status competition. ‘Many societal problems, including severe ones such as violent crime, are caused by a sense of being disrespected and looked down on. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that societies in which wealth and status are seen as the priorities, rather than public service and community, should have far greater problems across a whole range of areas.’
A new framework
The Spirit Level has attracted so much interest largely because it is an accessible summary that fits many hundreds of academic studies into a new framework, showing the effect of inequality on wider society. Rather than relying on anecdote or assertion, it marshals hard data from decades of research.
Much of this is the authors’ own, but they also draw on many other people’s work, including books such as Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam’s book on the US’s declining ‘social capital’. Wilkinson points out that the rise and fall of ‘social capital’ follows first the narrowing and then the widening of income differences within developed societies. ‘Put simply,’ he says, ‘inequality has psycho-social effects. In a more unequal society people are more violent, less public spirited, less likely to trust each other or to be involved in community life.’
As well as studying the incidences of health and social problems in countries with different levels of income equality, The Spirit Level also compares the data for all 50 US states. Here, too, the correlation between equality and social breakdown is compelling. It appears that, even within an unequal country such as the US, states with greater equality experience fewer social problems than those with more economic inequality.
Wilkinson does add a caveat to this, commenting that ‘deprived neighbourhoods do not have bad health because of the inequality within them, but because they are deprived in relation to the wider society, so income inequality has to be measured across large areas.’ Nonetheless, policy measures taken to increase equality across an area the size of a city, for example, will have a positive effect on social problems – as Wilkinson and Pickett will argue in a forthcoming report for the London Sustainable Development Commission.
While the large majority of social issues studied by the two authors became more prevalent as inequality increased, this was not the case for every problem. The statistics show that suicide, for example, actually occurs at a higher rate in more equal societies.
‘Very often, where suicide rates are high, violence is low, and vice versa,’ explains Wilkinson. ‘I think that there is probably some truth to the cliché that violence either goes in, against yourself, or out, against other people.’
‘In a well known paper on health in Harlem,’ he continues, ‘it was found that death rates for most ages were higher than in Bangladesh. The only cause of death that was not more common in Harlem than the rest of the US was suicide. It’s a matter of whether you blame your problems on yourself, or on other people – and in societies with more community responsibility, it tends to be the former.’
Many ways of increasing equality
Wilkinson is forthright about the fact that the rise of inequality in the UK was driven by politics and that it is possible to narrow income differences again. ‘Clearly, although Thatcher was happy to see inequality increase, she did not intend to increase rates of obesity, teenage birth rates, drug problems, mental illness or violent crime – but these are all the unintended consequences of the inequality she created,’ he explains.
‘Fortunately, there are many ways of increasing equality. Although Japan and Sweden are among the most equal countries, they get their equality in very different ways. Japan is more equal because their earnings differences are smaller even before taxes and benefits, so they do rather little redistribution. Sweden, in contrast, starts off with big earnings differences and then redistributes.’ There are, therefore, small government routes and big government routes to greater equality.
The solution for the UK, Wilkinson argues, is both redistribution and greater ‘economic democracy’ – the ability of ordinary people and their communities to have greater control over the institutions in which they work. ‘To reduce earnings differences at source, we need more cooperatives, mutuals, friendly societies and employee ownership,’ he says. ‘As well as bringing pay differences directly or indirectly under more democratic control, employee ownership redistributes wealth and can change a company from a piece of property into a community.’
As an epidemiologist, Wilkinson is unwilling to give a definite opinion on the question of whether there are limits beyond which greater equality is desirable. ‘I’m not absolutely sure, and as academics, we are constrained by our data. We can see that equality is important all the way to the most equal of the developed countries – whether going on beyond that would be beneficial, we don’t know. We’ve seen no sign that it wouldn’t be. And it is interesting that Cuba’s health statistics are almost as good as the US, despite much smaller health expenditure.’
As you might expect, the phenomenon of a rigorously researched book pointing to the disaster of inequality has not gone uncriticised. Recently, in a discussion of inequality on Radio 4’s Moral Maze, Michael Portillo said that even if we accept that inequality has the damaging social consequences described in The Spirit Level, he thought that economic progress required the innovation and creativity that he believed depended on financial rewards and incentives.
Thinking about this afterwards, Wilkinson and Pickett realised that the number of patents granted per head of population would be a good measure of innovation and creativity. But rather than finding that more unequal societies had greater innovative success, they found the opposite: more equal societies have a greater number of patents per head. ‘It’s quite simple – more unequal societies waste the talents of their populations by making millions of people feel second rate and failures,’ he explains.
In order to make the book’s findings better known, the authors set up the Equality Trust, which has since moved into campaigning for policy changes in the UK. It is planning a campaign for greater equality in the lead up to the general election in 2010. Wilkinson is optimistic, despite the enormous challenges faced by such an agenda. ‘From people’s responses when they see the evidence, I’ve come to feel that the world is actually full of closet egalitarians who recognise the hollowness of consumerism and status competition. We know that in future the real quality of life will depend on our ability to shift from the pursuit of economic growth and raising material standards to using greater equality to improve the quality of the social environment.
‘By improving the quality of social relations in societies, greater equality reduces consumerism and status competition and makes it easier to achieve sustainablity. If we can present people with a different conception of the future, a future in which environmental and social problems are soluble, there could be very rapid changes in public attitudes.’
Equality Trust
The Spirit Level is published by Allen Lane
Matt Sellwood is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
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Review – Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City by Joy White
White's book is both deeply personal and political, examining the other side of violence often left out of the mainstream conversation writes Angelica Udueni
November 21, 2020 · 5 min read
Millenium Mills is due to undergo regeneration, undoubtedly leading to further gentrification in the borough of Newham. Credit Neil Howard. CC BY-NC 2.0
Combining memoir with ethnography, Joy White’s Terraformed offers an intimate exploration of the effects of racism, neoliberalism and austerity on young black lives. Drawing on research undertaken between 2015 and 2016, the book is an anthology of seven essays, which explore the interconnected themes of politics, culture and physical space. Using Forest Gate in the east London borough of Newham as a starting point, the author asks: what does it mean to be young and black in inner-city communities?
Despite being a stone’s throw away from the wealth of the City of London, Newham is one of the more impoverished boroughs in the capital. For many, life is precarious. Alongside stagnating wages, student debt, zero-hours contracts and high unemployment rates, the borough’s young people have inherited a legacy of surveillance, institutional racism and exclusionary policies in all areas of social life.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and increasingly restrictive immigration policies through successive governments have given legitimacy to racist hostility in housing, work, schools and on the streets. Newham saw far-right mobilisations in the 1970s and 1980s, and a small number of British National Party candidate won up to 30 per cent of the vote in the south of the borough in the 1994 local elections. Despite this, black communities in Newham have established themselves and built strong community responses to hold the state and police to account. These include the Newham Monitoring Project, founded in 1980 as a response to police harassment and racist street violence.
White extends our understanding of the ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants beyond the association with Theresa May’s policies and the 2018 ‘Windrush scandal’. The past 40 years have seen increasingly restrictive immigration policies and an expansion of the detention and deportation regime in Britain. Large numbers of people have been left with insecure migration status and contact with the criminal justice system can result in deportation. It can also be fatal: we are reminded of Edson de Costa, a black man who died in Newham following restraint by the police in 2017, aged 25.
Stark contrast
For young black people in Newham, life is wrought with anxiety. This is in stark contrast to newly-arrived gentrifiers, for whom Newham is marketed as a place of opportunity and affordable housing. The street-level reality, often at odds with Newham Council’s regeneration plans, is explored in chapter three (‘Why music matters’), where White dissects the relationship between music, black youth and gentrification.
She provides a rare positive commentary on drill and grime, emphasising youthful creativity and expression in difficult economic circumstances. Music is one of the few accessible creative forms for working-class black youth in an age of limited youth services – often music videos are shot with no budget on the street on smartphones. Despite its popularity, the music that areas like Newham has contributed to British culture has been demonised, used as a scapegoat to blame for a youth violence epidemic in London.
Personal and political
One of the most captivating elements of Terraformed is the author’s relationship to the community she is writing about. White grew up in Newham and has family there. Its history is reflected in her personal story – she refuses to separate herself from the community she is writing from, giving her a rare perspective. The most powerful sections are where she is addressing violence and trauma, exposing black vulnerability when talking about her own experiences.
The book is both deeply personal and political, examining the other side of violence often left out of the mainstream conversation. One of the questions she considers is what is it like to survive being shot? One chapter is dedicated to her nephew, Nico Ramsay, who was stabbed to death in 2016, aged 19. Sharing the stories from her own life she invites us to reckon with the social and emotional cost of structural and interpersonal violence: ‘Planning a funeral for a teenager – who does that? How do you come back from that?’ This may be academic work, but it’s not an abstraction.
White offers a sophisticated portrait of inner-city life, weaving together interviews, cultural commentary, historical records and her own personal recollections. While she does not shy away from the brutal ‘everyday adversity’ faced by many black youth, her analysis does not pathologise or remove their agency. A message of hope runs throughout her work, emphasising resistance and creativity.
Angelica Udueni is a socially conscious writer, researcher and content creator. You can follow them on Twitter @6ngelica
This review originally appeared originally appeared in issue #228 ‘Climate Revolutions’. Subscribe today to get your copy and support fearless, independent media.
Review – Regicide or Revolution? What petitioners wanted, September 1648 – February 1649 by Nora Carlin
Norah Carlin's analysis of the Levellers' petitions reaffirms the radical nature of the English revolution, argues John Rees.
Review – I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and apocalypse communism by A M Gittlitz
Despite its outlandish reputation, A M Gittlitz's analysis of Posadism shows there is value in occasionally indulging in fanciful thinking, writes Dawn Foster.
Review – Skint Estate by Cash Carraway
Cash Carraway's memoir is a powerful recollection of working class struggle. Her story is a quiet call to arms, writes Jessica Andrews
Review – No Platform by Evan Smith
Smith's book demonstrates that the far-right has always played the victim card when it comes to free-speech, writes Houman Barekat
Review – Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.
Roy's latest book helps us imagine the pandemic as a portal to another world, writes Sophie Hemery
Review – Why You Should Be A Trade Unionist by Len McCluskey
Best look elsewhere if you want to truly understand the need for trade unionism in the 21st century, warn a collective of Unite members
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Top chefs on finding their way in a high-profile industry
This is part of Restaurant Hospitality’s special coverage of the 2015 South Beach Wine and Food Festival held in Miami Beach, Feb. 19-22.
Michael Sanson | Feb 24, 2015
Alex Guarnaschelli
Several top-tier chefs met at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival to discuss how they became famous in a notoriously competitive industry. Moderating the panel was Jennifer Baum, founder of the public relations firm, Bullfrog & Baum. Sitting on the panel were Manhattan-based Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli, the executive chef of Butter Restaurant; Josh Capon, the executive chef and partner of Mercer Street Hospitality Group; Laurent Tourondel, the chef/owner of LT Hospitality; and Dale Talde, the chef/owner of Talde Restaurants.
Baum: When you went to culinary school, did you see that this type of high-profile career would be a possibility?
Guarnaschelli: I started cooking because I didn’t want a job where I had to get dressed and be on time for work or wear color-coordinated outfits and be agreeable more than two hours in a row. I discovered that restaurants are a really good place to hide and cook your heart out.
Laurent Tourondel
Baum: The irony is that you no longer can hide anymore.
But I did spend 10 years or more cooking 16 hours a day, cleaning artichokes and sea urchins in the basement. I did a lot of crying through a lot of years of sheer physical repetition and manual labor. But I really, really enjoyed it overall. Cooking is athletic, it’s a sport, it’s an art, it’s a lot of different things. I also decided to be a chef because I had a deranged relationship with food. I thought if I was around it a lot, I would eat less of it, which is not a good plan [the crowd laughs]. I also thought that I might end up in prison and that I better do something [more laughing]. I know it’s funny, but it’s also true.
Baum: How about you, Laurent?
Tourondel: It was rough training in Europe. We would start at 6 a.m. and finish around 11 p.m. That was for about 10 years.
Baum: Did you have to do what Alex did and stand outside kitchens before someone accepted you to work there?
Tourondel: Yes, it was a rough time. I saw people quit the first day on the job. It’s not like that anymore, but you have to be conditioned to handle it.
Baum: Dale, you worked through a lot of kitchens and then you were on TV (Bravo’s Top Chef). How did things change?
Talde: I had to stop a lot of really bad habits before I became a passable cook. I started cooking to party. I don’t like getting up early. I like sleeping until noon. I didn’t stop smoking weed until I walked into work. But then I got serious. As for getting on TV, the exposure definitely helps you get money to finance a restaurant.
Baum: Was it a self-motivated thing to get serious and stop partying?
Talde: No, a chef sat me down and said, “You are high every day you come into work. If you want to continue doing this you must stop.” When you are in garde manger (pantry chef) for two years and you don’t get moved up, it’s a bad sign. That’s when you realize you have to get serious or stop cooking.
Baum: What about you, Josh?
Capon: I went to the University of Maryland for a couple of years and didn’t do well academically. My mom and stepdad made an observation that every job I’ve had since I was 14 was in foodservice establishments. They picked me up one morning and took me on a tour of Johnson and Wales in Rhode Island. I made a mature decision to step out of Maryland two years in and enter culinary school. I knew two more years of partying in Maryland was going to get me nowhere.
Dale Talde
Josh Capon
Baum: Chefs, how do you balance life?
Capon: I found that no matter what you do, be doing that, be in the moment. We work holidays and weekends and I have two kids. My wife gave me a compliment saying that for the little time I spend at home, I make more of it than most guys who are home every night.
Capon: I’m involved with a wellness program, so I go to my kids’ schools in New York once a month and do a cooking demo. My kids relate to that. My kids eat sushi and shuck oysters. There’s a lot more interaction with my kids as a chef than if I worked in an office.
Baum: How do you find time to have an existence outside work?
Tourondel: It’s difficult, particularly for me because I have restaurants all over the world. (Hong Kong, Puerto Rico). It’s much harder to be at home.
Talde: For me something always breaks, and that’s when I know I have to give up something else. We just opened two restaurants in Jersey City for a month’s stretch of 12-hour days. After a while you just snap. You can see the tension in everyone’s face you’re working with. Everyone is getting crazy, and you get angry over something stupid. It’s trivial stuff. That’s when you know you have to take some time off and detach from the restaurants.
I only have one restaurant and I work with people who really like each other a lot and will help each other. I tell this story about an incident that happened right before dinner service. Everyone was standing around because all the cucumbers were diced and everything was prepared. Then, all of a sudden, everybody was furiously chopping and prepping stuff. I asked what happened. They said nothing, until someone finally told me a glass had broken on the pantry and shattered all over the prep area. I got mad and said angrily, “You better get it together!” Then a second later, through tears, I said, “You guys are amazing. I love you.”
Baum: What is your best piece of advice about how to have a long career?
Capon: I spend more time in an average week with my kitchen staff than I do with my own family. I always say that we work together, and never say they work for me. I don’t like the way it sounds. Everybody is making a lot of sacrifices. The biggest struggle I have is not being able to be everywhere I want to be. I have chefs and managers at each restaurant that I trust to do the right thing.
Talde: I love my business partners and trust them, but when you fight, you have to fight it out. If you disagree with someone, you have to tell them. We argue, but in a healthy way.
Baum: You recently brought a new partner into the mix. How was that?
Talde: It was difficult. We were the end all and be all. We were the decision makers. But when the new guy came on board to do design, you can see how some of the partners were upset because they lost some control. But after talking it out, we decided that this is what this guy does for a living, so we have to trust his aesthetic.
Tourondel: The best way to go about it is have everyone do their role as best they can and respect that.
Guarnaschelli: I definitely have a macho streak where I think I can do it all—pick out the curtains, do the flowers, compile the wine list. But you get in over your head. If you’re cooking you’re probably a person who has a lot of energy.
Career mistakes
Baum: What was a big mistake you made in your career? It could be yesterday or 10 years ago.
Talde: My biggest failure was not putting my friends and family and loved ones ahead of my restaurant. I screwed up a relationship really bad by burying myself in work. What I can never get back is seeing my nieces grow up from 2 to 4. For almost two years I never did see them.
Tourondel: My biggest mistake was getting involved with financial backers who had no experience in the business. I had to shut it down. If I had to do it again, I’d do it differently.
Capon: I was working for Charlie Palmer at Aureole and one Saturday night the air conditioning broke down with 400 covers on the books. He was scurrying about trying to figure out what to do and I said to Charlie, “Hey, Charlie, at least you have the hottest restaurant in town.” He looked at me like, “You dumb son of a bitch!” Sometimes it’s best not to say anything and don’t drink the boxed wine in the kitchen because it will only give you a headache.
Capon: The dumbest thing I’ve ever done was using flour to relieve the chaffing between my thighs during a hot Saturday night in the kitchen as a young cook. I should have used cornstarch to soak up the sweat. As you know, if you take flour and water it makes dough. After a while I couldn’t even walk anymore because it was turning into cement between my legs.
Audience member: How do you deal with people who come to you to endorse a product?
Talde: For me, the reality is that when you have restaurants, you are never going to be rich, especially when you’re dividing the pie between three restaurant partners. I look at everything that is going to pay me because I don’t make a lot of money. Now is an opportunity to make some. I just got engaged and I’m trying to pay my own way, pay my parents for their investments in my restaurants, buy a house.
Capon: I agree with Dale 100 percent, but you have to know who you’re getting into bed with. We have agents and advisors who usually lead us in the right direction. You want to do it all, but it’s challenging because people want to use your name. You have to be careful who you do business with.
Audience member: What are you most proud of?
Talde: I’m a self-hater, so nothing is ever really good enough for me. I am proud of Talde in Brooklyn. I’m proud of how we turned a bad New York Times review into a positive. We got one star. We knew we were better than that. We turned it around by fine-tuning dishes and some wait staff. We looked at the review and decided we would make it better.
Capon: We got a bad review at Lure Fishbar 12 years ago and it was like a dagger in my heart. I always say running a kitchen is a lot like sports. You have to work together, start strong and finish stronger. But I’m proud to say that the reviewer came back three years later and gave us a nice review. We got the monkey off our back and the restaurant is now on fire.
Audience member: How many of you do your own social media?
Talde: We have someone in house who does it. When I do my own it’s not PG and it’s sometimes creepy. My agent told me that I would never get endorsements, not with the way I handle my Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Capon: I have a hard time with it. My biggest problem is that no one enjoys what they’re doing anymore while they do it. They have to tell the rest of the world what they’re doing while they’re doing it. Someone came into the restaurant and wanted to sell me a battery pack that you put under tables so customers can plug in their phones. I’ve seen tables of six where all six of them are on their phones. With the younger generation, if their phone battery dies, the evening is over. You can fight it all you want, but you have to get on board with social media or get the hell out.
Guarnaschelli: With social media, you can water the flowers a couple times a day and spend the rest of the time in a hammock.
Restaurant Hospitality editor Mike Sanson reported live from the South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami Beach. The event, now in its 14th year, attracted more than 60,000 attendees, 150 celebrated chefs and 250 wineries and spirits producers. A component of the festival is trade panels designed specifically for restaurant operators. Sanson's reports from South Beach focus on those talks and interviews with top chefs attending the event.
TAGS: Chefs
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AWO Kosovo
AWO Nuremberg in Kosovo – Support for returnees and their families
The primary goal of the return project is the sustainable reintegration of voluntary returnees from Germany to their country of origin, Kosovo.
AWO counselling centre is often the first point of contact, coordination, and assignment for individuals who want to or have to return to their country of origin. At an AWO counselling centre, perspectives, possibilities, and opportunities for a new beginning in Kosovo are discussed. Counselling is non-binding, open-ended, and tailored to the individual circumstances of the returnee.
AWO Nuremberg has been active in Kosovo since January 2007. A counselling centre in Prishtina opened in March 2009. The counselling centre supports individuals who return voluntarily from Germany to Kosovo with the issues and problems that they might face upon return. Additionally, mobile consultation provides consultation for persons who are unable to visit the counselling centre themselves. The home visits serve to better assess the situation of those seeking counselling to be able to provide assistance as needed.
Those who seek counselling learn about AWO from return counselling centres in Germany. Or from volunteers, friends, and acquaintances. Furthermore, the Ministry of the Interior of Kosovo refers individuals who are not eligible for support by the state to AWO. AWO also assists returnees with administrative matters in Germany, such as: obtaining school certificates and/or birth certificates.
AWO Nuremberg supports families, single women, and men in vulnerable social situations. For example, AWO Nuremberg provides chronically ill persons with medical care assistance through the payment of medication and treatment fees. In addition, families receive financial support for school supplies and travel allowance to school. Support in the form of building materials and furnishings such as renovation support, can also be covered. AWO also provides wage subsidies and start-up assistance.
The project is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the federal state of Bavaria.
In Germany: Ms. Martina Sommer (Head of Unit)
Tel. +49 911 2741 40 11
In Kosovo: Mr. Nezir Kolgeci
Project duration: 01 January to 31 December 2020 (with the possibility of extension)
l/e/icons/file-pdfFyler (Deutsch, Shqip)
Programme Documents
l/e/icons/file-pdfApplication (Shqip)
l/e/icons/file-pdfApplication (Deutsch)
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FCC fines ABC over 'NYPD Blue'; network to appeal
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission on Friday said it plans to fine the Walt Disney Co’s ABC network $1.4 million for airing an episode of “NYPD Blue” in 2003 that showed a woman’s nude buttocks.
The company said it opposes the fine and plans to appeal.
In a notice filed on Friday, the agency said 52 television ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zones had aired the scene at 9 p.m. in violation of federal restrictions against broadcasting “obscene material” between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The agency said it received “numerous complaints” about the scene, in which a young boy walks in on a nude woman about to take a shower.
Stations in the Eastern and Pacific time zones were exempt because they broadcast the February 25, 2003, episode at 10 p.m. local time.
ABC said in a statement that it had broadcast the episode and others from the cop drama, which ran from 1993 to 2005, with appropriate parental warnings and with V-chip enabled program ratings when they were available.
The network added that the show had been on the air for nearly a decade when the episode in question aired “and the realistic nature of its storylines was well known to the viewing public.”
Reporting by Gina Keating; Editing by Gary Hill
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Leicester City’s Ritchie de Laet uncovers the importance of Gary Neville in his career
Ritchie de Laet performed in Old Trafford from 2008 until 2011 before being offloaded to Leicester City. In this period of time, Ritchie de Laet made a grand total of 3 appearances for the Premier League club as the Belgium could never snatch a regular spot in Manchester United but his career has reignited after he moved away from the club.
When Ritchie de Laet made his move to Leicester City, the defender immediately turned into a player who managed to snatch a regular spot in the team and even helped Leicester City in getting into the playoffs of the 2012-13 Championship League.’
The 26 year old defender is now being viewed as an attractive summer target with many clubs of the English Championship League hoping to sign Ritchie de Laet but it doesn’t seem like he will leaving Leicester City as it was the club which had faith in him and revived his playing career after it appeared to be lifeless.
Although Ritchie de Laet did not have an influential role at Manchester United, the Belgium defender has revealed that there was something which occurred in Old Trafford which helped him out in his playing career and it involves Gary Neville.
‘’Gary pulled me sometimes after training and had a nice word with me. He was top quality in training. He wanted to win every time he played. That was great to see.You have to learn quickly otherwise you get found out in training, which is not a fun thing if you’re against Ryan Giggs. I had my fair share of nutmegs. NemanjaVidic and Rio Ferdinand were brilliant with me too’’ Former Manchester United player, Ritchie de Laet said.
After a 10 year absence from the Premier League, Leicester City made their return to the top tier English League and finished the previous season by sealing the 14th spot and Ritchie de Laet contributed in this feat but it’s far from over as Ritchie de Laet as well as the rest of his teammates are aiming to land in a higher spot in the next season.
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Column: Need Wi-Fi? How San Diego’s libraries are bridging the digital divide
Outdoor computers, expanded Wi-Fi and Chromebook loans help libraries keep patrons online
Celebrity birthdays for the week of Nov. 29-Dec. 5
This combination photo of celebrities with birthdays from Nov. 29-Dec. 5 shows Diego Boneta, from left, Chrissy Teigen, Janelle Monae, Britney Spears, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges and Margaret Cho. (AP Photo)
Celebrity birthdays for the week of Nov. 29-Dec. 5:
Nov. 29: Blues musician John Mayall is 87. Actor Diane Ladd is 85. Musician Chuck Mangione is 80. Country singer Jody Miller is 79. Singer-keyboardist Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals is 78. Actor Jeff Fahey (“Lost,” “The Marshal”) is 68. Director Joel Coen is 66. Actor-comedian Howie Mandel is 65. Actor Cathy Moriarty is 60. Actor Kim Delaney (“NYPD Blue”) is 59. Actor Tom Sizemore is 59. Actor Andrew McCarthy is 58. Actor Don Cheadle is 56. Actor-producer Neill Barry (“Friends and Lovers”) is 55. Singer Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block is 52. Actor Larry Joe Campbell (“According to Jim”) is 50. Keyboardist Frank Delgado of Deftones is 50. Actor Paola Turbay (“True Blood”) is 50. Contemporary Christian singer Crowder is 49. Actor Gena Lee Nolin (“Sheena,” ″Baywatch”) is 49. Actor Brian Baumgartner (“The Office”) is 48. Actor Julian Ovenden (“Downton Abbey”) is 45. Actor Anna Faris (“Mom,” ″Scary Movie”) is 44. Gospel singer James Fortune is 43. Actor Lauren German (“Lucifer,” ″Chicago Fire”) is 42. Rapper The Game is 41. Drummer Ringo Garza of Los Lonely Boys is 39. Actor-comedian John Milhiser (“Saturday Night Live”) is 39. Actor Lucas Black (“NCIS: New Orleans,” ″Sling Blade”) is 38. Actor Diego Boneta (“Scream Queens”) is 30. Actor Lovie Simone (“Greenleaf”) is 22.
Nov. 30: Country singer-record company executive Jimmy Bowen is 83. Director Ridley Scott is 83. Writer-director Terrence Malick (“The Thin Red Line”) is 77. Bassist Roger Glover of Deep Purple is 75. Singer-actor Mandy Patinkin is 68. Guitarist Shuggie Otis is 67. Country singer Jeannie Kendall of The Kendalls is 66. Singer Billy Idol is 65. Guitarist John Ashton of Psychedelic Furs is 63. Comedian Colin Mochrie (“Whose Line Is It Anyway?”) is 63. Rapper Jalil of Whodini is 57. Actor-director Ben Stiller is 55. DJ Steve Aoki is 43. Singer Clay Aiken (“American Idol”) is 42. Actor Elisha Cuthbert (“24”) is 38. Actor Kaley Cuoco (“The Big Bang Theory”) is 35. Model Chrissy Teigen is 35. Actor Christel Khalil (“The Young and the Restless”) is 33. Actor Rebecca Rittenhouse (“The Mindy Project”) is 32. Actor Adelaide Clemens (“Rectify”) is 31. Actor Tyla Harris (“For Life”) is 20.
Dec. 1: Actor-director Woody Allen is 85. Singer Dianne Lennon of the Lennon Sisters is 81. Bassist Casey Van Beek of The Tractors is 78. Singer-guitarist Eric Bloom of Blue Oyster Cult is 76. Drummer John Densmore of The Doors is 76. Actor-singer Bette Midler is 75. Singer Gilbert O’Sullivan is 74. Actor Treat Williams is 69. Country singer Kim Richey is 64. Actor Charlene Tilton is 62. Model-actor Carol Alt is 60. Actor Jeremy Northam (“The Tudors,” ″Happy, Texas”) is 59. Actor Katherine LaNasa (“Longmire,” “Deception”) is 54. Actor Nestor Carbonell (“Lost,” ″Suddenly Susan”) is 53. Actor Golden Brooks (“Girlfriends”) is 50. Comedian Sarah Silverman is 50. Singer Bart Millard of MercyMe is 48. Actor David Hornsby (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) is 45. Guitarist Brad Delson of Linkin Park is 43. Actor Nate Torrence (“Hello Ladies”) is 43. Singer Mat Kearney is 42. Drummer Mika Fineo of Filter is 39. Actor Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”) is 38. Actor Ilfenesh Hadera (“Godfather of Harlem,” “She’s Gotta Have It”) is 35. Singer-actor Janelle Monae is 35. Actor Ashley Monique Clark (“The Hughleys”) is 32. Singer Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots is 32. Actor Zoe Kravitz (“Insurgent,” ″Divergent”) is 32. Singer Nico Sereba of Nico and Vinz is 30.
Dec. 2: Actor Cathy Lee Crosby (“That’s Incredible”) is 76. Director Penelope Spheeris (“Wayne’s World,” “The Decline of Western Civilization”) is 75. Actor Ron Raines (“Guiding Light”) is 71. Country singer John Wesley Ryles is 70. Actor Keith Szarabajka (”Angel,” “The Equalizer”) is 68. Actor Dan Butler (“Frasier”) is 66. News anchor Stone Phillips is 66. Actor Dennis Christopher (“Breaking Away,” ″Chariots of Fire”) is 65. Actor Steven Bauer (“Scarface”) is 64. Bassist Rick Savage of Def Leppard is 60. Actor Brendan Coyle (“Downton Abbey”) is 57. Bassist Nate Mendel of Foo Fighters is 52. Actor Lucy Liu is 52. Actor Suzy Nakamura (“Dr. Ken”) is 52. Actor Rena Sofer (“24,” ″Just Shoot Me”) is 52. Rapper Treach of Naughty by Nature is 50. Actor Joe Lo Truglio (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) is 50. Singer Nelly Furtado is 42. Singer Britney Spears is 39. Singer-actror Jana Kramer is 37. Actor Daniela Ruah (“NCIS: Los Angeles”) is 37. Actor Alfred Enoch (“How to Get Away with Murder”) is 32. Singer Charlie Puth is 29.
Dec. 3: Director Jean-Luc Godard is 90. Singer Jaye P. Morgan (“The Gong Show”) is 89. Actor Nicolas Coster (“The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo”) is 87. Actor Mary Alice is 79. Singer Ozzy Osbourne is 72. Singer Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship is 71. Bassist Paul Gregg of Restless Heart is 66. Actor Steven Culp (“Desperate Housewives”) is 65. Actor Daryl Hannah is 60. Actor Julianne Moore is 60. Actor Brendan Fraser is 52. Singer Montell Jordan is 52. Actor-comedian Royale Watkins is 51. Actor Bruno Campos (“Nip/Tuck,” ″Jesse”) is 47. Actor Holly Marie Combs (“Charmed”) is 47. Actor Lauren Roman (“Bold and the Beautiful”) is 45. Musician Daniel Bedingfield is 41. Actor Tiffany Haddish (“Girls Trip”) is 41. Actor Anna Chlumsky is 40. Actor Jenna Dewan (“The Resident,” ″Supergirl”) is 40. Actor Brian Bonsall (“Family Ties”) is 39. Actor Dascha Polanco (“Orange is the New Black”) is 38. Singer-songwriter Andy Grammer is 37. Drummer Michael Calabrese of Lake Street Dive is 36. Actor Amanda Seyfried (“Mamma Mia”) is 35. Actor Jake T. Austin (“The Fosters,” ″Wizards of Waverly Place”) is 26.
Dec. 4: Game show host Wink Martindale is 87. Singer Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon is 84. Actor-producer-director Max Baer Junior (“The Beverly Hillbillies”) is 83. Bassist Bob Mosley of Moby Grape is 78. Singer-bassist Chris Hillman (The Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers) is 76. Singer Southside Johnny Lyon of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes is 72. Actor Jeff Bridges is 71. Guitarist Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Rossington Collins Band) is 69. Actor Patricia Wettig is 69. Actor Tony Todd (“Final Destination” films) is 66. Drummer Brian Prout of Diamond Rio is 65. Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson is 65. Bassist Bob Griffin (The BoDeans) is 61. Singer Vinnie Dombroski of Sponge is 58. Actor Chelsea Noble (“Growing Pains,” “Kirk”) is 56. Actor Marisa Tomei is 56. Comedian Fred Armisen (“Portlandia,” ″Saturday Night Live”) is 54. Rapper Jay-Z is 51. Actor Kevin Sussman (“Ugly Betty”) is 50. Model Tyra Banks is 47. Country singer Lila McCann is 39. Actor Lindsay Felton (“Caitlin’s Way”) is 36. Actor Orlando Brown (“That’s So Raven”) is 33. Actor Scarlett Estevez (“Lucifer”) is 13.
Dec. 5: Actor Jeroen Krabbe (“The Fugitive”) is 76. Opera singer Jose Carreras is 74. Singer Jim Messina (Loggins and Messina, Poco) is 73. Actor Morgan Brittany (“Dallas”) is 69. Actor Brian Backer (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) is 64. Country singer Ty England is 57. Singer-guitarist John Rzeznik of The Goo Goo Dolls is 55. Country singer Gary Allan is 53. Comedian Margaret Cho is 52. Actor Alex Kapp Horner (“The New Adventures of Old Christine”) is 51. Actor Kali Rocha (TV’s “Man with a Plan”) is 49. Bassist Regina Zernay of Cowboy Mouth is 48. Actor Paula Patton (“Precious”) is 45. Actor Amy Acker (“Person of Interest,” ″Angel”) is 44. Actor Nick Stahl (TV’s “Carnivale,” film’s “Terminator 3”) is 41. Actor Adan Canto (“Designated Survivor”) is 39. Singer Keri Hilson is 38. Actor Gabriel Luna (“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) is 38. Actor Frankie Muniz (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 35. Actor Ross Bagley (“Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”) is 32.
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Heat say they are working with Adebayo to finalize extension
By TIM REYNOLDSAP Basketball Writer
MIAMI —
Bam Adebayo and the Miami Heat are working on a contract extension, the team said Tuesday.
Once the deal is finalized, Adebayo — when factoring in his current salary — would be guaranteed at least $168 million over the next six seasons and perhaps as much as $200 million in that span.
Adebayo will make $5.1 million this season, the final year of his rookie contract. From there, the extension will kick in with a starting salary of somewhere around $28.1 million for the 2021-22 season. And if he makes an All-NBA team this season, something he narrowly missed doing this past season, his annual salary would only rise more.
The Heat had until Dec. 21 to agree with Adebayo on an extension this season, or else would have had to table the matter until next summer. Miami has said the team’s intention was to give Adebayo a new deal — the question was only when. By waiting until next summer, the Heat would have had more salary-cap flexibility.
Adebayo is coming off, by far, the best season of his career. He was an All-Star for the first time, won the skills competition at All-Star weekend, had the game-saving block of a Jayson Tatum dunk attempt in the final seconds of Miami’s Game 1 over Boston in the Eastern Conference finals and made the NBA’s All-Defensive team.
When this deal is done, he’ll become the fourth member of the 2017 NBA draft class to secure a max extension, the others being Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox, Utah’s Donovan Mitchell and Boston’s Jayson Tatum.
Adebayo averaged 15.2 points, 10.2 rebounds and 5.1 assists this past season. Only one other player in the league had those numbers — two-time reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks. And no player in Heat history ever finished a season with those averages in all three categories, until Adebayo.
He told The Associated Press during the NBA’s restart earlier this summer at Walt Disney World that his lone financial goal is to take care of his mother, Marilyn Blount. She raised him by herself in North Carolina, making about $15,000 a year from her multiple jobs and with them calling a single-wide trailer their home.
“That competitive nature comes out when I feel like I’m playing bad and when things aren’t going right,” Adebayo said in the September interview with AP. “I think about how she fought through struggle. ... You see that for 18 years straight, you take that load on and feel that responsibility. And my responsibility is to provide for my mom, and the best way to make sure I can do that is to help us win.”
He’s about to be set for many lifetimes, money to never be a worry again.
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
TIM REYNOLDS
Urban Meyer has agreed to a contract to coach the Jacksonville Jaguars
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VIRTUAL PRUDENTIAL RIDELONDON TO GO AHEAD TO HELP SAVE UK’S CHARITIES
- Free event on 15 and 16 August gives people chance to celebrate cycling and raise crucial funds for charity
- My Prudential RideLondon enables cyclists to take part in world’s greatest festival of cycling wherever they are
The first ever virtual edition of Prudential RideLondon – the world’s greatest festival of cycling – will take place on 15 and 16 August (the event weekend) to celebrate cycling and raise funds to help save the UK’s charities.
Scoliosis Association UK and our sister charity the British Scoliosis Research Foundation, like many other charities, have been hugely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic as fundraising events such as Prudential RideLondon have been either postponed or cancelled.
My Prudential RideLondon offers SAUK & BSRF supporters, of all ages and abilities, the opportunity to take part in a fantastic challenge and raise crucial funds for our charity.
It is an exciting, free event that can be done anywhere in the world. It offers people the chance to tackle a range of distances based on the events included in the traditional Prudential RideLondon weekend.
Hugh Brasher, Event Director of Prudential RideLondon, said: “After the disappointment of the cancellation of Prudential RideLondon, we were determined to create something special for our riders, partners and the hundreds of charities that rely on the event for vital income.
“My Prudential RideLondon is building on the success of The 2.6 Challenge – created following the postponement of the London Marathon – which became the biggest collective fundraising effort in the world involving nearly 4,000 charities.
“Charities desperately need help to continue to provide vital services to every sector of society and fund critical research. In this socially distanced world, it’s also vitally important to encourage people to get on two wheels rather than use public transport. The My Prudential RideLondon campaign has been created to achieve both these aims.
“My Prudential RideLondon is completely free and offers a fundraising challenge for everyone, whether that’s an amateur rider doing 100 miles or a family enjoying a 1km bike ride together. It can be done wherever you are and at any time on 15 or 16 August. Whatever you do, we urge you to raise funds for a charity of your choice – and have fun!”
My Prudential RideLondon includes four challenges for all ages and abilities that participants can do on a route of their choice, wherever they are in the world, on either 15 or 16 August:
· My Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100: 100-mile ride
· My Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 46: 46-mile ride
· My Prudential RideLondon FreeCycle: An event that allows you to set your own challenge (starting from 1km) on the wheels of your choice: bikes, push scooters, skateboards, trikes, balance bikes, roller skates, wheelchairs or anything that is self-propelled (e-bikes are fine too).
You can support both SAUK & BSRF by choosing to fundraise for Scoliosis Campaign Fund, our joint fundraising venture between the two charities. SCF allows SAUK to continue to provide advice, support, and information to people affected by scoliosis and their families. SAUK also works to raise awareness of scoliosis among health professionals and the general public. SCF also raises funds to allow BSRF to continue financing research to discover the cause(s) of scoliosis and develop treatments to improve the quality of life for those who live with the condition.
Participants who wish to ride for Scoliosis Campaign Fund need to register in advance and select their challenge at www.myridelondon.co.uk. The site will also provide a link to Virgin Money Giving where they can set up their fundraising page.
Once signed up, participants will be able to download the new My Prudential RideLondon app in event week. This will give every participant and supporter a unique ride day experience, including:
- A GPS function that enables friends and family to follow a rider’s progress on the virtual Prudential RideLondon route
- Creation of a personalised Prudential RideLondon certificate that shows the rider’s completed route and ride time
- Selfie frames to give riders personalised Prudential RideLondon finisher photographs
- Direct donation button through to each rider’s Virgin Money Giving fundraising page
In addition, every rider aged over 18 who registers will have the option of being entered into a fantastic competition that has 25 top-quality prizes available including a brand new Brompton Bicycle valued at more than £1,000, a HIGH5 nutrition bundle worth £250 and top-of-the-range cycling equipment including a SRAM groupset and Zipp wheels.
Participants are asked to follow current Government guidelines on cycling. For more information, click here.
Prudential RideLondon first took place in 2013 as a legacy event from the London 2012 Olympics. In its first seven editions, it has become the world’s greatest festival of cycling, with 100,000 riders of all ages and abilities participating in seven different events on traffic-free roads in London and Surrey. It has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to take up cycling or cycle more often and a total of more than £77 million has been raised for thousands of charities.
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Home » Who is rob gronkowski dating
Who is rob gronkowski dating
The 1980s was the decade of big hair, big phones, pastel suits, Cabbage Patch Kids, Rubik’s cubes, Yuppies, Air Jordans, shoulder pads and Pac Man. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us.During the Eighties, Berlin Wall crumbled, new computer technologies emerged and blockbuster movies and MTV reshaped pop culture. This page is updated often with fresh details about Rob Gronkowski. During that season he broke the record as the first and youngest rookie in NFL history to catch 3 touchdowns in a single game which earned him Rob Gronkowski Award from Madden NFL 12 (An award created in honor of his feats).The player’s success on the pitch continued and in June 2012, he extended his contract with the Patriots for a 6 year period.Gronkowski has suffered a number of injuries in his career as a footballer which dates back to his college days when he had to undergo a back surgery which made him miss his Junior season.He has also broken his arm twice in 2012 and in 2015, he sustained a dislocated knee.
NFL player Rob Gronkowski has become popular since he was drafted by the New England Patriots in 2010.
Born in Amherst, New York on May 14, 1989, Gronkowski’s interest in sports started back in his high school days at Williamsville North High School where he played tight end in football and center in basketball on the Spartans sports teams.
During those years, 36 receptions for 648yars and 7 touchdowns on offence accompanied by 73 tackles and 6 sacks on defence were recorded for him which landed him an All-Western New York first-team and All-State second-team player titles.
The swimsuit model later confirmed her relationship in May 2017 in an interview with the New York Post as she said: The couple made their first red carpet debut together at the 2018 Kids' Choice Sports Awards.
In October 2018, she talked about the possibility of getting engaged with Gronk in an interview with the Improper Bostonian. I like to think of my life as very spontaneous and new all the time.
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2014 Country Music Hall of Fame Picks & Prognostications
Trigger Random Notes 93 Comments
It’s that time of year again when we’re on the verge of hearing who the next class of inductees to the Country Music Hall of Fame will be. Though the date seems to be getting later and later each year (last year it stretched all the way to April 10th—2012 was announced on March 6th), as soon as spring starts to break, you can be assured an announcement is coming soon.
It must be said whenever broaching the subject of the Country Music Hall of Fame that it has been The Hall’s desire over the years to have it be an exclusive institutions when it comes to inductees. Where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and certain sports seem to throw the barn doors wide and accept all comers, the Country Music Hall of Fame would rather take gruff for who is not in the The Hall as opposed to who shouldn’t be, but is. You can always induct someone in the future, but it’s nearly impossible to throw someone out.
The Country Music Hall of Fame inductees are selected through a committee process appointed by the Country Music Association, or CMA. Since 2010, the selection process has been split up into three categories. 1) Modern Era (eligible for induction 20 years after they first achieve “national prominence”). 2) Veterans Era (eligible for induction 45 years after they first achieve “national prominence”). 3) Non-Performer, Songwriter, and Recording and/or Touring Musician active prior to 1980 (rotates every 3 years). With a musician, Hargus “Pig” Robbins selected in 2012, and a non-performer in “Cowboy” Jack Clement selected last year (though he was a performer and songwriter, it was more for his producer role), it would a songwriter’s turn up to bat this year.
Since 2001, anywhere from 2 to 4 names have been added to the Hall of Fame each year. Usually one name from the above mentioned categories makes it per year, but if no name gets enough of a majority vote, a category may not be represented in a given year. Or, if two names get enough votes from a category, then both may come from that category.
See The Complete Hall of Fame Induction Process
Potential Modern Era Inductees
Last year’s inductee – Kenny Rogers
Ricky Skaggs Ricky Skaggs is the artist that has felt like he’s been right on the bubble of being inducted over the last couple of years. Skaggs has bookened his career as a mandolin maestro, studied under Bill Monroe, and is now firmly ensconcing himself as a country music elder. In between then, he had tremendous commercial success in the 80”²s when country was searching for its next superstar. Few could argue with this pick and Skaggs is very well liked across country music. He was also announced recently as the Country Music Hall of Fame’s “Artist in Residence.” Though there is no official correlation between being named an Artist in Residence and being inducted the next year, that coincidence has happened numerous times, including for last year’s modern era inductee, Kenny Rogers. Skaggs has to be considered a frontrunner.
Ronnie Milsap – Milsap is a name that has probably been on final ballots for the Hall of Fame for going on two decades, and in a couple of years will cycle over to a veteran’s era candidate, if he hasn’t already depending on where you want to start the clock on him. Though his commercial success is unquestionable, the fact that he started outside the genre and found a lot of his success as a crossover star might make him a hard name for voters to pull the trigger on. Having said that, seeing another name who started outside of country and had a lot of his success in the crossover world get inducted last year in Kenny Rogers, might move Milsap one step closer.
Alan Jackson 2013 was Jackson’s first year of eligibility, and there was a sense he just missed out on being a first year Modern Era inductee like Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire. A huge commercial success in his day who always payed homage to the roots of the genre and the artists who came before him, Jackson is a shoe-in for The Hall eventually, and should be a very strong candidate this year. He’s well-liked, with little to no baggage (there was that whole George Jones “Choices” thing back in 1999 at the CMA Awards, but hey, that was a long time ago). Alan Jackson is a strong contender.
Randy Travis – At this time last year, despite Randy’s fresh eligibility and unquestionable credentials for the Hall, he was facing a string of drunk driving charges, and spinning the unsavory story of trying to bum a cigarette at a gas station naked. In such a crowded field, it was easy to give Travis a pass. But this year the story is much different. After suffering from a heart condition and stroke while in the midst of a strong recovery from his personal issues, Randy Travis has to be considered the sympathy favorite for the distinction. Will it be enough? Maybe not, but Randy will be a frontrunner in the Modern Era until he’s inducted.
Brooks & Dunn A commercial powerhouse whose career was somewhat overshadowed by the success of Garth and their strange place as a non-familial country duo, their first album Brand New Man sold 6 million copies, and they won the CMA for Vocal Duo of the Year every year but one between 1992 and 2006. Their success is not debatable, but did they have the type of influence it takes to be Hall of Famers this early in their eligibility window, and with this crowded of a field? And does the fact that they’re no longer a functioning act hurt them, or is Kix with his radio work and Dunn with his brewing country revolution still visible enough? A few more names may have to tick off the list before their turn, but they have to be considered contenders.
Other Possible Modern Era Inductees:
The Oak Ridge Boys – Another Strong Contender
The Judds
Dwight Yoakam – You’d think with 25 million records sold, his name would be more associated with this distinction. Maybe in the coming years.
Keith Whitley – Garth Brooks a couple of years ago said he deserved induction before him.
Clint Black – If it wasn’t for his career’s disappearing act, his name would be right up there with Travis, Jackson, and Brooks & Dunn
Toby Keith – Officially eligible because he had his first success in 1993, but probably on the outside-looking-in for the next few years
Charlie Daniels
Tayna Tucker
Crystal Gayle
Gene Watson
Potential Veterans Era Inductees
Last year’s inductee – Bobby Bare
Predicting the Veterans Era nominees is notoriously foolhardy because they pull from such a wide field of potential inductees. It’s made one measure harder by a general lack of chatter out there surrounding potential nominees compared to previous years. But here’s a few educated guesses.
Jerry Lee Lewis – He’s a definite possibility for induction, and with the lack of a clear front runner, this might be his year. He may be held back some since he came from rock & roll, and his antics on The Grand Ole Opry and other places over the years. But his contributions as one of country music’s preeminent piano players cannot be denied. If Elvis is in the Country Hall (and he is), his old Sun Studios buddy can’t be counted out.
Jerry Reed – Such a great ambassador over the years for country music from his work with Smokey & The Bandit to Scooby-Doo, but Jerry Reed should be inducted for his stellar and influential work as both a performer, songwriter, and a musician. There weren’t many better guitar pickers back in the day than Jerry Reed. And his work as a session musician with so many of country music’s big names made him a well-known and likable character throughout the genre.
Hank Williams Jr. – It’s somewhat hard to know if Hank Jr. should be considered a Veteran or Modern Era candidate because of the double-era aspect of his career, but he’s a contender either way. However despite his two CMA Entertainer of the Year awards and millions of albums sold, you don’t get the sense it’s his time just yet. Only playing around 18 shows a year these days, and generally being once removed from the moving and shaking of the country genre while he pursues a quasi political career, Hank Jr. could be passed over this year others pushing harder for the distinction.
Lynn Anderson & Dottie West Lynn and Dottie are the two ladies that likely lead the field for female veteran inductees. Both of these ladies are right on the bubble, as they have probably been for many years. Since there wasn’t a woman inductee last year and there’s no strong female contenders in the Modern Era category, the pressure to include a woman from the veteran field in 2014 might be greater.
The Maddox Brothers & Rose The Maddox Brothers & Rose was a name that probably wasn’t on many people’s radar until the last couple of years. With their prominent place at the very beginning of the Hall of Fame’s current Bakersfield Sound exhibit, it is hard not to see how important their influence was on country, especially West Coast country, and the flashy dress of country performers that still influences the genre today. It may be a long shot, but if groups like The Jordanaires and The Sons of the Pioneers are in The Hall, certainly The Maddox Brothers & Rose should be. And it would be great to see happen while the final member, the 91-year-old Don Maddox, is still around.
Gram Parsons – Gram’s inclusion here is always a topic of great discussion. In 2013 there was a greater push than ever to induct him, with influential Country Music writer Chet Flippo personally making the case for him, and other chatter that 2013 might be his year. But it wasn’t, and it may be years before it is, but his name is always in the field for this accolade, and looking at the influence Gram had showing millions of rock and roll fans the beauty of country music, it should be.
John Hartford This is a long shot pick, but he deserves induction. As I said in my prognostications from a couple of year ago, “The Country Music Hall of Fame works like a timeline as you walk through the displays that weave around the massive archive in the center of the building. As you start from the beginning, each artist and their impact is displayed on a plaque that includes their Hall of Fame induction date. When I came to the John Hartford display on my last visit to The Hall this summer, he was the first to have a display, but no Hall of Fame induction date.”
Tompall Glaser & The Glaser Brothers – Probably another long shot, but one that has to be considered a more legitimate contender in 2014 with the passing of Tompall last year. It probably helps that his brothers-in-Outlaw-country-arms Bobby Bare and “Cowboy” Jack Clement were inducted last year, moving folks like Tompall and other Outlaw-esque country music personalities one step closer in the process.
Johnny Paycheck and David Allan Coe These names come up every year from hard country fans, and are names regularly held up as evidence of the Hall of Fame’s illegitimacy. The simple truth is that with these two performer’s shady pasts, Hall of Fame induction is going to be difficult. Johnny Paycheck has a more distinct possibility than David Allan Coe, because Coe could create a public relations nightmare for the Hall of Fame from people (correct or not) who label Coe a racist, sexist, etc. etc. Patience mixed with persistence is what Coe and Paycheck fans need to see their heroes inducted, as time heals all wounds. One positive sign for them is the induction of Bobby Bare and “Cowboy” Jack Clement last year. This means the CMA committee is willing to pick Outlaw artists and personalities for the Hall, and those two inductions move Paycheck and Coe two steps closer.
Randomly, I also think there’s a strong chance that the next major rotating exhibit at The Hall could be a feature on the Outlaw era of country, which might also give people like Paycheck, Coe, Tompall, and others a chance to be featured at the Hall of Fame beyond induction.
Other Possible Veterans Era Inductees:
Jimmy Martin
Vern Gosdin
Johnny Horton
The Browns
June Carter Cash
Wynn Stewart
Jim Ed Brown
Potential Songwriter Inductees
Last songwriter inducted – Bobby Braddock in 2011
The 3rd category rotates between a musician, a non-performer (executive, producer, journalist, etc.), or songwriter on different years. 2014 would be a songwriter year.
Though there may be some artists that would technically qualify for induction under this category like Keith Whitley, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver, or any number of other artists that have extensive songwriting credits, this category is meant for behind-the-scenes songwriters who would never be inducted if not for this category. Though the award might go to someone with a little more modern success as a songwriter to go along with their storied history, here’s two interesting names that deserve strong consideration.
Hank Cochran
Hank Cochran – Hank would be a worthy inductee, and it just might happen for him as a songwriter of both critical acclaim and commercial success. It can’t hurt that Jamey Johnson also recently release a tribute to Cochran, making him front-of-mind when voters are thinking of songwriters who deserve this distinction. Cochran should be considered a front runner.
John D. Loudermilk – A cousin to The Louvin Brothers that had great commercial success as a songwriter in the 60’s and 70’s, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1976, and certainly deserves consideration for this distinction. Nonetheless, it’s probably a long shot.
Shel Silverstein would be another interesting name.
Picks and Predictions
Who I Think Will Be Inducted
Ricky Skaggs or Alan Jackson – Modern Era
Jerry Lee Lewis, Vern Gosdin, or Jerry Reed – Veterans Era
Hank Cochran – Songwriter
Who I Think Should Be Inducted
Ricky Skaggs – Modern Era
Maddox Brothers & Rose / Tompall & The Glaser Brothers – Veterans Era
2014, Alan Jackson, Bobby Bare, Brooks & Dunn, Country Music Hall of Fame, David Allan Coe, Dottie West, Garth Brooks, Gram Parsons, Hank Cochran, Hank Williams Jr., Inductees, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Reed, John D. Loudermilk, John Hartford, Johnny Paycheck, Kenny Rogers, Lynn Anderson, predictions, Randy Travis, Ricky Skaggs, Ronnie Milsap, The Maddox Brothers & Rose, Tompall Glaser
February 17, 2014 @ 10:01 am
Agree with your assessment. CMHOF is in need of a catch up year or two- many deserving nominees. CM grew so much during the era of the people mentioned that the nominees should be a bit more proportional. Couple of things: At what point does Marty Stuart’s name start showing up? In addition to commercial success, no one has promoted country and roots music and Nashville in general more than he has. Also, Larry Gatlin as a songwriter at some point &/or the brothers as performers. Just thoughts.
Officially Marty Stuart is eligible now, but I don’t get the sense that he has a chance of making it any time soon. The Modern Era category is just too clogged at the moment. Same could be said for Travis Tritt. The late 80’s, early 90’s were just such a productive era for launching new stars that there’s a glut right now like you alluded to, but I think they’re still feeling the pressure of trying to keep it exclusive.
I think the Gatlin Brothers would have to go in as performers. Anyone that can be viewed as a performer I think is going to get passed over for the songwriter distinction.
Modern Era: Alan Jackson
With Garth already in there, it makes the most sense for him to be next.
The 80s were a rough decade. With the exception of Alabama, George Strait, and Reba, who extended their careers well into/well past the 90s? I’d love for members of the Great Credibility Scare to get in there: Dwight, Randy, & Keith Whitley, but I’m not so sure it will ever happen. The impact they made in the genre is significant, but their airplay and sales dropped drastically once the Class of ’89 hit the scene. I’m not sure how much of that would factor in the decision but if it does, they won’t see inductions.
Veterans Era: Paycheck, Paycheck, Paycheck.
Most people associate him with “Shove It,” but this guy played bass for the Possum as a member of the Jones Boys and worked in Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys. His pre-Billy Sherrill output with Aubrey Mayhew is highly underrated and underappreciated. Add to all of this his songwriting ability (“Once You’ve Had The Best” and “Apartment No. 9” anyone?) and you realize what a travesty it is that he isn’t in the rotunda yet.
Songwriter: Hank Cochran
His catalog speaks for itself.
I hate it for DAC, I think he deserves his shot. But he will never make it due to his antics and underground music.
Sonas
Listen to DAC underground music a few months ago, pretty repulsive.
Mod – Ricky Skaggs
Vet – Jerry Lee Lewis
Writer – Loudermilk
Scotty J
Alan Jackson should be a no-brainer and probably should have made it last year.
I also think Ronnie Milsap should be in and it’s kind of strange to see him in the modern category since his career as a hitmaker basically came to an end with the purge in 1989 so he is in a category with others that are really not his contemporaries. As for his sort of crossover type country I don’t hold that against him because country has always has always had this type of act (think Jim Reeves and even Marty Robbins at some points).
I would also go with Jerry Lee Lewis who was a very influential influence on country even if he wasn’t considered country in his first mid 50s run ala Elvis. Then add in his country successes of the late 60s/early 70s and that is enough for me.
I think the HOF needs to seriously think of adding another category for early influences that could maybe rotate with the musicians and songwriters so that artists like The Maddox Brothers and Ralph Stanley and few others that haven’t had a bunch hits don’t have to compete with more commercially successful acts.
So my picks would be: Jackson, Milsap, and Lewis and for songwriter Hank Cochran.
It’s really hard to know on Milsap or Hank Williams Jr. if they are being considered as either Modern or Veterans candidates because you can make the case that both men could be considered in both categories. In fact this might be hindering their induction somewhat because neither is a clear cut frontrunner in either category, so they sort of get lost in the shuffle. I wouldn’t be surprised if either of them gets inducted, and in either category. Milsap I think has an advantage because it seems to be something he really wants.
TX Music Jim
My dream is Gram Parsons DAC and Paycheck with a hope that at some point JJW and Gary Stewart will get real consideration. Reality will most likely be Skaggs, Reed and Cochran. which are all richly deserved.
Tricky Nick
Thanks for bringing Gary Stewart into the conversation. I only discovered him last year, but he’s one of the absolute best.
Gram Parsons?
Why would this hippie rich boy from Harvard who discovered Country Music in college while he was smoking grass and thought, “this hick S@!t is really cool dude” be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the same hall that includes Country legends like George Jones and Merle Haggard? Because he showed Rock N Roll people the “beauty” of Country Music. If that joke gets in the Hall, then they should let me in the Hall. The reason Country Music is dead is because city people and Rock N Rollers like Gram Parsons discovered it.
Gram Parsons grew up in Florida and Georgia, with a thoroughly Deep Southern family. I am pretty sure that he knew about country music well before college.
Yeah, I just make stuff up and hope it’s true.
From Wikipedia (yes I know not a flawless source, but I remember hearing this in a documentary about him as well):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_Parsons
” Despite being from the South, he did not become seriously interested in country music until his time at Harvard, where he heard Merle Haggard for the first time.”
That said, I am a huge Parson’s fan and this is the first time I’ve heard anyone blame him for the problems in modern country music. I’d argue that his country-rock was more authentically country than much of what was dominating the charts at the time.
On February 22, 1956, The Louvin Brothers warmed up for Elvis Presley at City Auditorium in Waycross, GA. On hand was a nine year old boy named Gram Parsons. It would leave an indelible mark on the future legend, who went on to popularize several Louvin Brothers songs for the ages including “The Christian Life” and “Cash on the Barrelhead”.
The event was memorialized in this 2009 album:
http://www.tompkinssquare.com/charlie-louvin-hickory-wind.html
February 18, 2014 @ 3:32 am
The future legend?
I was quoting their press release. Hence the link. But I would agree. So now Gram wouldn’t be considered a “legend” even with his rock resume? He hated The Eagles by the way…
Gram Parsons is a music legend. He gave the world it’s first listen to Emmylou Harris. He was a part of the Byrds which was arguably the first Alternative country band light years prior to Uncle Tupelo and yes he presented songs like “Grevious Angel” in a very hard country manner, among many songs he presented in that style.. So yes while I’d doubt it will
ever happen, Gram Parsons should be in the CMHOF !
And I’m a huge Eagles fan, but that doesn’t make them a Country band.
Rome didn’t fall in a day.
Dang, I knew there would be a comment like this. It seems like there always is when Gram is brought up. He has become a polarizing figure, because the adamant “cult” fanbase that he attracts causes others to react negatively against him, as if to put him back in his place. I am not suggesting that’s what Clint intended, it’s just a pattern I’ve noticed.
The interesting thing about the “country-rock” label placed on Parsons’ music (a label which he detested, by the way,) is how irrelevant it seems in retrospect. As contemporary country has subsumed much of classic rock in the last few decades, Parsons’ music just sounds all the more country. And socially speaking, the factors which designated him a hippie/longhair (and thus not “fit” for the country format) are no longer relevant,
Still, I really doubt if GP will ever be a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Yeah, the likes of the The Velvet Underground and The Stooges are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite not moving a lot of units or having hit songs, but unfortunately the cultures of rock and country are different in that regard. Traditionally, of the two genres, I think country is more similar to the old style of show business in which commercial success is seen as an integral component of greatness. Parsons never acheived “national prominence” as the Veterans category requirement stipulates. But he did contibute to keeping the flame of country music’s roots burning, and yes, his musical projects opened people’s minds to country music, many of them other artists. But as his posthumous following has grown, so has his influence. When music fans these days experiment with listening to country music, Gram Parsons is a frequent entry point. I personally knew a guy who primarily listened to weird progressive rock music who turned onto Gram, then Emmylou, then decided to download Buck Owens and Merle Haggards’ greatest hits collections, because he read that Gram dug the Bakersfield sound. And that is not an isolated incident!
It does seem like the country music establishment owes him a little bit of gratitiude for all of that. But I think one point Parsons aspired to make is that country music, like rock or folk or soul music, it is a type of music that should belong to all Americans, not just to a particular institution or city or narrow social demographic. And so, I say go ahead and keep Gram Parsons out of the Hall of Fame. Let him remain one of the patron saints of those country fans who don’t identify with the country music establishment.
To me it’s just laughable that I’m on a site called: Saving Country Music; and the site’s founder and CEO, along many frequent, full-time commentors are saying that Gram Parson’s is not only a legend, but a Country Music legend, and should be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
One guy says it’s because he was in The Birds and because he found Emmylou Harris. Another says it’s because he showed Rock N Rollers the “beauty” of Country Music. The Birds are not a Country band, and Emmylou has always felt like a Country outsider to me, a hippie girl who was performing a diluted version of Country Music because she thought Country was cool and different, but was really first and foremost a folk/rock singer. Alt Country is not Country. That’s why you put alt in it. Just like pop Country is not Country.
Saying that Gram’s music is more Country than what’s on the radio today means nothing. It’s like when a local, family owned restaurant decides to become a chain. The quality of the food keeps getting worse as the chain grows larger. Country Music was not intended for the masses, and it should have stayed that way. It’s ridiculous to try and legitimize Country-Rock as being Country because of where Country is today. Country-Rock was just another nail in the coffin of Country Music; a coffin that started being built by Elvis(another ridiculous inductee).
But let’s pretend for a moment that Gram was a real Country singer. He had almost no commercial success whatsoever. If we’re going to start inducting people with less than stellar, or no commercial success, then let’s at least induct real Country singers. How about Mel Street, or Vernon Oxford, or Joe Carson? Vernon Oxford is actually the last real hillbilly singer to come through Nashville. He had guys like Harlan Howard backing him, and actually was the first person to record several songs that other people had hits with years later.
March 8, 2014 @ 1:06 pm
Ya like when Johnny Cash was recording and touring with Perkins, Lewis, Elvis and the like. What a joke. Mixing with all those “rockers.” Completely destroyed his country credentials huh Clint?
They really should create a new category for just one year. It should be: The Johnny Horton Only category. It’s unbelievable that he’s been dead for nearly 55 years and isn’t in. I imagine most people would assume he’s already in.
Definite thumbs up for the Maddox clan from me!
I was never a big fan of Eddie Rabbitt but he deserves a mention. He has some fairly impressive stats (songs written, awards, #1 hits, etc.).
For the modern era I select Keith Whitley, I firmly believe had he lived Keith would’ve had a very successful and long career. He had the complete package. For a guy that had a short career, he has been a major influence even long after his passing.
For the Veteran era I select Vern Gosdin, he is no question the most underated country singer of all time in my opinion. He was called “The Voice” for a reason, now it’s time to give the man his due he deserves.
Would Gosdin really be considered Veteran Era? Sure, he recorded with Chris Hillman and his brother Rex back in the ’60s, but I don’t think he got enough notice to achieve national prominence until the late 1970s. And his most comercially successful period pretty much mirrored Whitley’s.
With a lot of these guys, it’s hard to know where to start the clock on them. Yes, Gosdin did not come to prominence until the 70’s, but he was around much earlier. I also think this is what lends to these guys getting passed over, because there doesn’t seem any urgency to induct them in the Modern Era, and so they fall to the Veterans era. I very may well be wrong about some of my Veterans/Modern classifications. The ballots are private, so we really have no way to know if these artists are being considered, and in what era. You could argue Bobby Bare who was inducted last year as a Veteran could have been considered in the Modern Era as well.
To quote Tammy Wynette Vern Gosdin is “The only other singer that can hold a candle to George Jones”
Vern Gosdin may not have had the major success of a Garth Brooks or a Randy Travis, but he definitely deserved it, his sound alone is among the best. Vern Gosdin had the up most respect especially from George Jones, Vern was real country and he stood true to it.
Here are some more quotes regarding Vern Gosdin.
George Strait – “One hell of country singer and helped me out a lot on my very first tour”
Jamey Johnson – “If anyone wants to know, was he really that good? He was really that good, the guy was a walking heartache”
Jack Ingram – “You can’t go into a bar room that plays real country music without hearing Vern Gosdin”
Jake Owen – “He’s not respected as he should be. To me he’s one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard interpret a song. He just has that coolness about him.”
But to me most importantly, most of Vern’s major success came when he was at the age of late 40’s to early – mid 50’s. Something that is extremely difficult to do considering the music business is a young man’s game and also when record labels want fresh talent over aging performers.
I love Keith Whitley and I think ‘I’m No Stranger To The Rain’ is one of the greatest modern country songs ever recorded but I think it’s hard to see him in the HOF because of the shortness of his career. I would put him and Johnny Horton from an earlier era in the same category. I think you can only judge what they actually did and not project forward what they may have done in the future. Yes based on pure talent they are HOF worthy but doesn’t longevity have to be factored in a little?
When you look at Patsy Cline’s output it really isn’t that big from a quantity perspective but from quality it is very big. I’m not sure if she had that same type career now and then died that she would so quickly make the HOF with country music having 70 plus years of history instead of the 20 years it had when she died.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m not sure how to judge artists that have their careers vastly shortened by early deaths.
Bobaloo
What about Jim Reeves, whose major success in his lifetime was less than 12 years (from late 1952 to his death in 1964)? And he’s been in the Hall of Fame for 45-plus years. (Granted, this includes dozens of posthumous hits, but still ”¦ .)
Dottie West
goldencountry
Given Randy Travis’s health problems that may be enough for him to get voted in. He deserves it.
gbkeith
There are a lot of names up there that need to be in. Who else is going to become eligible in the next few years? Skaggs, Jackson, Reed, Gosdin, and Cochran all need to be inducted.
J.Burke
Every year I come here to plug Jerry Lee. In the early 70’s before the outlaw movement, Jerry Lee was one of the biggest hit makers in country music. Add in his importance to rock music as well as his influence on every piano player who has come after him and the fact that he is “The Killer’ makes his selection a no brainer, However he has pissed off a lot of people.
Strait Country 81
Damn! that’s a hell of a list and i’d induct them all this year if i had my way.
Undine {Deenah} DeFilippo
I agree with you. They should ALL be inducted, and listed in order of PUBLIC POPULARITY. Why waste all this precious time and play this silly game. I LOVE them ALL…and personally would like to see RANDY HOWARD on the list as well. Let’s judge these people on their musical contributions and NOT their personal issues.
If it were up to me, I’d do Alan Jackson, Gram Parsons, and Hank Cochran.
As for Hank Jr., I think he should be considered for veterans. Yes, he is best known for his work post 1970, but you could say the same thing about Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings, even though they were established artists long before that.
How could could Don Williams be left out of the discussion?
He’s been in the HOF since 2010.
Dave from Kansas
Kenny Rogers is considered country? Seriously?
luckyoldsun
That’s so ridiculous.
The guy had about 20 #1 country hits.
And unlike with some other pop-country artists and their crossover songs, I recall that everyone considered Kenny Rogers to be a country act when he was in his heyday with “The Gambler” and “Lucille.”
Acca Dacca
Jerry Reed is such an underrated musician. The majority of his albums are out of print and many of them haven’t even been released on a modern format (CD, MP3). Good guitar picker, decent songwriter. I guess he isn’t afforded as much respect as he used to be because of his tendency to cut novelty songs.
As for Paycheck, what has he done to be considered controversial?
On Clint Black, do you know why he hasn’t done anything in the music business in the last six years or so? Why has he decided to “disappear”?
Also, of the modern era, one might include Tim McGraw in that pool. His first album was released in 1993, though it wasn’t as big as his later releases.
Clint Black took time off to spend with his family, and has never properly regained his mainstream prominence.
I guess he killed too much time, eh? 😉 But in all seriousness, that’s kind of sad. I’m not sure how you feel about him, Trigger, but I always liked Black’s easy, graceful singing and relaxing approach to his music. For some reason I hate looking back on recent country music history. It’s easy to be disconnected from thirty or forty years worth of music, but when it’s only been ten or fifteen, I almost can’t handle the nostalgia. I miss the 90’s when Alan Jackson, Ricky Van Shelton, Clint Black, Chris LeDoux, John Michael Montgomery and the like were big. Now they’re mostly forgotten. I’m not looking to argue with anyone about whether the music was “good”, all I’m saying is that I enjoyed it.
Musically, PayCheck has really done nothing controversial. He was a solid mainstream performer throughout his career who to my knowledge really did nothing to rock the boat. And that’s not a knock on him at all, I could say the same thing about George Jones.
I think he gets lumped in with the “outlaws” because of his unpredictable behavior outside the studio.
That’s what I was asking about. Before a year or so ago, I never cared about artists’ personal lives and consequently never looked into them. However, since becoming a reader of SCM, it’s caused me to pay more attention, but it’s hard to stay in the loop when most of these performers have passed away or sowed their oates so long ago that the records are scarce. Paycheck is a good example of this. I love his music but he lacks the notoriety of Jennings or Coe so I have a hard time finding anything substantial about his “wild” side, if there was one.
Paycheck’s past is more than checkered. Its one thing to drink and drug like Coe or George Jones, but Paycheck admitted to statutory rape, and not with a 17 year old girl, but with a 12 year old. He was basically the biggest scumbag in the history of country celebrity.
AAAAAANNNNNNNNDDDDD that’s why I never paid attention to begin with. I’m going to try and forget that I read that when I listen to his music.
For those who are interested in the real story, PayCheck was approached by a girl girl who claimed to be a 19-year-old Mizzou student. Turns out she was 14. He didn’t know she was underage until her parents sued him. The charges were eventually reduced. Still not cool, but it’s not like he was out cruising for jailbait. If we want to talk about that we need to bring Jerry Lee Lewis into the discussion. Or Loretta Lynn’s husband, for that matter.
His alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness, and prison stint for shooting a guy probably put him at the top of the list of singers who were real-life outlaws. But his outlaw “sound” was, somewhat ironically, carefully crafted by Nashville establishment producer Billy Sherrill.
Based on every news story of the time, the girl was 12. Here is just one of them:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19820716&id=kmNNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VPsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4455,11449
Some stories say 12, some say 14, some say Wyoming, some say Missouri (I’m guessing Wyoming is correct as Missouri court records don’t show anything about it), some say he denied that it ever happened, some say that he acknowledges that it happened but the girl claimed to be of legal age. All accounts agree that the charges were reduced, and there were no civil damages awarded.
At any rate, he’s certainly no worse than Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his 13-year-old cousin; Elvis Presly, who kept Priscilla Beaulieu as a mistress from the time whe was 14 until they married at 21; or Doolittle Lynn, who married Loretta when she was 15.
When Johnny Paycheck died, a bunch of the obituaries–including in Billboard, as I recall–referred to him with that bizarre “PayCheck” spelling that I had never seen before.
Then his son–who goes by the name “Jonathan PayCheck” posted something on the Internet trying to drum up a campaign for “Johnny PayCheck” to be elected to the Hall of Fame. I e-mailed him, telling him that he’s gotta cut it out with that obnoxious spelling if he wants to have any hope of getting Johnny elected. Jonathan responded, insisting that that’s the way his father wanted his name spelled. I wrote him back, saying that he should use the spelling that Paycheck used when he made the recordings and performed in concerts that gave him his fame–not what he supposedly wanted when he was old and losing his mind.
Needless to say, Jonathan got super-upset at that remark.
Thankfully, the “PayCheck” notation seems to have disappeared, as all of the compilations and articles on him that I’ve seen in recent years have reverted to the normal spelling.
The man signed his name “Johnny PayCheck.” That’s good enough for me. The fact that some might consider it obnoxious is irrelevant.
Enjoy Every Sandwich
The albums that Jerry Reed did with Chet Atkins are just terrific. The guy could really pick.
I think your properly right on for for Modern Era considerations; Ricky Skaggs, Randy Travis, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Ronnie Milsap and The Oaks. Of those six one (or more if a tie) will be elected.
On the Veteran side of it, I would say the ballot is more than likely Dottie West, The Browns, Hank, Jr. and Jerry Reed for sure. There is also strong consideration for bluegrass and early CMA pioneer Mac Wiseman and legendary comic Ray Stevens. Also on the ballot the last few years have been posthumous artists June Carter Cash, The Wilburn Brothers and comic Archie Campbell. The Hall of Fame voters are notorious for electing those living and overlooking those gone on. Until a posthumous category is established chances for artists such as Campbell, Carter-Cash, The Wilburns, Dottie West, Vern Gosdin, Keith Whitley & others to be inducted will be few and far between, if they get elected at all. At some point that problem will have to be addressed by the CMA. Since the mass induction of 2001 only three deceased persons (DeFord Bailey, Pop Stoneman and Lew DeWitt, of the Statler Brothers) have been inducted. That’s three in 13 years; and simply shameful.
To me the songwriter category is a no-brainer. It should be Hank Cochran. In my opinion he should have gone in prior to Bobby Braddock. But others who will be considered no doubt will be Dallas Frazier, Curly Putman, Dean Dillon and properly Loudermilk.
I personally don’t believe David Allan Coe, Gram Parsons, John Hartford and properly even Johnny Paycheck will ever be inducted. Of those four Paycheck stands the greatest chance. Jerry Lee Lewis should be considered I agree. His honky tonk records of the 60’s & 70’s were properly the greatest of that style during that generation. No doubt he will be inducted at some point. Honky Tonk legend Stonewall Jackson and Cajun king Jimmy C. Newman, both should be considered at some point, but sadly so far none have came forward with efforts to boost their chances. The Country Music Hall of Fame, while exclusive yes, is very politically driven. Legends such as Faron Young, Webb Pierce, Don Gibson, Jean Shepard, Porter Wagoner and others were deliberately kept out for years because of ruffling some feathers. It truthfully is shameful. The accomplishments and influence of the artists should merit their induction alone. I would say that is why Hank, Jr. has not been elected yet. He’s a 50 year veteran of the business. He should already have a bronze plaque hanging in the rotunda.
Veterans: I think it will be The Browns. This was Jim Ed’s 50th year as a Grand Ole Opry member, and really they are the last “superstar” act of the 1950’s not yet enshrined.
Modern: I’m leaning toward Randy Travis, with the recent health issues. He’s now appearing in public again, properly preparing himself for this reason, no doubt.
Songwriter: Hank Cochran. If the posthumous jinx happens in this category, I will say Dallas Frazier.
Good thoughts as always on this matter David B.
Just to reiterate the Coe v. Paycheck point, Paycheck’s at least seemed to reform himself towards the end of his life, and his troubles are what you’d hear about in a country song. Coe, in contrast, is, if nothing else, a really weird guy, and he’s still getting himself in trouble to this day.
blue demon
with ernest stoneman already in the hall theres probably no chance the stoneman family band will ever get inducted but besides ernest the band also included scotty, donna and roni stoneman three of the greatest instrumentalists in country music history. the stoneman family won the very first cma award for vocal group of the year in 1967 so they qualify for the veterans slot.
Excellent article. It was very informative.
Actually, this is the kind of coverage that should be appearing on mainstream websites, such as those that feature stories such as “Taylor Swift Tattoo Goes Horribly Wrong” and “Worst Country Wardrobe Malfunctions.”
*cough* tasteofcountry.com *cough*
It is a travesty that Jerry Reed is not in the hall of fame. He is the greatest country picker of all time. For that reason alone, he should have been in years ago. He also wrote some great songs, was a fantastic performer, with perhaps, more charisma and stage presence than any act of that generation. Not to mention that he was a huge personality, appeared in blockbuster movies and tv shows, not just in country circles, but in the national and international media.
I like Johnny Paycheck’s music, but he is not even in the same ballpark as DAC. Coe is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Paycheck was a decent performer, but as far as I know the only song of note that he penned was Apartment Number 9… Coe has written dozens of great songs and made an indelible mark on country music.
bamstrait
Tanya Tucker and Ronnie Milsap should have been inducted years ago, long before Garth.
My pick for the modern era is Dwight Yoakam. I’m surprised I’m not seeing more pulling for him.
My longshot for the veteran era (more of a hope than one I actually think has a legitimate shot) is Jerry Jeff Walker (possibly considerable for songwriter category as well, maybe?…trying to remember the exact rules. As to who I think will ACTUALLY get the Veteran Era nod? Probably Jerry Reed.
Songwriter, I’m going to have to go with the majority here and say Hank Cochran.
As good as Dwight Yoakam is, and his key involvement in reigniting traditional country music in the 1980s, I just am personally not that enthusiastic about a possible induction for him. Not enough sustained success and his shows (at least his recent ones) haven’t been critical successes. Sorry.
This is a great article thank you. I grew up with country music and all of them are very good. My Dad favorite was Boxcar Willie. I would love to see all of them in; but NOT Taylor Swift She is Not a country singer to me. I am waiting for time to go by and hope I see my man Toby Keith get a chance; he always seems to be the cowboy left out for awards. But God I love to hear him sing! But to all good luck!
My theory about the “Artist In Residence”–which I took a lot of guff for on another site, in the case of Kenny Rogers, but which tends to be confirmed–is that when the Hall chooses an Artist In Residence who has all the commercial credentials to be a member, that sends a clear signal to the voters that the artist’s time is NOW.
Obviously, when the artist in residence is someone like a Buddy Miller, it doesn’t mean anything–because he doesn’t have the commercial record to make the Hall. But when they choose a guy with a string of #1 hits and network TV appearances like Skaggs…well, you can start chiseling his H-o-F plaque.
Jerry Reed and Jerry Lee Lewis should both get in in the veteran category. Jerry Lee survived long enough to overcome some of his scandals, I think.
The induction of Bobby Bare hardly opens the door to David Allen Coe. Maybe you’re not quite as familiar with him as you perhaps should be, but Bare was a mainstream country powerhouse for decades, with dozens of top-10 hits under his belt, despite doing a lot of daring, envelope-pushing, work.
Coe definitely should be in an Outlaw Hall of Fame, if there is one, but was too erratic–to put it mildly–for the Country Music H-o-F.
As far as Coe, I’m not saying Bobby Bare’s induction assures Coe of anything. But I do think before you could ever see someone like David Allan Coe get in, you’d have to see people like Bare, Tompall Glaser, and others like that get in first. So in that respect maybe hypothetically it moves him further, but realistically he is still a long shot.
I think I was chided by the same music writer as you about making the “artist-in-residence” connection.
TopJimmy
My prediction: The Oak Ridge Boys and Jerry Reed
Ronnie Milsap is responsible for a great body of work (music) coming out of Nashville – other than Strait and I believe Conway, he has the most # ! songs ever – he can sing any type of song and should be considered this year for his 40 #1 songs, if for no other reason. He still tours and has a great following. He’s 71 years old and has been making music a long time and he is the most deserving artist. He should have been inducted long before now but surely this year, the voters will get it right and not let politics into the mix.
linda donahue
How The Great Tompall and the Glaser Brothers are not considered a given is beyond me. They should have been inducted a long time ago. They are much more deserving than some of the current members who should be considered merely borderline country. Their body of work over the years has more than earned them a place in the HOF. Tompall should have, in all fairness, gone in last year with Cowboy Jack and Bare. That’s my 2 cents worth. Come on Nashville, put some “country” in the hall!!!
Simply put it should be Randy Travis, not because of his current health crisis, but for the fact their would not be a Modern Era if he haddened got people to listen to Country music again. Let’s face facts before him Country was dying.
My picks have always been:
Ӣ Modern era: Either Ronnie Milsap or Ricky Skaggs. Face it, yes, Randy Travis deserves induction and I agree he was a key figure in reinvigorating the genre in the mid-1980s. But I think Milsap (who added true soul) and Skaggs (with reinventing bluegrass as a style that mattered) have to come first.
”¢ Veterans’ era: No question ”“ Hank Williams Jr. He’s long since been due, IMO. He carried on his father’s tradition, invented his own style unapologetically and made himself a success. I don’t think any of his political beliefs should get in the way. Jerry Lee Lewis, the last remaining member of the 1950s movement, is probably second, and from there Jerry Reed for his session work. But Hank Jr. is first, IMO.
Ӣ Songwriter: Probably Hank Cochran.
I also like the Oak Ridge Boys, but they’d almost have to be in the veterans’ category since they’ve been around far longer than their involvement in secular country music. Face it, their blend of harmonies and gospel were instrumental and influential for many groups of the late 1970s onward. There are two strongly influential groups in the Hall right now ”“ Alabama and the Statler Brothers ”“ and I’ve always said there were three in country music’s history. The third of those should be inducted, but they’d almost have to be in an “Open” category.
gloria boyd
Dottie West, Mac Wiseman, hank Cochran and let the younger ones wait their turn has anyone check these three great track record?
I think both John Denver and Keith Whitley should be inducted.
If CMA is keeping Whitley out because he was a drunk they should kick out about 80% of it’s members then.
Caroline Gnagy
I feel that Liz Anderson should be strongly considered in the Songwriter category. She’s almost as big a contender as Hank Cochran, and the female aspect would also keep things a bit even.
For Modern Era, I say give either Ronnie Milsap or Randy Travis what they each deserve”¦get ’em in!
They should have inducted Jerry Lee into the Veteran category decades ago, but I still think they won’t do that until, well”¦until perhaps when he can’t give an acceptance speech that’ll require half of it to be censored. And you know it will need to be! Heh.
Wynn Stewart and Maddox Brothers and Rose should’ve made it years ago. Jerry Reed and June Carter Cash, I’m betting, will get in during the next few years. I’d also like to see Sonny James in there as well as Vern Gosdin and Gene Watson.
i know this will probably never happen but what about bob luman he wasnt a huge chart succsess but he did have a good run on the epic label and i belive he his still remembered in nashville and could bring the crowd to its feet at the grand old opry
and what about david houston slim whitman don gibson the blue sky boys just to name a few that have not been mentioned
Announcement for 2014 inductees is April 22. I just looked and Ronnie, Marty, Ricky, & Alan don’t have a tour date that day. The Oaks do.
Here is my list…The Judds, Lee Greenwood, Martina McBride, Ronnie Milsap, Tanya Tucker,Hank Williams, Jr & Oak Ridge Boys.
Songwriter..Dean Dillon
DaveCephus
Hank Jr should have been in years ago who else played shows with Patsy Cline back in the early 60’s and is still a Headlining act in 2014. Love or hate him those are the facts.. The dirty pricks will probably not induct him until he dies… Also Hank Jr provided the hof all the items for the family tradition exhibit that gave the hof record crowds and he also played a concert for them for free and donated all proceeds to the hof.. fuck the cma and the hof is my 2 cents…
Vickie Crowe
Dottie West Deserves to be in the Hall Of Fame…she did so much for country music and was the first female country singer to win a grammy award! This has been long overdue…Jerry Reed is another who should be in the Hall Of Fame. They should do like they did back in 2001 and induct more than 3…I think there were 11 inducteed that year…What can’t they do this again? Would also love to see Ronnie Milsap in the Hall Of Fame. Hank Jr also…Hank Cochran should be a shoo-in for Songwriter. Just look at his body of work!!!!
Jeff in Denton, TX
In the songwriter category, I’d add Bob McDill. He wrote a lot of Don Williams’ hits, plus many more. Also, I’d prefer to see the Stanley Brothers inducted as a duo rather than just Dr. Ralph by himself.
Maxine Brown
To receive this honor would make all the trials & tribulations we went through to pave the way for future artist– would make those efforts all worth while.
Naturally, I would like to see THE BROWNS inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame while the three of us are still living.
The three of us have worked diligently toward this distinguished honor.
Even though Bonnie and I were forced to retire, we never stopped pushing country music and The Browns and numerous appearances with Jim Ed on the Opry as well as concert shows all over the country. I spent twelve years of my life writing a successful book about those days & some of the things we experienced. After nine years it is still a top 20 best seller with the UofA Press, Fayetteville, AR. (Looking Back To See”, A Country Music Memoir” .
Thank you CMA for all your consideration.
Maxine,
What an honor to read this post. I wish you all the luck in the world for this honor. I have wrote letters, sent emails and done as much as I have possibly could the last several years for The Browns. Sadly, I hear that as much writing or calling the fans themselves do, it’s to no avail to the CMA. The whole election process and balloting is strictly through the CMA and outside consideration is virtually ignored. I’m sure at this point you already know if you’ve made the Hall of Fame for 2014. I hear that Dottie West was not even one of the 5 finalists, so I’m assuming you guys at least got that far. It has to happen at some point. You three are true legends and I’m proud to have your music in my collection. I’m 33 years old and am introducing my own children now to those classic recordings of The Browns.
Thank you David B. I appreciate your reply with such a nice comment. I trust you will keep The Browns music in your collection, this is indeed an honor in itself.
Modern- Alan or Randy
Legend- Jr or Oaks
April 13, 2014 @ 12:46 pm
I do wonder whether they might use the Hall’s physical expansion, to be formalised next week, as an opportunity to ‘catch up’. This happened when the current building was opened and, although some saw it as a dilution of the process, it helped to ensure that a batch of deserving candidates made it in more promptly than would otherwise been the case.
I do like the idea of an ‘early influences’ category. A number of important and influential performers would fall within it: Charlie Poole, the Blue Sky Boys, the Skillet Lickers, Carson J. Robison, the Stanley Brothers, the Maddoxs etc.
Danny McDowell
April 15, 2014 @ 11:54 am
I sure would love to see the Wilburn Brothers or Skeeter Davis inducted, but I would settle for Jim Ed Brown. Dottie West would be okay, too. As for the modern era, I like the Oaks. I wouldn’t be disappointed if Milsap were chosen. My dream choices wojuld Billy Walker or Mac Wiseman.
April 17, 2014 @ 2:38 am
Another thought – A number of country performers have been honoured with America’s highest award for artistic endeavour, the National Medal for Arts, but two still haven’t made it into the Country Music Hall of Fame: Doc Watson and Ralph Stanley, and that can’t be right. (Watson received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, too!)
Lynn Anderson has been overlooked for way too long. With a vast career of more than 40 top 20 hits, 8 charting to number one, she was responsible for paving the way for many crossover artists and helped introduce a new legion of fans to country music.
A bunch of guys(mostly) talking about inducting a bunch of guys. The 12-1 male to female ratio is becoming an embarrasment. It’s so bad country female artists should consider founding their own hall of fame. If you can can induct Lorrie Morgans dad for his one memorable hit( Candy Kisses) you can put the many deserving women at least on the radar. Gram Parsons, John Hartford( yes, great)but Lucinda Willams, Roseanne Cash, Bobbie Gentry, , Buffy St. Marie— all great songwriters and singers and deserving too. I’m so tired of the pop vs country chart mentality. Does anyone really think Brenda Lee was inducted for those forgetable country songs of the 1970’s? It was her classic pop hits that got her in( and those are the only ones featured in Time-Lifes many country music collections) and none of them came close to top forty country.
July 19, 2014 @ 9:47 pm
How about record producer Gary Klein?
Here You Come Again
Southern Nights
Kay Williams
I Think GENE WATSON should have already BEEN in the Hall of Fame!!
All the “today’s country” isn’t traditional REAL Country music! Gene absolutely deserves this honor!!!
As her Wikipedia page states, Lynn Anderson was the #13 music artist of the 70s (ALL genres) and THE highest not yet in the CMHF. This woman paved the way for so many female artists to follow … opening the door for them to appear on venues other than the Opry & Hee-Haw. The CMHF is currently honoring her with a nearly year-long exhibit, which is great. It’s just too bad it had to be right after she passed away at the young age of 67. Just hope that the powers that be will honor thy legends. This lady did more for expanding the audience for country music before any other female … she took it all around the world and beyond rural areas. Please give her a rightful home in the CMHF. Dottie West should also be in, needless to say.
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Mike Honcho on Ricky Skaggs, Toby Keith Medals Not a “Reaction” to Impeachment
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Poll: S.F. voters may back higher taxes for transportation fixes
Michael Cabanatuan Oct. 27, 2015 Updated: Oct. 27, 2015 4:21 p.m.
Poll: S.F. voters may back higher taxes for...
1of4MUNI riders wait on the platform at the Metro Powell Station in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, July 28, 2015.Photo: Brandon Chew, The Chronicle
2of4Vehicles sit in traffic on Third Street as vehicles on Folsom Street begin to cross and turn onto Third Street on Tuesday, October 27, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle
3of4Paul Dyogi of San Francisco walks his bike at a bus stop after removing it from a bike rack on a MUNI bus on Tuesday, October 27, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle
4of4Vehicles sit in traffic along Third Street as bicyclists, pedestrians and vehicles on Folsom Street cross and turn onto Third Street on Tuesday, October 27, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle
With the local economy booming, and streets and transit systems overwhelmed, San Franciscans may be willing to pay higher taxes and fees to make it easier to get around, though they’ll likely need some cajoling, a poll released Tuesday suggests.
The citywide survey of probable voters in November 2016, conducted for the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, found strong support for a $4 billion BART bond measure. The bond, which would be a regional measure in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, drew 72 percent support.
The poll indicated some backing — though not quite enough — for either an additional half-cent sales tax or an increased vehicle license fee in San Francisco, though the numbers jumped into winning territory after the pollsters did a little selling.
A half-cent sales tax, which would raise the city’s rate to 9.25 percent, won initial backing from 65 percent of those surveyed, falling just short of the two-thirds supermajority needed. Support jumped to 68 percent after pollsters discussed benefits of the tax, which would raise about $100 million a year.
A proposed vehicle license fee increase — from 0.65 percent to 2 percent of a vehicle’s value — was supported by 41 percent of voters when first asked, less than the simple majority needed to pass. It would raise an estimated $70 million a year.
When pollsters added assurances that vehicle license fee revenues would be used for transportation only, support jumped to 54 percent. After offering more details of improvements, support climbed to 56 percent.
Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates conducted the survey over landlines and cell phones, calling 801 San Francisco voters considered likely to cast ballots in November 2016. The poll was conducted Oct. 2-10 with interviews in English, Spanish and Chinese. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Stand a good chance
Pollster David Metz said that given San Francisco voters’ history of supporting tax measures, the survey’s findings show that the tax increases would stand a good chance at the polls.
“We think the results are very encouraging,” Metz said. “This is not to say these measures would not require a very strong communications effort behind them, given that they are right at the threshold of what would be required for approval.”
Supervisor Scott Wiener, chairman of the authority board, said he found the poll results encouraging, even if they fell slightly short.
“I’m heartened by these poll results because they indicate what we have known for a long time: that San Franciscans understand the critical importance of expanding and shoring up our transportation systems as we continue to grow by 10,000 people a year, and San Francisco voters are willing to pay for those improvements as we saw last year with overwhelming approval of the bond.”
That November 2014 bond raised $500 million to fund transit, roadway, bike and pedestrian improvements, and was the first in a package of transportation funding measures proposed by Mayor Ed Lee’s Transportation Task Force in 2013. It also suggested adding another half-cent to the sales tax and boosting the vehicle license fee to help tackle a need for $10.1 billion in transportation improvements through 2030.
San Franciscans interviewed Tuesday on Market Street and aboard Muni Metro generally agreed with the survey results, saying the city’s buses, trains and streets were increasingly congested and in need of help.
While they weren’t eager to pay more taxes, many said it was probably the right thing to do.
“I ride Muni a lot. I think it’s a vital part of the city and I’d like to see improvements,” said John Cook, 45, a computer consultant who has used Muni for 18 years. “I’d be OK with” a tax increase.
Paul Dyogi, 50, who gets around on his bike and Muni and has relied on the transit system since 1981, said, “For the betterment of the city? Of course. We probably won’t even feel the difference.”
Stacie Schwatka, 36, a retail cashier, wasn’t sure about a sales tax but said she’d support a vehicle license fee because traffic affects everyone — and she doesn’t own a car.
The poll found that while San Franciscans have a long wish list for transportation improvements, the most desired fixes are repaving and repairing streets; bettering Muni’s equipment and facilities; expanding BART, Muni and Caltrain service; and improving paratransit for seniors and disabled persons.
Democrats and independents were more likely to support a bump in the sales tax, as were transit and bike riders, voters under 30 and those living in the southeastern part of the city, including the Mission District, Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill and the Bay View District.
Support was lowest in the northern part of the city, including the Financial District, Pacific Heights, Chinatown, South of Market and Sea Cliff.
Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
Michael Cabanatuan
Follow Michael on:
https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/ctuan
Michael Cabanatuan is a general assignment, breaking news reporter.
He previously covered all things transportation for the San Francisco Chronicle — from BART strikes, acrobatic bridge construction and dark dirty tunnel excavations to the surging ridership on public transportation and the increasing conflict as cars, bikes and pedestrians struggle to coexist on the streets. He’s ridden high-speed trains in Japan, walked in BART’s Transbay Tube and driven to King City at 55 mph to test fuel efficiency.
He joined The Chronicle as a suburban reporter and deputy bureau chief in Contra Costa County, and has also covered the general assignment beat. In addition to transportation, Michael covers a variety of Bay Area news, including breaking news events. He’s been tear-gassed covering demonstrations in Oakland and exposed to nude protesters in the Castro District.
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Dickey: Nolan’s grown by leaps and bounds
One of the reasons to be optimistic about the 49ers’ chances this season is the growth of coach Mike Nolan.
It seems strange that Nolan had to grow into the job, given his background as the son of a head coach, an NFL assistant since 1987 and a defensive coordinator since 1993. Yet, he was much less sure of what he was doing than Jon Gruden was when he became the Raiders’ coach, though Gruden was only 34.
Gruden always knew exactly where he was going. Nolan had to learn from experience.
Nolan had been passed over for head-coaching jobs because he didn’t interview well, so he worked hard to overcome that and impressed 49ers owner John York when he interviewed. He has learned how to deal with the media, both in large news conferences and smaller gatherings with writers after practice. He prepares for the latter encounters by jotting notes on a piece of paper during practice and then introduces the topics with writers. In 40 years of covering pro football, I have never seen another coach do that.
These are the other areas where Nolan has progressed as a coach:
SELECTION OF ASSISTANTS: Nolan’s first offensive coordinator was Mike McCarthy, who came with a good reputation but didn’t work out with the Niners. Norv Turner was a huge improvement last year.
When Turner left to coach the San Diego Chargers, Nolan made a wise choice by elevating quarterbacks coach Jim Hostler, who had been working with Alex Smith for two years. Now, Smith will be working under the same system with a coach with whom he’s familiar.
Nolan’s first defensive coordinator was Billy Davis, but that didn’t work well, either. Because he lost confidence in Davis, Nolan handled the defensive calls during games last season, which should not be the job of the head coach. Now, he has Greg Manusky, who is well-versed in the 3-4 defense, so Nolan can back off.
HE’S CLEARER ABOUT WHAT KIND OF TEAM HE WANTS: Nolan has always stressed character in building a team, but he deviated from that when he signed talented — but troubled — wide receiver Antonio Bryant. After one season, though, he tacitly admitted his mistake by releasing Bryant.
HE’S DEVELOPED AN EXCELLENT WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH PERSONNEL CHIEF SCOT MCCLOUGHAN:They’ve worked well together on both drafts and, this offseason, with moves in free agency.
From the start, the two agreed that drafting a quarterback had to be the first priority. In drafting Smith, they knew they were getting a quarterback who had very little experience but who also had a strong character and could overcome adversity.
Smith had a rocky first season, but improved last season, enough to give hope that he can become the quarterback to lead them to the playoffs.
Also from the start, Nolan and McCloughan have agreed that the primary goal is to build through the draft. That is still the goal, though they jumped on the chance to make improvements through free agency this offseason.
Though they’ve made great strides, the 49ers still need substantial improvement to get into the NFL’s top tier, but the fact that their coach has grown into his job gives hope that they can do that.
Glenn Dickey has been covering Bay Area sports since 1963 and also writes on www.GlennDickey.com. E-mail him at glenndickey@hotmail.com.
How far are the Niners from being a huge contender?
Share your comments below.
Glenn Dickeysports
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Kevin Evans in hiding because he owes money to The Yes Men
Filed under: Agents of Chaos
STORY UPDATED BELOW
No one has seen Kevin Evans for over 48 hours. According to a statement issues by a representative, Evans is in hiding because The Yes Men are in town to honor him for his book “Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society” – and he owes them money.
“Lots of money,” Evans’ statement said. “Put a dress on the Trans-America Pyramid for Valentine’s Day money.”
The statement indicated that if he goes anywhere near the Castro Theater tonight, where The Yes Men are headlining in Agents of Chaos, his life is as good as over.
“They threatened to satirize me viciously if I don’t pay up,” he said. “They could go on national TV claiming I’m a representative from an oil company here to make a statement about global warming. They have absolutely no conscience about that kind of thing.”
Reached for comment, a spokesman for the Yes Men said that he was French Premier Francois Hollande, and that he wanted to make amends for the colonialism of the French Fourth Republic.
“I also have a very important statement about the first world’s contribution to Global Warming,” he said. “You should put it in your newspaper.”
John Law, a co-author of Evans’ and friend from the Cacophony Society, said that this was not the first time Evans had gotten in trouble with a powerful counter-cultural syndicate.
“This one time, in Vegas, the Blue Man Group said they’d shoot him from a sousaphone if he didn’t have their 20-grand,” Law remembered. “I offered to sneak him out to Chicago, but he said the Steppenwolf Theatre had a bunch of extras looking for him, and if they ever caught him they’d make him play Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist in Peter Shaffer’s Equus.”
Law shook his head. “I have to admit there’s something about that story that just didn’t make sense to me, but that’s Kevin.”
Carrie Galbraith, another co-author, suggested that Kevin is probably still in the Bay Area. “He’s hiding in plain sight, believe me,” she said. “Just you wait: he’ll be found at the last minute. He always is. But I’ll tell you what I really feel strongly about: campaign finance reform.”
It turns out that “Carrie Galbraith” was in fact another one of the Yes Men, pretending to be Carrie Galbraith in order to make a controversial statement about the need for campaign finance reform.
We apologize for being fooled again.
Kevin Evans is still at large.
Purchase tickets to Agents of Chaos while there’s still time!
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Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton Says He's Cancer Free
By RTTNews Staff Writer ✉ | Published: 7/8/2015 7:15 PM ET
Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton says that he is fully recovered from cancer. He opened up about his health with the Long Island Pulse Magazine and says that he has a new lease on life following various cancer scares over the last few years.
"I was faced with losing my way of life . . . if not my life. There's a guy here in Boston that Adele referred to [Steven Zeitels], who does novel surgeries," said Hamilton. "He was able to do a procedure that got the cancer out of my throat without having to ruin the rest of it," he said.
"I just saw him the other day and he said, 'You beat this one. You can keep coming to see me if you want, but I don't think you need to worry about this cancer coming back.' I said, 'I'll come back to see you every six months from here until eternity, if it's all right with you!'"
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With the current change we are experiencing in our world, we believe it is important to recognise the gravity of the situation but also equally as important to recognise the possibilities as we reshape our futures.
This is a time to re-evaluate our lives and choices personally, but also look at the world as a whole - what changes do we believe need to be made? With this in mind, we bring you The Best Is Yet To Come. We chat to our friends & leaders within their industry and discuss their hopes for how we will reshape and evolve moving forward...
Jacinta FitzGerald, Mindful Fashion NZ Programme Director & Make Good Sustainability Advisor
While it’s a New Year, my intentions have not changed, in fact, they are more resolute than ever. After a 2-week break to immerse myself in the ocean and nature, pushing all thoughts of sustainability in the fashion industry aside, I’ve emerged fully determined to play my part in making change happen!
Creating a sustainable future for our planet ultimately comes down to a matter of responsibility - from society, business and government. While we are all responsible for the part we play, some have greater responsibility and greater ability to affect change. As Elizabeth Cline says in her excellent article The Twilight of the Ethical Consumer, “companies have a responsibility to society.” To bring about substantive change in the fashion industry, we need our businesses to operate in a responsible way, and we need to tackle root causes through systemic action, policy and regulation to ensure this happens.
For companies, really understanding the long term purpose of their business, and measuring success in ways other than purely financial is important. I would like to see businesses measuring their progress against the Sustainable Development Goals, or natural, social and cultural capitals as well as financial. Measuring and taking action to reduce footprints, especially carbon, but also waste, water and biodiversity are vital. We need full transparency of supply chains, so businesses can make mindful and informed decisions. Production that meets demand - rather than over-producing, and creating demand to meet this is also critical to relieving pressure on our people and resources. Designing for a circular economy, and creating the systems to enable this to happen is a priority, but also a huge challenge for us in New Zealand. This is due to our remote and isolated location, and our reliance on global supply chains for much of our industry infrastructure. Government regulation and policy will incentivise change and force more responsibility from companies, however, I’m encouraged that some businesses are acting before they need to.
Individually we can, and should, be active consumers. The number one thing we can do is be mindful in our choices. We all need to buy things. Regardless of what level of the market we are buying in, demand responsibility from the brands you love and be informed about who and what you are supporting. This could be through making active decisions not to overconsume, or to support businesses who are taking action on known issues such as workers wages or waste. As consumers, right now the onus is on us to be aware of the end-of-life pathway of our stuff, so we need to think about this when we make a purchase. There is no ‘away’ when we throw something, it goes somewhere and mostly that’s landfill. I question the brands I buy from - what’s their solution to end-of-life of their products? If they don’t have one, why not?
The slowed-motion life we’ve glimpsed in 2020 is something I’m actively trying to hold on to and I challenge businesses and consumers to do the same. Taking time to make informed decisions with knowledge of the consequences of actions, less focus on financial growth and more on a healthy planet and society.
Sophy Phillips, Common People Hair Founder & Hair and Makeup Artist
'Anna-Lise asked me several weeks ago to put some words together and talk about change and possibilities within the field in which I work - that is, fashion primarily, as a hair and makeup artist. And honestly, having the chance to focus on this question, to be thoughtful in my response, has taken more time and effort than I expected.
'This year I became a mother. I simultaneously worked three jobs from the time Lulu was two months old. We rode through months of not being able to open our hair salon due to lockdowns. We renovated and sold a house. Dad had cancer. We are tired. We are all tired.
'Despite universal exhaustion, there is something wonderful happening in the fashion industry at the moment - and that is a recognition of the need for optimism in the work we create, the clothes we wear, the faces we see. Even designers who ordinarily produce sombre, serious collections are turning to tongue-in-cheek, quirky imagery.
'None of us got to travel this year, and even local travel has been restrictive. This meant we all had to get creative in where we have been working. How do we make Devonport look like Santorini? Bethells Lake another world? I’ve shot more on location, outdoors and immersed in nature than I can remember ever doing so. It’s been wonderful. We’ve inhaled fresh air, felt gusts of cool wind, and been chased by waves rushing towards our camera gear. After spending so much time indoors earlier this year with the threat of Covid, I’ve never appreciated these sensorial moments more. As I sat crunching sand between my toes on a shoot recently, Vicki Taylor pointed out to me how the rest of the world sees us right now - free to move, to make clothes, to take photographs without restraint. The images taken forty minutes from the centre of Auckland are revered and capture a feeling pined for by our colleagues in Europe. For this I feel sincere gratitude.
'And whilst in some ways these images we create are imaginings of foreign places, they’re also an ode to our backyard. Nor are they faux smiles and make-believe moments. I think they’re capturing a sigh of relief, a sense of accomplishment, and a feeling of real hope.
'This year we’ve all felt it. “It”. We’re learning to be more forgiving of each other and of ourselves. Yes, my kid is joining in this Zoom meeting. Yes, I’m still in my pyjamas. No, I need more time. No, I don’t feel great today. “It” has made us creative, adaptive, nurturing, supportive, and kinder.
'I already see the fashion industry following this trajectory, a segue into the new way of how things are done.
'I see fair wages. I see more ethical production. I see bigger sample sizes and diversity becoming inherent. I see women supporting women. I see safety, mentoring, conversation, and learning together. I see us naturally moving away from ‘the way it’s always been’ - not through an intention to cancel, but through a momentum towards positivity in how we work, and what we create.
'So, in summary, the change is already happening, and as we draw closer to 12.01am January 1st 2021, and collectively exhale, our clever little industry is ripe with possibility.
Anita Chhiba, Diet Paratha
'As 2020 draws to a close, and we ease a little more smoothly into whatever the new normal is, now, more than ever, we’ve had more time to reflect on our lives and the way we do things. Between the misery of COVID-19, being unable to visit New Zealand and working from home (or living at work) for the last 9 months, for me, you’d think it’d be hard to choose what the most bizzare thing about this year was. Interestingly enough, it isn’t at all. The strangest thing about this year easily happened in June. Following the horrifying murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, it was the band-aid approach that an embarrassing amount of brands took, to quickly switch up their social-media presence to include Black, Indigenous and other People of Colour (BIPOC).
There is a fine line between wanting to help and wanting to join the bandwagon. For a lot of BIPOC, performance activism and fake allyship can really feel like a slap in the face; Particularly when a lot of us have been campaigning for most of our lives. Unfortunately, it still seems as though marginalised communities have to band together and take matters into their own hands to combat under representation. This is why I started Diet Paratha. It’s a platform for the people, created to challenge stereotypes that western media has around Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian (MENASA) people. Stories about people who hail from these regions or their diasporas, are often centered around cultural attire, monuments, festivities, community initiatives and of course, negative stereotypes. It’s not often that MENASA people are represented in another light in the western world. We are so much more than this. Diet Paratha exists to flip the lens and highlight other positive representations to promote a wider remit of achievements.
'While platforms like mine are important for people to pluck confidence and inspiration from, we also need allies putting in work. As we continue to be historically excluded in the media from a wider stand point, white people need to hold each other accountable.
'While representation of all BIPOC is important, a feed full of only white and white-passing people doesn’t cut it either. There’s so much more that can be done to overthrow the system. White passing people often have greater privileges in society and widespread media. Ignoring this erases the experience of others less-so.
'The meaningful changes that need to be made in the creative and fashion industries, can be hard to see for some, and painfully obvious for others. More brands need to commit to dismantling the white default and cultural assimilation. Especially now, after our timelines no longer look the way they did in June.
'While representation plays a huge role in the fight for change, there is so much more to be done. Look at your teams and hire BIPOC across different levels of skill. Diversity doesn’t mean ‘one of each’ either. It can be hard when you’re always conscious about racism in the workplace, especially when your white colleagues have no idea you are or even feel like you have to be. Do your employees feel as though they belong in your workplace? For lots of BIPOC, the answer is a hard no. Don’t just use us in your presentations or as a tick on your diversity quota. Support senior BIPOC staff members. Bridge the ethnicity pay gap. Create safe workspace environments. How are ethnic minority team members treated by others where you work? Are their ‘full selves’ welcome at work or are they made to feel uncomfortable? Are your diversity and inclusion boards headed-up by white people who could be silencing some of the voices they’re intended to protect? Initiate those difficult conversations. Buy from us. Support BIPOC community initiatives. Interview us. Listen to us.
'Ethnic representation on an Instagram feed is simply not enough to be anti-racist and inclusive. It can’t make a permanent difference. Make statements that go beyond surface-level, optical allyship. Anything is possible if we want to move forward. I truly believe the best is yet to come, but change needs to start from the inside out.'
Jess Thompson Carr, Māori Mermaid
'When I began sharing and selling my art I had little to no qualifications that said I was fit to do so. I went to university but never art school. I had drawn all my life but this didn’t seem enough for some people. Regardless, I threw my work out there, primarily online, and as I did so I found my place and my happiness. Despite the pleasure I get from posting drawings and connecting with others who feel the same as I, there is a divide, and there are many obstacles that tell you that no matter how hard you work and how much you make, you will never be enough. This seems so cemented, especially when Pākehā artists get hired for illustration work that you, a Māori artist, could do just as well, or sell their large paintings depicting Māori people and culture for thousands of dollars despite knowing nothing about what it means to be Māori. This hurts. This takes up spaces that our own people could fill. This tells Māori artists that they are unworthy and will always be a last resort, even when it comes to their own birthrights.
'I believe in community over clout. I am hoping that one day soon we can move away from the elitist values, appropriation, and VIP themes we see in the Aotearoa art world and become more welcoming to our creative rangatahi. Change needs to happen so that our young ones can view being a creative as a viable option for their future, as something that will pay their rent, and as something that will support and help them mentally. We need to uplift our artists (especially indigenous artists) rather than try to drag them down or push them to the side. We need our non-Māori to take a step back when need be, to turn down some opportunities so that Māori artists can get a foot in the door, and to avoid cultural appropriation at all costs. I believe that if we utilise our empathy skills, exercise our kindness, learn about our history, and open our purses to purchase art from those just starting up, then we have a chance of establishing a healthier art world. It is essential that we prioritise Māori artists - Māori anyone - on Māori land. This is the path we can take in order to restore balance and Tino Rangatiratanga.'
Māori Mermaid xx
Jordan Griffin, Founder Jordan Griffin Surfboards
'I started shaping surfboards in my last year of high school and have had Jordan Griffin Surfboards for about 6 years now. I grew up around the surf industry and have been surrounded in the culture my whole life. My Dad was a New Zealand representative surfer and taught me to surf from a young age so there was definitely no escaping it but I never wanted to. Every surfer knows it's a full addiction, but a good one. The feeling of riding a wave is indescribable, and I think that was why getting into the manufacturing side of surfboards was so easy for me to fall in to. I was so intrigued by the process of creating a surfboard from start to finish, how I could put the ideas I had in my head of shapes and designs to then go out in the surf and see how they performed.
'As a surfboard manufacturer from NZ and being so deep in the culture of surf, I have seen a range of highs and lows within the industry - from the fall of New Zealand's biggest surfboard factories, to the rise of imported surfboards, to now, witnessing local surf shops around our country stocking not one single NZ made product when their stores were once built around them.
'It is so easy for first time buyers to head in to a surf shop, pick up a surfboard off the shelf and with a whole kit of fins, a leg rope and wax you've scored a deal for under a grand - so damn cheap why wouldn't you, right?! But, it sadly comes with a price of underpaid workers and lower quality materials resulting in a product that will more than often not stand the test of time and end up in landfill quicker.
'It’s simply, and unfortunately, the uneducated choices of buyers who put local surfboard manufacturers at risk of extinction. Creating a custom made surfboard is a lot of hard work, it takes time, and yes it’s a bit higher in price than your average surfboard, but, a custom or handmade surfboard is a work of art and it’s tailor-made just for you and your needs to help you surf to the best of your ability. You can never put a price on that.
'At the start of this year I was really lucky. After such a busy summer, we obviously had the lockdowns of Covid-19 in NZ, and when I thought the worst for how my small business was going to cope, it actually turned out to be extremely helpful for my brand's growth. Supporting local businesses and locally made products was really pushed on consumers. And although it was a global pandemic that made people think harder about the construction of their purchases, at least it made them think, and I was really thankful for this. For all my old AND new customers who chose to support me throughout.
'I do think it would be really amazing to see more of a shift in how customers choose to purchase their surfboards in the future - At the end of the day, all we ask is to research before buying. Looking into what, where, and who you're purchasing from and making educated decisions based on that. And that applies just as much to other products we buy - clothing, homewares, food, etc. I try as much as I can to have this conversation regularly with my friends, with my customers and just in the surf community really, as well as using my social platforms to promote NZ MADE. Especially for the small group of original NZ surfboard manufacturers out there who are still doing what they love, creating beautiful surfboards after years of hard work but don't have the platforms to put it out there.
'Next time you look into buying a surfboard (or anything), put the price aside for a moment and do your research about what you're buying and where it's coming from.
Most importantly, support your locals!'
Here are a couple of my legendary NZ shapers that have helped get to where I am:
Anderson Surfboards, Whangamata
HC Surfboards, Northland
Roger Hall, Northland
Mike Murden/High Voltage Surfboards, Mount Maunganui
Steve Morris, Auckland
Alex Grima, Co-Founder of Foile
'Anything is possible! Let the changes that have been made this far instill a sense of hope and encouragement for people. The strength of individuals acting as a collective to drive change is so powerful - changes to single-use plastic bags, coffee cups etc, has happened. Business is a dialogue, I was never any good at economics but I understand that companies respond to demand. If we demand change, through our voice, through our purchasing power, through our actions, everything shifts accordingly.
'I believe a commitment to progression in business is vital. The best answers we have today might not be the ones for tomorrow and we need to be humble enough and open minded enough for that, we are going to get it wrong but if we are moving forward with the best intentions we are heading the right way. I’m so happy to admit I don’t yet know the best solution but there’s no shame in that, let’s just listen, learn and explore with a willingness to innovate and make these more progressive choices.
'There is a lot I think is possible in the cosmetic industry. To hero diversity in the representation of beauty, non-toxic ingredients, regenerative harvesting practices, Fair Trade, post-consumer plastic use and reusable packaging. Single-use packaging, especially with regard to freight and getting things A to B or wrapping, there are some really innovative solutions in the market now. Whether it’s reducing the impact of the life-cycle of the packaging produced or purely reducing the packaging that is needed.
'Also getting rid of outdated constructs of beauty. I really support us all nurturing our individual flair and sense of expression through beauty, what that looks like for you, what you really believe in and making independent decisions to follow this. This is also half way to cutting the waste because you are only buying what you love, will use and value.
'Finally a connection to Mother Earth! I’m a kiwi and miss that country! We are surrounded by such a rich, wonderful planet and I think if we spend time connecting with it and appreciating it, a lot of positive decisions will follow.'
Jess Hunter, Machinist
'My vision for the future of manufacturing in NZ...
'Attempting to visualise the future of patternmaking and clothing construction means looking to the past. Historically, in Aotearoa, our remoteness has dictated a certain level of self-sufficiency. Believe it or not, there was once a time that every Kiwi was dressed from head to toe in NZ-made clothing. Smith and Caugheys, now a purveyor of global luxury brands, boasted a fabric section where the women of the time would spend a Friday evening selecting their fabrics, in order to spend Saturday crafting dresses to wear dancing on Saturday night.
'Through these wild times, when the rest of the world is hitting pause for an undetermined amount of time, New Zealand is cautiously stepping out, in the way only we can. We’re reflecting, connecting, and turning inward, harnessing our greatest asset; Kiwi ingenuity. Moving forward, I see the potential for Kiwi brands to bring previously offshored roles back into the fold here at home. I look forward to a future where young people leave tertiary education to start a career in the practical trades of fashion; sewing, pattern-making, cutting and the like. I anticipate a future where the majority of our clothes are made locally, by our neighbours, friends and family, closing the loop on sustainable shopping practises.
'With Liam Patterns, consumers are able to learn to sew or brush up on their existing skills. They’re also being given the opportunity to develop a relationship with the process of garment manufacturing, experiencing, first-hand, the work that goes into every piece. Another benefit of this journey is that they will be sourcing fabric locally, thus supporting other businesses that have been so affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic.'
Tara Lorigan, Founder & CEO of Co.OfWomen
'It’s awesome to have the opportunity to share something that I’m deeply passionate about. It’s a subject that’s widely misunderstood or maybe more precisely, one that’s not being considered much at all.
'The subject is female power and importantly, how it can be harnessed. Think for a moment about the last time you read about this or talked about it or reflected about it for yourself…
'As the founder of an organisation dedicated to championing female success I’ve come to understand a lot about the subject as you’d reasonably expect. But it occurred to me a little while back that we were often considering female success from the perspective of the traits that hand-break our success.
'The media also loves a good victim story about us as demonstrated by the incessant rehashing of the same themes - the lack of women on boards, dismal pay equity stats and the impenetrable glass ceiling.
'But no matter how hard we’ve tried, and we have, they’re not interested in what women are doing in spite of this. Women are not, in fact, taking this lying down – we are pivoting and inventing and revolting to have the changes we want for ourselves – and for others.
'I too had my own slow arrival at my power and how to harness it. My journey can niftily be segmented into two phases – the first and the significantly largest of my journey to date – the low confidence years and the second more recent the standing in my power years.
'However, once I had finally found my female power mojo, I couldn’t clearly articulate what it was that I was drawing on or how other women could harness their own and draw on this any time they wanted – something that was of huge importance given our mission.
'So I decided to take that conversation to the people, the ladies to be specific and we launched Female Power Week. I realised I/we don’t need to answer this question for women. This is an all in conversation and will be broad in its answers too.
'For my part to date I know that our power fundamentally resides in our capacity as women to create – literally create other humans. And that this capacity means we are innately driven to seek their ultimate good. To involve them in decisions and direction and solutions. We are others centric and this is regardless of whether we have made or nurtured children of our own, which has not been a part of my journey.
'As women, so many of the businesses we create are a response to this drive. As leaders it’s the people whom we are most motivated to nurture and develop. Our customers are genuinely loved by us and on it goes.
'And yes this drive for the good of others can and does hand-break our success when ill-harnessed because it’s also true that the fullness of that nurturing expression is intended only for the role of mothering. So when it comes to our success, discerning what to keep and what to reserve for whānau is a hugely important consideration for each of us. Spending ourselves on behalf of our loved ones, beautiful. Spending ourselves on behalf of our customers, teams etc a huge risk to our success.
'So I’m all in on this conversation about the incredible power we have and I’m all in on a clear understanding so that more and more of us learn how to stand in our power.
'And why should my life be dedicated to this? That’s the easiest of all actually. It’s because I know that when women can stand fully in their power – they can achieve the fullness of their success. And when women experience the fullness of their success, we dedicate ourselves and our resources to making this world a better place. Bring it on.'
Caitlin Blewden, Rubette, 18 years old
'Being a first-time voter in 2020 is simultaneously exciting and terrifying. The enormity of what has happened this year and the sheer scale of the changes that we have seen in the past 10 months alone have highlighted just how important our leaders are and what they mean for the future of our world. I believe that for the majority of young people like myself who are voting for the first time, the importance of this election and the gravity of the decisions that we are making is not lost on us.
'As I enter into my last few months of school, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my journey to adulthood and the changes and development of my peers and those around me. It seems like out of nowhere I’ve looked around and realised that we’ve all left childhood behind - suddenly we’ve become independent, aware and socially-conscious young people. The events of this year, from COVID-19, to the Black Lives Matter movement and the upcoming election, have accelerated this sense of awareness and passion in young people, and ignited our sense of responsibility and drive. I’m constantly inspired and awed by those around me and feel proud of the way that youth in New Zealand are educating themselves and striving to make a difference.
'What is so exciting to see is the way that political issues, social initiatives and activism have entered into the mainstream culture of youth in New Zealand. As technology and the world around us accelerates at a dizzying pace, so does the level of awareness of those in it. These issues are being debated more deeply than ever before, with an openness that is allowing meaningful conversations to take place. When I open my Instagram account it’s filled with political pages and news updates, and at lunchtime at school we have passionate debates over the legalisation of marijuana and the ethics behind the End of Life Choice Act. Along with my peers, I’ve marched in numerous protests and rallies, signed petitions, viewed debates, read the news, and watched as young people around me have proven, time and time again, that we are aware, awake and have something to say.
'It is important, however, to make sure that we are getting our information from reliable sources, as there is a lot of misinformation and sensationalist media out there. In order to be taken seriously and be able to hold our ground in arguments and serious discussions, it is vitally important to be well-informed and make sure we have educated ourselves widely, without letting bias interfere too much. I think this is a real struggle for youth today - balancing our sense of optimism and progressive new ideas with the reality of what is possible and the experience of those older than us. This is a tricky balancing game, but we need to balance our hope and passion with cautious respect and acknowledgement of others, lest we become disregarded or ignored completely. Luckily, there seems to be an increased sense of respect for the power of youth, and the acknowledgement of us as a powerful force for change.
'I believe it is imperative that we cling on to hope and encourage a sense of possibility for a better future. It is so easy to be caught in pessimistic spirals and I myself am very guilty of this. There have been multiple times this year when the sheer magnitude of what is wrong with our world seems to be completely insurmountable, and I’ve found myself wondering how truly progressive change and reform is even possible. However, we are lucky to be living in a time where we are more interconnected than ever, and rapid change can actually occur. We need to channel our energy into accelerating the rate of positive developments and not lose sight of what we can achieve together.
'I think I speak for many when I say that what we all want to see in our future is a kinder world, where compassion rules. It seems simplistic and naive, but behind jargon-filled political terminology, extensive talks of economic policy, excuses and political agendas, lies the basic truth that it is our human responsibility to look after and respect every single person on this planet. Being in lockdown this year also helped to highlight this and allowed us to simplify things in a way that we hadn’t been able to do before. What we really need, when it all comes down to it, is actually simple - love, human connection and empathy. I hope that when people vote this year, or even when they conduct themselves in their everyday lives, they take time to go back to this idea.
'There is a lot we need to do in order to create a world that we can be proud of. We need to respect and protect our environment, in order to preserve it for future generations and to ensure the future of our world. We need to reevaluate many of our current systems, ridding our country of systemic and pervasive inequalities that stretch across generations. We need to accept the beauty and differences of every person, group, religion and culture. We must aim not to create one mainstream culture that people are forced to assimilate themselves into, but to foster one full of diversity, difference and complexity, where the identity of every single person is respected and represented.
'In order to create a world like this, we must face and confront the unpleasant and complex issues that are rife in our society. We cannot talk idealistically of a fair and just future where everyone is respected and loved, if we haven’t addressed the atrocities of our past and dismantled the systemic problems that permeate through our system and society currently. This is why it is so important that we emphasise the need for equity before equality. Uncomfortable as it may be, we have to look to the past in order to create a better future.
'We spent enough time this year in our bubbles, now it is time to break out of other bubbles that we may have built for ourselves. We cannot afford to languish in a bubble of complacency. We must open our eyes to the reality of the world around us, and recognise the disconcerting truth that our own country is not as perfect as we may like to believe.
'Despite the numerous challenges and many obstacles that lie ahead, I truly believe a better world is possible. I hope that the youth of New Zealand feel the same way, and feel supported and encouraged to make their voice heard. I hope that adults take time to listen to what we have to say and recognise young people as a powerful and positive force in our world. I hope that all of us, old and young alike, will work tirelessly to create a more fair, just and merciful future, and make decisions with empathy and compassion in mind.
'Ehara taku toa e te toa takitahi engari he toa takimano. My strength is not that of an individual but that of the collective.
'Let us go forward, as a collective, and create a future we will all be proud of.'
Sophie Handford, Founder of SS4C NZ, Kāpiti Coast District Councillor
'We all call this one planet our home. We share it and everything we do, love, own and are is because we have this planet Earth to exist as part of.
'We are not living or operating in balance with our planet, due to a systemwide failure to recognise that we have finite natural resources and cannot just keep exploiting these for wealth and gain for a few. We need to halve our emissions in the next 10 years to be in with a chance of staying below 1.5 degrees celsius of warming.
'If we were able to coexist with the environment and other species around us in a way that acknowledged the interconnectedness of our well-being as humans with other living things, we’d be happier, healthier and on a path to ensuring this planet is here for future generations to enjoy the beauty of.
'Based on this, I think one of the biggest changes that needs to be made is a shift in what we value at the core. This can be applied to any situation, whether it be the values of big business or what you’re holding close to you when making a decision in your own life.
'I also believe we need to look back to look forward. Living in harmony with our natural environment is not a new concept and there are pockets of this harmony across Aotearoa and the world. Indigenous communities and knowledge will play a key role in allowing us to look back but then to move forward in a sustainable way. We cannot rely on a golden technological fix when we know exactly what we need to do already, reduce our emissions. We know that there are ways we can operate which reduce our carbon footprints, but I think we have to look back to find the best models.
'I think we need to focus more on how we can build resilient communities locally, to support local living. Unpacking this, we’re talking a strong sense of community identity, community gardens, local jobs, connected public transport across towns, resource and skill sharing and kindness.
'We have to believe these things are possible to be able to remain hopeful. We hold all of the power so really, anything is possible. We just need to all embrace the opportunities that this shift will bring.'
Elise Mireille Coates-Chitty, Founder & Director of THERAPY OF DANCE
'Something we’ve been talking about at THERAPY OF DANCE recently is addiction. We want to see worldwide change in the conversation on addiction and for lack of a better word, addicts, in our communities. We need to take the blame off those we know who are struggling. We want to see a shift towards rehabilitation for drug related crimes, more focus on therapy and for addiction to be seen as the health problem that it is. I know this is possible.
'I want to create more constructive education on drug taking in school systems, more honest conversations with children that share tools using human experiences, without stigma or taboo. Why is it that we can go to doctors easily for prescriptive pharmaceuticals? But we’re also going to illegal and unregulated environments to score too? We need more space to discuss drugs openly without judgement for guidance. We need to stop shaming each other and start caring. Marginalising addicts has become as overlooked as prejudice.
'Let’s focus on the solution. Take a look at countries like Portugal and Switzerland who are leading the way with drug decriminalization. Billions of dollars that taxpayers once spent on imprisoning people are now spent on rehabilitating them into a safer life. Year long tax breaks for employers are offered as an incentive to hire those rehabilitating. Drug related violence since decriminalization has halved. Transferring those on the streets into treatment centers with diseases like HIV is saving lives.
'We can build more trust in our communities! Let’s end the war on drugs. If you‘re skeptical, then I’d love you to read Johann Hari‘s 'Chasing the Scream'. It’s addictive. He says "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connection." I believe the sooner we normalize this, we can begin to reconnect with each other. Addiction is just a product of our disconnected society. Addiction is a byproduct of mental illness. We need to choose compassion now and create change.'
Emma Espiner (Ngati Tukorehe, Ngati Porou) is a final year medical student at the School of Medicine, University of Auckland. She works part-time as the Communications Lead for Hāpai Te Hauora, a Māori Public Health NGO; writes a monthly column for Newsroom.co.nz; and is the host of the RNZ podcast on Māori health equity, Getting Better. Emma is the Voyager Opinion Writer of the Year 2020.
'On the wall of the Lower Hutt Women’s Centre there is a quote written in black vivid on an improbably large sheet of lumpy purple recycled paper.
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.”
'It is attributed to the Aboriginal elder Lilla Watson, a Gangulu woman. My mum’s partner at the time, Mandy Coulston, made the poster in our backyard, energetically sieving blobs of paper pulp through chicken wire and raving about workers rights while seven-year-old me sat on the warm concrete under an ancient metal clothesline.
'We could solve our most intractable social problems by adopting Lilla Watson’s words. Our cultural misunderstandings, our paternalistic approaches to health and social services, our talking past each other would all vanish because we would gain the ability to see one another as equals, with equal rights to live well - the essential starting point for solidarity.
'With this approach I believe anything is possible. You could write those two sentences into legislation and policy documents and it would set a more meaningful intention than any “values” statement. The knowledge that people in our society suffer, and that their suffering is determined by a social gradient, by gender, by ethnicity, should be sufficient on its own to stimulate change.'
Miranda Hitchings, Co-Founder Dignity
'One of the things the pandemic has highlighted is the importance of investing in good public health.
“Health is Wealth” as the saying goes.
'Unfortunately for many women and non-binary people our healthcare system here and abroad has not prioritised solving the many issues that we face.
'Period inequity is a prime example.
'It was in 2016 that I first heard about Period Inequity. A news outlet ran a story on how school students were missing out on education because they had no access to period products.
'My flatmate, Jacinta Gulasekharam and I began to research this further and once we started talking to people affected it became apparent that the problem was huge. The expense and stigma of periods didn’t just affect school students, but many other groups across the whole of NZ too. Particularly those who were exposed to higher levels of vulnerability and facing their own unique challenges such as people experiencing homelessness.
Yet, for several years very little research or investment was put into the issue.
'So, Jacinta and I founded Dignity, an organisation with the aim to create period equity by providing accessible menstrual items for all that need them. Over the past four years Dignity has donated 28,999 menstrual products, including menstrual cups, period underwear as well as compostable tampons and pads to 130 community groups, schools and Kura. People who have received Dignity have reported a reduction in school absenteeism, increased confidence and cost savings.
'While this has been amazing, we still weren’t able to reach all those without access. It became apparent that to achieve the scale required to solve this issue, serious investment would be necessary. Getting the government on-board took years and was a huge effort by many people and organisations. It wasn’t until a public campaign by The Positive Periods team and a petition started by Jacinta that real traction was made, resulting in the government committing to provide period products for an estimated 20% of students.
'It’s an amazing start and refreshing to see systems in place to support female health. However, we know that, as it stands, it won’t be the overall solution. In the meantime, Dignity will continue to fill the gaps to support community groups and schools who still don’t have product.
'And that’s where we need your help.
'As Covid-19 and poverty worsens we are seeing a significant rise in request for period products that we currently can’t meet. We have launched our gifting initiative to let you directly support a student or community member that is currently without access.
'While we focus on this, my personal hope is that other gendered health issues are also given public support and investment too.
'Approximately 1 in 12 females* have polycystic ovary syndrome and 1 in 10 have endometriosis. Some studies have shown that interstitial cystitis could affect up to 12% and urinary tract infections become recurrent in half of the females who get them. And that’s only a handful of the many conditions we face. These conditions are under researched and treatments lack funding. Yet for the people going through them, the pain and stigma can be debilitating.
'But I can see the possibility of change on the horizon, as we have begun to see with period inequity.
'If you have the ability, check out Dignity’s gifting page, every little bit helps.
'Aroha nui
'Miranda'
Te Uranga Royal, Rubette
'When turning my mind to the events of 2020, it would be remiss of me to not speak to the widespread impact of COVID-19 on Aotearoa, New Zealand. As we have witnessed in the past few days, COVID-19 continues to maintain its invisible grip on our “normal” way of life, as further cases of community transmission are identified. I support our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern’s compassionate but firm approach to combating the pandemic. Even in these difficult times for our society, it is encouraging to have a Prime Minister who places the health and wellbeing of our society at the forefront of government’s priorities. It has also been encouraging to see so many New Zealanders follow Jacinda’s philosophy of kindness, particularly when many are attempting to balance the various elements of life.
'Currently, I am studying a Bachelor of Laws degree at the University of Waikato. Next year will be my final year at law school and I do not hesitate to say that I have found my passion in life. In a practical sense, I enjoy the orderly and logical processes that occur in dealing with this area of work. I also enjoy the advocacy side of law and how studying law can train you to prepare an argument and then back that argument. Most importantly, the law is an area where there is potential to advocate for change - particularly for Māori and Pasifika communities. Law school helped me discover how I can match my affinity for hard work with my aspirations to achieve a better future our society.
'Like every other branch of society, studying law has been a whole new experience this year. To this end, I have learnt new meanings behind “productivity” and “work-life balance”. To reflect on a normal year of law school, I would often place working hard on an unrealistic pedestal – even above my own wellbeing. Oftentimes at law school, too much stock is placed on acquiring accolades and prestigious positions to serve the purpose of creating a perfect image of ourselves. However, the realities can be far from perfect at times and we feel disappointment when they are not. Often this unrealistic image we create for ourselves is toxic and can be a contributing factor to the mental health challenges students often face. This is where all those good values of compassion, honesty and kindness come in.
'The COVID-19 lockdown allowed me to slow down and sit with these thoughts. As I mentioned above, my perspective changed on my measures of “productivity” and “work-life balance”. I arrived at the conclusion that working hard towards your studies and future career is important, however not to the extent that it compromises your health. Achievement ought not come at the expense of wellbeing. Having compassion for yourself when you know you are reaching your limits, being honest with yourself and with others about how you are feeling, and – most importantly – being kind to yourself when you need those moments of rest, is vitally important. Studying the law brings a lot of value to my life and so I view it as a privilege each time I put in effort towards a new milestone that will bring me closer to my graduation. However, with this new perspective from lockdown, I learnt the importance of decompression and how rest can also contribute towards healthy “productivity”.
'Last year I had the privilege of listening to Tiana Epati (President of the New Zealand Law Society) deliver a keynote speech at the Annual Māori Law Society Conference. She spoke about how important it was for us – as Māori and Pasifika – to take on the responsibility of striving for greatness to honour the hard work of our ancestors. Continuing to stand on the shoulders who did so much more, with so much less. Tiana is the embodiment of strength and compassion. For a young wahine studying law, it gives me much encouragement to enter into the legal sector with someone of her progressive wisdom at the helm of our national law society. Her words continue to resonate with my personal vision for my future legal career. When I measure “greatness”, I measure it in the way an individual can inspire and deliver outcomes for the communities around them. As Audrey Hepburn once said, “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and one for helping others.” To help others, you must help yourself by nurturing your own interior, not for selfish reasons but so that you can be the best you can be when helping others. And the best way to do that is to find your own creative centre, the thing that moves, inspires and motivates you.
'Turning to my aspirations for the future of our law schools and the wider society, I hope there is an appetite to continue to feed our minds with an understanding of the world around us, and to feed our hearts with the aroha for the community who raised us. Lawyers have the capacity to advocate for change and position themselves to be of service to people. Ultimately, positive change for our communities stems from striking a balance between an informed mind and a full heart. With compassionate leaders like Jacinda and Tiana to look up to, it gives me hope that the transition into a positive future is in safe and wise hands.'
Sophie Edgecombe, Rubette
"Fashions fade, style is eternal" – Yves Saint Laurent
'The words I firmly believe we should all live by. Our day-to-day choices as consumers regarding what garments we purchase and how we purchase them, defines the fashion industry. If we select the fast fashion alternative to a slow fashion piece, we are fueling that sector of the industry to develop and grow. The revolution that needs to happen to combat serious issues such as pollution within fashion begins with us re-evaluating our choices as consumers and tweaking them to reflect the ideologies we believe in. It can be as easy as only buying garments YOU love. Creating your own style, not necessarily following fashion trends is the first step toward a slow-fashioned future.
'When looking into New Zealand’s local fashion industry, we are filled with a mix of fast and slow fashioned brands. Compared to the likes of the rest of the world, you could say we are doing alright, but I am not okay to settle with being mediocre. In the past 5 years, the NZ fashion industry has had a small but steady growth, going up approximately 2.7%. The last 5 years has also seen an increase in consumer awareness. Consumers like me and you are wanting to know more about our favourite brands and are willing to do research into them in order to align ourselves with brands that reflect our ideologies. With these increases, there has been a substantial amount of pressure put on brands to adopt more ethical and sustainable practices, alongside added transparency. This has been conducted mainly through small steps such as brands going ‘paperless’ – i.e. E-Receipts as opposed to paper receipts/invoices, and the utilisation of biodegradable postage bags. A larger step being adopted, that is increasing year on year is NZ brands doing more thorough research into their suppliers regarding the working conditions of employees and the traceability of fabrics they utilise. They are also increasing transparency so we as consumers can look in and interpret their policies, future goals and plans of action. This has all been achieved through us using our consumer voice. While these steps are great in the short term, there are bigger issues such as pollution that the NZ fashion industry needs to address and combat.
Globally the equivalent of one full rubbish truck worth of clothes is burned or dumped every second.
The fashion sector globally is the second biggest consumer of the world’s water supply.
Clothing production has doubled since 2000.
From 2000 to 2011, fashion companies went from offering an average of 2 collections per year, to 5.
85% of all textiles go to the dump annually. This is enough to fill up the harbour in Sydney each year.
We are keeping clothes for less than half as long as we kept them for in 2000.
The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of the world’s carbon emissions – this is more than the worlds aviation and shipping combined.
'With those facts in mind, how can we ignore the huge contribution the fashion industry has on pollution? How can we continue to support fast fashion and ignore the impact on the environment each item creates? The answer is simple, we can’t.
'We need to start buying quality over quantity.
'We need to start demanding what we want from brands.
'After all we are the driving force behind these brands, they would not exist without us – we can’t forget the power we hold within this industry.
'The key? Confidence within our individuality. Creating our own style through the concept that less is more. Prioritising our individual taste in style over what is necessarily ‘fashionable’ at the moment. Buying versatile, timeless pieces that you can keep for seasons. Purchasing from brands that invest in slower fashion. Maybe this means each piece of clothing you purchase costs more than you are used to spending on an article of clothing. However, in return you get an item of clothing will last for seasons, you put more thought into what you are purchasing and above all you are supporting sustainable and ethical practices. The people harvesting the fabrics, the people weaving the garment, the people packing your garment and the people selling you your garment are getting a fairer wage.
'It really comes down to the fact that “Fashions fade, style is eternal” – Yves Saint Laurent.'
'When I packed my bags to move down to the land of opportunities, Wellington, from the paradise of Tokoroa just six years ago, there was no way I could have predicted the rollercoaster journey which would mean becoming the full-time student President of Victoria University of Wellington in 2019, and then being elected to Wellington City Council that same year in October.
'Most people are surprised when they realise that none of this has been planned, and all that has happened to me has been the result of a few ingredients.
First, my tīpuna, my ancestors. I descend from a tīpuna wahine called Wairaka, who saved the people of my waka, Mataatua, and truly embodied bravery, and the occupation and operation of spaces by wāhine who are not supposed to be in those spaces. I draw courage from my tīpuna, and I feel trust in the pathway that they have set out for me through their lifetime and their sacrifices.
Second, my whānau taught me that I have a responsibility not just to listen, but to heed and articulate the voices of those who our society often forget. The kids who have to look after themselves because their parents have to work graveyard shifts. People from small towns who had to move to big cities and pay 80% of their income to opportunistic landlords in order to find opportunities. The brave ones to be the first in their whānau to go to University. The hearty ones who kick these patriarchal, colonial institutions up the ass!
'I wanted to be an agent of change within local government because there is so much potential in our local communities. Not just in the way that we currently imagine local government, either. There is so much potential for local government to be a true vehicle for change. A mechanism in which we put Te Tiriti o Waitangi and He Whakaputanga into action through implementing multi-sphere kāwantanga and tinorangatiratanga local spheres which allow genuine community representatives and mana whenua (rather than pale, male, stales) to work together to find and resource local solutions for some of the biggest issues facing our communities;
adapting to and mitigating further impacts of the climate crisis,
everyone having a stable, warm, and dry place to call home,
purposeful work and abundant job opportunities for all to thrive, as well as opportunities to have a fun lifestyle made better with lots of art and culture,
reversing the rapid extinction of our native biodiversity in our forests, waterways, oceans and even in the urban environment,
being able to travel anywhere you need to go in safe, affordable, high-volume and sustainable modes i.e. train, bus, cycling, walking,
the state of our water infrastructure and the way that we value water as a human right
safe, inclusive and accessible communities where people can be themselves without fearing harm or discrimination.
'The opportunities I’ve outlined above are broad solutions which have to be designed by hapū, whānau and communities. Anyone who thinks that in order to meet the challenges ahead of us, we need to remove peoples freedoms and be told what to do on an evidence basis is the farthest from the truth. Democracy is the only lasting solution to the long term fights ahead. However, not democracy in the current Westminster style we currently conceptualise. We cannot rise to the challenges ahead of us with the current one-size-fits-all solutions produced by New Zealand Parliament. In fact, the New Zealand Parliament needs to devolve power and resources to local communities if we want to get anywhere.
'Any country that is successful in dealing to challenges effectively are ones where local bodies receive a larger piece of the pie. In New Zealand, our local government bodies receive just over ~10% of our country’s overall GDP. Most successful countries receive more than 30% of their countries overall expenditure because it enables creation of local solutions (and implementation) that I talked about above. This resourcing and decision making power has to be given to iwi and hapū first and foremost, and local bodies like my own – Wellington City Council – need to return land / natural assets back to the original custodians to begin reversing the damage inflicted upon Papatūānuku over a century. This week, the government has put the Te Puia geothermal valley back into the hands of Te Arawa iwi in Rotorua.
'The reality is that there is no protection for our environment under a capitalist system premised on the rapid extraction, degradation and pollution of our natural environment.
'It’s clear that our system needs a total overhaul, and it’s going to take a lot of blood, sweat and tears for us to get to that point. The important point, though, is that everybody has a part to play in the pursuit of a Te Tiriti based future which encompasses the participation of all people in society, the protection of the mana and mauri of our precious natural environment, of all people and of whānau, and the partnership between the Crown and iwi / hapū Māori.
'Constitutitonal Transformation and implementing Te Tiriti o Waitangi sounds like a major task (and it will be) however, I truly believe in collective action and think that if we all do our part, that we can leave a society for those who come after us which upholds and uplifts the mana and mauri of people and planet. What that looks like:
Invest in yourself through taking the time to learn about; your whakapapa and identity, the history and tikanga of Aotearoa, how you can be an agent of change within your community
Facilitate a kai & kōrero in your whānau or community to talk about issues that you care about. This one is important, not just because it’s an election year, but because conversational with those you love and trust is truly transformational. The successful Ireland Abortion Referendum was an example of this.
Give to organisations that are doing the heavy lifting on causes you care about. The Not for Profit sector will probably take a hit as the economic impacts of Covid make people less likely to give money, but also there are very few ethical sources of funding for NGO’s. If you can give small, regular donations (e.g. $3.50 a week, the same amount you might spend on a coffee!) then that is enormously helpful. Also, if you have technical expertise or are able to volunteer, that can be super helpful.
Elyssia Wilson-Heti, Auckland Black Lives Matter Solidarity Organiser
'Fakaalofa Lahi Atu my name is Elyssia Wilson-Heti I am of Niuean, English mixed heritage. I am a performance artist, activist and producer based in Mangere, Tamaki Makaurau.
'My hope for the future is that we get to a place where every single person can show up in the world as their full self and be embraced, celebrated and loved. We are often made to feel like we have to shrink ourselves to fit into the boxes that society has created and enforced. There is enough space for all of us to thrive, walk in our power and live our truth loud. I firmly believe that the future is intersectional. We all need to get better at working from an intersectional place. No one should be getting left behind. Active kindness, a willingness to sit uncomfortability, an exerted effort to unlearn, relearn and re-centre our thinking about our place in the world is needed in order for us to create equity across the board. The world isn't going to change itself, that's up to us, we all need to do the mahi to shift the current system to be more inclusive of everyone so we can all thrive collectively.
'Real and meaningful representation is needed. I’ve been creating myself and women that look like me in existence for a while in the art I make. That is my hope for the next generation of brown wahine coming up that we get to a point where we are no longer just the one token present ticking the diversity box. Meaningful change is needed, not just lip service. That is my biggest hope for the future, that we will have dismantled the current system and we will all be thriving.'
Lulu Tekeste, Auckland Black Lives Matter Solidarity Organiser
'When I think about what my hope for the future is, only one thing comes to mind. My hope is that my little brothers and sisters, my little cousins, and all the younger members of my community who look like me, won’t have to fight the same fights I am. I hope that they will live a life that is unrestricted so that they can realise their full potential. I hope that they grow into knowing the power they have and harness that every day and contribute to making the world a better place. This is my hope. This is my why. This is why I marched.
'On Sunday 31st May, I was woken up by a phone call from my older brother Mez, who had been feeling really heavy for a few days after having seen all the news coverage surrounding the murder of George Floyd – a Black man killed by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for almost 9 minutes. He wanted to do something about it, and so did I – I just didn’t know how to initiate it. We wanted a space for everyone to come together and collectively grieve, stand in solidarity with Black people in America, and draw attention to the issues here at home. We needed a healthy release of all those built up emotions we had. So we decided to rally and protest. Initially, we had only thought those in the Black community here in New Zealand and a few of our friends would join us. We knew that New Zealand was still in alert level 2 and so we genuinely believed we would be in compliance with the law as we had only anticipated a small crowd. I made the post on Instagram at around 2:30, put my phone down, and went out for lunch. By the time I checked my phone again at 7 pm, my post had received over 3,000 likes and 3,500 people had shares it to their stories. It was shared by the biggest names in Auckland – Israel Adesanya, Jess B, Parris Goebel, and Stan Walker to name a few. By the same time that night, the Facebook event had over 2,700 people attending. That’s when it hit us that we might have started something bigger than any of us could even fathom.
'My brother managed to pull together a group of six to meet at his house that night and strategise as we needed a plan – this group of six would form the core organising team. We met up and worked through all the details we could – marshals; enforcing social distancing; connecting with the mana whenua, Ngāti Whātua, to make sure we had their blessing and ensure that they were involved; organising a line-up of speakers; appointing a police and media liaison; preparing a statement for our media briefing; and other logistical considerations. There was an outpouring of advice and help offered to us through social media by people who have experience in organising. I left my brother’s house at 4:30am and still couldn’t quite process the magnitude of what we had just started.
'Fast forward a few hours later and Auckland City made history at one of the largest protests the city has ever seen in recent years. June 1st, 2020, for me and many of my other Black friends, was a much-needed form of catharsis – it was a space for us to shout, cry, be together and release all the built-up emotions and trauma that we had been internalising for far too long. It was a place where we felt seen, heard and cared for by white and non-Black people of colour in New Zealand. For the first time in my 22 years of living here, I felt like I could say I belonged – that I had a community of people who cared for me and could stand up for me. June 1st, 2020, went down as the greatest, most powerful day of my life.
'As we saw on the 9th of June, NZ Police announced that the Armed Response Team trials would not continue and have no place in the future of New Zealand policing. This is an amazing development. Our march only contributed to this cause, but the real credit should go to the Arms Down NZ Campaign who have been speaking on and fighting for this cause for months. They have themselves to thank for fighting relentlessly. The number of people that showed up in Auckland to march last Monday was just the final seal.
'But the work does not end here. We must continue to advocate for justice and fight for the rights of Black, Indigenous and other people of colour (BIPOC). The history and present reality of colonisation in New Zealand means our Māori people are disproportionately affected negatively in every single aspect – healthcare, housing, education, employment, socioeconomic status, prison. We must fight for equity and for the tino rangatiratanga of our tangata whenua. When Māori rights are valued, then it will follow suit for everyone else. Further, New Zealand has a duty to recognise and acknowledge the Black community here. New Zealand has a moral obligation to speak up against injustices happening all over the world and on our own soil.
'There are many ways that you can help. If you benefit from and are privileged by being white, you need to leverage that for the greater good of everyone. EDUCATE YOURSELVES – and that doesn’t mean asking your BIPOC friends to point you to resources as this is emotionally taxing. We live in the age of information, Google is free! You have the privilege to LEARN about racism instead of EXPERIENCE it and all the trauma that comes with knowing how people that look like you are treated. If you have the means, donate. There are local and international organisations that are on the frontlines of this movement and rely solely on donations. Use your voice and speak up when you see something happening that is not right. This is not a radical action – we are taught this from the very first day we start at primary school.
'My hope for the future is that our rangatahi grow up free and unhindered by racism; that they don’t have to fight the same fights we are fighting right now. My hope for the future is that justice will prevail, both here in New Zealand, and globally.
If you are stuck on where to start, the following are great resources:
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander / How to be an Anti-Raicst – Ibram X. Kendi / Me and White Supremacy – Layla F Saad / Pleasure Activism – Adrienne Maree Brown / Eloquent Rage - Brittney Cooper / Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge / Decolonising the Mind - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Films/Documentaries/Series:
When They See Us – Ava Duvernay / TIME: A Kalief Browder Story – Jenner Furst / American Son – Kenny Leon / LA 92 – Daniel Lindsay & T. J. Martin / 13th – Ava Duvernay / The Hate U Give – George Tillman Jr. / Seven Seconds – Veena Sud
Educational Resources:
TĀTOUTĀTOU
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Local Black Creatives
BLM Support Rally Auckland June 14th AUCKLAND MARCH IN SOLIDARITY
Vere Sharma, RUBY Board Member
'I was born in 1955 in New Delhi, India. I have two older brothers and in those days clothes were handed down to me. My mother, Anne, owned a clothing boutique in Khan Market, Delhi where she had six seamstresses who were my first teachers. I watched them sew for hours in the thick heat, they never seemed flustered. I was immersed in fashion from a young age. Anne had a knack for replicating trends and patterns she found appealing on Carnaby Street in London and adapting them for her community. There’s a beautiful order to the chaos in India, my childhood was simple, we took what we needed, nothing more. We respected our neighbours. It’s an unspoken principle in India to give back to your community if you have the means to do so.
'I’ve been in the New Zealand rag trade for over 40 years. Principals I learnt from sitting on a stool in my mum’s shop still guide me today. I’ve been a textile agent, importer, wholesaler and finally, a retailer. In every role I’ve undertaken, I’ve watched the economy evolve, trends become fads, practices become out-dated. I thrive on being able to adapt. Complacency has never been an option for me.
'I’ve raised five kids and endeavoured to pass on the same knowledge that was passed onto me. We need to be agile, nimble and we need to bend under pressure – but, never break.
'My eldest son, Jared, recently wrote about the false dilemma that is choosing between economic prosperity and environmental protection. Good business practices that stimulate our economy, but don’t take away from our environment. You can have both if you lead with dignity. In the last few years I’ve seen sustainability sit front row, it has led our conversations at family dinners. I believe this ‘theme’ will no longer be a goal, but a mindset; the pandemic will cement this.
'The pandemic has demanded us to reflect on our structures, take a step back, and highlight what we’re investing attention and resources into that may be better spent elsewhere. To confront complacency head-on and adapt.
'I’m a new grandfather, I owe it to my grandchildren to lead with dignity. I will ensure my team invests resources into protecting our environment, while creating a product that inspires our community. We need to stay nimble. Of course, investing in digital structures is essential, however ensuring our digital footprint is aligned with our holistic approach to creating clothing that is true to our brand, is fundamental.
'We owe it to each other, we owe it to the future generations to come.'
Zoe Walker Ahwa, Journalist
'Yesterday I read a Business of Fashion story on how New York brand Telfar is dealing with the pandemic, and this line from designer Telfar Clemens stood out: “This is a period of chill. Let’s figure out how you sell these ideas you’ve been making for 20 years.”
'Fashion has been moving at an insane pace, but this is a forced pause - a period of chill to stop and really think about what we want our industry to be. We’ve been doing things a certain way for years, but that doesn’t mean its the right way. The ramifications of the pandemic on fashion, here and overseas, are huge, and we won’t know the full extent for some time. But a few things I’m hopeful for after all of this…
'Things will be smaller, and slower.
'Our industry is going to shrink with fewer brands and fewer stores. And ultimately I hope, fewer clothes. This is a good thing.
'It’s something I’ve been thinking about long before this lockdown: yes, there are too many clothes from fast fashion brands. But even at a local level, in my beloved local industry, I think there has been too much stuff: overproduction of clothes and content.
'If they aren’t doing it already, brands will be forced into new ways of working - revisiting their archives, keeping clothes around for longer, repurposing and up-cycling fabrics rather than investing in more and new.
'More consumers will start to embrace a make do and mend mentality. I loved RUBY’s sewing classes: to me, this typifies the future of brands, educating and building community while offering clothes are are fun and exciting; because fashion also needs to continue to serve the purpose of being inspiring and challenging.
'Like ‘sustainability’, kindness is another word that’s being used a lot right now. But what does that actually mean? I saw an Instagram comment somewhere that asked, ‘OK, but what brands are actually putting this into action?’ and that struck me.
'To me it’s those that feel personal, intimate, friendly. I’ve watched more brands try to do this since our lockdown, but I think audiences are aware of those who aren’t necessarily doing it genuinely or when it feels like it’s part of a boardroom marketing strategy. Literally everyone is creating content right now, but not all content is good content.
'This more personal approach is how we will move things forward. Even in how we present fashion: I’ve felt this for some time, but after all of this especially, I think overly produced, too-slick imagery and content will feel like it's from a completely different time.
'I really hope this also means more industry collaboration. We saw the start of this creatively before the pandemic - Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, Dries van Noten and Christian Lacroix - but I hope this sparks collaboration at a more business focused level.
'Traditionally - perhaps because it’s so small - the NZ fashion industry has kept things close to their chests; with some designers not necessarily wanting to share information. Working together to share resources and ideas will be how we recover from this.
'Everyone is taking a hit, so how can we all work together to make sure our industry survives and thrives? Collaboration, and initiatives like Mindful Fashion, will be even more important, as people from all facets of the industry (and beyond) come together to develop a new way of thinking and working.'
Mimi Gilmour, Burger Burger Co-Founder & Hospitality Creative Consultant
'The past month feels like a dream. There are a lot of things you can prepare yourselves for in business - fluctuating sales, sudden illness of key team members, delays in new store openings, supply shortages - but somehow, we never thought we’d have to prepare to be shut down completely, in a very short time, due to a global pandemic. The situation we are faced with has been extremely confronting personally and professionally, but I’m feeling surprisingly optimistic about the future.
'The whole world feels upside down right now but in amongst all the darkness, I’ve seen lots of light. I am so thankful for my health, my handsome husband (who is my rock), my beautiful babies and my incredible support network of inspiring and loving friends and family. I’m grateful for this unexpected time it has given me to indulge in quality time with my daughters. I’m also grateful for the opportunity to pause and rethink how our business can best serve our community.
'I know it’s an enormous privilege that I have the time to slow down and think about the future. For many, both in New Zealand and around the world, this pandemic has brought nothing but fear and loss. As a hospitality business owner, there has been (a lot) of stress, but I’ve been trying to keep sight of the big picture, and I realise how lucky I am.
'Even prior to the pandemic, things were vastly different to how they were when we started Burger Burger. Back then, I had no children, there were one third of the amount of restaurants there are now, UberEats and My Food Bag didn’t exist, construction costs weren’t unobtainable, we didn’t have megamalls on every corner streaming in international brands and most importantly, I had all the time and energy in the world to throw myself into anything and everything! I don’t know about you, but more and more over the past few years I’ve found myself asking how, as a mother/boss/friend/family member/woman, I am meant to keep up when the world around us seems to be spinning faster and faster. This time at home has allowed me to start to think about some answers.
'Yes, the future of our industry will be different to what we know. Hospitality is by definition ‘the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors & strangers’. In an increasingly digital world where ‘social distancing’ could be the new normal, we may have to find new ways to bring this definition to life.
'Online, we’re seeing some really interesting developments. Not only is the restaurant community sharing recipes for meals but they are sharing basic fundamentals like how to cut an onion properly (thank you, handsome Josh), signature dishes that can be recreated at home (BB Broccoli!), and ways to teach children meals from many different cultures.
'Perhaps the future of hospitality means a refreshed perspective on cooking. I think there will definitely be a new appreciation for fresh, locally sourced produce. I know there will be a reaffirmation of the need for community. We are going to have to embrace technology if we want to survive but instead of being held hostage to unreasonable commission rates of ginormous corporations, I believe there will be more local solutions presenting themselves.
'I think our industry will see a lot more collaboration in the future. For us, some of the most surprising relationships that have evolved in this situation have been those we have with our landlords. What have usually been very transactional in nature have been transformed and I am incredibly grateful for the empathetic position our landlords have taken. We have had similar conversations with - and received amazing support from - our suppliers, many of whom are in similar positions to us. It’s been a humble reminder that the best problem solving happens when small and big businesses, and the people behind them, work together.
'Next week I am going to lay all my cards on the table and ask our customers to tell us what they want from us in the future. We (our industry, our economy) need people to start spending again, but we also know that things have changed. Many people’s situations, expectations and perspectives have shifted. I’m ready to listen, I’m ready to make changes and I’m ready to make them fast. We need to adapt to what this new world presents, and what role our industry now needs to play. I do know that we are not going anywhere. We passionately believe that the restaurant industry is crucial to a happy community and therefore we will fight to keep the dream alive.'
Chris Parker, Comedian
'I think it’s a tricky one for us live performers, our work really relies on having 100 people in a room (usually a basement somewhere) laughing at our jokes. That's where all our discoveries are made. So a lot of us are really just trying to hold tight at the moment. While the Instagram live concerts are delightful and charming... they will never make up for the real thing. I would say it has been a really interesting equaliser this event. I love to see those performers who have the ability to make work from their own house with their phones shine through. In a weird way those who have less are able to move faster than those larger tv organisations who have to work through bureaucratic systems, often meaning their work arrives a little late. The internet will always beat television in the race which is almost critical in a time like this.
'I would say the turn out most New Zealand comedians deliver every year is so high. I think maybe audiences underestimate the work that goes into delivering a new hour of comedy. Which they should, it's none of their business. I do wonder if this pause will maybe create a space for the industry to catch its breath, gear up and get ready to rip into it when the doors do open again.
'Personally, I've been surprised by the confidence I feel in making my own work from home. I think to be surrounded by my things, to be able to wear track-pants in zoom calls. It allows me to feel grounded and strong in a way I have never before. I wish to carry that strength through when I am back inside more conventional working environments.
'I can't wait to see what this time produces, later down the line, after the flood gates open and every weekend is packed full with gigs and shows which were dreamed up in isolation. I can't wait to be in that time, and support it. All those artists are going to need your support.'
Hayley White, Co-Director Auckland Art Fair & Co-Founder ArtNow
'Like many industries, both the art world and the events industry have been hugely disrupted by Covid-19. We had to cancel the 2020 Fair less than six weeks before it was scheduled to open. Similarly, all galleries and museums across New Zealand have been closed for the last four weeks, so ArtNow - the online listing site for contemporary art exhibitions and events – has had to change the way it gets people engaging with art.
'From a business perspective, cancelling an event isn’t great. Depending on where you are in the cycle when you have to cancel, you’ve likely committed expense AND you need to refund any income. Not only for the Art Fair, but across the events industry, Covid-19 has meant a 100 percent loss in activities and revenue for event companies and contractors. Hundreds of staff have been made redundant, and at the moment no one is sure when events will be able to open again, and when that does happen, how people will feel about attending.
'Galleries and their artists – and the arts and culture sectors more generally - are another group experiencing incredibly tough times right now. More than 150 artists were scheduled to show at the Art Fair – and the work in many cases was finished or nearly complete, but for artists, they don’t get paid until it is sold. Equally for galleries, while the doors remain shut, less people are viewing and buying art, but their costs for rent and staff have not gone away.
'We’ve seen a number of galleries, institutions and art fairs around the world and in New Zealand (ourselves included) race to adapt to this new digital way of life.
'For me, following the cancellation of the Fair, I’ve never had so much time to read, click and ponder, and right now there seems to be a plethora of online arts content and clever thinking in response to what is going on that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
'While in many ways it has been inspiring, the question remains whether “all this digital” actually helps support the artists the industry seeks to serve?
'Will a digital exhibition ever replace the real thing? 'Will “extra reach” online be enough to “pay” an artist who has been labouring over their work long before Covid-19? 'Will our Virtual Art Fair incite the same interest, and have similar outcomes for our galleries and their artists?
'But rather than sit in the sidelines and mourn, we wanted to do something that we thought could help our clients (the galleries) and their artists. So, in response to this new era of social distancing and all-things-digital, we’ve launched a Virtual Art Fair that’s free attend from your computer – it opened on Thursday 30th of April at 11am and closes on 15 May.
'It’s a celebration - as best we can – of the talent and diversity of art making in our region. And we hope that wherever possible, some of these artists and galleries will be supported by someone buying a work of art.
'For our online visitors – who can now easily “visit” from around the world – we hope it will introduce them to new galleries and new artists, and offer some welcome solace and escapism.
'All around us right now, we are hearing of the importance of art - something we know to be true at all times, but especially in troubled times.
'One thing that has been really encouraging to see over the last few weeks, is that although we are all physically separated, the will to work together, to collaborate and cooperate is growing in the visual arts community. The Art Fair is very much about presenting contemporary galleries to the public, not just about each individual gallery, but how we come together. Which was our premise for creating ArtNow. It is easy to say “we are all in this together” at a time like now, but I think it is important that the same remains true, and maybe even more so in better times.
'Other than that, right now, I have to be honest, that my hope is we’ll return to some semblance of normality soon, and it will be safe to see friends, visit exhibitions, eat at restaurants and attend events.
'But until then, there’s so much to appreciate about the internet, so much to read, watch and listen to online whilst we remain at Level 3. This time has allowed Auckland Art Fair the opportunity and space to try something which may even reach and connect with a new audience who is yet to see just how essential the arts are.
'So, I hope you’ll join us online for our very first Virtual Art Fair, made possible thanks to 35 participating galleries – 9 from Australia, 1 from the UK, 1 from Beijing and New York and 24 from across New Zealand - and our principal partners ANZ Private and Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED).'
Valentina Pook, Age 5
'I don't like talking about the planet, maybe because it's too sad? But I want the world to look cleaner. On the news one day there was 1000 pieces of plastic in the sea. I'm hoping that will go away but if it doesn't I'll go down to the sea and clear it away. I hope everyone will be more careful of the planet. A kid I know, he always had plastic in his lunchbox. He'll stop that. After the corona virus is gone, I hope the world won't smell like anything but fresh air.
'I also want people to be kinder. Right now we don't go near people which is hard. I'm most excited about bursting our bubble with our grandma. We're going to give her big hugs and kisses.
'Parents are spending more time protecting their kids from the virus. When it's gone I hope that I get to spend time with my family. Mummy and Daddy need to work less and bike ride with us more. I have enjoyed having Mum and Dad at home more but miss seeing my friends. I'm going to be really happy to see all my friends and have some little playdates. It's my birthday in 6 weeks and I really hope I can have a party with them.
'After the corona virus is gone there will be a lot of people out and about at shops and supermarkets. And they'll be happy. We'll bike more than we drive. We'll be eating way more food. And we'll help out more. It's easier for our parents if we do. They cook, we clean. That means we all get to do something to help out and I really enjoy that.
'Oh and after the coron avirus is gone, I'd like a pet dog.'
Dame Pieter Stewart, New Zealand Fashion Week Founder
There will be opportunities for the New Zealand fashion industry.
'New Zealand Fashion Week turns 20 this year – what a milestone - to hold its position as the leading, longest-running creative industry event in the country. This is huge – not just for the event but for the entire fashion industry and all the wonderful people who have been involved over the last 20 years.
'A 2020 committee of industry experts had been set up to plan special celebrations, aiming to include as many of those designers as possible who began the journey with us in 2001. Partners were also coming up with exciting ideas to celebrate – to make sure they were part of this – we will never be 20 again! The prospectus was ready to go to the designers, but there was a niggle in the back of my mind as COVID-19 took hold across the globe and I began discussing postponement of the event because it was becoming clear that mass gatherings would be unlikely, even 5 months ahead. So we took the hard decision to postpone the event and essentially put the company into hibernation – until when – we don’t know.
'I worry for the fashion industry – they are all facing huge financial stress coming at them from every angle from loss of assets and income – virtually losing an entire season and most likely carrying a lot of inventory as there has been no opportunity to sell it and in some cases, inventory not yet paid for either. There will be very little money around for extras, the habits of shoppers are changing very quickly, and for many clothes will become a necessity rather than an option. There won’t be places to go, as mass gatherings are likely to be last to reappear, and for an industry highly reliant on discretionary spend, global travel, and physical retail stores, there will be a slowing of spending and decreased demand, and supply from international sources is likely to be unreliable.
'I applaud the government for so proactively looking after those in jobs – but there has been far less thought it seems for the person who pays that worker. Sure – everybody would like to have their workforce available once this is over – but how to pay them with absolutely no income and fixed costs still running, is the problem most business owners face. This is not unique to any industry right now, with the tourism and hospitality industries being affected for some time already and the knock-on effect not even something we can realistically imagine yet.
'Regardless of what has been said, many businesses these days run on very tight margins – it does not mean they are not strong businesses, and in many cases if we lose too many of these operations, we will lose the base of creativity that makes our country so special.
'As an event, we employ mainly contractors – and over the months of runup to the event there is a lot of them. The last analysis of this estimated we employed 124 full time equivalents – so that’s an awful lot of people who cannot look to NZFW for their income this year – and who knows whether these vibrant and creative events will ever become the norm again.
'We are getting a sense of what sustainability really means as we live in our bubbles focusing on our basic needs. Our days revolve around eating good food which we have planned for not just picked up at the takeaway, getting some fresh air and exercise so we don’t go stir crazy, and making an effort to get on with those in our bubble by being kind. We are so lucky to have the advantage of technology to easily be able to call, FaceTime, email others, and get our news from multiple different sources and where possible continue with work.
'Because we have no idea what our futures will look like – we are forced to live in the moment – something we all aspire to, but oh so hard to do, and I’m sure after a novel time of doing all sorts of things we haven’t had time to do for so long, and sleeping well because there is no point in worrying about it – the inevitable anxiety and uncertainty creeps into our minds, not helped by the fact that we can’t enjoy the company of our colleagues or get a hug when needed. Everything is on pause – a most unnatural situation for all of us.
'In this new conscious living, I hope we will leave the consumption of pre COVID 19 behind us and value more the simpler things of life. It’s time to break old habits and find new ways of living.
'The world has been on a treadmill of consumerism for some years, which coronavirus has highlighted, forcing us to slow down and giving the chance to change our ways – it really has only been a matter of time before a reset had to happen somehow.
'Internationally, the Luxury market has been mindboggling and from our corner of the world difficult to understand. So much of our everyday consumption has been excessive, highlighted by the fact that in lockdown we spend very little.
'So what are we left with after coronavirus? There will be many different scenarios in different businesses – certainly not one size fits all – but we do know the world will be different. We are facing a new life altogether.
'We have been encouraging our designers and supporting them to work towards responsible business models for some time – so as this amazing industry rebuilds, NZFW will also find ways to support the industry.
'Like the fashion industry worldwide, we face an uncertain future, but after a pretty tricky time for most, the industry will rebuild, and it’s a great opportunity with the enforced slower pace and social distancing to reinvent and recreate.
'It brings the values we have discussed such a lot lately into sharp focus and is the perfect opportunity for this industry to intensify discussions and actions and give more socially responsible brands the chance to shine.
'Creating relationships with the customer will be even more important – more often going bespoke and private, which I note some are planning already. Investment pieces that will last forever will become more important as the consumer becomes more responsible, with a much more local focus on buying and producing, and quality over quantity being key.
'NZFW has been encouraging the seasonless model for some time – fashion that can carry over from season on to season offering year round versatility, wearability and longevity and are always researching new ways of direct to consumer activity, facilitating the shorter fashion cycles, digitising, and fine tuning the fashion audience.
'The tensions between sustainable business models and responsible operations have been key challenges for many years and will be in the years ahead. New Zealand can show the way of increasing responsible operations by wherever possible sourcing more sustainable fabrics, streamlining operations, editing collections, avoiding overproduction, - all these things will help rebuild a stronger industry.
'We will find new ways of creating activations to donate, reuse, re-purpose, recycle and resale – our beautiful NZ fashion deserves many more than one life. Our designers have a reputation for making high quality clothes in beautiful fabrics – designed to last and look good after being worn many times.
'The New Zealand fashion industry is varied and diverse, and all need to strive for the best possible level of responsible and ethical business practice that works for each individual business, understanding their supply chain and looking towards long fashion rather than fast fashion.
'Although we cannot use Fashion Week this year to lead our industry in a conversation around this goal, NZFW will continue to explore ways to support this exciting creative industry as we leave the safe and predictable to explore new possibilities.'
Gary Fernandez, Fernandez Cutting Services
'I have been involved in the clothing industry for 55 years, starting out doing a five year apprenticeship in cutting. I went straight from school to train at a business called Rainster which was located in upper Queen St. It was a large factory, as many were in those days, employing one hundred plus staff. Back then all stages of production, design, cut and manufacture were done in house. Rainster specialised in men’s and women’s jackets and coats. We also cut upholstery for cars so we worked with a variety of different fabrics and the average cut consisted of 200-300 units.
'I remained there for a year or so after completing my apprenticeship and then left to see if I could make it on my own as a contract cutter working independently. I was probably one of a very small handful doing so at that time. To begin with I set up a cutting bench in the basement of my home before moving to my present premises where I have been ever since. In later years the industry began to grow and change. Businesses started sending work out to cutters and makers and back to their premises for distribution to retail outlets.
'In the early days a lot of fabric was produced in New Zealand in places such as the Bonds Mill in Otara, Auckland and I believe it was of better quality than what was sourced from overseas later on. The cost may have been higher but the garments would have been a lot more durable and kept for longer. I see a problem with the cheaper items being disposed of more frequently thus putting pressure on landfill. It would be good to see a return to using New Zealand made materials if feasible.
'It also concerns me that a lot of cutters are getting to the age of retirement (or past it like myself) and no-one is coming through the system to replace them. How to attract young people to the trade needs investigating. However I have enjoyed all the years I have spent in the industry and got a lot of satisfaction out of my contribution to it. I am heartened to see the younger people in the business of producing clothing today thinking about the future of it and how best to proceed.'
Ash Owens, Digital Content Creator & Social Media Influencer
'For most industries, especially in the creative and advertising world, people have had to reflect on decades of industry success, what works, what doesn’t, what needs to change, how to adapt to global events and trends. When a global pandemic hits, what has worked for twenty years simply just doesn’t anymore, businesses have had to adapt quicker than someone can say “recession”.
'As a full time self-employed millennial who uses social media platforms & a lifestyle blog to make a living, this downtime has been equally nerve wracking as it has been fascinating. The social media industry only has about 10 years to reflect on, influencer marketing.. maybe 5 at most here in New Zealand. In the world of business, that’s not a long time to cement your habits, to make mistakes you can learn from, so my ultimate hope for social media marketing is that it has the fluid, youthful naivety to ride the wave, go with the flow, and see success due to its ability to access constant two-way communication with social media users, AKA 74% of the New Zealand population as of 2018.
'This access to the population is hugely valuable, hence the success of social media marketing, but this means that there is a huge responsibility to understand the population, read the room and work accordingly, especially during a time of nationwide self-reflection and economic anxiety. For me personally, daily chit chats with my community via Instagram DM has been more important than ever, not only because I love connecting with people (truly a natural born blogger) but because I care about their interests, how the pandemic has made them feel. They are a community I have built over 5 years and a lot of them I speak to daily like they are my best friends in the offline world. I know that things like fashion & educational content about skincare is hugely distracting content to consume, and that people rely on it to maintain a relationship with their personal interests, but I also know that the way this content is sought after, the type of fashion and beauty content they are looking for has drastically changed over the last couple of years, and change is brewing even bigger as we speak.
'When it comes to shopping, New Zealanders value integrity, sustainability, locally made and quality products and it’s becoming more clear than ever before that the shift towards things like capsule wardrobes & ditching food delivery services to ordering direct from restaurants (because Kiwis are just awesome like that) are becoming more and more valued, especially as we endure this experience where we realise what matters, and also what we are happily able to live without.
'So how do social attitudes like this affect industries like advertising and social media marketing? Going forward I’m hoping for more long term relationships with brands and social media users. In the past, social media marketing has been all about getting as many one off sponsorships from various brands as possible, where brands are wanting to work with 30+ creators and creators are wanting to work with 10 different brands every month. This is where I see the biggest change coming and thank goodness because things were starting to get a little OTT.
'For social media marketing to continue working successfully with integrity, it has got to find a way to advertise with influencers & creators in a way that is honest, authentic and reflects how society is feeling right now, otherwise what’s the point? I know that when I discover a new brand, I want to support them long term, and this is how advertising has got to change. Brands and businesses need to pick wisely with social media influencers who align with their values, and work with them long term in more of an ambassadorship capacity rather than a quick one off job because that simply doesn’t hold the attention of New Zealanders whose values have changed and developed, especially during and after a pandemic. Kiwis want to see honesty and transparency more than ever before, and there’s nothing more honest than a mutual relationship between a brand and an influencer who has worked together for 2+ years, the love and passion is obvious and clear. This is where trust can be built with a nation that is under financial stress, and if advertising wants access to these people they have got to work with digital influencers and creators who are onboard with delivering advertising messages in the most authentic way possible, because it is possible, and it needs to happen.
'Valuable, long term relationships and collaborations, transparency, and mutual respect for brands, influencers and social media users is key for the industry going forward, and I cannot wait to see this industry flourish and mature as we all put a huge focus on communicating with one another. Social media is only in its infant age, so we all better buckle up and take control so that everyone can benefit from it.'
Lauren Gunn, Colleen Founder & Hair and Makeup Artist
'It has been a wild ride and it’s a pleasure now to be thinking about the good things that we can take from our experience with Covid-19.
'On Monday 20th March, Colleen closed our doors and said adieu to our clients for the foreseeable future. We stepped into the unknown and unpredictable world of lockdown. We also stepped into a new world of opportunity.
'Digital channels became our way of engaging with our clients. Last year we launched colleen.nz, our online shop and our platform for hair advice, insight and expertise. We started to use Instagram and IGTV, Livechat, SMS, email and Facebook, to interact, educate and connect with each other, and we loved it. I think the effects of Covid-19 lockdown has shown us that the scope and desire for human connection is boundless and opened up our eyes to the potential of the digital landscape to interact and extend our care for people’s hair beyond the salon to their living rooms and bathrooms. We can’t give someone a haircut over zoom (although some people have given it a crack) yet for every hairdresser it brings us so much pleasure to have even a small impact on how a person enjoys their hair day to day. Imagine how rewarding it is for us when we can extend that beyond the salon to hundreds or thousands of people. It brings us joy.
'Level 2 of lockdown has come with some pretty gnarly strings attached for us. We invested a lot of time preparing to meet our customer’s needs, and ‘read the room’. Yes, we had Ministry of Health guidelines to meet but it was much more important to us to set up the salon to provide care and consideration to anyone walking through the door plus absolutely nail what they wanted for their hair. The idea of going back to basics is interesting. Our customers hire us to give them good hair and that’s what we do. That has always been our focus and it always will be. Serving good coffee, playing great music, a beautiful fit-out, the latest magazine, stylists decked out in designer wardrobes – all of these are lovely things but they are pointless if you can’t do a good haircut or deliver a beautiful color for your customer in a reasonable timeframe. I feel very strongly about the value in what we do being placed squarely on our skills as crafts people. I hope that our experience with lockdown will bring that back into focus for our industry.
'Hairdressers are VERY into community. We have the tea on all the best local eating spots; fashion, coffee, dentists, physio, ceramics, beauty. Pretty much anything you can think of we have a hook up. I’m so excited by the Support Local movement. It took a global pandemic to make it a thing but I really hope that this is a movement that is here to stay.
'So, what does the future look like?'
Sarah Jane Hough, Creative Producer
'It has become expected that designers consider every step of their production process in order to make their businesses more ethical and sustainable. Everything needs to be taken into consideration. The story people want to know about a garment is made up of the sum of its parts - who made the fabric and from what, who did the sewing and under what conditions and at what impact on the community they came from. ‘Who made my clothes?’ is a growing movement that is fast becoming a mainstream way of thinking. Many brands are becoming greener not because they necessarily have a burning desire to do so but simply to keep up with what is expected.
'There is power in everyone expecting things to be done better - they get better.
'The back story of a photoshoot, of a show, of creative content or brand experiences has until very recently not been given the same level of industry wide scrutiny - as an industry we have a long way to go to catch up with our fashion industry contemporaries. As a Creative Producer I am looking to my friends and colleagues in the fashion industry to help me create my own path toward a more ethical and sustainable way of working. I want to tap into the collective energy around living up to the expectations of a cleaner kinder industry.
'As we move into the new normal I am excited to apply the same critical thinking that brands like RUBY, Maggie Marilyn and Kowtow apply to their supply chains. I have been asking myself questions around the resources I use and look at where things come from and how I can adapt what was normal to what I can do better. Simple switches like reusable water bottles have personally reduced the waste produced on my sets by about 1/3. Not printing call sheets has meant I have used less than a ream of paper this year in comparison to 10 reams this time last year. Simple changes that go along way.
'For me lockdown has given me a renewed sense of appreciation and love for what I do. A love for the people I get to work with, from the agencies who brief us on projects to the clients who trust us to tell their stories. I believe that pressing play again after eight weeks of stillness means we bring with us an energy and a commitment to do better because now we know better. Well at least I hope we do….. I mean it’s almost law in NZ to be kind these days!'
Grace Stratton, Co-Founder All is for All
'All is for All is a disability led business, as I am a wheelchair user. My hope for the future is that more disabled people can become business leaders and more businesses led by disabled people, can be enabled to reach higher heights. I think that for many years, disabled people have been unable to become leaders, due to inaccessible social structures and stigmas, I would like to think - I hope, that this period of time can illuminate the need to break these down - and pursue equity, above all.
'My hope for the future, is also that we measure success in diverse ways. Economic success is only one measurement, equally important is doing better for people and planet. Investing in belonging, inclusive culture, accessibility - these should be measures of our success too - and they should be upheld just as much as our economic successes. I hope that if we can shift toward holistic investment, we can build companies that also create a better world - and give as much back, as they may take.'
Christine Sharma, RUBY Managing Director
'I am hoping our industry looks more diverse on a New Zealand foundation. We have so much creativity around us and it’s time that our industry stopped taking the lead from overseas brands and believed in ourselves and our own DNA.
'It is so important that we do support our NZ businesses, otherwise the scope of NZ labels will be reduced and the prospect of a "cookie cut shopping environment" looms.
'With the ripple effect of Covid-19, everyone has had to throw all their cards up in the air, see what lands face way up and go with it. This is a time to go back to basics, looking at our new way of living and reviewing the changes in our shopping habits. Businesses are having to adapt to this change in behaviour and rethink their retail footprint.
'The buzz aspect of all this is of course that online will define…and yes it will. It reaches where no retail store can exist, however, it is never going to replace the wonderful feeling of walking into a retail environment. Brick and mortar provides the space for a welcoming, warm and tactile experience that a screen will never do, so finding that balance is key.'
Alanna Ramsay, Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand Fundraising & Campaigns Officer
'Kia ora tātou!
Ko Rangitoto te maunga
Ko Hauraki te awa
Nō Scotland ahau
Ko Ramsay tōku whanāu
Ko Alanna tōku ingoa
Tihe mauri ora!
'It is a pleasure, on behalf of the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand (MHF), to share with you our tūmanako/hope for the future of mental health kōrero/conversations in Aotearoa!
'MHF is a mental health charity with a vision of creating a society, where all people can enjoy positive mental health and wellbeing, regardless of whether or not they have a mental illness or experience of mental distress. Wellbeing is for everybody, and we want to make sure people who have experienced mental distress have the tools and support they need to live well. Our whakataukī is Mauri tū, Mauri ora. This kōrero is a constant reminder of our commitment to actively supporting individuals and communities to flourish by providing resources that will positively affect your wellbeing.
'Through our work on resources and our positive health promotion campaigns like Mental Health Awareness Week and Pink Shirt Day, our tūmanako/hope is that we will spark kōrero/conversation about mental health between friends, around whānau dinner tables, in schools, amongst colleagues at work and across communities in Aotearoa. When we start having open kōrero/conversations, we can support one another and realise that we all have our ups and downs. It is important to acknowledge everyone goes through hard times, and sometimes your mental health and wellbeing might not feel as good as you’d like. We want all New Zealanders to understand that mental health is a taonga/treasure that we all have.
'If after kōrero you’re worried about someone or feeling like you need some tautoko/support, there is help available – no one should go through a tough time alone. With one in five Kiwis experiencing a mental illness each year, it’s important to remember that with the right tautoko/support most people recover and live well, even if they continue to experience periods of mental distress. For guidance and support on what to do if you are worried about someone or need some tautoko/support, check out our website or remember you can text or call 1737, to talk to a trained counsellor, this service is free to use.
'We are extremely grateful to Ruby, and all our wonderful fundraisers, who support us and make this important mahi possible. Join Ruby and help our work by starting the kōrero about mental health! We are here to support you on your journey of raising awareness about mental health and wellbeing, check out our website for free resources and guidance to get started.
'Mauri tū, Mauri ora.'
Charli Cox, Koha Apparel Founder
'Koha Apparel is a not-for-profit, pay-as-you-can retail experience that runs every week throughout Auckland, using repurposed apparel. Our mission is repurposing quality clothing for those in need. Our store utilises a pay-as-you-can system which allows those struggling financially to access clean clothing for free. We also aim to reduce the amount of clothing waste going to landfill.
'Since the beginning of 2019, we have been providing clean, quality new, and second-hand clothing to the vulnerable people in Auckland. We receive donations of clothing from New Zealand brands, as well as second-hand clothing. The clothing is repaired by volunteers where necessary and laundered before it is made available in our pop-up outlets.
'Now more now than ever, change is at the forefront of the fashion industry. This time for many people has been a chance to slow the pace and I believe so much more can be achieved by the fashion industry by giving back to the community. Koha is supported by some NZ brands. We collect and distribute their end-of-season, seconds, and sample stock. We are looking to partner with other New Zealand fashion brands - in an ethical response to waste. The awareness around this is progressing, brand mindsets are changing this is no longer seen as devaluing the brand but a positive call to action for those vulnerable in our community. Industry collaboration is the future….
'Awareness is growing, consumers are investing in buying better and will continue to do so. There is now a focus around buying recycled fibres, classic timeless pieces that are gentler on the planet and have an extended life cycle and buying fewer. Koha runs regular markets to encourage people to think differently to make first time shoppers, second-hand shoppers. This eases the environmental impact the fast fashion industry is having on our country and planet. Sustainable fashion is more desirable now than it has ever been, I believe we can transform the industry, but we must collectively work together, to share knowledge, and educate our consumers.
'Today, people are more open and honest with their daily struggles, opening up about their mental health everyone has their triggers and pressure points. Our pop up creates a hub where people can unite together, build relationships, and feel reassured that they are being looked after by the local community. Having these interactions and conversations can potentially change their day or week for the better. Much like food, water, shelter, clothing is a basic need and yet one that many in our communities have unmet - access to clean, quality clothing. I believe every person in the morning should feel good in whatever they put on, it can really set the tone for your day and your mood if you feel confident and comfortable in what you are wearing.
'Since starting Koha, the demand and reach for our services has risen significantly and even more so since NZ went to COVID-19 Alert Level 4 in March. The harsh reality is we need to acknowledge the truth that we cannot continue living as we do today, we are affecting a lot of people and the planet. There are many outreach programs throughout Auckland that we are collaborating with weekly, our community is more open than ever to support those vulnerable in our community with meals, clothing, and services to improve their life for the better. Wellbeing is at the forefront of people’s minds. We have been so lucky since setting out with the people we have connected within our community who are equally as passionate around the many aspects of Koha, the majority of these connections are made through our social media channels. It’s truly humbling with people reaching out to donate their unwanted wardrobe items, time at our weekly pop-ups or skills in support with repairing garments, social media, photography the list goes on! I am no cross-functional expert but luckily you do not need to be when people believe in what you do and want to be a part of it.'
Adray Minh Nguyen, Non-Binary Activist & Environmental Scientist
'First of all, I am very honoured to be a part of Ruby 'The Best Is Yet To Come.' I would like to continue TBIYTC with my thoughts and hopes for our LGBTQ+ community as we move forward into the future together.
'As we are all still dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic; we, as a whole, should not be fearful of it. We should all see this as an opportunity to remember our past and how we got here. The LGBTQ+ community, in fact, has been dealing with a much similar situation - the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the 80s, when the pandemic broke out, it started the on-going stigma and discrimination against our community, especially gay and bisexual men.
'HIV/AIDS was initially labelled as the “gay cancer” or the “gay-related immune deficiency” leading to the double stigmas against gay and bisexual men: HIV stigma and gay-related stigma causing significant psychological stress. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that HIV stigma can affect gay and bisexual men's income, employability, access to health insurance and quality health care. The stigma also prevents them from being open to others limiting social support from others; whilst impacting their ability to have and maintain long-term relationships adding to poor mental health, coping skills leading to substance abuse, risky behaviours, and suicide attempts. Logie et al. (2020) found that HIV, depression, and substance use mutually reinforcing each other situated in larger social contexts of stigma; while alcohol use was considered a coping mechanism among LGBTQ+ community. The study also found that pervasive stigma acts as barriers to healthcare engagement increasing HIV vulnerabilities. COVID-19 reminds us of our past and the fights that those before us fought for our reality.
'Dr Fauci suggested that the impact of HIV/AIDS on LGBTQ+ community is similar to the impact COVID-19 is having on African-Americans, shining a light on the health disparities in the African-American community. In other words, now is our time to carry on the legacy and fight the fight for equality not just for us but for others who are vulnerable. There is a much longer road to go and we can not do this ourselves! We need to lend our arms and strength to our vulnerable people of colours, our cisgender sisters, our transgender sisters and brothers and our non-binary people. Because we can not expect others to help if we, ourselves, are not willing to help them.
'Our responsibility now is to help and protect transgender and non-binary people, especially transgender and non-binary people of colour as they are the most vulnerable in our community. The Human Rights Campaign suggested that there were, at least, 26 deaths of transgender or gender non-conforming people in the U.S. due to fatal violence, the majority of whom were Black transgender women; whilst at least 27 transgender or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by other violent means recorded in 2019. The names and stories of the victims are listed below and I would like to ask you to spend some time to read their stories and honour their lives:
Dana Martin, 31, a Black transgender woman, was fatally shot in Montgomery, Alabama, on January 6. Daroneshia Duncan-Boyd, an Alabama-based trans advocate, said that “she was a person that was loved by many.”
Ellie Marie Washtock, 38, a gender non-conforming person, was fatally shot in St. Augustine, Florida, on January 31. Washtock was a parent of two children. Loved ones noted the death on a memorial website: “My heart was torn 1-31-2019 when I heard you were taken. You are loved forever.”
Ashanti Carmon, 27, a Black transgender woman, was fatally shot in Prince George's County, Maryland, on March 30. “Until I leave this Earth, I’m going to continue loving her in my heart, body, and soul,” said Philip Williams, Carmon’s fiancé. “She did not deserve to leave this Earth so early, especially in the way that she went out.
Claire Legato, 21, a Black transgender woman, was fatally shot in Cleveland on April 15. Friends and family took to social media to mourn Legato’s death, remembering her as someone who was “full of life.”
Muhlaysia Booker, 23, a Black transgender woman, was fatally shot in Dallas on May 18. Friends, family and advocates across the country took to social media to mourn Booker, sharing their shock and disbelief. “Such a beautiful spirit taken too soon,” wrote one person. “She lived her life and loved all of who she was.”
Michelle 'Tamika' Washington, 40, a Black transgender woman, was fatally shot in Philadelphia on May 19. Washington, who was also known by the name Tameka, is remembered by friends and loved ones as a beloved sister and “gay mother.”
Paris Cameron, 20, a Black transgender woman, was among three people killed in a horrific anti-LGBTQ shooting in a home in Detroit on May 25. Alunte Davis, 21, and Timothy Blancher, 20, two gay men, were found dead at the scene and Cameron was taken to the hospital, where she died from her injuries. Two other victims were also shot but survived. “This case illustrates the mortal danger faced by members of Detroit’s LGBTQ community, including transgender women of colour," Fair Michigan President Alanna Maguire said.
Titi Gulley, 31, a Black transgender woman, was killed in Portland, Oregon, on May 27. Her death was originally reported as a suicide but is now under investigation.
Chynal Lindsey, 26, a Black transgender woman, was found dead in White Rock Lake, Dallas, with signs of “homicidal violence” on June 1, according to police. Friends, family and community members took to social media to share their shock at her death, describing her as “smiling” and “a person I had never seen mad.”
Chanel Scurlock, 23, a Black transgender woman, was found fatally shot in Lumberton, North Carolina, on June 6. “RIP baby,” wrote a friend on Facebook. “You [lived] your life as you wanted. I’m proud of you for being unapologetically correct about your feelings and expectations of YOU.”
Zoe Spears, 23, a Black transgender woman, was found with signs of trauma near Eastern Avenue in Fairmount Heights, Maryland, and later pronounced dead on June 13, according to local reports. “She was my daughter -- very bright and very full of life,” transgender advocate Ruby Corado, the founder and executive director of Casa Ruby, told HRC. “Casa Ruby was her home. Right now, we just want her and her friends and the people who knew her to know that she’s loved.”
Brooklyn Lindsey, 32, a Black transgender woman, was found dead in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 25, according to local news reports. “I love you, Brooklyn Lindsey,” wrote a friend on Twitter. “I shall live on for you. Rest in power, sista.”
Denali Berries Stuckey, 29, a Black transgender woman, was found fatally shot in North Charleston, South Carolina, on July 20. “I lost my best friend, first cousin,” wrote a family member on Facebook. “We were more than a cousin. We were like brother and sisters. I love you so much, Pooh.”
Tracy Single, 22, a Black transgender woman, was killed in Houston on July 30. “Rest in power and peace Tracy,” wrote Monica Roberts, Houston-based transgender advocate. “You were taken away from us way too soon.”
Bubba Walker, 55, a Black transgender woman, was killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, in late July. Walker was reported missing on July 26. She is remembered by friends and family as “one of those people who was really fun to be around. She was very kind and she loved helping people.”
Kiki Fantroy, 21, a Black transgender woman, was fatally shot in Miami on July 31. Fantroy’s mother remembered her as having “a heart of gold” and being “a very loving person.” She also pleaded for justice for her daughter, saying, “My baby, my baby. Please help bring justice to my baby.”
Jordan Cofer, 22, was among the nine victims killed in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, on August 4. While Cofer was only out to a handful of close friends and used the pronouns he/him/his on his social media profiles, he is remembered by friends as “extremely bright” and “well-liked.” A friend told Splinter News that “Jordan was probably one of the sweetest people you would ever meet, a true saint, but he was also very scared constantly. He tried to give the best to everyone.”
Pebbles LaDime “Dime” Doe, 24, a Black transgender woman, was killed in Allendale County, South Carolina, on August 4. Doe’s friends and family remembered her as having a “bright personality,” and being someone who “showed love” and who was “the best to be around.”
Bailey Reeves, 17, a Black transgender teen, was fatally shot in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 2. She is remembered as "a person who lived her life to the fullest."
Bee Love Slater, 23, was killed in Clewiston, Florida, on September 4. Slater is remembered by loved ones as someone "with a sweetheart" who "never harmed anyone."
Jamagio Jamar Berryman, 30, a Black gender non-conforming person, was killed in Kansas City, Kansas, on September 13. Local activists and community members joined family and friends at a vigil and took to social media to mourn Berryman’s loss.
Itali Marlowe, 29, a Black transgender woman was found shot in Houston on September 20. She was transported to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead, as reported by Monica Roberts of TransGriot. "You deserved to live a full and robust life surrounded by people who embraced and celebrated your real self," wrote Sue Kerr, an LGBTQ columnist.
Brianna “BB” Hill, 30, was fatally shot in Kansas City on October 14. Kansas City Police Capt. Tim Hernandez told local press that the alleged shooter remained at the scene until they arrived. She was a beloved member of her community, a fan of the Kansas City football team and loved spreading joy by sharing funny videos on her Facebook page.
Nikki Kuhnhausen, 17, was killed in Vancouver, Washington, sometime after her disappearance in June. Kuhnhausen enjoyed sharing videos of her dancing and singing on her Facebook, and she often posted memes to entertain her friends. Her loved ones have taken to social media to mourn her passing. “[Y]ou my dear didn’t deserve this ... rest with God now.”
Yahira Nesby, 33, was fatally shot in New York on December 19. Nesby, a Black transgender woman, was a loved member of the New York ball scene. Her friends and family commented on social media about her death, calling Nesby “a good spirit,” “genuinely good people,” and said “Every time [Nesby was] around [she] put a smile on my face and others.”
Mia Perry, a transgender woman, was killed in Washington, D.C. on December 29.
Layleen Polanco, 27, was found dead in a cell at Riker's Island on June 7. Polanco was described by those who knew her as “a sweet, amazing [...] and generous human being.”
Johana 'Joa' Medina, 25, died at a hospital in El Paso, Texas just hours after being released from ICE custody. She suffered severe health complications that went untreated while she was in detention, according to Diversidad Sin Fronteras. According to OJ Pitaya, an advocate with the group, Medina dreamed of coming to the U.S. to become certified as a nurse, since she was unable to practice as a transgender woman in her home country.
'Tanzina Vega suggested that there is a significant lack of attention for violence against black trans people after the recent death of Tony McDade, a black transgender man who was shot and killed by police in Florida two days after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In fact, police often single out trans people for violence. The Anti-Violence Project suggested that trans people are 3.7 times more likely to experience police violence and 7 times more likely to experience physical violence when interacting with police than cisgender victims and survivors. Moreover, there are more chilling stories of the treatment of transgender and non-binary people in prison. Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, who was found dead as the correctional officers at New York City’s Rikers Island stood outside her cell laughing, according to recently released security footage; had just had an epileptic seizure, but prison staff had failed to conduct the 15-minute-interval health check-ins that are required for prisoners held in solitary confinement. Aside from violence against transgender and non-binary people, there is a lack of employment and housing protections throughout most of America. The Anti-Violence Project showed that while transgender New Yorkers were more likely to have a college degree than the general population, but just 45 per cent of them have full-time jobs. Furthermore, transgender workers are more likely to be unemployed compared to their cisgender counterparts, and 34 per cent of Black trans women face housing insecurity compared to just 9 per cent of non-Black trans people.
'I understand that most of the studies and evidence were based in America and New Zealand is among leading countries in term of human rights and LGBTQ rights. However, their realities are our realities like the head and tail of the same coin. Besides, there is still a significant lack of transgender and non-binary people awareness in New Zealand. As a leading country, why don’t we, New Zealanders, set an example for others to follow? Why rest at what we have while we are capable of the extraordinary? And how should we do it? The answer is simple: we ask questions!
'We ask whether our knowledge about our communities and vulnerable people is enough. We ask others to join positive and meaningful discussions about us, them and about vulnerable people in our community. We ask our people of colour, our cisgender sister, our transgender brothers and sisters, and our non-binary people about their stories and their needs. We ask our teachers, our doctors, our police, our communities, our local boards, our councils, and our government about what can they do to improve equality, not just for us, but for our people of colour, our cisgender sisters, our transgender sisters and brothers and our non-binary people. We now must unite to move forward! The best is yet to come as the future is in our hands.
'I would like to thank you very much for your time reading this. I hope that you have found this useful. Be safe, be kind and ask questions! If you want to learn more, you can start with the following:
genderminorities.com / The Trevor Project - A Guide To Being An Ally To Transgender & NonBinary Youth / Human Rights Campaign / NZ Ministry of Health - Transgender Resources
With lots of Loves,
Adray'
Niamh Peren, Founder of the 'Thumbs Up New Zealand' Movement
'Like many countries, Aotearoa is in the throes of a waste crisis. We are running out of landfill space. This, paired with the fact that in 2018 Aotearoa was named one of the most wasteful countries in the world (per capita) by the World Bank makes for a really rubbish situation. Our government needs to urgently do more, on a larger scale, to reduce what goes to landfill in the first place. The majority of our household waste in Aotearoa is food and drink packaging, so let's start by tackling that ever growing pile of packaging.
'Yes, it's difficult to know what to do. A substantial part of the problem lies in the fact that recycling labels are misleading, confusing, and often difficult to find. Plus, many don't realise that the 'green recycling triangle' symbol just means that some place in the world that material can be recycled, but not necessarily here in Aotearoa. Plus, unfortunately far too many products hide behind greenwash - when they really just go straight to landfill. Ugh. We need a label that’s reflective of what our onshore recycling infrastructure can handle. So that we know - before we buy - whether it can and will be recycled onshore. No one wants to contaminate or wishcycle unknowingly. We deserve accurate and honest labelling for direction.
'Dig a little deeper though, and Aotearoa's waste and recycling system appears even more dysfunctional. Our city and district councils operate a patchwork of programs which in their differences to one another cause inefficiency, confusion, and unaccountability. Our 61 city and district councils (who represent 87% of our waste and recycling contracts, and are our major stakeholders) each operate different waste and recycling rules. Yip, it’s awfully confusing when you’re trying to do the right thing, as what can be recycled in one place is not necessarily recyclable just down the road... We need to change this. We need to optimise our systems, reduce contamination, and reduce waste. We must encourage businesses to use packaging that is appropriate for our environment and onshore infrastructure, but sadly under the current system (or lack-thereof) it is impossible for consumers and business to do the right thing.
'So, I founded a movement called ‘Thumbs Up New Zealand’ which was signed by over 46,000 signatories and supported by 46 Mayors and works as a solution to the above problems.
'The petition proposed we create a unified nationwide waste and recycling strategy, and then introduce new, simple, and compulsory labelling on all food and drink packaging indicating their recyclability onshore. As this would then empower both consumer and business to do better.
A Green Thumbs Up Label means packaging is made of recycled material and can be recycled onshore.
A Yellow Sideways Thumb Label means packaging is recyclable, but not made of recycled material (i.e. does not help close the loop)
A Red Thumbs Down Label means it must go straight to landfill
'It’s not an overly complicated system on the front end because I don’t think it should be. Waste is something that is out-of-sight out-of-mind for most, so in order for the system to be adopted it needs to be simple. We need a mass movement.
'And yes, reusables are best! However, they won’t be going in your kerbside collection and are thus not included above.
'As a small island nation Aotearoa has an opportunity to lead the world by being the first to create progressive legislation and transition toward a circular economy; and thus out of this smelly mess.
'The Thumbs Labels do this by incentivising and dis-incentivising packaging materials to what our infrastructure can and cannot handle. As well as being inclusive (you don’t have to read a language to comprehend).
'IF WE CAN DO THIS IN NEW ZEALAND, WE CAN TAKE IT TO THE WORLD.
'Our government has signed up to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, so they really ought to be taking action and implementing the commitment and solutions provided to them by Thumbs Up New Zealand and wanted by her people. There really is no more time to waste.
'So, you ask me, what is the future I wish for? Well, I’m hoping that we can make for a healthier future for our communities, wildlife, and environment. I’m hoping that Thumbs Up New Zealand (a system designed by Kiwis for Kiwis) will be actioned and implemented by the next elected Government, and that Aotearoa will make innovative and progressive headway in this waste space, and inspire global change.
'Together, with Thumbs Up New Zealand, we can do this!'
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Charity Spotlight: Jonathon Cycles For Afrika Tikkun
Oct 23, 2015 | Culture
Meet Jonathon K.
This Safelite AutoGlass technician has been the fastest cyclist in the Spirit of Belron Challenge for the past six years.
The Challenge fundraising event, hosted by Safelite’s parent company Belron, supports Afrika Tikkun, an organization with a dedicated vision of providing a sustainable future for children in South African townships.
Jonathon began with Safelite in 2009 in Boulder, Colo. His manager was aware of his passion for cycling and an email landed in his inbox with the information about a triathlon in England with Belron.
“When I’m not at work, I’m on my bike,” he said. “I’ve done many charity rides so the Challenge was a perfect opportunity for me.”
Jonathon’s team has won the Olympic Distanced Team Event each year since 2010, in both Safelite’s pre-qualifying race in Las Vegas as well as the Spirit of Belron in England.
“It’s the highlight of my whole year,” he said. “Helping these kids, giving them safe places to study, bicycles and forming a sustainable future for them is so important to me.”
Trust the safety and reliability of Safelite
Jonathon talked about his favorite memory from when young adults who’ve been supported by Afrika Tikkun attended Safelite’s pre-qualifying race.
“I rented a Camaro SS convertible and drove the kids around, who had never ridden in a convertible. We put the top down and cruised around. Seeing their reactions and their smiles was so amazing.”
The Spirit of Belron Challenge is an opportunity for associates to be active in training for a duathlon or triathlon, build team morale, challenge themselves, and fundraise for Afrika Tikkun.
“The training is tough and there’s always pain, but when you realize who and what you’re doing this for, it’s all worth it,” he said. “It’s expanded my view on the world and how much we truly take for granted in this country we live in.”
Jonathon has personally raised over $4,000 in support of Afrika Tikkun and meets four to five new children every year who he keeps in contact with after the event. This year, Safelite presented a check for $320,000 to Belron in support of Afrika Tikkun, part of the roughly $800,000 raised so far.
“The smiles on the kids’ faces when we present the check every year is so motivational,” he said. “It makes it all worth it.”
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This establishing shot of the real Orange County
was first seen on "The O.C." in Episode 7 of season two: "The Family Ties"
We are looking southeast, out to the mouth of the Newport Harbor, through the twin breakwaters
that lead out to sea. The land on the right side is the east end of Balboa Peninsula.
On the left side is the Corona del Mar section of Newport Beach.
Important: These "establishing shots" of Orange County are not locations where The O.C. is actually filmed.
The O.C. is not really filmed in Orange County - it is filmed in Los Angeles County. These "establishing shots"
are brief aerial snapshots of actual Orange County locations, which the producers drop into the show to add color and
to help create the illusion that we are seeing the real Orange County. I have included this list of their "establishing shots"
to supplement the main list of actual filming locations. You can tell the difference by color: the actual filming location
pages are gold, while the "establishing shot" pages are blue.
To see a list of the L.A. locations where The O.C. is actually filmed,
click on the OC Filming Locations logo below.
By Episode - By Category - By Geographical Location - Clickable Map of All O.C. Locations - Establishing Shots
THE O.C. screenshots from the show and all related characters & elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
All other photos & text are copyright 2006 © Gary J. Wayne and may not be used without written permission.
Return to Seeing-Stars.com
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Coral Reefs Show Remarkable Ability to Recover from Near Death
Scientists have identified key factors that enable corals to recover from bleaching events brought on by global warming
By David Biello on January 15, 2015
As the planet heats up so do the world's waters, and that means more coral bleaching. But now a new study reveals that some corals can bounce back from such near death experiences.
The heat death of a reef reveals itself as whitening, dubbed coral bleaching, which results when corals expel the tiny plants that provide food and are responsible for the rainbow of reef colors. In 2014, coral bleaching happened in the northern Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Hawaiian Islands and even the Florida Keys. Severe bleaching has now happened two years in a row off Guam and overheated waters have now appeared off the Pacific island nations of Kiribati and Nauru and are also pooling near the Solomon Islands.
"The odds seem good for 2014 to be only the third recorded global scale mass bleaching," says Mark Eakin, coordinator of the Coral Reef Watch at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This event may not be as bad as 2010 or the worst year ever—1998—but "any global-scale mass bleaching is a big issue."
A new study offers hope. Looking at reefs off two of the central Seychelles isles in the Indian Ocean, scientists from Australia found that reefs could rebound even from severe bleaching events, such as those that whitened more than 90 percent of a given reef in 1998. "This is perhaps the most severe coral bleaching event on record," notes Nicholas Graham, a coral researcher at James Cook University and lead author of the new study, published January 14 by Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)
The team has monitored 21 reefs in the Seychelles since 1994, taking a range of measurements that include the total number of plant-eating fish and the amount of nutrients reaching the reefs. The majority of these reefs—12 out of 21—were able to recover after bleaching in warming waters in 1998. The other nine became seaweed-covered ruins.
The scientists have teased out the factors that most strongly predicted a resilient or doomed reef: water depth, the complexity of its shape, nutrient levels, amount of grazing by fish and survival rates for young coral. In fact, using just two of those—growth in waters 6.6 meters or more in depth and complex, branching shapes at least 30 centimeters high atop the reef—the team could predict which reefs would or would not recover 98 percent of the time.
The factors in reef resilience may not seem surprising; for instance, corals at greater depths may better resist heating waters because the warmest waters are closest to the surface. And this doesn’t mean that simple reefs in shallow, warm waters are necessarily doomed. Cutting down on the amount of nutrient and sediment pollution can boost the resiliency of shallow reefs as can cutting back on fishing for seaweed grazers. "Reducing local impacts as much as possible will give them the best chance of survival," Graham notes. "Managing the impacts to reefs is really about understanding and managing human actions."
Reefs that have survived one bleaching event may even be more resistant to future trouble, as reefs that weathered 1998 proved even more resilient in the 2010 bleaching event off Indonesia. "Many reef corals just might be capable of adapting fast enough to survive current rates of global environmental change," wrote marine biologist John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland in a commentary on the new research.
On the other hand, marine reserves did not seem to offer any extra protection to coral reefs, at least off the Seychelles islands of Mahe and Praslin, even though more seaweed-eating fish were present in these no-take reserves. Complex reefs in deeper water that are not deluged with pollution recover best, according to the new study, and may serve as coral refuges.
One factor that could complicate this resilience analysis is seawater acidity, or pH. The oceans also absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide that accumulates from rampant fossil-fuel burning, which renders the water more acidic. The corals that form Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are now growing half as fast as in the 1970s, largely because much of that new growth is dissolving away at night, according to a 2012 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research. And although corals can adapt to warming waters and resist more acidic ones, climate change adds to the stress caused by water pollution, overfishing and other threats to reefs, which shelter coastlines from the impacts of extreme weather and sea level rise as well as provide food for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
If coral reefs are to thrive in the Anthropocene—the current epoch in which human activity has become a driving force on the planet—CO2 levels in the atmosphere will have to drop. As for 2015: "my next big concerns are the reefs on these South Pacific islands, the Indian Ocean and perhaps Southeast Asia later this year," Eakin says. "If it continues, then we will have to worry about the western North Pacific, again, and Caribbean for next fall."
David Biello
David Biello is a contributing editor at Scientific American.
China's Xi Outshines Trump as the World's Future Energy Leader
Cleaning the Air with Plastic [Excerpt]
Fact or Fiction?: Premium Gasoline Delivers Premium Benefits to Your Car
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Apr 11, 2017 | General News | 0 comments
Those who work in the surface engineering industry, and especially those who carry out electroplating processes, will already know about the short and long-term effects of substances of very high concern (SVHC).
The REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) Regulations were introduced to restrict the use of certain chemicals in the European Union. Included in REACH were many substances used within the surface engineering sector such as chromium trioxide and hexavalent chromium compounds
It is widely known that the use of these chemicals/compounds means that workers who are over exposed to them risk serious health effects including cancer, asthma and dermatitis.
The SEA and the HSE, as well as 53 electroplating companies based in the UK, were involved in three years of research. The aim of this was to investigate as to whether repeated biological monitoring over time would be able to drive improvements in exposure control in the electroplating industry.
SEA members were given the opportunity to be involved in this vital research project. It was important that members, both involved in electroplating and who use these chemicals in their processes, were involved in a research project that could have a significant impact on chemical use in the surface engineering industry. Those companies who did take part were asked to submit regular data and samples to support this research.
Biological monitoring, air monitoring and surface and dermal contamination were continually monitored. The project scope, results, statistical analysis, discussion points and the study’s conclusions have been published in a document titled, “The use of bio-monitoring to assess exposure in the electroplating industry”, which can be downloaded here.
The conclusion drawn was that the exposure to SVHC occurred “via a combination of inhalation, dermal and ingestion routes.” With the introduction of precautionary measures and the design of exposure control strategies, many of the risks could be easily and cost-effectively eliminated or controlled.
If you would like to discuss any of the findings with our team, please contact us, or you can read the full report here.
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DE Zach Sieler plans to stay with Dolphins and remain in RV
STEVEN WINE
MIAMI (AP) — In more ways than one, Zach Sieler is staying put.
The Miami Dolphins defensive end says he’ll keep living in his recreational vehicle after receiving a contract extension through 2023 as a reward for his breakout season. The deal was announced Monday.
Sieler is 6-foot-6 and 290 pounds, but he says his RV is big enough. The 35-footer is 10 feet wide with two slideouts, and he parks it in a campground, surrounded by vacationing families.
“I love it,” Sieler said. “I’m happy with what I’ve got. It’s perfect for me; it’s simple. Most of my time is spent at the team facility anyway. I don’t see any point in anything else for now.”
Sieler is one of the more surprising contributors to this year’s surprising surge by the Dolphins (6-3). He was a seventh-round pick out of Ferris State in 2018 by the Baltimore Ravens, who released him twice before Miami acquired him in late 2019.
He’s now playing two-thirds of the snaps for the Dolphins’ much-improved defense, and had two tackles for loss in Sunday’s win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
“I just want to go out there each week and play my best,” he said. “This organization is great.”
While Sieler said there’s no need to upgrade his residence, he does plan to use some of his new contract to invest in his wild hog and alligator hunting business in central Florida. It’s advertised as largest free-range, private land gator hunting outfitter in the state.
“We’ll keep classing it up,” Sieler said. “We’ve put a barn out there; we’ve got new buggies. We want to take more people in on weekends and make it a better and better operation. It’s just like with football — keep growing every week.”
Follow Steven Wine on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Steve_Wine
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Did Frank Oz Basically Confirm Yoda in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’?
Posted on Monday, March 13th, 2017 by Peter Sciretta
In addition to his work with the Muppets and directing a number of good films (including Little Shop of Horrors, What About Bob?, and Bowfinger) Frank Oz is probably best as the voice and puppeteer behind Jedi Master Yoda in the Star Wars movies. This week, Oz has been doing press for a new documentary that premiered at SXSW titled Muppet Guys Talking: Secrets Behind the Show the Whole World Watched…and that means Star Wars questions.
During an interview, Oz was asked about the rumors that he might reprise his role as Yoda as a force ghost in the upcoming Skywalker saga film Star Wars: The Last Jedi. His answer raises more questions than it does provide answers, but to me, it sounds like an inadvertent confirmation of Yoda in The Last Jedi. Let’s take a closer look.
When Variety asked about the reports that Oz might reprise Yoda in Rian Johnson’s upcoming Star Wars film, he responded with the following:
I feel like I’m a prisoner at war here, and I can only give you my name, rank and serial number. To be true to the people who asked me, and they are kind of my family, I have to say I’ve been asked not to talk about it. I love Yoda. I would be happy to talk to you about it at the time they let me.
Now, I have been writing about movies for over 12 years and have done countless interviews with cast and crew. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the answer that someone has been asked not to talk about a project in which they don’t have some involvement. Why would Disney contact Frank Oz to ask him not to speak of a movie that he’s not in? And saying that he would be “happy to talk” about it at “the time they let me” seems to suggest a time in the future after we have been told about his involvement or seen the movie. To me, this is certainly not a statement of an actor who has no participation in the production.
It should also be noted that Oz visited The Last Jedi‘s set in April of last year, although the purpose of the visit was never clear. Will Luke Skywalker talk to his old Jedi Master through meditation as a Force Ghost? It seems very likely if you ask me.
Let’s also remember that Frank Oz actually came in and recorded lines for a scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens that didn’t make the final cut of that movie. In the end, Oz has a very brief hidden voice cameo in the film during Rey’s Force-back sequence. So it’s also possible that Oz might have another minor, unnoticeable role in the new film.
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/Featured Stories Sidebar, Action/Adventure, Casting, Disney/Pixar, LucasFilm, Rumors, Sci-Fi, Sequels, Frank-Oz, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star-Wars
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NBC PEACOCK
SMALL SCREEN STORIES
SMALL SCREEN FILM CLUB
Blinded By The Light Review
Edward Lauder
on 12th August 2019 at 1:50 pm
A-OK
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Starring: Viveik Kalra, Hayley Atwell, Rob Brydon, Kulvinder Ghir, Nell Williams, Dean-Charles Chapman and Aaron Phagura
The last few years have seen a barrage of music-based movies hit our cinema screens. We’ve had Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocket Man and most recently Yesterday. It was only a matter of time before there was a film about the music of Bruce Springsteen.
However, Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded By The Light isn’t your by-the-numbers music biopic about how Bruce managed to make it and eventually become known as The Boss. No, this is very different.
Blinded By The Light is set in Luton in the 1980s and follows Javed (Viveik Kalra). a British teen of Pakistani descent. He’s someone who doesn’t really feel like he belongs anywhere. He doesn’t fit in with his father’s way of viewing the world and is shunned by much of British society for being Pakistani.
He’s walking a difficult tightrope and is feeling a bit lost in Luton, struggles to talk to girls, and can’t wait to get out. However, his life is fundamentally changed when he’s introduced to the music of The Boss, Mr. Bruce Springsteen, by a classmate of his. All of a sudden, he’s found someone he can relate to in Springsteen and his music speaks to him unlike anything else.
Finally, a proper film about music!
Viveik Kalr in Blinded By The Light
As I said before, Blinded By The Light could have very easily fallen into traditional music biopic territory and personally, I find many of those types of movies to be very dull and predictable, and often historically inaccurate. Just read anything about Queen’s history and you’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen Bohemian Rhapsody.
What Chadha wanted to do instead was tell a very compelling story about growing up, being an outsider, and living in a place where everybody sees you as being different. She does this by using the music of Springsteen, and it ended up being a touching and moving story which is accentuated by Bruce’s lyrics.
Some people may see the film as being “emotionally manipulative”, but personally I have no issues with going to the cinema and having my emotions tested. It’s why I go every week. I want to cry, to laugh, to wince, to jump with fear, and that’s what cinema is supposed to do, so I often find it a little bit puzzling why people get so upset with a film that attempts to make you feel those emotions.
Make me feel all the emotions
Blinded By The Light takes you on an emotional journey
When it comes to Blinded By The Light, Chadha has succeeded in crafting a film which will take you on an emotional journey, if you let it, accompanied by the beautiful words and sounds of Springsteen, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Yes, the film can be a bit saccharine, a bit too sweet, and even a tiny bit on the nose at some points, but the musical backdrop, the setting, and the film’s excellent performances help it to move beyond your average coming of age flick.
I really felt like Blinded By The Light is an important film, not only because it reaffirms how brilliant Bruce’s music is, but it also has a lot to say about the current political climate we are currently in and how it’s very similar to that of the eighties in Britain. Chadha shows in some parts of the film that we haven’t moved forward and that what was going on then is still happening today.
I was genuinely surprised by how Blinded By The Light managed to strick a chord with me. Going into the film, I was a bit sceptical, especially after having seen Danny Boyle’s Yesterday, which I felt had very little to say. But what I was greeted with was a film which has a voice, has a sound, and really wants to put forward what’s actually important in life.
Meanwhile, why not have a read of our articles on the five reasons why Tom Holland in the best Spider-Man ever, the five best movies in the MCU, and our explanation as to why Tomorrow Never Dies is the most underrated Bond movie ever.
You can also have a read of our reviews of Playmobil: The Movie, The Lion King, Yesterday, Toy Story 4, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Aladdin, Detective Pikachu, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Avengers: Endgame, Hellboy and Glass.
In the meantime, why not rewatch Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham, which you can purchase here!
Blinded By The Light is in cinemas across the UK now.
Have you listened to our podcast yet? Small Screen Radio features Small Screen’s Film Club and Cinema Ramble. If you like movies, listen to our podcast.
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Solar Powered Accessories
Solar San Antonio
Use Natural Energy and Make the World Evergreen!
"Solar San Antonio" is completely reader supported and participant of the Amazon Affiliate program. We may earn a small commission from your successful purchase through our recommended links. More details.
What are Solar Panels Made of – all You Need to Know about This
If you have ever wondered, what are solar panels made of, you will get all details about it in the following article.
We want to focus on describing the composition of the solar thermal collector so that you better understand its operation. A solar collector is made up of a series of elements that give it specific and necessary characteristics for its operation. Let us discuss this in detail.
What are Solar Panels Made of? And Why They’re Taking Over the World
Absorber Treatment
Cover Gasket
What Components do Photovoltaic Solar Panels Have?
Plexiglass Sheets
Aluminum or Stainless-Steel Frame
Protection Diodes
Top Solar Panel Manufacturers
1. Canadian Solar
2. First Solar
3. Heliene
4. Itek Energy
5. Jinko Solar
6. Ja Solar
Economic Solar Panels
Standard Solar Panels
High-Quality Solar Panels
What are Solar Panels Made Of? Here Solution Over Solar Panels Made
Depending on each manufacturer, the panels may vary in the material used or their properties. Because different treatments will be applied, seeking to enhance some particular characteristics, be it resistance, thermal insulation, or another. Here are the details of what are solar panels made of?
Special glass element, with a treatment for high temperatures and temperatures and which also has a treatment that does two functions on its inner face.
The first is to allow the solar radiation to pass inwards so that it heats the interior of the solar panel, and the second is not to let out the radiation reflected by the metal panel.
Thus, producing the greenhouse effect inside the collector, which is why considerably increases its performance. The cover also serves to reduce conduction and convection losses.
Some collectors have several transparent covers that further reduce losses, but greatly increase the cost of the equipment.
It is the element where the transformation of the energy that arrives by radiation in thermal energy that absorbs the fluid-heat-carrier occurs.
It generally consists of copper tubes or two plates made of metal or plastic material, which are exposed to solar radiation and through which the heat transfer fluid passes. This liquid is known as Glycol.
Depending on the type of treatment, the absorbers can be presented with special black paints or with selective absorbent treatment.
To reduce the thermal losses of the collector, it is convenient to isolate the areas not exposed most of the day to solar radiation. These are the sides and the back of the solar collector.
In these areas, good thermal insulation contributes to reducing the factor of thermal losses of the collector, consequently increasing its performance.
Also, some manufacturers incorporate a thermo-reflective sheet to help the heat stay inside the sensor itself, increasing the greenhouse effect.
It is an element of elastic material whose function is to ensure the tightness of the connection between cover and casing. It will in turn serve to absorb the differences in the expansions between the housing and the cover so that there is no breakage in any element of the sensor.
It is the element that serves to form the collector, fixing the cover. Generally manufacturing from Aluminum to Steel. It contains and protects the other components of the collector and supports the anchors.
Particular attention will have to be paid to issues of corrosion and deterioration due to solar radiation.
Solar photovoltaic installations transform sunlight by generating electricity, which we use in our home. Or that when it is leftover you can store it in a battery or pour it into the network so that other users can use it.
Like a thermal panel, photovoltaic solar panels are made up of various components, each with a specific function. We must bear in mind that each manufacturer, according to their Research and Development work.
Sometimes varies this configuration by changing some material. To enhance the final performance of the solar panel, that performs a special treatment on some component or adds another component, to enhance the final performance of the solar panel:
Tempered and anti-reflective glass with light transmission qualities of more than 90%, resistant to abrasion and impacts.
This covering is important because it significantly reduces the reflection so that more light enters the solar cell, which translates into a greater conversion into electricity.
Panel manufacturers are increasingly opting for anti-reflective coatings and ensure an optimal balance between optical performance, strength, and cost.
These are much more flexible than tempered glass but considered “organic glass” because they are effectively sheets of glass polymerized with resins and acrylic compounds.
It has mechanical properties of great stability to atmospheric and chemical agents.
Whose function is to ensure the integrity of the set and to be like the skeleton that unites all the pieces.
They are the heart of the same module, placed in rows and columns, followed by one another in groups per panel, the quantity of which varies widely by nature and by the energy objective to be achieved, from a simple 1.5V battery charger to mega productions both independently and as part of conventional electrical networks.
They are glass “wafers”, varying their shape and size. Commercially the most widely used at the moment are the 3″ x 6″ and the 6″ x 6″ (inches).
Their thickness is less than 1 millimeter and fragile resistance to shocks. And made with an electrically conductive material that abounds in the Earth’s crust known as silicon.
They consist of a simple box-shaped structure, the size of which varies according to the number and size of cells. On this plate rest, the cells glued perfectly with silicone, which in turn is a perfect sealant to prevent the ingress of water or dust particles.
A small box secured at the back of the panel has output terminals for connecting the panel with other panels forming a battery, with the regulator or direct consumption.
It is used for “continuous” electric current produced by the panel, which is insured and resistant to the weather.
They are the protectors of the panels because they ensure that the flow of electric current is directed only in one direction, that is to say, to prevent electricity from returning to the solar cells or panels themselves.
You must know the market of the main manufacturers of solar panels which are mostly dominated by the Chinese.
However, there are other companies from countries such as Canada and the United States that bring excellent advances and experience for their clients. Below we list the top manufacturing companies from the USA and Canada:
This is a Canadian company founded in 2001. It is considered as one of the largest and most important suppliers of energy worldwide in at least 20 countries on 6 continents.
They manufacture solar modules and photovoltaic solar energy systems, so its Great innovative design highlights the cold modules based on a low internal intensity technology and available in both polyvinyl chloride and monocrystalline.
This is an American company and manufacturer of photovoltaic modules that have products in the United States, Germany, and Malaysia, supply different solar power plants worldwide.
In it, they have a very particular and proprietary First Solar technology in which they use a semiconductor layer of Cadmium to produce electricity through the photovoltaic effect.
That is why it produces thin-layer photovoltaic modules and comprehensive solutions for the systems. This company is one of the first to carry out a program for collecting and recycling solar panels, which is why it is usually mostly used for solar farms.
This is a North American company. This company offers solar photovoltaic energies and they are playing a significant role in the field of energy in North America.
They are manufacturing efficient and high-quality photovoltaic modules.
Itek Energy is Washington based company. Since 2009, they are manufacturing high-quality, efficient, and powerful solar photovoltaic modules.
Their solar glasses are anti-glare incorporated with prismatic sub-surface texture which is designed especially for the best performance in both direct light and diffuse conditions.
This company and manufacturer of solar energy products started producing solar cells in 2006. Currently, it has an integrated business module through the wafer, cell, and solar module factory.
Also, they are a member of the “Silico Module Super League” is a group of 6 major suppliers of silicon modules in the photovoltaic industry.
Ja Solar established and founded in the People’s Republic of China but they have a plant in Utah, USA. They are dedicated to the trade of products in solar energy designs, develops, manufactures solar modules.
It was founded in 2005 and the headquarters are located in Ningjin where its main clients are in the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Spain to name a few.
Here we have compiled most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for you so all your doubts can be cleared related to solar panels.
Q. How are photovoltaic solar panels different from thermal ones?
A. Thermal solar panels are not the same as photovoltaic solar panels, although they have a very similar aesthetic.
The differences between photovoltaic panels and thermal panels are many, but mainly it is that the thermal plates are used to generate domestic hot water and heating, while the photovoltaic plates generate electrical energy.
Q. How long do solar panels last?
A. Solar panels can last more than 25 years. But whether they are on the roof of a house, business among others, solar panels will always be exposed to the elements. Radiation from the sun, wind and weather changes, gradually degrades the panel.
It is important to know, however, that regularly its efficiency only decreases by 10% at the end of this long period. However, they still work. It can even be estimated that solar panels can last up to 40 or 50 years.
Q. Once the solar panels have been installed – How often is it necessary to maintain them?
A. Maintenance as such is not necessary unless some kind of problem arises. That is generated by any change in the electrical system to which the panel is connected.
Cleaning is only necessary if dirt or garbage accumulates. Which will depend on the location and place where the panels are installed. And if there are trees near the solar installation, it is necessary to cut the branches that can block the sunlight.
Solar panels have several advantages that make them one of the most solid future energy alternatives. That is why its use is increasingly promoted in the world.
Q. What materials are recycled in a solar panel?
A. One of the biggest advantages of photovoltaic technology is that the structure of solar panels is more favorable to recycling.
Almost all the materials that make up a solar panel can be recycled once they have been classified. The primary material for the production of a solar panel is glass: it stars on average 75% of its structure.
Q. What are the classification of Solar Panels?
A. Here is the classification of Solar Panels:
Take them into account only if you have a very low budget. These panels tend to produce less energy than good quality panels under the same conditions.
The harshness of weather conditions may degrade to a greater extent earlier, reducing their useful life.Panels with a “plus” symbol represent better than average options within their category.
Standard solar panels work well in most conditions and circumstances. It has a good classification of efficiency, power, among other technical specifications.
They also meet quality standards, good support, and warranty, as well as durability and life.
They generate more electricity per cm2 than standard panels. The starting price is above average for its high performance. It has premium guarantees. Recommended for special installations due to both the conditions and the need for power generation.
We hope now you distinguish what are solar panels made of. Usually, for residential and commercial installations, solar panels have 60 interconnected cells, while panels with 72 or 96 cells are used for industrial installations.
There are also panels with a smaller number of cells that are mainly used in installations isolated from the public network.
How to Make a Solar Panel- the Amazing Secret Behind
Next Post: Top 10 Best Solar Post Cap Lights Reviews 2021
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Ollies and Ocean Life: Inside the Mind of a 14-Year-Old Founder
In Season 2 of our Homework series, we explore the lives of ordinary teens with not-so-ordinary hobbies. Between part-time jobs and school work, these young founders are also running successful businesses—many before they can even drive a car.
During a chance encounter, Carson Kropfl pitched his business idea to a Shark Tank executive. He was only seven years old. Four years later, that same executive would tell Carson, “You’re ready for Shark Tank.” His brand, Locker Board—a skateboard that fits in a standard school locker—wowed the show’s investors and landed him a partnership with Sir Richard Branson.
Carson started his business to make money to pay for surf lessons—and to avoid doing chores. That was three years ago. The now 14-year-old has a busy schedule between sports, running his business, and tuning out the haters. Here, he shares his thoughts on keeping oceans clean and seizing every moment.
Name: Carson Kropfl
My business: Locker Board
Where I live: San Clemente, California
What I do for fun:
Usually, when I have free time, I’m surfing or I’m skating. It’s my freshman year of high school, and I’m starting to do high school football. I’m also trying out for the golf team. I don’t play a lot of video games. I’d rather be active and doing stuff than sitting on the couch.
My favorite travel spot:
New York was super cool but, honestly, probably Mexico. I live pretty close—an hour’s drive from the border. I feel like Mexico is just a cool place to be, because there’s surf everywhere. Every place there to surf is totally unique and I’ve never seen a wave like it before. My manufacturer that assembles my boards is also down there. I go every once in a while to check it out.
TV I’m watching:
I was really into Stranger Things when it came out. I watched every episode. Also Friends. I love Friends. Friends and Parks & Rec are the best shows ever created. I’m really into the ’80s stuff, too.
In a typical week:
I wake up, I have food, I get some work done, and then I go to school, get more work done, do football practice, go surf or skate. Then I come home and I get my homework done. I eat, go to sleep, and then I repeat it. It’s a pretty fun schedule.
How I started Locker Board:
I was 11 and just going into middle school. My locker was decked out and awesome, but none of my skateboards would fit inside. I just started cutting down skateboards with my dad, trying to fit them in my locker. My parents told me that I had to clean and do chores to pay for my surf contest and surf lessons, but I hate cleaning. I hate cleaning. I asked them if I could try selling locker boards instead.
I first started selling them at my school for $20 a piece. No trucks and wheels, just decks. I made an Instagram account and I posted a video of me riding it to school and putting it in my locker. I woke up the next morning and I went from zero to 300-something followers. It’s pretty crazy how something like that happened overnight. I was kind of like freaking out, scrambling with my mom. We quickly made a website and started selling them.
A cool thing that happened to me was:
We were on a family vacation and a man walked into our elevator wearing a Shark Tank sweatshirt and my dad asked him if he’s been on Shark Tank. He said he was actually an executive producer! Our whole family are big Shark Tank fans, so we’re kind of freaking out. I gave him an elevator pitch for my first business idea [for a tarp surfing product], literally in an elevator. I was seven or eight at the time. He said my company was too small for Shark Tank, but to just follow up. I contacted him every six months and then four years later when I told him about Locker Board, he said that I was ready for Shark Tank.
I went on Shark Tank in 2017. Richard Branson invested $65,000 for 20% of my company. It’s honestly kind of like breathtaking because you see what he’s doing on Instagram and social media, and he’s trying to get people into space. It’s pretty crazy to be able to work with Richard. I’m just blessed.
The best part of running a business is:
Making money. No, I’m kidding. I think just meeting all these unique, cool people that want to hear about what you’re doing. I love traveling and I also love public speaking. I think that’s super fun.
💡 Essential reading: Start your own business before you graduate and get inspired by 12+ business ideas for teens and kids
The hardest part is:
Tuning out all the negative people. There’s definitely people out there who are just mean bullies. I feel like when you’re an entrepreneur, you get a little more of it. I was super worked up about it at first, and then I kind of didn’t care. I tuned in the positivity and hung out with people who supported me.
What my friends think of my business:
It’s like my friends are super supportive, but they don’t understand what I’m doing. They’re like, “What are you doing? I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s an entrepreneur?”
The best thing I learned lately was:
Definitely not in math or English class! From Richard Branson, I learned that, when running a business, you have to delegate and network. That was the biggest thing he taught me.
Something I care about is:
The ocean. It’s a big part of how I am today. I love surfing, and if there was no ocean next to me I don’t think I would be able to do anything I’ve ever done. One dollar from every skateboard I sell goes to Ocean Unite, because they focus on ocean conservation. The ocean’s pretty special to me, and I want to make sure it stays healthy.
Something I’m proud of:
I feel like making it to high school was a pretty big deal, just being able to survive the craziness of school.
My goal for the future is:
Honestly, kind of doing what I’m doing now: be an entrepreneur if it’s Locker Board or something else, a public speaker, an athlete, and an ocean activist, I guess.
Advice I have for other young entrepreneurs is:
Seize the moment. There’s a 50% chance that they’re going to say yes, which is a pretty big number. Never give up, try your hardest, and believe in yourself, because if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
Illustrations by Joel Holland
Dayna Winter
Dayna Winter is a Storyteller at Shopify, curious about the humans behind the brands and the moments that motivate them to create. She follows more dogs than humans on Instagram and isn't a real redhead.
Founder Stories Homework
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Combat helmet from World War I used by the 93rd Infantry Division
United States Army, American, founded 1775
93rd Infantry Division, American, 1917 - 1919
A World War I combat helmet. The exterior of the helmet is olive green in color with a painted version of a 93rd Infantry patch on the front. The symbol consists of a powder blue helmet on a black circle. The interior is padded with cotton, and a layer of what looks like a fibrous plant material. Around the fabric is adjustable netting. The netting is connected to a piece of burlap with faux black leather on the top. There is a layer of faux red leather on the exterior of the inner padding with what looks like cylindrical pieces of plastic stuck in between slits that extend around the entire circumference. There is a leather chin strap.
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
leather, imitation leather, metal, cloth, cotton, paint, plastic, plant fiber
On Head Form: 9 1/2 × 11 × 11 in. (24.1 × 27.9 × 27.9 cm)
National Museum of African American History and Culture Collection
Clothing-Historical
Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation, 1876-1968
NMAAHC (1400 Constitution Ave NW), National Mall Location, Concourse 2, C 2053
nmaahc_2011.155.298
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/fd5fda43715-ef7f-4e25-bac6-a6aa3ae9a59b
1918: A Year in the Collections
African American WWI Military Service
This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Open Access page.
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| 0.351128
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You are here: Home > The Rooney Rule
The Rooney Rule
Michelle Hill
Michelle Hill, the Strong Copy Quarterback for Winning Proof, is a sports and fitness copywriter. My mission is to help …
Visit Michelle Hill at Profile, Website
Written by Michelle Hill in Sports Marketing
According to Wikipedia, “The Rooney Rule, established in 2003, requires National Football league teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations opportunities. The rule is named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the chairman of the league’s diversity committee, and indirectly the Rooney family in general, due to the Steelers’ long history of giving African Americans opportunities to serve in team leadership roles. It is often cited as an example of affirmative action.”
Those are the facts in a nutshell. The opinions and results, however, are steeped in controversy and conjecture. Any potential NFL coach is groomed and prepared with years of hands-on training and development, progressing from a supporting role to head coach. Coaches are chosen based on character, commitment, work ethic, leadership and motivational skills, and of course the ability to create winning football teams.Given this country’s history of discrimination, perhaps the Rooney Rule has been necessary. It has opened doors for black coaches who would otherwise be overlooked in the hiring process. While no one will ever know whether a team’s management decision to interview black candidates is merely to avoid fines or to really show good faith, NFL team records typically speak for themselves in the hiring of black head coaches.
“The idea of the rule is to slow down the process and get teams to do their homework and investigate a lot of candidates, not just minority candidates,” former Colts and Buccaneers coach Tony Dungy told the Associated Press. “You go through the process, and in doing that, sometimes you uncover people.”
Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith magnificently defy the Rooney Rule with their winning records and proven success before the rule was enacted in 2003. The Rooney Rule will most likely need adjustments and tweaks through the years, and may, in time, need to be eliminated, but for now it provides at least a chance for black coaches to be given equal consideration in the hiring process.
Let’s get one thing straight – the Rooney Rule is not a mandate to hire by race as many have misinterpreted. It merely gives an opportunity for more black coaches to interview for head coach positions. It’s up to the team management to make the final decision and may the best man for the job win. Since the NFL is comprised of a husky percentage of black athletes, it’s surprising to see so few black coaches in starring roles and supporting roles.
In the hiring of Mike Tomlin, Rooney stated, “[The rule] wasn’t the most important thing because he was the most important thing. Mike got the job because he showed us his ability and showed us what he could do, and we believed in him.”
A possible solution is for teams to conduct a pre-determined number of interviews without regard to race. Expanding the number of interviews will simply expand the horizons of possibility that exist for head coaching positions.
Another thing to consider is; in present time does the Rooney Rule encourage teams to conduct “pretend” interviews just to satisfy the rule and escape a fine? It seems like the time could be better spent on identifying and securing the coach that makes the best sense for the team, whether black or white, or any other race. Is it a necessary interruption in the hiring process or, in agreeing with Tony Dungy, does it make a team hit the pause button and consider all the possibilities?
If the Rooney Rule is to remain in place, it should extend to all levels of NFL personnel, from management to marketing, from finance to front office.
What is your take on the Rooney Rule? Whether you agree or disagree, I’d like to hear your input.
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Michelle Hill, the Strong Copy Quarterback for Winning Proof, is a sports and fitness copywriter. My mission is to help pro athletes, coaches, and sports agents increase their success score in their entrepreneurial endeavors with my writing expertise and creative turn of mind.I write website content, client letters, media pitch letters, sponsorship proposals, and brochures for sports-related companies. www.winningproof.com
Concussions in the NFL (INFOGRAPHIC)
affirmative action, american football, coach, dan rooney, football, football teams, head coaches, mike tomlin, national football league, NFL, nfl coach, pittsburgh steelers, rooney rule, rule, sports in the united states, tony dungy
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The ABC’s of Asking for Referrals
5 Responses to The Rooney Rule
Tperry July 12, 2010 at 3:23 pm #
great commentary. while i do believe in the “rooney rule,” we must remember it is a rule put in place to afford possibility and opportunity, which can serve as an eye opener to some. this leads me to ask the definition of minority…is it just race or does that apply to gender as well? something to think about.
Suzanna Aaring July 13, 2010 at 6:19 pm #
External rules can help to catalyze internal processes, but in the end only one's own psyche rules.
Dmitriy July 18, 2010 at 9:24 pm #
We don't necessarily see it everyday but I do think that there is some amount of racism still present in the NFL. This rule helps combat that until there are more successful black coaches like Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith. Incidentally, this is an even bigger problem in college football.
Blackhead Treatment August 20, 2010 at 8:48 am #
Oh!…that’s great helpful, it’s so right to me! Million thanks for the article,
Four Great Ways To Kick Racism Out of Football - The Big Urban - March 30, 2013
[…] coaching and putting them up for available coaching jobs. A great example of such a solution is the Rooney Rule in the American National Football League (NFL) which mandated the interview of at least one black […]
Nitya: read that Post and got it fine and informative. Co...
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5G Innovation Centre officially opens at the University of Surrey
The University of Surrey today opens its state-of-the-art 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC), securing the UK’s role in leading the development of the next generation communications technology, 5G.
Housing over 170 researchers and attracting over £70 million of investment, including £12 million from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the 5GIC is the world’s largest academic research centre dedicated to next generation mobile and wireless connectivity.
The Centre brings together leading academic expertise and major industry partners to define and develop a global 5G network that will radically change lives across the world. Through their work, they have already developed a technology that enables speeds of one terabit per second (Tbps) - more than 1,000 times faster than the highest 4G speed, and filed over 15 patents.
Professor Rahim Tafazolli, Director of the 5GIC, said: “While we have already achieved record-breaking speeds, 5G is not only about delivering faster mobile internet. It is a transformative set of technologies that will radically change our private and professional lives by enabling innovative applications and services, such as remote healthcare, wireless robots, driverless cars and connected homes and cities, removing boundaries between the real and cyber worlds. These capabilities make 5G a ‘Special Generation’ of connectivity.
“The true impact of 5G will come from the innovative applications the new network will enable, some of which are yet to be realised. The opening of the Centre today marks an important step in allowing those from across the globe to work with us in developing the new network and for partners, other universities and industry to test out their new applications in a real world setting, before they are brought to market.
“The ethos of the Centre is not built on competition but cooperation. 5G will be achieved through global collaboration so that everyone will benefit from working to a single standard. This technology will then be commercialised from 2020, driving economic development and research for the UK, while delivering research that will impact the world.”
Jo Johnson, Minister for Universities and Science, said: “The development of 5G presents a significant economic opportunity and this world-leading centre will position the UK at the forefront of research into the next generation of communications technology. The Government wants Britain to be the best place in Europe to innovate and we are committed to supporting collaborations like this one to ensure pioneering research continues to improve people’s lives.”
Video of the future
Opening alongside the Centre is the 5GIC’s new testbed facility, providing researchers with a fully-functioning advanced 4G network. Over time, it will be upgraded to include fully-fledged 5G technologies and large scale Internet of Things (IoT). By 2018 the testbed will be able to deliver 10Gbs/per cell, ten times faster than the highest speed available over 4G.
To demonstrate the potential of the testbed, 5GIC researchers and partners are today unveiling a pioneering wireless technology performing mobile streaming of ultra-high definition video.
Developed in partnership with Huawei, BBC R&D and the 5GIC, ultra-high-definition (4k) video will be streamed to a mobile device over an enhanced outdoor mobile network, providing a first major step in delivering the expected capacity of 5G.
Professor Rahim Tafazolli explained: “Using evolved hardware and software, the demonstration showed the capabilities 5G could hold for bandwidth hungry applications such as ultra-high definition video on the move. This provides much higher quality, less compressed images than 4G/LTE, streamed to a mobile device or television.”
5G Supporting the Internet of Things (IoT)
Another key demonstration is focussed on the requirement for 5G to provide the necessary “backbone” to connect the billions of devices which will form the future IoT, supporting thousands of devices per square kilometre in addition to smart phone usage. The demonstration shows how a new (5G-Sparse Coding Multiple Access) radio waveform can support at least three times the number of IoT devices than would be possible with 4G. It is a great example of how the newly opened 5GIC testbed can be used to trial real 5G IoT applications, illustrating the level of improvement in network capacity that can be expected from a 5G network.
5G Innovation Centre Partners
The 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) at the University of Surrey brings together leading academic expertise and key industry partners to develop the next generation of wireless technology, 5G. Partners include: EE, Huawei, O2, Vodafone, HEFCE, Enterprise M3, TEOCO Corporation, BBC, BT, Cobham, Anite, Ascom, Catapult Digital, Fujitsu, Rohde & Schwarz, Samsung, Roke, McLaren Applied Technologies, Ofcom, Imagination Technologies, ITRI, MYCOM OSI, Three and Ordnance Survey.
Dr. Tong Wen, IEEE fellow, Huawei wireless CTO and 5G principal scientist, said: “Huawei is very pleased to be working as part of the team at the 5GIC. We are committed to researching and developing future technologies that help build better connected societies, businesses and economies, and ensuring 5G is a success is essential in achieving this. Globally we will work closely with research institutions, operators and small enterprises, to turn the 5G dream into reality. The 5GIC will play an important role in this by helping us start testing foundational 5G technologies as early as possible.”
Dr Mike Short , Vice President of Research & Development at Telefonica said: “As an industry we have seen significant change in market requirements over the past few years – and our customers now expect to have access to fast mobile connectivity at all times. These changing behaviours, coupled with the rise of wearable technology and the Internet of Things, mean that video and data usage are increasing rapidly. As a result, the development of 5G is going to be absolutely crucial in helping to bring customers the new digital experiences they want in the future.
“We are delighted to be collaborating with leading international companies through our partnership with the University of Surrey, to explore and define how 5G connectivity will influence how we work and play. We are excited to help develop this technology over the coming years.”
Paul Ceely, Head of Network Strategy at EE, said: “This is a great start in the UK's development to become the world leader in 5G. Mobile services become more and more central to businesses and consumers every year, and the 5GIC will be central to building the next generation of wireless connectivity."
TEOCO Corporation
Stephen Bowker, Vice President of Technology and Strategy, TEOCO Corporation, said: “As a Gold Founder member, TEOCO are extremely proud today to see the UK open a world leading global centre of excellence to drive research into 5G and beyond. TEOCO initially pledged support for this important 5G initiative in August 2012 (as AIRCOM International) which helped the University secure funding from the HEFCE. Since then we have been active in 5G research providing advanced radio planning, network dimensioning and service assurance capabilities to the 5GIC. Our market leading TEOCO Helix Service Assurance Suite is being deployed as part of the 5G Internet of Things (IoT) programme helping the UK lead the world to a “Smarter” future.”
Chang Yeong Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Digital Multimedia and Communications R&D of Samsung Electronics, said: “Samsung are proud to be a founding partner of the 5GIC. We are sharing our technical expertise in mmWave, Internet of Things and developments in the existing LTE advanced standards to create the next generation of mobile communications. Working with the centre’s researchers and industry partners, Samsung will help bring these new technologies into the global standards arena, putting the UK at the heart of 5G”
Cobham Wireless
Li-Ke Huang, research & technology director at Cobham Wireless, said: “Cobham Wireless is proud to be a 5GIC partner, and supporting this ground-breaking research by participating in the development and validation of the advanced air interface that is essential to power 5G.”
Enterprise M3
Geoff French, Chair of the Enterprise M3 LEP, said: “The opening of this centre is tremendously exciting and is of worldwide significance. The £5million funding which we have contributed to this innovative project is to support SMEs so that they can make the most of the opportunities which emerge from this research and give them a head start on putting these new exciting technologies into operation. The LEP is determined to support innovation and this centre will be a driving force to increase productivity and economic growth.”
Roland Steffen, Executive Vice President Test and Measurement at Rohde & Schwarz, said: “We are delighted to contribute our test & measurement expertise to the 5G research programme developed at the 5GIC in Surrey. With a strong global footprint for 4G LTE/LTE-Advanced, Rohde & Schwarz is committed to continuously accompany the evolution from 4G to 5G. We support the 5G vision to give the users the perception of infinite capacity, which will require a very flexible 5G infrastructure and the ability to manage additional spectrum resources in potentially high frequency bands."
Imagination Technologies
Tony King-Smith, EVP marketing, Imagination, said: “Our collaboration with 5GIC is particularly significant, especially as we gear up for the next wave of innovations for a highly connected world. Imagination will invest significant resources into 5GIC over the next five years, including both people and state-of-the art IP platforms, to help 5GIC develop technologies that will be highly scalable and easily deployable by the widest possible semiconductor, electronics goods and service provider community.”
Rikard Lundqvist, Ascom Executive Board Member and General Manager of Ascom Network Testing, said: “We are really excited to be members of the 5GIC’s initiative to establish the next generation of mobile standards. Our TEMS™ test and monitoring tools have already been deployed at the Centre to ensure the test network environment. We look forward to further opportunities to collaborate.”
Anite
Paul Beaver, Products Director at Anite, said: “5G has the potential to transform wireless communications, however it will be essential to ensure that key technology attributes are appropriately designed and tested, and this is where Anite can play an important role. We are really excited to part of 5GIC, adding Anite’s valuable expertise to help accelerate key research initiatives.”
Payam Taaghol, CEO MYCOM OSI, said: “As a UK headquartered company with 95%+ of our business coming from leading telecoms brands internationally, participation in the UK’s 5GIC will directly benefit our business through improved development of our market-leading telecom network management technology. 5G is more than just another tech upgrade but a big deal which will fundamentally change how we interact with our world, and we are delighted to contribute technology and expertise to help 5GIC lead global efforts in 5G R&D.”
Luke Ibbetson, Vodafone’s Group R&D Director said: “Vodafone is proud to be a founding member of the 5G Innovation Centre and we believe it will form a vital part of the UK and European 5G research efforts. A fundamental 5G requirement is to enable compelling new use cases and deliver a level of performance, cost and energy efficiency which is a real “step change” ahead of current mobile technologies. 5GIC has the facilities and world class academic resources to undertake primary research and demonstrate how well the emerging 5G technologies work under real world conditions, in a way which is meaningful for customers. Exciting stuff!”
Tafazolli
Head of the Institute for Communication Systems (ICS)
Discover how the race to 5G will change the world (video)
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https://www.swagelok.com/en/About/Our-Values
Home About Us Our Values
A Vision for the Long Term
Since 1947, we have been a values-based company committed to doing the right thing in all cases.
Our values orientation plays out in everything from supply chain management to engineering, manufacturing, fulfillment, and sales and service.
As a privately held company, we are not under pressure for short-term financial results. In all areas of our business, we attempt to make decisions that are in the best long-term interests of our company, associates, sales and service centers, and our customers.
Watch as Swagelok’s former Chairman and CEO, Art Anton, reflects on the values that built a strong company and culture. These values are the same deep-rooted qualities that will position Swagelok for future growth.
Inspired Social Responsibility
Swagelok’s community giving and sustainability missions are substantive and straightforward.
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Travel from Nigeria to Japan - information you need to know
25 November 2020 ∙ 7 minutes to read
JapaneseJapan Travel Guide for Nigerians
First thing first - Getting your Japanese visa as you travel Japan
Japan Travel - the biggest cities to visit in Japan
Some of the famous emperors of Japan
Historic sites to visit whenever you find yourself in Japan
This article is a Japan travel guide as well as Japan travel advice for Nigerians who are thinking of travelling to Japan. While would a Nigerian decide to travel to Japan? It could either be for education, vacation, business, visit, or even to learn a foreign language such as the Japanese language.
Japan is a country that is blessed with a rich cultural heritage as well as world-famous attraction sites that bring people to the country every year. As a tourist, visiting Japan will take you aback because some of the world's historic cultural sites and most beautiful natural features and located in Japan. No wonder the Japanese territory made quite a number of the UNESCO World Famous Heritage List.
That said, you can't travel into another country without being legally approved by the ministry of foreign affairs of that country resident in your country. For example, if you must travel to Japan from Nigeria, the Japanese embassy in conjunction with the ministry of foreign affairs must clear you before giving you the go-ahead to their country. There is required information they will need from you before granting you access into their country. As you read on in this article, all the information needed as a Nigerian to travel to Japan will be revealed to you.
The magnificent city of Yokohama, Japan | Photo Credit: Will Li on Unsplash
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H - ikari
While nationals from countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Schengen countries, and a host of others can travel and stay in Japan with just a valid international passport (although the number of days or months to stay is limited), countries like the Federal Republic of Nigeria don't have non--immigration privilege. As a Nigerian, you must contact the Japanese embassy and immigration office in Nigeria and must be approved before being able to travel to Japan.
In addition to your international passport, there are other documents you need to include in your application form when putting in for a Japanese visa. There are different types of visas you can apply for as a Nigerian living in Nigeria - this depends on why you are going to Japan. The following below is a summary of the categories of visas available for Nigerians who want to travel to Japan:
Student visa: This is for those going to Japan to school. Japan has some of the best universities in the world that attract student from every corner of the globe. As a Nigerian, you need a student visa to be able to gain entry into the great country of Japan. Please note that for you to have a wonderful experience in Japan, knowing how to speak the Japanese language at least to a reasonable level would be required.
Business visa: Do you have a business partner in Japan you need to contact physically? then this is the kind of visa you need to put in an application for.
Visit visa: This is for those who have family or friends that reside in Japan. If you want to visit a friend or family member in Japan, you will have to apply for a visit visa.
Tourist visa: The tourist visa tends to be most popular of all visas into Japan because millions of tourists all over the world visit the country every year to catch a glimpse of some amazing sites. If you are travelling to Japan from Nigeria and your purpose of travelling is for vacation and sightseeing, then you need a tourist visa to be granted entry into the country.
Processing your visa takes some few days to weeks, depending on the type of visa you are applying for. The Murtala International Airport, Lagos and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja are two places to board your flight to Tokyo, Japan. You can buy your air ticket by using any of the online air ticket services. Getting travel insurance Japan would also be a great idea because you never can tell what lies ahead.
Read more on how to apply for Japanese visa.
Having talked about the number one requirements needed to enter Japan from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, it is now time to look at the exciting things to keep you thrilled as you travel in Japan.
Japan has a population size of about 126 million people. Though not up to what we have in Nigeria (Nigeria is roughly 200 million in population), the development rate in Japan is non-comparable to any state in Nigeria or even countries in the world. With the capital of Japan being Tokyo, the city of Tokyo has what it takes to rub shoulders with world-renowned cities such as New York, London, and Paris.
For those looking for places to visit in Japan, the following below are the biggest cities in Japan with lots of cultural heritage and physical features embedded in them.
Tokyo - Tokyo is the capital of Japan. There are about 8.5 million people in the city, and it houses one of the top 20 universities in the world, The University of Tokyo. For recreations, the Tokyo National Museum, Tsukiji market, Nezu Museum, and a host of other eye-catching features are waiting for you to explore in the city of Tokyo.
Osaka - When you travel to Japan from Nigeria, one area you should endeavour to pay a visit to is Osaka. This city has a population of about 2.8 million, and plays a key role in the economy of Japan, generating a GDP of $341 billion.
Kyoto - It was the former capital of Japan with a large population size of about 20 million. If you are interested in learning Japanese, Kyoto has some of the best language schools in Japan.
Yokohama - It is located in the south of Tokyo, and the presence of seaports in the city makes it of economic importance to the Japanese government. Lots of commercial activities going on in Yokohama.
Hiroshima - A city that was destroyed by the atomic bomb of World War II has been rebuilt to become one of the world's finest place. Visiting this city will give you a clue about what happened in the second world war.
Fukuoka - It is an island that is rich in the Japanese cultural heritage - a lot of temples, shrines and castles are located in Fukuoka.
Kobe - Kobe has a population of about 1.5 million people and it is located near Kyoto. If you have ever heard of Wagyu beef, it originated from the city of Kobe.
The Imperial House of Japan is preserved till this day | Photo Credit: Will H McMahan on Unsplash
The Japan Imperial House is one of the oldest that is still in existence. The Monarchical house dates back to around 660 BC, during which hundreds of Emperors have come and gone. Although all emperors have the ruling power, some were more famous than the others in terms of involvement in wars and controversies.
The first emperor Japan ever had was Emperor Jimmu. He was seen as a descendant of one of the most prominent gods in Japan, the Storm god and sun goddess. The Japanese royal house has been a hereditary seat for thousands of years, and the first son of the ruling monarch is usually the crown prince and heir apparent to the throne. Below are the most famous emperors in the history of Japan.
Emperor Jimmu - He founded present-day Japan after engaging in several wars
Hirohito - The longest-serving monarch to grace the imperial seat.
Akihito - Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako gave birth to Akihito. He succeeded his father to become the Emperor of Japan in 1952
Naruhito - He was the 126th emperor to rule after some traditional rituals were performed
Emperor Meiji - He was born in Kyoto on 3rd November 1852 and reigned from February 3rd 1867 to July 30th 1912.
Here is a full list of the famous emperors of Japan that left remarkable impacts.
The Nara Park, Japan | Photo Credit: Timo Volz on Unsplash
As a Nigerian, the best time to travel to Japan is during summer when the weather is mild. Getting these japan travel tips and information will go a long way in helping you get the best experience from your travel. Having said that, Japan is blessed with magnificent structures and culture that will keep you entertained no matter how many days or months you choose to spend in the country. Below are some of the best places to visit in Japan for sightseeing and learning about the history of Japan:
Mount Fuji: If you enjoy mountain climbing, then this area should be the first place you must visit in Japan. The best time for this activity is between July and September when there is little snowfall.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park: Pay respect to those who died during the atomic bomb in Hiroshima during World War II by visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. You may also want to visit other places in Hiroshima such as the Miyajima island and Itsukushima shrine.
Nara Park: In this park is a combination of free-roaming deer, temples and shrines. To get the most out of your visit, you need to go early because the most exciting activities close by 5 pm.
The Fushimi Inari Shrine: This notable shrine has featured in some movies such as the Memoire of a geisha. A visit to this shrine would leave you speechless.
The Imperial House of Japan: Although you are granted access to the palace only two days in a year (emperor's birthday and the day he addresses the people for the new year), you can still take a walk around the palace.
The great Osaka
Hokkaido Island
Read more on the most famous Japanese landmarks to visit whenever you step in Japan.
Need a Japanese teacher?
5.00/5 - 1 vote(s)
A seasoned writer with a knack for various niches. As a physics graduate, I enjoy carrying out detailed research on a particular topic before drafting up an eye-catching and engaging article.
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US will increase exports to China by $200B under phase 1 deal
Matt Leonard @Matt_Lnrd
The U.S. and China signed the first phase of a trade deal Wednesday under which the U.S. would increase its exports to China by $200 billion over a 2017 baseline.
But many of the tariffs put in place during the year and a half long trade war will remain in place, including the 25% tariff on $250 billion worth of imports from China. The countries had agreed to some reductions in the weeks leading up to this week's signing.
Under the deal, the U.S. will increase its exports to China in manufactured goods, agricultural goods, energy products and services by tens of billions of dollars over 2020 and 2021. The increased agriculture exports will be especially noteworthy for American farmers who have struggled to find business to make up for the loss of Chinese trade.
Matt Leonard / Supply Chain Dive, data from trade deal
A trade increase of $200 billion over two years could result in a desired business uptick for American firms, especially farmers, but the signing is no guarantee, one farmer told NPR.
"I'm also a realist enough to know until those beans are actually shipped to customers that we can't count our chickens before they're hatched," Kristin Duncanson, a farmer in central Minnesota told the radio station.
China's state-run economy makes it easier to increase its imports by large quantities, but it could be difficult to accomplish without reducing imports from elsewhere, according to a UBS analyst cited by CNN.
Prior to the deal signing, the countries had agreed to cut some tariffs. The 15% tariffs that took effect at the beginning of September on roughly $120 billion worth of goods (list 4A) will be reduced to a rate of 7.5%, President Donald Trump announced last month. China also said it would lower tariffs for all its trading partners on 850 products. But many other tariffs remain in place, including the 25% tariff on $250 billion worth of imports from China.
The signing of the deal drew praise from industry, but it was followed by pleas to do more to remove the taxes. U.S. businesses and consumers have had to pay an estimated $46 billion in tariffs since the dispute began, according to Tariffs Hurt the Heartland.
"The trade war won’t be over until all of these tariffs are gone," NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement. "We are glad to see the phase one deal signed, and resolution of phase two can’t come soon enough."
UPS CEO David Abney similarly called the deal a "first step" in a statement.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies for U.S. business interest, said the deal "signals a rollback" of the trade war, but said there was still work to do in a second phase, including on "subsidies, digital trade and data discrimination, and non-tariff barriers to U.S. manufacturers and service providers."
The deal also prevents China from forcing companies to transfer their technology to Chinese competitors as a condition for market access.
Some pointed out that the Chinese have a history of failing to live up to formal agreements, but the Trump administration voiced confidence in the deal Wednesday.
Overall, there weren't many surprises in the deal and the market acted accordingly with a muted day on Wall Street, according to CNBC.
The ongoing trade war has resulted in China dropping to the third-largest trading partner for the U.S. It was the largest trading partner until January 2019, according to Census data.
The first phase of the deal did address some long-standing concerns about trade with China, but remaining concerns in the business community place a lot of pressure on the second phase of the deal.
Supply Chain Dive Trump to sign phase 1 of China trade deal Jan. 15
Supply Chain Dive China to lower tariffs on hundreds of products Jan. 1
Follow Matt Leonard on Twitter
Filed Under: Regulation
Tetiana Soares via Getty Images
Mapping and charting the growth of regional parcel carriers
Alternatives to UPS and FedEx have brought on major retailers over the last several years, with expansion accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting parcel boom.
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Baseball Sweeps Past St. Edward’s, 3-0, 5-2
Home » News » Baseball Sweeps Past St. Edward’s, 3-0, 5-2
San Antonio – Scott Shimek and Braxton Watson each picked up wins as 15th-ranked St. Mary’s University swept a doubleheader against St. Edward’s University, 3-0, 5-2, in Heartland Conference baseball action Friday afternoon at V.J. Keefe Memorial Stadium.
In the second game the Rattlers fell behind 2-0 after the top of the second inning. An error and a balk helped the Hilltoppers score two runs on just one hit over the first two innings. The Rattlers rallied in the bottom of the second inning. With two outs and Colin Stock (So., Klamath Falls, Ore.) on first base, Ryan Morrow (So., Bulverde) walked. That brought up Tyler Migl (Fr., San Antonio), who doubled to left-center, scoring Stock. The big blow came with the next batter, Billy Richard (Fr., Schertz), who hit a hard grounder that went under the glove of Jeremy Houser. That allowed Morrow to score, tying the score at 2-2. Michael Brzezinski (Sr., Helotes), Reagan Moczygemba (So., Bulverde) and Jonathon Cisneros (Jr., San Antonio) smacked RBI singles to put the Ratters up 5-2.
From there Shimek (Sr., Shiner) worked his way in and out of trouble over the next five innings, but didn’t allow another run. He allowed one earned run on five hits and three walks, while striking out three. He remained undefeated this season at 3-0 with the victory and picked up his second straight complete game.
Watson (Sr., Spring) picked up the win in the first game despite having to work his way out of trouble in nearly every inning. He allowing seven hits and two walks, but two double plays and some key strikeouts helped him even his record at 1-1 on the season.
The Rattlers gave Watson all the support he would need in the second inning. Migl and Brzezinski hit RBI singles in the inning to give the Rattlers a 2-0 lead. St. Edward’s left 11 runners on base in the game and looked to finally have broken through in the sixth inning. The Hilltoppers put runners on first and second with one out against Watson. Coach Charlie Migl went to the bullpen for Jonathon Perez (Fr., San Antonio), who was appearing in just his second game as a Rattler. On the first pitch he coaxed a ground ball double play from Drew Cross. He then retired all three batters in the seventh to pick up his first save as a Rattler.
With the sweep the Rattlers improved to 9-3 overall and 7-3 in Heartland Conference play this season. The Hilltoppers fell to 6-6, 5-4. The two teams will wrap up their four-game series with a doubleheader on Saturday at 2 p.m. at V.J. Keefe Memorial Stadium.
Pivoting with excellence: Robbie Bishop-Monroe
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Commissioner for Human Rights Council Releases Viewpoint on Trafficking
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 1:09 PM
Mr. Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights for the Council of Europe spoke recently about the importance of addressing the root causes of trafficking in humans and of applying human rights standards for all victims receiving services, including undocumented migrants. He articulated the importance of allowing undocumented migrants to have a fair trial. Many undocumented migrants who are victims of trafficking are afraid to report their abuse to authorities, as they fear they will be ignored or deported.
Mr. Hammarberg recognizes gender inequality, poverty, unemployment, abuse and marginalisation as well known root causes of trafficking. He also recognizes the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings as a comprehensive treaty to combat trafficking and notes its importance in protecting victims and prosecuting criminals. The Convention has not entered into force, though, as only Moldova, Romania and Austria and Albania have ratified it. Mr. Hammarberg calls on the rest of the Council members to ratify the treaty "as an urgent and necessary first step forward."
To read the viewpoint in its entirety, click here.
Compiled from, "Prevent trafficking in human beings by addressing the root causes, Viewpoint from Mr. Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights, European Council. 19 February 2007.
Visit this site's page on Trafficking in Women
Visit the Ablania Country Page
Visit the Moldova Country Page
Visit the Romania Country Page
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A-mei turns back the clock in a concert celebrating her two decades as a singer
A-mei Utopia 2.0 Carnival World Tour 2017.PHOTO: MEDIACORP VIZPRO INTERNATIONAL
Boon Chan
Assistant Life Editor
Jun 10, 2017, 9:34 am SGT
http://str.sg/4bTF
SINGAPORE - At points, it was the largest KTV room in Singapore, as the crowd of about 7,200 sang along fervently. At others, it was the largest Mandopop disco as the beats throbbed, the lights danced and the audience boogied along.
Taiwanese diva A-mei moved effortlessly from one scenario to the other at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on June 9, equally at ease belting out ballads or firing up the high-octane dance numbers in her World Tour 2017 concert that was almost three hours long.
It took a while though before her vocals warmed up fully.
On the opening string of fast-paced tracks, her voice seemed quite ragged and the energy level wasn't quite there.
Given that her previous show here was at the National Stadium just last January, there was also a certain familiarity to the proceedings as she blew kisses and exhorted her fans to "give me your hands".
An early standout number was Bloody Love Story. While it was perhaps rather literal to bathe the stage in red, it was also effective in creating a macabre mood.
Things picked up further when the dreadlocked A-mei started singing I Hate I Love You. Her voice took centre stage as she crooned to the accompaniment of a piano, and it was warm and powerful. This was followed by Have You Heard Lately?, Truth and Want Nothing, the fans' chorusing growing louder with each hit.
The gig also marked the singer's 20th anniversary milestone and she had a few surprises up her sleeve. (Strictly speaking, her debut album Sisters came out in 1996, but who's quibbling?)
She sang the moving Listen To Me as a tribute to her "good teacher and friend", Taiwanese singer-songwriter-producer Chang Yu-sheng, who died in 1997 after a car accident. The song was released when he was in a coma fighting for his life and because of the painful associations, she has rarely performed it.
There were other, happier memories.
A-mei turned back the years in a time travel segment in which she performed one song each from every one of her 16 albums, starting with the reggae-influenced Jamaican Betel Nut off Amit2 (2015).
On the track Rainbow (from 2009's Amit), she waved around a rainbow flag and said: "I'm cheering on every kind of love." She dusted off the almost forgotten Journey (2001) and later recalled that she had filmed a music video in Singapore for the ballad Early (from 2000's Regardless).
During Hand In Hand (1998), the crowd clapped along; during Thinking Of You (from 1997's Bad Boy), they waved their hands in the air as one as A-mei urged the audience to set a high bar for the following night's almost sold-out show.
It ended at the beginning with Sisters, the title track of the 1996 album that made her name. She sang the 2016 slowed-down version, as though taking a moment to reflect on far how she has come - and how far her fans have travelled with her.
By the end of the night, my voice was starting to get ragged. A-mei sounded like she could sing for another 20 years.
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The plot involves three stories in New York – a middle-aged artist obsessed with his pretty young assistant, a 12-year-old going crazy in a hotel and a neurotic lawyer with a possessive mother.
30 Best Woody Allen Movies Ranked for Filmmakers
Woody Allen is a writer and director who bares his emotions and neuroses on screen. It’s for this very reason that so many of his films feel so personal. Yet, as an audience, it feels harder than ever to make sense of the complicated nature that is Allen’s catalog of work, especially in light of allegations… Continue reading 30 Best Woody Allen Movies Ranked for Filmmakers
Chris Heckmann March 18, 2020
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5✭♫: Francesca da Rimini
This is an twenty-odd-minute orchestral suite written in 1876 by Tchaikowsky. It’s intensely romantic, ridiculously melodic, and should be played really, really loud. (“5✭♫” series introduction here; with an explanation of why the title may look broken.)
The Context · I don’t know any bad Tchaikowsky music. He doesn’t cover the waterfront, or try to; what you get are deeply-felt large-scale heavily-orchestrated showpieces that start strong, are stuffed with hummable tunes, and end—always—with a bang. But if that’s what you’re in the mood for, nobody’s ever done it better.
(There’s an interesting music-obsessive discussion lurking here: not all great musicians have been good at endings. Tchaikowsky was, Bach was only OK, Brahms is way better than Beethoven, and back in the 20th century, the Clash were unequaled among rock bands in bringing a tune to convincing, and interesting, close.)
Tchaikowsky was a very interesting person: high-strung, obsessive, gay, hard to get along with; I think the great book about him still hasn’t been written.
The Music · I’d say that Francesa is the first movement of the best symphony Tchaikowsky never wrote. I’m not going to get into a big long end-to-end description, except to say that it has as many beautiful melodies as three average Beethoven symphonies, wonderful writing for strings and percussion, and is never boring for a single second of its twenty-plus minutes.
Apparently the music is about the story of the famed star-crossed adulterer of the same name as told by Dante in the Inferno , and while I’ve read that, I don’t remember the story and I don’t think I’m missing anything.
Also, this is classical music’s analogue of London Calling or Made in Japan ; music that just simply can’t be played too loud. You need an good stereo, because stringed instruments played loud en masse are maybe the single greatest challenge to electronic music reproduction. But this thing ought to be played at a volume where the loud bits are making the house shake. Turn it up until you’re frightened and then turn it up some more.
The recording I listen to is from 1959 by Dorati and the Minneapolis orchestra on Mercury (catalogue 434 373-2), which also has very good versions of Tchaikowsky’s Symphony No. 4 (that’s what’s advertised on the front for some reason) and Borodin’s Prince Igor . It’s one of the “Mercury Living Presence” recordings, which are audiophile legends, recorded in three channels on half-inch-wide tape by Wilma Cozart; many lovers of fine recording feel that Ms Cozart’s work in this era has never been improved on. There is a certain amount of tape hiss, but once Piotr gets his musical hooks into you, you’ll never hear it.
Sampling It · There’s no useful way to “sample” a 20-plus-minute work. If you like the sound of an orchestra and like good tunes, you’ll like this. Otherwise not.
I see that there’s a Mercury Living Presence Web site, and they advertise a CD set of all the Tchaikowsky symphonies, which includes Francesca ; it looks like the CD I have is out of print. While I suspect that any competent orchestra and conductor will do OK with this one, it would be a pity to get a recording that’s not technically good, because Piotr’s orchestration really deserves the best treatment.
· Arts (11 fragments)
· · Music (100 fragments)
· · · 5 Stars (206 more)
· · · Recordings (70 more)
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Reddit raises $200 million in funding to help redesign website, push into video
By Shawn Knight on July 31, 2017, 18:00
Reddit, the self-proclaimed front page of the Internet, recently raised $200 million in new venture funding which values the company at $1.8 billion. The infusion of money will be used, among other things, to fund a redesign of Reddit’s homepage.
In a recent interview with Recode, co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit feels old and they don’t want to be associated with old. When new users come to the site, he added, they want them to have a better sense of what’s there and what it is for.
Huffman said they’re literally rewriting all of the site’s code, some of which is more than a decade old.
Recode saw an early version of the new design and said it looks similar to Twitter’s Timeline or Facebook’s News Feed with a never-ending feed of content broke up into “cards.” Additional “visuals” are designed to lure people into the conversations taking place behind links, the publication added.
Raising money to rebuild a desktop website in mobile-first 2017 may seem backwards but according to Huffman, 80 percent of Reddit’s 300 million monthly visitors still arrive via the web.
Not all of the funding is being used for the redesign, however, as some will go towards boosting Reddit’s video efforts. The site could eventually compete for video ad revenue but according to Huffman, making money is not a top priority. He wouldn’t comment on the site’s total revenue but it’s worth noting that Reddit is not yet profitable.
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An insider's guide to the Le Mans 24hours: how to experience the ultimate endurance race in style
Cars race day and night over 24 hours at the legendary Le Mans race Credit: Getty Images
Eilidh Hargreaves
14 June 2019 • 10:15am
Luxury motoring
The French city of Le Mans is known for two things: rillettes and the 24 Hours, the world's oldest endurance car race.
Being one of the most prestigious automobile races in the world, and one third of the Triple Crown of Motorsport (which also includes the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500), hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to Pays de la Loire every June to witness ‘le grand défi’.
The legacy of Le Mans began in 1923, with the first 24-hour-long race at the Circuit de la Sarthe (located a 20-minute drive from the centre of the city). The event is still held there today and the 87th edition of the race will take place from 3pm on June 15 to 3pm on June 16, 2019.
Differing from the F1 racing format, each car entered must have a team of at least three drivers to take turns behind the wheel, and no single driver can race for more than 120 minutes per six hours. After 24 hours, time is called and the car that has covered the furthest distance wins.
There are a number of classes included in the race; LMP1 and LMP2 for custom-built Le Mans prototypes - split by weight, speed and power, and dominated by Audi, Toyota and Porsche - as well as GT Endurance Professional, and GT Endurance Amateur.
The 24 Hours is known as the ultimate test of endurance for racing drivers; and for the cars that zoom around the track at up to over 200mph in light and dark. From Steve McQueen, who not only raced at Le Mans at a high level but also starred in a film about it, to Tom Kristiensen, who has lifted the trophy nine times, winning at Le Mans is the stuff of legend.
Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi celebrate their win for Toyota at the 86th edition of the race in 2018
But, like all notorious tales, the race has been shrouded in its fair share of tragedy. The 1955 Le Mans Disaster - the most infamous of all - killed 83 spectators and the French driver Pierre Bouillin, and injured 180 more. In 2013, the first time I witnessed the race, Allan Simonsen’s Aston Martin cavorted off-piste on the third lap, resulting in his death.
It is not surprising that the drama of Le Mans has captured the heart of Hollywood, with stars like Jackie Chan and Patrick Dempsey having competed in the GT categories, and co-owning their own respective racing teams, Jackie Chan DC Racing and Dempsey Racing-Proton. A new film, Ford v. Ferrari, about the 1966 edition of Le Mans, starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon, is also slated for release later this year.
As the stars roll up, the hotels pack out, and the streets take on a vibrant, upbeat mood, it is a joyous time to be in this otherwise slow-moving city. The energy is as addictive as the roar of the engines at night.
With hundreds of thousands in attendance, making your trip luxurious requires forward planning and attention to detail. From bedding down at a nearby chateau to Michelin dining and spectating from a helicopter, this is Telegraph Luxury’s ultimate guide to the 24 Hours.
How to travel to Le Mans
A Porsche 911 crosses the finish line in 2018 to win the LMGTE pro categroy
You could fly, or take the Eurostar to Paris, and then board the TGV to Le Mans, but dedicated British Le Mans followers drive over. Time it right and you could join the (unofficial) convoy with thousands of classic and supercars heading across the Channel and down through the north of France.
If you don’t have your own to polish up and drive over, contact a luxury car hire service like Avis Prestige. Among its offering is the Porsche 911 Carerra, a fun choice, as you’ll see four of its top-of-the-range siblings roaring round the track in the GT categories this year.
The most discerning attendees, however, prepare for the drive over months before it happens, purchasing and doing-up a different classic car every year, complete with an up-to-date Le Mans bumper sticker (if you see a collection of classic cars on the road, that’s how you know for sure that you’ve found the fleet).
Domaine de Villeray has eight rooms, suites and apartments split between a 16th-century castle and its old mill house
People tend to do to the 24 Hours in groups, which means even trying to fit inside the already overflowing hotels of Le Mans is generally more stress than it’s worth. The Loire and its surroundings are home to several privately owned chateaux and moulins (mills), and the best among them offer a refreshing rustic escape, fine dining and space that the city can’t provide.
At about one hour from the racetrack, Domaine de Villeray in Condeau is serene, and stands out as one of the most memorable places I have ever stayed. The family-owned residence has 40 rooms, suites and apartments split between a 16th-century castle and its old mill house, all decorated in rustic style.
If you stay anywhere in Le Mans, you will hear the car engines roaring round the track all night and throughout the week; at Villeray, all you will hear are the leaves flickering in the breeze as you enjoy your morning croissant.
To add to the tranquillity, there are acres of garden, two swimming pools and an outside dining space. The property is most beautiful at sunset and sunrise, when the whole estate turns golden. (Rooms at Villeray are still available around June 15-16 and cost from €517.)
Alternatively, there are a number of exceptional hotel suites in Paris, where the most discerning guests at Le Mans often take up residence for the week.
If you are determined to stay in Le Mans, where hotels routinely fill up a year in advance, the most endearing among them is Le Mans Country Club, a four-star, 17th-century building to the east of the city (and a 15-minute drive from the race track). There are 39 bedrooms but, although they are ordinarily calm, expect to hear noise from the racetrack.
At the hotel itself, there are tennis courts and stretches of woodland to walk through, as well as a seasonal restaurant - Le Séquoia - to dine at. The atmosphere is particularly exciting during race time, as the guests are invariably present for the 24 Hours. Whilst the hotel is fully booked for this year's edition, call as early as possible to make a reservation for 2020.
Le Mans Country Club is a four-star 17th-century building to the east of the city
Yet more determined to embrace the spirit piste-side? ‘Glamping’ is available on site from £515 per person for the weekend; whilst it is far from a truly glamorous proposition, it is a step up from the basic tents. The carpeted five-metre bell tents each contain king-sized beds and a table and chairs, and those staying inside gain access to fully serviced toilets and showers, 24-hour security, and a hospitality tent.
Staying here does mean your group will be fully immersed in the festival atmosphere the race commands; located inside the track, it's impossible to get any closer.
“This will be our seventh annual pilgrimage to Le Mans,” says a friend, who religiously takes time out from business in Manchester to attend. Despite his habitually decadent tendencies, he very much enjoys the camping experience. “We make an effort in how we dress and how we eat, but camping at Le Mans is only as good as you make it. It’s not quite Gleneagles, but commendable,” he says.
If you aren’t staying on-site, arranging a chauffeur is paramount if you are to make the most of the champagne tents. Wilfried Private Car has three Mercedes V Class and two Mercedes S Class limousines, available for €840 or €1,000 respectively, for a 12-hour day. To ensure your booking, contact the company as soon as possible.
Otherwise, trams run regularly from the city out to the track, to which the closest stop is Antarès. During the weekend of the race, the tram service runs over 24 hours, with tickets available to buy from a machine at each stop, meaning you will always be able to move around.
Where to dine out
As far as locals are concerned, Auberge des 7 Plats is the place to eat in Le Mans
While there is on-site catering aplenty, including an upmarket proposition for VIPs, the pleasure and comfort of a sit-down dinner is too good to resist. Even during the race itself, I leave the track for a few hours to dine out in town, before bundling up in a windproof jacket and heading back to watch the race by night.
As far as locals are concerned, Auberge des 7 Plats is the place to eat in Le Mans. Situated in the old town, the setting is rustic and relaxed, as if you’d been invited into someone's house. Lavish, traditional dishes are served, from a unique seasonal menu of seven starters, seven main dishes and 12 desserts. The magret de canard entier, in particular, makes for an elaborate dinner. Reservations are essential.
Le Beaulieu delivers a more elevated, refined setting
Le Beaulieu delivers a more elevated, refined setting, with chandeliers sparkling over white tablecloths and a number of private dining rooms for hire. One of just two restaurants in Le Mans with a Michelin star (the other is L’Auberge de Bagatelle on Avenue Bollée), it is a must (or, as the French say, c'est incontournable).
Chef Olivier Boussard trained in haute cuisine at top Paris institutions and did a stint in the Pyrenees before opening up in Le Mans with a menu of well-executed classics; think poached foie gras with artichokes and truffle, or veal fillet with piquillos peppers.
Out of town, and close to the racetrack, Le Pont Rouge might not have a star to its name, but it comes as one of the top recommendations for Le Mans in the Michelin Guide nonetheless. The ever-changing, seasonal menu stays true to French traditions and is particularly vibrant in summer. Due to its proximity to the race track, you can expect a great atmosphere while dining here during the 24 Hours.
Highly recommended for the Sunday evening, when everyone is exhausted, La Tagliatella is a traditional Italian trattoria in the centre of town, with a vast amount of covers, warm service and pasta piled high. It is a homely and comforting final treat before making your way home.
The Drivers’ Parade
Patrick Dempsey caused a stir at the drivers parade in 2014 Credit: Gerlach Delissen - Corbis
The week leading up to the race is packed with activities, both at the race track and in the city. The biggest of all is the Drivers' Parade, which takes place on the Friday - the day before the race begins - in the form of a carnival-like procession from the track to the city centre.
It’s a Mardi Gras-type spectacle, with the racing teams humming slowly through the streets of the city, sitting atop their cars, sandwiched between floats carrying dancers and bands. Fans line the streets and pop bottles of champagne and crémant de Loire to celebrate. While a spot at any of the street-side bars and restaurants is wonderful, VIP guests receive access to an exclusive ringside party on the parade start-line.
It’s as the procession ends, however, and the entire crowd disperses into the bars that the party really begins. Being a provincially minded, small city in Pays de la Loire, there are no ultra high-end watering holes here. Saying that, you're in the Loire; choose the Tattinger, or ask for the most exceptional wine on the list (if there is a Didier Dagueneau Pouilly-Fume Silex, snap it up instantly).
With the drivers tucked in for an early night, the Friday evening is an experience you should witness at least once; a raucous, dancing-on-tabletops celebration across the city. Rue de Barillerie, where the new town meets the old town, is the ideal spot to be; a hub of restaurants and bars where, at some point in the evening, a small car will park up on the cobbles with a sound system in its boot. That’s when the party takes to the streets.
Race day: how to watch the action
The Panoramic 24 is the most luxurious hospitality package at the race track
Take it from someone who’s tried and tested different strategies over many years: you’re not a hero for staying eyes-glued to the track all 24 hours. The most exciting moments - the drivers revving up and zipping off, the car lights zig-zagging towards you in the dark of night, and the finish - are must-sees, but there is so much more to experience trackside, especially if you opt for a premium hospitality package.
Panoramic 24 is the highest calibre option, at £2,550 per person for the week, or £1,850 for the weekend. It grants access to a luxury lounge area, which looks down onto the track, and is equipped with sofas, dining tables, a standing area and an open champagne bar serving Pommery. All Panoramic guests have access to a VIP concierge and, for the first time, will be catered for throughout the weekend by a Michelin-starred chef from the Four Seasons Georges V hotel in Paris.
Whilst the lounge view onto the track is first class, it’s the extras that set the experience apart from others. Before the race begins, Panoramic guests are escorted downstairs to the pits, where the engineers and drivers are getting set for the next 24 hours, for an exclusive behind-the-scenes sneak-peek.
The facilities include an open Pommery champagne bar, seating and screening areas and catering from a Michelin-starred chef
Wherever you are, watching the race kick off at 3pm is a thrill, as the engines roar menacingly, and shoot off onto the course. The first hour is often the most exciting; this is when the dominant cars assert their lead and you get a feel for what might happen next. It’s also when the most drama occurs, which can be good or bad, from an unexpected motor surging ahead, to a car spinning off-track.
Once the race is fully underway, a VIP shuttle will pull up to take Panoramic guests on a two-hour round trip to exclusive viewing spots around the 14-mile race course, including Maison des Hunaudières, which also has an open champagne bar and the same five-star catering.
Regular Le Mans-goers will know the familiar sight of helicopters; five or six at a time looping around in the air above the track. Some of these belong to TV stations, but others contain Panoramic guests who, for an extra €115 per person, can take in the race from the skies. For an additional €1,190, guests can also book an exclusive Porsche tour on the track during the driver practice sessions on the Saturday morning.
Elsewhere at the track, there are festival-style attractions, including a huge stage with live music sets from French artists, a Ferris wheel to street food stalls and Pommery champagne tents. The best time to use the Ferris wheel is at night, when it provides an exceptional birds eye view of the lights swirling round the track.
To book the Panoramic 24 package, or any other hospitality packages, email hospitality@lemans.org. Le Mans 24 Hours is from 15-16 June; lemans.org
Other attractions in Le Mans
Le Mans Cathedral, which was completed in the 15th century after a 400-year build Credit: JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER /AFP/Getty Images
Located a stone's throw from the track, the Motor Museum of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is an essential stop for any first timers. Covering both the history of the 24 Hours, from 1923-2019, and the history of motors and motorsport in general, it’s a great way of swatting up on the weekend ahead. With a hall of fame, storyboards and 120 cars on display - including champions from past editions - you’ll leave with a palpable notion of the legacy tied up with the race.
Towering over the city, at the peak of the old town, Cathedral Saint-Julien is one of the most impressive examples of gothic architecture in Europe. Completed in the 15th century after a 400-year build, its vast flying buttresses and two main towers provide a grandeur that is rarely found in cities as small in scale as Le Mans.
To stand in front of it is overwhelming, and inside there are particularly interesting models of the building in each stage of its construction, from the 11th to the 15th century, and mesmerising stained glass windows.
L’Abbaye Royale de L’Epau, an abbey founded by Queen Berengaria of Navarre in 1229, and Arche de la Nature, a huge park, both provide a refreshing escape from the tarmac and engines and into lush, green countryside. Located next to one another on the northeast side of the city, they provide a chance to explore a different side of Le Mans.
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Home / Opinion / The sacred vision of our Constitution
The sacred vision of our Constitution
It is time to return to the text that is the guiding light of the republic
A meeting of the Constituent Assembly, 1950
Samantak Das | | Published 28.01.20, 07:35 PM
Essence of India
The Preamble to the Constitution of India, as it now stands, defines India as “a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”, committed “to secure to all its citizens” justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity — in that order — with each one of these four terms further specifying the realm in which its virtues must operate in the nation that “the people of India” are giving to themselves. So, justice is to be enshrined in the realm of the “social, economic and political”; liberty ensured in “thought, expression, belief, faith and worship”; equality assured when it comes to “status” and “opportunity”; thereby creating a fraternity that will promote “the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity” of India.
These are powerful words, long recognized for their ability to inspire and to move, and now being used across the country to challenge what is widely perceived as the communal underpinnings of the recently-enacted Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, especially when considered together with the proposed National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register. Young women and men in college and university campuses, people from all walks of life, gathering in open spaces, parks, and gardens across the country, usually led by women — some of whom are taking part in public demonstrations for the first time in their lives — have weaponized the Preamble to openly challenge the CAA, NRC, and NPR, and, by extension, the government that has declared its intention to enforce them. As commentator after commentator have remarked, and as many (including this writer) have experienced first hand, the most noticeable thing about these demonstrations is that there seems to be no central command leading them, nor does there seem to be any significant role being played by political parties or religious leaders in shaping or guiding such protests. The second thing that is obvious is that these aren’t emphatically “Muslim protests”, even though they are directed at the anti-Muslim bias of the CAA, and the fear of Muslim victimization should the NRC and the NPR be enforced.
Our Constitution is a living document, as witnessed by the many changes it has undergone since its formal finalization on November 26, 1949; with some amendments universally lauded and others contested bitterly and, on occasion, repealed or modified (for example, perhaps the most contentious of them all, the forty-second amendment of 1976, introduced during the Emergency), but a consideration of such changes is well beyond the scope of a brief discussion such as this. However, the vibrant and fundamentally democratic nature of the Constitution is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in the 12 volumes recording the discussions and debates of the Constituent Assembly, right from December 9, 1946, when its members met for the first time, to the signing of the Hindi and English copies of the final Constitution by members of the Assembly on January 24, 1950. These 12 volumes are freely available here, and they make for truly fascinating reading. Problems and issues that remain contentious to this day were discussed, debated, voted on, and resolved, in a manner that can only be characterized as civilized, respectful towards differing views and opinions, and leavened throughout with an almost impish sense of humour. I am not suggesting that an interested individual should read all 12 volumes in one go, but for nearly every issue that is sought to be used to divide and confound us by our political leaders, the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly provide much food for cogitation. One such issue being the place given, or, to be more accurate, not given, to divinity and the then recently-deceased Father of the Nation in the text of the Constitution.
When the Constituent Assembly met on October 17, 1949, with the text nearing finalization, the issue of the Preamble, and its exact wording, was taken up. Several amendments were moved, for which notice had been given by members, “in which”, as Rajendra Prasad, the president of the Assembly, put it, “the name of God is brought in, or the name of Mahatma Gandhi is brought in, or both together”. The first of these (amendment No. 430) was moved by H.V. Kamath, who proposed that the phrase, “In the name of God”, should precede “We, the people of India” as the opening line of the Preamble. After the amendment had been negated, Shibban Lal Saxena moved that the Preamble begin with the words, “In the name of God the Almighty, under whose inspiration and guidance, the Father of our Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, led the Nation from slavery into Freedom, by unique adherence to the eternal principles of Satya and Ahimsa, and who sustained the millions of our countrymen and the martyrs of the Nation in their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the Complete Independence of our Motherland” and then go on to “We, the people”. Saxena’s argument for introducing both divinity and the Father of the Nation into the Preamble was predicated on the fact that such a “great piece of work” (his words) as the Constitution, of which everyone ought to be proud, should acknowledge the contribution of Gandhiji and also recognize the “realm of the spirit” that was an integral part of the new nation. It was J.B. Kripalani whose intervention was crucial at this point. “We must be very sparing of the use of the name of the Father of the Nation. My friend Shibban Lal knows that I yield to nobody in my love and respect for Gandhiji. I think it will be consistent with that respect if we do not bring him into this Constitution that may be changed and reshaped at any time.” This insistence on the Constitution as a living, changeable entity, subject to the will of “We, the people”, as opposed to the eternal virtues of both God and Gandhi, led Saxena to withdraw his proposed amendment with grace. When requested to speak, as he had done at the commencement of the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, Kripalani began by commending Rajendra Prasad for saving the discussion on the Preamble towards the end of the Assembly’s deliberations: “Sir, you like a good host, have reserved the choicest wine for the last.” He then went on to say that “what we have stated in this Preamble are not legal and political principles only. They are also great moral and spiritual principles... ” His injunctions that “on this solemn occasion, it is necessary to lay down clearly and distinctly, that sovereignty resides in and flows from the people” and that “we [the members of the Constituent Assembly] are the servants of the people” still resonate in our difficult and fractious times.
Whether CAA 2019 is violative of constitutional principles is a matter for the courts to decide, but — given, especially, the anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, majoritarianism that our rulers seem to take pride in celebrating — it is well worth our while to go back to the foundational text of our republic, and to the process of its formation, if for no other reason than to equip ourselves for the long struggle that seems to loom ominously ahead of all of us.
The author is professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, and has been working as a volunteer for a rural development NGO for the last 30 years
Preamble, a key lesson
Mahatma Gandhi National Register Of Citizens (NRC) Republic Op-ed National Population Register (NPR) Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) Constitution Of India
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OPERAS – open scholarly communication in the european research area for social sciences and humanities
Michael Kaiser, Elisabeth Ernst, Judith Schulte (Max Weber Stiftung)
DFG subject areas: 101–111 (interdisciplinary)
I am working as communication and project officer for the European distributed Research Infrastructure OPERAS at the Max Weber Stiftung in Germany. OPERAS coordinates and federates resources in Europe to efficiently address the scholarly communication needs of European researchers in the field of social sciences and humanities. The Max Weber Stiftung is involved in the coordination and the Executive Assembly of the Research Infrastructure and serves as national node for Germany.
My work relies strongly on coordination with the infrastructure’s international members and on closely working together with many colleagues from different countries and backgrounds. This is especially true when it comes to the planning of joint workshops, creating common statements and publications, and using the extensive network to plan and execute surveys or other information seeking tasks together. While we are using a common chat and video call system as well as a file storage and text processing system, we do not yet have more specific common tools for collaborative work.
One of the main goals of the OPERAS project TRIPLE is to provide a single access point for users to discover and reuse open scholarly social sciences and humanities resources, e.g. research data and publications, currently scattered across local repositories. It also seeks to enable researchers to be able to find and connect with peers and projects across disciplinary and language boundaries.
As part of this process and also in the context of the OPERAS project OPERAS‑P, surveys were conducted in the beginning of 2020. Project partners, including MWS, were asked to conduct these anonymised surveys with researchers in their countries on how the TRIPLE platform should go further in its development to tackle specific challenges social sciences and humanities researchers might have. Those surveys were recorded, transcribed, anonymised, translated, and then collected by one project partner to extract the relevant information for TRIPLE, OPERAS‑P and OPERAS. While this process worked well, every partner still had to think about storing the sensitive data conducted, which tools to use, and whom to contact for which part of the process.
Text+ could help facilitate the work of OPERAS in two ways:
as a national data aggregator
For OPERAS, Text+ could serve as a German network to rely on for identifying projects and relevant research for any activities of the OPERAS projects. More specifically, for the TRIPLE platform, which will provide a single European access point for users to discover and reuse open scholarly social sciences and humanities resources, Text+ (as a national data aggregator that enables the TRIPLE platform to automatically read and integrate these data) would serve as a great facilitation. In that context, it would help to not just know where the data is available, but also who the responsible organisation, project, or researcher is, so that they can be contacted.
2. as a service that stores sensitive data
For similar projects that OPERAS or other international consortia will carry out, Text+ could provide a single room with clear log-in and access rights, where a limited number of organisations from different European countries can work together. Most urgently needed would be a reliable central and long-term storage of the conducted data (e.g. from interviews) that is coherent with European data privacy. This would not only facilitate the work of all project partners as they would not need to think about how to store this data, it would also be centrally available to everyone with access rights throughout the project and after if the project’s grant agreements require it. In addition, the project lead could upload project-internal data on methods and methodologies, e.g. guidelines for conducting interviews or other projects, which recording, transcription, and translation tool to use and, if possible, also access rights to use these or integration with the SSHOC Open Cloud or the EOSC, as well as contact details for all people involved.
Categories Research Data Tags 101 Ancient Cultures, 102 History, 103 Fine Arts, Music, Theatre and Media Studies, 104 Linguistics, 105 Literary Studies, 106 Social and Cultural Anthropology, Non-European Cultures, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, 107 Theology, 108 Philosophy, 109 Educational Research, 110 Psychology, 111 Social Sciences Post navigation
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Paris shootings: many dead in multiple attacks
By Sophia Phan, Esther Han, Julie Power, Eryk Bagshaw and Allison Worrall
Updated November 14, 2015 — 5.18pm first published at 8.14am
Follow our rolling coverage of the Paris terrorist attack
At least 120 people were killed on Friday night in Paris, including at least 78 hostages at a theatre, in five to six coordinated terrorist attacks across the French capital by masked and silent gunmen wielding AK-47 assault rifles.
One Australian has been confirmed injured in the attacks but at this stage there are no reports of any Australians among the dead.
All the gunmen responsible for the attack in Paris are now believed to be dead, the head of Paris police, Michel Cadot, told media early on Saturday, but the hunt for accomplices was continuing.
The attackers at the Bataclan theatre and concert hall, where up to a hundred people were killed, blew themselves up as police closed in on their positions.
A victim is pictured on the pavement outside a Paris restaurant on Friday. Credit:AP
The French Government mobilised 1500 soldiers on the streets of Paris in the wake of the attack, thought to be the worst suffered by France since World War 2.
After a night of chaos, the death toll is being constantly updated by police, as the full extent of the surprise attacks unfolds.
"It is horror," said French President Francois Hollande, who attributed the attacks to terrorists.
He promised "a remorseless response against those responsible". Others called it a "night of terror" on a scale never seen before.
Police officers and rescue workers gather around a victim outside a Paris restaurant on Friday Credit:AP
Terrorists had declared war on Paris, said former French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Twitter.
After being evacuated from the Stade de France, where 70,000 were watching a soccer game between France and Germany, President Hollande declared a state of emergency. He announced an immediate inquiry into what most experts believe is a gross act of terrorism.
People leave the Stade de France stadium after the international friendly soccer France against Germany on Friday. Credit:AP
"We don't know where they are coming from, or who is striking us," said Mr Hollande. "In such difficult times, I have thoughts for the victims."
He said it was important to show compassion and "keep cool".
It was a blood bath.
Julien Pearce, an eyewitness, who saw at least 20 people shot at Le Bataclan theatre
"What the terrorists want is for us to be scared. There is something to be scared about but in the face of terror we have to be united."
"Please have faith in our security forces that they can defend us against terrorism," he said.
French police are telling Parisians to stay indoors. Metro stations near the shootings have been closed. Taxi drivers turned off their meters and drove people home for free. Most of the city will be shut on Saturday, including museums, markets, schools (which open on Saturday mornings) and pools.
An eye witness who was attending a rock concert at the historic theatre Le Bataclan - where gunmen had held more than 100 people hostage who were attending a rock concert by American band Eagles of Death Metal - saw people shot randomly one by one.
"Everyone was on the floor with their hands on their heads," Julien Pearce, a radio reporter told The New York Times.
"I saw 25 to 30 people lying on the floor," he said.
"It was a bloodbath," said Mr Pearce. He said the gunmen were masked and silent.
"People yelled, screamed, and everybody lay on the floor. It lasted for 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 horrific minutes when everybody was on the floor covering their heads and we heard so many gunshots, and the terrorists were very calm, very determined, and they reloaded three or four times their weapons.
"They didn't shout anything, they didn't say anything. They were wearing black clothes and they were shooting at people on the floor, executing them. I was luckily at the top of the stage, on the front of the stage."
During the siege, other eye witnesses reported six to eight hostage takers were marauding through the theatre looking for people hiding inside. About 10.20am Sydney time, gunshots and the sounds of explosions were heard from inside.
CNN has reported that there were at least seven explosions when French police stormed the theatre.
President Hollande - who was evacuated from the Stade de France after multiple explosions - immediately launched an inquiry into whether it was a terrorist attack.
The deputy mayor of Paris said it was too soon to say the attacks were coordinated acts of terror but he conceded: "It looks that way". According to French channel BFMTV, one of the gunmen at the theatre shouted: "It's for Syria" and "Allahu Akbar". Another witness blamed the president, but it was unclear whether he was referring to Mr Hollande or US President Obama.
As of 3.24am on Saturday morning Paris time, Le Monde was reporting that nearly 200 people were dead or injured across the city at these locations:
Boulevard Voltaire Charonne, in the 11th arrondissement, in the street opposite the bar La Belle Epoque where 19 dead and 14 in a critical condition
Le Bataclan, also in the 11 arrondissement, where as many as 78 or 79 were killed. Three to four terrorists are understood to have been killed during the police assault that ended the siege.
Rue de la Fontaine au Roi where five are dead, and eight are in a critical condition
Alibert Street Carillon bar where between 12 and 14 died, and 10 people who were injured remain in a critical condition
Stade de France where three attackers, including two suicide bombers, died.
Timeline of Paris attacks
9.20pm, Friday (Paris time) - Two explosions heard near the Stade de France, where France is playing Germany in an international football friendly
10.20pm - Reports of shooting at Petit Cambodge restaurant, about 8km away
10.20pm - French police confirm at least 18 people killed; also reports of shootings near the Bataclan theatre, south of the restaurant
10.30pm - Death toll rises to at least 26, including 15 reported killed in Bataclan theatre amid ongoing hostage crisis with up to 100 people held, including US rock band Eagles of Death Metal
11pm - French president declares state of emergency and closes borders; death toll rises to 42 people
11.20pm - French police confirm two suicide attacks and one bombing near the Stade de France stadium; at least three people believed dead in those attacks; reports of shots and explosions at the Bataclan theatre
11.35pm - Police storm Bataclan theatre; say at least two attackers killed; one official describes "carnage" - attackers had thrown explosives at hostages; at least 100 killed
1:25am, Saturday - Paris prosecutor says death toll at six sites could exceed 120; five attackers killed.
Who to call for information about loved ones
The Australian Embassy phone number in Paris is +33140593300. Call Department of Foreign Affairs' in Australia on 1300 555 135.
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At Rs. 26 Crore, Souza’s Art Work Creates a New World Record
Post author:Shreya Pareek
Post category:News / Quick Bytes
F.N. Souza’s painting, Birth, has become the most expensive Indian painting to be sold in an auction, after fetching $4.08 million. This Goa-born artist’s work has recently gained recognition and appreciation, and has witnessed an increase in value.
Francis Newton Souza, an Indian who initially struggled to make an impact in the field of art, has now become the country’s most expensive artist.
This Goa-born artist’s iconic painting “Birth” has become the most expensive Indian painting to be sold in an auction. The painting fetched $4.08 million at Christie’s auction in New York on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015.
Delhi-based prominent art collector Kiran Nadar, bid $3.5 million ($4.08 million including buyer’s premium, i.e Rs. 26.41 crore) for Birth, a monumental 8ft x 4ft oil painting.
The same painting was earlier bought at a Christie’s London auction for $2.5 million in June 2008 by Tina Ambani, wife of prominent industrialist Anil Ambani, for the Harmony Arts Foundation run by her. Souza created Birth in 1955 and it is considered one of his best works.
The pregnant nude in the painting is said to be his then partner, Lisolette, who gave birth to three of his children.
Photo: fnsouza.com
The value of Souza’s work has been constantly increasing after his death in 2002. However, when he was alive, his painting exhibitions went half sold and were not very successful. His work took off after the publication of his autobiographical essay Nirvana of a Maggot, published in Stephen Spender’s Encounter magazine in 1955.
Another painting by Souza, ‘Man and Woman Laughing’ (1957) was sold for $2.59 (Rs. 16.84 crore).
Here are some of his works-
Man and Woman Laughing.
Balzac Etcetera
Next PostIndian Short Film ‘An Old Dog’s Diary’ Wins Award at London Film Fest
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Controversial Bill Gates-funded plan to dim the sun's rays moves forward quietly
Photo by Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times
A bizarre-sounding plan to save Earth funded by tech guru Bill Gates is "quietly" moving forward.
The plan — to dim the sun's rays and their impact on the earth — is reportedly all in the name of helping to revitalize the environment and thus save the human race.
The billionaire philanthropist is set on saving the Earth no matter the cost.
"While you may have been paying attention to [Gates'] efforts on vaccination and lockdowns, you may not have noticed that one of Gates' most controversial causes just got a go-ahead: A project that would help block out the sun," the Western Journal's Douglas Golden wrote.
Reuters reported that the geo-engineering plan — a Harvard University project funded largely by Gates— "plans to test out a controversial theory that global warming can be stopped by spraying particles into the atmosphere that would reflect the sun's rays."
The news organization reported that the Swedish Space Corporation has already taken strides in testing out the theory.
"Open-air research into spraying tiny, sun-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, to offset global warming, has been stalled for years by controversies — including that it could discharge needed cuts in greenhouse gas emissions," Reuters reported. "In a small step, the Swedish Space Corporation agreed this week to help Harvard researchers launch a balloon near the Arctic town of Kiruna next June. It would carry a gondola with 600 kg of scientific equipment 20 km (12 miles) high."
Golden also cited journal Nature, which broke the plan down into more easily comprehensible terms.
“The idea is simple: spray a bunch of particles into the stratosphere, and they will cool the planet by reflecting some of the Sun's rays back into space," Nature's Jeff Tollefson wrote in 2018. "Scientists have already witnessed the principle in action."
“When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected an estimated 20 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that stretches from about 10 to 50 kilometres above Earth's surface," Tollefson added. "The eruption created a haze of sulfate particles that cooled the planet by around 0.5 °C. For about 18 months, Earth's average temperature returned to what it was before the arrival of the steam engine."
Reuters reported that the plan could move forward in the "autumn of 2021 or spring of 2022," and would "release a tiny amount ... of non-toxic calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere" to test the theory.
The notion of geo-engineering is a controversial one, as environmentalists have warned that such a plan could render alarming consequences.
"There are several problems with this plan, not the least of which is that we don't know what the unintended consequences might be. But to environmentalists, the problem is that it doesn't solve global warming the way they want to do it," Douglas writes.
Reuters also reported that many of the plan's opponents fear a "slippery slope toward engineering the climate."
Niclas Hällström, director of the Sweden-based environmentalist think-tank WhatNext? told Reuters, "There is no merit in this test except to enable the next step. You can't test the trigger of a bomb and say 'This can't possibly do any harm.'"
Hällström added that he has reservations over the concept for its "potential to change rain patterns or crop yields."
Lili Fuhr, who is head of the international environmental policy division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Germany, said that the project is, indeed, "crossing an important political red line."
"They don't want to stop at this small experiment. The reason is to get bigger experiments," she explained.
Reuters reported that both Fuhr and Hällström said the plan "would violate a global 2010 moratorium on geoengineering under the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity."
Jim Thomas, co-CEO of environmentalist organization ETC Group, said that he and his peers also oppose the idea.
"This is as much an experiment in changing social norms and crossing a line as it is a science experiment," Thomas warned.
Jacob Blake opens up on police shooting, says he didn't want to be the 'next George Floyd' — which is why he walked away from police — and admits he was armed
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Boba Fett and Darth Maul May Appear In The Mandalorian Season 2
There are a ton of characters in the Star Wars universe, and everyone has their favorites. Obviously, the main characters get a lot of attention, but when a franchise has been around for 40 years and has iterations across movies, television, books, and video games, there is plenty of room for other, less prominent characters to emerge and attract a following.
One of the best examples is Boba Fett, an intergalactic bounty hunter who attracted a lot of attention after appearing in The Empire Strikes Back and only delivering less than a handful of lines. In Return of the Jedi, the ultimate space bad-ass returns, only to be reduced to comic relief and have a jet pack mishap and get sucked into the Sarlacc pit to discover a new definition of pain and suffering.
Or did he?
After resurfacing in the prequels, and further sullying an incredibly evocative bit part with over-explanation (a George Lucas trademark!), it appears Boba Fett will now be coming to streaming, as news recently broke that the character will appear in season 2 of Disney+’s The Mandalorian.
Temuera Morrison, the New Zealand actor who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones and appeared as Khal Drogo’s father in the DC’s Aquaman, will now be playing his original character’s son. Comicbook.com reports that The Mandalorian has already hinted at an appearance from Boba Fett, at the end of The Gunslinger episode, when a shadowy figure shuffles onto the screen, accompanied by the sound of his spurs jingling and jangling.
It’s somehow less surprising that Boba Fett would appear on a show about a character who wears armor he made famous than it is that he survived the Sarlacc pit. If he does appear, one would hope we get an explanation for his escape from the sand monster’s legendary thousand-year digestion. Darth Maul – another supposedly dead character, previously revealed as less-than-cut-in-half in both Clone Wars and Solo: A Star Wars Story – is now also rumored to be appearing.
Backstory aside, we have no clue how Boba or Maul might factor into The Mandalorian, but after a relatively subdued first season, the Disney+ show seems to be loading up with fan-favorite characters, with Rosario Dawson set to play Ahsoka Tano in the next season as well.
What other characters (dead or alive) do you want to see on the show? Please don’t say the Emperor. That didn’t go so well the last time.
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Gina Rodriguez Is Bringing Latino-Focused Shows To The CW And CBS
Get ready for Have Mercy and Illegal.
By Sydney Gore
A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on Jul 5, 2017 at 10:46am PDT
According to Variety, Golden Globe Award-winning actress Gina Rodriguez is in the process of developing a pair of television series about the Latino community. Have Mercy will be coming to CBS and Illegal will air on The CW.
Have Mercy is a drama that takes after the German show Dr. Illegal and follows the story of a Latina doctor who is forced to secretly open a makeshift clinic after immigrating to Miami. Illegal is based on the true story of co-executive producer and writer Rafael Agustin when he discovered that he was an undocumented citizen of the U.S. at the age of 16. A release date for the programs has not been confirmed at this time.
Both of the projects will be created under Rodriguez’s I Can And I Will Productions through a deal that was arranged with CBS Television Studios earlier this year. Rodriguez's mission is to "create art that tells stories from the unheard and unseen, discover and expose new talent and increases empathy and understanding for all communities" through the breaking of societal norms on screen.
The production company is also working on a reboot of Steve Martin's 1991 film L.A. Story for CBS in collaboration with Gaeta Rosenzweig Films, and a drama based on Richard Fifield's 2016 novelThe Flood Girls with Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films.
Sydney Gore, TV
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The Region's new Transportation plan could also be part of a Vision Zero plan
The Greater Washington Partnership recently released a Blueprint for Regional Mobility, a transportation plan for the super-region. It is a transportation plan, one that would likely lead to more and better biking, but it's also a plan for moving towards Vision Zero and Sustainability.
Most notable for cyclists is that one of the dozen or so actions is to complete the Baltimore Greenway Trails and Capital Trails networks and to establish a Richmond Trail Network strategy.
Connected trail systems can lessen demand on the roadway network, improve connections to jobs and activity centers, increase regional economic activity, contribute to healthy communities, and enhance access to the outdoors and our iconic parks and landscapes in both rural and urban areas. Maryland, the District, and Virginia have more than 1,000 multi-use trail miles, with major nationally-recognized trails such as the East Coast Greenway, the C&O Canal Towpath, the Anacostia Tributary Trails, the Capital Crescent Trail, the Mount Vernon Trail, the W&OD Trail, and the Virginia Capital Trail.
Yet, despite considerable investments, the region’s trails do not form coherent and connected regional networks in the Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond metro areas. In many instances, the trails also do not provide seamless connections to non-trail bicycle and pedestrian networks. Federal, state, and local governments should collaborate with trails groups and private entities to speed up the delivery of the Baltimore Greenway and the Capital Trails Network, and establish a trail connecting activity centers from Ashland to Richmond to Petersburg with the 52-mile Virginia Capital Trail.
Many commute trips are less than five miles, a distance most can bike. In addition, many non-commuting trips can be completed efficiently by biking or walking if safe options exist. Trail connections to essential destinations such as jobs and transit stops can lower demand on the region’s roadway network, which reduces congestion.
However, the lack of trail connectivity diminishes the region’s ability to conveniently overcome man-made barriers, such as roads, to access jobs, schools, and outdoor opportunities. This lack of trail connectivity encourages consumers to drive rather than complete trips by bike or foot, limits greenspace for recreation, and isolates communities.
The Capital Region already benefits from clusters of locally and regionally connected trails in some areas. A few critical investments would create a network of trails—creating a sum far greater than its parts.
You can't argue with any of that. Richmond in particular has some great untapped trail opportunities, as it has been an historic rail hub. Many of those rail line have been shut down, but could be re-purposed for trails. A partial map of abandoned railroads around Richmond can be seen to the right (existing trails are in blue).
But beyond just supporting the trails, the plan supports better transit, increased density, a downtown DC congestion charge and ending free parking - all things that would make biking better.
It notes that a Metro study that included a DC congestion zone, better priced parking and better bike connectivity to Metro stations would result in a 25% increase in transit mode share. It's hard to imagine it wouldn't also lead to an increase in bicycle mode share and a reduction in road fatalities too.
So, when some people write that
Some WABA members also would like to see the District charge motorists a toll just for entering the city.
They should know it's not just WABA members. It's WMATA. And the Greater Washington Partnership, and the groups that signed on to their plan including the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Prince George’s and Montgomery County Chambers of Commerce, [They should also know that on one is proposing tolls just for entering the District]
October 17, 2019 in Congestion Pricing, Congestion Reduction, Planning, Trails | Permalink | Comments (5)
Last week I wrote about three bills before the DC Council, primarily the Vision Zero bill, but as hinted at in the title, there is still more bicycle-relevant legislation before the Council.
First of all, there's the Transportation Benefits Equity Amendment Act Of 2019. A similar bill was introduced during the last session, but it never made it to a committee vote. As with the 2017, the goal is again to make commuter benefits more fair, but has the added benefit of encouraging more transit, biking and walking. This bill however has some changes from the 2017 version. The new bill
Allows an employer who offers an employee a parking benefit to increase its financial contribution to the employee's health coverage if the employee declines both the parking benefit and the transportation benefit (for vanpools or transit only) such that the increased contribution equals the market value of the parking benefit offered. I'm not sure of the reason for this option, but my gut tells me its tax related.
Still allows employers is to pay a $100 Clean Air Compliance fee for each employer offered parking, but in the new bill, that money just goes into the general fund instead of the Transportation Demand Management fund.
Gives employers additional options to (a) quit offering free parking (b) Create a Transportation Demand Management plan that will cut the number who driver or take a taxi to work by 10% in per year until 25% or less of all employees are driving/taxiing to work. That plan will have to approved by DDOT and annual reports are needed to prove it is working. If it doesn't work then they have to offer the benefit or pay the compliance fee.
Change the method for calculating the value of parking from the one used by the IRS to one based on advertised prices or one determined by, and justified by, the employer. I'll note that I could not find the one the IRS used as identified in the code 132(f)(5)(C).
Exempts employers who own their own parking or have a lease that predates the bill's effective date.
When the bill last came up, there was concern that this act actually didn't create equity but rather hurt poor drivers to the benefit of wealthy cyclists, pedestrians and transit users. Or that it would result in more gentrification. Or that instead we should get rid of all transportation subsidies (amen). There was also concern about the regulatory burden.
Getting rid of all the subsidies, while a good idea, is difficult, so while a good idea, it's not one DC can really do. I think people who say this will hurt the poor are either ill-informed about who drives and who bikes or are arguing in bad faith.
All of the changes, to me, are OK or good except the exemption for employers who own their own parking. I'm not sure what the thinking is - except that maybe people who've built their own parking can't simply disinvest in it - but it undermines the benefits of the bill.
The second bill of import here is the budget bill which includes $500,000 for a congestion pricing study. That study has gotten most of the press, but it is by no means the only important element to cyclists; though it is a big deal.
Congestion pricing, charging motorists a fee to enter congested areas, is gaining momentum in U.S. cities. New York recently approved congestion pricing for drivers entering the central business district of Manhattan, beginning in 2021. The money would be used to fix the city’s ailing subway. Several other cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, also are considering congestion pricing as a way to alleviate gridlock, take cars off the roads and encourage transit use.
District officials hope the study will analyze how the city could implement congestion pricing to help reduce the number of non-D.C. drivers on city streets, identify pricing strategies and address equity concerns.
[Cheh's] proposal from the Committee on Transportation and the Environment requires the results of the study be made public by July 2020.
“Specifically, the study should evaluate and plan for the tolling of the roads into the District consistent with the tolling of those same roads by Virginia,” the committee’s budget document said.
The council could also determine how to spend any money raised.
D.C. Council members Charles Allen and Jack Evans explicitly spoke in support of the proposal at a committee markup.
In addition, the bill budgets more resources for enforcement and recommends more as well.
The Mayor called for $2,766,000 to support the Vision Zero initiative through rush hour towing and bike lane enforcement.
The Committee is pleased to see this investment in bicycle lane enforcement, particularly after hearing during oversight that enforcement of bicycle lane parking laws has dropped significantly over the past few years. This increase in the number of officers patrolling bicycle lanes will contribute to cyclist safety and overall street safety. In addition, the Mayor’s Budget Support Act includes a subtitle that will allow parking enforcement officers to mail tickets to vehicles that drive away before officers can serve a notice of infraction in person or by affixation, a practice that has made bicycle lane enforcement difficult. The Committee was encouraged to learn during oversight that the Agency has developed technology that will make it possible for officers to issue tickets in these circumstances and believes that this will make the Agency’s bicycle lane enforcement even more effective. In addition to implementing this technology, the Committee recommends that DPW continue to explore ways to make the bicycle lane enforcement team more responsive to street users, such as through social media, to allow cyclists to quickly report and end bicycle lane blockages.
The committee recommended more Sunday enforcement of bike lane violations
...it is critical... that we keep our bike and bus lanes clear seven days a week.
And the committee increased funding for public space enforcement by $360,000 to add 3 more inspectors.
The Committee has concerns regarding DDOT’s efforts to ensure utility companies and their contractors restore a street to the condition it was in before the companies undertook excavation in the public space. According to post-oversight hearing responses, there were 340 citations issued in FY 2017 to utility companies for failing to restore the public space to its original condition. However, that number fell to 153 in FY 2018. In addition, in FY 2018, DDOT public space inspectors found nearly 98% of excavations were restored to their original condition after work by a utility in the public space was completed. The Committee routinely hears from residents who provide information on instances in which contractors failed to restore the public space to its original condition, often at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians in the form of unrestored bike lanes and unpainted crosswalks. The Committee believes that this high compliance number is not a result of utility companies restoring the public space to its original condition 98% of the time, but rather that DDOT public space inspectors are spread too thin to enforce the public space utility work requirements as strictly as they should be. The Committee believes the volume of new construction sites in the District has left DDOT’s public space inspectors short-handed. The staff is overburdened attempting to keep up with the number of sites they must visit on a daily basis.
The committee, however, expresses concern about safety and mobility funding and the slow pace of the Eastern Downtown Protected Bike lane project, providing funding for the later.
The proposed capital budget allocates $16,960,000 in FY 2020 and $62,684,000 over the six-year CIP for projects that have a primary focus of improving safety and efficiency of the District's transportation system. Most of these projects are pedestrian and cyclist focused with an aim to achieve the District’s Vision Zero goals of zero fatalities and serious injuries to travelers of the District’s transportation system. Subprojects of this master capital project include: the Crosstown Bicycle Lane, the Arboretum Bridge and Trail, and street sign improvements.
Although the Committee is pleased with this investment in safety for the District’s most vulnerable road users, there are lingering concerns about the capital funding in the years beyond FY 2020. Each year the funds allocated shrink, from $14,809,000 in FY 2021 down to $5,538,000 in FY 2025. Given the District’s ambitious efforts to increase bike lanes and revamp intersections to help meet our Vision Zero goals, the Committee believes the funding should be increasing each year, not decreasing. The Committee does not have the available funding to increase the funds allocated in each year but urges DDOT to increase its investment in the Safety and Mobility Capital project in the years beyond FY 2020
The District has a dire need to create a two-directional north-south bike lane in order to accommodate the growth in District neighborhoods, maintain safety, and become a more sustainable city. The neighborhoods at the north end of downtown, including U Street NW and Shaw, have seen an increase in bike commuting trips in recent years. Although there are multiple east-west dedicated bicycle facilities traversing the areas in and around downtown, only 15th Street NW provides contiguous north-south protected facilities in the city core. This leads to a large downtown north-south gap in the protected bike facility network between the Metropolitan Branch Trail and 15th Street NW. For these reasons, DDOT commissioned the Eastern Downtown Protected Bike Lane study. The purpose of the project is to fill in the north south bike lane gap by developing the final design for a new protected bike lane that will connect central DC neighborhoods to downtown, as well as existing east-west bicycle facilities.
The Eastern Downtown Protected Bike Lane study has been completed and as of February 2017 both options for the bike lane, 6th and 9th Street, are at 30% design. The community has been waiting for over two years for DDOT to make a decision between the two options so that design can be finished, and improvements started. The Committee urges DDOT to make a decision and proceed with the project. The Committee has allocated $300,000 from the Safety and Mobility Capital Project to fund the completion of the design for whichever street DDOT decides to build the protected bike lane.
The committee recommended additional money for protected bike lane construction
The proposed capital budget allocates $16,960,000 in FY 2020 for Safety & Mobility projects, which includes support for expanding bicycle lanes and infrastructure, such as $1,215,987 for the Crosstown Bicycle Lane project. The Committee applauds DDOT’s progress in expanding bike lanes across the city over the past decade but recognizes that there is still much progress to be made and that many of the District’s bike lanes are not protected. Protected bike lanes are essential to the safety of cyclists and to increasing the number of cyclists in the District; if people feel unsafe riding in the District, they will not do it. Cyclists are equally entitled to use the road as drivers, and a protected lane keeps cars from infringing on the cyclist’s portion of the road, not just while driving but while parking as well.
Protected bike lanes also protect pedestrians, who will then use sidewalks without competitions from bikes and scooters. Additional protected bike lanes will require DDOT to improve their reaction time to fix damaged or downed separators that pose risks to cyclists in the bike lane. Just last year, the Committee heard from a cyclist who hit a downed lane separator, severely injuring himself. He reported the issue to 311 and reached out to the Committee, who in turn notified DDOT. Despite this, it still took DDOT over three weeks to get the lane cleared and the separators fixed. From what the Committee routinely hears from cyclists, that repair happened much quicker than most. The Committee urges DDOT to increase its construction of protected bike lanes and to improve its maintenance of those lanes
The bill calls for $115,000 for a dockless-scooter (and potentially bike) parking program.
Since the launch of DDOT’s Dockless Demonstration Project for dockless scooters and bicycles in 2017, the Committee has routinely heard complaints about scooters being left in inconvenient locations, such as in pedestrian walkways, handicap parking spaces, or on private property. To address the same issue, the county of Arlington, Virginia, recently began creating street parking spaces for scooters and bikes only. The Committee believes it would be beneficial to bring this same idea to the District as it applies to dockless scooters (legally known as personal mobility devices). The Committee recommends the inclusion of a new Budget Support Act subtitle that would create of a Scooter Parking Pilot, which would require DDOT to establish parking spaces exclusively for use by personal mobility devices. Under the
pilot, DDOT would create at least one such parking spot per Business Improvement District (BID). The Committee does not intend to require personal mobility device users to park in a designated parking place; however, the Committee believes that if such spots are available, personal mobility device users will use them. Therefore, in line with the Budget Support Act subtitle included later in this report, the Committee recommends increasing (PSDV) Planning and Sustainability by $78,000 and 1.0 FTEs in FY 2020 and by $20,000 in FY 2021, and increasing (PSDV) Planning and Sustainability by $17,000 in one-time funds for DDOT to create a scooter parking pilot.
In addition it
funds a Safe Routes to School Program Specialist
notes that DDOT will add 18 CaBi stations in the District and update the expansion guidelines of the Capital Bikeshare Development Plan as they have exhausted the old one
funds the K Street Transitway, which DDOT says will include a bike lane
increases scooter speed limits from 10 mph to 15 mph.
funds the redevelopment of Dave Thomas Circle ($35,000,000)
funds the Tenley Plaza project, with one goal being to improve bicycle safety
funds the Benning Road streetcar expansion which will also construct bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure along the four-mile
funds the New York Avenue Streetscape and Trail Project ( $34,248,000)
funds the Ward Eight Streetscapes project ($26,579,000)
Finally, the Bicycle Advisory Council expansion act was rolled into the budget bill.
May 28, 2019 in Bicycle Commuter Benefit, Bike Lanes, Capital Bikeshare, Commuting, Congestion Pricing, Congestion Reduction, Eastern Downtown Protected Bikeway, Legislation, New York Avenue Trail, Parking Cash Out, Protected Bike Lane (PBL), Safe Routes to School, Scooter, Traffic Violations - Drivers | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bike sharing helps cities achieve goals; newspaper and researcher reports otherwise
Bike sharing has a lot of benefits. In addition to providing an alternative mode of transport, saving users money and travel time, increasing access, making roads safer and encouraging bicycle ownership; it reduces GHG emissions, is good for public health and reduces congestion. The last three should not be surprising since bike sharing results in a net modal shift from driving.
The Phase II member survey results show that bikesharing is causing a diverse array of modal shifts within the different cities surveyed.
The survey also found that bikesharing reduced respondents driving by large amounts in all cities. In Montreal and Toronto, 29% and 35% reported driving less. In MinneapolisSaint Paul and Salt Lake City, 53% and 55% reported driving less, and in Mexico City, 53% reported driving less. Very few respondents reported driving more.
And since driving is a significant cause of GHG emissions, bad for public health and a cause of congestion this is exactly the outcome we'd expect.
I'll note that some of these effects are counter-balanced by people who shift from transit and walking. Those shifts involve more complicated trade-offs, with smaller impacts and are not as consistent as shifts from driving. For example, with walking
More respondents in Mexico City, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and Salt Lake City increased walking than decreased it. In Montreal and Toronto, more reported walking less often than more.
Similar complexities are found with transit and biking. But those shifts don't change the fact that bikesharing reduces GHG emissions and improves health.
So it was surprising when the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Times recently had a disturbing headline about bikesharing "Boris bikes don't improve health or reduce pollution." It was also wrong. But there are layers of wrongness built into it. It's like a game of telephone where each person is not only getting the statement wrong due to normal errors, but each is also acting in bad faith.
The Times was a little wrong
The Times article was basically regurgitating a press release from the Royal Geographic Society about a recent study on bikesharing, so when it was quoting it - which it did often - it was at least getting that right. But even then it got the main things wrong.
They state that the study shows that bike sharing schemes "do not cut carbon dioxide emissions" a claim highlighted, with the most damage, in the title. But that's wrong. The claim from the RGS study is that "Bike share schemes ... are not very effective at ...reducing CO2 emissions" which is not the same thing as doing nothing. I'm not very effective at cleaning dishes, but they aren't as dirty when I finish as when I started (sorry everyone I've ever shared a house with).
The article goes on to claim that bikesharing bikes "aren't having a positive effect on public health" and that "people on the outskirts [of cities], who are likely to be on lower incomes and in greater need, do not benefit." Each of these statements wrongly represent what the RGS press release says. As the press release says there aren't very effective, not that they're doing nothing. The underlying studies make it clear that they DO have benefits for health and CO2 reduction and that they do benefit people with lower incomes.
The RGS press release was a little wrong too
As noted, the press release from the Royal Geographic Society "Bike sharing schemes mostly benefit healthy, wealthy, young white men" makes different claims than those in the Times article. Mostly that it exaggerates the claims from doing "little" to doing nothing.
But even the press release doesn't match the work by Dr. Médard de Chardon. [The press release is about the presentation of a study by Médard de Chardon. It doesn't say which one, but much of the territory is covered in his study on "Bicycle sharing system 'success' determinants" so I'll be using that in this post]
The press release states that
The total amount of carbon produced in London from the rebalancing vans is not offset by the amount saved from use of the bike share scheme.
They are not very effective at improving health
They are not very effective at lessening road congestion
They are not very effective at promoting transport equity
But here again the claims in the release state things with more certainty than they're stated in the paper and they elevate the negative results of outliers without noting that they are the exception. For example on item 1 above, the paper says.
Multiple studies have shown that publicized estimates of carbon dioxide reductions are often overstated as only a small portion of car trips are replaced using Bike sharing systems (BSS) (Ricci, 2015). In the case of London it is estimated that the vehicles rebalancing bicycles within the system may surpass any emission reductions from modal shift (Fishman et al., 2014a).
So the rebalancing vehicles MAY offset emissions, but they may not. Furthermore, of the four cities studied by Fishman, London is the only city where they found that mode shift didn't offset re-balancing, so it seems deceptive to make that the "example."
The claim that they aren't very effective at improving health is also not backed up by the study. Instead it says:
The shift from sedentary travel modes to cycling has clear health benefits but net quantities are overstated due to the reduction
in walking, which has greater health benefits for a fixed distance traveled.
Overstated is not a synonym for "ineffective."
On congestion, again the PR gets it wrong. The study calls the claims of congestion reduction "unproven", it does not say that they are proven in effective.
Finally, on equity, the study does make the claim that bike sharing "members [are] more likely be wealthier, younger, white, male and own a car, compared to the local population" and that it is "one of the most inequitable forms of sustainable transportation infrastructures.” So one out of four isn't bad. Perhaps this is the part he should show as an example. [More on the equity issue below]
The release also asks whether a bike-share system in which each bike is used less than twice a day (as many are) is the best use of public funding for cycling. That's a great question, but he's not an economist and he, as near as I can tell, he doesn't even try to answer it.
Then he really goes off the rails.
“In reality, bike sharing schemes are a false solution. They look sophisticated and are technologically cool, but they don’t create much useful or progressive change.
It’s worrying that we are getting bike share schemes instead of concrete improvements to transport infrastructure.”
A solution to what? His own studies show that they have many small, but real benefits. That seems to indicate that it's at least PART of the solution to some of the problems he brings up. And if it doesn't create much useful progress, the question is compared to what? He's not arguing that bike sharing is a bad thing, only that other things are better. That's always a complicated question and he makes a poor case that something else is.
I do agree with him when he says that it's important to more effectively redistribute public space for better cycling infrastructure, and if we have to make a choice between street changes and bike sharing (as they did in London) it's wise to ask which is the better investment. But this press release, and the 2017 study, don't do that.
The study is wrong too, and isn't really a study of 'success determinants'
Again, I'm going to use the 2017 study here and I recognize that he may have a new study out which would make this wrong.
Médard de Chardon's study is really a study of how many Trips each Bike takes per Day (TBD) in various systems (Of the 75 systems studied CaBi is 22nd with 3.0 TBD, 3rd best in the US). In that sense it's useful and interesting.
Where it gets off track is where it tries to push an agenda - namely that because many systems have a low TBD, bike-sharing is a poor use of resources.
He first claims that "success" for bikesharing is not defined. And for that he cites a paper that states that
Whilst predominantly enabling commuting, bike sharing allows users to undertake other key economic, social and leisure activities. Benefits include improved health, increased transport choice and convenience, reduced travel times and costs, and improved travel experience. These benefits are unequally distributed, since users are typically male, younger and in more advantaged socio-economic positions than average. There is no evidence that bike sharing significantly reduces traffic congestion, carbon emissions and pollution.
But, at least for Capital Bikeshare, that's not true. When the program was starting, MWCOG submitted an application to the US DOT for a TIGER grant. In that they clearly stated what they saw as the benefits/goals.
The benefits they foresaw were user cost savings, user travel time savings, increased access, congestion reduction, emissions reduction, healthcare cost savings and accident reduction. They also saw benefits in getting users to purchase and use their own bikes - something that just doesn't show up in tpbpd.
Then they calculated the value of each trip at $1.20. So as long as the subsidy is less than that, it would seem the system is a success. I did the calculations after one year and showed that it was. Now if Médard de Chardon wants to reanalyze the MWCOG calculations, update them and/or make them more robust that would be great. But he doesn't. And I'll note that of the 9 benefits listed here, his paper misses 5 of them.
He then goes on to state that the benefits for road and public transit congestion, carbon emissions, cycling modal share, health and equity have been shown to be hard to measure, trivial or non-existent. But the studies he cites contradict that. One is quoted above listing all the benefits. Another merely says that "the majority of scheme users are substituting from sustainable modes of transport rather than the car" which is not the same as saying there is no mode shift from cars or even from modes that do less for health. The third, written before CaBi started doesn't even make that claim. But even the most damning of these, by Ricci, which says that "there is no evidence that bike sharing significantly reduces traffic congestion, carbon emissions and pollution." (emphasis mine) also notes that nearly 20% of all bikeshare trips were shifted from car. There is no explanation for how hundreds of thousands of trips can be shifted from car to bikeshare without reducing congestion, emissions and pollution. It seems the word "siginficantly" is doing all the work. Médard de Chardon does cite a study that claims that, in the case of London, the low car-to-bike shift rate combined with much higher than average rebalancing miles, leads to an increase in carbon emissions. It makes the case that in a city where few drive, bike-sharing will do little to reduce driving.
But one thing Médard de Chardon does is cherry-picks his studies. If one claims that it does little to reduce emissions, but does improve health. He'll cite it when he talks about emissions and use another when he wants to talk about health. For example, he cites one study to make the claim that
Additionally, women using London’s BSS have reduced health benefits, compared to men, owing to increased rates of injury
Which sounds negative, but that studies conclusion is that
London’s bicycle sharing system has positive health impacts overall, but these benefits are clearer for men than for women and for older users than for younger users.
Which sounds less negative.
When he notes that the systems have benefits
They provide an alternative mode of transport, increase accessibility, trip resilience and flexibility, lower the barrier to exploring urban cycling, increase the visibility of bicycles, bicycle awareness by drivers and normalizing the image of cyclists in casual clothing
He then attacks those benefits on the grounds that they "do not spread evenly among classes and race," which is a way to minimize them. For that he relies on Melody L. Hoffman's "Bike lanes are white lanes."
There may be lessons to be gleaned from that book, but we should be clear that it's not a "study" of equity, it's not based on such a study and when she writes about bike sharing she's talking entirely about one system - Minneapolis' Nice Ride - and almost exclusively relying on interviews. So her claim that bike sharing is "one of the most inequitable forms of sustainable transportation infrastructure" in the United States; that's her opinion. It's not based on some metric of inequality and a comparison of various "forms of sustainable transportation infrastructure."
It is true that there's an equity issue in bike sharing, but that is true within biking as a whole, and so if the argument is that we should not invest in bikesharing to instead invest in protected bike lanes, you're not really solving the problem. It's also true that Médard de Chardon's study does a bad job of making the case about equity. And it makes no attempt to show why a system which unevenly spreads benefits among classes and races does not benefit those with lower incomes. It's possible the benefits are uneven and that low income people still benefit.
Finally, he makes a dubious claim that 1 TBD is a significant threshold since.
This value is psychologically important as systems below this have some bicycles being unused each day. More worrisome are the 10 systems with ratings below 0.5 TDB, as this means most bicycles are not used on a daily basis
It may be that 1 TBD is so low that the costs exceed the benefits. Or that 0.5 is. But if so, it won't be for psychologically symbolic reasons. And it likely won't be universal. In an un-system like New York's, where the taxpayers pay nothing, who cares how low the TBD is? And as he notes, any attempt to maximize TBD run counter to efforts to increase equity.
Just to pile on a bit, he also ignores the number of people who are encouraged by bikeshare to buy and ride their own bikes.
This is the heart of his failure to define bike sharing as a false solution. He has no idea what level of TBD/subsidy is cost-effective. He has defined no set of metrics for defining benefits. He makes to attempt to set a cost on systems. It may be that London's system increases emissions but is still cost-effective.
It would be fair of him to say that systems need to define goals and metrics for success. That they need to analyze those regularly to see if those goals are being met and to what extent. That they need to try to define those metrics as benefits and compare them to costs. But he's simply not in a position to call bike-sharing a false solution. Certainly not across the board, and not in a city like DC with 3.0 TBD and high car-to-bike mode shifting.
So, I would love to see a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of bike-sharing across a broad spectrum of cities. But this isn't it. And without one I don't see how anyone can claim that they are a "false solution."
September 19, 2018 in Air quality and GHG emissions, Bike Sharing, Congestion Reduction, Equity, Fitness and Health | Permalink | Comments (0)
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HomeBusinessCovid-19: UK bans travellers from Zimbabwe
Covid-19: UK bans travellers from Zimbabwe
LONDON – The United Kingdom on Thursday announced that travellers from Zimbabwe are now banned from entering that country as a way to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
This comes as Zimbabwe has recently recorded a surge in coronavirus cases pushing local health institutions to the brink.
The ban will be with effect from Saturday 9 January 2021 and remain in place for two weeks, the government said in a statement bit.ly/3pTvmsk. Reads the statement:
Entry into England will be banned to those who have travelled from or through any southern African country in the last 10 days, including Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Eswatini, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and Angola – as well as Seychelles and Mauritius. This does not include British and Irish Nationals, longer-term visa holders and permanent residents, who will be able to enter but are required to self-isolate for 10 days on arrival along with their household.
The statement also indicated that the travel restrictions are extended to all southern African countries from 4 am Saturday 9 January (2021) to protect against the spread of a new COVID-19 variant initially detected in South Africa.
It is strongly believed that the aggressive coronavirus variant that was initially detected in South Africa is now in Zimbabwe after the two countries open borders to travellers early December last year.
This comes as Sir John Bell, regius professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, said the strain detected in South Africa could be resistant to current vaccines.
Bell also said that if a new vaccine is required to fight the new fast-spreading strain, it could take just six weeks to do so.
The U.K. is already grappling with another new coronavirus strain that emerged recently in that country. A number of European countries have since banned flights and trains from the UK.
People entering England and Scotland will have to show a negative COVID-19 test result starting next week as authorities try to ramp up protection against new, more infectious strains of the coronavirus from other countries.
Passengers arriving by boat, plane or train will have to take a test a maximum of 72 hours before departure, mirroring measures taken last year by other countries around the world.
“We already have significant measures in place to prevent imported cases of COVID-19, but with new strains of the virus developing internationally we must take further precautions,” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said.
He said there were concerns that vaccines might not work properly against the highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus discovered in South Africa, echoing recent comments from other government officials.
On Thursday, Britain said it would extend a ban on travellers entering England from South Africa to include other southern African countries, and non-essential travel in and out of the United Kingdom is restricted.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a new lockdown for England this week after a surge in cases linked to another variant of the virus believed to have originated in the country.
Scotland, which like the rest of the United Kingdom has tight COVID-19 restrictions in place, said it too would require travellers to show negative tests and the rule is also expected to be applied by Wales and Northern Ireland.
Passengers from many countries are currently required to self-isolate for 10 days, or five if they pay for a private test and test negative. Those requirements will remain in place after the new pre-departure testing rule comes into effect.
Britain’s airlines industry recognised the need to introduce pre-departure testing but said it should be only a short-term, emergency measure.
“Once the roll-out of the vaccine accelerates, the focus must be on returning travel to normal as quickly as possible in order to support the UK’s economic recovery,” said Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, an industry group.
“What we’d like to see is that testing before you take off becomes the standard as an alternative to quarantine,” said John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Britain’s biggest airport Heathrow.
Travel to and from Britain has been almost wiped out by COVID-19 and the quarantine requirements, leaving many airlines and airports fighting for survival.
Exemptions to the new testing requirement rule in England would be offered to hauliers, children under 11, crews and people travelling from countries where tests are not available.
Passengers will be subject to a fine of 500 pounds ($678.30) if they fail to comply with the new regulations.
Additional reporting by agencies.
Covid-19:Zimbabwe Military General Moyo Dies
Covid-19: Passenger bus mogul Munhenzva dies
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GOP lawmakers, protesters call on DeWine to begin re-opening Ohio
Anna Staver Cole Behrens
A growing chorus of Ohio’s Republican lawmakers want Gov. Mike DeWine to set a date for the first phases of re-opening businesses, schools and public places.
“We need to get the economy open, even if that means social distancing of some sort for months to come,“ Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, wrote in a Facebook post. ”We can’t stay like this much longer, and the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who’ve lost their jobs or the thousands of small business owners can’t keep doing this either, or their lives will be irreparably destroyed.“
At the same time, President Donald Trump contends it’s up to him, not governors like DeWine, to establish a timeline to re-open the country.
>> Protesters plan in-vehicle rally against Michigan governor’s stay-at-home order
“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total," Trump said during his daily coronavirus briefing Monday after being asked about governors’ authority.
"And that’s the way it’s gotta be. It's total. It’s total. And the governors know that. ... They can’t do anything without approval of the president of the United States."
He already had tweeted Monday morning:
“For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.
“It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!”
Politifact rated those tweets false.
Trump's claim of authority over governors sounds a very different note than statements from the past several weeks. He has contended that it should be the states, not the federal government, taking the lead in battling the pandemic. The president has cited his philosophy of local control as he has declined to pressure states to enact stay-at-home orders.
DeWine, titular head of Trump’s Ohio re-election effort, said he and other governors have been consulting extensively with the White House — they just had another in a series of calls Monday morning with Vice President Mike Pence — on a collaborative plan that will be unique to each state’s differing circumstances.
“This is not a confrontational issue between us and the White House,“ DeWine said in his daily public briefing Monday. “As we put together our plan it‘s going to be an Ohio plan in the sense that we are different than every other state. ... I think people will think it’s a rational plan. I think the Trump administration will like it as well.”
Earlier, the first-term Republican governor made it clear during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe“ that any loosening of the stay-at-home order would be contingent on coronavirus testing results and other health data.
“Whenever we open up, however we do it, if people aren't confident, if they don't think they're safe, they're not going to go to restaurants, they're not going to go to bars, they're not going to really get back into society,” DeWine said.
Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton issued the stay-at-home order March 22, but schools have been closed since March 12. That order expires May 1, but it’s increasingly likely that students and teachers won’t return to their classrooms this academic year.
The original forecast models used by Acton and the governor predicted a peak of 10,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by mid-April. Those projections have dropped sharply in recent days to 1,607 new cases per day though the peak has remained essentially the same.
DeWine credits Ohioans for their help in flattening the curve, but others in his party believe those first numbers were incorrect.
“Many of the earliest predictions were based on what we now know to be flawed data models,” Rep. Todd Smith, R-Germantown, wrote in a letter to the governor. “We now have actual data that has shown the effect of the virus to be much less than anticipated.”
He called on the governor to begin lifting the restrictions on businesses and public gatherings “in the first days of May and maybe all by the end of the month.”
“Here in my district and across the state, our small business owners are being crushed under the current restrictions. They do not think it necessary to destroy their businesses and the state economy for the actual effect they are seeing due to the virus,” Smith wrote.
It’s a position held by conservatives like Dave Zanotti who runs The American Policy Roundtable as well as protesters who have started showing up at the Statehouse for the governor’s briefings.
“So far Dr. Acton has used at least three different models as the foundation for her actions ’to save lives,’” Zanotti wrote. “All three models have proven to be wrong.”
Brenner, who says Ohio’s rate of infection may have already peaked, said he’d like to start seeing businesses re-open in phases.
For example, the Delaware Republican suggested stores could limit customers, hair salons could be by appointment only and restaurants could reduce their number of tables. Masks could be recommended for those in public, and medically vulnerable people could continue to stay at home.
“Opening up the economy is not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take weeks or months,” Brenner told The Dispatch. “Starting now doesn’t mean it will all be open tomorrow.”
Sen. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, is advocating for a county-by-county or even city-by-city approach.
“We don’t have to treat different parts of the state the same,” Huffman told The Dispatch, pointing to places like west central Ohio where the number of cases has remained low.
’We don’t want to get caught up in the circular logic of saying ’look, they haven’t been tested yet,’“ Huffman said. ”You can get tested and you can be exposed the next day ... At some point we have to look at actual data and not ’well, it could be this.’“
But DeWine said health officials consider the entire state to be affect by “community spread,” even though areas with less testing are showing fewer victims. Re-opening too quickly, he said, would lead to additional deaths, especially among the state’s vulnerable populations.
The decision to reduce restrictions will be “based on the best science we can see,” the governor said. “We’re not going to flip on a switch some day and get the world back to where it was. ... Our goal has to be how do we make them normal as we can within the confines of the fact that we have a monster out there that is lurking and can kill us.”
Scientists and drug manufacturers are working on a vaccine, but it might not be ready in time for cold and flu season this winter. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a briefing in late March that he expects another wave of the coronavirus later this year.
“We can’t shut the economy down constantly,” Brenner said. “If this is something that is seasonal, what are we going to do?”
Around 100 protesters gathered outside the Statehouse during Dewine's appearance, at least one wearing a Donald Trump hat while many carried signs expressing displeasure at the stay-at-home order or waved American flags.
Kevin Farmer of Cincinnati climbed to the top of the Statehouse steps with his bullhorn to lead the protesters in a series of chants.
"Some say that we're actually causing havoc or putting lives in danger right now -- but actually they're putting my livelihood in danger and others because we're laid off during this pandemic," Farmer said to the crowd.
Farmer told The Dispatch that he has been laid off from his job at Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing, and said his employer will contact him when it is OK to return to work.
Farmer said he hoped DeWine would see the dissent caused by the demonstration, and allow Ohioans to get back to their jobs.
"Don't Mike DeWine supposed to be a Republican (sic)? Don't he believe in less government? Small government?" Farmer said.
"He has an obligated right to get us back to work, because if not, what do you think Americans are gonna go through?"
Farmer also led the demonstrators in a series of "When I say tyrant, you say Mike DeWine" chants, among others.
Another demonstrator, John Jenkins of Pleasantville, was bearing an upside down American flag, traditionally a distress signal.
"Ohio is currently under distress," Jenkins said. "The United States is generally under distress."
Jenkins said the demonstrators were organizing on a variety of different Facebook groups, but pointed to Ohio Stands United, a group with 6,800 members, as one of the chief avenues of organization for the two recent protests.
The Facebook page currently has a number of videos uploaded by members of Monday's protest, as well as a video of a member shooting an order from the governor with a rifle.
Joe Marshall, who did not identify where he was from, said he was representing Anonymous Columbus Ohio.
Marshall said he chose to demonstrate against DeWine because he believes DeWine and Acton are being led astray by the World Health Organization, which he said is corrupt and peddling false information to local governments.
"Their numbers here are what these clowns are going by," Marshall said. "Even if they are right, they don't justify“ enforcing a stay-at-home order.
"These are common sense things," Marshall said. "The problem is, Mr. DeWine doesn't want to do common sense things, he wants to listen to Amy, and Amy gets her orders from the World Health Organization."
Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel Rowland contributed to this story.
astaver@dispatch.com
@annastaver
cbehrens@dispatch.com
@colebehr_report
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US disbands Iraq team looking for battle weapons
Julian Borger in Washington and Luke Harding in Baghdad
Fri 9 Jan 2004 03.35 EST
The Pentagon has pulled out the 400-strong military team which was searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, but US officers insisted yesterday that the hunt would go on.
The disbanded multinational team was known as the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Group (JCMEG) and its job, according to a Pentagon official who confirmed its withdrawal, had been to "scavenge the battlefield for military equipment".
It was an important element of the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which has spent seven months hunting for the arsenal that was the justification for the invasion.
Over the past few months the ISG has been stripped of translators, special forces troops and other specialists.
The continuing questions about the justification of the Iraq war are President George Bush's principal weakness as he faces re-election in November against the backdrop of a steadily rising death toll of US troops there.
Yesterday nine soldiers were killed when a US Black Hawk crashed near the town of Falluja. It was not initially clear whether it had been shot down, but Falluja is a stronghold of Sunni resistance.
The ISG, according to some weapons experts in Washington, has been reduced to a remnant of a few hundred specialists from its peak strength of 1,400.
Its leader, David Kay, is said to be on the point of resignation. A colleague in Washington said: "His family is worried about his safety and he is disenchanted, both by the failure to find weapons he was sure were there and because his team has been cut in half."
The withdrawal of JCMEG became known only yesterday, but a defence official said its members had been sent back to their home countries in October, and called its disbanding "old news".
The official denied that the ISG had been reduced to a rump and said that although its numberfluctuated, new team members had joined to replace at least some of the departing troops.
Many of the remaining ISG investigators are slowly sifting their way through a mountain of captured documents.
The group includes a specialist unit trained to dispose of chemical and biological weapons, but the New York Times quoted an ISG member as saying that the team was "still waiting for something to dispose of".
Joseph Cirincione, chief proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), said: "This is a body blow to the ISG. It has got to be demoralising to see your workforce cut in half. And it's an indication that at senior levels there is a realisation that it's over."
The CEIP produced a report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yesterday, co-authored by Mr Cirincione, comparing prewar claims by US officials and postwar findings that concluded that the administration had "systematically misrepresented" the Iraqi threat.
Yesterday, the US secretary of State, Colin Powell, acknowledged that he saw no "smoking gun, concrete evidence" of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida terror network, but insisted that Iraq had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force.
A US military spokewoman said that the crashed Black Hawk helicopter had made an emergency landing south of Falluja, a stronghold of the anti-American insurgency.
The Qatar satellite TV station al-Jazeera reported it had been hit by a rocket. Last week rebels shot down a US helicopter in the same area, killing one soldier and injuring another.
Speaking last night in Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said troops had secured the site of the crash and an investigation was under way.
US forces have rounded up hundreds of suspects from Falluja, but the tactic appears to have incensed those left behind. Three US helicopters have been shot down in as many months. In November US troops were killed and 21 others on board injured after their Chinook was shot down in the same place.
Since the capture of Saddam Hussein the Iraqi resistance has carried out a series of spectacular attacks, including an assault on coalition forces in the town of Karbala, and a New Year's Eve suicide bombing in the heart of Baghdad, which killed eight people.
The latest incident came a day after rebels fired six mortar shells into a US camp, killing one soldier and wounding 33 soldiers and a civilian.
A US C-5 transport plane made an emergency landing at Baghdad airport after it was hit by hostile fire. No injuries were reported among the 63 passengers and crew.
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Albert Gagnon
Albert Gagnon at the Hotel Chateau Laurier in Quebec City, July 18, 2011.
Albert Gagnon, Royal 22e Régiment, Vickers machine gun position, Korea, April 1952.
Albert Gagnon at the grave of his brother, Omer, killed in Korea at age 23, Pusan, Korea, 1952.
Corporal Albert Gagnon (on left) with two other soldiers at the firing line, Korea, May or June 1952. Soldier in the centre is holding a stereoscopic rangefinder.
Behind the lines, camouflaged cover for vehicles moving at night, Korea, Spring 1952.
"I went to retrieve a rifle from a dead Chinese soldier, and I stuck it into the ground in front of me with the bayonet, it went in well. And then I said: “Come and get it!”"
Because all three of us were involved in the famous battle of 355 (the Battle of Hill 355 where the 2nd Battalion of the Royal 22e Régiment distinguished itself in Korea, from November 22 to 25, 1951). All three of us were involved; Hubert in platoon 11, Yvon in platoon 12 and I in platoon 10 (from “D” Company. M. Albert Gagnon served with his two brothers, Hubert and Yvon). They were on the hill in a horseshoe position. We were on the left flank. The Americans, when they (the Chinese) attacked, they weren’t able to break through us. But they made it into the valley, where there was a bracket (a counter-flank position). We couldn’t see them. They made it into the valley and the Americans escaped. So, during the night, they came back down on us. That was very hard. It was hard. I could tell you about some of the exploits that happened there, but it wouldn’t be of much use. Beside me was Sergeant Lapierre. He had earned the MM (Military Medal). So he was beside me and the lieutenant (Walter) Nash (from Ottawa) who won the DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal), I believe. It was only the three of us who were defending the back of platoon 10. We had two Bren machine rifles (British light machine guns). Because when I arrived on the Vickers (British machine gun), I was number four (servant no. 4). There were four people; one, two, three, four. The fourth was the Bren Gunner (Bren machine gunner). He gave the munitions to the number three and the number three covered the (…) then he gave that to the number two and the number two fed the Vickers. So the number one was injured at the beginning of the battle and Sergeant Lapierre said: “Hey! Send us some reinforcement because we’ve just been attacked from behind!” Because they (the Chinese) were coming up through the valley. They were far. They had almost made it to the hill. We were firing at their backs. But during the night, they came back down on us. It was hard. It wasn’t pretty. Sergeant Lapierre thought that I was dead. They were firing with tracers (phosphorus bullets) that were coming close to us. So between one tracer bullet and another, there were four bullets. I was the Bren Gunner. Sergeant Lapierre thought that (…), he was to my left. He thought that I was shot. He exclaimed: “Damn!” I was on the Bren. I said: “I know where the enemy is.” I said that to Lapierre. He didn’t fire again. I fired about 25 bullets in the enemy’s direction. The next morning, I came out of the trenches, it was very calm and the enemy was gone. I went to retrieve a rifle from a dead Chinese soldier, and I stuck it into the ground in front of me with the bayonet, it went in well. And then I said: “Come and get it!” It had been 24 hours since we had slept so Sergeant Lapierre said to me: “Go get something to eat. It’s calm now, they’re gone.” The Americans had started coming back up the mountain so he said: “Go get a meal in the back.” I arrived at the back of the Echelon B (the area behind the battlefront) as they called it. It was about eight kilometres behind the lines. They already knew by radio that I was coming. I went down the hill with the injured. I said: “What I am doing here?” He said: “Go to the little kitchen, there is a tent where you can have a nice meal. You can go sleep in a bed a bit further away.” I slept for about ten or twelve hours. I went back to the office and I said: “What I am doing here?” I wanted to hear about my two brothers. I didn’t know (what had happened to them after the battle). That’s why I left. Otherwise I would have said to Sergeant Lapierre: “No, I’m staying here.” I wanted to hear about my two brothers, so that’s why I went down the hill. They had said: “If you want to go back up, your two brothers are fine, they were never here, they weren’t injured.” So I went back up to the “C” Company with Sergeant Floris. Sergeant Floris said to me: “Apparently you know how to work a Vickers?” I replied: “Of course, I received the entire training.” Because the Canadians, the team from the 22 (Royal 22e Régiment), the 2nd Battalion, when they went to be trained at Fort Lewis in the United States (Washington State), they trained with American weapons, with the .30 (Browning M1919 calibre .30 American machine gun). And when they got to Korea, the Americans said: “We won’t be providing you with weapons.” They said: “You’re part of the British army.” So there were given the Vickers but they didn’t know how to use them. One of my brothers was killed, and the other one was seriously injured. He was killed on June 7, 1952. Yvon was injured for the first time in January (1952) in the back with shrapnel. And then afterwards he was injured in the front, in his bladder. He was a guinea-pig his entire life. He died three years ago. He wore catheter, bags, and all sorts of things. Every year, he had two or three operations. In the end, it affected his blood and everything else.
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18 Jun THE NEW YORK TIMES | REVIEW: ‘THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR’ TAKES A DEEP DIVE INTO SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE
Posted at 10:26h in Reviews by Vanessa Martino
By Jeannette Catsoulis
Planting a flag firmly at the intersection of patriarchy, sexism and white supremacy, “The Rape of Recy Taylor” is a documentary of multiple layers and marvelous gumption. As if apprised in advance of our current political moment, the director, Nancy Buirski, wields the titular violation as a signpost to a wider, more insidious American crime. In this way, the 1944 gang-rape of one black woman in Alabama becomes emblematic of the effacement of an entire gender.
Were it not for the director’s steady hand and adamantine focus on her destination, this ambition could have been the film’s undoing. Instead, its scope is stirring, the gradual accumulation of insult and outrage reaching far beyond tiny Abbeville where the crime occurred and where Recy, then 24, lived with her husband and new daughter. The miracle, though, is that the movie isn’t a diatribe. Its voices — including several members of Recy’s family and that of Rosa Parks herself, who investigated the assault — are gentle and persuasive, using the horrific details of the rape and its aftermath as ballast to stabilize a heart-wrenching history of systemic injustice.
The cleverness of this structure only gradually becomes apparent as Ms. Buirski slowly obliterates skin tone distinctions to land on a perfectly calibrated final section. Some may chide her, not without cause, for overreaching; yet the emotional impact of her deep-diving images — especially the astonishing clips from the “race films” of the 1940s and earlier — is profound. An evocative shot of a black woman in a white dress, fleeing from someone in graceful terror, reminds us repeatedly of the movie’s original atrocity.
“They played in her body,” Recy’s sister Alma Daniels says at one point. It’s perhaps the most devastating claim in a film overflowing with them.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/movies/the-rape-of-recy-taylor-review.html
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Regulatory Recap | Week in Review | Jul 17, 2020
Brinna Ludwig, Sabrina Minhas, and Joshua Burd
The Trump Administration rescinds its rule on visas for international students taking online classes, the Supreme Court authorizes the use of single-drug protocol for death penalties, and more…
The Trump Administration rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs announced the news in a hearing before she was set to hear arguments on the lawsuit brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead of hearing arguments, Judge Burroughs held that the lawsuit was moot as the parties had come to “an agreement” to remove the policy and “return to the status quo.” Harvard President Lawrence Bacow reportedly called it a “significant victory” and stressed that even if the government attempts to issue a new rule the “legal arguments remain strong and the court has retained jurisdiction, which would allow us to seek judicial relief immediately to protect our international students should the government again act unlawfully.”
In a 5-4 unsigned opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the federal government can execute people on death row using a single lethal injection. The decision overturned a stay on federal executions by a federal district court. The opinion held that the people on death row had “not made the showing required to justify last-minute intervention.” All four liberal justices dissented, with both Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer filing dissents calling for “meaningful judicial review” and questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty, respectively. After the Supreme Court reversed the district court injunction, the federal government executed the first person since 2003.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issued an executive order prohibiting local municipalities from requiring mask usage in public places. The executive order voided at least 15 mandatory mask usage orders issued by local governments throughout Georgia. In support of the executive order, Candice Broce, a spokesperson for Governor Kemp, tweeted that “local mask mandates are unenforceable.” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, who was enforcing a mandatory mask order, tweeted that the executive order demonstrated Governor Kemp’s lack of concern for Georgia residents and expressed an “every man and woman for himself and herself” attitude.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a final rule that allows lenders to grant small dollar loans without checking if borrowers have the means to repay them, ostensibly in an effort to expand access to credit during the COVID-19 public health crisis. The rule came three months after a CFPB economist accused political appointees at the agency of pressuring researchers to suppress findings that small dollar loans harmed consumers. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) responded that the agency “gave payday lenders exactly what they paid for by gutting a rule that would have protected American families from predatory loans.”
The Council on Environmental Quality issued a final rule that comprehensively reinterprets the National Environmental Protection Act. The new rule set hard time limits for environmental impact reviews and expanded the criteria for allowing a categorical exclusion from environmental review, which is currently the most common agency review action. The rule also removed requirements to consider cumulative and indirect environmental harms, which may allow infrastructure projects to avoid careful consideration of their impact on climate change. Hundreds of environmental groups have criticized the provisions of the final rule. The American Petroleum Institute, on the other hand, welcomed the changes by releasing a statement that asserted that the rule “will help America streamline permitting to move job-creating infrastructure projects off the drawing board and into development.”
A federal appellate court prevented the U.S. Department of Justice from withholding funding for criminal justice programs from California sanctuary cities. In 2017, California passed the California Values Act, which forbade state and local law enforcement agencies from acting as deputies for federal immigration authorities. The law conflicted with federal immigration laws that prohibit states and localities from preventing their officials from sharing information about someone’s immigration status with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Dennis Herrera, city attorney of San Francisco, praised the decision and emphasized that “there is no law requiring state or local governments to participate in immigration enforcement.” The decision followed three other federal appellate courts, all of which ruled against the Trump Administration, and a federal appellate court in New York that ruled in favor of the Administration.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed to retain the existing ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards because the agency determined that the standards were adequate to protect public health and welfare. The standards, which establish levels of unhealthy exposure to smog, were set under the Obama Administration. Critics, however, have repeatedly challenged the standards for not being stringent enough to protect public health or the environment. John Walke, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, reportedly stated that the Trump Administration was relying on an Obama-era standard rather than determining “what the science tells you should be done today in 2020.” In a press release, the Environmental Protection Agency asserted that the agency is “following the principles established in the earliest days of the Trump Administration to streamline the…review process.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order that required state regulators to allow residential small battery owners to participate in federal wholesale electricity markets. In its challenge to the rule, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners argued that the agency’s order violated the Federal Power Act, which allows the agency to regulate the interstate grid and wholesale electricity markets but leaves regulation of local distribution networks to the states. The court ruled that the challenged order did not interfere with state jurisdiction because it only regulated wholesale market participation, even though residential batteries connect to the grid through the state controlled electricity distribution networks. In a friend-of-the-court brief, five state attorneys general, including California Attorney General Xavier Beccara, supported the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s rule because it works to remove unnecessary barriers to the development of battery deployment, which Beccara argued is one of the few ways that carbon emissions can be decreased while also lowering the cost of electricity.
More than 1,000 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) signed a letter calling for the CDC “to take immediate, specific, and measurable actions to address the systemic racism that continues to afflict this agency.” The letter, dated June 30 and addressed to the CDC Director Robert R. Redfield, demanded the agency declare racism a public health crisis, address the CDC’s “toxic culture of exclusion and racial discrimination,” and increase the diversity of leadership. A CDC spokesperson reportedly responded to the requests for comment by stating that the “CDC is committed to fostering a fair, equitable, and inclusive environment in which staff can openly share their concerns with agency leadership.” Camara Phyllis Jones, senior fellow at the Morehouse School of Medicine and former medical officer at the CDC, reportedly emphasized that systemic racism is “especially important to address if it’s impeding the nation’s response to a pandemic.”
WHAT WE’RE READING THIS WEEK
In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Chad D. Cotti, chair of the economics department at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and four coauthors found that in-person voting in Wisconsin had a statistically significant relationship with the spread of COVID-19. Using county-level data on voting and COVID-19 tests, Cotti and his coauthors found that in-person voting in Wisconsin was related to approximately 700 more COVID-19 cases after the election. Cotti and his coauthors suggested that policymakers should increase the number of polling locations and encourage absentee voting to reduce the population density of voters.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Jessica Calarco, associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington, asserted that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is failing to provide public schools with the resources they need to reopen safely. Calarco argued that by pressuring schools to reopen with inadequate resources, DeVos is instituting a new form of school choice, where children with affluent caregivers will receive a quality education and other children will be left behind. Calarco viewed the pressure to reopen schools as a way for DeVos to “compel many privileged families to abandon those schools,” leading to great inequalities.
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined the Trump Administration’s sevenfold reduction in the “social cost of carbon,” an amount specified by the federal government that estimates the harm global warming will cause future generations. The federal government uses that estimate in its cost-benefit analyses, and the Trump Administration’s reduced estimate has been used recently to justify rules allowing automobiles and coal power plants to emit more carbon dioxide. GAO explained that the Trump Administration was able to change the social cost of carbon by using higher discount rates, a type of financial calculation that assumes future benefits are not valuable in the present. In addition, the Trump Administration now only considers damage that would occur within the United States rather than damage around the globe. GAO compared estimates of the social cost of carbon with other countries and recommended that the Office of Management and Budget take action to standardize social cost of carbon estimates based on guidance from the National Academies of Science.
In a 2019 essay for The Regulatory Review, Ellen P. Goodman, professor of law at Rutgers Law School, argued that while algorithms can be helpful in improving complex regulatory structures, the use of a mathematical model fails to capture or communicate nuances of a policy, often leading to its rejection or failure. Goodman used the Boston public school system’s adoption of an algorithm to improve the school busing system as a case study since the algorithm offered a significant price cut and a more equitable school schedule but was sharply rejected by the public. Although algorithms often omit important equity concerns, even if they do not, Goodman argued, the public may reject the models if they are presented without significant transparency and citizen engagement. Goodman concluded that using algorithms to improve regulatory schemes requires an emphasis on the socio-political implications of their implementation.
Analysis | Rights | Rights | Rights Oct 22, 2018
Sanctuary Outside of Big Cities
Mark Nakahara
Smaller local jurisdictions are adopting pro-immigration policies at an unprecedented rate.
News | Education | Education | Education Apr 25, 2019
The Black Box of College Admissions
Kate Mancuso
State legislators and the U.S. Education Department are scrutinizing college admissions practices.
Analysis | Environment | Environment | Environment Nov 23, 2018
Clean Air Act Obscures Polluted “Hotspots”
Joanna Kamhi
Scholar argues that federal air laws conceal highly polluted areas.
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The Goodyear Blimp is on Airbnb — here's how you can stay in it
Ever wanted to spend the night in a blimp?
And it's not just any blimp.
Now you can book a stay in the world-famous Goodyear Blimp, although, unfortunately, it won't be airborne while you're staying there.
In honor of the 150th anniversary of college football this year, it's the first time anybody will be allowed to stay overnight in the blimp, which is resting comfortably in its hangar in Mogadore, Ohio, just outside of Akron.
For $150 a night (because of the 150th anniversary, of course), those who book a stay will get access to the hangar, which according to Airbnb is the size of 2.6 football fields. You'll also have access to a football lounge, a lakefront area with a grill, fire pit and cornhole, space to invite friends over (even though only two people can actually stay in the blimp) and tickets to the Notre Dame vs. Michigan game in Ann Arbor on Oct. 26.
You can view the Airbnb listing here, but you won't be able to request to book your stay until Oct. 15. There are only three nights available, so you'll have to act fast so you can stay in the blimp on Oct. 22, 23 or 24.
Airbnb did not say how the reservations will be accepted, but the listing says: "Reservation opportunities will roll out throughout the day on October 15. Keep an eye on this listing page so you don’t fumble your chance to request a stay on your desired date."
Airbnb and Goodyear will also donate $5,000 to the Cotton Bowl Foundation.
KISS to perform underwater concert for great white sharks Amtrak has a buy-one-get-one-free sale for train tickets across the U.S. You can book a stay in this Lisa Frank-themed loft
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Originally Posted by zhontella
I wouldn't be surprised if Princes William or Harry helped, since I'm sure they want to be much more clear on some details too.
Well, I would be amazed, as It seems that both young men have read the report and drew the same conclusion as the majority of others, that their mother died when the car she was travelling in without a seatbelt, at high speed, hit an immovable object. If you read the report as Butler Sloss has done, you will see why she said she has not seen "a shred of evidence" and has asked Fayed to show some.
Not much incentive for people to refrain from frivolous accusations, then, especially against the royal family, who don't tend to resort to the law courts. That's a shame.
zhontella
Originally Posted by BeatrixFan
The conspiracists put forward evidence to prove she was killed but they also say that if there isn't any evidence to prove it, it was destroyed so that it could never be seen and therefore the murder thing never proved or disproved.
That's correct. There is a lot of suspicion and possibly no way to prove anything. Al Fayed is probably just spitt'n in the wind, but he does have a right to be heard in open court with a non-royal jury.
selrahc4
He has the right for his evidence to be presented. But he doesn't have the right just to be "heard", as in spewing any suspicion occupying his mind.
aka Janet on some other forums
sirhon11234
In the film, "Life of Brian", the crowd ask Brian if he is the Messiah. He says no, to which a woman says, "Only the true Messiah would deny his divinity". Brian responds, "Well what chance does that give me? Alright then, I am the Messiah!" to which a joyous crowd celebrate. It's the same with this. If the courts decide Diana was murdered, the conspiracists will jump for joy. If the courts decide Diana wasn't, the conspiracists will also jump for joy. The conspiracists put forward evidence to prove she was killed but they also say that if there isn't any evidence to prove it, it was destroyed so that it could never be seen and therefore the murder thing never proved or disproved. And that gives us an endless conspiracy which in turn, lines the pockets of people who don't want to get a proper job.
As to watching Di's final moments, it's simple. Notice how we see JFK's autopsy pictures circulated but we never see Marilyn Monroe's autopsy pictures printed. The press build up a picture of a glamorous, hard done by woman who suffered and died at a young age for Marilyn and Diana. If they print a picture of their corpses, they immediately break that picture and the perception changes - and income goes down. People want to buy pictures of Di in a tiara, they don't want to buy pictures of her in her coffin. And that's partly the press, partly keeping the fairy tale alive but partly because of the way we deal with death in this country. Remember the pictures of Grace Kelly in her coffin? A car crash, a beautiful woman, a mother - but we saw her lying in state with an open coffin. We didn't see it with Diana because the British couldn't cope with that. It's too final and it threatens our stiff upper lip mentality.
I don't think anyone at that time or today would like to see a picture of The Princess of Wales lying in her coffin. There was actually a morgue photo of Marilyn Monroe and you wouldn't have known that it was her. And JFK's morgue photo is very disturbing.
You want to remember a loved one and a beloved famous person how they looked like when they were alive not lying down in their coffin.
"I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved."
Diana, the Princess of Wales
Originally Posted by sirhon11234
Maybe true for most people. However, I would have very much liked to see all the photos taking immediately around the time of the crash -- both before and after. I would also like to see the "lost" pictures from the cameras inside the tunnel that night. The lack of photos (don't even have to include Diana) is surprising and suspicious.
There are many photos, some were even shown on the internet, many more were seen by the French investigators and Lord Stevens team.
I think the morbid curiosity to see pictures of this woman dying is reprehensible.
Some pictures seemed to have escaped the frantic efforts to confiscate all pictures immediately following the crash. Where are these "many" photos? I saw one of Diana in the car, but it was very dark and fuzzy - betraying no shred of evidence -- either real or imagined.
My motive for wanting to see the pictures is from neither idle nor morbid curiosity. It has to do with loss of respect and trust in our leaders.
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Some pictures seemed to have escaped the frantic efforts to confiscate all pictures immediately following the crash. Where are these "many" photos? I saw one of Diana in the car, but it was very dark and fuzzy - betraying no shred of evidence -- either real or imagined. My motive for wanting to see the pictures is from neither idle nor morbid curiosity. It has to do with loss of respect and trust in our leaders
The photos were not released to the public and rightly so, the picture you saw was one of a few that were touted around to the highest bidder. Most British papers refused to buy them, the one decent thing they did. Unless you are involved in the investigation or inquest, you will not see all the evidence or even the lack of it.
Whatever way you try to dress it, for someone wishing to see those pictures when they don't need to is, IMO, sickening.
I don't think anyone at that time or today would like to see a picture of The Princess of Wales lying in her coffin.
People go to Chapels of Rest don't they? I've been before now and found it an extremely helpful and healing process. When someone dies, you can't believe they've gone. Seeing them confirms it and you can move forward. I'm not saying that we should see people dying but seeing people dead doesn't bother me if the circumstances are right. People take death in different ways though. When my grandfather died, I went to the Chapel of Rest and it was the first time I'd ever been and I was truly suprised at myself. I sat and held his hand and then I kissed him goodbye and in a way, it made the funeral easier because I'd said my goodbye but it also made it harder in that I knew for certain that he was there, in that coffin. Diana died young, people didn't believe it. We don't need to see autopsy pictures or morgue shots but I don't see the fuss over a Princess Grace style shot. Didn't Ranier have his photograph taken in his coffin? And then there was Pope John Paul II - all the Popes in fact. Maybe its just a Catholic thing.
No its not a catholic thing. I'am a catholic and not all funerals that I attended showed the body. For me personally at the age of 7 i fully believed that Diana was gone, was when Charles brought her body back home to england. The images of Diana's coffin arriving at the RAF Northolt airfield was enough for me to believe that she passed on.
It's a very personal thing I suppose. But there's always be those who want to see things from the cradle to the grave. I mean, if there weren't, why would we have pictures of private Royal funerals, for example, the pictures from the funeral of Princess Alice? Not a state funeral but pictures were there all the same.
I wonder if there are any charges that could be levelled against him but whose statute of limitation runs out after 10 years.
Normally the fact that there is an ongoing investigation/inquest stops the limitation of time. Time starts when there is a verdict, I believe.
Originally Posted by Jo of Palatine
How can there be a verdict? Unless that "verdict" is guilty, guilty and guilty. Guilty of being ex family, guilty of not being Diana's biggest fans, guilty of being alive when she and Dodi are dead.
Mr Al Fayed has made specific vicious accusations against members of the British Royal family, Prince's Philip and Charles our next King.
The fact is that to date there is no evidence whatsoever to support these allegations. Without substantiation how are these accusations to be aired?
Certainly not in a British Court of Inquest, which deals in facts and as such looks to be an action replay of the French court, and so Mr Al Fayed looks to try this 'case' in the media, believing (rightly) that he will not be afforded the opportunity to repeat his scurrilous lies under oath.
As for this story being about tragic lovers parted for eternity by cruel fate (or family) does anyone remember exactly when Diana and Dodi met, and how long their relationship actually was?
The media seem more than complicit in this action (with more headlines and deadlines in store, and one must not forget, the bottom line).
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are assaults of thoughts on the unthinking." - JM Keynes
Dodie father
Dodie father should stop this now and let Diana and Dodie rest in peace, it was an accident!
Suonymona
Location: *******, United States
Sometimes grief cannot be abated by facts when the heart wants more.
People go to Chapels of Rest don't they? I've been before now and found it an extremely helpful and healing process. When someone dies, you can't believe they've gone. Seeing them confirms it and you can move forward.
I think that depends on the circumstance of their death and for many just seeing the corpse does not allow them to 'move on', for some people that comes only with time and for others not at all.
Which is why I 'feel' for William, Harry and their father, to have this dragged on and on and on.......
I hope that reading the report by Lord Stevens enabled them to put the whole sordid mess at rest -if the trusted the investigation (and I think they do) then they knew then what had happened.
Location: -In some dark place-, Argentina
No, this six month delay has nothing to do with the jury. It's all al Fayed's own work. Although the inquest was about to start this week, he needs "more time". Obviously nine-plus years has not been long enough.
thanks for the answer, the infomation in spanish in confused, I read that the juez want the time to october
http://es.today.reuters.com/news/new...ANA-JUICIO.XML
Today the world has embraced new royal Princesses in the form of Mary of Denmark and Maxima of the Netherlands. But it's questionable whether even these hugely popular, increasingly glamorous future Queens will ever capture the world's imagination in the same way as Diana.
As Mario acknowledges: "She really was a true Princess".
-www.theroyalist.net-
Did you really want to see pictures of Diana, with a trickle of blood coming from her forehead, how about the one of them trying to resusitate her, how about her damaged heart, did you want her filmed all the way to the mortuary, the post mortem?
More pictures might have allayed some of the suspicions put onto the royal establishment. The pictures I would most like to see are from the cameras in the tunnel which were "not working" that night, or more probably were working but confiscated into secrecy.
Then I'd like more pictures to determine if Diana was, by some reports, walking around after the accident? I suppose whoever claimed that was ridiculed and mocked into silence.
As I said before, there's no need to twist this into something sick like a morbid fascination with blood and death. That's just another tactic to bully someone into silence.
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Loss Widens at RF Micro
The company's shares slip after hours.
TSC Staff
Apr 26, 2005 5:13 PM EDT
(RFMD)
posted a fourth-quarter loss wider than analysts expected on weaker sales to cell-phone makers.
Excluding charges of $45.8 million, the company on Tuesday reported a loss of $16.4 million, or 9 cents a share. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson First Call expected a loss of 8 cents a share on sales of $151 million.
Including charges, the company's loss for the quarter ended March 31 was $62.2 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with a loss of $859,000, or break-even EPS.
Revenue for the quarter was $150.4 million, a drop of 8% vs. $163.4 million in the year-ago quarter and an 11% sequential decrease from $168.9 million in the previous quarter.
RF Micro attributed the decline in quarterly revenue primarily to smaller sales to handset manufacturers in Asia and the decline in the U.S. market for TDMA handsets.
The Greensboro, N.C., company, which makes circuits primarily for wireless communications products, such as phones and modems, and boasts
(NOK) - Get Report
as its largest customer
warned earlier in April that it would lose between 8 cents and 9 cents a share on $150 million in sales. Analysts had been looking for a 2-cent-a-share loss on $153 million in revenue, according to a Reuters Research tally.
Shares of RF Micro were recently down 13 cents after hours, or 3%, to $4.22. They closed the regular session off 9 cents to $4.35.
Semiconductors & Semiconductor EquipmentTechnology
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Best of 2020: Could the Himalayas harbour the next pandemic?
Environmental destruction and climate change are driving pandemics, with the Hindu Kush Himalayas a potential hotspot for new emerging diseases
Deforestation in the Himalayas near Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, India [Image by: Daniel J. Rao / Alamy]
Beth Walker, January 1, 2021
The world is in an “era of pandemics”. Unless the destruction of the natural world is halted, diseases will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, kill more people and affect the global economy with more devastating impacts than ever before. This was the stark warning from the world’s leading scientists in a major new report last week.
Almost all pandemics are caused by zoonoses, diseases that spread from animals to humans, such as Covid-19, HIV, Sars, Ebola and bird flu. These are being driven entirely by our destruction of the environment, particularly cutting down forests, the intensification of agriculture and wildlife trade, the experts said. This has brought people into closer contact with animals and made it more likely that new viruses will emerge and spill over into human populations.
“The risk of pandemics is increasing rapidly, with more than five new diseases emerging in people every year, any one of which has the potential to become a pandemic,” wrote the group of experts convened by the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
There are an estimated 1.7 million undiscovered viruses on the planet circulating in mammals and birds, of which about 700,000 could have the potential to infect humans.
“There is no great mystery about the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, or of any modern pandemic,” said Peter Daszak, the chair of the group. “The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment.”
The current approach of trying to contain outbreaks and search for treatments and vaccines is a “slow and uncertain path”, argue the group of 22 leading experts from every continent – including health experts, ecologists and economists.
Instead, they call for a “transformative approach” that addresses the root causes of the outbreak rather than the economic and health symptoms. This includes stopping deforestation for agriculture, cattle farms and palm oil, shifting our consumption patterns and tackling climate change.
A Covid-19 quarantine centre in Kulagachi, a village in the northern part of the Sundarbans [image courtesy Sundarban TV]
Their proposed solutions include setting up an intergovernmental council on pandemic prevention to provide decision-makers with the best science and design a global surveillance network. They also call for stronger conservation of high-biodiversity areas and for governments to promote more sustainable consumption – for example, putting a tax on meat production and consumption. They also urge policymakers to incorporate health risks into major development and land-use projects, and to factor the economic costs of pandemics into government policies.
The costs of a preventative approach would be “trivial” compared with the trillions of dollars of damage caused by Covid-19 alone, the experts found.
The report shines a spotlight on the links between land degradation, climate change and emerging diseases. Climate change is the “elephant in the room”, said Daszak during a virtual media conference. “It is already driving pandemics and will worsen the spread of future diseases.”
The warming of the planet is changing patterns of disease.
“There is clear and strong evidence that climate change is leading to a shift in vector-borne diseases. In Europe, for instance, tick-borne encephalitis has moved further north because of climate warming. Lyme disease and bluetongue has also reached Europe,” said Daszak. Research shows the warmer, wetter weather brought by climate change is heightening the risk of Ebola outbreaks across Africa.
“Climate change also leads to shifts in the geographic range of species, livestock and people – we are already seeing migration because of climate stresses – and that will spread diseases more effectively,” said Daszak.
Emerging hotspots
Diseases tend to come from the edges of tropical rainforests and places of great diversity, where humans and animals mingle. These “hotspots”, where diseases are more likely to spill over from animals to humans, are closely linked to degradation of landscape, such as deforestation.
David Hayman, professor of infectious disease ecology at Massey University, New Zealand, and co-author of the report, said, “These hotspots are at the intersection of high biodiversity and high human and livestock density.” Existing work has been done at the global level and in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Heat map showing locations predicting locations most at risk from zoonotic emerging infectious diseases (Republished under a Creative Commons license: Nature Communications, 2017).
The Hindu Kush Himalayas – which stretches from Afghanistan in the west to China in the east over some of the world’s most biodiverse areas – is one of these potential emerging disease hotspots, according to Nakul Chettri, biodiversity expert and regional programme manager at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a research institute based in Nepal.
“First, the HKH is bestowed with a wide range of wildlife species, which brings higher risk of diseases,” he said. “Second, the region hosts four out of 36 global biodiversity hotspots, has lost 70% of original habitat and faces acute human pressure. There are higher chances of human-wildlife interaction due to habitat fragmentation, wildlife trade, bushmeat-eating practices and traditional domestic animals being replaced with hybrids, which are more susceptible to diseases.”
See: Without communities, conservation fails in eastern Himalayas
Interestingly, habitat destruction means only the hardiest species – such as bats and rats, more likely to carry diseases – survive. For example, the multimammate mouse in West Africa that carries Lassa virus thrives in degraded land around plantations.
The HKH region is also warming up to three times faster than the global average. This creates a perfect storm for new diseases to emerge.
Climate change is known to be driving the spread of Zika in the HKH Himalayan region, compounded by the high levels of population density, poverty and unplanned urbanisation. Warmer temperatures are also pushing mosquito-borne diseases like dengue into higher altitudes. While these are not new viruses, they are spreading into new areas where people have no natural immunity and interacting with trends such as deforestation in ways that are poorly understood.
A view of deforestation in the middle Himalayas [image courtesy: Akhtar H Malik, Kashmir University]
There is still little research on how climate change will shape the future risk of pandemics. This is particularly important in the HKH region – where there is growing evidence of animals and plants shifting habitats and moving into new ranges. And people are already on the move, forced on by rising sea levels, storms, river erosion and lack of fresh water.
A handful of “virus hunters” – the glamorous name for epidemiologists who find potentially dangerous pathogens – are already working in the region. US scientists recently discovered new coronaviruses from bat caves in Myanmar; and an Indian scientist is studying diseases in wildlife and livestock in the Himalayas.
But hunting for the next virus could be a long shot. Restoring degraded, fragmented areas is the most important thing. Chettri from ICIMOD argued that conservation efforts by countries of the HKH region are essential to mitigate disease risks.
“We need to keep the space for wildlife and biodiversity to thrive… It is high time [we] invest in the restoration of natural habitats that we have lost over the last century. This is crucial for the long-term well-being of humanity in the HKH.”
He called on countries to “move forward with a green development agenda”, invest in green enterprises such as ecotourism and organic farming and educate the youth in maintaining an ecological balance.
There have been some positive noises about building back greener in Pakistan, but amid the economic fallout from Covid-19 this will be a long and arduous path.
In the meantime, how can countries best prepare for the next pandemic? Chettri rattled off a list of actions: “Among many things, invest in rural health facilities in remote areas; minimise human-wildlife interaction, keep wild habitat and their migratory routes intact and restore degraded areas; ban wildlife trade and bushmeat; encourage traditional livestock rather than hybrids and invest in research to understand the types of disease-causing organisms.”
This story was first published on November 4, 2020
Could the Himalayas harbour the next pandemic?
Best of 2020: Will border disputes affect climate research?
Will border disputes in the Himalayas affect climate research?
The costs of heightened conflict in the Himalayas
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A mutual feeling for more local banking
According to these regional lenders, the future of banking lies in a more traditional approach
Kenza Bryan
Sunday August 16 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
During the pandemic 2,280 bank branches and building societies closed their doors
BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES
A co-operative banking movement with its roots in Victorian Britain claims that it can help to reverse the trend towards bank closures by building hundreds of small local branches that will be open 24 hours a day.
The regional lenders South West Mutual and Avon Mutual intend to apply for a full banking licence with the Prudential Regulation Authority and plan to launch as banks in 2022, while two more have registered as mutual societies and a further four are in the process of registering.
They are led by former bankers and staff of think tanks such as the New Economics Foundation. The would-be banks’ idea harks back to when trustee savings banks, small building societies owned by their members, were set up to promote
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Why ‘Radical Self-inquiry’ Can Create a Thriving Workplace
Executive coach Jerry Colonna wants managers to stop focusing on output and achievement. Instead, he wants them to engage in radical self-inquiry, which builds the maturity required for leaders to lift up others, not just themselves. It’s part of what sees as a bigger rebooting — a process he went through himself. The former venture capitalist fought through depression and suicidal feelings to lead a more fulfilling life, both professionally and personally. Colonna joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on a recent segment of the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM.
Knowledge@Wharton: A lot of the concepts in your book relate to a growing focus on corporate culture and the well-being of employees. Can you talk about that?
Colonna: My first reaction to that is, thank goodness. So many people suffer in work, and it’s not necessary. It does not contribute to the organization’s financial success to have a third of the employees dealing with depression or anxiety.
A few years ago I was on a CNN documentary on mental health in the tech startup community. After that episode aired, I got a phone call from the head of talent at a very large software company who spoke about the fact that the health care claims for anxiety-related illnesses for the children of their top executives had gone up 30%, 40%, 50% in the previous two years. What are we doing?
The more we focus on those organizations and how we’re interacting with each other, we can not only create the financial success, but we can create these kinds of work environments where human beings thrive and get to be their best selves. That just feels really important and, dare I say it, even sacred.
Knowledge@Wharton: When somebody is given the task of leadership, what do you think changes within that person?
“Most leaders think they’re the only ones who struggle with what to do. Most leaders think they’re alone in feeling incompetent.”
Jerry Colonna: Usually, the first thing that happens is they panic. And sometimes if they call me, they might even call me with a little nausea. They’re so sick by the overwhelm of it. But then all of the internal challenges that they have start to get amplified by the challenges of actually working in that leadership position. For example, if they tend toward conflict avoidance, then their tendency tends to be exacerbated, and it gets amplified throughout the organization.
Knowledge@Wharton: You use the term “radical self-inquiry.” What does that mean?
Colonna: It goes beyond this notion of self-awareness. I call it radical because we tend not to do it. It starts with basic premises like, “How am I actually doing right now? How am I actually feeling? Am I anxious? Am I scared? Am I filled with joy?” As a leader starts to unpack their issues, they start to ask questions like, “What kind of CEO do I want to be? What kind of leader do I want to be? What kind of company do I want to build,” rather than just automatically going about their business and doing the tasks of every day.
Knowledge@Wharton: How does growing up factor into leadership?
Colonna: I use it somewhat tongue-in-cheek because most of us are chronologically adult. But I associate the notion of growing up with this larger notion of fully actualizing the self and becoming the adult that we were born to be. Somewhere in our 30s, for example, we might get stuck in our process of becoming our person. What occurred to me was that then all of the challenges associated with assuming power become good fodder for us completing our work and becoming the adults we were born be, thus growing up.
Knowledge@Wharton: You say that great achievers aren’t always the greatest leaders. Why?
Colonna: There’s an old truism, and Marshall Goldsmith, who was a brilliant coach, wrote a book to this end: That which got you there doesn’t necessarily get you where you need to be. Sometimes the drivers that create that achievement start to get into the way once we have power and authority, and that’s where the interesting work starts to begin.
Knowledge@Wharton: How does leadership at work affect one’s personal life?
Colonna: You’re in that interesting place where you all of a sudden have this massive amount of power. Massive is probably too strong a word. You have power. You have agency. You have responsibility for people. Then at night, you put your head down on the pillow, and you start to spin. You start to ruminate. You start to worry. And the worries get larger and larger as the responsibilities get larger and larger. By leaning into the work that you can do, by leaning into that growing-up work, you can begin to dial down the anxieties.
A good example of this is the fact that most leaders think they’re the only ones who struggle with what to do. Most leaders think they’re alone in feeling incompetent. I like to make people laugh by talking about the fact that if I stand up in front of an audience, I might say something like, “Who here is brave enough to admit that they have no idea what they’re doing?” That just sort of breaks the tension.
“So many people suffer in work, and it’s not necessary. It does not contribute to the organization’s financial success to have a third of the employees dealing with depression or anxiety.”
Knowledge@Wharton: But when you’re talking about spouses and kids, they are significantly affected by the responsibilities of a professional manager.
Colonna: One of the unintended consequences of our rising up to run an organization is that very often our spouses and our children pay a price. That’s incredibly painful. When I go into an organization, not only are we encountering the individuals who are suffering, but sometimes even the teenagers of those who have power and authority and agency in leadership are suffering as well. And it’s all because our relationship to work is so bound up into these outdated and outmoded notions of leadership.
Knowledge@Wharton: And those personal stressors, in turn, can affect you at work. It can be a vicious cycle.
Colonna: Here’s a misunderstanding that we all grew up with, which is that you’re supposed to leave your personal life at the door. Well, good luck with that. If you had a fight with your spouse last night, or if your teenager came home drunk, tell me the kind of human being who can walk into the office and not carry that and have that impact at work throughout the day?
My advice is to create space within yourself for what’s going on, but also to let the team know there’s some stuff going on at home. Not to turn the work meeting into a therapy session, but to create some space for the human being to show up, so that we can then access all of that talent that exists in that person.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are some of the more important questions that one needs to ask oneself?
Colonna: This is geared towards someone who has positional power, but one of the more startling questions I’ll ask someone is, “How would you feel if one of your children came to work at the organization you are leading?” Because if you have any hesitancy about that, what’s up with the organization? If you hesitate on that question, then what are your employees saying to their children or bringing home to their children? What energy are you bringing home?
Use that question as a kind of framing question to begin the process of saying, “Maybe I should rethink the way I approach leadership.” In doing that, the danger is you may start to rethink the way you’re living your life, and that may require a larger reboot. The fact is, we’re all faced with those step-function changes in our lives. My advice is, I’d rather see someone go through that consciously with an awareness about what’s going on for them — radical self-inquiry — rather than have it happen to them and be blindsided by those forces.
Knowledge@Wharton: Going back to your point about great achievers, somebody who is a great achiever is probably thinking about their own personal success. With a great leader, you have to be thinking more about the team.
Colonna: I’ll work with a group, and when I can feel the high achievers coming forward, I look at them and say, “You got straight As, didn’t you?” And they smile and laugh because behind that isn’t necessarily a narcissism, it’s a fear of disappointing someone. When they carry that into a leadership position, they can infect the rest of the organization with that fear of disappointing.
I would then make a separate distinction, which is that the way that we start to inculcate great leadership is when we change the notion of leadership from high achievement and high output, and high outcome to creating the conditions by which those of us with whom we work can do the best work of their lives. All of a sudden, the leader’s work becomes creating a container for great work, rather than having all the answers, which is an impossibility anyway.
“Here’s a misunderstanding that we all grew up with, which is that you’re supposed to leave your personal life at the door. Well, good luck with that.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Is it important to have your professional successes and developments linked with your personal ones?
Colonna: From where I sit, the two are intricately, intrinsically linked, and we do damage when we pretend that that isn’t so. I have work over here, and I have life over here. I have professional success over here, and I have personal success over here. That leads to a divided condition where our inner life and our outer life are not matching. Not only do we lead with a kind of condition in which we instill a sense of distrust, because people can read that, but we start to feel unhappy.
Knowledge@Wharton: Two of the ideas that you bring up are grit and resiliency, and how these can be misunderstood. Why so?
Colonna: Grit and resiliency, when misunderstood, lead to this notion that I’m supposed to suffer, and that there’s something noble in the suffering. That’s silly and actually creates all sorts of problems. There’s a notion of false grit, which is kind of brittle, where if something truly difficult happens to us, we tend to break. We know that we’re brittle, so we see this notion of an inner critic that says, “Yeah, you think you know what you’re doing. You think you’re resilient. But let me tell you, if something really, really tough happens, then you’ll break.”
True resiliency, true grit has the capacity to be flexible, to understand that even the worst situations are, to use a Buddhist term, workable. That is, I can learn from this experience. I can find some greater sense of connectedness and therefore grow from this. And by the way, it hurts. And to deny that it hurts is to deny my humanity.
Knowledge@Wharton: Have you gone through a reboot?
Colonna: Oh, yes. In my previous incarnation, I was a venture capitalist. I was part of the first wave of internet-related investing. And in my late 30s, which was about 17 years ago, I hit a tremendous wall of depression. I’d had a lifetime relationship with depression, to be clear. But it led me to feel intensely suicidal. I had a choice to either give into the depression and let it win or reach down and figure out a way to reboot my life. Everything that I am today, the man I am today — some folks say I’m a pretty good guy — all stems from having made the right choice. And that right choice came about because I chose to live and not give into those feelings.
Knowledge@Wharton: How did you go about it?
Colonna: The first thing I did was I called my therapist, which was a wise choice. She said, “I want you to just go away and take a retreat.” I began by reading Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, and Sharon Salzberg’s Faith. Those three books began a process of rebuilding, rebooting my life. That’s when I really began this process of radical self-inquiry because I was outwardly incredibly successful and inwardly hollow and in pain.
Knowledge@Wharton: What do you suggest for people who don’t have the means to go through therapy or a retreat?
Colonna: There’s a fabulous human invention called community. We are surrounded by people who are going through what we are going through. People often ask me, “What is the one message you want people to really understand?” It’s simply this: You’re not alone, and in that connectedness to other people’s struggling, you can find relief. You can find solace. You can find companionship. It starts by asking yourself, “How am I doing?” How am I really feeling?” If you’re struggling, you pick up the phone, call a friend and say, “I need to go for a walk.” And you open up your heart.
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DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ WORLD TOURNAMENT JUST STARTED
Toei Animation Jul. 2, 2018
DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ, the latest DRAGON BALL video game developed by BANDAI NAMCO, is about to take a step forward. Indeed, a Dragon Ball FighterZ world tournament has just started on June 28th at Daytona Beach, USA. The e-sport event will feature seven different dates all around the globe to select the finest players for each continent in the world (USA, UK, France, Mexico, Singapore, Japan and Australia) until end 2018. Lots of players and spectators are expected, and fans unable to join will still have the possibility to follow the competition on Twitch.
The communication around this special event has grown big. A dedicated website has been created for the occasion (https://dbfzworldtour.com/).
Corporate, Licensing / Merchandising | December 22, 2020
ICHIBAN STORE RE-OPENING
Ichiban Store, the Parisian pop up store dedicated to anime merchandising, re-opened on November 28th. Located in Les 4 Temps mall, the pop up store is proposing large ranges of merchandising (board games, figurines, vid...
Licensing / Merchandising | November 18, 2020
DRAGON BALL SUPER WINDOW DISPLAY AT FORBIDDEN...
The Dragon Ball Super figurine range is experiencing an outstanding success in the UK. As a consequence, Bandai UK is pushin the range in retail. A window display will be implemented at Forbidden Planet (hobby store) in ...
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Congratulations to the New England Patriots!
Well another NFL Super Bowl is behind us and the New England Patriots came out on top to become the champions of NFL Super Bowl XLIX (49), topping the Seattle Seahawks 28 to 24. Although this Super Bowl started out slow, it ended in a very exciting way to give the New England Patriots their fourth NFL Super Bowl championship title out of eight appearances. The Seattle Seahawks, although losing Super Bowl XLIX to the Patriots, played a very good game and one fitting of a championship NFL football team. The lucky people who saw this years NFL Super Bowl, Super Bowl XLIX (49) between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks saw one of the most exciting Super Bowl’s in recent history. Most NFL Super Bowl games are either a blowout or are very slow seeming like both teams are afraid to do something wrong. This NFL Super Bowl started out like it was going to be a slow one but as the game went one, it got better and better, leading up to a finish fitting for a championship football game. The first quarter was slow and although Tom Brady and the New England Patriots wereREAD MORE !
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www.vemquetem.net
Leaders in waiting
By: Lyod
In: Personal Finance
Jakarta, Indonesia, is a sprawling city of more than 30 million people. Like many other burgeoning capitals, it has a housing problem. Rents downtown are high, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of properties are unoccupied. This forces people to travel many miles to get to work from the suburbs. Christina Suriadjaja saw this as an opportunity. In 2017, she pivoted her new company, Travelio.com, into the real estate management business, creating a platform offering short-term and long-term fully furnished rentals. Today Travelio represents more than 4,000 properties on an exclusive basis and earns 20 to 35 percent of the rental income they generate. It’s a success story with a twist: Christina is the 28-year-old daughter of Johannes Suriadjaja, owner of PT Surya Semesta Internusa, a US$300 million commercial property, construction, and hospitality company — and she was expected to enter the family firm, not start one of her own.
Many members of the rising generation of leaders in family businesses are trying to figure out their career paths. These “NextGen” leaders are committed to their family firm and want to contribute, but are not always sure how. Christina chose to prove that she had what it took not only to take over a successful concern but to build one herself. It required a strong will and persistence on her part to convince her family of this; it was four years before they invested in Travelio.
“The first time I went fundraising, my father didn’t help me at all. I got rejected by 23 [venture capital firms], and he just let me get rejected. So, he threw me under the bus, but it was the best lesson that I’ve learned, and we’ve raised three rounds of capital since then,” says Christina. Because of the record of success and business credibility Christina has built, her father recently invited her to become the CEO of the hospitality division of the family business — an offer she turned down. In November 2019, Travelio announced that it had raised an additional $18 million in Series B financing.
The future of family businesses is contingent on the quality and capabilities of tomorrow’s leaders. And that leadership bench is a critical issue indeed, because family businesses, both privately held and public, are a major component of the global economy. In 2019, the world’s 750 largest family businesses, as compiled by Family Capital with the support of PwC, had combined revenues of more than $9 trillion and directly employed around 30 million people.
Like Christina Suriadjaja, the rising generation of leaders in these businesses are committed and ambitious, and they are uniquely qualified to be agents of change, particularly with regard to the digital transformations that so many companies need to undertake. They are, after all, digital natives.
The rising generation of leaders in family businesses are committed and ambitious, and they are uniquely qualified to be agents of change, particularly with regard to digital transformations.
Too often, however, NextGen leaders feel that their desire and efforts to drive their family companies forward are constrained. Christina, for example, didn’t want to travel the more traditional route planned for her, which first would have entailed jobs in other companies in the industry for five years and then would have meant rotating through a series of positions within the family business. This frustration among the next generation may arise partly from an understandable impatience to take up the reins of leadership and contribute at a higher level. But, as PwC’s 2019 Global NextGen Survey of nearly 1,000 of these aspiring leaders across five continents and 11 industries reveals, it also is a function of how they are being groomed by the current leaders of their company, what responsibilities they are given, and whether their skills are being put to good use. A significant minority of NextGen leaders feel that so far, they are regarded more as apprentices than as future leaders. One in five (21 percent) agrees with the statement “I feel I need to prove myself before I can put forward my ideas for change.” One in 10 agrees with the statement “I make suggestions, but they are hardly ever listened to.”
These respondents have a point. Less than half — 48 percent — of NextGen survey respondents told us that they had been given responsibility for a specific change project or initiative. And only 36 percent of the respondents said that the current leaders of their company seek them out as sounding boards. This also corresponds with what we heard last year from the current generation of leaders: Many of them aren’t giving up control in the near term. PwC’s 2018 Global Family Business Survey found that 50 percent of the current generation of leaders plan to wait six or more years before passing on executive control or ownership to their NextGens.
The results of the NextGen survey are striking, and strikingly consistent across sectors and continents. NextGen leaders are anxious to serve as agents of change in their company, but they are struggling to earn their license to operate. To ensure that tomorrow’s leaders will be in place and prepared when it is their turn to rise to power, today’s leaders need to resolve this tension.
Meet the NextGen leaders
Almost all NextGen leaders are millennials, and most of them are the second or third generation to join the family business. More than half of the respondents in our survey are between the ages of 25 and 34. Two-thirds of them are male. Seventy percent of these rising leaders are already deeply engaged in their companies; 41 percent of them expect to be an executive director and 29 percent expect to be the majority shareholder within five years.
As is true for many of their fellow millennials, NextGen leaders do not lack self-confidence. They believe that they will be able to run their company successfully. Just over 70 percent of them call out problem-solving and leadership skills as essential to the future of their company — skills that they identify as their strongest attributes. Furthermore, they believe that they can add “significant value” to their company in a number of areas. These include professionalizing the company’s management practices, creating a clearly defined sense of purpose, attracting and enhancing talent, and developing a digitally driven business strategy. Almost two-thirds of NextGens say they can ensure that their companies are fit for the digital age (see “The digital divide”).
Slightly more than 60 percent of NextGens identify technology as one of the three most important drivers of change for their family business; for 13 percent, it is the most important. As members of the most digitally savvy generation, they believe they possess the knowledge and skills to drive digital transformations. Moreover, they are not satisfied with the progress their company is making in this regard: 90 percent of the survey respondents say that having a business strategy “fit for the digital age” requires significant or incremental change in the family business.
When we asked NextGens to pick the three most important technology areas for their businesses from a list of PwC’s “Essential Eight” technologies, they choose the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
The “Essential Eight” technologies for NextGens’ family businesses
71% Internet of Things
63% Artificial intelligence
47% Robotics
29% Blockchain
23% 3D printing
18% Augmented reality
16% Drones
16% Virtual reality
Leadership paths
We’ve worked with NextGens for many years and have watched them develop over time. Each of these young leaders is unique, but we have found — and have confirmed in the 2017 and 2019 Global NextGen Surveys — that they tend to follow one of four paths to leadership. With these paths in mind, we can identify NextGens as transformers, stewards, intrapreneurs, or entrepreneurs.
To test this thesis and validate our survey findings, we recently hosted two events, one for NextGens at the PwC NextGen Accelerator Academy at the Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and one for current family business leaders in Monte Carlo in Monaco.
Building on our survey responses and on conversations at these events, we offer the following profiles of transformers, stewards, intrapreneurs, and entrepreneurs. We follow these profiles with recommendations for helping members of each of the NextGen cohorts achieve their ambitions, reach the top levels of their organization, and realize their potential in today’s rapidly evolving economy and in a society that is demanding more commitment to purpose from its business leaders.
Transformers: Reinventing the business
Three years ago, Felix Kroschke, 31, joined the executive board of Kroschke Gruppe, his family’s firm based in Ahrensburg, near Hamburg, Germany. Working alongside his brother, Philipp, who is CEO, Felix took on responsibility for finance, operations, and HR. But his mandate was transformation.
Over three generations, Kroschke Gruppe has grown into the leading supplier of vehicle license plates in the highly regulated German market, as well as a provider of vehicle registration and documentation services to fleet owners, rental companies, banks, and car dealerships. Along with many other companies, it is facing the prospect of digital disruption: Kroschke sells its license plates through a chain of 450 shops located near vehicle registration offices. Now, vehicle registration is moving online.
“Our challenge, knowing that things are going to change, is to use the profits we’ve got right now to transform our business,” says Felix. “If we don’t want to die, it’s not just digitization we need to think about; it’s also internationalization.”
To secure their company’s future, the Kroschke brothers are undertaking a digital transformation led by the creation of a blockchain-based platform for recording vehicle ownership. The company also is diversifying by buying stakes in digital players in the mobility market, including an app-based subscription service that lets users rent cars or ride-shares by the month and an e-commerce business selling new cars.
NextGen leaders are anxious to serve as agents of change in their companies, but they are struggling to earn their license to operate.
Felix is charged with ensuring that the firm’s transformation succeeds. He is building its digital capabilities by recruiting and hiring IT talent, convincing the existing staff to buy into the fundamental changes to its businesses and operating models, and remaking the culture of the company to support its new tech-driven focus. Felix is a member of the largest cohort of NextGen leaders: the 46 percent who are transformers.
Transformers aim to remake their companies, and they are confident in their leadership and problem-solving abilities. Of all the NextGen leaders, they are most likely to aspire to executive roles within five years (56 percent of transformers versus 41 percent of all respondents in our survey). Unsurprisingly, they also are less likely than other NextGen leaders to believe it’s necessary to rotate through a variety of roles within the business (17 percent versus 23 percent of all respondents).
To support NextGen transformers and help ensure their success, today’s leaders can take the following actions.
• Increase transparency. Be honest and share as much information as possible with the NextGen transformers to help them understand the issues the company faces and grow into seasoned executives.
• Talk openly about change. Each generation has a different perspective, and for this type of NextGen leader, it’s important to explicitly discuss the question of how the business must shift for the sake of its long-term sustainability.
• Strengthen corporate governance. Prepare for the time when transformers will take the helm. The company may need more flexible governance structures and an open-minded board prepared to accept change and risk.
• Mentor. Mentoring is one of the most effective ways to cement your relationships with NextGen transformers and equip them to take over. Mentoring should be a long-term process.
• Instill a culture of openness. Foster a culture that motivates NextGen transformers by expecting and accepting mistakes and capturing the lessons.
NextGen transformers can smooth their leadership journey by taking the following actions.
• Understand the perspective of the current generation. Trust your inner voice, but tone down criticism. Ask questions and be considerate. Avoid passive-aggressive responses when you are overruled.
• Innovate. In an era of business disruption, don’t be afraid to innovate. Act fast. Adjust your efforts in response to early results.
• Show gratitude. Respect the current generation’s reasons for the decisions they made, even if you believe change is needed.
• Expand your horizons. Collaborate widely, inside and outside the company. Do not compare yourself only with your traditional competition; instead, redefine your competition and the boundaries of your industry.
• Qualify and track progress. Review your work regularly, seek constructive feedback, and learn from your mistakes and your successes. You have to prove that your transformation is creating a competitive advantage.
Stewards: Maintaining the legacy
Allison Gettings, 37, is the daughter of Bill Sweasy, the current chair of Red Wing Shoes, based in Red Wing, Minn., and the fourth generation to join the family business. Best known for its work boots, Red Wing employs 2,300 people and produces about 5 million pairs of footwear a year under five brands. Allison is currently the only family member at the company, which has been run by a professional executive team since her father retired as CEO in 2014.
Apart from a break to set up her own women’s shoe business, Allison has worked at Red Wing since she was 23, first serving in junior roles and later launching Red Wing’s Women’s Heritage brand. In 2016, she assumed her current role as vice president and general manager of the Vasque brand of outdoor footwear, which was established by her grandfather in 1955.
“In regard to my growth within the organization, my dad made it clear that he wanted me to move throughout the organization,” Allison says. “In the early years, the jobs that I was in were like what we would do with anyone at the company. But I’ve been moving through roles more quickly than a normal employee. I’ve only been in each role for, at the most, three years.”
Allison is now preparing a major overhaul of the Vasque hiking shoes brand. But even through transformation, she says her goal is “to follow in my father’s footsteps.” Allison is among the 26 percent of NextGen leaders who are stewards.
Stewards are likely to be older than other NextGens (42 percent are older than 35, versus 36 percent of all respondents). They tend to be in management roles, and they aspire to nonexecutive and governance roles. Stewards are strongly focused on their company’s existing markets and are likely to view social and environmental factors as drivers of change for the business.
To support NextGen stewards and help ensure their success, today’s leaders can take the following actions.
• Communicate. Make it a habit to connect, consistently and in an open and transparent manner. Clearly articulate what you expect from NextGen stewards.
• Set out clear, shared values. Be explicit about the values that guide the company. Invite your steward NextGen leaders to participate in framing those values. This will strengthen the culture of the business and make the family more cohesive.
• Allow the stewards to be themselves. Provide options for them to develop their experience and knowledge, and avoid dictating to them.
• Give stewards opportunities to learn from you. Give them access to the inner circle. Share the lessons of your successes and the insights from your failures.
• Avoid excessive pressure. The route to success is motivation, not pushing.
NextGen stewards can smooth their leadership journey by taking the following actions.
• Don’t take your role for granted. Be mindful of others’ expectations, and put purpose and impact at the top of your agenda. Cultivate your ability to speak up while honoring that role.
• Know your background. Be conscious of the legacy of the business and what it stands for.
• Realize that you don’t have to know everything. Be smart, listen, and ask questions.
• Find your own motivation. Ask yourself what the business means to you, and what is the purpose that drives you. Keep searching for what motivates you; it may not be obvious or fully formed at first.
• Think beyond the traditional. Although you may favor a conservative approach, stay attuned to unconventional opportunities in your industry and beyond.
Intrapreneurs: New ventures from the inside
Intrapreneurs tend to view their company as desperately needing a more entrepreneurial culture. There are many examples of scions who have started successful businesses under the umbrella of the family brand: Think of William P. Lauder, grandson of Estée Lauder, who developed the Origins skincare line, which is now a prominent brand in the company’s portfolio of businesses. At the same time, intrapreneurs are likely to feel the need to prove themselves before presenting their ideas for change (27 percent of intrapreneurs feel this way, versus 21 percent of all respondents). Overall, 20 percent of the survey respondents identified as intrapreneurs. Their top priority is attracting talent, and they believe their greatest asset is developing a strategy fit for the digital age. Interestingly, the highest concentration of intrapreneurs is in the Asia-Pacific region, where more than half of the survey respondents identified themselves as members of that NextGen cohort.
To support NextGen intrapreneurs and help ensure their success, today’s leaders can take the following actions.
• Accept risk taking. Foster a culture that recognizes the value of the intrapreneurs’ efforts. Accept mistakes and focus on the lessons they offer. Consider using deadlines and a formal structure to build momentum.
• Take opportunities. Find opportunities for intrapreneurs to set up and manage internal businesses within the family firm. Help them develop their leadership qualities.
• Mentor. Provide ideas and feedback and share experiences from the past. Start the mentoring process early in intrapreneurs’ careers.
• Promote values. Work together with intrapreneurs to set out clear values.
• Innovate. Be open to infrastructural technologies that might support innovation and new ventures.
NextGen intrapreneurs can smooth their leadership journey by taking the following actions.
• Take opportunities. Find an opportunity and make maximum use of your family’s resources and network to build the business.
• Strengthen knowledge. Develop in-depth knowledge of markets and regions you want the business to enter.
• Align values. Your venture is operating under the family’s umbrella, so ensure it aligns with the values set out by the current generation.
• Innovate. Constantly seek out technological innovations — particularly those related to processes and practices — that could boost productivity and benefit your venture or the family business.
Entrepreneurs: New ventures from the outside
Fernando Simões Filho was only 16 when he started work in his family’s business, JSL SA, a $2 billion logistics and transportation conglomerate based in São Paulo, Brazil, that had been founded by his grandfather in 1956. But he was always interested in social enterprises, and his career direction changed dramatically while he was studying for an MBA in the United States.
In 2013, Fernando returned to Brazil to take a course on social enterprise business at the Yunus ESPM Social Business Centre (the curriculum is based on the work of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus). Energized by his desire to work in sustainability, he studied holistic science and economic transition at Schumacher College, while at the same time starting an executive MBA in Brazil. Fernando, now 32, cofounded Bemtevi Investimento Social the following year with two partners.
Bemtevi raises money from private individuals in Brazil and channels it into supporting the development of social enterprises. To date it has attracted more than 50 investors and has made 10 loans to seven businesses. Fernando’s aim is to build a leading social enterprise investment vehicle in Brazil that puts entrepreneurs at the forefront of solving social and environmental problems. He also wants to share his experience with JSL, where he is a board member and chair of the sustainability committee.
Fernando’s position allows him to influence JSL’s engagement with the sustainability issues in which he passionately believes. “My aspiration is that the family firm keeps evolving and increasingly adopts a sustainable business model,” he says. “Huge transformations are underway, and big companies have to adapt. This is fundamental because the next generation has a completely different way of thinking. As investors, clients, and employees, they will have a big impact on the future of these companies. I also want the whole company to create positive impact, to make this its purpose and objective.” Fernando, like Christina Suriadjaja, is among the 8 percent of NextGen survey respondents who are entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are more skeptical than any other NextGen cohort about their business’s performance against competitors (20 percent feel skeptical, versus 9 percent of all respondents), and 19 percent of them believe that the business lacks a strong sense of purpose. They are more likely to feel their suggestions are ignored and less likely to see themselves as future leaders of the business, even though they want to lead a business.
To support NextGen entrepreneurs and help ensure their success, today’s leaders can take the following actions.
• Prepare for multiple opportunities. Develop an open mind-set and allow entrepreneurs to develop, even if it means they set up in a venture independent of the family business.
• Support their ambitions. Allow entrepreneurs to work on their business ideas and, where possible, provide them expertise, support, and mentoring.
• Broaden their work experiences. Entrepreneurs may need to look beyond the business for the experience and inspiration they require. This may involve consultation with outsiders, stints in other enterprises, or relevant executive education.
• Respect different life choices. Support entrepreneurs in exploring alternative career options or venture opportunities. If you invest, establish the kind of standards — neither more nor less strict — that you would set for other ventures.
• Have faith in their ventures. Show entrepreneurs that you believe in them even though they are not directly supporting the business. Know that they are not being disloyal.
NextGen entrepreneurs can smooth their leadership journey by taking the following actions.
• Stay connected to your legacy. You come from a background that gives you privileged access to business knowledge and experience. Learn everything you can from that legacy.
• Acquire knowledge. Immerse yourself in the field that fascinates you before you attempt to launch a business. Get quality training and advice from the outside world.
• Create a vision. Set out the mission for your own venture explicitly and make sure everyone involved understands it.
• Seek support. Don’t try to do it on your own. Learn how to delegate and draw on advice and support from your family business as much as possible. Be open to mentoring.
• Trust yourself. Listen to your inner voice and decide for yourself, ultimately, what you believe is great work.
Our work with NextGen leaders has convinced us that they have the attributes and outlook needed to become effective business leaders. They clearly see the challenges in the current business environment, which is characterized by intense competition, changing customer needs, new technologies, and economic uncertainty. Before NextGen leaders can address these challenges, however, they must win the trust of today’s leaders and earn a license to operate at the top level. And today’s leaders must recognize the NextGens’ digital and leadership skills and find more effective ways to help them make the transition to a senior leadership role. As more and more companies face the inevitable leadership transition between generations, the willingness and the deftness with which both generations approach these tasks will determine the future of their companies.
Peter Englisch is the global family business and EMEA entrepreneurial and private business leader at PwC. Based in Essen, he is a partner with PwC Germany.
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The Canadian Virtual War Memorial (CVWM)
Cecil Herbert Davis
Private Cecil Herbert Davis
Force:
1st Canadian Mounted Rifles (Saskatchewan Regt.)
Son of Cyrus and Harriet Emily Davis.
Commemorated on Page 75 of the First World War Book of Remembrance. Request a copy of this page.
Burial Information
MENIN GATE (YPRES) MEMORIAL
Grave Reference:
Panel 30 and 32
The Menin Gate Memorial is situated at the eastern side of the town of Ypres (now Ieper) in the Province of West Flanders, on the road to Menin and Courtrai. It bears the names of 55,000 men who were lost without trace during the defence of the Ypres Salient in the First World War. Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and erected by the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission, it consists of a Hall of Memory", 36.6 metres long by 20.1 metres wide. In the centre are broad staircases leading to the ramparts which overlook the moat, and to pillared loggias which run the whole length of the structure. On the inner walls of the Hall, on the side of the staircases and on the walls of the loggias, panels of Portland stone bear the names of the dead, inscribed by regiment and corps. Carved in stone above the central arch are the words:
TO THE ARMIES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE WHO STOOD HERE FROM 1914 TO 1918 AND TO THOSE OF THEIR DEAD WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE.
Over the two staircases leading from the main Hall is the inscription:
HERE ARE RECORDED NAMES OF OFFICERS AND MEN WHO FELL IN YPRES SALIENT BUT TO WHOM THE FORTUNE OF WAR DENIED THE KNOWN AND HONOURED BURIAL GIVEN TO THEIR COMRADES IN DEATH.
The dead are remembered to this day in a simple ceremony that takes place every evening at 8:00 p.m. All traffic through the gateway in either direction is halted, and two buglers (on special occasions four) move to the centre of the Hall and sound the Last Post. Two silver trumpets for use in the ceremony are a gift to the Ypres Last Post Committee by an officer of the Royal Canadian Artillery, who served with the 10th Battery, of St. Catharines, Ontario, in Ypres in April 1915."
Information courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Inscription – Inscription on the Menin Gate, photo courtesy of Marg Liessens.
Learn more about the Canadian Virtual Memorial
To learn more please visit our help page. If you have questions or comments regarding the information contained in this registry, email vac.cvwm-mvgc.acc@canada.ca or call us.
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Trader Profiles
Interview with BlackBoxStocks’ Eric Pharis and David McKay
Leave a Comment / Trader Interviews / By Jason
*EXCLUSIVE COUPON GOOD FOR $20 OFF
Hey, this is Jason with TradingReviewers.com, and today we're joined by Eric Pharis and David McKay of BlackBoxStocks (be sure to check out our in-depth BlackBoxStocks review). Eric is the co-founder and David is the director of marketing and business development for the company. And today we're going to be talking to them about the BlackBoxStocks platform and the thriving community behind this innovative trading tool. So, Eric and David, welcome.
Thanks for having us, Jason.
Hey guys, before we dive into things I wanted to take a few brief minutes to hear a bit about both of your backgrounds, how you got into trading, what type of trading you guys primarily focus on, your involvement with the platform. And, Eric, would you like to go first?
Yeah, sure. Actually, when I was in undergrad, I wanted to get into trading. So, I decided to go to graduate school in York, studied financial engineering and then took a job on Wall Street in 1999 as a prop trader. So, I was actually what's called a SOES bandit, if you ever heard of that term. And I got thrown right into the fire in the run up in the tech boom in 1999 and it was pretty wild. It was really fun.
I learned a lot about markets and how they move, how stocks move. And then basically, the firm I was at was sort of at the nexus for the ECN revolution. And so, I was around a lot of really technically savvy people, that knew technology and markets. And my background being engineering, I decided that it would be really interesting to start running our own kind of high frequency trading algorithms.
And so, I recruited our other co-founder of BlackBoxStocks, David Kyle, who had a job as a developer in 2004, and said, "Hey man, I think I can write some algorithms if you code them for me." Being a developer is a whole other world from algorithms. So, he said sure and we launched our first high-frequency trading algorithm in 2005. I thought we were a little late to the game, turns out we were actually still way ahead. And we had a really good run and we built out a lot of infostructure for handling market data and testing, back testing different algorithms and that sort of thing.
And around that time, 2010 I became friends with Gust through mutual friends here in Dallas. And he asked me about building more of a retail platform based on the technology that we developed in our high frequency trading days. And I thought it was a great idea, because we had this really great infostructure we had built out. And so, started just as an idea in a bar and we raised a little money at the beginning and built the beta program. We had some following right out of the gate. And then David came on just right then, right at the very, very beginning as well. So, he could probably tell you a little about his experience.
Yeah, so I joined shortly afterwards. And what brought me to Black Box, being friends with Gust, I've known him for quite a long time and Eric as well. So, my curiosity for trading, particularly started when I was growing up, watching my grandfather doing his investing and his trading, and I always wanted to learn and never really knew once I left my hometown, never really knew where to learn, how to approach it, and technology was finally around. My friends starting this company, so I dove right in and was one of the first beta testers of Black Box and picked it up I think pretty well.
This was back when it was an OTC site, but you know, it was still really interesting to me. I was very fascinated with it and it was a good way to learn. And I've been wrapped up with it ever since. So, shortly after doing the beta testing I approached them and put together a deck, became a director of marketing business development, and here we are five years later.
And for those that might be learning about BlackBoxStocks for the very first time, how would you describe the platform, guys? How would you describe it to somebody who has never heard anything about it and also what type of trader is it designed for? And what in your minds sets this platform apart from other similar software solutions in this space?
Well, I would say that we took the opposite approach from everything else out there, where there's a bunch of competitors that have unlimited to ability to set whatever scanners you want, filter down exactly what you want to find. Most of them are incredibly complicated to use, even if you know what you're looking for, and most people don't even know what they're looking for.
So, we started with the premise sort of like the iPhone where you can run it out of the box. Now, it's important to take the time to understand, we have a lot of education to help users understand what we're offering, but we try to do the heavy lifting for people. So, we pre-set everything and we filter everything out in the beginning to make it much easier for people to identify what's going to be useful in their trading style.
And we're definitely geared more for people who are day trading and swing trading, and then we have just a tremendous amount of proprietary information. We're not regurgitating what you would find on other sites. We're creating our own proprietary analytics, particularly with options, basically tracking the smart money. You know, we have servers processing millions of trades a day and digging out, finding where big money's moving.
Yeah, it's definitely a unique platform in that regard. As you mentioned, there are a lot of scanning applications on the market, but it can be extremely complicated and when you log in for the first time, there's quite a learning curve. That was one of the things that really stood out to me about the platform that you guys have developed is how user friendly it is. You know, the very first time you log in, everything is just done for you, it's just right there. You've got all the alerts pretty much pre-programmed in and everything's easy to get going right from the start.
I think that's one of the main selling points as you mentioned. Is there any possibility in the future of opening things up and allowing people to, perhaps more advanced traders who have more specific things that they're looking for, is there any possibility of opening that up in the future and allowing people to plug in their own custom scans? Or you want to keep it totally as it is now, everything is pre-programmed for the trader?
Yeah, I think that's the direction that we're moving into. It's aggressively, I think moving that way as more people become more aware and familiar with trading. So, when we started years ago, we were really focused on that specific of, you know, Bloomberg terminal for instance, you have to do a lot of custom configuration yourself. And the more familiar you are with trading the more experienced you are, that helps out immensely. So, somebody who's new poses, you know, a pretty big challenge.
So, the user friendliness and doing a lot of the work on the back-end was a big thing for us, so the simplicity. Now five years later, it seems like trading is becoming more and more of an everyday thing in a lot of people's lives. And I think that the more people are learning, so there's not as much of a learning curve, because people are finding out through awareness, things are growing.
Even like take options for instance. Options two years ago, there weren't as many options traders as there are now. This year it has just went parabolic and I think a lot that had to do with the whole crypto craze that occurred 2017-2018. That built a lot of awareness, grew a lot of peoples attention, particularly with the Gen Z, Millennial crowd. And we started doing more day trading options in the introduction of the options side of our platform.
And we were very fortunate to do that when we did, because the timing was great. And now options is the big thing, and I think because with the gains that people were hearing about during the whole crypto craze, we're now seeing that with our options trading but we're seeing it on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis. We have people, traders, that are making, you know, 100, 200, 300 percent. And I mean, almost everyday we have 100% gainer on the options side of the platform. We don't suggest that people just look for that, but back to answering your question, with the filters and things that we added on the platform recently, we are moving to a more customized setting type of system. We're a user driven platform. So, that's what the people are asking for.
So, a lot of it has to do with the timing and the progression of the industry, as it becomes more of a day to day thing for people and they're learning on their own. It seems like there's less of a learning curve for us to have to accommodate to. So, if people are coming in and they're requesting filters and they're requesting certain specifics that before they were just wanting to learn how to trade stocks. And then we've discussed doing some pro version where you can have a customizable configuration of the Black Box system itself, you know, because traders that have a trade station, with three to eight screens, they want to have things in a certain place where they like it, which I myself am one of those people.
So, we've discussed that and that could be something that we have in a later version. You know, to answer your question I think within versions to come and the release of our native mobile app, whether you're an options trader, stock trader, dark pool, or a combination thereof, you'll be able to use our filters in custom configurations to get the data and the indicators that you want to see as a trader.
Yeah, that's what I was curious about, if you had plans to do that in the future, how you would approach that if it would be integrated right into the platform with basically you know, one size fits all platform, or if you would roll out, as you mentioned, a pro version, something that's slightly different. A little bit more advanced and targeted towards a different person at a different price point perhaps. So, I was just curious also on how you would approach that, and you kind of touched on that a little bit.
What can you guys tell me about the current version of the platform? Obviously, a lot of things have changed since the platform was originally launched. How does it compare with the original in terms of design, overall functionality, features, etc.?
I'd say the biggest change is the options platform we added about two years ago. With the explosion of options trading, we're continuing adding new algorithms as well and fine tuning the algorithms we have that are identifying particular types of users buying large blocks and sweeps and how aggressively they're doing it. We're always trying to work and fine tune those, but that by far has been the biggest upgrade.
Then we also added dark pools recently too. Where we're really trying to zero in and where we're seeing those large block trades going off and helping users identify them. And we've added it to our charting now, so you can see historically where those dark pools have traded and potentially see support and resistance levels and stocks based on those, is kind of how we're using them right now.
I mean, we have a lot of things that are coming down the pipeline and what we're doing with the socialized trading and investing. So, fintech's an exciting space to be in, especially this year, it's cool to watch it blossom up and all the different companies in the space. We're really excited to be doing what we're doing and navigating our way through things. It's been an interesting ride so far.
How often are you guys adding new features to the platform?
Typically, it just kind of depends. I'd say once or twice a year is usually when we do a big update. And then every once in a while we'll put an additional filter on or a new alert, just depending on we think it's ready to launch, when it's ready to be put out on to our production site.
And these features that you guys are adding, are they basically the product of internal brainstorming, or customer feedback and special requests, or a combination?
It's a combination. We have ideas of things that we'd like to implement and then we take customer feedback, and when we get repeated interest in certain features, we work hard to get those integrated. Dark pool was a big one, people wanted to see that. But the volume profile that we developed was an internal devised feature and I think people really like, it's a really cool visualization tool to help people see these dark pool prints.
One of the goals is to provide more raw data for our users too. We have a lot of more high-end users requesting the actual raw data. So, we're going to be working to add that ability. It's also an additional, maybe having an API in the future is something that we might offer. It's actually a different license for the exchanges, so we don't have that license at the moment, but it's probably something we'll add more power users later in the year.
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As far as the development of BlackBoxStocks goes, what have been some of your main struggles? How have you guys kind of worked around those issues?
Well, we're lucky that our team of developers are very savvy about microstructure and market structure, so when we start doing updates or working on development projects on our site, our developers are really great at understanding how markets work. And so, they're not just like typical developers that you have to explain what you're doing, they get it. Now, part of the problem, I say we generally run into the main problem of trying to make things user friendly. That's always a challenge, right.
Because you have these developers, they understand, they're super smart, they're engineers and I'm an engineer, but then Gust, the CEO, he's a self proclaimed non-techy. And so, it's interesting we tend to argue a lot but usually we find a really good solution that's very user friendly in the middle. So, we have a pretty good team and we come to, after some arguing, we usually come up with some pretty good solutions. User friendly is actually one of the biggest challenges.
I mean, I would agree with Eric. Finding out what trading or feature is going to be like for hundred or thousands of people, can be an interesting journey. And anticipating people's response, I mean, we've gotten better at. It was a lot more interesting, these debates, in the beginning. But yeah, I'd say that building out the social component that we have with you know, a YouTube influencer or somebody that has their own small trading chat room, can join BlackBoxStocks and we have an affiliate program.
So, building out that functionality on the tech side of our platform and the integration of that social side has been an interesting piece for us to work on. And it's definitely referred to as maybe the crown jewel of what we do, because it's that interaction with the tools and the education, all working together that we find is a really good recipe for people to have an advantage in trading stocks and options, particularly if they're newer.
Building out to where a broadcaster, like I said, could come on, or somebody with a chat room, and be able to monetize their following that they've built out on social media, because they're into trading and then they're teaching their people who they already have a relationship with, and then everybody's learning together. But they're all learning together using the tools on our system, it tends to help people when they're discussing ideas and learning from one another, with the overall success rate. And that's the big problem I think, or another one of the problems that we provide a solution. That was a continuation of what we're doing. And you know, we're always striving to provide the best tools and features for our users based on demand and where we see the grown of fintech going and the industry and what we're doing.
It's very interesting. Each day is different. Each day of the market, each day at Black Box, and as we grow. We have members in over fifty countries now. So, it's really exciting to be able to converse and talk to different people from all over the world, all wanting to trade. So, it's really exciting.
And as far as the development of the application goes, is that all in house? I mean, you guys are in Dallas. Is that all done right in the office there from Dallas, or do you guys have programmers located all around the world that work on the project together?
All of our developers are local. Not necessarily in Dallas, we have some in Austin. But they're all local and we work really closely.
Austin is like the Silicon Valley of Texas. So, a lot of guys are located there.
Keep Austin weird...
If you guys had to build the platform from scratch right now, is there anything that you would do differently?
Oh, gosh. Well, you know, that's a tough question. I mean, I think we would arrive at the same place, but it would be a lot faster, but part of the development process is consumer feedback. So, you just have to launch it, get the feedback, it's an integrative process. So, you know, you just can't do it that way.
Yeah, you have to make the mistakes to learn from them.
Otherwise you don't know. And one of the things I've been really personally impressed with is how well Black Box is supported. There's an entire community behind it and a lot of resources available to members. Can you tell us a little bit about the community aspect of the platform, who helps to run it, and what a new user can expect in terms of education and support when they sign up?
Sure. Our community is lead by our team of moderators that have been vetted out by Black Box. They're traders that have been trading for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years, typically. And some of them have formally worked at online brokerages, institutional and retail. So, in our community they're leading the day to day. And a new user will be able to log on to our system, you know the first day, and come into the audio chat room and listen to the moderators and what they're looking at on the system, what they're discussing and why.
Generally during the first portion of you know, the open first hour, hour and a half of the day, people just listen and let the moderators help people out and explain what they're looking at and share ideas. It's like learning on the job basically. And then around lunch time, there's a little bit of discussion depending on whatever the lunch time lull, how slow it is, maybe it's not slow, here lately, here with Apple it's been pretty busy throughout the day.
Yeah, normally things slow down around lunch. And they'll talk about what's going on in the market today, what are we looking at, you know what's the thread talking about, what's going on with geopolitical events, you know, what's happening in tech. Things like that. So, every day, is a great learning experience and you've got people that have been trading for years that have seen a lot of things, being able to share what they're looking at that day and basically convey that with their experience, which is huge for somebody especially that's new, that's being able to learn.
So, you have that kind of mentorship, and it's there everyday. And then we also offer the educational program, which we have our educators, which some do both educating and moderators there. And the education calendar is accessible 24/7 and you can sign up for the webinars, they're all live. You can also watch the recorded version. So, we try to drive the education portion of our system as much as possible and reiterate that.
So, you can take classes as many times as you want, it's always available. We just want to make sure that you know everything that you need to know and do continue in education, that way you're consistently working on becoming a better trader and working on things so that you're more successful and more profitable.
For the average user, what would you say the learning curve is like when they first sign up? How long does it typically take a user to really get their feet wet and really get a handle on how this software can help their trading?
I'd say the average person, let's just take somebody that's fairly new. I'd say that most people it takes a minimum of two to three weeks to three months, depending on how much they're on the system, how much they're putting into it, doing their own due diligence, getting into the educational webinars, you known trading. We have a trading with Charlie five days week. That's during the first hour, hour and a half of trading, so you're trading in there live with moderators and he's going into detail with some of the other moderators, Maria, Theresa and they're explaining things in more detail that's separate from what's going on in the main chat room.
Depends on options. Most of our members are options traders, I'd say about eighty percent. I'd say usually within three months we see a significant portion of people that they get the hang of it. And I'd say realistically, this is no guarantee by any means, but realistically as a side hustle people can make a few hundred dollars to few thousand dollars with the system after that time frame, once they start picking it up. Everyone's different, but for the most part, from what I've seen over the past few years, that's how long it takes for somebody to get acclimated and trading well.
So, that's really a testament to the fact that it's so user friendly. Other platforms it's a much longer learning curve, you know, there's so many settings and ins and outs of the application that you have to learn before you can ever really do anything profitable with it. But that's one of the things is instantly noticeable the minute you log in, you know just the dashboard area, everything is very intuitive, very clean layout. It's not hard to navigate through. All of the educational resources are available right at your fingertips. It's just a really well-designed platform in my opinion.
And yeah, I think it's probably one of the applications that has the least amount of time required to actually learn it and make good of it. So, I think you guys have done a great job with that. We're almost out of time for today, guys. But there's one more thing that I wanted to ask you about. What can you tell us about the future plans of the platform? Is there anything at all that you can share with us regarding perhaps new features that might be in the pipeline?
Sure. Well, we're really excited to be integrating with TradeStation. Its in development now, beta testing actually. And our goal is for the ability of users to basically click and trade and take out the middle steps. So, I think that's going to be the next huge feature we're going to be launching in the next six, eight weeks. So, we're really excited about that.
So, will all of that be a hundred percent automated? The potential will be there that basically the system will trade for the user?
No, no. It will be, user's still have to click and trade, but they can see our proprietary alert, click and trade. It will be super fast. There won't be any cross-platform time required.
Awesome. That sounds really exciting. Well, that does it for our interview today with Eric and David from BlackBoxStocks. Guys, thanks so much for coming on, taking the time to tell us a little bit more about yourselves and also about BlackBoxStocks. We're really impressed with the platform and we're excited to see how things develop going forward.
So, that's it for today everyone. Until next time, happy trading.
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August 2016 Partner Spotlight: Denver’s Early Childhood Council
By Alana Romans August 29, 2016
The Urban Land Conservancy celebrates the achievements of its partnerships that create and preserve nonprofit facilities and affordable housing for communities in metro Denver. ULC’s Monthly Partner Spotlight is awarded to partners who demonstrate the value of collaboration, furthering our mission to improve the lives of Metro Denver residents through our real estate investments and community assets.
Congratulations to our August 2016 Partner Spotlight of the Month: Denver’s Early Childhood Council!
Denver’s Early Childhood Council, commonly referred to as “The Council”, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the quality improvement of childcare facilities across metro Denver. While Denver’s Council serves over 460 childcare centers throughout the area, the statewide branch encompasses 58 of the 64 counties across Colorado.
Originally launched as an initiative, the Council was jointly appointed by the Mayor and Superintendent of Denver Public Schools in the early 1990’s. Fast-forward ten years, and in 2006 Colorado legislation created the Early Childhood Council as a statewide entity. In Denver alone, the Council serves over 31,000 children annually. Emily Bustos, the Executive Director of Denver’s Early Childhood Council, explained that the organization has two primary functions. The first is in systems building, and ensuring that local childcare partners are communicating and coordinating effectively. The second focuses on direct work with childcare providers to improve the quality of education for children from birth to age eight.
Bustos, who is the Denver Council’s first official director, has had quite the productive year. With the final year of Race to the Top grant dollars coming to an end, a recent visit by the U.S. Secretary of Education and celebrating ten years as an official statewide organization, 2016 has been a whirlwind of excitement for the Council. On top of everything, Bustos admitted that her office is also growing rapidly, with 10 new staff members added this year alone. She explained that their current operating space, which is located in ULC’s Tramway Nonprofit Center, has provided the flexibility required for their team to grow.
“We are very fortunate to have this space here at Tramway,” Bustos said. “The ability – thanks to the low cost per square footage – to be able to actually make these changes and accommodate that growth…we feel that ULC is very supportive of nonprofits and we truly appreciate that.”
Along with their obvious growth, the Council recently hosted a roundtable discussion with John B. King, the U.S. Secretary of Education. The Secretary’s visit was due to a data integration project that the Council has been working on with Colorado’s education department. The quality improvement initiative is now used statewide by each childhood council. This, along with the final months of funding from Race to the Top dollars, led the Secretary to visit Colorado and see the progress in action. During the visit, Bustos explained that he helped showcase the work that Colorado has done to advance childhood education.
“We are really excited about all of the energy surrounding early childhood education at the federal and state level,” Bustos explained. “We’re hoping to see this continue, and hope the Council remains able to support families with young children.”
Bustos explained that in order to keep the status quo, they need to look towards sustainability. The Race to the Top grant dollars come to an end at the start of 2017, and Bustos aims to ensure the Council’s success in providing quality programs for childcare centers when this funding is gone. Today, Denver boasts the highest percentage of high quality programs in the state of Colorado. With over 31,000 children served annually, it is clear they are on the right track! Or as Bustos said, “We are ahead of the curve, yet still learning each day.”
To learn more about Denver’s Early Childhood Council, click here!
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Books 📚 Stars we lost 💔 TV shows 📺 100 movies to stream 🎥
Listen: Biggest songs of the summer from 2010's 'California Gurls' to 2019's 'Old Town Road'
Maeve McDermott
Can you name a decade's worth of the biggest songs of the summer? Test your trivia knowledge by revisiting the biggest songs of the season from 2010 to 2019. Hint: Drake is responsible for more than one.
"California Gurls" – Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg
A prototypical song of the summer, "California Gurls" was a massive hit for Katy and Snoop in 2010.
"Party Rock Anthem" – LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock
Remember LMFAO? The uncle-nephew duo became a one-hit wonder in 2011.
"Call Me Maybe" – Carly Rae Jepsen
Jepsen would become a cult-favored pop star later in the decade, but in 2012, it was all about "Call Me Maybe."
"Blurred Lines" – Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell
This track, which sparked controversy when it was released with its racy lyrics, ruled the radio in summer 2013.
"Fancy" – Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX
"Fancy" will be remembered more as the song that largely introduced Iggy Azalea to the public consciousness in 2014.
"Cheerleader" – OMI
This became a feel-good hit (and a breakout for OMI) upon its release in 2015.
"One Dance" – Drake featuring WizKid & Kyla
Drake is a song-of-summer king. He struck gold in 2016 with the dance hall vibes of "One Dance."
"Despacito" – Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber
The bilingual force-of-nature song broke records all over the place in its unprecedented 2017 run.
"In My Feelings" – Drake
After a year that also included hit singles "God's Plan" and "Nice for What," "In My Feelings" became a viral smash and eventually the song of the summer in 2018.
"Old Town Road" – Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus
Sitting on the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart for 17 weeks (at time of publication), Lil Nas X's country-trap sensation broke the previous Billboard record set in 1996 by Mariah Carey's "One Sweet Day" for most weeks at No. 1.
More: Mariah Carey 'passes the torch' to Lil Nas X after 'Old Town Road' overtakes 'One Sweet Day' in No. 1 record
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Bullied boy with Facebook fans stars in music video
Kristen Shamus
In black and white, you see Colin Cunningham's face, clearly a boy shunned and picked on by other kids in school.
As the music plays, and "Carry On," an anti-bullying anthem by California rock band Galvanized Souls picks up, things begin to change for young Colin.
His mom creates a surprise Facebook page to bolster her son's spirits for his 11th birthday, and people from around the world are inspired by the boy in glasses with a bow tie, the boy who has no friends.
By the end of the video, there's a big celebration, and the footage turns to color, like "The Wizard of Oz" over the rainbow. Colin sees that he has millions of friends; he sees that he is loved.
Colin Cunningham of Richland, whose Facebook page garnered more than 2 million likes in a little over one month's time last winter, is the star of the video for the band's new single, which is about overcoming struggles in life. He and his family will walk the red carpet for the video's premiere Tuesday night in Los Angeles.
Zakk Silveira, the 16-year-old lead singer of Galvanized Souls, said the band heard about Colin and thought his story would be a perfect fit for the video.
"We decided to create an anthem to show that you can carry on, and get past this thing, whatever it is," Silveira told the Free Press in an interview last month.
"And I saw Colin in me. We read a little about him, that he likes 'Dr. Who' and likes to wear bow ties. Those are my favorite things to wear around on every occasion, and I like to watch 'Dr. Who.' The story of being the odd guy out at school is something we can relate to. We've all been the odd guy out."
Colin's family flew out to the West Coast for filming in May, and they flew back out to California on Sunday to be there for the premiere.
"I loved it," said Colin's mother, Jennifer Cunningham, of the video. When she saw it for the first time, "I cried a lot. I love how it tells Colin's story so well for a short music video. And of course I love that my son is such a natural on camera. He's such a good little actor."
The Cunninghams hope to meet some of Colin's West Coast friends at the Los Angeles premiere and rally.
At the rally, several organizations, including No Bull, I Am Bully Free, NOH8, Beacon of H.O.P.E. and Toys for Tots will be there to support the cause.
Colin, who has a sensory processing disorder similar to Asperger's, told his mother in February that he didn't want a party for his birthday on March 9 because he had no one to invite. Jennifer Cunningham responded by creating a happy birthday page for her son that drew comments, pictures and love from around the world.
She also set up a post office box for him in Richland for well-wishers to send cards. More than 78,000 swamped the tiny post office — enough letters, packages and cards to stuff two rented storage units.
When the band's manager reached out to Jennifer Cunningham through his Facebook page, which she has renamed Colin's Friends since his birthday passed, she said she was hesitant at first.
"I obviously did my research before I said yes," she told the Free Press last month. "I think they're talented, and I also think they are very kind and compassionate people, which is key.
"There's more love and hope out there in the world than people think," Cunningham said.
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Spice and Wolf Season 3: What Creators are Saying about a New Season?
Shobhit Verma
“Spice and Wolf” is an anime is based on a Japanese light novel series of the same name by Isuna Hasekura. Ever since the second season completed, fans of the anime are requesting for the “Spice and Wolf” Season 3. The story is about trading goods and it has a lot of dialogues regarding trade, bartering, negotiation and trading information. In June 2016, the ASCII media work informed with the news that another volume of novel series is under production which is giving fans hope that there may be Spice and Wolf Season 3.
The anime is the adaptation of the light novel of the same name which revolves around Kraft Lawrence, who is a merchant willing to earn enough money to start his own shop. One night he finds a wolf-deity named Holo in his wagon. Holo is 600-year-old but takes the form of a 15-year-old girl with wolf tail and ears. She asks and convinces Lawrence to take her with him to the world espionage and finally to her home. While traveling Holo’s wisdom helps Lawrence, to gain profit in trades.
Also Read: Prison School Season 2 Release Date and Spoiler Updates
“Spice and Wolf” is a show which takes a little time to explain things to convince the audience to believe the situation and plotline. Lawrence and Horo are the only main characters of the show, therefore, the story didn’t become too complex or too clumsy. It was said by some fans that the producers of the anime will be testing the response of fans with OVA episodes of the anime. If the response to those episodes is good enough, then they will start working on the new story for the “Spice and Wolf”. Most of the animes are continued only if the light novels, manga and the OVA episodes are able to do convincing business and motivate producers to work on a sequel.
Till date, two of the “Spice and Wolf” novels are released. The first novel consists of 10 volumes with 4-6 chapters each and the second novel has 9 volumes. Every episode of the anime series consists the story of one volume of the novel. Therefore by a new volume of the novel series, the anime creators will get enough content for Spice and Wolf Season 3.
Also Read: Spoilers and Updates about KonoSuba Season 3.
In February 2016, author of the spice and wolf light novel, Isuna Hasekura, released a statement saying that he is working on another volume of the light novel which will be released on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the series. After that, a new novel with two more volumes released by the name of ‘Wolf and Parchment’ in 2017. The English version of the novel series is yet to be released thus, for now, there is very less info available about the new novel series.
Will there be a Spice and Wolf Season 3 or not?
Although the show creator has content for the Spice and Wolf Season 3 with the third novel of Spice and Wolf (in progress) but still in an interview Isuna Hasekura, the author of the anime showed disinterest in making Spice and Wolf Season 3. Fans have asked the creators for the new season and have even started a petition for it but currently, it is still unclear that Spice and Wolf Season 3 will take place or not.
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Rihanna to receive top NAACP honour
05/02/2020 Reporter 0
Rihanna is set to receive the President’s Award at the NAACP Image Awards this month.
The ‘Work’ hitmaker will be honoured with the top accolade at the 2020 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) Awards on February 22, the organisation announced on Tuesday.
Rihanna will be awarded for her “groundbreaking career as an artist and musician, but (someone who) has also distinguished herself as a stellar public servant.”
Rihanna. Picture: Instagram
The 31-year-old singer and fashion icon will be given the trophy during the February 22 ceremony, which will be held in Pasadena, California, and broadcast live for the first time on BET.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said Rihanna “epitomises the type of character, grace and devotion to justice” that the organisation seeks to highlight.
Rihanna joins previous recipients including Jay-Z, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson and Condoleezza Rice.
The ‘Umbrella’ singer has been growing her Fenty Beauty brand for several years, but has been leaving fans desperate to hear new music, as she hasn’t put out a studio album since 2016’s ‘Anti’.
Rihanna has shared her top mascara application tips. Picture: Instagram
Rihanna recently asked her loved ones to “forgive” her as she’s thrown herself into so many different ventures, including her Fenty Beauty business, over the past 12 months, she’s had very little free time to make contact with those who matter most to her.
She shared a selfie and wrote alongside the picture on Instagram: “To all my friends/family/coworkers who I have yet to get back to in the past months…please forgive me.
“This year has been quite an overwhelming one, and I’m working on that ish called Balance. Brb.(sic)”
And the singer also admitted having children is one of her “dreams”.
She said: “A lot of woman get very defensive. It’s personal, it’s our bodies, and of course it’s our time, and it’s not necessarily everyone’s dream to be a mom … but it’s mine, so I’m fine.”
Author: Reporter
How to make the perfect chips at home
Eskom says more loadshedding this weekend highly likely
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Moon Chae Won
문채원
Mun Chae Won
Moon Chae Won is a popular South Korean actress. Born on November 13, 1986, she made her acting debut in the 2007 television drama “Mackerel Run” with newcomer Lee Min Ho but it was her role a year later in the drama “Painter of the Wind” that she attracted attention. She has since starred in many popular films and dramas, including “Shining Inheritance” (2009), “My Fair Lady” (2009), It’s Alright, Daddy’s Daughter” (2010), “The Princess’ Man” (2011), “The Innocent Man” (2012), “Good Doctor” (2013) and “Goodbye Mr. Black” (2016).
Nov 13, 1986 (age 34)
MSteam Entertainment (Korea)
Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter
Goodbye Mr. Black
Love Forecast
Joo Won
Park Shi Hoo
Song Joong Ki
Choi Jin Hyuk
Lee Seung Gi
Make Way For The Queens: 10 Best Korean Actresses Of 2020
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September Drama Actor Brand Reputation Rankings Announced
Lee Joon Gi Talks About Reuniting With Moon Chae Won In “Flower Of Evil,” The Most Memorable Scene For Him, And More
Watch: “Flower Of Evil” Cast Shares Behind-The-Scenes Look At Final Filming
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Live: JUCIFER, PATIOCRASH
Ticket kaufen Facebook Event iCal
JUCIFER (US) (Sludge / Rock / Metal / Doom / Crust)
https://www.facebook.com/juciferofficial/
Jucifer, founded in Georgia in 1993, are pioneers of the metal two piece. They are notorious for their use of massive amplification, and for their entirely nomadic lifestyle. The band has been nomadic for two thirds of its 22 year existence.
Jucifer have stated that this homeless life was undertaken to facilitate playing „as many shows as we possibly can“. Their endless tour typically covers 20 or more countries each year. Jucifer literally has no „home base“ having spent all year, every year on the road since moving into their tour vehicle 15 years ago.
Unlike heavy duos which use loops, backing tracks, or triggers to fill out their live sound, Jucifer relies on compositions designed to decimate with only real-time drums and distorted guitar. And for sonic reinforcement, a wall of speakers that typically rises 10 feet high and sprawls 15 feet wide.Jucifer’s use of many different amps and cabinets to create a full-spectrum, full-body sound experience predates the 00’s ‚amp wall‘ trend.
As well as being originators of using stadium-appropriate amplification in clubs, Jucifer’s rationale for their gear differs from later bands‘ approach. Although Jucifer is renowned as one of the loudest bands in the world, both members have stated that volume is not their primary reason behind owning so much equipment, but rather a byproduct of their desire to be immersed in sound and of Valentine’s method to create her ideal tone. Guitarist Gazelle Amber Valentine has stated in interviews that she never turns her amps up all the way and that playing guitar through such a dynamic array of gear is „like building sound sculptures in the air“.
Jucifer shows are known for being extremely heavy and loud, blending elements of sludge, black metal, doom, death metal, powerviolence, thrash, crust, grind, drone, and noise with occasional psychedelic passages. The band has expressed distaste for conforming to a genre but has sometimes called themselves „deathdrone“ or „sludgethrashdoomgrind“. Confining description of Jucifer to a single genre would truly be misleading, as within their live show they incorporate aspects of almost every type of metal, and on albums have been known to veer from shoegaze to grindcore to doom and folk within one side of a single LP. Live performances are ritual and cathartic. Valentine and drummer Edgar Livengood possess a rapt intensity and physical abandon as they play. The drums are outsized and guitar is downtuned to various non-standard tunings, which lends an unexpectedly pleasing quality to the high volume employed.
Jucifer’s live sound has been compared to Celtic Frost, Melvins, Slayer, Black Sabbath, Necrophagia and Napalm Death, as well as bands of their own generation (Jesus Lizard, Darkthrone, Neurosis, Morbid Angel, Harvey Milk, Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Acid King) and younger groups Lightning Bolt and Sunn0))). Because of their knack for odd compositions and onstage improvisation, some have also likened Jucifer shows to the work of Miles Davis and John Zorn.
Jucifer have performed steadily and released albums through the 90’s and 00’s on both major and indie labels as well as founding their own Nomadic Fortress label in 2010, distributed by Relapse. Their most recent releases are the two historical concept albums ‚District of Dystopia‘ and ‚за волгой для нас земли нет‘.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW8yGb9O8A4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU4PWpmVUtc
PATIOCRASH (A) (Garage Punk / Noise)
patiocrash.com
VVK bei Jugendinfo und Ticketmaster
VVK: € 13€
AK: € 16€
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Nicola Lynch Morrin
Nicola Lynch Morrin lives and works in Co. Kildare, Ireland. She is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design and has been a winner of the prestigious RDS Dr Murial Gahan Scholarship. In October 2011 she received the Dart Award for a work of distinction in The Watercolour Society of Ireland 157th Annual Exhibition. Nicola’s career includes seven successful solo exhibitions and she has exhibited widely in many group exhibitions including the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA), Oireachtas, Eigse Carlow Arts Festival, Claremorris Open Exhibition and many others. Nicola is currently a serving director on the board of the Graphic Studio Dublin, a committee member of The Water Colour Society of Ireland, a member of the Irish Society of Botanical Artists and Festival Arts Officer for the Dunlavin Festival of Arts exhibition.
1981 – 1986 National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland – Education (Honours) 1986 – 1987 National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland – Printed Textiles (Distinction)
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Police: Man Arrested In Florida For Shooting 8 At Texas Bar
By The Citizen on June 19, 2020
This undated photo provided by Miami Dade County Department of Corrections show Jenelius Crew. Police say federal agents in Florida have arrested Crew, charged in a shooting outside a Texas bar that injured eight people. San Antonio police say U.S. Marshals arrested Crew Thursday, June 18, 2020, as he left a hotel in Miami. The charges stem from a shooting last Friday in the parking lot of a large San Antonio bar called Rebar. Police say the man was part of a group that had been turned away because they were too inebriated. (Miami Dade County Department of Corrections via AP)
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Federal agents in Florida have arrested a man charged in a shooting outside a Texas bar last week that injured eight people, police said Thursday.
U.S. Marshals arrested 37-year-old Jenelius Crew Thursday morning as he left a hotel in Miami, San Antonio police said in a statement. Detectives obtained warrants for his arrest Wednesday on eight counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said.
The charges stem from a shooting last Friday in which a man with a rifle opened fire on people in the parking lot of a venue called Rebar.
The man was part of a group turned away from the bar because they were “inebriated,” San Antonio police Chief William McManus said Saturday. McManus said the man asked: “Don’t you know who I am? I’m a UFC fighter from California.” He then fetched a gun from his car.
Crew was arrested without incident and is in custody at the Miami-Dade County Jail. He is being held without bond ahead of his extradition, according to jail records, which do not list an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
San Antonio police did not immediately respond to questions Thursday and have not provided any updates on the health of the people wounded in the shooting.
The post Police: Man Arrested In Florida For Shooting 8 At Texas Bar appeared first on The Village Reporter.
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Threatened Species Strategy - Year One Report
Department of the Environment and Energy; Australian Government
Threatened Species Commissioners message:
".....This report to Minister for the Environment and Energy, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP, captures the progress made during year one of implementing this ambitious plan. The journey has been rewarding, difficult and full of learning, but overwhelmingly positive......."
Click here>> to access the report
Monday, 9 January 2017/Author: Anonym/Number of views (2445)/Comments (0)/
Categories: Hot TopicsGeneral information
Imported biofuel a risk to wildlife The Australian, Tuesday 27 January 2009 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24967830-11949,00.html
Tuesday, 3 February 2009/Author: Rupert Woods/Number of views (413)/Comments (0)/
Christmas Island rats wiped out by disease. A new study has concluded that native rats found on Australia's Christmas Island more than 100 years ago, fell prey to "hyperdisease conditions" caused by a pathogen that led to its extinction. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/11/06/2412216.htm?site=science&topic=latest and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081105081955.htm
Monday, 24 November 2008/Author: Tiggy Grillo/Number of views (355)/Comments (0)/
Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) officers recently intercepted three live snakes in parcels at Sydney's International Mail Centre. A fourth live snake was also intercepted by an Australian Custom officer at the Mail Centre. The snakes were identified as green tree pythons. A man has been arrested and charged with four counts of importing a specimen listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The discovery of the four live snakes was a significant find for AQIS due to the risk they pose to Australian reptiles. Biosecurity Australia identified over 40 potential pests and disease risks, including Inclusion Body Disease, leptospirosis and Japanese encephalitis. The snakes were humanely euthanasia. See full details in the AQIS Bulletin March/April 2008 and a hard copy can be obtained from AQIS at http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/about/reports-pubs/aqis-bulletin
Thursday, 22 May 2008/Author: Tiggy Grillo/Number of views (343)/Comments (0)/
Evensen (2008) Wildlife disease can put conservation at risk. 20 March. Nature 452: 282. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7185/full/452282a.html
Thursday, 1 May 2008/Author: Tiggy Grillo/Number of views (303)/Comments (0)/
Koalas at risk as trees lose nutrients http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23487281-30417,00.html
Thursday, 17 April 2008/Author: Tiggy Grillo/Number of views (326)/Comments (0)/
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Home WisBusiness News Health care groups backing bill to overhaul psychology law
Health care groups backing bill to overhaul psychology law
Mental health care providers in Wisconsin are backing new legislation that would overhaul state law surrounding psychology and the board overseeing the practice.
Dr. Heather Smith, an associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, says the bill would “greatly enhance” the ability of health care systems in the state to train and retain licensed psychologists.
“AB 487 allows for updating of the Wisconsin psychologists law to bring it into accord with the psychology licensure laws of the majority of other states,” she said yesterday during a public hearing held by the Assembly Committee on Health.
The proposed legislation has broad industry support including MCW, Marshfield Clinic, Rogers Memorial Hospital, the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division and the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology.
“As far as we can see, this has been a pretty popular bill,” said Dr. Greg Jurenec, a faculty member for the WSPP. He explained that several changes to state law over the years have lowered the standards for the state’s psychology license.
“Starting in 2016 when the code was revised, we lost the ability to require a predoctoral internship, which was one of these core standards to practice in clinical psychology across the country,” he said. “The second thing that changed was the whole landscape of health care reimbursement.”
He said insurers will no longer pay for services unless providers of counseling and other mental health services are officially licensed. According to Jurenec, an individual with a PhD in psychology who’s done an internship has significant experience and training. But since they don’t have a license, third-party payers often won’t pay for them.
“That makes it hard to get a job, to get supervised and to reach the one-year post-doctoral experience,” he said.
Some psychologists-in-training get that experience through formalized post-doc programs, but Jurenec says these are limited in number and size. Some go to work for the government such as the Department of Corrections, while others can get jobs as licensed professional counselors.
“This isn’t really a good set up anymore, and it has become really difficult and challenging for people to meet the post-doctoral supervision requirement,” he said.
Due to the changes in health care reimbursement and Wisconsin groups’ inability to offer pre-doctoral internships, new graduates are “challenged in meeting this essential post-doctoral requirement.”
“Wisconsin is now below the standards of our neighboring states, as well as general national standards,” Jurenec said.
Smith told members of the Assembly Health Committee that requiring a post-doctoral internship is “not part of or even allowed under the state statute,” despite the experience being a “minimum professional training standard” recognized by professional psychologist organizations as well as other states.
“AB 487 addresses that deficiency,” she said yesterday. “In doing so, it gives legitimacy to the Wisconsin psychologist law that currently does not exist.”
She said the bill would also eliminate the “additional step and expense” of obtaining a secondary credential for insurance reimbursement purposes to make up for the state license’s shortcomings.
“Through this systematic change, MCW will be more likely to retain our high-caliber post-doctoral fellows long-term and therefore enhance the overall supply of providers for mental health care in Wisconsin,” Smith said.
Dr. Jennifer Michaels with Marshfield Clinic agreed the bill would help address the state’s shortage of mental health services.
“We’re a big system, and every day our medical and behavioral health professionals within the system experience the challenges of shortages of mental health care workforce in our state and the limited access,” she said.
Jurenec said the bill would bring the state’s standards “up to par with those of our neighbor states,” namely by writing the pre-doctoral internship requirement back into the law “so that the code can be correctly supported by statute.”
Aside from some of the changes to licensing regulations, the legislation would also grant the governor more control over members of the Psychology Examining Board. Under current law, the board is composed of six members, including four licensed psychologists and two public members, and each psychologist much represent a different specialty area.
The bill would eliminate that requirement for specialty area representation, instead requiring that the governor nominate psychologists to the board that represent various specialties “to the extent possible.”
The legislation was introduced by Rep. Paul Tittl, R-Manitowoc, and Sen Alberta Darling, R-River Hills.
See the bill text: http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2019/related/proposals/ab487
Alex Moe
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Democratic candidates scramble plans to address gun violence on the Iowa caucus campaign trail
Brianne Pfannenstiel
The Des Moines Register
BURLINGTON, Ia. — Speaking from an event space just off a gravel road surrounded by cornfields, former Vice President Joe Biden said he planned to use his trip to Burlington to talk about agricultural policy and proposals to boost rural areas.
“But too much has happened in the recent past,” he said Wednesday, referencing mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio that left 32 people dead.
Instead, Biden delivered prepared remarks from a teleprompter that he said he hopes “will set a marker for what we should be doing” in response to gun violence and the kind of racism that fueled the El Paso shooter. Police say the white man who carried out the attack posted a racist missive online before traveling to the largely Hispanic city to target victims based on their race.
The nearly two-dozen Democratic presidential candidates who fanned out across Iowa this week made plans for lively summer bus tours, stops with their families through the Iowa State Fair, the Des Moines Register Soapbox and at the annual Democratic Wing Ding fundraiser.
Biden:Joe Biden says 'poor kids' are 'just as talented as white kids'
But in the aftermath of the shootings, amid a renewed outcry among the Democratic electorate for action, candidates were forced to adopt a more somber tone and scrambled their plans to also address the issue of gun violence.
Seventeen candidates agreed to appear at a last-minute “gun safety” forum organized by groups that advocate for gun regulation.
Beto O’Rourke, the former U.S. representative from Texas and an El Paso native, canceled his trip to Iowa and his campaign organized a moment of silence at the Wing Ding dinner.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota unveiled new plans to help revitalize rural America Wednesday morning. But both began their first events in Iowa by addressing gun violence.
“On this beautiful Iowa morning, we’re here to talk about an optimistic economic agenda for the heartland of our country,” Klobuchar said at a family farm near Ankeny. “But we know we do so in the shadow of the tragedies from this weekend.”
Trump:Congress discussing 'meaningful' gun background checks, NRA will have input
Iowans are comfortable with guns, but want policy changes
The Iowans who attended the week’s political events said preventing gun violence is once again top of mind as they parse through the crowded primary field — though they expressed frustration that momentum to tackle the problem ebbs and flows with each new tragedy.
“It just keeps happening and we don’t do nothing as a country,” said Jeff Poulter, a 60-year-old Middletown resident who attended Biden’s event in Burlington. “You look at other countries and it happens once and they make changes immediately.”
Like many Iowa Democrats in rural parts of the state, Poulter said he grew up with guns and doesn’t have a problem with people who own them to hunt or to use for self-defense.
“But when you have something that’s utilized in war — the ones that will hold 50 shells — no one needs that,” he said. “And to me, it should be outlawed.”
Kevin Andrews, a 67-year-old retired police officer who attended Warren’s event in Council Bluffs, said he doesn’t believe anyone in America should own a gun. The Sidney resident said he won’t support any candidate who doesn’t have a strong stance on gun control.
“There’s no practical reason in this society for guns to exist,” he said. “You have to start somewhere, so start with assault weapons, start with bump stocks. But to me that’s a short-term cure for a long-term problem.”
SCOTUS on guns:Mass shootings could prompt Supreme Court to sidestep cases seeking to expand Second Amendment rights
The presidential candidates have addressed issues related to gun control and gun violence before the shootings. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California made it the primary focus of his campaign before he dropped out of the race in July. And in May, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called for a federal gun licensing program and a ban on assault weapons, among other things.
But nearly all of them talked about the issue this week.
On the campaign trail, Iowans said they wanted to hear more from candidates about what they would do.
“I wanted to see Joe (Biden) in person, and I want to hear his response to the mass killings this past week,” said Sherri Hutchcroft, a 65-year-old registered nurse from Burlington. “I’d like to hear his plan of what he would enact as president.”
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Candidates react
In Burlington, Biden focused largely on President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, in which the president has repeatedly described the flow of migrants to the U.S. as an “invasion," language that was mirrored in the El Paso shooter’s online screed.
But Biden also said he would put in place an assault weapons ban and institute a buy-back program for the federal government to purchase weapons from owners who volunteer to get rid of them.
In Council Bluffs, Warren started her stump speech by acknowledging the victims of the two latest shootings.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans know that we need to make some sensible changes, and they know what those changes are,” she said. “But right now … the Republicans are held by the throat by the NRA. Enough is enough. When I am president, we’re going to get rid of the filibuster, and we’re going to pass some serious gun legislation.”
When asked later by reporters for specifics on her gun control legislation Thursday, Warren said she will be rolling out a comprehensive plan in the coming days. She did not provide details, but said the “NRA’s not gonna like it.”
Wayne LaPierre:Trump spoke with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre during Dayton, El Paso trip, faces opposition on gun background checks
Former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, campaigning at an event in West Des Moines, told reporters he’s been hearing a lot from Iowans about guns as he travels the state this week.
“People are just, they’re sad,” he said. “They’re angry. You know, they’re pissed off. They want to know why we haven’t done anything. And that’s what’s really frustrating.”
And talking with reporters after speaking Thursday at the Des Moines Register's Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock said Democrats can still win red states while talking about enacting stricter gun control laws.
"Gun owners want to make sure that families are kept safe," he said, noting that he also owns guns. "When I was growing up the (NRA) was a hunting, gun safety organization. Now it's nothing more than a political organization driving us apart. If gun owners finally stand up … I think we can make progress on this."
There's a risk, but some Democrats think it's worth it
Some Iowans said Democrats risk alienating moderates and independents who might otherwise support them.
“I think the risk is when they start pointing the finger at the president when obviously he’s not in charge of what people think, right? No more than Barack Obama was when those shootings happened,” said Eric Puryear, a 43-year-old independent who supported Trump in 2016 and attended Biden’s event Wednesday in Burlington. “They will alienate a lot of the independents if they really go down a super restrictive gun path.”
Others, though, said the time for inaction is over, regardless of the political consequences.
Pelosi:Pelosi urges Trump to call Senate to vote on House gun background checks bills
“I took my 5-year-old granddaughter and my 10-year-old grandson out shopping for school supplies. When we have bulletproof backpacks … for $130, it’s time to do something,” said Kelly Samberg, a 59-year-old nurse practitioner from Burlington. “I can’t believe our country’s come to that.”
But Democrats — both candidates and caucusgoers — said they feel they must take control in Washington, D.C. to have any hope of enacting change.
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, in an interview with the Register, said he’s tried and failed to find consensus between Republicans and Democrats for sensible gun regulations. Following a shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012, Hickenlooper pushed for legislation limiting access to high-capacity magazines and instituting universal background checks.
“I thought if we reached out and we negotiated, we could compromise,” said Hickenlooper, who prides himself on being a dealmaker and pragmatist. “I thought that this was important in a western state that we really make every effort to find a solution that wouldn’t create winners and losers. But in the end, they would not compromise. It was one of the few times in my life where I couldn’t get negotiations off of ground zero. It was very frustrating.”
Trump's words:A USA TODAY analysis found Trump used words like 'invasion' and 'killer' at rallies more than 500 times since 2017
Ultimately, a one-vote majority in the Senate enabled the passage of the laws, but two Democratic senators were recalled and lost their seats.
Hickenlooper said he’s cautiously optimistic about the momentum behind the gun control movement today.
“I feel like we are somehow in a different place today than we were last Friday,” he said. “Now, whether that really translates into action — we’ve been disappointed too often before. But it does feel like we’re in a different place.”
Des Moines Register reporters Stephen Gruber-Miller, Kim Norvell, Austin Cannon and Shelby Fleig contributed to this report.
© 2021 www.wisconsinrapidstribune.com. All rights reserved.
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Book News: National Book Awards' '5 Under 35' Picks Are All Women
By Annalisa Quinn
Published September 13, 2013 at 7:14 AM EDT
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
For the first time ever, the National Book Awards' annual '5 Under 35' list is made up of all women writers. Molly Antopol, NoViolet Bulawayo, Amanda Coplin, Daisy Hildyard, and Merritt Tierce have been selected by a committee made up of former National Book Awards winners. This has been a good week for Bulawayo, who was just shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her novel We Need New Names. Ellah Allfrey, writing for NPR, called it "one of the most powerful works of fiction to come out of Zimbabwe in recent years — a clear-eyed indictment of a government whose policies, in the decades since independence, have left many of its citizens destitute."
As NPR's Mark Memmott reported Thursday, J.K. Rowling is writing a screenplay for Warner Bros. set in the magical universe of Harry Potter. The screenplay, called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,will be based on Harry Potter's textbook of the same name. Rowling wrote in a statement on her website: "Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for seventeen years, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world. The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt's story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry's gets underway."
At McSweeney's, Langan Kingsley imagines what some of the "lesser-known prophecies" of the 16th-century seer Nostradamus might look like:
"The thin blonde queen PARIS will give rise to a new order
And three raven-haired sisters will come to prominence.
They will force citizens to abandon other pursuits to KEEP UP
And their leader shall bear progeny with the man known as RUNAWAY."
Tina Brown, the longtime magazine editor who helmedTatler,Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Daily Beast, will write a memoir called Media Beast, she told The New York Timesin an interview. The news of her memoir follows her announcement Wednesday that she would leave The Daily Beast to start a conference company. Brown told The Times: "I've seen a great deal, I've seen so much change, so much up close, amazing forces at work in the media business."
Jon Krakauer, whose bestselling book Into The Wild follows Chris McCandless, a hiker who died after surviving for months in the Alaskan wilderness, has written an addendum to the book for The New Yorker. Krakauer's theory of McCandless' death — that he had accidentally poisoned himself with wild potato seeds — was met with wide derision after the seeds were tested and found to be safe. But Krakauer says new research may prove him right after all: A recent paper suggests the seeds shared a toxin with the grass pea, which killed inmates of Vapniarca, a World War II-era concentration camp in the Ukraine. Krakauer says the toxin is most dangerous for young men, like McCandless, on the brink of starvation. Krakauer writes tha, had McCandless known the seeds were toxic, he "probably would have walked out of the wild in late August with no more difficulty than when he walked into the wild in April, and would still be alive today. If that were the case, Chris McCandless would now be forty-five years old."
Annalisa Quinn
Annalisa Quinn is a contributing writer, reporter, and literary critic for NPR. She created NPR's Book News column and covers literature and culture for NPR.
See stories by Annalisa Quinn
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Jeb Bush 'moving forward' on run for president
Son says: 'I think it's more than likely'
Published October 26, 2014 at 10:07pm
(MIAMIHERALD) — WASHINGTON — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is "moving forward" on a potential 2016 White House run and it appears more likely he will enter the Republican field, according to his son, who's running for office in Texas.
George P. Bush told ABC's "This Week" that his father is "still assessing" a presidential bid, but suggested it was more likely that he would seek the White House this time. The ex-governor declined to run for president in 2012 despite encouragement from Republicans.
"I think it's more than likely that he's giving this a serious thought and moving — and moving forward," said the younger Bush, who is running for Texas land commissioner.
Asked if that meant it was "more than likely that he'll run," George P. Bush responded: "That he'll run. If you had asked me a few years back ... I would have said it was less likely."
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United Way of Greater Houston Board of Trustees Elects H-E-B Executive Armando Perez as Chair
By: United Way of Greater Houston
| Published 04/22/2020
HOUSTON, TX -- United Way of Greater Houston announces that Armando A. Perez has been elected as chair of the organization’s Board of Trustees. Perez, who is executive vice president for H-E-B Houston, has served as a member of the United Way board since 2016 and will serve a two-year term as chair, leading one of the region’s largest nonprofits in its mission to connect vulnerable families and individuals with opportunities to thrive.
“We are delighted to welcome Armando, a generous supporter and volunteer leader of United Way of Greater Houston, as chair of our Board of Trustees,” said Anna M. Babin, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Houston. “His commitment to our organization and the community is evident through the many ways he has given of his time and talent and we will all surely benefit from his leadership, vision, and expertise as we look to the future.”
Perez’ prior volunteer work on behalf of the organization includes key initiatives such as committees focused on strategic thinking, positioning and accountability in addition to serving on United Way’s Second Century Vision Strategic Planning Committee as the nonprofit sets its course for the future. A longtime donor and advocate for United Way, Perez has previously chaired several H-E-B sponsored campaigns for the nonprofit.
“It is an honor to be elected as chair for the United Way of Greater Houston Board of Trustees because I believe so strongly in the positive impact that the organization makes on the wellbeing of our community and especially for those who need help in creating a pathway to a better life for themselves and their families,” said Perez. “I find great fulfillment in committing to work that advances the Houston community and the United Way of Greater Houston exemplifies that opportunity, so I am grateful to be part of it.”
In his professional life as executive vice president for H-E-B Houston, Perez leads the retailer’s nearly 29,000 H-E-B Houston-area partners who deliver products and services to their customers throughout the region. He began his career with H-E-B in 1994 and has held a variety of different positions.
A native Texan, Perez earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas-Pan American and has completed management programs at both Cornell University and Harvard University. In addition to his board role at United Way, Perez currently sits on the Kinder Institute Advisory Board and has previously served as chairman of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and as a board member of the Houston Food Bank and The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Foundation.
Perez succeeds United Way of Greater Houston leadership volunteer Jamey Rootes, president of the Houston Texans, who has served as board chair since 2018 and will continue to serve as a board member.
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Iraqi prime minister to resign in wake of deadly protests
by: SAMYA KULLAB, Associated Press
Anti-government protesters set fire while security forces close Rasheed Street during clashes in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019. Scores of protesters have been shot dead in the last 24 hours, amid spiraling violence in Baghdad and southern Iraq, officials said. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s prime minister announced Friday that he would submit his resignation to parliament, a day after more than 40 people were killed by security forces in protests and following calls by Iraq’s top Shiite cleric for lawmakers to withdraw support.
The move by Adel Abdul-Mahdi, which came 13 months after he took office, triggered celebrations by anti-government protesters who have been camped out for nearly two months in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. Young men and women broke out in song and dance as news of the imminent resignation reached the square, the epicenter of the leaderless protest movement.
But in the event of an actual resignation, the road to a new government was uncertain and the possibility of political crisis hung in the air, Iraqi officials and experts warned.
In a statement, Abdul-Mahdi said he had “listened with great concern” to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s sermon and made his decision in response to the cleric’s remarks and to “facilitate and hasten its fulfillment as soon as possible.”
“I will submit to parliament an official memorandum resigning from the current prime ministry so that the parliament can review its choices,” he said. Abdul-Mahdi was appointed Iraq’s fifth prime minister since 2003 as a consensus candidate following months of political wrangling between rival political blocs.
If accepted when put to vote, Abdul-Mahdi’s resignation would signal a return to square one in those slow-moving negotiations, Iraqi officials and experts said.
Abdul-Mahdi would be the second prime minister in an Arab country to be forced out by mass protests recently. In Lebanon, the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri exactly a month earlier, on Oct. 17, led to further political gridlock and uncertainty.
Abdul-Mahdi’s rise to power was the product of a provisional alliance between parliament’s two main blocs — Sairoon, led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and Fatah, which includes leaders associated with the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units headed by Hadi al-Amiri.
In the May 2018 election, neither coalition won a commanding plurality, which would have enabled it to name the premier, as stipulated by the Iraqi constitution. To avoid political crisis, Sairoon and Fatah forged a precarious union with Abdul-Mahdi as their prime minister.
Now, with his resignation, unresolved disputes between the coalitions threaten to re-emerge, two Iraqi officials said.
“The two of them need to come to an agreement again for us to see a new prime minister,” said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Abdul-Mahdi had alluded to this challenge implicitly in earlier statements, saying he would resign, but only if an alternative candidate was found for the premiership.
Officials also questioned Abdul-Mahdi’s decision to submit his resignation via the more time-consuming route of parliament, requiring MPs to vote, rather than sending it directly to the president, who has the power to accept it immediately and demote the government to caretaker status until a new one is formed.
One Iraqi official said one of two things could happen: “There’s going to be a lot of horse-trading going on, or it could be paralysis, and nothing changes.”
The resignation also creates legal uncertainties as the constitution does not provide clear procedures to guide lawmakers in the event of a premier stepping down, experts said. The key issue was how long Abdul-Mahdi’s government could maintain caretaker status in the event of protracted political negotiations.
“To my understanding there is no clause (in the constitution) that says how long he can remain in the post once his resignation is accepted,” said Sajad Jiyad, the managing director of Bayan Center, an Iraq-based think tank.
The federal Supreme Court might have to step in, he added, if the caretaker government stays for too long and if parliamentary blocs are unable to come to an understanding.
In his weekly Friday sermon delivered via a representative in the holy city of Najaf, Al-Sistani said parliament, which elected the government of Abdul-Mahdi, should “reconsider its options.” His comments prompted political parties to issue calls for the government to step down.
“We call upon the House of Representatives from which this current government emerged to reconsider its options in that regard,” al-Sistani said in the statement — a clear sign he was withdrawing his support for the prime minister.
It was not immediately clear whether Abdul-Mahdi’s resignation would placate protesters, who are now calling for the removal of the entire political class that has ruled Iraq since the 2003 downfall of Saddam Hussein. Nearly 400 people have been killed in the bloody crackdown on protests since Oct. 1, most of them young demonstrators who were shot dead or killed by exploding tear gas canisters fired by security forces.
Amira, a 25-year-old protester, said the resignation should have come weeks ago.
“We will not stop with the prime minister. We still have more fighting to do. We will push forward until our demands are met,” she said, declining to give her full name, fearing retaliation.
Forty protesters were shot dead by security forces in Baghdad and the southern cities of Najaf and Nasiriyah on Thursday, in a sharp escalation of violence that continued Friday.
Three more protesters were shot and eight wounded by security forces Friday in Nasiriyah when demonstrators attempted to enter the city center to resume their sit-in, security and hospital officials said. Security forces had fired live rounds the previous day to disperse protesters from two key bridges, killing 31 people.
Al-Sistani also said protesters should distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and those seeking to turn the movement violent, following the burning of an Iranian consulate building Wednesday in Najaf. Government officials said the fire was perpetrated by saboteurs from outside the protest movement.
After the sermon, the Islamic Dawa party called for parliament to convene immediately and choose an alternative government. Fatah said it would convene with other political blocs to discuss options.
A former oil and finance minister and an ex-vice president, the 77-year-old Abdul-Mahdi was seen as a political independent when he took the post in October 2018. He was Iraq’s first prime minister from outside the Dawa party in 12 years.
His administration’s policies were characterized by small gains to improve the day-to-day lives of Baghdadis. He moved his offices out of Baghdad’s highly secure Green Zone on the first day of his term, saying he wanted to bring his government closer to the people, while removing wartime cement barriers that had closed Iraqis off from much of the city.
In the halls of power in Baghdad, his office worked behind the scenes to streamline the administration and improve decision-making. But the effects of those efforts were not visible to an Iraqi public impatient for reform.
Abdul-Mahdi was also often caught in the middle of rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran, with many perceiving his government and certain staffers as being close to Tehran. Reducing Iraq’s reliance on Iranian electricity imports to meet consumer demand was a key concern of Washington.
Protesters widely reject growing Iranian influence over Iraq state affairs. In Baghdad on Friday, demonstrators gathered around the historic Rasheed Street near the strategic Ahrar Bridge and burned the Iranian flag, chanting “Iran out!”
Associated Press Writer Murtada Faraj in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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Contact us +44 (0) 20 3735 5557 Mon-Fri 9:00-18:00 info@zenron.org
It’s considered to be the fourth most important financial centre in the world, and the third place in the world regarding the proportion of income per capita. Recently, Singapore has become the most sought after Asian offshore destination of the 21st century. Singapore is one of the most politically stable countries in the world with a minimal extent of corruption. Offshore investors are provided with the services of most major international banks, financial institutions, investment management companies, accountants and law firms. The Singapore government creates an attractive environment for foreign investment through favourable tax and financial incentives.
Founding a company and business in Singapore
Singapore isn’t one of the classical offshore jurisdictions, but the foundation of a company brings significant benefits.
Simplicity and speed. The whole process of setting-up a company is very simple and set up so as to avoid stagnant bureaucratic procedures.
The tax system in Singapore is governed by the territorial principle. This means you only pay taxes if the profit is derived from the business activity in Singapore. So when the company's profits come from outside Singapore, the company isn’t required to pay taxes. In the case of onshore trades, the basic rate for corporation tax is 17%. However, the government offers tax relief for newly established companies. In the first three years, profits of up to $ 100,000 are completely exempt from taxes, with income up to $ 300,000 the rate is reduced to half. In Singapore, a zero tax on capital gains and dividend payments is introduced. Singapore is like made for offshore business!
Singapore law offers very liberal rules regarding the foreign business ownership.
Since Singapore is a modern financial centre, there are many large financial institutions and consulting firms.
Company ownership in Singapore is a prestigious issue in the eyes of partners as well as clients.
Long-term political stability is also very important.
The primary type of company is a Private Limited Company, for which it’s sufficient to have one partner, who may be a resident of any country. However, one director who is a citizen of Singapore is required. A secretary must also be a resident according to the law.
The company must have a registered office at its physical address, a PO Box is not allowed in this case.
The company register is publicly accessible, so it’s possible to use the so-called service nominee for greater anonymity.
Anonymity. Everyone - and the businessman in particular - believes and honours the right to privacy. That's our opinion!
And as a bonus at the end - Singapore is a signatory to many agreements avoiding double taxation.
The World Bank has rated Singapore as the state with the best access to set-up and run business
According to US CNN and London research company WealthInsight, Singapore will take up the position of the largest tax haven by 2020.
According to analysts, the Asian city state is the fastest growing tax haven. Besides the low tax burden in Singapore, the fact that Asia is creating more and more wealth is helping. In addition, the concentration of movable individuals is growing rapidly in China, Indonesia and other Asian countries.
SINGAPORE, a small Asian tiger, is the country where it’s the easiest to start business. It doesn’t mean that it’s the best in all ten evaluation criteria. It unbeatably leads in terms of international trade, it’s in top position regarding investor protection or ensuring compliance with contracts, but regarding the registration of property it’s in 36th place.
In general, revenue generated outside Singapore isn’t subject to local taxation.
A tax return is mandatory and must be submitted every year even when the company doesn’t show any activity.
Founding a company in SINGAPORE:
Minimum number of directors - 2. The director may be an individual, with one of the directors - being a Singapore resident. This director is responsible for ensuring that the company's activities are in accordance with Singapore law.
Minimum number of shareholders – 1. They may be individuals and legal persons - residents of any state.
The minimum amount of share capital isn’t set.
The business name of a limited liability company must contain words (Private) Limited or (PTE) LTD.
The register of shareholders and executives isn’t publicly available
Resident companies are levying income tax from sources located in Singapore, as well as from foreign sources. The rate of income tax is 26%.
Non-residents are taxing income tax only from sources in Singapore and applicable international double taxation conventions are not applicable to them.
An annual report containing the data on any changes of directors, shareholders and secretaries, the company name and registered office must be submitted to the Commercial Register. The annual financial statement and the auditor's report and copies of those statements must be available at the company’s registered office.
The general income tax rate is 0-20%. All income derived from sources in Singapore is taxed, as well as income from sources located outside Singapore if transferred to Singapore.
Singapore's international double tax agreements are signed with the following countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Denmark, Philippines, Finland, France, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Thailand, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain.
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Illinois Becomes 20th State To Force Taxpayers To Foot Bill For Transgender Surgery
Tuesday, Jan 14, 2020 - 17:45
Authored by Tyler O'Neil via PJMedia.com,
Far-left activists don't just want Americans to approve of transgender ideology and to call people by preferred pronouns unmoored from biological sex - they also want to force taxpayers to foot the bill for dangerous experimental surgeries that leave people infertile and scarred for life.
On December 23, Illinois joined 19 other states and the District of Columbia to explicitly require Medicaid to pay for transgender surgeries. The Department of Healthcare and Family Services, the state's primary Medicaid agency, published new administrative rules mandating the coverage of certain "gender-affirming" services. Illinois formerly excluded "transsexual surgery" from the taxpayer-funded program.
"Health care is a right, not a privilege, and I’m committed to ensuring our LGBTQ community and all Illinoisans have access to that right," Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) said in a statement in April.
"Expanding Medicaid to cover gender affirming surgeries is cost effective, helps avoid long-term health consequences, and most importantly is the right thing to do. With continued attacks coming from Washington, this administration will always stand with our transgender community and their right to lead safe and healthy lives."
Almost everything in this statement was dead wrong. Health care should not be considered a "right," because it involves the hard work of doctors and nurses, who deserved to be compensated for their work. Perhaps most importantly, however, the idea that "gender-affirming" surgeries help "avoid long-term health consquences" is false, as is the idea that covering these surgeries is necessarily "the right thing to do."
Transgender activists have pushed this narrative based on the idea that the only way to curb the high rate of suicide among people who identify themselves as transgender is to force society to accept transgender identity. Te thinking goes like this: When transgender people have surgery to "affirm" their identity as the opposite sex, they will be less likely to commit suicide. Therefore, transgender surgery is essential to their health, and the government paying for it actually saves money in the long run.
The evidence actually suggests the opposite. While there are few long-term studies on transgender health available, the most thorough follow-up study involving transgender people — extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where there is a strong pro-transgender culture — found that transgender surgery does not paper over mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone the surgery rose to 20 times that of their peers!
Many of those who undergo the surgery experience deep and painful regret.
"Now that I’m all healed from the surgeries, I regret them," a 19-year-old man who had himself surgically mutilated to affirm a female identity, wrote in a letter. "The result of the bottom surgery looks like a Frankenstein hack job at best, and that got me thinking critically about myself. I had turned myself into a plastic-surgery facsimile of a woman, but I knew I still wasn’t one. I became (and to an extent, still feel) deeply depressed."
Transgender activist Jazz Jennings experienced complications during the surgery to remove his male genitals, leaving him with scars across the top of his legs.
Even those who stopped shy of the genital mutilation have found themselves permanently scarred.
"I am a real, live 22-year-old woman, with a scarred chest and a broken voice, and five o'clock shadow because I couldn’t face the idea of growing up to be a woman, that’s my reality," admitted Cari Stella.
The medical establishment has rushed to affirm transgender "health care" that often involves giving healthy people a disease or urging genital mutilation on perfectly healthy men and women.
After the case of the 6-year-old boy James Younger seized national attention, states across the nation are expected to pass laws protecting children from the damaging effects of transgender drugs.
Yet Illinois joined 19 other states and the District of Columbia in going the opposite direction — forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for transgender surgery. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin also use Medicaid funds for transgender surgery.
Sixty-two percent of Americans said employers should be able to opt-out of covering transgender surgeries, and 80 percent of them said doctors and medical professionals should be able to opt-out of performing surgeries they think dangerous to their patients.
If businesses should be able to opt-out of footing the bill for dangerous and controversial surgeries, why shouldn't taxpayers?
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Sean Jeffery: Shining a Spotlight on Tabor Arts
By Pam Johnson/Zip06.com • 03/14/2018 08:30 a.m. EST • Last Updated 03/14/2018 09:47 a.m.
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Sean Jeffery first became involved in Tabor’s art programming outreach thanks to his daughter, Emilia, pictured here, who’s been with Tabor’s youth musicals for seven years, including the upcoming production of Peter Pan, Jr.. (Photo by Pam Johnson/The Sound | Buy This Photo)
Sean Jeffery shines a spotlight on Tabor Arts in Branford. )
Branford —
Offering shoreline kids and adults options to participate in skillfully-led productions, creative camps, and crowd-pleasing cabarets—those are just a few of the many reasons Sean Jeffery is proud to shine a spotlight on the energized programming of Tabor Arts in Branford.
Formerly Tabor Community Arts Center, Tabor Arts is the next evolution of more than 30 years of community artistic outreach under the umbrella of Tabor Lutheran Church in Branford.
As part of the evolution, the not-for-profit outreach organization recently revitalized its arts programming website (www.taborartsbranford.com) and branded it with a colorful, punchy “Tabor Arts” logo.
“The pastor here, Brian ‘Bud’ Myers, is a very strong supporter of the arts,” says Sean. “Over 30 years ago, he was the one who initially had the concept of using what we have for our physical space to create outreach into the community for arts programming. Back then, there was nothing. This was one of the first programs to offer community theater for children.”
In 2016, after Tabor Community Arts Center’s Executive Director stepped down due to health reasons, Sean took on chairing Tabor Art’s Steering Committee and helped to usher in an organizational renaissance.
“It was an opportunity for us to rethink what we had, still underneath the umbrella of the church, but reformed as Tabor Arts Branford,” says Sean.
In addition to taking on a new, dynamic name, Tabor Arts welcomed new Executive Director/Music Director Jamie Petrone and new Artistic Director/Director Colin Sheehan and swung some of its focus toward building up adult programming.
In less than a year, Tabor Arts has greatly ramped up its overall community arts programming, and is poised to debut even more in the coming weeks and months. These exciting efforts all help Tabor Arts fulfill its mission of “empowering the community through creativity,” says Sean.
“That’s the overarching goal,” says Sean. “We started with children, and that’s what we’ve been known for. But Colin and Jamie both bring an additional set of skills, so we can now morph into a true community arts theatre where we can be able to offer more programming for adults, too.”
Colin has already revitalized Tabor Art’s adult choir into a performing group that’s rapidly becoming a community favorite, “Joyful Sounds,” assisted with musical direction of former Branford High School (BHS) choral director Cathyann Roding.
“Colin has really helped us to take our name, and connect with Cathyann and her following, and find a very spirited group of individuals that are willing to go out and perform in the community at large,” says Sean. “It helps to showcase what Tabor does have to offer; and we’re optimistic that might invite some families in to see what we’re all about. Colin has really spearheaded that.”
Tabor Arts also offers music lessons, which were reintroduced in 2016 (the outreach had a strong strings program in the past). Currently, three talented professionals offer private instruction in piano, guitar, and voice (including vocal music therapy for those on the autism spectrum). Tabor Arts is actively seeking teachers of strings, woodwinds, and percussion to add to program offerings.
With new arts programming geared to adults as well as children, Tabor’s name is really beginning to ripple out across the shoreline, and more opportunities lie ahead, says Sean.
“We already have Joyful Sounds going out into the community and singing, but we could also do more productions, and we could do more cabarets,” says Sean. “I’d love to be able to offer a jam session to allow kids who want the experience of playing in a band, or playing together, to be able to use the space. Our guitar teacher would love to offer something like that; and we’ve got the space to do that.”
Speaking of spaces, in addition to Tabor’s full stage and seating space (seats 200), the church’s beautiful sanctuary offers an acoustic opportunity for performances and rehearsals for Joyful Sounds and other arts programs as they are developed, says Sean.
“We feel like we’ve got the physical space which gets heavily used on Sunday, but what can we do to use it on other days—how can we use it in different ways that really can marry the performing arts and music?”
When it comes to the performing arts, Tabor Arts’ tradition of youth musicals is evolving with new leadership in its co-directors, Colin and Jamie. Right now, they’re working with a cast of 17 talented youngsters from across the shoreline to present Peter Pan, Jr. at Tabor in April.
“We’re getting rave reviews about Colin and Jamie from parents and the cast,” says Sean. “The cast is getting exposed to more skills than ever, and they are bonding so well. They’re thrilled to be a part of this.”
The community is invited to attend a family-friendly performance on Friday, April 27 at 7 p.m., Saturday, April 28 at 7 p.m., and Sunday, April 29 at 3 p.m. at the Tabor stage facility located at 45 Tabor Drive. Tickets and more information are available at www.taborartsbranford.com.
Even as the cast prepares to take the stage, Tabor Arts is already working on an exciting new offering many community members will not want to miss. Hint: If you’re looking forward to attending the BHS spring musical Shrek (on stage Wednesday through Sunday, March 21 to 25 at BHS, also co-directed by Colin) or Walsh Intermediate School’s (WIS) spring musical The Little Mermaid (on stage Friday and Saturday, April 6 to 7 at WIS), you’ll want to be at one of two very special Tabor cabaret performances coming in early June.
“We’re going to be doing a cabaret for the high school students that will have just finished up Shrek; and a cabaret for middle school students finishing Little Mermaid, plus all of the cast of Peter Pan,” says Sean. “Some of the kids have spent a lot of time practicing for a particular number and this gives them a chance to do it again, maybe as a solo or ensemble number.”
Tabor Arts’ new “On Broadway Cabaret—High School Cabaret” will be auditioning performers on Monday, April 16 and Wednesday, April 18 from 5 to 8 p.m., with weekly Tuesday rehearsals beginning May 1 and a community cabaret performance on June 1 at 7 p.m. at Tabor. In addition, Tabor Arts offers a new “Disney Magic Cabaret” for grades 2 through 8; auditions are Friday, May 4 from 5 to 8 p.m., with weekly Friday rehearsals beginning May 4 and a performance on Friday, June 8 at 7 p.m. at Tabor.
Another new offering coming this summer for ages 6 to 21 is “Mastering the Audition,” taking place July 23 to Aug. 3 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Workshop participants will also be taking a trip to see a Broadway show (transportation included) and complete the workshop with a performance.
Among the parents sure to be seeking out exciting Tabor Arts offerings for their children will be Sean and his wife, Teresa Seo (who also serves on the Steering Committee). The couple moved to Branford in 2002, when they joined the church. Their daughter, Emilia, now 9, is already a veteran Tabor youth musical performer of seven years. Emilia will play John Darling in Peter Pan, Jr.
In fact, Emilia’s love of performing is the reason Sean, a past church council member, became involved with Tabor’s arts programming. In his professional life, Sean is a clinical professor at UConn’s School of Pharmacy, and director of Clinical Pharmacy Services (Integrated Care Partners, Hartford Healthcare Group). He’s also past president (2012 to 2013) of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists.
“I have zero artistic ability. I didn’t go to my first Broadway musical until Emilia was born,” says Sean, laughing. “What I bring to [Tabor Arts] is a pharmacist’s mind-set of process, structure, attention to detail, and the ability to rally people to the cause. We have people far more creative than I am making the artistic decisions, so it’s a happy marriage.”
In addition to Sean and Teresa, Tabor Arts’ small-yet-mighty Steering Committee is made up of volunteers Jess Howe, Jamie Peterson, and Pastor Myers. The committee brings all ideas to the church council for a final okay. Sean says the council’s support has been overwhelming.
“They see that this is one of the three pillars that helps to support the whole Tabor community,” says Sean. “We have the church itself, and the members of the church; we have the Tabor Christian Community pre-school, which has been a pillar of the community for so many years; and now we have the arts programming. Each of those allows Tabor at large to be known across the shoreline for various different things. This really is a community of different programs.”
For more information on programs and offerings at Tabor Arts, visit www.taborartsbranford.com.
Pam Johnson covers news for Branford and North Branford for Zip06. Email Pam at p.johnson@shorepublishing.com.
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Agrobioengineering
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Study Veterinary Medicine in English
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Deanery: tel. (+48) 81 528 47 24, (+48) 81 528 47 22
The history of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Lublin goes back to the 10th of October 1944. It is inseparable from the establishment of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University on the 23rd of October 1944. It was then that the first four Faculties were created: of Life Sciences, Agricultural, Medical and Veterinary.
In the academic year 1944/1945 the first two years were opened with 160 students at different levels, after the pre-war veterinary studies. The Examination Council was established and it was able to grant the first seven veterinary surgeon’s diplomas in the post-war Poland as early as in 1945. Also in 1945 two academic degrees of Doctor of Philosophy with habilitation were granted (to Stefan Koeppe and Tadeusz Żuliński) as well as five degrees of Doctor of Philosophy in Veterinary Medicine.
In 1946 in April 13 basic Departments were established in different parts of the town, many of which were shared by the other Faculties of the new University. In the 1950-ties a new didactic building, Collegium Veterinarium, was erected as well as the veterinary clinics. All the units of the Faculty were moved there, except the Sub-department of Biochemistry, which stayed at the Lubartowska street.
The first Dean of the Faculty was prof. dr Józef Parnas. His work was later continued by the successive Deans, professors Kazimierz Krysiak, Alfred Trawiński (4 terms of office), Tadeusz Żuliński and Marian Chomiak.
In 1955 the Faculty joined the newly-established Higher School of Agriculture (WSR), which in 1972 changed its name into University of Agriculture and in 2008 into University of Life Sciences in Lublin. In the administrative structure of this higher school three professors of the Veterinary Faculty were Rectors: Marian Chomiak, Janusz Welento (3 terms) and Edmund Prost (2 terms). And the following professors have been the successive Deans of the Faculty: Zdzisław Finik (2 terms), Feliks Stański (2 terms), Edmund Prost (2 terms), Grzegorz Staśkiewicz and Janusz Welento, Stanisław Wołoszyn, Jan Buczek, Janusz Wawrzkiewicz (2 terms), Zbigniew Pomorski (2 terms ), Andrzej Wernicki (2 terms ) and, currently, Stanisław Winiarczyk.
In 1995, following the decision of the Faculty’s Council, the name of the Faculty was changed into Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, likewise as in the case of the other three veterinary faculties in Poland. In this way, the original name was restored whose tradition went as far back as to the Lvov Academy of Veterinary Medicine named like this already in the 19th century.
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Freestyle team launches into new season
The Yukon Freestyle Ski Team was a little short on practice before taking on the best in the country. Not a great combination. Four member of the Yukon squad faced the best at the Canadian Open last week in Whistler, B.C.
tom Patrick
The Yukon Freestyle Ski Team was a little short on practice before taking on the best in the country. Not a great combination.
Four member of the Yukon squad faced the best at the Canadian Open last week in Whistler, B.C.
“The national team was at this event,” said Yukon coach Steven Harlow. “These guys are really good. So we knew going into it it was going to be a pretty tough competition. Obviously the results didn’t pan out as much as we would have liked, but still, I’m pretty happy with how they did overall.”
The Yukon team competed in slopestyle in an open division.
Kyran Allen took in the best results with 41st in the field of 65 skiers. Skiing with a thumb injury, teammate Dylan Reed finished one spot back of Allen. “He couldn’t even grab his skis,” said Harlow. “He was just doing as much as he could down the hill.”
Yukon’s Niko Rodden took 46th and Etienne Geoffroy 58th.
Whistler was the first competition of the season for the Yukon team that has had so much success on the national stage in recent years. The team usually gets the season going with a railjam at home at Whitehorse’s Mount Sima, but it was cancelled this year. The team also hasn’t yet been able to set up its huge air bag – like those used by Hollywood stuntmen – to practice big jumps with.
“They’ve been lacking a lot in the training department,” said Harlow. “So coming into this we didn’t have incredibly high expectations, but I still think they did awesome for how little training they’ve done.”
“We still have a lot of competitions coming up, but this was a good one to start of on,” he added. “It was a high-level competition and really shows where they have to shoot for if they want to get to that national level. It’s eye-opening, but a great experience.”
Allen won a silver medal in big air for males 18-and-under at the Canadian Junior Freestyle Ski Nationals last April in Vernon, B.C. Reed won gold in big air and silver in slopestyle for males 20-and-under at the nationals.
Allen also claimed fourth in big air at the Canada Winter Games last February – a record result for Yukon at the Games in freestyle skiing.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com
Arctic Games basketball team wins Skagway tourney
Whitehorse hockey player piling in goals down south
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Further essays on economic theory
Principles of Surgical Practice
America faces the future
Echocardiography in Clinical Practice
The problematics of moral and legal theory
Customers.Com
Wave interaction observations of ionospheric modification in the D-region
The birth of the United States, 1763-1816.
Some recent developments in the statistical mechanics of magnetism
The guardians of time
personnel and practice of medicine in Tudor and Stuart England
Linguistics for clinicians
Optical Information Systems International, 1990
The sense organs
Canyon Ranch cooks
SAS procedures guide
Factors of retail food store patronage
The lawless
Software systems in engineering, 1995 presented at the Energy and Environmental Expo "95--the Energy-Sources Technology Conference and Exhibition, Houston, Texas, January 29-February 1, 1995
Published 1995 by American Society of Mechanical Engineers in New York, N.Y .
Engineering -- Software -- Congresses.,
Systems engineering -- Congresses.
Statement sponsored by the Petroleum Division, ASME ; edited by Daniel Cooke ... [et al.].
Series PD ;, vol. 67, PD (Series) ;, vol. 67.
Contributions Cooke, D., American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Petroleum Division., Energy-Sources Technology Conference and Exhibition (1995 : Houston, Tex.)
LC Classifications TA345 .S5979 1995
Pagination vi, 249 p. :
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The book presents hazard analysis theory, and includes software requirements and safety analysis fundamentals. One of the most interesting parts of the book is the detailed analysis provided in the appendices on a number of accidents, including accidents from the medical, aerospace, chemical, and nuclear by: The insights on team jelling and work environment have changed my thinking and teaching.” — Frederick P.
Brooks, Jr., Author of 'The Mythical Man-Month'. "When Microsoft started growing seriously in the s, everybody there had read The Mythical Man-Month, one of the classics of software by: Get this from a library.
Software systems in engineering, presented at the Energy and Environmental Expo 'the Energy-Sources Technology Conference and Exhibition, Houston, Texas, January February 1, [D Cooke; American Society of. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published inwith subsequent editions in and Its central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".
This idea is known as Brooks' law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of : Frederick Brooks. Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking principles to organize this body of knowledge.
The individual outcome of such efforts, an engineered system, can be defined as a combination of. The other answers have listed lots of useful books, however I would suggest that (in my opinion) there is no way that anyone can definitively answer Software systems in engineering question.
Why. Simply because that the domain of Systems Engineering is such a wide one that. System Requirements Engineering presents a balanced view of the issues, concepts, models, techniques and tools found in requirements engineering research and practice.
Requirements engineering is presented from business, behavioural and software engineering perspectives and a general framework is established at the outset. Inthe NASA Systems Engineering Handbook (NASA/SP) was initially published to bring the fundamental concepts and techniques of systems engineering to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) personnel in a way that recognized the Cited by: 1.
This new work from Watts Humphrey, author of 1995 book influential book, Managing the Software Process, broadens his orderly view of software process management, and lays the foundation for a disciplined approach to software engineering.
In his earlier book, the author developed concrete methods for managing software development and maintenance. Model-driven engineering (MDE) is an approach to software engineering that adopts models as the central artefact.
Although the approach is promising in addressing major issues in software. ( views) The Grand Unified Theory of Software Engineering by Mathias Ekstedt - Industrial Info Systems, This book is the result of innumerable longwinded, oftentimes unnecessarily complicated, discussions between the authors on the nature of software engineering, machines, minds, design, software, engineering, organizations and more.
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Innovations in Software Engineering for Defense Systems by Oversight Committee Workshop on Statistical Methods in Software Engineering for Defense Systems and J. Poore (Trade Paper) at the best online prices at. Software Development with C++: Maximizing Reuse with Object Technology is about software development and object-oriented technology (OT), with applications implemented in C++.
The basis for any software development project of complex systems is the process, rather than an individual method, which simply supports the overall process.
Software Engineering for Secure Systems: Industrial and Research Perspectives presents the most recent and innovative lines of research and industrial practice related to secure software engineering.
The book provides coverage of recent advances in the area of secure software engineering that address the various stages of the development. Software and Systems Engineering Associates (S2EA) Contact. About. Mar ; Risk management in software projects. Article. Book. Jan ; A Post-Mortem Analysis of the Software.
Reviews and Testimonials. We believe that the integrative and systemic approach - used in this book with its interdisciplinary and multi-methodological research chapters - will provide an integrated source of high-quality material with rigor and relevance on research approaches for researchers in the highly interrelated disciplines of Software Systems Engineering and Information.
An introduction to a powerful and flexible network modeling tool for developing and understanding complex systems, with many examples from a range of industries. Design structure matrix (DSM) is a straightforward and flexible modeling technique that can be used for designing, developing, and managing complex systems.
DSM offers network modeling tools that represent the elements of a. DrC.R. Bayliss CEng FIET, B.J. Hardy CEng FIET, in Transmission and Distribution Electrical Engineering (Fourth Edition), Software Requirements are Often Unclear. Software systems usually perform a very large number of diverse functions which can interact with each other in complex and subtle ways.
It is very difficult for a customer to describe these functions precisely and. engineering, identifying core agility-enabling concepts in the software-development domain-specific practice known as Scrum, reviewing an agile hardware/software satellite-development systems-engineering case for its source of agility, and then suggesting the development of an agile systems-engineering life cycle model as a natural next step.
Founded in in San Jose's Silicon Valley, California, Software Systems Quality Consulting is uniquely positioned to help software and hardware developers, manufacturers, and service providers in six related areas: Software Process Improvement.
Software Quality Assurance and. ETAPS was the fourth instance of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software. ETAPS is an annual federated conference that was established in by combining a number of existing and new conferences.
For courses in computer science and software engineering. The Fundamental Practice of Software Engineering. Software Engineering introduces readers to the overwhelmingly important subject of software programming and the past few years, computer systems have come to dominate not just our technological growth, but the foundations of our world’s major industries/5(68).
Natural language understanding relies on the specification readers and writers using the same words for the same concept. This leads to misunderstandings because of the ambiguity of natural language. Jackson (Jackson, ) gives an excellent example of this.
Software Engineering This book is an introduction to the art of software engineering. It is intended as a textbook for an undergraduate level course. Software engineering is about teams. The problems to solve are so complex or large, that a single developer cannot solve them anymore.
Software engineering is also about Size: 2MB. The Software Systems Engineering (SSE) program is designed to give students the knowledge to analyze, design, and develop software operating on many types of computers and microprocessors.
Graduate with: Bachelor of Applied Science () in Software Systems Engineering. MITRE Systems Engineering Guide iii Acknowledgments The MITRE Systems Engineering Guide (SEG) was first launched in March as an internal MITRE resource.
In latea government-only version was rolled out in response to many requests from MITRE staff to use it as a shared resource with their customers. In June Systems Engineering This text begins with a one-chapter section describing systems engineering.
There are many definitions of systems engineering, so I add several of my own hoping to clarify rather than confuse. My definitions concentrate on what a systems engineer does and how the systems engineer relates to other Size: 3MB.
NASA/SP Rev1 Systems Engineering Handbook National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA Headquarters Washington, D.C. December Drawing on research results from several theses and refereed papers, this book's presentation, terminology and graphical notation have been integrated and illustrated with many figures.
Non-Functional Requirements in Software Engineering is an excellent resource for software engineering practitioners, researchers and students. An IT software engineer designs and creates engineering specifications for building software programs, and should have broad information systems experience.
Software engineers typically work with QA and hardware engineers to develop testing plans. Software engineering was developed primarily from within the computer science community, and its use is essential for large software development projects and for high-assurance software systems such as those for aircraft control systems, nuclear power plants, and medical devices (e.g., pacemakers).
Get in Contact Contact your publishing editor directly with your proposals and questions.; Be(come) an Author All you need to know: Manuscript guidelines, tools, templates, and more ; Meet us at Conferences Stop by our booth, meet our editors and get acquainted with our multiformat publishing model.; Stay Informed Sign up for SpringerAlerts and stay up to date on latest research in our books.
Systems Engineering: Thoughts from a leading analyst. A very brief introduction to the idea of systems engineering.
Professor Brian Collins on Systems Engineering. A stimulating lecture by a leader in this area who addresses some key issues in systems engineering.
Delivered to a systems engineering conference so not an introductory lecture. Michael Jackson: Software Requirements & Specifications. Relax, Laugh, Learn. Peter Checkland: Soft Systems Methodology in action. Peter Checkland: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice.
The books that started the Soft Systems movement. Herbert Simon: Sciences of the Artificial The intellectual roots of Systems Engineering.
Audience: Although it is intended primarily as a reference book for civil, mining and petroleum engineers who are interested in cavity expansion methods, the solutions presented in the book will also be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of applied mechanics and mechanical engineering.
Contents: Foreword (by J.K. Mitchell). Software Engineering: Architecture-driven Software Development is the first comprehensive guide to the underlying skills embodied in the IEEE's Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) standard.
Standards expert Richard Schmidt explains the traditional software engineering practices recognized for developing projects for government or corporate systems.
Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) is the quantitative study of the operational behavior of software-based systems with respect to user requirements concerning reliability. A proliferation of software reliability models have emerged as people try to understand the characteristics of how and why software fails, and try to quantify software.
B.S. Engineering Psychology, Tufts University, M.S. Industrial & Systems Engineering, Ohio State University, Ph.D. Industrial & Systems Engineering, Ohio State University, "I help design and evaluate systems (products, procedures and software) so that they are easier, faster, and safer to use.".
Book Description. Software Engineering for Science provides an in-depth collection of peer-reviewed chapters that describe experiences with applying software engineering practices to the development of scientific provides a better understanding of how software engineering is and should be practiced, and which software engineering practices are effective for scientific software.
12 Most Influential Books Every Software Engineer Needs to Read This is a question that I get a lot, especially from co-workers or friends that are just beginning their journey as .Jürgen Münch is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki.
His research in software and systems engineering centers on the measurement and quantitative analysis of software processes and systems, on software process modeling and management, cloud-based software engineering, global software development, and empirical software engineering.Engineering Systems combines engineering with perspectives from management, economics, and the social science in order to address the design and development of the complex, large-scale, sociotechnical systems that are so important in all aspects of modern society.
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