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COVID-19 Stimulus, Round Two: What Should You Know?
After months of intense debate, the House and Senate voted to pass a second COVID-19 economic stimulus bill and the President has signed it into law.1 At a total cost of $900 billion, this 5,600-page bill[1] contains everything from individual payments to taxpayers[2] through increased broadband access[3], all the way through funding for vaccine distribution.[4]
But what other changes can the American people and domestic businesses expect to see from this bill in 2021 and beyond?
What’s in the Stimulus Bill for Individuals?
Households earning under $75,000 per year (for single filers) or $150,000 (for married couples filing jointly) will receive a $600 direct payment for each household member.2 This means that a married couple with two children could receive a total of $2,400 in stimulus payments as long as their adjusted gross income is below this threshold.
For singles earning between $75,000 and $99,000 (and married couples earning between $150,000 and $198,000), these benefits will be reduced by $5 for every $100 over the income limit.3
Those who are unemployed during the pandemic can receive an additional $300 per week in unemployment benefits from January through the middle of March. The enhanced unemployment benefits contained in the first COVID-19 stimulus bill (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA benefits) were set to expire on December 31, 2020.4
Around $25 billion of the COVID-19 stimulus bill has been earmarked for rental assistance, and the bill also extends the nationwide eviction moratorium until January 31, 2021.[5]
What’s in the Stimulus Bill for Businesses?
Like the first COVID-19 stimulus bill, this bill sets aside a significant sum (around $284 billion) for PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans. Eligible businesses include local newspapers, nonprofits, television and radio stations, live venues, independent movie theaters, and other cultural institutions that were largely excluded from the first stimulus bill.[6]
Another $10 billion in stimulus funding has been set aside to help childcare providers safely reopen their businesses.[7]
What Else Will Americans See from This Stimulus?
Other provisions of the stimulus bill might not be getting as much attention as PPP loans, direct payments, or unemployment assistance, but will likely play a key role in keeping the nation’s pandemic response on track.
Around $68 billion of stimulus funding will be used to expand COVID-19 testing and assist states with vaccine distribution. Lawmakers hope to make the vaccine available to all Americans at no cost.[8]
The “Emergency Broadband Benefit” will increase access to broadband internet, particularly important for children engaged in e-learning and adults working remotely.[9]
Another $45 billion has been set aside for transportation aid, divided among mass transit agencies, Amtrak, highway departments, and airlines.[10]
A total of $82 billion in funding will go to schools (including private K-12 schools) and universities to help them reopen.[11]
Around $13 billion in funding will go toward agriculture, providing assistance for farmers and beef, dairy, and poultry producers.[12]
Finally, this bill includes a provision that will serve as a welcome benefit to anyone who has ever received an unexpected medical bill. This provision, purporting to end “surprise medical billing,” will require that patients receive a true cost estimate at least three days before any scheduled procedure. This measure should provide more transparency and help encourage those who are ill to seek treatment without having to worry about the potential cost.5
All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.
LPL Tracking # 1-05093315
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-12-27/trump-signs-coronavirus-relief-stimulus-checks-into-law
[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-12-21/congress-passes-900-billion-coronavirus-stimulus-after-a-months-long-impasse
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/22/internet-rebate-coronavirus-stimulus/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/us/politics/second-stimulus-whats-included.html
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/21/stimulus-deal-extends-national-eviction-ban-through-january.html
[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2020/12/20/congress-reaches-an-agreement-on-a-relief-package-including-new-stimulus-checks/?sh=55095271c5e6
[7] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/21/covid-relief-child-care-10-billion-dollars.html
[8] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/21/covid-relief-bill-includes-about-8-billion-for-vaccine-distribution.html
[9] https://www.axios.com/broadband-access-covid-relief-bill-7-billion-5be48439-c1a4-4927-a0c4-515312a1d281.html
[10] https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/article/21164761/bipartisan-908-billion-emergency-relief-framework-includes-funding-for-transportation
[11] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/21/948744901/here-is-whats-in-congress-covid-19-relief-package
[12] https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/coronavirus-package-allots-13-billion-for-crop-and-livestock-producers
← Solid Holiday Shopping Season
Consolidated Appropriations Act Provides Relief to Individuals and Businesses →
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February 6th - Saturday; 7:30pm
Mill Town Music Hall - Bremen
With his rich, deep voice and distinctive style, MCA Nashville recording artist Josh Turner is one of country music's most recognizable hit-makers. From his 2003 Platinum-selling debut Long Black Train to his 2017 Billboard No. 1 release, Deep South, Turner has scored multiple GRAMMY(R), CMA and ACM Awards nominations and received siX Inspirational Country Music Awards.
As one of the youngest members inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, Turner has sold more than 8 million units, topped more than 1.5 billion in global streaming and populated radio with such memorable hits as "Hometown Girl," "Would You Go With Me," "Your Man," "Time Is Love," "Why Don't We Just Dance" and "Long Black Train."
Additional Information and Tickets Here
Jo Dee Messina
February 27th - Saturday; 7:30pm
Jo Dee Messina is a seasoned veteran in the music industry, always evolving and reintroducing herself and her sound as she gains new experiences in life. Jumpstarting her career, Jo Dee's breakout song, "Heads Carolina, Tails California," made her a household name. Following the success of her debut, Jo Dee posted nine No. 1 hits, sixteen Top 40 songs, sold over five million albums worldwide, and was honored by the ACM Awards, CMA Awards, and GRAMMY Awards.
As Jo Dee's resume grew, she proved to be a trendsetter and history-maker, becoming the first female in country music history to celebrate three consecutive multi-week, chart-topping songs.
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What is a Consulting Engineer?
A consulting engineer provides expertise and leadership in the planning, design, modification, or rehabilitation of public and private infrastructure. Consulting engineers are registered professional who practice in many disciplines, including civil, structural, sanitary, environmental, mechanical, electrical, geotechnical, chemical, industrial and agricultural engineering.
Consulting engineers are involved in designing virtually every construction and renovation project in the nation, from bridges and prisons to water purification plants and energy-efficient generation and distribution systems. They design ventilation and electrical systems for new hospitals, figure out how to build tunnels through mountains without disturbing the local wildlife, and renovate wastewater treatment systems for bustling cities. And they solve environmental and ecological problems.
As a catalyst in the problem-solving process, consulting engineers lead teams of multi-disciplined professionals on complex technical projects. They also serve as expert advisors to local, state and federal government agencies, and to private businesses and industries. Consulting engineers serve these public and private clients from preliminary survey and analysis through final design and construction.
Why is Consulting Engineering Important?
The physical framework that supports our society and makes our lives safer, cleaner and more comfortable is the substance of the consulting engineering profession.
The safety of a bridge support beam, the efficiency of a heating system, the purity of a glass of water, the convenience of an interstate highway& these are made possible by the efforts of engineers.
The range of engineering services has grown significantly in the past ten years. Hazardous waste clean-up technology and computer-assisted drafting and design (CADD), for instance, are new technologies that boost consulting engineers problem solving capabilities.
Consulting engineers are also artists, in that they mold utilitarian structures and systems into the backdrop of the environment. Graceful bridges arch over deep ravines. Glistening glass buildings rise up out of urban landscapes. Powerful rushing water plunges hundreds of feet to the base of a dam. And smooth ribbons of road wind through quiet countrysides.
What are ACEC/L and ACEC?
The American Council of Engineering Companies of Louisiana (ACEC/L) is a voluntary, non-profit professional association exclusively serving engineers in private practice. ACEC/L was founded in late 1950 to improve and promote the practice of consulting engineering in Louisiana.
The mission of ACEC/L is to facilitate the success of member engineering companies.
Today ACEC/L represents more than 150 firms and approximately 3500 employees in the State of Louisiana.
ACEC/L has broadened its horizons by establishing an AFFILIATE MEMBER category, which is open to any non-engineer company allied to the engineering field or interested in supporting and participating in chapter activities and programs. Allied, non-engineering companies would include vendors and manufacturing representatives, CPAs, stand-alone architect firms, surveying firms, contractors, computer software, hardware and office equipment reps. Affiliate Members are afforded opportunities to sponsor various events at Annual Meetings, present seminars and participate in all meeting discussions. Affiliate Member dues is a paltry $500/year. If you are interested in more information, contact the ACEC/L Office at (225) 927-7704.
Recent activities of ACEC/L include representing consulting engineers with various State agencies, developing partnering agreements with other organizations, lobbying in the State Legislature, representing the consulting engineering profession on issues throughout the State and participation in all of the activities of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC).
ACEC is a national federation of 51 state and regional member organizations such as ACEC/L. The organization represents more than 5800 independent engineering firms throughout the country with nearly 250,000 employees.
Consulting Engineers are Entrepreneurs
Consulting engineering is a profession similar in many respects to those in law, medicine, and financial management.
Men and women who study engineering in college, then develop expertise in a particular field of engineering, may feel that their experience and talents warrant an independent venture. They may want to establish their own, or join another, entrepreneurial firm. Practicing engineering in such independent businesses can provide a particularly challenging and creative career path for these skilled professionals. Not only must they be good engineers to succeed; they also must be proficient business managers. They need financial, human resources and marketing skills, for example.
Consulting engineering firms may range in size from a sole proprietor to a multi-national firm with hundreds of engineers, architects, scientists and technicians in several regional offices. The firm may contract solely with ""owners"" of public and private facilities, or may partner with other engineering firms, architects and constructors. The consulting engineer may design an entire project, or be responsible for one element of larger project.
How to Select a Consulting Engineering Firm
Quality is a basic tenet of the consulting engineering profession, since to be competitive in the marketplace, and to be successful, a consulting firm must be the best in their field. Consulting firms build their reputations on being experts in specific disciplines of engineering; thus it makes sense that they should be selected primarily based on this expertise.
The cost of engineering services also is important, but should be a secondary consideration behind qualifications. Engineering design costs typically represent less than one percent of the total life-cycle cost of an average project. Yet an innovative, quality design can have an enormous impact on reducing construction, operation and maintenance expenses, which comprise the other 99 percent.
Hiring consulting engineering firms on an as-needed basis allows large public and private sector clients to keep their costs down by not having to support dozens of permanent in-house design professionals. Clients have the flexibility of hiring only those experts in specific specialties for whatever time they are needed. Consulting engineers give small public and private entities opportunities to develop projects which would otherwise be impossible with their own limited staffs and budgets.
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MICOV, VLADIMIR
AX Armani Exchange Olimpia Milan 5 Forward
Height: 2.01 Born: 16 April, 1985 Nationality: Serbia
Totals 29 28 798:06 316 68/133 47/106 39/50 5 70 75 63 16 42 3 7 38 75 326
Averages 29 28 27:31 10.9 51.1% 44.3% 78% 0.2 2.4 2.6 2.2 0.6 1.4 0.1 0.2 1.3 2.6 11.2
1 * at CSKA Moscow 38:25 16 3/6 2/4 4/4 1 4 5 3 2 2 2 5 22
2 * vs Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul 34:07 15 3/7 2/5 3/4 1 3 4 1 1 1 2 2 12
3 * at Real Madrid 33:50 15 2/6 3/3 2/2 5 5 2 1 4 1 2 3 15
4 * vs FC Barcelona Lassa 31:14 6 1/7 1/2 1/2 1 4 5 1 3 2 5 4
5 * at Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv 29:41 8 1/5 2/4 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 4
6 * vs Zalgiris Kaunas 26:09 7 1/2 1/3 2/2 1 1 2 2 5 10
7 * at Valencia Basket 31:33 5 1/4 1/4 3 3 2 1 1 4
8 * vs Brose Bamberg 11:51 0/1 0/2 -3
9 * vs Olympiacos Piraeus 32:45 15 5/7 1/2 2/2 3 3 5 1 2 2 19
10 * at Anadolu Efes Istanbul 31:25 15 3/5 2/6 3/4 3 3 5 2 2 5 17
11 * vs Khimki Moscow Region 25:37 7 2/2 1/5 2 2 3 2 1 1 1 9
12 * at Panathinaikos Superfoods Athens 27:01 13 4/7 0/3 5/5 1 1 2 1 2 4 11
13 * vs KIROLBET Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz 24:13 12 1/2 2/3 4/6 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 5 13
14 at Unicaja Malaga 23:04 9 3/6 1/3 3 3 1 1 1 8
15 * vs Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade 22:49 16 2/4 3/3 3/4 3 2 3 17
16 * at Olympiacos Piraeus 26:54 11 4/6 1/3 4 4 2 2 2 13
17 * vs CSKA Moscow 25:23 9 2/7 1/2 2/2 1 1 5 1 2 3 9
18 * vs Unicaja Malaga 21:40 16 3/5 2/2 4/4 1 1 1 2 16
19 * at KIROLBET Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz 24:25 9 0/2 3/6 0/1 1 5 6 2 1 2 8
20 * vs Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv 22:10 9 3/4 1/2 2 2 1 4 1 7
21 * at FC Barcelona Lassa 25:43 11 4/5 1/4 1 1 4 1 1 2 3 13
22 * at Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade 23:28 11 3/4 1/3 2/4 1 1 1 2 1 4 9
23 * at Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul 30:41 19 6/6 2/6 1/2 2 2 4 2 2 2 3 21
24 * vs Anadolu Efes Istanbul 20:00 3 0/2 1/1 2 2 2 1
25 * at Khimki Moscow Region 34:03 8 1/2 2/5 1 7 8 1 1 2 12
26 * vs Real Madrid 28:59 10 2/4 2/5 1 1 2 2 1 1 3 1 6
27 * at Zalgiris Kaunas 27:20 0/3 0/4 1 1 4 2 1 1 1 4 1
28 * vs Valencia Basket 32:49 27 3/5 7/9 0/1 5 5 4 1 2 1 1 4 34
29 * at Brose Bamberg 30:47 14 5/7 1/2 1/1 2 2 1 1 1 2 3 15
29 Totals 798:06 316 68/133 47/106 39/50 5 70 75 63 16 42 3 7 38 75 326
Average 27:31 10.9 51.1% 44.3% 78% 0.2 2.4 2.6 2.2 0.6 1.4 0.1 0.2 1.3 2.6 11.2
#5 in Minutes Played (798:06)
#18 in 3-pointers made (47)
#24 in 3-pointers attempted (106)
#24 in Points (316)
#25 in 3-point % (44.3%)
Index rating 34 AX Armani Exchange Milan vs. Valencia Basket 3/22/2018
Points 27 AX Armani Exchange Milan vs. Valencia Basket 3/22/2018
Offensive rebounds 4 FC Barcelona vs. Pallacanestro Cantu 1/19/2012
Defensive rebounds 7 Valencia Basket vs. AX Armani Exchange Milan 3/5/2020
Total rebounds 9 FC Barcelona vs. Pallacanestro Cantu 1/19/2012
Assists 9 Pallacanestro Cantu vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv 2/2/2012
Steals 4 Olympiacos Piraeus vs. Galatasaray Istanbul 3/17/2017
Blocks 2 Panathinaikos Athens vs. AX Armani Exchange Milan 12/21/2018
Minutes 39 Gran Canaria vs. AX Armani Exchange Milan 2/1/2019
Grew up with Beopetrol Belgrade (Serbia) juniors.
Signed for the 2002-03 season by Nova Pazova, in the Serbian minors.
Signed for the 2003-04 season by OKK Belgrade.
Signed for the 2004-05 season, signed by Lavovi 063 Belgrade.
Signed for the 2005-06 season by BC Buducnost Belgrade.
Played there till March'07.
Signed for the remainder of the 2006-07 season by BC Partizan Belgrade.
Back to BC Buducnost Podgorica for the 2007-08 season.
Moved to Greece signed by Panionios BC Athens for the remainder of the season.
Moved to Spain for the 2009-10 season, signed by Baskonia Vitoria.
On December '09 moved to Italy, signed by Pallacanestro Cantù.
Moved to Russia for the 2012-13 season, signed by CSKA Moscow.
Moved to Turkey for the 2014-15 season, signed by Galatasaray Istanbul.
Moved to Italy for the 2017-18 season, signed by Olimpia Milano.
Won the 2016 EuroCup with Galatasaray Istanbul.
Named to the 2015-16 All-EuroCup First Team.
Won the 2006-07 Serbian National Championship with BC Partizan Belgrade.
Won the 2006-07, 2007-08 Montenegrin National Championship with BC Buducnost.
Won the 2012-13 Russian National Championship with CSKA Moscow.
Won the 2017-18 Italian National Championship with Olimpia Milan.
Won the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Montenegrin National Cup with BC Buducnost Podgorica.
Won the 2013 and 2014 VTB League with CSKA Moscow.
Won the 2017, 2018 and 2020 Italian Super Cup with Olimpia Milan.
Played the 2008 Adriatic League All Star Game.
Has been member of the Yugoslav U-16 National Team.
Has been member of the Serbia & Montenegro U-20 National Team.
Won the bronze medal at the 2005 European U-20 Championship.
2009-10 Caja Laboral 7 29 4.1 9/13 69.2 2/4 50 5/11 45.5 20 1 6 0
2011-12 Bennet Cantu 14 145 10.4 38/92 41.3 13/33 39.4 30/35 85.7 58 15 45 5
2012-13 CSKA Moscow 30 228 7.6 50/111 45 37/88 42 17/28 60.7 80 18 51 7
2013-14 CSKA Moscow 31 240 7.7 44/99 44.4 39/80 48.8 35/45 77.8 89 15 39 6
2014-15 Galatasaray Liv Hospital Istanbul 20 198 9.9 49/111 44.1 19/61 31.1 43/51 84.3 60 13 46 2
2016-17 Galatasaray Odeabank Istanbul 29 326 11.2 62/151 41.1 54/125 43.2 40/52 76.9 104 24 69 2
2017-18 AX Armani Exchange Olimpia Milan 29 316 10.9 68/133 51.1 47/106 44.3 39/50 78 75 16 63 3
2019-20 AX Armani Exchange Milan 26 314 12.1 70/138 50.7 43/105 41 45/56 80.4 85 17 57 3
2020-21 AX Armani Exchange Milan 10 67 6.7 22/44 50 7/21 33.3 2/4 50 18 6 16 0
Totals 226 2281 10.1 505/1077 46.9 317/765 41.4 320/413 77.5 686 159 468 32
Averages 226 2281 10.1 505/1077 46.9 317/765 41.4 320/413 77.5 3 0.7 2.1 0.1
2007-08 Buducnost 12 142 11.8 45/74 60.8 7/24 29.2 31/41 75.6 57 14 24 1
2008-09 Buducnost 6 61 10.2 13/30 43.3 6/13 46.2 17/24 70.8 18 4 14 2
2010-11 Bennet Cantu 6 62 10.3 17/34 50 6/12 50 10/18 55.6 26 9 18 2
2015-16 Galatasaray Odeabank Istanbul 24 310 12.9 65/119 54.6 46/130 35.4 42/48 87.5 88 24 67 8
Totals 48 575 12 140/257 54.5 65/179 36.3 100/131 76.3 189 51 123 13
Averages 48 575 12 140/257 54.5 65/179 36.3 100/131 76.3 3.9 1.1 2.6 0.3
2003/04 OKK 22 12 0.5 2/7 28.6 2/5 40 2/4 50 8 5 5 0
2004/05 Lavovi 063 23 249 10.8 72/97 74.2 16/43 37.2 57/78 73.1 60 25 28 2
2005/06 Buducnost 35 348 9.9 98/156 62.8 20/60 33.3 92/159 57.9 178 50 57 5
2006/07 Buducnost 26 272 10.5 80/145 55.2 14/40 35 70/105 66.7 129 56 47 2
Partizan 19 108 5.7 28/42 66.7 7/15 46.7 31/39 79.5 35 16 14 1
2007/08 Buducnost 29 360 12.4 115/205 56.1 16/62 25.8 82/119 68.9 120 38 87 5
2008/09 Buducnost 26 356 13.7 106/186 57 17/60 28.3 93/126 73.8 108 55 70 4
Panionios 6 54 9 13/27 48.1 7/10 70 7/12 58.3 25 4 7 1
2009/10 Caja Laboral 13 34 2.6 11/21 52.4 2/11 18.2 6/8 75 17 8 7 0
Cantu 24 282 11.8 71/143 49.7 23/56 41.1 71/98 72.4 97 47 63 3
2010/11 Cantu 42 427 10.2 122/226 54.0 33/91 36.3 84/121 69.4 179 57 93 4
2011/12 Cantu 25 255 10.2 60/134 44.8 26/68 41.2 51/62 82.3 93 17 60 3
2012/13 CSKA Moscow-PBL 14 108 7.7 25/47 53.2 13/34 38.2 19/25 76.0 49 5 14 3
CSKA Moscow-VTB 31 268 8.6 55/114 48.2 37/97 38.1 47/70 67.1 96 19 44 3
2013/14 CSKA Moscow 16 161 10.1 33/64 51.6 28/65 43.1 11/14 78.6 44 11 29 2
2014/15 Galatasaray 28 316 11.3 74/139 53.2 36/93 38.7 60/70 85.7 94 32 65 6
2015/16 Galatasaray 36 516 14.3 93/168 55.4 85/152 55.9 75/89 84.3 112 25 79 7
2016/17 Galatasaray 30 348 11.6 78/156 50.0 48/117 41.0 48/62 77.4 61 31 79 2
2017/18 AX Armani Exchange 39 454 11.6 100/184 54.3 64/178 36.0 62/75 82.7 136 34 96 1
2018/19 AX Armani Exchange 32 309 9.7 74/151 49.0 43/115 37.4 32/39 82.1 86 26 64 4
2019/20 AX Armani Exchange 17 206 12.1 49/81 48.1 28/68 41.2 44/57 77.2 38 18 33 0
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Home » Balkrishna Doshi Wins 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize
Balkrishna Doshi Wins 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize
Balkrishna Doshi, 2018 Pritzker Prize Laureate
Photo courtesy VSF
Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (Ahmedabad, 1966-2012)
Sangath, Doshi’s Architecture Studio, Ahmedabad (Ahmedabad, 1980)
Premabhai Hall (Ahmedabad, 1976)
Life Insurance Corporation Housing or “Bima Nagar” (Ahmedabad, 1973)
Amdavad ni Gufa (Ahmedabad, 1995)
Doshi designed this gallery to house the work of Indian artist Maqbool Fida Husain.
Miriam Sitz
KEYWORDS Balkrishna Doshi / India / Pritzker Prize
Balkrishna Doshi was sitting his in his garden in Ahmedabad—the largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat—chatting with his wife and a friend when he received a phone call from Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She asked him if he was still able to travel. “When you get old, people wonder about what you can do and what you cannot do,” explained the 90-year-old architect. “I told her yes, I’m still travelling, and then she mentioned to me this award.” Doshi is the 45th winner of the profession’s highest international honor, and the first from India. “I was very thrilled and extremely surprised,” he told RECORD by phone.
An architect, urban planner, and educator for some 70 years, Doshi was born in 1927, in Pune, India. His extended Hindu family has been connected to the furniture industry for two generations, and from a young age, Doshi proved adept at art and spatial reasoning.
Balkrishna Doshi in 2013, photo © DrashtiUnit
His academic career in architecture began in 1947—the year India gained its independence—at the prestigious Sir J.J. College of Architecture in what was then called Bombay (now Mumbai). As a young man he traveled to study in London, then went to Paris where he apprenticed under his “guru,” Le Corbusier, despite not speaking French. Returning to India in 1954, he oversaw work on the great architect’s buildings in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. Doshi married Kamala Parikh in 1955 and founded his own practice, Vastushilpa, in 1956; he then received a Graham Foundation fellowship in 1958 and traveled to the U.S. where he met Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. They became friends, and Doshi began working with Kahn in 1962 on the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.
Doshi’s collaborations with Le Corbusier and Kahn, masters of Modernism, continued for decades. He transplanted Modernist ideas to India, expertly merging them with the context and customs of his home country—the setting for his entire body of work. “I am a part of this culture, and architecture is a holistic profession,” he said. “As an architect, if I’m not able to do something for the people, to provide them with what they need, then I think I’m leaving something undone.”
Doshi’s work in low- and middle-incoming housing demonstrates his dedication to this belief. His designs for projects such as the ATIRA Low-Cost Housing in Ahmedabad (1958), the Vidhyadhar Nagar master plan outside of Jaipur (1984), and the Aranya Low-Cost Housing in Indore (1989) take into account factors like as the angle of the sun, the direction of the prevailing winds, and the patterns and order of existing settlements when orienting streets and demarcating plots. As the Pritzker jury citation put it, “The entire planning of the community, the scale, the creation of public, semi-public and private spaces are a testament to his understanding of how cities work and the importance of the urban design.”
Courtesy of The Hyatt Foundation/The Pritzker Architecture Prize
A teacher as much as a practitioner, Doshi’s first experience with the American educational system came during his years as a Graham fellow (1958-59), when he lectured at Washington University in St. Louis. (He later taught at the University of Pennsylvania, as well.) “What I learned was that we need to be rooted, but also open-minded; we must be global and local in order to understand how our culture has been sustained over centuries,” he said. “It made me want to take a fresh look at architecture in India, and the only way to do that was to start a new school for new thought.”
He founded the School of Architecture in Ahmedabad in 1962 and served as its first director. The institution and its campus, both shaped by Doshi, continued to expand, ultimately becoming the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology or CEPT University, as it’s called today. (RMA Architects’ Lilavati Lalbhai Library, which RECORD published in February—the school’s first building not designed by the newest Pritzker Laureate—opened in October 2017; because of Doshi’s legacy, CEPT alum and RMA founder Rahul Mehrotra called the commission “intimidating, to say the least.”)
Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (Ahmedabad, 1966-2012), photo courtesy VSF
While the astounding breadth of Doshi’s work spans civic buildings, educational and cultural institutions, and private residences, all of his projects reflect a profound understanding of their context, a thoughtful response to the human condition, and an innate commitment to sustainability. His own Ahmedabad studio, called Sangath, exemplifies these characteristics. Communal areas like a garden and outdoor amphitheater point to the architect’s commitment to collaboration and interaction, while vaulted roofs, sunken spaces, and grassy landscaping allay the extreme heat while deferring to the site’s natural characteristics. As the Pritzker jury citation noted, “Doshi has created an equilibrium and peace among all the components—material and immaterial—which result in a whole that is much more than the sum of the parts.” Other notable works include cultural spaces such as Tagore Memorial Hall (Ahmedabad, 1967), the Institute of Indology (Ahmedabad, 1962), and Premabhai Hall (Ahmedabad, 1976); as well as the Life Insurance Corporation Housing or “Bima Nagar” (Ahmedabad, 1973) and the private residence Kamala House (Ahmedabad, 1963), among many others
Sangath (Ahmedabad, 1980) photo courtesy VSF
Doshi is still active in his firm, now renamed Vastushilpa Partners, which boasts 5 partners and some 60 employees. The firm’s work is as diverse as that of their founder; of their many projects, said Doshi, “I work on the buildings I enjoy.” But the unifying theme remains a commitment to sustainability and connection to context—or, as Doshi puts it: “These buildings talk about today and tomorrow.”
The newest Pritzker winner is no stranger to the prize: He served as a juror from 2005 to 2007, when Thom Mayne, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, and Richard Rogers received the honor.
Having been both a juror and now a laureate, he says: “I think it’s better to be on this side, no?”
The 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize will be conferred on Balkrishna Doshi at a ceremony at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto in May.
Recent Articles by Miriam Sitz
Pascale Sablan Wins 2021 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award
Interview with Incoming NOMA President Jason Pugh
Billings Remain Stalled in October 2020 While Inquiries and Contracts Grow
Miriam Sitz was a staff writer and editor for Architectural Record from 2015 to 2020, during which time she served as the web editor, then senior news & web editor. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Chicago's Wrightwood 659 to Host Balkrishna Doshi Exhibition
2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize Goes to Arata Isozaki
Watch Doshi's Pritzker Prize Lecture
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Home » BIP Computer Building
BIP Computer Building
Alberto Mozó designed an ecofriendly building for BIP Computers that would be easy to erect and easy to take apart.
Clifford A. Pearson and Jeannette Plaut
KEYWORDS Chile
Nothing lasts forever, but we usually expect buildings to stick around long enough to become familiar parts of a neighborhood or district. When Alberto Mozó designed a new retail and office building for BIP Computers in Santiago, Chile, however, he knew it might not remain for long. The modest-size, three-story structure sits on a site zoned for a 12-story building, so the economic pressure to erect something bigger began as soon as it opened in 2007. But instead of being discouraged, Mozó took the notion of uncertainty and made it an essential element in his design.
First, he inserted the 17,225-square-foot building between a pair of existing houses on the site, creating the sense that the new structure had merely been slid into place and could just as easily be removed. He retained 80 percent of the two houses, then renovated them for use as computer-assembly space, storage, and customer service. “We wanted to rescue the existing structures as much as possible,” says Nicolás Moens, the owner of BIP Computers, “because they were seen by the community as old country houses in the middle of the city.” While the houses date from 1939 and have tile roofs, Mozó used a very different design vocabulary for his BIP Building to set it apart in terms of time and materiality. Rather than firmly rooting the new building in its context, the architect set it on a concrete podium that separates it from the land and gives it the sense of floating 11⁄2 feet above grade.
He used a single size of laminated pine timbers as the essential element in the building’s structural system, bolting them together for ease of construction and—just as important—ease of dismantling. He selected the size—31⁄2 by 131⁄2 inches—because it reduces the amount of wood waste during cutting and was available from a wood-company catalog. The standardized component—which he used for all of the building’s pillars and beams, as well as a dramatic, curving stair—also provides a great deal of flexibility for reassembling the building on a different site, allowing the structure to take different forms and serve different functions in the future. The design embodies a concept that Mozó calls “transivity,” by which he means the ability to change over time.
The project’s standardized and simplified construction allowed unskilled workers to do much of the labor and to proceed quickly. According to the architect, the building’s two long facades were assembled on-site, then tilted in place in just one day.
“I always make an effort to understand a material’s proper dimensions when I design a building, so I can avoid bluntings or leftovers,” explains Mozó. “The client pays for the material, but that shouldn’t include waste.” Instead of fitting the materials to the design of the building, he worked the other way around on this project. “Material efficiency was key in conceiving the module of the building itself,” states Mozó. “Developing a project that would be friendly to the environment was important to the client,” he says. Because the client emphasized the need to be environmentally responsible, Mozó sourced the wood from renewable forests in Chile. For about half of the curtain wall, the architect used an innovative type of laminated glass that has a middle layer of napa—a fiber used in bedcovers and jackets. The napa makes the glass a translucent white, reducing heat and glare at workstations inside and providing some privacy where needed.
To maximize flexibility, Mozó eliminated all interior partitions, leaving only the structure’s crisscrossing columns to imply a certain spatial segmentation. Twenty-inch-square, precast-concrete pavers create a neutral walking surface for all three floors. The concrete provides thermal mass to slow changes in temperature and reduce the energy needed to heat and cool the interiors. BIP uses the ground floor as a store, the third floor as offices, and the second floor as space for expanding either the store or administrative areas. Right now, the second floor serves as a gallery for emerging artists.
Now in his mid-40s and running a five-person studio in Santiago, Mozó is developing an international reputation as an architect whose command of materials and innovative construction complements a strong commitment to sustainable design.
Recent Articles by Clifford Pearson
Moynihan Train Hall Expands New York’s Penn Station
Close Up: Nakanoshima Children’s Book Forest by Tadao Ando Architect & Associates
He Art Museum by Tadao Ando
Contributing editor Clifford Pearson is the co-author, with A. Eugene Kohn, of The World By Design, and writes about architecture and urbanism.
Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion Project Portfolio
Backstory: Building a Valhalla That Links Generations
Sustainable Facades: Design Methods for High-Performance Building Envelopes
2021 National Building Cost Manual
Sustainable Building Design: Principles and Practice
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Dec. 8, 2014 -- SecArmy's Remarks at 10th Mtn Division's Welcome Home ceremony, Ft. Drum, NY
By John M. McHughDecember 18, 2014
It is good to be home. Isn't it good to be home? You know it is. I want to begin by, if I may, adding my words of appreciation and welcome to the distinguished guests that you heard the names of here previously, certainly the governor of the great state of New York, Governor Cuomo, congresswoman elect Stefanik, Assemblywoman Russell, Assemblyman Blankenbush, also of course, Sen. Patty Ritchie, Col. Hassey, Tony Keating, my good friend and civilian aide…indeed to just about everybody in the first four or five rows here that I've seen coming in.The folks who I know from personal experience have worked for so many years, indeed, so many decades, in support of this great facility and in support of these incredible men and women who don the uniform of the United States Army and put that 10th Mountain Division patch on their arm. You honor these soldiers, as you always have, by your persistence, presence and your attendance here.Governor, Sir, particularly - going back to your time and our association as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, where you were so supportive of the initiatives in the North Country to this very moment in your second term now as the Governor of the great state of New York - we deeply appreciate your appreciation and your support, as well as the state of New York's, for this amazing installation, for our community in which it calls home and, of course, our Soldiers and their families.And I know, given that support that you bring to work each and every day, our partnership in the days and years ahead will only continue to grow. And we're deeply appreciative of that.To General Milley, Major General Townsend and Command Sergeant Major Lewis, all the extraordinary men and women of the 10th Mountain Division who proudly stand before us, thank you, personally, for the invitation to be here. I guess the second time is a charm, Steve, in this particular instance.And although the temperature may call for snow, it's holding off, so I appreciate the break in the weather. But most importantly, to have this enormous privilege to share this very important moment with all of you. As is obvious now, we're here to celebrate the coming home of the colors of the 10th Mtn. Division to the United States and, of course, to the North Country. At the same time, of course, we embrace many of our own back into our fold happily -- I think it bears noting - just in time for the holidays. So, as has been said, Welcome Home, not just to the Division Headquarters, not just to the Muleskinners, but indeed, to Team Drum. An amazing job stretching, yes, over deployments of the last 18 months but, really, a mission that has stretched now for well over a decade.And I want to just tell you just how proud I was to have the honor and the opportunity to hook the Somalia Streamer onto your colors. Yours is the first across the United States Army who has been allowed to display that streamer and I think it is altogether fitting given that historic and, I would say, unfortunately sometimes overlooked mission which began for this Division and began for America some 22 years ago. It was a great thrill for me to have the chance to approve that streamer and, as I would also note, it's particularly appropriate that we celebrate - that we recognize - in the presentation of those streamers, our Army's long tradition of service and sacrifice. And to do it right here where so much of that history has been written.This is really a time to reflect on what has really been a generational journey--a journey of over twenty years that has taken us through two wars -- one in Iraq, and one in Afghanistan and a second in Iraq, that has taken us to a place where we have the opportunity for a new beginning for both of those nations.And because of the courage, because of the resiliency of our military and our international partners --partnership within our own government and in Afghanistan -- your journey home has helped make our world and indeed our Nation safer. And because of men and women like each and every one of you, men and women of the 10th Mountain Division, the people of Afghanistan have a precious gift: it's the gift of a chance -- a chance for freedom…a chance to stand on their own…a chance for a better tomorrow. And there is no way any Soldier can provide a greater gift than that. And it's also a time to reflect. Reflect on what has been achieved over these many years. What we have learned, and how each and every one of you has made a difference. And, it's a time, too, as has been noted by the Governor, to remember those we have lost. We should always remember brave men and devoted Soldiers like Fort Drum's Sergeant Major Wardell B. Turner who just mere days ago lost his life in an IED attack in Kabul. We must remember him, his wife, his five precious children. His mother, Wanda. And I pledge you this: together we will make sure that Sergeant Major Turner's sacrifice is long told and always, always remembered.And in addition to the souls we grieve, we must remember as well those for whom the wounds of war remain. And the Governor spoke about it. And he posed the exact correct question: Will we care for those Soldiers? And knowing what I have experienced over the last five years, I can tell you this. Our promise is: We will care for you. Your nation will care for you. You and your families deserve the better future that your sacrifices have helped secure.Now, as some of you may guess, as Secretary of the Army, I have many opportunities to take part in a variety of ceremonies and events across our Army. Each has really tremendous meaning - to me, to the Army family. And of course, no matter where I go, no matter with whom I visit I'm not expected to have favorites. I have the honor of being the Secretary for all of the Army. But I would note since this is the only division post I can readily drive to from my home, you're free to guess where my heart truly lies.Like so many in this great audience, I've grown up with this installation -- from my birth, when it was known as Pine Camp, to now and its time as only one of 10 maneuver bases in our Army and a true power projection platform. And over the years, I have been honored and indeed blessed to get to know so many who served and lived here.And like Fort Drum, the 10th Mountain Division has a long and storied legacy -- a legacy that each of you today continues to nurture and continues to grow.And as is well known in this place, the 10th Mountain Division was the last headquarters to deploy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, which seems especially fitting given that it was the 10th that represented the first division headquarters to deploy to that theatre more than a dozen years ago.And as the Governor noted, it is particularly fitting, too, that the final chapter in a war first declared on the soil of New York state is now being written by a unit housed and trained within New York state's borders. Indeed, the story of this long war cannot be fully told without including your story - the story of the 10th Mountain Division, whose valor and courage produced great victories, and whose losses and sacrifices will always sadden our hearts.The 10th Mountain's fearlessness and devotion to brothers-in-arms during OEF are forever memorialized in your two Medal of Honor winners -- Staff Sergeant Jared Monti and Captain Will Swenson.As I said, yours is a proud heritage but it's also an equally weighty legacy.But it is a legacy that I know you continue to build upon each and every day. It is a legacy that will endure far beyond our time and service. But you are building upon what you have brought to reality. Simply put, the creation of the greatest land force the world has ever known. You have done your job, you have done it extraordinarily well and no one could ask a single thing of you in addition.I am so proud to have the ability to work alongside each and every one of you, the men and women who ask nothing more than 'How can I serve? How can I make a difference?'God bless you. Welcome home. Happy Holidays. Climb to Glory.
December 5, 2019Army announces upcoming 1st BCT, 10th Mountain Division unit rotation
November 6, 2019Army to launch additional housing satisfaction surveys
September 12, 2019Department of the Army announces upcoming 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division deployment
September 12, 2019Department of the Army announces upcoming 10th Mountain Division deployment
September 12, 2019Department of the Army announces 10th Mountain Division deployment
September 12, 2019DA ANNOUNCES ROTATIONAL DEPLOYMENTS
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« Primary care physicians becoming extinct partly due to Obamacare | Rule 40 says a majority of delegates »
Canada's foreign minister drops the ball on climate change and Islamic revolutions
By Sierra Rayne
In a recent speech on "[t]he security implications of climate change in fragile states," Canada's minister of foreign affairs – Stéphane Dion, who named his dog after the Kyoto Protocol and holds dual citizenship to France – made some problematic claims regarding climate change and food production:
Ladies and gentlemen, to speak in front of you about climate change as a risk amplifier for security is quite a challenge. After all, you are among the best experts that the United States and Canada have produced on this crucial issue. So I will not pretend to teach you anything; my objective is rather to reassure you that as a minister, I am fully seized with how critical the topic of this conference is for humankind.
Critical? Certainly. But how many people really know? For most, conflict and unrest have nothing to do with climate change. Yet look at the facts.
Five years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians filled Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, they were not shouting "climate change." They shouted "down with injustice, corruption and poverty." But the motto on the square was "bread, freedom, social equality."
Bread. It accounts for almost 40 percent of the Egyptian diet. And food accounts for roughly 40 percent of Egyptians’ household budget. With serious land and water scarcity issues, the country cannot produce enough wheat for domestic demand. Egypt is the world's largest wheat importer.
In the winter of 2010 and 2011, China -- the world's second-largest wheat producer -- was struck by a "once-in-a-century" drought. At the same time, wheat production in Russia, Ukraine, Australia, Pakistan and Canada also fell dramatically due to drought, wildfires, floods and abnormal weather.
With global wheat supplies down and protectionist measures up, the Egyptian government failed to balance its massive subsidies, and market prices shot up. At the time of the uprisings in early 2011, food prices had increased by 20 percent, and 40 million Egyptians -- about half of the population -- were receiving food rations.
Or look at Syria. The 2007-2010 drought in Syria was the worst drought on record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centres. A United Nations Development Programme report found that nearly 75 percent of farmers in northeastern Syria experienced total crop failure and herders lost 85 percent of their livestock. Another United Nations report found that more than 800,000 Syrians lost their entire livelihoods as a result of the droughts.
A lot of misinformation here to unpack, so we will tackle it sequentially – starting with the 2007-2010 Syrian drought.
Dion claims that it caused "widespread crop failure" between 2007 and 2010. Syria's primary agricultural crops are wheat, sugar beets, barley, and olives, in that average order of production quantity since 1993.
The following charts show normalized total annual production (i.e., annual production for the year in question divided by the average annual production over the period of record, multiplied by 100) for these crops in Syria between 1993 and 2010, using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Statistics Division.
If you are not seeing a general catastrophic impact on agricultural production between 2007 and 2010, that is because there isn't one. Except for wheat production in 2008 and sugar beet production in 2009, there are no truly anomalous years compared to the overall period since the early 1990s.
From the media reports, one would expect the data coming out of Syria to show massive declines across the entire 2007-2010 period that would be extremely unusual compared to production trends over the previous decades. This simply is not the case. Drought did have a significant impact on agriculture in Syria, but not to the extent suggested by Dion's analysis.
What about Dion's claims that "wheat production in Russia, Ukraine, Australia, Pakistan, and Canada also fell dramatically" in 2010 and 2011, coupled to a corresponding massive wheat production drop in China over this period that led to a global decline in wheat supplies? This doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny, either.
The following chart shows global wheat production, and production in the six nations that Dion singled out, since 1993.
There is absolutely no evidence of some climate change-induced drop in global, or regional, wheat production during 2010-2011, especially within the context of natural year-to-year variation and the overall trends since the early 1990s.
And that a "once-in-a-century" drought that supposedly crippled China's wheat production in 2010-2011, thereby contributing to Islamic revolutions and the rise of ISIS? In 2009, China's wheat production was 115.1 million metric tons. It increased – yes, increased – in 2010 to 115.2 million metric tons, and then increased yet again in 2011 up to 117.4 million metric tons.
Overall, using all the data available, we must conclude that Dion's public comments appear to be entirely incorrect.
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New Company to Export Anime, Other Content Overseas (Updated)
Production I.G, Asmik Ace, Nikkatsu, Dentsu, Fuji TV, TBS, Toho-Towa, Tomy to collaborate
Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a joint investment fund between the Japanese government and the private sector, announced on Monday that it will establish a new company to handle the overseas planning and development of anime, films, and other Japanese content.
The All Nippon Entertainment Works will be established this October with 6 billion yen (about US$80 million), 100% of which will be invested by INCJ. The new company will have offices in Tokyo and Los Angeles, and one of its specific goals will be to attract interest for adapting Japanese content into films in Hollywood. According to the INCJ, "experts with the proven track record and hands-on expertise in both Hollywood and the Japanese contents community will be brought on board."
The collaborating partners include the anime studio Production I.G, the production companies Asmik Ace Entertainment and Nikkatsu, the advertising agency Dentsu, the television broadcasters Fuji TV and TBS, the conglomerate Mitsubishi, the film company Toho-Towa, and the toy maker Tomy. The Japanese government expects more partners to join.
Last month the INCJ revealed it was setting up a new company to plan and produce Japanese anime and films, then distribute them internationally. However, INCJ had said then it was investing 5 billion yen (about US$63.48 million) in the project. The INCJ also revealed then it was aiming to produce about 10 box-office hits in its first five years.
Update: More background information added.
Source: Yomiuri
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Netflix releasing ‘Cobra Kai’ on New Year’s Day, a week earlier than expected
Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso in "Cobra Kai" on Netflix. TINA ROWDEN/NETFLIX © 2020
Credit: TINA ROWDEN/NETFLIX
Radio & TV Talk Blog | Dec 24, 2020
The much anticipated third season of Netflix’s “Cobra Kai” will be fly kicking its way into 2021 on New Year’s Day.
Netflix had previously announced the launch date as Jan. 8.
The show, which continues the saga of the original trio of ‘Karate Kid” movies from the 1980s, was a big hit in 2018 for YouTube Red, the premium paid site for that service. But the company decided to stop doing scripted series and in 2019 freed the producers of “Cobra Kai” to shop the series elsewhere.
The three “Cobra Kai” creators — Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg — told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a Zoom interview last week that interest was high because the series already had brand-name recognition and a strong track record. It did not hurt that the third season was already in the can, shot in metro Atlanta before the pandemic began.
Netflix, being the biggest streaming service in the world, gave the creators the best offer and the biggest potential audience.
When the first two seasons debuted on the service, “Cobra Kai” became an even bigger hit, spending weeks in the service’s top 10. Nielsen said the show generated 7 billion minutes of viewing time in the United States over its first five weeks on the service.
Season three will pick up after a violent school brawl between members of Daniel LaRusso’s (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence’s (Zabka) rival dojos. The unresolved issues from Daniel and Johnny are basically transferred to a new generation. There is jealousy between Daniel’s student, Robby, who happens to be Johnny’s son, and Miguel, Johnny’s key student, over Daniel’s daughter, Sam.
In the final moments of season two, Robby ends up flipping Miguel over a school railing, cracking his spine and landing him in intensive care.
The first episode of season 3 will feature a lot of guilt among multiple parties over what happened.
Production of season four will start in 2021.
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Aldevron Campus Expansion
Aldevron Expanding 14-Acre Gene Therapy Manufacturing Campus
Expands GMP and GMP Source® plasmid capacity 10-fold
Supports gene editing, gene therapy, and cell therapy applications
Includes synthetic production of nucleic acids, vertical integration for clients
We are shaping the future of genetic medicine with our clients. The millions of patients that benefit from progress to this scale begins here, and the teams that make this possible are making an impact as we inch closer to the next era of breakthroughs.
Original press release Summer 2019
Aldevron, a leader in the production of plasmid DNA, proteins, mRNA and antibodies; announced expansion plans for a 14-acre campus at its headquarters in Fargo, N.D. Phase one construction will begin in August 2019. Upon completion of the campus, the annual capacity will exceed $1 billion of plasmid DNA, RNA, gene editing enzymes, and other biologics.
View image gallery of the expansion
The first two-story building will increase Aldevron’s GMP and GMP-Source production capacity up to 10 times its current output. This 189,000 square-foot new build will connect to the existing GMP facility and is expected to be fully operational by Q1 of 2021. In total, three new buildings are slated to be built over the next three to five years to support the rapidly growing field of genetic medicine.
“This plan is designed to serve the biopharmaceutical industry with the world’s most advanced manufacturing platforms for gene and cell therapy,” said Michael Chambers, CEO of Aldevron. “It is an honor for us to provide plasmids, gene editing enzymes, and other biologics to support clinical and commercial applications that our clients are pioneering.” Chambers added that the new campus will also enable large-scale production of novel products like nanoplasmids and minicircles.
“Our industry is growing exponentially. We are building a campus to meet client demand, create a functional and inspiring environment for our staff, and take us to the next level,” said Henry Hebel, Chief Operating Officer for Aldevron. “Our robust expansion plan was designed by listening to and engaging with regulatory agencies, industry professionals and most importantly, our clients. The design decisions promote efficiency and scaling, and the next generation of manufacturing optimization.”
Plans include adding 20,000 square-feet of additional Quality Control and product storage space to Aldevron’s current 70,000 square-foot GMP and GMP-Source manufacturing building, the world’s largest plasmid DNA manufacturing facility, which opened in September 2018. The next building to be added is an 89,000 square-foot, two-story administration and client visit center, connected to the manufacturing space via skyway. The final building will be a 96,000 square-foot research and development, technical operations and training center. Once complete, the total square footage will be nearly 0.5 million square feet and has potential to employ 1,000 people.
“Our mission has remained unchanged in 21 years: to help our clients improve lives through innovative partnerships and scientific excellence,” continued Chambers. “This campus has been, and will continue to be, designed to serve their current and future breakthroughs.”
Aldevron is a privately held company, founded in 1998. Its biologics are currently being used by thousands of researchers around the world who are improving the lives of millions.
Aldevron’s expansion plan adds the necessary capacity and flexibility to support those discoveries with Research Grade, GMP-Source® and GMP nucleic acids, proteins and mRNA. The company currently employs more than 350 people across its current global network in Fargo, Madison, Wisconsin, and Freiburg, Germany.
View images of the expansion
Aldevron Fargo
Fargo, North Dakota 58104, USA
phone: 1 (701) 297-9256 toll-free: 1 (877) PURE-DNA fax: 1 (701) 280-1642
email: dna@aldevron.com
Aldevron Madison
5602 Research Park Blvd., Ste. 112
Madison, Wisconsin 53719, USA
phone: 1 (701) 297-9256 toll-free: 1 (877) 787-3362 fax: 1 (608) 441-3460
email: protein@aldevron.com
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Re-Introduction of the Small Site Affordable Housing Exemption - What are the Opportunities?
Gareth Pinwell
Following the Court of Appeal decision which resulted in the re-introduction of the guidance on exempting small sites from a requirement to provide affordable housing, it may be appropriate to examine planning obligations that were either entered into prior to the introduction of the guidance or in the period between the withdrawal of the guidance in August 2015 and its re-introduction in May this year.
A small site may be subject to a planning obligation to either provide affordable units on site or to make an off- site affordable housing contribution. Those provisions may make the site difficult to market or prevent a start on site being made.
If you are seeking to remove the affordable housing obligation then there are potentially three ways to approach it.
Negotiation/Application to vary a planning obligation
If the obligation is contained in a planning obligation of less than five years old then , you can seek to negotiate with the Council that the obligation should be removed as due to the change in guidance the obligation is no longer appropriate. The likely stance of the Council will be that it is not prepared to agree a variation as it would in effect be giving up either affordable Housing or an in kind contribution.
The Second way to approach it under a variation to a planning application is if the obligation is contained in a document which is at least 5 years old, then there is a statutory right to make an application to the Council to have the obligation removed. The grounds of such an application would be that the obligation no longer serves a valid planning purpose, as it no longer complies with current guidance. The Council are required to determine the application and in the event of a refusal there is a statutory right of appeal.
Make an application under s 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990
These application are commonly made to make alterations to design or the type and nature of dwellings already approved , or to seek to remove or substitute a planning condition. It may be appropriate to consider whether such an application can be made , as it requires the Council to consider the up to date Development Plan and material considerations when determining the application. This will require a consideration of the recently introduced guidance and on that basis for a small site, no affordable housing contribution should be required.
If approved the application will result in a new freestanding consent , with the original commencement date, but may not be accompanied by an affordable housing requirement, which will benefit the scheme.
Inheritance Tax and Estate Planning
Protecting the family business from life changes
Being in business is not easy, but when the impact of a relationship breakup or death is thrown into the mix, it can put the business at risk.
A portrayal of dementia
COVID-19 and the restrictions it placed on our society means that once again I am turning to the TV for entertainment and to pass the time.
The Trust & Estate team help clients executing wills during lock down
We’ve had a huge upsurge in demand for wills. A will or codicil has to be executed in front of two (non-family) witnesses. Traditionally that has been easy when clients have come into the office to sign their wills – now they’re not doing that, it can be tricky to find two independent witnesses at home (beneficiaries of a will cannot be witnesses).
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Aspect County – The Premier Luxury Lifestyle Magazine. Est. 1989
1st October 2016 by Aspect County
The end of the Websters
The First World War caused the end of many distinguished families. One such was that of the Websters, owners of Battle Abbey
The Websters were a good example of family ups and downs, with a rumoured monkish curse on them that the owners of the Abbey would die by fire and water. They step into recorded history with a man who made enormous profits under William III. His son Thomas was the first baronet. A long-standing MP, in 1721 he bought the ruinous Battle Abbey from the family awarded it at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 (and on whom the curse landed heavily later), and then much more land in Sussex.
As so often this early promise did not continue. To put it politely, the fourth baronet was an argumentative sort. He fell out with his family when he married a fifteen-year old heiress, and then with her when she began affairs with other men. A public divorce followed, and soon afterwards he shot himself, in 1800. He had spent far too much money; his successor spent more; the family had to sell the Abbey in 1857. The Websters then recovered so much that the seventh baronet could buy it back in 1902.
Sir Augustus re-established the dynasty. He and his wife had three children, one of them due to inherit the estate and the title. This was Godfrey, and he was no chinless wonder. Educated at Eton, he was keen on ornithology; his surviving essays show a depth of study and maturity of expression unusual in someone still at school. Then Sandhurst called, and the Grenadier Guards. He went to the western front in 1916 at the age of 19.
His letters from the front mainly concern bird life, and he was elected a Fellow of the British Ornithological Union while still on active service. Others letters concern the war but offer no complaint although as a young Lieutenant he faced forced marches and trenches live with rats.
Then the curse struck hard.
One of Godfrey’s two sisters got into difficulties when swimming in Farthing Pond near Battle in June 1917. Her mother went to save her but drowned; the daughter was pulled out by a servant. Enough deference remained for the town to close all its shops for her memorial service. Then only seven weeks later Godfrey was blown up by a shell in the third battle of Ypres. No remains were identified and his name is on the Menin Gate at Ypres. His father could never recover from this double tragedy. He sank into depression and died six years later. The baronetcy died with him. His two daughters inherited the estate.
One daughter soon married and had children; but she fell out with her husband. One of her sons claimed the baronetcy, to which he was not entitled. In 1976 the Abbey was sold and is now in the care of English Heritage. The claimant son and all other recent Webster descendants are now dead.
If the curse ever existed, English Heritage had better watch out.
George Kiloh is the author of The Brave Remembered: Battle at war 1914 – 19
Special Motoring Issue 2020
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Subject: Law Topic: Article
Common Law: Common law (also known as case law or precedent) is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals (as opposed to statutes adopted through the legislative process or regulations issued by the executive branch. A “common law system” is a legal system that gives great precedential weight to common law, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions. The body of precedent is called “common law” and it binds future decisions. Common law the body of law developed by judges, courts, and similar tribunals. The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts.
The term common law can refer to two things. Common law often refers to laws that are based on the customs and principles of society, which are used in court case decisions in situations not covered by civil law statutes. These decisions set a precedent that must be applied to future cases on the same subject. The common law is the body of law formed through court decisions, as opposed to law formed through statutes or written legislation. A common law system is the system of jurisprudence that is based on the doctrine of judicial precedent, the principle under which the lower courts must follow the decisions of the higher courts, rather than on statutory laws.
History of Common Law
Common law is a term that was originally used in the 12th century, during the reign of Henry II of England. The ruler established secular tribunals, with the goal of establishing a unified system of deciding legal matters. The King’s judges in these tribunals respected the decisions of one another, such decisions creating a unified “common” law throughout England. The precedent set by the courts through the 12th and 13th centuries were often based on tradition and custom, and became known as a “common law” system.
Common law in the United States dates back to the arrival of the colonists, who brought with them the system of law with which they were most familiar. Following the American Revolution, the newly formed states adopted their own forms of common law, separate from the federal law.
Initially, common law was founded on common sense as reflected in the social customs. Over the centuries, it was supplanted by statute law (rules enacted by a legislative body such as a Parliament) and clarified by the judgments of the higher courts (that set a precedent for all courts to follow in similar cases). These precedents are recognized, affirmed, and enforced by subsequent court decisions, thus continually expanding the common law.
Under a common-law system, disputes are settled through an adversarial exchange of arguments and evidence. Both parties present their cases before a neutral fact finder, either a judge or a jury. The judge or jury evaluates the evidence, applies the appropriate law to the facts, and renders a judgment in favor of one of the parties. Following the decision, either party may appeal the decision to a higher court. Appellate courts in a common-law system may review only findings of law, not determinations of fact.
Common law draws from institutionalized opinions and interpretations from judicial authorities and public juries. Similar to civil law, the goal of common law is to establish consistent outcomes by applying the same standards of interpretation. In some instances, precedent depends on the case-by-case traditions of individual jurisdictions. As a result, elements of common law may differ from district to district.
Strength of Common law
It was one of the earliest means for the adjudication of disputes and administration of justice.
The common law as it were provided justice for the people before the development of equity. As a result, it was regarded as a tool in the hands of the judges, which was exercised under the prerogative of the monarch.
It evolved several writs for the adjudication of disputes. This was the direct effect of the unending complaints from the people. As such, it provided the action for the recovery of land known as ‘real actions’. This enabled claimants to recover their lands at common law.
Weakness of Common Law
One of the most obvious weaknesses of the common law was that it offered remedy to only one problem (monetary) damages; and this was always readily not available. Again, an action could only be started in the Royal courts by a writ purchased from the office of the chancellor.
Since the existence of a common law right depended on there being a procedure for enforcing that right, an action could only be brought if an appropriate writ already existed which covered the facts of the case. Similarly, the procedure for successfully bringing an action was very formal, rigid and therefore leading to delays. It was also too expensive to bring an action.
It did not recognise certain rights, such as the borrower’s right under a mortgage or trusts. For example, if the date for the repayment of a mortgage had passes, the lender regained ownership; even when the borrower was able to pay back the loan.
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For many businesses the tax allowances available for business motoring is an important matter to consider. At ATN Partnership, we can provide advice for your business in the Gravesend area.
This factsheet focuses on the current tax position of business motoring, a core consideration of many businesses. The aim is to provide a clear explanation of the tax deductions available on different types of vehicle expenditure in a variety of business scenarios.
Methods of acquisition
Motoring costs, like other costs incurred which are wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade are tax deductible but the timing of any relief varies considerably according to the type of expenditure. In particular, there is a fundamental distinction between capital costs and ongoing running costs.
Where vehicles are purchased outright, the accounting treatment is to capitalise the asset and to write off the cost over the useful business life as a deduction against profits. This is known as depreciation.
The same treatment applies to vehicles financed through hire purchase with the equivalent of the cash price being treated as a capital purchase at the start with the addition of a deduction from profit for the finance charge as it arises. However, the tax relief position depends primarily on the type of vehicle, and the date of expenditure.
A tax distinction is made for all businesses between a normal car and other forms of commercial vehicles including vans, lorries and some specialist forms of car such as a driving school car or taxi.
Tax relief on purchases
Vehicles which are not classed as cars are eligible for the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) for expenditure incurred. The AIA provides a 100% deduction for the cost of plant and machinery purchased by a business up to an annual limit. The amount of AIA available varies depending on the period of the accounts. The amount of AIA has been set at £1,000,000 from 1 January 2019 for a three year period and will revert to £200,000 from 1 January 2022. Complex calculations may apply to accounting periods which straddle this date.
Where purchases exceed the AIA, a writing down allowance (WDA) is due on any excess in the same period. The WDA available is currently at a rate of 18% or 6% depending on the asset. Cars are not eligible for the AIA, so will only benefit from WDA.
Capital allowance boost for low-carbon transport
A 100% First Year Allowance (FYA) is currently available for businesses purchasing zero-emission goods vehicles, gas refuelling equipment and electric charge-point equipment.
Writing Down Allowances (WDA)
The WDA rates are 18% on the main rate pool and 6% (8% before April 2019) which applies to many higher emission cars which are part of the special rate pool. Complex calculations may apply to accounting periods which straddle this date.
Complex cars!
The green car
Cars generally only attract the WDA but there is one exception to this and that is where a business purchases a new car with low emissions - a so called 'green' car. Such purchases attract a 100% allowance to encourage businesses to purchase cars which are more environmentally friendly. A 100% write off is only available where the CO2 emissions of the car do not exceed 50g/km. The cost of the car is irrelevant and the allowance is available to all types of business.
When did you buy?
The allowances due are determined by whether the car was purchased. The figures below apply for purchases from April 2018.
The annual allowance is dependent on the CO2 emissions of the car.
Cars with emissions between 51 – 110g/km inclusive will qualify for main rate WDA.
Cars with emissions in excess of 110g/km are placed in the special rate pool and will qualify for an annual WDA of 6% (8% before April 2019).
The 100% first year allowance (FYA) will be available on new low emission cars purchased (not leased) by a business is generally available where a car’s emissions do not exceed 50 g/km.
If a used car is purchased with CO2 emissions of 50g/km or less, this will be placed in the main pool and will receive an annual allowance of 18%.
First year allowances for business cars from April 2021
There will be an extension to 100% first year allowances for zero-emission cars, zero-emission goods vehicles and equipment for gas refuelling stations by four years from April 2021. CO2 emission thresholds will also be amended from April 2021. These determine the rate of capital allowances available through which the capital expenditure for business cars can be written down. The thresholds will be reduced from 50g/km to 0g/km for the purpose of the first year allowances for low CO2 emission cars and from 110g/km to 50g/km for the purpose of WDAs for business cars.
Non-business cars
Any cars used by the self employed where there is part non–business use will still be separately allocated to a single asset pool. The annual allowance will initially be based on the CO2 emissions and then the available allowance will be restricted for the private use element.
A company purchases two cars for £20,000 in its 12 month accounting period to 31 March 2020. The dates of purchase and CO2 emissions are as follows:
White car
Blue car
1 May 2020 1 May 2020
Allowances in the year to 31 March 2021 relating to these purchases will be:
White car (main pool as emissions less than 110g/km)
Blue car (special rate pool as emissions more than 110g/km)
£20,000 @ 18% = £3,600
£20,000 @ 6% = £1,200
In the following year to 31 March 2022 the allowances will be:
£16,400 @ 18% = £2,952 £18,800 @ 6% = £1,128
Where there is a disposal of plant and machinery from the main or special rate pools any balance of expenditure, after taking into account sale proceeds, continues to attract the annual allowance.
Where there is a disposal of a car held in a single asset pool, the disposal proceeds are deducted from the balance of the pool and a balancing allowance or a balancing charge is calculated to clear the balance on the pool.
This applies to any cars used by the self employed with part non business use whenever purchased.
What if vehicles are leased?
The first fact to establish with a leased vehicle is whether the lease is really a rental agreement or whether it is a type of purchase agreement, usually referred to as a finance lease. This is because there is a distinction between the accounting and tax treatment of different types of leases.
Tax treatment of rental type operating leases (contract hire)
The lease payments on operating leases are treated like rent and are deductible against profits. However where the lease relates to a car there may be a portion disallowed for tax.
Currently a disallowance of 15% will apply for cars with CO2 emissions which exceed 110g/km.
Contract signed 1 July 2020 by a company:
The car has CO2 emissions of 116g/km and a £6,000 annual lease charge. The disallowed portion would be £900 (15%) so £5,100 would be tax deductible.
Tax treatment of finance leased assets
These will generally be included in your accounts as fixed assets and depreciated over the useful business life but as these vehicles do not qualify as a purchase at the outset, the expenditure does not qualify for capital allowances unless classified as a long funded lease. Tax relief is generally obtained instead by allowing the accounting depreciation and any interest/finance charges in the profit and loss account - a little unusual but a simple solution!
Private use of business vehicles
The private use of a business vehicle has tax implications for either the business or the individual depending on the type of business and vehicle.
Sole traders and partners
Where you are in business on your own account and use a vehicle owned by the business - irrespective of whether it is a car or van - the business will only be able to claim the business portion of any allowances. This applies to capital allowances, rental and lease costs, and other running costs such as servicing, fuel etc.
Providing vehicles to employees
Where vehicles are provided to employees irrespective of the form of business structure - sole trader/partnership/company - a taxable benefit generally arises for private use. A tax charge will also apply where private fuel is provided for use in an employer provided vehicle. For the employer such taxable benefits attract 13.8% Class 1A National Insurance.
No charge applies where employees have the use of a van and a restricted private use condition is met. For details on what this means please contact us. Where the condition is not met there is a flat rate charge per annum. These benefits are £3,490 for the unrestricted private use plus an additional £666 for private fuel in 2020/21 (£3,430 and £655 for 2019/20).
If your business is in the Gravesend area and you would like further details on the tax aspects of business motoring please contact us at ATN Partnership.
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117 High Street, Upper Weston
Home Planning Applications 117 High Street, Upper Weston
20/01439/FUL
Create off-street parking space, with associated landscaping including new walling, works to existing walling, new steps / access gate & works to boundary treatments.
117 High Street forms part of a pair of Grade II Georgian houses situated within the Bath conservation area and World Heritage site. The dwelling’s exposed boundary wall and gable end strongly contribute to the visible vernacular use of limestone rubble throughout Weston, the view of which is beneficially framed by the open green slope to the south of the dwelling. Due to the boundary wall’s position and material connection to the main building, contextual relationship with the dwelling, and apparent visual age, it can be assumed that the wall falls under the curtilage listing of the main property.
The Trust has some concerns regarding the proposed driveway, and the associated loss of green space which suitably complements the setting of a listed building whilst enhancing the retained open, village character of the conservation area. In particular, the exposed slope running down to the High Street as part of the junction into the Harcourt Gardens cul-de-sac positively frames the dwelling’s west elevation and the staggered aspect of the boundary wall. The insertion of a driveway and a secondary boundary wall will therefore obscure 117 High Street’s gable end with detriment to the building’s current vernacular contribution to the central streetscape of the conservation area. We additionally feel that the loss of green space in so prominent a position along the High Street will neither preserve nor enhance the appearance of the conservation area.
We are concerned that despite the proposed loss of part of the western section of the boundary wall to form a new entrance into the garden, there has been no LBA submitted as part of the overall scheme, with the current application providing no further detail regarding the age or associated significance of the wall. We would therefore strongly recommend that the applicant consult with the conservation officer as to whether an LBA is required before this application progresses further.
With regards to the proposed replacement of the existing railings, we feel that this application offers a positive opportunity for the installation of a high-quality, traditional boundary treatment. However, we are unable to assess the suitability of the proposed railing design without the submission of relevant drawings and details to the LPA. We would additionally recommend that more detailed elevations of the proposed rubble wall along the western boundary of the proposed driveway are submitted to ensure that the wall will be of a suitably harmonious design which will complement the setting of a listed building.
Driveway and/or Boundary Wall
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Related Expertise: Public Sector, Leadership Development, Transformation
Creating People Advantage in the Public Sector
Transforming Government Human Resources
25 January 2016 By Agnès Audier, Jean-Michel Caye, Lucie Robieux, Rainer Strack, Carsten von der Linden, and Danny Werfel
Many countries are experiencing a crisis in public-sector human resource management stemming from mounting pressures on a number of fronts. Budgets are tight for numerous governments around the world, and human capital costs represent a major—if not the major—cost center. Employee compensation accounts for about 25% of government budgets on average (they are even higher, at about 30%, in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia). In addition, demands on government staff are increasing because of a growing need for services in some countries and rising expectations of government performance among citizens in general. At the same time, a looming retirement wave in many countries is creating a potentially problematic loss of institutional expertise. And all this is playing out at a time when governments must upgrade their talent base. This includes recruiting people with the skills to help them deploy new digital technologies, an area where talent is in limited supply and for which there is tremendous competition.
The bottom line: governments must dramatically improve how they recruit, train, and manage talent. And they must make HR into a strategic partner for public-sector leaders, one that plays a key role in helping to improve overall government performance. Governments that rise to this challenge will emerge with an organization that is more effective and efficient—and a workforce that is able to fully harness the potential of new technology.
Based on extensive experience working with public-sector organizations, BCG has identified ten steps that governments can take to ensure that their transformed HR organization is efficient and well-connected to internal stakeholders, that it takes a strategic approach to helping the overall organization, and that it has a full toolbox of the necessary skills and capabilities.
The Imperative for Change
Government HR leaders know only too well the pressures weighing on their organizations. First, there are the big constraints on public budgets, which frequently lead to large-scale reorganizations or severe staff cuts—or both. In the US, for example, the Department of Defense recently announced a sharp 8% cut in Army staff and a 17,000-person reduction in the civilian workforce. In France, Ministry of Defense staff was slashed from 330,000 in 2006 to 270,000 today. And in the UK, the government has reduced the number of civil servants by almost a fifth since 2010.
In addition, demands on government are only increasing. For example, in the wake of the global financial crisis, governments in many countries continue to play a large role in areas such as assistance for the long-term unemployed. And providing these services often requires increased staffing and enhanced training and skills.
At the same time, citizens have increasingly high expectations when it comes to the quality and efficiency of public services, in part because more information is available about the performance of governments around the world. From the OECD’s PISA rankings of student performance to the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings to BCG’s own Sustainable Economic Development Assessment, there is greater visibility into how governments are performing relative to peers.
Governments also need to upgrade their skills in many areas. Whether because increased outsourcing requires new contract management skills or because the latest digital tools demand high levels of technical expertise, governments need to bring critical skills onboard.
Compounding these challenges is the fact that many governments are facing an exodus from the workforce over the next decade. In OECD member countries, for example, one-third of employees are older than 50. As a result, a significant amount of hiring and training will be needed, as well as an overall rethinking of roles.
Transforming HR will require major initiatives… Taken together, the forces weighing on governments will trigger significant shifts. These will include changes in the scope and mission of some roles, improved processes in many areas of government, and mergers, reorganizations, and delayering programs. HR will play a central role in such initiatives, and government leaders must ensure that their organizations are up to the task. HR leaders certainly recognize the need for change.
In BCG’s 2014 Creating People Advantage survey of more than 400 government HR leaders (conducted in partnership with the World Federation of People Management Associations), public-sector HR managers reported significant challenges, including the need to develop advanced analytic capabilities. (See “The Current State of Public-Sector HR.”)
THE CURRENT STATE OF PUBLIC-SECTOR HR
Public-sector HR leaders surveyed by BCG’s Creating People Advantage team identified three areas requiring urgent action: engagement, behavior, and culture management; talent management and leadership; and HR strategy, planning, and analytics. These are areas that participants believe will be critical to future success but in which their current capabilities are low. (See Exhibit 1.)
Our survey found that HR is significantly less involved in the development of business strategy and in strategic decision making in public-sector organizations than it is in private-sector companies. (See Exhibit 2.) Also, HR metrics are used less in day-to-day decision making in public-sector organizations.
Furthermore, while HR leaders across industries report that data tools are particularly useful when it comes to HR strategy, performance management, and recruiting, the use of such tools in the public sector is limited. (See Exhibit 3.) For example, public-sector organizations use KPIs much less frequently as part of HR efforts to boost productivity or manage personnel costs. In fact, not even 50% of public-sector organizations have a single data management system that contains all their relevant HR data. And only 40% have dedicated teams within HR to analyze that data.
The gap between the public and private sectors could widen even further as many private-sector companies extend their analytical capabilities by harnessing big-data tools and advanced data analytics solutions. In order to avoid falling further behind, the public sector must not only adopt big-data tools but also find people with the skills to deploy them and develop a culture that can fully exploit them.
Certainly there are understandable reasons for the difference in analytical capabilities between the public and private sectors. In private-sector organizations, finance teams often drive the collection of HR data, which can be used to develop analytics for evaluating production costs, including staff expenses. In the public sector, however, bolstering profitability is not an incentive, so information on the costs involved in providing public services is often lacking. However, the fact that public-sector organizations have not used such HR analytics in the past does not mean that they cannot deploy them in the future. After all, if HR organizations are to make progress in meeting their most urgent challenges, they will need to address their capability gaps head-on.
In many ways, remaking a public-sector HR organization is even more challenging than transformation in the private sector. For one thing, the sheer size of the public-sector employee base has major implications for the national labor market—and therefore complicates the HR mission. In the OECD countries, for example, government employment in 2013 represented an average 19.3% of the total national labor force. (See the exhibit below.) As a result, changes in government salaries or employment levels can affect consumer spending, while higher or lower levels of government outsourcing can affect private-sector employment. There are also institutional factors, such as strict rules on layoffs and restructurings, that can create barriers to change. (See “A Balancing Act in Public-Sector HR.”)
A BALANCING ACT IN PUBLIC-SECTOR HR
Change is difficult no matter the setting. But public-sector leaders face a host of institutional challenges that make the task of revamping HR processes particularly complex.
For one thing, the policies and regulations governing public-sector HR often limit flexibility. In some countries, there are strict rules governing layoffs, promotions, and the use of performance-based compensation and other incentives. And there is often little freedom to move people into different jobs or locations. In part this is because the age of many public-sector workers makes them less amenable to major career changes.
In OECD countries, for example, the number of workers over 50 in the public sector is on average 26% higher than in the private labor force. In addition, because labor unions are generally more powerful in the public sector than in the private sector, government HR leaders need to involve them in the planning of any major transformation effort.
Complexity also presents hurdles. Government organizations are often fragmented, with silos within both central and local offices. This can make it difficult to get a comprehensive overview of the workforce and of potential opportunities to move people into different positions and locations. The employee base is also typically quite diverse, resulting in a variety of cultures and HR policies. Defense departments, for example, comprise both civil and military personnel—two very different types of workers.
Finally, the mission of government to better the lives of citizens affects how HR operates. Public-sector organizations are expected to be out in front when it comes to promoting equality and diversity in the workplace. Any changes affecting the government labor force therefore need to be assessed carefully in that context.
Taken together, these issues create real challenges for public-sector HR organizations—and offer more evidence of the need to deploy the ten transformation levers outlined here.
…but some challenges will create opportunities. Some of the challenges to transforming HR could have long-term benefits—if they are handled well. The aging workforce, for example, will result in natural attrition in public-sector organizations—and an opportunity to upgrade talent and potentially eliminate some positions through better use of technology. Of course, capitalizing on that opportunity will not be easy. For one thing, areas in which large numbers of employees are retiring will not necessarily be ones where positions can be eliminated.
Still, as governments recruit teams to harness new digital tools, they can make major improvements in efficiency. In the UK, for example, the Driving Standards Agency (now the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency) started offering an online channel for booking driving tests in 2003. More than three-quarters of roughly 2 million annual transactions are now handled digitally. The result: one of two dedicated contact centers was closed in 2008, and the total number of employees involved in these transactions fell from 400 in 2003 to 75 in 2012.
Ensuring Efficiency and Connections with Stakeholders
The first set of steps required to transform a public-sector HR organization concern operational efficiency and the creation of strong connections with internal stakeholders, such as top management, rank-and-file workers, and unions. The combination and prioritization of these measures, like all the others discussed in this report, will differ based on the specific challenges and conditions of the particular country and government.
1. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the HR function. Leaders who want to truly improve their HR organizations should first ask themselves these questions:
Who is doing what and at what level within the HR function, both locally and centrally?
How much value is each core task or activity generating? Is the HR department focused on those activities that add the most value?
Is HR properly using IT tools? For example, does it automate nonvalue-adding tasks, such as tracking employee holidays? And do these tools provide the data that operational managers really need?
Are processes for connecting HR with other departments efficient and effective?
Is the HR department attracting the best people? Is it recognized as a place to grow professionally?
In France, a major public agency took aggressive action to boost the efficiency of its HR functions. A detailed review of operations found that many employees—both at headquarters and in the local offices—were performing mainly low-value administrative work, such as reporting basic HR data, tracking absenteeism, and planning training sessions. In some cases, these tasks were even being done twice. HR teams were understaffed at the local level, and higher-value activities, such as leading IT projects or developing a strategic vision for HR, lacked resources. Using the lean approach, the agency conducted workshops tasked with redesigning processes and reorganizing functions, an effort that ultimately made it possible to leave certain positions unfilled after workers retired.
2. Build strong connections with internal stakeholders and management. Public-sector HR organizations need to cultivate strong relationships with internal groups, including top managers and staff running operations on the ground. One way to do this is to provide a regular flow of HR data and indicators regarding, for example, retirement projections, absenteeism, or needed skills by site. Such information can be invaluable to operational managers, but generating it requires the ability to identify useful sets of data and make them accessible with proven IT tools.
At the same time, HR leaders need to establish strong channels of communication with agency leaders. This ensures that the strategy of the HR organization and that of the overall government agency are aligned. It also gives HR a clear understanding of the issues that managers face in the field, which can lead to the development of customized solutions such as new training sessions.
HR leaders at the US Environmental Protection Agency have strengthened their ties with agency managers through tools such as the Skills Marketplace initiative, aimed at improving how staff are deployed across the organization. Designed by a joint team of HR managers and EPA staff in charge of programs and operations, the program was rolled out in 2014 after a two-year pilot. Participating employees can apply for short-term, mission-critical assignments and projects posted on an internal portal. A LinkedIn-style profile of their work on previous assignments forms the basis of their application. Those selected remain in their current role, devoting no more than 20% of their time to the new assignment. The objective is to direct time and talent toward critical projects while giving employees additional development opportunities. The program has received strong praise from frontline employees seeking to expand their professional skills and grow within the EPA.
3. Proactively develop relationships with unions. Given the high rate of union membership in the public sector—which exceeds that in the private sector of many countries, including the US, France, Poland, and Sweden—it is vitally important to involve unions in any major organizational change.
A strong partnership with unions can increase the odds of a successful transformation in several ways. First, during the design phase of the program, unions can provide insights on the potential obstacles to change based on their knowledge of the realities facing workers in the field. Second, if union leaders are involved in program design, they are more likely to become effective promoters and facilitators of change. And third, union leaders can provide valuable information during implementation about where problems are cropping up and how to address them.
Acting as a Strategic Partner with the Overall Organization
While improving efficiency and building relationships are critical, HR leaders must also be able to think strategically. This means understanding not only the strategic challenges and ambitions of the organization but also the implications of those challenges and ambitions for HR. Tools like strategic workforce planning (SWP) can help HR managers understand how actions taken within HR can support such strategic goals as improving efficiency through digitization or through reorganizations and redeployments.
4. Anchor HR strategy in strategic workforce planning. The need for this approach in the public sector is growing, but putting it into practice requires a comprehensive strategy that includes accurate modeling of labor supply and demand. (See “The Hallmarks of Successful Strategic Workforce Planning.”) SWP ensures that HR policies in recruiting, training, mobility, and retention within and across agencies, among other areas, are in line with the future needs of the organization. At the same time, it allows HR decisions to be closely linked to the organization’s overall strategy. SWP can lead to a reevaluation of an organization’s geographic footprint, for example, so that offices are located where critical talent is most available.
THE HALLMARKS OF SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING
SWP is based on an analysis of the types of skills and expertise required across an organization. The process starts with a segmentation of the employment base by job category. Different scenarios are developed that project how the supply of and demand for people in the positions within each category would change under different circumstances. It is critical to take into account the impact of digital technologies, which can have a significant impact on workforce size and skill requirements. Once gaps are identified based on the projections of supply and demand, HR can determine the right mix of actions to address the most critical shortfalls.
When it comes to training measures, organizations should be ambitious about developing internal talent. Retraining and moving people into new positions within the organization is a powerful—and sometimes an overlooked—way to fill critical positions. HR leaders also need to regularly revise their scenarios and hypotheses. And like other programs, SWP can be piloted in local offices before being broadly deployed.
In Germany, the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) was concerned about the large number of employees approaching retirement age. In one division alone, half the employees were expected to retire in the next decade. To address this challenge, the agency kicked off two SWP pilots in February 2015, covering about 15% of the workforce. The team leading the effort created a model forecast of worker supply and demand based on parameters such as job type, geographic location, and age group. Combining the supply and demand projections into a single model, the team built an array of heat maps that showed the areas where shortages were likely to be critical and came up with concrete plans for filling the worker pipeline. The pilots have proven so successful that the approach is being rolled out throughout the entire organization.
SWP becomes even more crucial in an era of budgetary pressure, when both public and private organizations often respond with short-term measures such as across-the-board headcount reductions to hit cost-cutting targets. Such moves, however, fail to take into account the skills and roles that will be needed in the future, raising the risk that strategic knowledge or expertise (in managing complex military bases and equipment, for example) will be lost. That can result in higher costs down the road if positions need to be restaffed. The need for SWP is particularly acute in countries such as France and Spain, where many public-sector jobs are essentially guaranteed for life, so hiring decisions have significant long-term implications.
5. Develop the organization’s ability to deal with mergers and redeployments. Budget constraints and changing skill and personnel requirements call for new strategies across government. Among the impacts of those strategic shifts: consolidation of teams, whether across locations or within a given department, and redeployments of staff to new roles. In both cases, HR has a clear role in supporting the agency or department’s operational teams.
To succeed, HR must build a package of tools that can be easily disseminated in order to help operational teams with budgeting and with staff training, mobility, and reduction. The package should include organizational design tools that help define appropriate spans of control and communicate information about the restructuring.
Building the Right Capabilities
The transformed HR organization must have policies and procedures that ensure internal staff mobility, world-class recruiting, advanced training and development, a well-crafted talent management system, and sound management of the contingent workforce.
6. Offer internal mobility options. Increased mobility contributes to richer career paths, greater worker engagement, and a better match between talent supply and demand. HR organizations need to design bold mobility schemes. This requires building a variety of connections to facilitate employee transfers and exchanges:
Among departments within the same ministry or agency at both the central and local levels
Among groups with similar roles at different public-sector organizations
Among public and private organizations
Public-sector leaders in Germany have increased worker mobility by creating a new career option, the horizontal career track. They did so in response to the frustration of some experienced senior civil servants with the traditional vertical track, which often left them with little opportunity to move up in the organization. With the new approach, employees have the option of switching to a job at the same management level but with different duties and responsibilities.
7. Address recruiting challenges through improved branding, hiring, and onboarding. Recruiting is more than just scouting for talent. In addition to attracting and finding the right people, it includes building a strong employer brand, successfully bringing new hires onboard, and taking steps to retain top talent. A systematic and effective onboarding process is especially critical in order to reduce early attrition. And given the growing talent shortage in most developed countries, public-sector organizations must pay close attention to their branding as an employer. A number of factors determine that brand, including the degree of gender equality in the organization; opportunities for minorities, disabled workers, and senior citizens; and, most important, the corporate culture and overall satisfaction of employees.
The German railway operator Deutsche Bahn1 Notes: 1 Deutsche Bahn is a private company, but the Federal Republic of Germany is its only shareholder. understands well the power of a strong employer brand as part of a holistic talent acquisition approach. In 2012, when the company saw that it needed to hire up to 70,000 new employees over ten years, it decided to overhaul its talent acquisition strategy. The first step was to assess how it was viewed by current and potential employees. Deutsche Bahn launched a broad employee survey, scores of employee interviews, and extensive market research, as well as an ambitious branding campaign aimed at enhancing its image as an employer. It segmented its applicant base into four categories—high-school graduates, college graduates, professionals with an academic background, and professionals without an academic background—and tailored its branding and recruiting activities to each group. The overhaul paid quick dividends, with incoming applications up about 40% in the first year and an enormous increase in their attractiveness.
Central to any employer brand, of course, is the organization’s culture. Faced with budgetary uncertainty and unresolved questions about the future of manned space flight, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched a broad initiative in 2013 to remake its culture. The effort comprised three elements: recognizing and rewarding innovation, engaging and connecting with the workforce, and improving the roster of supervisors and leaders. Among the most enthusiastically received initiatives was a “reverse mentorship” program, in which line employees mentor senior managers. Senior managers are now able to learn firsthand what their staff actually do, including the problems they face every day. The program has improved morale and given the agency’s leaders a much better understanding of what is happening at the heart of the organization.
8. Design and implement training and development processes. Development and training should be tailored to the needs of the workforce—segmented, for example, by age or employee potential. For those in leadership positions, training and development should be designed to develop complementary capabilities such as operational, strategic, and interpersonal and communication skills.
HR leaders also have a major opportunity to improve the efficiency of training outsourcing by, among many other examples, setting a minimum size for training sessions, using formal proposal processes, cutting costs through competitive bidding, and identifying where in-house trainers (rather than outsourced providers) can be used. Government training efforts can take a page from the playbook of large companies such as GE and Bertelsmann, which are using e-learning tools in their internal training centers as well as partnerships with external academic institutions.
The US Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency that monitors federal spending, has a well-tuned Professional Development Program. In their first two years at the agency, entry-level accountants and analysts—the majority of new hires at GAO—are assigned an employee mentor and sent on three increasingly specialized rotations across the organization, each lasting an average of six to ten months. The program provides a robust orientation for new employees and helps identify suitable long-term career paths.
9. Design an ambitious and structured talent management process. Talent management in the public sector should include, among other things, clearly defined individual and organizational goals, close monitoring of individual performance, and the development of action plans in cases where performance is falling short of agreed-upon objectives. In addition, in those countries where performance-based compensation is possible, workers whose performance exceeds expectations should receive monetary or other rewards.
Some governments, including Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, have become world-class leaders in talent management. Their programs involve sophisticated segmentation of the talent pool and the use of scholarships, competitive compensation structures, and clearly identified career paths. In Singapore, the Public Service Leadership Programme focuses on cultivating talent across a number of critical areas, from management of the economy to infrastructure and the environment to national security. Candidates go through a rigorous selection process that includes a written exam and interview. The program replaces Singapore’s highly successful Management Associates Programme, which offered promising entry-level officers a carefully designed management career track. (See The Making of a Talent Magnet: Lessons from Singapore’s Civil Service, BCG Focus, May 2012.)
10. Manage the contingent workforce. In addition to building strong connections with the internal workforce, public-sector HR teams need to strengthen their external relationships, especially with subcontractors. In many governments, this contingent workforce plays a significant role, particularly when it comes to handling seasonal spikes in demand in areas such as tax collection and building maintenance.
Solid, long-term connections with the external workforce offer two key benefits. First, they can improve work quality. Building strong ties with talented technology-oriented freelancers, for example, can speed up the development of digital tools. Second, these relationships can help reduce costs by allowing more efficient management of peaks in labor demand, for example, or by coinvesting with outsourced providers in the training of contingent workers.
The imperative to remake HR in the public sector is impossible to ignore. But governments must put the right pieces in place to drive the changes needed. First, they must dedicate adequate resources and talent to the effort. This means resisting the ever-present temptation to pare the HR budget and staff as overall government budgets tighten. Second, leaders should ensure that the right governance structures are in place, including a project management office to oversee and manage key HR initiatives. Third, governments must be willing to experiment through pilot projects that test new initiatives in specific ministries or regions before they are deployed nationally. And fourth, the effort must include collaboration among HR leaders in different ministries, agencies, and geographies in order to rapidly identify and share best practices.
With these key mechanisms in place, leaders can accelerate the transformation of the HR function and boost the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the entire government organization.
The authors would like to acknowledge Jacqueline Betz, Shu Ling Heng, Daniela Jozic, Daniel Lautzenheiser, Madeleine Lee, Jeffrey McNichols, Daniel Vogel, Verra Wijaya, and Johannes Willberg for assistance with research. They also thank Aurélie Granger, Nadine Smith, Miranda Stobbs, and Amy Barrett for writing assistance, and Katherine Andrews, Gary Callahan, Kim Friedman, Abby Garland, Gina Goldstein, and Sara Strassenreiter for contributions to editing, design, and production.
Agnès Audier
Jean-Michel Caye
Lucie Robieux
Rainer Strack
Danny Werfel
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Benjamin Walker Heads For The Heart of the Sea Alongside Chris Hemsworth
May 8, 2013 By Tim Isaac Leave a Comment
For quite a while now, Chris Hemsworth has been attached to the true-life whaling tale In The Heart Of The Sea. Now he’s got some company, as Deadline reports that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter star Benjamin Walker is in talks to join the movie, beating out the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston and Henry Cavill, who were also in contention.
Charles Leavitt wrote the script, adapted from Nathanial Philbrick’s non-fiction book of the same name, which is based on the true events that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. The story revolves around a Nantucket whaling ship that was destroyed by a sperm whale in 1820. Only eight crew members were rescued alive, after being lost at sea for 90 days.
Ron Howard is set to direct, with Warner Bros backing the movie. The hope is to shoot the movie this September in order the fit into Hemsworth’s busy schedule.
ACTORS: Benjamin Walker, Chris Hemsworth DIRECTORS: Ron Howard FILMS: In The Heart Of The Sea
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Confidence is the Result of Experience by Fern Weis, Parent + Family Recovery Coach
Building confidence, like building self-esteem, comes from doing and pushing yourself out of that comfort zone we hear so much about. Today I'm sharing a story from my own past, about a job that had me feeling anything but confident. "Confidence is the Result of Experience" gives you a look behind the curtain. What you see, the public persona, is never the whole story. You and I, we're all a work in progress.
Most people say, "When I feel more confident, then I'll..." But confidence is not the starting point. Confidence is the result of experience. When you take action, plowing through the resistance, anxiety, and fear of what lies ahead, that is how you build your confidence and your self-esteem.
Every one of us has experienced resistance around doing something for the first time; continuing to do something that is personally challenging; failure and the vulnerability it brings; and making decisions that will affect others (our children, spouses and parents come to mind).
It feels risky to do these things. I know as much as anyone about wanting to control the outcomes, the fear of failure and of looking bad. That's where inertia can set in. Are you ready for a story?
When my children were seven and three, I went back to work part-time for a recruiter (an IT recruiter, no less). It began with general office work and data entry. After a couple of years I was ready to move on and gave two weeks notice. The very next day my husband told me that he was going to leave his job (where there were some intolerable conditions) which would likely mean a reduction in salary at his next position. Panic set in. I went to my boss, asked for my job back, and if he would train me to be a recruiter. He said yes.
At this point you may be cheering for me. What an opportunity! Not exactly. I was a little excited and a LOT scared. This job challenged everything about me, and triggered every self-doubt and fear I had. (My jobs out of college were as a bilingual secretary, and then as an office manager for local non-profits.) Those of you who enjoy sales and the art of the deal probably have no idea what I'm talking about.
Talking to people you don't know is one thing. Talking to them about something you don't understand is another. (I'd have been more comfortable recruiting childcare providers.) Talking to managers was yet another. Then there were the openings that disappeared, and the candidates who didn't show up or bombed at the interviews. And, of course, there were managers and HR people who wouldn't talk to me at all, or did, and said no right away. There was nothing predictable, other than knowing I'd be on that damned phone every day.
You should have seen me at my desk, staring at the phone. I mean staring at it, practically willing it to dial itself. Did I buy into the idea that confidence is the result of experience? No way. All I knew was that I didn't have confidence. It triggered me, every phone call, every day.
Fast forward four years. No, I was not wildly successful. There were some successes, and I definitely earned more than I did as an hourly office worker. But if we'd needed my salary to pay all the bills and put food on the table, we'd have sold the house and eaten spaghetti every night. (Footnotes to this story: my husband did not leave his job, and I left for a new opportunity, to become a teacher. I could write a book about the personal challenges of that job.)
Did I feel confident after those four years? Not exactly. What I do know is that showing up, day after day, phone call after phone call, proved to me that I had courage and was persistent; that I did make a difference in a few people's lives; that I learned about an industry I would otherwise never have explored; that I felt the fear and did it anyway; that I was narrowing down what kind of work was or wasn't meaningful to me; and that I learned so much about myself. Maybe that is the beginning of self-confidence.
Confidence in anything, including parenting, doesn't come from reading books and listening to speakers. It doesn't come from moaning and groaning about how difficult things are and continuing to do the same things.
Confidence comes in the doing. Try something new, and do it more than once. Act, reflect, modify and do it again. Confidence comes from making the attempt, whether you win or lose. Not taking action creates negativity and hopelessness, stuck in a rut-ness.
When you don't act, you stay stuck, never knowing what you are capable of. (Does this sound like your child?) Taking action generates energy and creative thinking. It creates possibilities and opportunities. I know this is true. I am 62 years old and feel as if I am just getting started. All those experiences, from the wonderful to the downright awful, led me to my vision and mission. Do I feel confident 100% of the time? No, and that's okay, because I keep moving in the direction of leading as many families as possible to hope, strength, and transformation, one family at a time. I have found purpose and meaning, and it's the result of all of my life experiences.
Confidence is not a destination, it's a journey. Create as many experiences as possible on your journey, and watch your confidence grow.
Practicing What I Preach: On Exercise + Making Positive Changes by Dr. Brian Amorello, Ph.D.
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Intelligence™
biotech district
Roche Scores Big With FDA Approval For NMOSD
The United States' Food and Drug Administration agency has just approved Enspryng (satralizumab-mwge) to Genentech Inc. on August 17, 2020. The medication is used to treat an ailment known as NMOSD (Neuro-Myelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder). It is discovered in adults with a specific antibody, i.e., those who are down with anti-aquaporin-4 or antibody-positive to AQP4.
Genentech Incorporated is a biotech company that became a Roche subsidiary in 2009. The company's early beginnings and studies started after its integration with Roche. Roche obtained Genentech in March 2009 through the purchase of shares which it had not already controlled for about $46.8 billion. Best known as F. Hoffmann-La Roche & Co., Roche started during the European industrial revolution. The founder, Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, was 28 years old when he began the company on October 1, 1896, in Switzerland.
Roche's initial production is based on an increase in the output and production of vitamins. The company became a significant producer after launching new production sites in the US and Switzerland. However, Roche's has been a company passionate about innovation and diversification. As such, pharmaceutical research intensified to reduce the dependency on vitamins. By 1960, Roche had greatly diversified into different ranges of medicine production. This includes antibiotics, antiviral drugs, and cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Apart from this expansion into a wide variety of public healthcare range, Roche has innovative bioelectronics centers across the United States and Switzerland. The centers are known for their equipped digital (electronic/modern) medical instruments. The company is also the owner of medical publication groups such as Medicovision and Rocom.
With the reputation of Roche, it is no surprise that the FDA has granted approval to its subsidiary company, Genentech Inc., for the production of Enspryng. The beneficial effects of Enspryng for treating NMOSD have been presented in two 96-week medical trials. Ninety-five elderly patients participated in the first research; 64 of them had antibodies to anti-AQP4 positive (AQP4). Throughout that trial, Enspryng therapy decreased the number of NMOSD depressive episodes by 74 percent in participants who were successful with anti-AQP4 compared to placebo care (unresponsive medication).
There were 76 aging patients in the second trial test; 52 of those participants were positive for anti-AQP4. Results for the second study showed that Enspryng treatment decreased the number of withdrawal symptoms in patients who were positive with anti-AQP4 by 78 percent compared to placebo treatment. All through the trial tests, there was no indication of any gain in either study in respondents who were cynical of the anti-AQP4 antibody.
According to Billy Dunn, the director of the Office of Neuroscience, there are now three FDA-approved drugs for treating patients with NMOSD. The director who operates under the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research department in FDA describes the approval as "FDA's commitment to rapidly advancing safe and effective therapies for NMOSD and other neurological diseases."
Merck Looks For FDA Review for 15-strain Pneumonia Vaccine
Pharma January Price Hikes Are Here 💊📈
Top Biotech Stocks to Look Out For in 2021
© 2020 by BiotechDistrict Subsidiary of Biotech Brothers LLC. Proudly Independent.
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Caleres Names Michael Edwards President of Famous Footwear, Positioning the Company’s Largest Brand for Further Growth and Success
Mike Edwards, President of Famous Footwear (Photo: Business Wire)
ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Caleres (NYSE: CAL) today named Michael Edwards president of Famous Footwear, effective November 20, 2020.
Edwards joined Caleres in 2008, most recently serving as senior vice president of digital commerce, planning, allocation and stores. Prior to that he has held roles of increasing responsibility in Famous Footwear including time as chief customer officer, senior vice president of merchandise planning and analytics and vice president, sales and store operations. With his breadth of experience and deep knowledge base in all areas of the business from strategy to stores, Edwards is uniquely positioned to lead Caleres’ largest brand. Most recently, he was instrumental in navigating the business through the economic shutdown, during which he played a critical role in reopening and operating the stores post-COVID and pivoting Famous Footwear to successfully meet the evolving needs of its customer base including leading the brand’s digital growth initiatives, implementation of QuadPay, the rollout of curbside service at more than 600 Famous Footwear stores and the coordination of increased store fulfillment activities.
Edwards will replace Molly Adams, who resigned her position, effective November 20, 2020, to pursue an opportunity outside the organization.
“Mike is a capable and successful leader who has seen the business through every lens,” said Diane Sullivan, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “I am confident he will use his institutional knowledge and his extensive digital commerce, operating, product and marketing experience to further the positive momentum within our largest brand. His deep understanding of the Famous customer and strong leadership abilities will be essential as we remain focused on growing sales and profit, executing on consumer strategies and delivering the Famous vision. We want to be the first and only choice for family footwear. The board and senior executive team look forward to working closely with Mike to make that happen. We thank Molly for her contributions over the last two years and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”
“I have a true passion for this business, the utmost confidence in the Famous go-forward strategy, and I am honored to lead this significant part of the Caleres portfolio,” said Edwards. “Famous Footwear is expertly positioned to excel in any market environment through our ability to offer the national brands she wants, when and where she wants to shop – online and in store. Athletic and sport-inspired styles, our sweet spot, are exactly what the customer is looking for in this environment. We have the right team and tools in place to leverage what we’ve learned, build upon our successes, advance our goals and deliver value to all of our stakeholders.”
Biographical Information:
Mike Edwards is a 12-year Caleres and Famous Footwear veteran. For the last year, he has served as senior vice president, digital commerce, planning, allocation and stores, working closely and collaboratively with the Famous team to craft the strategic growth vision for Famous. Edwards joined Caleres in June 2008 as the director of merchandising, systems and operations and had served in numerous roles of increasing responsibility during his tenure – including Chief Customer Officer for Famous Footwear. Prior to joining Caleres, Edwards served in a variety of operational, merchandising and financial roles at the May Company and served as an account executive at Laclede Steel Company. Edwards and his wife Jodi live in St. Louis.
About Caleres
Caleres is the home of today’s most coveted footwear brands and represents a diverse portfolio spanning all of life’s styles and experiences. Every shoe tells a story and Caleres has the perfect fit for every one of them. Our collections have been developed and acquired to meet the evolving needs of today’s assorted and growing global audiences, with consumer insights driving every aspect of the innovation, design, and craft that go into our distinctly positioned brands, including Famous Footwear, Sam Edelman, Naturalizer, Allen Edmonds, Vionic, Dr. Scholl’s Shoes, and more. The Caleres story is most simply defined by the company’s mission: Inspire people to feel great…feet first.
Logan Bonacorsi
lbonacorsi@caleres.com
Kelly Malone
kmalone@caleres.com
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Higher education bonds Michigan
Northern Michigan University carving out $14 million to renovate university center
By Nora Colomer May 15, 2018, 4:02 p.m. EDT 2 Min Read
Northern Michigan University plans to sell a mix of tax-exempt and taxable new money and refunding bonds that will fund a renovation of the its university center, an upgrade that comes as the school is working to stem enrollment losses.
The university will issue a total of $72 million of general revenue bonds in a negotiated sale Thursday.
Northern Michigan, in Marquette on the Upper Peninsula, is one of 15 publicly assisted universities in Michigan. The university reported total general revenues collected in 2017 were $123 million. Operating revenues for the fiscal year 2017 $99 .4 million.
The university experienced a decline in general enrollment for five consecutive years although enrollment for fall 2017 stabilized with an increase in freshmen matriculation to 1,501 from 1,355 in 2016.
Roughly $8 million of the $22 million taxable bond piece will redeem bonds the university issued in 2008. The rest will finance the university center. Proceeds from the $50 million tax-exempt piece of the deal will refund 2008 bonds.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citi are the lead managers. Blue Rose Capital Advisors LLC is the municipal advisor and Miller Canfield Paddock & Stone Plc is bond counsel.
S&P Global Ratings affirmed the university’s long term rating at A with a stable outlook. Moody’s Investor Service rates the bonds A1 with a stable outlook. The university has $81 million of outstanding bonds.
The bonds are secured by an irrevocable pledge of general revenues . State operating and capital appropriations and restricted income are specifically excluded from the security pledge. Revenues associated with certain on-campus student housing facilities constructed and managed by third parties are also excluded from general revenues.
The borrowing will finance the demolition costs and reconstruction and equipping of the south and east wings of the Don H. Bottum university center. The update to the center will provide an opportunity to serve the campus community as well as conference patrons and community of the Upper Peninsula residents.
“Renovation of the current university center on campus will create a new and modern venue for the university region and upper peninsula that attracts students and the community,” the university stated in an offering document.
The project is expected to cost $22 million with construction to begin this spring and completed next August. The bonds will finance about $14 million and the rest of the project will be be paid from reserves.
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Policies, ministerial instructions, and agreements
Ministerial Instructions
Other immigration programs and goals
Ministerial Instructions 37 (MI37): Ministerial Instructions with respect to the processing of certain new and existing applications for temporary residence
Ministerial Instructions with respect to the processing of certain new and existing applications for temporary residence to further support Government wide measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus)
These Instructions are given, pursuant to section 87.3 and subsections 92(1.1) and (2) by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration as, in the opinion of the Minister, these Instructions will best support the attainment of the immigration goals established by the Government of Canada over the next 21 days.
These Instructions are consistent with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act objectives, as laid out in section 3, and are compliant with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Authority for these Ministerial Instructions is pursuant to section 87.3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Instructions are directed to officers who are charged with handling and/or reviewing certain applications for temporary residence.
Recognizing the declaration by the World Health Organization regarding the pandemic of COVID-19 (Coronavirus);
Recognizing also that the increased spread of the disease would pose an imminent and severe risk to public health in Canada;
Recognizing also that the entry of persons into Canada who have been in a foreign country may contribute to the spread of the disease in Canada;
Recognizing how the related response measures have reduced Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada’s capacity for processing applications, both in Canada and overseas;
Noting that Canada’s immigration objectives, as laid out in section 3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, include the protection of the health and safety of Canadians; and
Recognizing that in order to meet the objective of protecting the health and safety of Canadians, these Instructions are to operate consistently with two Emergency Orders under the Quarantine Act: Minimizing the Risk of Exposure to COVID-19 in Canada Order (Prohibition of entry into Canada from any country other than the United States), and Minimizing the Risk of Exposure to COVID-19 in Canada Order (Prohibition of entry into Canada from the United States), as well as the Interim Order to Prevent Certain Persons from Boarding Flights to Canada due to COVID-19, made pursuant to the Aeronautics Act. These Orders restrict travel to and entry to Canada, with limited exceptions.
To view the language of the Emergency Orders issued under the Quarantine Act, including details regarding foreign nationals whose entry to Canada is not prohibited by these Orders, please visit: https://orders-in-council.canada.ca/. For the text of the Interim Order issued under the Aeronautics Act, please visit https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/initiatives/covid-19-measures-updates-guidance-tc.html.
This information is also published on the Canada Gazette.
These Instructions apply for the period of 21 calendar days following the day they come into force.
These Instructions apply to certain applications for Temporary Resident Visas, work permits, study permits, and Electronic Travel Authorizations (eTAs) received by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada before the coming into force of these Instructions, and in respect of which a final decision has not been made, and to certain new applications received by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on or after the coming into force of these Instructions.
Any categories for which Instructions are not specifically issued shall continue to be processed.
Applications Submitted from Outside Canada to be Submitted by Electronic Means - Temporary Residence
All applications for a Temporary Resident Visa (including a Transit Visa), a work permit, or a study permit submitted by persons who are outside Canada at the time of application must be submitted using electronic means (apply online).
Temporary Suspension on Processing of Certain Applications for Temporary Resident Visas and Electronic Travel Authorizations for Visitors
Applications for Temporary Resident Visas for visitors that were received before the coming into force of these Instructions and in respect of which a final decision has not been made, and those that are received on or after the coming into force of the Instructions, will not be processed while these Instructions are in effect, unless they pertain to foreign nationals who are not prohibited from entering Canada or from boarding an aircraft for a flight to Canada, per the Emergency Orders under the Quarantine Act, and the Interim Order under the Aeronautics Act, referenced above.
Any eTA applications that require processing by any means other than the electronic automated system will not be processed while these Instructions are in effect, unless they pertain to foreign nationals who are not prohibited from entering Canada or from boarding an aircraft for a flight to Canada, per the Emergency Orders under the Quarantine Act, and the Interim Order under the Aeronautics Act referenced above.
Retention/Disposition
Applications received prior to the coming into force of the Instructions, and in respect of which a final decision has not been made, and those that are received on or after the coming into force, will be retained and processing fees shall not be returned, as Instructions are temporary in nature.
Effective Period
These Instructions have effect during the period beginning on the date they are signed and ending 21 days after that date.
Marco E.L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
Dated at Ottawa, April 9, 2020
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11.25.20 // Markets & Investing // Article
Raymond James CIO Larry Adam puts this new market milestone in perspective.
After recovering from its COVID-driven decline just last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has another record to celebrate. On Tuesday, November 24, the index reached a major milestone as it closed above the 30,000 level for the first time on record – its ninth new record high this year.
If the month had ended Tuesday (month-to-date: +13.4%), it would be the best month for the Dow since January 1987 (+13.8%) and the best November since 1928. A wonderful way to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday!
But what does it mean?
The short answer is that the Dow is now up over 5% year-to-date on a price return basis, and it has rallied more than 60% from its March 23 lows to fully recover its losses and once again hit record highs.
While these thousand-point milestones are always hyped in the news headlines, they should be put into perspective. It’s important to recognize that it has been more than 300 days since the last thousand-point milestone – more than double the average duration for the previous 10 thousand-point increments – and the annualized return of 4.1% is the fifth lowest of any thousand-point milestone on record. Incidentally, this thousand-point increment only represented a 3.4% increase as each milestone going forward gets increasingly smaller.
The slowness of this milestone momentum is unsurprising given the historic levels of volatility experienced since the Dow reached the 29,000 level in mid-January, which was just prior to the COVID-driven drawdown. While the current COVID surge remains a key risk, a multitude of effective vaccine candidates and decreased levels of political uncertainty have overshadowed it. Nevertheless, the economic recovery from the COVID-induced recession has led to vast levels of dispersion beneath the Dow’s surface.
In accordance with our expectation for a K-shaped economic recovery, constituents in the technology and home improvement areas have contributed heavily to this last thousand-point gain. The Dow is up about 4% since the last milestone, and while leaders such as Apple (+49%), Walmart (+31%) and Home Depot (+22%) have lifted the index, constituents in the industrial and energy sectors such as Chevron (-18%) and Boeing (-34%) have reduced its performance.
Is the Dow expensive, and should we adjust portfolios?
Given the recent strong rally in the equity market, we have grown more cautious in the near term as valuations are the most expensive they’ve been since at least 2001. However, despite the potential for near-term volatility, our positive outlook for equities over the longer term is supported by fundamental factors, including:
A forecasted bounce back in economic activity in 2021
Expectations for a substantial earnings rebound in 2021
An accommodative Federal Reserve, and
Heightened levels of cash still on the sidelines.
With our optimistic long-term outlook, we remind investors that timing the market is a difficult task, and psychological levels such as these shouldn’t be used to make portfolio changes.
All expressions of opinion are those of Investment Strategy and not those of Raymond James & Associates, Inc. and are subject to change. Information contained in this report was received from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy is not guaranteed. Past performance is not indicative of future results. No investment strategy can guarantee success. There is no assurance any of the trends mentioned will continue or that any of the forecasts mentioned will occur. Economic and market conditions are subject to change. Investing involves risks including the possible loss of capital. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), commonly known as “The Dow” is an index representing 30 stocks of companies maintained and reviewed by the editors of the Wall Street Journal. It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Further information regarding these investments is available from your financial advisor. Material is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation.
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Complaints & Compliments
We value what you have to say about our school. Your feedback could make us aware of strengths and problems that we don’t know about. So, we want to hear from you.
It’s always good to be told when things go well. We like to know what’s working and how the things we do make a difference. If you would like staff to know the good things they do, please write a quick compliment at the link below and send it to us.
If you had a concern about something or would like to make a complaint we’d also like to hear that so we can work to improve and work with you to resolve the issue. You’ll find the complaints form further down on the page at the link below.
If you wish to register a complaint or to lodge a compliment, please choose an option below. You can choose to remain anonymous, and we will work swiftly towards a response.
I'd like to make a complaint about the College.
I'd like to make a complaint about the Principal.
I'd like to make a complaint about a staff member.
Capstone College is a project fo Fusion Australia, and we take all complaints seriously.
View Our Grievance & Complaints Policy Documents
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In this season of love. You know, it's easy to see other people who have relationships and compare that to your own situation or compare the relationship you do have to other relationships. And one thing that I know for sure is that as you want to expand the love in your life or deepen the relationship you currently have.
There's a couple of proven ways to do that. And today I want to share with you a story that deeply impacted me and the story centers on a theme, a theme that when you take this to heart, it can deepen not only your experience of love in your life, but experience of love in the relationship that you have. And that theme is kindness. It's often overlooked. It's often underestimated the power of kindness, and yet kindness can literally create a moment in time in a relationship where someone will remember that forever. And that's exactly what happened for this gentlemen. His name is Charles swindle. He's a Reverend and many years ago he drove taxi and he writes about a particular experience that he had. And I invite you to hear this story and bring it into your own heart and think about how this story could relate to you. During this season of love. Here it goes. 20 years ago, I drove cab for a living. I arrived at two 30 in the morning. The building was dark except for a single light on the ground floor. Under these circumstances, a cab driver would just honk. Once or twice, wait a minute and then drive away. But I'd seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. So I wouldn't drive away unless the situation smelled of danger. I always went to the door. So I walked to the door and not just a moment, answer the frail elderly voice after a long pause, the door opened.
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A small woman in her eighties stood before me, by her side was a small nylon suitcase. Would you carry this bag out to the car? For me, she asked. So I took the suitcase out and returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for me, kindness. Uh, it's nothing. I told her. I just treat all my passengers the way I would want my mother treated. When we got to the cab, she gave me an address and she said, Oh, by the way, could you drive through downtown? It's not the shortest way I told her, I don't mind. She said, I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to hospice. I looked in my rear view mirror and her eyes were glistening. I don't have any family left. She said almost to herself. The doctor said I don't have very long. I quietly reached over and shut off the meter route. Would you like me to take? I asked her for the next two hours, we drove all the way and the city, she showed me the building where she had ones worked. As an elevator operator, we drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had left when they were newlyweds.
She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she asked me to slow down in front of a particular building or corner and she would sit staring into the darkness and nothing as the first hint of light was creasing the horizon. She suddenly said, okay, I'm ready. Let's go. Now we drove in silence to the address you had given me. It was a low building. Two orderlies came out to the cab. As soon as we pulled up, they were solicitors and intent watching her every move. They were expecting her. I opened the trunk and took out the small suitcase and carried it to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. How much do I owe you? She asked, no, you don't owe me anything. I said, Oh, you have to make a living. She answered. Well, there are other passengers. I responded almost without thinking I bent over and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. You gave an old woman a little bit of joy. Thank you. She said I squeezed her hand and walked into the dim morning, light behind me a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life. I drove aimlessly lost in thought for the rest of the day. I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten into that cab with an angry driver that morning or one who is impatient?
What if I had refused to take the ride or it honked once and drove away on a quick review? I don't think I have done anything more important in my life. I hope that story touched you the way it touches me. And what I love about that story of kindness is that it embodies a quality of kindness that can be so powerful for people. And that is patients. This taxi driver had patience for her and understanding for what she wanted that day. And he was willing to give that gift of patients to her, to drive her around, to see these sites. And so in relationships, it's so easy to have grudges and hold resentments. And to be impatient with each other, impatient over breakfast, impatient when someone's a little bit late and we're trying to get in the car and go impatience in response, turning to a text message. So I challenge you this week to turn out the patients, because that is an expression of kindness for the relationships that you have love and watch your own life blossom as a result.
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What are those special qualities that make a man desire a woman? Well, today we're going to talk about six qualities that you have that as you demonstrate, that increases his desire for you. Check it out. Now, before I give you these six qualities, it's important to know the overarching principle that we are attracted and desire. People who are attracted and desire us back. It's a common law where people like people who like them. So if you want your man to desire you, you've gotta be willing to desire. Him and actually show that affection to him and let him feel that energy from you. So in all six of these, let that be the underlying tone that your desire for him is coming through. All right. Number one is you appreciate. His quirkiness. See every guy's got quirkiness, guy's got his little idiosyncrasies. The thing that kind of only, he does the things he geeks out about. I've got mine. And if you can love and appreciate his quirkiness, then he feels this emotion of she gets me. And I'll tell you what, every man who has fallen in love, love with a woman, the way he describes her to his friends is he'll say, I don't know. There's just something about her. She just gets me and that getting you comes down to do you love and appreciate his quirkiness and the way that he sees life. If you can show that for him, his desire for you will go up. Number two is you are a woman who creates joy laughter and fun in life. Instead of being a woman who waits for other people to create the joy, the laughter and the see there are passengers in life and there are drivers in life and drivers are the ones who tell their day where they're going.
Passengers are the ones who wait for other people to drive the day and say, what am I going to experience today? And the men who have a desire for the woman is the woman who will find the fun, create the fun, create the joy, and it might be. Game night you say, Hey, let's play a game tonight, or you're going to cook up a new dish together, or you say, Hey, let's take this new class together or use find something fun. You tickle him and tease him and you bring and infuse that energy into the moments that is a special woman. Number three is to be authentic and real. You see in every relationship, there are moments when we can really be seen and create intimacy. And ironically, those are the same moments. When many of us have a tendency to shut down or pull away or close off. And so are you the woman who closes off and puts on the everything is fine phase. Or are you the woman who really lets him in, lets him see you? Are you willing to cry on his shoulder? Because let me tell you, every man loves to be the man who holds his woman, lets her cry on his shoulder, consoles her and has her rejuvenate regenerate and feel better because of that. Number four is sexy and sweats. Here's what I mean, it's easy to be second. See when you're going to dress up, put your makeup on and go out for a Saturday night, but allow to self to be sexy in sweats. That means on a Saturday morning. Or a Sunday morning when you're just kind of lazy, go ahead and brush your hair.
Put a little bit of makeup on walk around in the sexy underwear, underneath the sweats to get your own sexy energy going. And you will absolutely stir up the desire in your man. And number five is that you get along with his family and friends. You get along with the people that matter most to him, the people he loves because the woman that gets along with the people he cares about is a woman that he can see himself with. Longterm. I remember my wife and I were dating and we were dating long distance for nine months. And our first big trip together was a birthday trip that I was throwing and we rented this beautiful log cabin up in the mountains. It was called the chalet shock a lot, and it was the first time that she was going to be my friends, the most important friends and loved ones that I have in my life besides my family. And so as she comes and I pick her up. She's feeling nervous because she knows this is a big moment and I'm trying to make it all chill and all good and everything. And as the weekend progresses and she's hanging out with my friends and she's bonding and she's laughing and there was this moment where I'm in the living room. I could see her in the kitchen yeah. With my friends and they're laughing and they're talking and she's totally connecting. Totally getting it. It was like the whole thing turned his slow motion and I could see how she fit. In my life, not just now, but longterm. And it was such this reassuring, great deep feeling.
And then afterwards to have my friends come to me and say, man, I think you found a one, like she is amazing, right? That is just icing on the cake. So when you get along with his friends and family, the people who matter most to him, just know this, that that's added value. That's going to take his own desire and attraction for you to the next level. And number six is you can do nothing together. And you can do everything together. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that the two of you have such a great friendship and you foster that friendship by doing things that you both love together, whether that's Netflix and chill, whether that's just hanging out, watching a favorite TV show. Or whether that's going hiking or whether that's going out someplace nice traveling together when you foster the friendship and you do a spectrum of things from nothing to two activities, to the things that you enjoy doing most, when he thinks I'm going to hang out with somebody today, who would I love to hang out with?
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Cyprus: measures to upgrade VET
A press conference announcing measures to upgrade Cyprus’s public VET system improve its image and increase participation rates took place at the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC) in December 2018.
The measures include renaming the Department of Secondary Technical and Vocational Education (STVE) to Department of Secondary Technical and Vocational Education and Training (STVET), and ‘technical schools’ to ‘technical and vocational schools of education and training’.
The addition of the word ‘training’ reflects compatibility with European terminology and marks the expansion of training opportunities beyond secondary level. New logos for Cypriot VET and its overarching pillars were also presented. Construction of new buildings for technical and vocational schools of education and training were also announced, one in Larnaca by 2022 and one in Limassol by 2025.
Evening schools of technical and vocational education play an important role in Cyprus as the main provider of formal VET to adult learners, and the sole progression route for core apprenticeship graduates. These schools offer adult learners programmes of formal education – equivalent to the STVE programmes (ISCED 354, EQF level 4) – free of charge to promote further participation in VET and support integration of early school leavers in the workplace and in society in general. Three new evening schools of technical and vocational education were established, increasing their total number and ensuring geographical coverage of the whole country.
The study duration of these programmes varies from one to four years, depending on students’ education background. They lead to the acquisition of a leaving certificate, which has the same legal status as the one awarded by mainstream upper secondary general and upper secondary technical and vocational education and training schools. The important role of the ‘new modern apprenticeship’ was also emphasised as the only route of progression for apprentices completing the core apprenticeship programme.
Concerning higher non-tertiary education institutes of VET (previously known as post-secondary Institutes of VET), which play a leading role in the technical and vocational education and training system, a new building will be constructed in Limassol, featuring technologically advanced laboratories and infrastructure. This additional modern infrastructure is of high importance, considering that most of graduates find employment easily, usually upon completing their studies.
Access to education and training
Recognition of qualifications
Transition from school or training to work
Reporting on European training policy
VET in Europe
ReferNet Cyprus
Read more about Spotlight on VET – 2018 compilation
Spotlight on VET – 2018 compilation
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Boris: Don’t Betray Future Generations! #NoToNoDeal
Mete Coban started this petition to Boris Johnson (Prime Minister)
The UK’s exit date from the EU is fast approaching, and our new Prime Minister Boris Johnson is still taking steps that increase the chances of us leaving without a deal. If he allows this to happen, he is betraying future generations. Not just their opportunities, their futures, their freedoms - but their trust too.
Without some kind of a Brexit deal, NHS chiefs have warned they could quickly run out of vital medicines and may have to delay operations for people in need. Supermarkets have spoken out about their concerns for our fresh food supply. Politicians on both sides of the channel have said this would mean a hard border in Ireland. People have started stockpiling because there is so much uncertainty.
With this petition, let's demand Boris Johnson safeguards our future by ruling out a no deal Brexit.
I run My Life My Say, a youth-led group made up of both Remainers and Leavers who have been fighting to make sure that young people aren’t forgotten when it comes to Brexit. I usually wouldn’t speak up like this but I’m terrified about what No Deal could mean for young people like me. Reports suggest that we’ll lose as much as £108,000 in earnings by 2050 if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal. In the short-term they say it could cost 18 to 21-year-olds £675 a year and 22 to 29-year-olds £830 a year.
By the Government’s own impact assessments, leaving without a deal would be disastrous for the future of this country and our everyday lives.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and we must find a way to reunite our country.
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US Supreme Court Decisions On-Line> Volume 242 > PENNSYLVANIA R. CO. V. STINEMAN COAL MINING CO., 242 U. S. 298 (1916)
PENNSYLVANIA R. CO. V. STINEMAN COAL MINING CO., 242 U. S. 298 (1916)
Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Stineman Coal Mining Co., 242 U.S. 298 (1916)
Pennsylvania Railroad Company v.
Stineman Coal Mining Company
Argued May 14, 1915
Restored to docket for reargument June 14, 1915
Reargued October 25, 1915
Decided December 18, 1916
ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT
OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA
An action against an interstate carrier for damages caused by unfair and discriminatory departures from a rule of car distribution in times of car shortage may be prosecuted in a state court. Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Sonman Shaft Coal Co., ante, 242 U. S. 120.
The rule of car distribution relied on by the plaintiff having been held discriminatory and illegal by the Interstate Commerce Commission in due proceedings at the complaint of other shippers, and this being proven by reports and orders of the Commission produced in evidence, held that the administrative question so determined could not be revived by the carrier to oust the jurisdiction of the court.
By such proceedings of the Commission, the Act to Regulate Commerce intends no less to redress past discriminations than prevent them in future, under the carrier's rule, and this for the benefit of all shippers who have been or may be affected thereby, and when the Commission finds the rule obnoxious not because of temporary or changeable conditions, but inherently and from its adoption, and, besides chanrobles.com-red
ordering its discontinuance, recognizes that all injured shippers are entitled to reparation and awards it to such as appear and prove damages, the status of the rule is fixed for past as well as future transactions under it.
Where a rule is found discriminatory by the Commission in the circumstances indicated in the last preceding paragraph, a shipper, though not a party before the Commission, cannot recover from the carrier for its failures to obey the rule before the finding was made.
241 Pa.St. 509 reversed.
The case is stated in the opinion.
MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
In a state court in Pennsylvania, the coal company recovered a judgment against the railroad company for damages resulting, as was claimed, from unjust discrimination practiced in the distribution of coal cars in times of car shortage, and the supreme court of the state affirmed the judgment. 241 Pa. 509.
The suit related to both intrastate and interstate commerce, and whether, in respect of the latter, it could be brought in a state court consistently with the Interstate Commerce Act is the first question presented.
The coal company was engaged in coal mining on the carrier's line in Pennsylvania, and was shipping the coal to points in that and other states. Other coal companies were engaged in like operations in the same district. A chanrobles.com-red
rule of the carrier provided for a pro rata distribution of the available supply of coal cars in times of car shortage, but did not require or contemplate that individual cars owned or controlled by the shipper should be charged against his distributive share. Without questioning the reasonableness of this rule, but, on the contrary, assuming that it was unobjectionable and became the true measure of the shipper's right and the carrier's duty, the coal company claimed that the carrier had unjustly discriminated against it to its damage by furnishing it a smaller number of cars, and some of its competitors a greater number, than the rule contemplated or permitted. In other words, the claim was not that the rule was discriminatory, but that it was violated or unequally enforced by the carrier. Of such a suit was said in Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Puritan Coal Mining Co., 237 U. S. 121, 237 U. S. 131-132, where the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act were extensively considered:
"There is no administrative question involved, the courts being called on to decide a mere question of fact as to whether the carrier has violated the rule to plaintiff's damage. Such suits, though against an interstate carrier for damages arising in interstate commerce, may be prosecuted either in the state or federal courts."
Adhering to this view, we think the suit was properly brought in a state court. See Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Sonman Shaft Coal Co., ante, 242 U. S. 120.
But it is suggested that, in the course of the trial, an administrative question -- one which the act intends the Interstate Commerce Commission shall solve -- was brought into the suit, and that this disabled the court from proceeding to a decision upon the merits. The suggestion is grounded upon the fact that one of the carrier's defenses at the trial was to the effect that the rule invoked by the coal company as fixing its quota of the cars was unjustly discriminatory, and therefore not an appropriate test of the shipper's right or the carrier's duty. We think the chanrobles.com-red
suggestion is not well taken. The administrative question, which was whether the rule was reasonable or otherwise, was not then an open one. It had been theretofore determined in the mode contemplated by the act. Upon the complaint of other shippers, and after a full hearing, the Commission had found that the rule was unjustly discriminatory, and had directed the carrier to give no further effect to it. 19 I.C.C. 356, 392; 23 ibid. 186. This was shown by the reports and orders of the Commission, which were produced in evidence. Thus, there was no jurisdictional obstacle at this point.
The Commission deemed it essential to a fair distribution in times of car shortage that individual cars owned or controlled by the shipper should be charged against his distributive share, and, because the rule here took no account of such cars, the Commission found that it was unjustly discriminatory. This occurred two years before the trial, but after the period covered by the suit. As part of its defense, the carrier claimed that the cars distributed to the coal company during that period included many individual cars controlled by the latter, and that these were not charged against its distributive share. Evidently intending to recognize that this was so, and desiring to shorten the trial, the parties agreed that a verdict should be taken for the coal company in a designated sum, subject to the condition, among others, that "if, under the practice, the law, and the rules," the court should conclude that "the plaintiff company should have been charged with individual cars," then judgment should be entered for the carrier non obstante veredicto. The verdict was taken and judgment entered thereon, the court concluding that the rule should be respected notwithstanding the Commission's finding. Complaint is made of this decision, and we think it was wrong. That this shipper was not a party to the proceeding before the Commission hardly needs notice, no point being made of it in chanrobles.com-red
the briefs. And it is not a valid objection that the finding came after the period to which the suit relates. The act contemplated that the proceeding should be conducted in the interest of all the shippers who had been, or were likely to be, affected by the rule, and not merely in the interest of those who filed the complaint. The purpose was to determine the character of the rule for the equal benefit of all, to the end not only that discrimination thereunder in the future might be prevented, but also that such discrimination in the past might be redressed. So understanding the act, the Commission, upon finding the rule unjustly discriminatory, ordered the carrier to cease giving effect to it, and also recognized that shippers who had been injured through its operation in the past were entitled to reparation. And the Commission proceeded to award reparation to such shippers as appeared and adequately proved their injury and the amount of damages sustained. Not only so, but the Commission's report makes it plain that the finding was not based upon any temporary or changeable condition existing at the time, but upon what inhered in the rule, and therefore was true from the time of its adoption. The legal propriety of the Commission's finding is not questioned, but only that it operates to discredit the carrier's rule as respects earlier transactions.
In the circumstances stated, we are of opinion that effect must be given to the Commission's finding, even though it came after the transactions in question, and that a recovery by the coal company cannot be permitted without departing from the uniformity and equality of treatment which the act is intended to secure. Only through an enforcement of the discriminatory rule, and of the particular feature which made it discriminatory, can a recovery be had. A right to recover independently of that is neither shown nor claimed. In short, the coal company concedes that it received all the cars to which it would have been entitled under a reasonable rule, and yet seeks to recover chanrobles.com-red
upon the ground that more cars were not delivered to it under a rule which was unreasonable, because unduly discriminatory in its favor. Consistently with the act, this cannot be done.
Judgment reversed.
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Home / About Us/ Our Team/ Gregg Rozansky
Gregg Rozansky
Senior Vice President, Senior Associate General Counsel
Primary Issue Expertise
Amicus Briefs Bank Activities and Structure Bank Governance
Gregg Rozansky currently serves as Senior Vice President, Senior Associate General Counsel for the Bank Policy Institute. Prior to joining BPI, Mr. Rozansky served as Managing Director and Senior Associate General Counsel of The Clearing House. In that capacity, Mr. Rozansky led the policy efforts of The Clearing House on a wide array of bank regulatory, compliance and corporate governance-related issues impacting large financial institutions. Mr. Rozansky is a frequent presenter on bank corporate governance and regulatory issues at leading financial industry events and has written extensively on the regulation of major banking institutions and regulatory reform, including the Dodd-Frank Act.
Prior to joining The Clearing House in 2013, Mr. Rozansky advised financial institutions on U.S. bank regulatory and compliance issues in private practice at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Shearman & Sterling, focusing on cross-border transactions and the implications of U.S. and global regulatory reforms and developments. Mr. Rozansky is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned his B.A. in economics and government at Cornell University. At Harvard, he held a position as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics.
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Max Naylor Black Holes and White Voids
Oil, ink, pastel and graphite on board
Urban, surreal, landscape.
Max Naylor
As an image maker Max's practice consists of two related activities: firstly the gathering of information; exploring the landscape, foraging for experiences, ideas and visual memories; the ongoing hunt for that elusive glimpse of magic.
Secondly returning this haul to the studio; adding to a witch’s brew of materials and techniques that finally coalesce as an image on a surface.
Through this evolving process he continues to develop a diverse yet cohesive body of work.
Max grew up in Cornwall, he studied at Falmouth College of Art, Brighton University and the Royal Drawing School London. He has completed several international residencies including time spent in India and Los Angeles. In 2017 he was awarded the Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary Award and in 2016 was the winner of the Jackson’s Open Art Prize. Max is currently a tutor at the Royal Drawing School in London and he lives and works in Bristol.
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Website: Extra Strong
Bricks is a charitable incorporated organisation registered with Charity Commission: 1183118. Bricks Trading Limited (our trading company) is registered with Companies House: 12359038
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Victoria County History - Middlesex
A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7, Acton, Chiswick, Ealing and Brentford, West Twyford, Willesden
Ealing and Brentford: Other estates
A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7, Acton, Chiswick, Ealing and Brentford, West Twyford, Willesden. Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1982.
OTHER ESTATES.
At Castlebar Hill Richard Barenger in 1423 held c. 90 a. of copyhold, including 53 a. called Absdonsland, to which Simon Barenger was admitted in 1560. (fn. 1) Absdonsland, then 72 a., passed in turn to Anne Perrott and her son Thomas, who surrendered it in 1574 to Christopher Rythe, (fn. 2) by whom it was settled in 1585 on Joan Southcott, widow. (fn. 3) Edward More surrendered it in 1627 to his wife Philippa, who settled it in 1641 on his son John. (fn. 4) The estate was acquired from George and Rebecca Lamplowe by Sir William Bateman, the purchaser of other property in Ealing, in 1650 and descended in 1664 from Bateman's widow to his son Sir William, (fn. 5) whose youngest son Charles settled it on his son William in 1719. (fn. 6) It descended in turn to William Bateman (d. c. 1797) and his children William (d. 1820) and Mary Bateman (d. 1833), all three of them lunatics, (fn. 7) and included 160 a. in Ealing when it was disputed among Mary's heirs. (fn. 8) Francis Swinden bought out other claimants in 1854, with a view to leasing the estate for building. (fn. 9) The threestoreyed mansion, called Castlebar House or CASTLEBAR PARK in 1824, (fn. 10) stood on the south side of Castlebar Hill. First mentioned in 1641, (fn. 11) it was difficult to let by 1818 (fn. 12) and dilapidated in 1855, when Swinden allowed for its demolition in a lease. (fn. 13) Among tenants were Isabella Cunningham, countess of Glencairn (d. 1796), in 1806, (fn. 14) Lt.-Gen. Sir Frederick Augustus Wetherall (1754-1842) in 1818, and Sir Jonathan Miles in 1819. (fn. 15)
A forerunner of Castle Hill Lodge, north of Castlebar Hill, was sold by Charles Gould in 1763 to Capt. James Cusack. In 1764 it was acquired by John Scott, (fn. 16) who combined 5 freehold closes and 10 a. leased from the Isleworth charity trustees (fn. 17) to form an estate of c. 27 a. The house had been enlarged or rebuilt by c. 1773, (fn. 18) when the estate was bought by Francis Burdett. During the tenure of the Burdetts, Stebbing Shaw (1762-1802), topographer, was tutor there to the politician Sir Francis Burdett, Bt. (1770- 1844). (fn. 19) In 1791 the house was bought by Henry Beaufoy (d. 1795), who improved it and whose brother sold it in 1795 to Mrs. Maria FitzHerbert (1756-1837), (fn. 20) morganatic wife of the prince of Wales. (fn. 21) She sold it in 1801 to Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent (1767-1820), (fn. 22) who called it CASTLE HILL LODGE and commissioned improvements by Wyatt (fn. 23) but lived elsewhere from 1812. (fn. 24) After attempted sales in 1820 and 1827 the estate was bought in 1829 by Gen. Sir F. A. Wetherall, the duke's former aide-decamp. (fn. 25) The general's son, Adm. Frederick Augustus Wetherall (d. 1856), was succeeded by his son Frederick Henry Pakenham Wetherall, (fn. 26) the house being leased from 1856 to Henry Austin. (fn. 27) The property was called the Kent House estate in 1870, when F. H. P. Wetherall sold the house to Thomas Harrison and the rest of the land to Alfred Prest, Ebenezer J. Pearce, and Charles Jones, for building. (fn. 28) Some of the land was later bought by Harrison, who sold it in 1880 to the British Land Co. (fn. 29)
Two-storeyed and in the Grecian style, Castle Hill Lodge was long and low in 1816, when its principal, north, front featured an Ionic portico beneath a pediment. Lacking woodland and water, it was considered a pleasant but not a firstclass seat. (fn. 30) Fittings were sold in 1820 and further materials were removed in 1827. (fn. 31) No house apparently survived in 1840 but a new one had been built by 1845. (fn. 32) As Kent House it was still occupied by Henry Gibbons in 1890 and 1908, (fn. 33) becoming St. David's Home in 1918. (fn. 34)
Gen. Wetherall, tenant of the Batemans' seat until 1818, (fn. 35) in 1817 bought the lease and in 1824 the freehold of CASTLEBAR HOUSE, east of Castlebar Hill and newly built in 1790 when leased by John Wey to Richard Meux (d. 1813), brewer. (fn. 36) In 1840 Wetherall held c. 47 a. of freehold, copyhold, and leasehold, (fn. 37) including Castle Hill Lodge. The residue passed to his son Gen. Sir George Augustus Wetherall (1788- 1868), who devised it to his sons Maj.-Gen. Sir Edward Wetherall (d. 1869) and the Revd. A. W. Wetherall, the second of whom intended to sell it in 1870. (fn. 38) Castlebar House belonged to Mr. Bartholomew in 1897, when it was acquired as a Benedictine monastery. It was used as a girls' school successively by Visitation nuns, by nuns of the Holy Child Jesus 1901-10, and by Augustinian nuns 1912-15. In 1976 it was a Roman Catholic men's club and youth club. The principal front of the classical 18th-century house had faced the garden and only three bays had faced the road until c. 1830, when an extension by two bays gave an asymmetrical appearance. (fn. 39)
John Twyford settled three customary tenements and two crofts on his daughter Isabel and her husband Richard Hayward in 1456. (fn. 40) Their daughter Isabel married Thomas Clavell, who held most of the estate in 1492. (fn. 41) It descended to his grandson John Clavell, on whom his greatgrandmother Isabel Hayward settled a homestead and croft in 1518 (fn. 42) and whose coheirs in 1547 were his three sisters Agnes Alderton, later Hore, Elizabeth Cogges, and Alice, later wife of John Living. (fn. 43) Following Elizabeth's death without issue, her sisters sold the estate of c. 160 a. in 1584 to William, later Sir William, Fleetwood, recorder of London, (fn. 44) who in 1588 sold it to Edward Boteler, (fn. 45) who as Sir Edward Boteler of Birchanger (Essex), settled copyhold property on his son John and his wife Jane in 1608. (fn. 46) Probably it was the house and 156 a. called Botelers farm near Drayton Green and Drayton Lane, which they surrendered in 1610 to the lawyer John, later Sir John, Walter (1566-1630). (fn. 47) Sir John's youngest son David was admitted in 1635 (fn. 48) and lived in DRAYTON HOUSE at the north end of Drayton Green. (fn. 49) The estate descended to Sir William Walter, Bt. (d. 1694). In 1698, in accordance with his will, Botelers farm was settled on his second wife Mary and their son Robert, later Sir Robert (d. 1731). (fn. 50) It passed to John Mead, to his widow Jane, and then to his son John, whose grandson Grantham Mead, merchant of London, was admitted in 1712. (fn. 51) Mead surrendered Botelers farm in 1747 to King Gould, (fn. 52) who held at least 225 a. of copyhold and Pitshanger manor at his death in 1756. His son Charles (fn. 53) sold Botelers farm with Pitshanger to Thomas Gurnell in 1765 but retained land west of Northfield Avenue and a house at Little Ealing, (fn. 54) which may however have been Coldhall manor house and leased out. (fn. 55)
PLACE HOUSE, Little Ealing Lane, was reputedly sequestrated as recusants' property during the Interregnum (fn. 56) and had nine hearths in 1664. (fn. 57) It belonged to John Loving (d. 1693) and descended to his son and namesake, who successfully asserted his claim to a pew in Ealing church and his independence of Coldhall manor in 1693. (fn. 58) In 1729 Loving sold the house to Sir Richard Ellis, Bt. (d. 1742), (fn. 59) whose widow Sarah sold 33 a. of copyhold to King Gould before her marriage in 1745 to Sir Francis Dashwood, Bt., later Lord Le Despenser (d. 1781). (fn. 60) The Dashwoods either sold the house or let it on a 1,000-year lease in 1746 to Richard, later Sir Richard, Lyttelton, who in 1760 with his wife Rachel, dowager duchess of Bridgwater, assigned the lease to Francis Greville, Earl Brooke and earl of Warwick (d. 1773), (fn. 61) who assigned it in 1765 to Lord James Manners. (fn. 62) In 1765 and 1777 the tenant of at least part of the estate was the statesman Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth and later marquess of Bath (1734-96). (fn. 63) Manners sold the estate in 1789 to Cuthbert Fisher, (fn. 64) whose widow was owner in 1811, when the estate had been renamed EALING PARK. (fn. 65) Mrs. Fisher was succeeded by 1824 by her husband's devisee Jacob Jeddere, who took the name Fisher (fn. 66) and had died by 1834. (fn. 67) In 1840 Ealing Park belonged to the surgeon William Lawrence, later a baronet (1783-1867), whose 89-a. estate lay mainly between Boston Road, Little Ealing Lane, and Ealing Road (fn. 68) and whose wife Louisa Trevor (d. 1855), a leading social figure, made the gardens. (fn. 69) After her death Ealing Park was leased by 1863 to J. Wainright, and then to James Budgett, before its sale by Sir Trevor Lawrence, Bt. (d. 1913). (fn. 70) Acquired in part in 1882 by the British Land Co., (fn. 71) much of the grounds had been built over by 1898, when the house was a convent of the Ladies of Nazareth; (fn. 72) by 1912 it was a convent of the Sisters of Charity. (fn. 73) Built in the late 18th century and soon extended, the house is two-storeyed and of nine bays, with a pedimented central projection and, on the east front, a single-storeyed Ionic colonnade. (fn. 74)
The ELM GROVE estate, earlier called Hicks on the Heath, lay on the west of Ealing common, of which it may once have been part. A copyhold toft and 20 a. of woodland called Hickes atte Hethe, late of Richard atte Hethe, were leased in 1458 to John Merryweather and others, who immediately assigned them to Thomas and Henry Frowyk. (fn. 75) The estate apparently descended with Gunnersbury until Henry Frowyk's death in 1520, when it reverted to the lord, who farmed it in 1520 to John Basset. (fn. 76) In 1578 Christopher Rythe held Hickes atte Hethe, which he surrendered in 1584 to Joan Southcott, with Abdonsland. (fn. 77) It belonged in 1613 to Edward More (fn. 78) and in 1667 to Thomas Talbot, (fn. 79) who surrendered it in 1670 to Sarah Baker of Holborn. (fn. 80) Robert Newdigate, admitted in 1677, (fn. 81) was succeeded in 1684 by Sir William Trumbull (1639-1716), Secretary of State, who leased it c. 1688 to the lawyer and politician Dr., later Sir Charles, Hedges (d. 1714) (fn. 82) and sold it in 1696 to Samuel Cox. (fn. 83) In 1721 the Hon. George Watson was owner or occupier, (fn. 84) between 1730 and 1753 it belonged to Charles Scholes, (fn. 85) and in 1764 William Turner surrendered it to Anne Cotesworth. (fn. 86) She surrendered it in 1769 to William Birch, (fn. 87) who had let it by 1777 to Dr. John Egerton, bishop of Durham (1721-87), to whom he surrendered it next year. (fn. 88) The bishop's son John Egerton sold it in 1787 to Frederick Augustus Barnard, (fn. 89) who sold it in 1795 to George Kinnaird, Lord Kinnaird (d. 1805). Kinnaird devised it to his wife Elizabeth (d. 1806), who devised it to their daughters, several of whom were minors. Under an Act of 1808 the estate, described as the mansion called Elm Grove and 35 a., was sold (fn. 90) to Spencer Perceval (1762-1812), prime minister, on whose assassination it was held by his widow Jane, who later married Sir Henry Carr. In 1821 the estate was settled on Lady Carr and her son Spencer Perceval (d. 1859), (fn. 91) and on Lady Carr's death in 1864 it passed to her daughter-in-law Anna Elizabeth Perceval, who enfranchised it. (fn. 92) The house was occupied by Dr. W. R. Vines as a boys' school c. 1861, (fn. 93) by the Revd. Charles Scott in 1864, (fn. 94) and by the Royal India Asylum 1870- 92. (fn. 95) After Leopold de Rothschild had bought the estate for building, Elm Grove was demolished in 1894. (fn. 96) The house, first mentioned in 1696, (fn. 97) was improved by Frederick Barnard (fn. 98) and was a large, plain, stuccoed building of three storeys and attics. (fn. 99)
From 1734 Thomas Barratt of Old Brentford (d. 1762) (fn. 100) was building up a substantial copyhold estate on both sides of Boston and Ealing roads, mainly from open field strips. In 1760 he settled some on his daughter Anne and her husband Thomas Edwards, later Sir Thomas Edwardes, Bt. (d. 1790), and by will dated 1760 left the rest to Anne and her issue. On Sir Thomas's death all descended to his daughter Ellen Hester Mary (d. 1836) (fn. 101) and in 1794 was settled on her and her husband John Thomas Hope. (fn. 102) In 1840 J. T. Hope held 155 a., mainly at Brentford but some north of Haven Green. (fn. 103) Part was enfranchised in 1849 and 1851, when the tenant for life was Frederick Hope. (fn. 104)
The adjoining houses and estates of EALING HOUSE and EALING GROVE, east of St. Mary's Road, originated in the freehold and copyhold capital messuage and house held in 1593 by Joan, widow of William Frost. (fn. 105) Following her marriage to Matthew Grey, Joan sold her estate in 1598 to Thomas Soame, (fn. 106) who was admitted in 1605 to the copyhold estate consisting of Crowchmans tenement, Cooper's homestead, and 55 a. (fn. 107) A second house already stood on an adjoining orchard by 1616, when a wall was erected around it, (fn. 108) suggesting, with later evidence, (fn. 109) that it was the future Ealing House and that Crowchmans was the future Ealing Grove. The two houses probably descended in the Soame family until the Interregnum, when they were divided.
Ealing House, already so called, and c. 40 a., including land leased from the rector, were sold in 1657 by John Wadlowe and other Londoners to Sir John Barkstead, (fn. 110) whose widow in 1663 surrendered the estate to Nicholas Bonfoy, merchant of London. (fn. 111) On the death of Bonfoy's widow, their son Hugh was admitted in 1691 and surrendered it to Richard Lascelles, goldsmith of London. (fn. 112) In 1715 William Kingsford and Joseph Denys sold the estate to the lawyer Sir James Montagu (1666-1723) (fn. 113) whose widow sold it in 1724 to Sir Thomas Gery, master in Chancery. (fn. 114) Gery's widow sold it to Nathaniel Oldham of Holborn, (fn. 115) who conveyed it in 1735 to Thomas Bale, (fn. 116) who sold it in 1747 to Hugh Bethel. Hugh's brother Alderman Slingsby Bethel was admitted in 1748 (fn. 117) and sold it in 1751 to Richard Coope, (fn. 118) who surrendered it in 1753 to Lt.-Gen. John Huske (1692?-1761). Huske, who died there, (fn. 119) devised it to William Adair, who devised it in 1780 to trustees. (fn. 120) In 1803 it was acquired for Anne, dowager countess of Galloway, who released it in 1813 to Col. Patrick Douglas. (fn. 121) He sold it in 1817, probably to Mason Gerard Streetford, (fn. 122) and in 1830 William Johnson surrendered it to his brother John (d. 1848), who devised it to his widow for sale. Bought in 1851 by Ambrose Brown of London and Robert Shorter of Ealing, (fn. 123) it belonged in 1860 to the Ragged School trust. (fn. 124) Ealing House had a gatehouse by 1657 and was of brick, containing two storeys with projecting mullioned windows and attics in a steeply pitched roof, in 1795, before alterations. (fn. 125)
Ealing Grove, formerly Crowchmans tenement, adjoined Ealing House to the north and Grove Road to the south. It was leased from 1608 to Sir William Fleetwood (fn. 126) and later to John Maynard. In 1657 Sir Thomas Soame and his eldest son Stephen surrendered it, another house, and 27 a. to Joseph and Sarah Wadlowe, who surrendered it in 1675 to Robert Welstead, goldsmith of London. (fn. 127) The soldier Richard Savage, Earl Rivers, lived at Ealing Grove for several years and died there in 1712, (fn. 128) leaving it to his illegitimate daughter Bessy, wife of Frederick Nassau de Zuylestein, earl of Rochford, owner in 1722. (fn. 129) Their son Richard Savage Nassau sold it in 1746, probably in trust for Sir Hildebrand Jacob. (fn. 130) Mary Swift and Amy Peters were admitted to the copyhold estate in 1750 and Capt. Edward Hughes, R.N., in 1754; Hughes and Charles Guild conveyed the estate in 1755 to Joseph Gulston, M.P. (d. 1766), (fn. 131) whose son Joseph (1744?-86), the collector, sold Ealing Grove to George Spencer, duke of Marlborough (d. 1817), in 1775. (fn. 132) It was bought from him by John Campbell, duke of Argyll (d. 1806), who sold it in 1791 to James Baillie (d. 1793). Baillie devised Ealing Grove to his wife Colin for life, but she immediately conveyed it to their eldest son Alexander. (fn. 133) The tenant from 1799 to 1802 was Edward Harley, earl of Oxford (d. 1848). (fn. 134) Under an Act of 1805 the estate, described as a mansion house and 64 a., (fn. 135) was sold by 1811 to Charles Wyatt, still the owner in 1845. (fn. 136) The house was converted into an Italianate villa, at great expense, by Joseph Gulston the younger (fn. 137) and c. 1800 was a three-storeyed classical mansion of nine bays, with a pedimented central projection, set among trees. (fn. 138)
1. Guildhall MS. 11766, f. 13; P.R.O., SC 2/189/26, rot. 7 and d.
2. Guildhall MS. 10312/92, rot. 42.
3. Ibid. 96, rot. 4d.
4. P.R.O., SC 2/190/11, rot. 10.
5. Guildhall MSS. 10312/100, rot. 9; 101, rott. 5d.-6.
6. Ibid. MS. 10465/6; M.R.O., Acc. 828/4.
7. Guildhall MS. 10465/149, pp. 215-17; M.R.O., Acc. 828/4.
8. M.R.O., TA/EAL; ibid. Acc. 828/21.
9. Ibid. Acc. 828/15.
10. Ibid. Acc. 526/11.
11. P.R.O., SC 6/190/11, rot. 10.
12. M.R.O., Acc. 828/3.
13. P.R.O., MAF 20/64/159; M.R.O., Acc. 828/24.
15. Ibid. 3.
16. Ibid. Acc. 1028/1, 5, 6.
17. Ibid. 6, 12, 84.
18. Ibid. 16-18.
19. D.N.B. s.v. Shaw.
20. M.R.O., Acc. 1028/25-6, 30-2.
21. D.N.B.
22. M.R.O., Acc. 1028/35-6.
23. Ibid. 44 (sales cat.).
24. Ibid. Acc. 1028/43.
25. Ibid. 53; above.
27. Ibid. 64-5.
28. Ibid. 70, 73-83; Jones, Ealing; 141; Ealing libr., Wetherall colln.
29. Ealing libr., copy of abs. of title.
30. Brewer, Beauties of Eng. & Wales, x (5), 336-7.
31. M.R.O., Acc. 1028/53; sales cat. (1827) at Ealing libr.
32. M.R.O., TA/EAL; Faulkner, Brentford, Ealing and Chiswick, 259.
33. Jones, Ealing, 141; Kelly's Dir. Mdx. (1890, 1908).
34. Inf. from Mr. P. Hounsell; below, public svces.
36. Ibid. Acc. 224/6; Acc. 1028/89; D.R.O. 37/D1/2.
37. Ibid. TA/EAL.
38. Ibid. Acc. 224/6; D.N.B.
39. Ealing libr., TS. notes; Prospect of Ealing, plate 5.
40. Guildhall MS. 10312/87, rot. 13d.
41. Ibid. rot. 13d.; P.R.O. SC 2/189/11, rot. 2d.
43. Ibid. 42, rot. 1 and d.
44. Ibid. 95, rott. 2 and d., 11, 14d.
45. P.R.O., SC 2/189/287, rott. 2-3.
46. Ibid. SC 2/189/32, rot. 9.
47. Ibid. SC 2/189/34, rot. 6 and d.; D.N.B.
48. P.R.O., SC 2/190/9, rot. 1d.
49. Ibid. MPA/7. It may have been the Manor Ho. of the 1880s, when there was a mid 19th-cent. Drayton Ho. east of the green: O.S. Map 6", Mdx. XV. SW. (1873 edn.); Ealing As It Was, illus. 56.
50. 10 Wm. III, c. 42 (Priv. Act); Guildhall MS. 10465/13; G.E.C. Baronetage, ii. 142.
51. Guildhall MS. 10465/51.
52. Ibid. 63, pp. 49-50.
53. Ibid. 71, pp. 239 sqq.; M.R.O., Acc. 276/138.
54. Guildhall MS. 10465/80, pp. 250-4; Gtr. Ealing Local Hist. Soc. Local Historian, i (1966), 4-7; B.L. Maps K.29.9.a.
55. Ealing libr., survey (c. 1774).
56. P.R.O., C 8/455/35.
57. Allison, Ealing in 17th Cent. no. E 15.
58. Ibid.; M.R.O., Acc. 526/83.
59. M.L.R. 1730/1/116-17; G.E.C. Baronetage, iii. 71.
60. Guildhall MS. 10465/104, pp. 328 sqq.; G.E.C. Baronetage, v. 3.
61. Guildhall MSS. 10465/61, pp. 49-51; 75, pp. 228-31; M.L.R. 1766/2/361.
62. M.L.R. 1765/6/332-5; Guildhall MS. 10465/80, pp. 254-9.
63. M.L.R. 1765/6/332; B.L. Maps K.29.9.a; D.N.B.
64. Guildhall MS. 10465/138, pp. 75-8.
65. Lysons, Environs (Suppl.), 129.
66. Guildhall MS. 10465/139, pp. 122 sqq.
67. Ibid. 149, pp. 52 sqq.
68. M.R.O., TA/EAL; D.N.B.
69. Keane, Beauties of Mdx. 25-30; Walford, Gtr. Lond. i. 23.
70. Jones, Ealing, 142.
71. Jahn, 'Rlys. and Suburban Development', 97.
72. Jackson, Ealing, 223-4.
73. Mdx. County Times, 21 Dec. 1912.
74. Pevsner, Mdx. 43; Guildhall Libr., grangerized copy of Lysons, Environs, ii (2), illus. between pp. 228 and 229.
75. Guildhall MS. 11765, ff. 106-7v.
76. Ibid. MS. 10312/87, rot. 18.
77. Ibid. 94, rot. 8; 96 rot. 4d.; above.
78. P.R.O., SC 2/190/5, rot. 12.
79. Guildhall MS. 10312/103, rot. 12.
80. Ibid. 106, rot. 8.
81. Ibid. 115, m. 4d.
82. Lysons, Environs, ii. 228; D.N.B.
84. Lysons, Environs, ii. 228.
85. Guildhall MSS. 10465/51; 52; 68, p. 248.
86. Ibid. 79, pp. 263-4.
87. Ibid. 84, pp. 64 sqq.
88. B.L. Maps K.29.9.a; Guildhall MS. 10475/93, pp. 93-6; D.N.B.
90. Elm Grove Estate Act, 47 Geo. III, Sess. 2, c. 30 (Local and Personal, not printed); Neaves, Hist. Gter. Ealing, 85.
92. P.R.O., MAF 9/167/8562; MAF 9/167/9387.
93. M.R.O., D.R.O. 37/A12/1; Jackson, Ealing, 205.
94. M.R.O., D.R.O. 37/B2/7.
95. Kelly's Dir. Mdx. (1890); Prospect of Ealing, note for plate 4.
96. M.R.O., Hist. Notes 25/8/71; Jackson, Ealing, 205.
98. Ambulator (1807).
99. Prospect of Ealing, plate 4.
100. Gent. Mag. xxxii. 552.
101. Guildhall MS. 10465/106, pp. 395 sqq.; B.L. Maps K.29.9.a; G.E.C. Baronetage, iv. 98.
102. Guildhall MS. 10465/166, pp. 553 sqq.
103. M.R.O., TA/EAL.
104. P.R.O., MAF 20/64/959; Guildhall MS. 10465/166, p. 557.
105. P.R.O., REQ 2/144/44.
106. Ibid. SC 2/189/27.
107. Ibid. SC 2/189/29, rot. 15.
108. Ibid. C2/Jas. I/S 14/55.
109. M.R.O., F 111.
110. Ibid.
111. Guildhall MS. 10312/99, rot. 10 and d.
112. P.R.O., PROB 11/404 (P.C.C. 49 Vere); Guildhall MS. 10465/9.
113. M.L.R. 1715/5/58-60; D.N.B.
114. M.L.R. 1724/5/160-2.
115. Guildhall MS. 10465/51.
116. M.L.R. 1735/2/409-10; Guildhall MS. 10465/51.
117. Guildhall MS. 10465/63, pp. 120-2.
118. M.R.O., Acc. 112/2.
119. Ibid. 4; Guildhall MS. 10465/76, pp. 32-3; D.N.B.
120. Gtr. Ealing Local Hist. Soc. Local Historian (1963), 35; Guildhall MSS. 10465/76, pp. 55-9; 106, pp. 94-6.
122. Guildhall MS. 10465/132, pp. 401-5.
123. Ibid. 166, pp. 215 sqq.
124. P.R.O., C 54/16807, no. 1.
125. M.R.O., F 111; grangerized copy of Lysons, Environs, iii. 228.
126. P.R.O., C2/Jas. I./S14/55.
127. Guildhall MS. 10312/110, rot. 5.
128. D.N.B.
129. Lysons, Environs, ii. 228; Complete Peerage, xi. 53.
130. M.R.O., Acc. 276/119; Guildhall MS. 10465/61, pp. 65-8; M.L.R. 1745/3/173.
131. M.L.R. 1755/2/572.
132. D.N.B.; Hist. Parl., Commons, 1754-90, ii. 560-2.
133. Ealing Grove Act, 45 Geo. III, c. 90 (Local and Personal); Guildhall MS. 10465/106, pp. 423 sqq.
134. B.L. Maps K.29.9.d; M.R.O., D.R.O. 37/A8/1.
135. Ealing Grove Act, 45 Geo. III, c. 90 (Local and Personal).
136. Guildhall MS. 10465/131, pp. 542-3; Chiswick libr., grangerized copy of Faulkner, Brentford, Ealing and Chiswick; Lysons, Environs (Suppl.), 129.
137. Hist. Parl., Commons, 1754-90, ii. 561.
138. B.L. Maps K.29.9.d; below, plate facing p. 33.
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Broadway's Kenita Miller and More Star in PROPAGANDA! THE MUSICAL at NYMF, Now thru 7/27
BroadwayWorld.com Jul. 23, 2014
The 2014 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) presents Propaganda! The Musical a world premiere musical Book, Music, and Lyrics by Taylor Ferrera & Matt Webster. Nathan Brewer directs a cast of 10, including Mary Joanna Grisso (Nat. Tour: West Side Story), Nick Mason, Kenita Miller* (Bway: Xanadu, The Color Purple), Kenny Morris* (Bway: Hairspray, Les Miserables), Benjiman Dallas Redding (Nat. Tour: West Side Story), Shaun Repito (Nat. Tour: West Side Story), Dale Sampson*, Beth Cheryl Tarnow*, and Jillian Wallach (Nat. Tour: Legally Blonde).
Propaganda! The Musical is being staged at PTC Performance Space, 555 West 42nd Street (bet. 9th & 10th Avenues) in NYC for five performances from tonight, July 23 through Sunday, July 27, 2014. *Appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.
Ignorance may not always be bliss. Rookie doesn't know much about his family business -- neither does the American Public -- but covering up political scandals is in his blood. And now it's up to him to cover up the biggest scandal since Watergate! Armed with a clever idea, Rookie must fight the evil Agent X and save the bureau from doom. With an energetic, catchy score and maybe even a tap dancing president (though you didn't hear it from us...) Propaganda! The Musical is the ultimate tribute to the power of musical theatre.
Propaganda! The Musical is presented by The New York Musical Theatre Festival along with Taylor Ferrera and Matt Webster. Director: Nathan Brewer; Musical Director: Andre Cerullo; Choreographer: Jason Sparks; Set Designer: Ryan Howell; Lighting Designer: Ethan Steimel; Costume Designer: Sky Swister; Stage Manager: Katie Kavett; General Manager: Form Theatricals (Anthony Francavilla & Zachary Laks); Publicist: Paul Siebold/Off Off PR.
Propaganda! The Musical plays for five performances on the following schedule: Wed., July 23rd at 8:00 pm; Thursday, July 24th at 1:00 pm; Friday, July 25th at 9:00 pm; Saturday, July 26th at 5:30 pm; Sunday, July 27th at 12:00 pm. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online at nymf.org or by calling 212-352-3101. For more information, please visit nymf.org. The runtime for Propaganda! The Musical is 2 hours, plus one intermission.
NYMF is the flagship program of The National Music Theater Network, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Now celebrating its 11th year, The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) exists to revitalize musical theatre culture by discovering and promoting new musical theatre artists, producers and projects, nurturing a vibrant and innovative artistic community, and connecting one of America's greatest art forms with a diverse, contemporary audience.
MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM:
Nathan Brewer (Director) Selected credits include Spring Awakening (NYFA, American Theatre of Actors), Bubble Boy (Workshop), Grand Hotel (BHT, Theatre at St. Clements), Grand Hotel (Pennsylvania Centre Stage), Mirette (Princeton Festival), The Secret Garden (Long Island Musical Theatre Festival), Hello Again (Manhattan Theatre Source), The Drowsy Chaperone (Penn State), and over twenty productions on the campuses of Penn State, Princeton University, Rider University, and Westminster Choir College. Assistant: Aladdin (New Amsterdam, Ed Mirvish & 5th Avenue), Relatively Speaking (Brooks Atkinson), Around The World In Eighty Days (Pittsburgh Public), The World Goes Round (Pittsburgh Public), Mirita (Cherry Lane), Born For Broadway (New World Stages), and both Assistant Director and Music Director of Seussical (Theatreworks/USA) since 2008. Nathan teaches at New York Film Academy, Westminster Conservatory, and is Artistic Director of Recreational Arts, Inc. Proud member of SDC! www.nathanbrewer.net
Taylor Ferrera (Book, Music, Lyrics) has been in New York City for three years. In that time she has attained a worldwide audience on YouTube and has been featured in the Huffington Post, on NBC, and various radio shows across the country for her songwriting. She has appeared in numerous shows, including Kingdom Come in the 2012 Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and as part of the Connecticut Children's Theatre (Artistic Director: Tony nominated, Jerry Goehring). She writes songs for people, campaigns, and companies; writes sketches and short plays; and now has delved into the world of musical theatre writing. She received her degree in acting from West Virginia University, is a San Francisco Giants fan, and will always cry when she visits the grave of Robert F. Kennedy (which she does more often than you'd probably guess.) www.TaylorFerreraMusic.com
Matt Webster (Book, Music, Lyrics) is a New York City based actor and writer currently on the Broadway Tour of West Side Story. His first musical Kingdom Come won Best Musical at the 2012 Downtown Urban Theatre Festival. Since winning the festival, Kingdom Come has been featured at the New York Theatre Barn's Night at the D-Lounge (performers included Anne L. Nathan of Broadway's Once) and a three night, sold-out run at the Secret Theatre in Long Island City. He received his BFA in Acting from West Virginia University where he was named the outstanding graduate from the College of Creative Arts. Matt has also been seen as an actor in NYC: Vital Theatre's production of the Off-Broadway Alliance Award-winning family show, StinkyKids the Musical; The Curious Quest of Benjamin Bunny with Connecticut Children's Theatre (Artistic Director: Tony nominated, Jerry Goehring). Matt is also a member of the Rescue Agreement Theatre Company, where he has been featured in two shows. www.TheOtherMattWebster.com
MEET THE CAST:
MaryJoanna Grisso - West Side Story (Maria - National Tour); Regional Credits include Guys and Dolls, Urinetown, High School Musical, and The Sound of Music. BFA, West Virginia University.
Nick Mason - with a BFA Musical Theatre from Shorter College, Nick comes from Atlanta, GA. Some recent credits include: Avenue Q (Nicky/Trekkie Monster), Spring Awakening (Moritz), The Wedding Singer (George), How to Succeed... (Bud Frump), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Martin Van Buren), In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (Leo), 2012 NYC Fringe Festival: Dark Hollow (Andy).
Kenita R. Miller* - B'way/ Off B'way: Working, Ave. Q, Xanadu (Erato/Kira Cover), The Color Purple (Celie), Dessa Rose (Dessa), Langston In Harlem (Zora Neale Hurston (Drama Desk Nom./ Audelco Award)). National Tours/Regional: Once on This Island (Mama Euralie/ Timoune), The Color Purple, The Civil War, Woody Guthrie American Songbook, Ragtime (Sarah). Film/TV: "Liberty City Is Like Paris To Me" (Sundance), Sesame Street.
Kenny Morris* - Broadway: Hairspray; Les Mis?rables; Jacques Brel... (20th Anniversary) The Tenth Man (LCT). National/Intl Companies: Sunset Boulevard (First National Co.); Hairspray (First National Co.); Jolson: the Musical; Joseph and the Amazing... (w/David Cassidy); Doubles (w/Robert Reed); Sessue (Tokyo); Les Mis?rables (SF Co.). Off-Broadway: Soul Doctor (NY Theater Workshop); A New Brain (LCT); The Quick-Change Room (dir., Orson Beane). Regional: Caroline, Or Change (Guthrie Theater Kushner Festival), Cabaret (w/Deborah Gibson), Visiting Mr. Green, Gypsy (w/Karen Mason), Crazy for You; Diary of Anne Frank; City of Angels; Broadway Bound; Rags. Films/TV: "The Knick" (Steven Soderbergh, Dir.); "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (ABC); "Third Watch" (NBC); "Big;" "Radio Days;" "Nous York."
Benjiman Dallas Redding was born and raised in Columbus, GA and is a proud graduate of Elon University (B.F.A.). National Tour: West Side Story (Riff).
Shaun Repito is thrilled to be a part of Propaganda! The Musical! National Tours: West Side Story (Male Swing, Assistant Company Manager and Assistant Stage Manager), and Elf - The Musical 1st National (Ensemble). Regional: Young Frankenstein (Ensemble) and Gateway Playhouse and Ogunquit Playhouse. Shaun is a proud graduate from The University of Arizona with a B.F.A in Dance.
Dale Sampson* is a national champion in Humorous/Dramatic public speaking. National Tours: Seussical (Cat In the Hat), Junie B. Jones (Herb), NYC credits: Rent (Mark), Propaganda! The Musical (Rookie) also first workshop at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Kingdom Come (Freddy/Michael) winner: best musical at DUTF, BEST IMITATION (Landon) at FestivALL, Emerging Artists Theatre, and Midtown International Theatre Festival. Some favorite regional: Footloose (Ren), HONK! (Ugly), R&J (Romeo), BROADWAY CARES (Featured Vocalist).
Beth Cheryl Tarnow* is thrilled to be involved with NYMF for the first time, and is especially excited to be part of Propaganda! Favorite past credits include Shelley/Tracy u/s (Hairspray, Paper Mill Playhouse), Edwina (Dear Edwina), and Missy (The Marvelous Wonderettes).
Jillian Wallach is thrilled to be involved in her first NYMF show! National Tours: Legally Blonde the Musical! (Paulette) & Annie (Star to Be). Favorite Regional Credits: Bye Bye Birdie (Rosie) and Swing! www.JillianWallach.com
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The upcoming film adaptation of the acclaimed musical Matilda has found its title star! ...
VIDEO: HAMILTON Releases Side-By-Side Comparison of 'Helpless' and 'Satisfied'
Back in August, one Hamilton fan, YouTube user Ye Olde Bard, saw some parallels while watching the musical on Disney+, specifically between A Winter's...
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Debbie Allen, Joan Baez, Garth Brooks, Midori, and Dick Van Dyke to be Honored at 43 Annual Kennedy Center Honors
Recipients to be honored at the 43rd annual national celebration of the arts are: multi-disciplinary artist, choreographer, and actress Debbie Allen; ...
The State of Broadway: January 2021
It's no secret that the state of the world has had a major impact on the theatre industry over the past year. Broadway, which usually brings in $14 bi...
DVR Alert: Hollywood Bowl Concert Series Kicks Off Tonight With MUSICALS AND MOVIES, With Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, and Sutton Foster
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The increases can be modest — an extra inch during a ten-inch storm — but over the course of a season that adds up to several extra feet.
One cloud seeding operation in the Tahoe area provides the annual water needs of about 10,000 homes, a several million-dollar value produced for pennies on the dollar, McDonough said.
RESORTS TO RESERVOIRS
Not every cloud can be seeded, and the process is as much art as science. The ideal targets are warm clouds where there’s plenty of liquid water floating around at freezing temperatures that doesn’t have any particles to latch onto.
On a cold day on the ski slopes when a cloud is hovering on the mountain, you can see evidence of this in the ice that forms on objects.
“If you go up to the top of A-Basin after a storm, you should see white ice that has grown on the lift towers and in the trees,” McDonough explained. “What’s happening there is the water drops are floating around in the cloud and as soon as they hit a structure, that structure serves as a spot for a freezing event. With cloud seeding, what you’re doing is throwing some dust up in the cloud and creating the freezing in the cloud.”
Local:Fort Collins could get first snow early Monday morning
In other words, if you see ice forming on towers while skiing this season, it means there could’ve been a missed opportunity to turn that into some extra powder.
Vail Mountain, which has contracted with Hjermstad for more than 40 years, hasn’t missed any of those chances for extra snow, he said.
“Some storms they would get 18 inches and everybody else would get 12,” he said.
Breckenridge Ski Resort, Keystone Resort and Winter Park Resort are all sponsors of the Summit-area program. But snow that’s good for skiing is good for drinking later down the line, and Front Range water managers have taken notice.
“Over time, there has been a lot more interest in weather modification programs in the state of Colorado,” said Maria Pastore of the Colorado River District. “We’re really excited to get into the sixth season (of cloud seeding) . the primary objective for the sponsors is to increase the water supply in the Upper Colorado River Basin.”
Western Weather Consultants claims that its two seeding operations in the High Country generate between 180,00 and 300,000 added acre-feet of water per year, and that has been backed up by independent studies.
An outside evaluation of the Vail operation from 1977 to 2005 found statistically significant snowfall increases ranging from 6.3 to nearly 29 percent.
“With time, people have become more comfortable that the process is actually doing what it says it does,” Hjermstad said. “Why would Vail keep us on for 45 years straight unless they didn’t see something?”
More:What to expect for fall 2017 weather in Fort Collins
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Book Smart: Stories of women of courage
Nancy Harris More Content Now
From the big screen to New York times best sellers, this summer has seen a number of plot lines that feature strong, courageous female leads who dazzle men and women alike. Yet, the definition of what being �courageous� actually means has long been open to interpretation.
While philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aquinas have speculated for centuries about what constitutes �courage,� social science research on the topic is surprisingly scant. Nonetheless, clinical psychologists regularly observe ordinary women relying on courage each and every day as they move through the world. The four attributes of courage most frequently cited by practitioners are:
Feeling anxiety and fear, yet choosing to act. Dictionaries often define courage as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face danger, pain, and difficulty without fear. Indeed, fearlessness is often used as a synonym for courage. However, Stanley Rachman argues instead that the capacity to face danger, pain, and difficulty despite the presence of fear lies at the heart of true courage. He proposes that without the emotion of fear to conquer, there can be no test of courage.
Standing up for what you believe to be true or right. An often quoted aphorism by writer James Neil Hollingworth, is that, �Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than the fear.� In short, it involves making the conscious decision that the risk, danger or precariousness of saying or doing something is worth it. This is sometimes referred to as �moral courage� and is the basis of the phrases �having the courage of your convictions� and �putting your money where your mouth is.�
Going outside your comfort zone. We all agree that entering a relationship, or trying a new sport, activity or job often requires us to go outside our �comfort zone.� But what that means in practice, is that we are willing to be imperfect, risk failure, and when necessary, dust ourselves off and try again. Dr. Brene Brown, a well -known researcher from University of Houston postulates that courage, �is really about putting our vulnerability on the line.�
Perseverance in the face of adversity. Sometimes courage is facing the cards we have been dealt in life: a parent dying, a sick child, a job loss or any major life reversal. Some psychologists argue that courage is simply putting one foot in front of the other when the load seems too much to bear. This attribute taps into the notion of fortitude, stamina and endurance.
Stories about powerful and courageous women are particularly popular right now. Some focus on little known but true incidents and figures in history, and others on ordinary women discovering strength and courage within themselves.
Perhaps in looking to the lives of these women, we are looking for inspiration to push ourselves to new limits and effect meaningful change in the world or in our own lives. Yet, maybe we are also hoping for validation that courage does not only exist within bold actions that speak loudly, but also within the simple, quiet moments where we say, �I�ll try again tomorrow.� The following three book selections are a few of the most riveting, richly textured tales of women whose courage is unforgettable.
The Alice Network
�The Alice Network,� by Kate Quinn, is a fast-paced, engaging, and memorable wartime tale of intrigue, self sacrifice, and betrayal.
Destined to be one of this summer�s best, the novel is based on the little-known true story of impoverished French aristocrat, Louise De Bettignies, who led one of the most successful, heavily female spy rings in World War I.
The narrative begins in 1947 with a young American college girl, Charlie St. Claire, who finds herself pregnant and banished to Europe by her disapproving parents. They are expecting her to have her �little problem� taken care there by a physician. But Charlie has other ideas.
She desperately misses her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared two years earlier in Nazi-occupied France. While family assumes she is dead, Charlie clings to the hope that Rose is still alive and makes her way to London to begin her own desperate search.
The second storyline focuses on Eve Gardiner in both present day London and in flashback to 1915 when she was a young girl determined to fight the Germans in the Great War. Surprisingly, she gets that chance when she is recruited to gather intelligence and spy for the English, and is placed in occupied France, as part of a vast network of spies-known as the Alice Network.
The lives of Charlie and Eve collide when Charlie�s first lead takes her to Eve�s crumbling home in London in 1947, and Charlie insists that Eve participate in the search for her missing cousin. With unresolved questions and secrets of her own, Eve agrees. But, will this frantic search for truth bring them the answers they crave, or will it lead to more pain and loss- and possibly even, their own demise?
Baker�s Secret
�The Baker�s Secret,� by Stephen Kiernan, is a beautifully written and sensitive story of struggle, survival, and hope set in a sleepy coastal village in Nazi occupied Normandy during World War II.
The story focuses on 22-year-old Emmanuelle, who is forced repeatedly to witness the cruelty and brutality of the Nazis bleeding her beloved small town dry and inflicting grievous crimes against friends and family. Yet, Emmanuelle is clever and determined to not give in to feelings of powerlessness. But what can a young girl do?
Having been taught to bake alongside a master since age 13, Emmanuelle has learned her craft well. Each day the Nazis give her just enough flour to bake a dozen baguettes for their occupying force. Yet Emmanuelle has figured out a way to extend the precious dough to make an extra two loaves.
She willingly shares this contraband bread with her desperately hungry neighbors, even at the risk of her safety. In doing so, she becomes the heart and soul of a secret network of barter and trade that manages to both quietly thwart the enemy as well as provide her village both the will and the way to survive.
But with rescue still a distant dream, the question remains whether Emmanuelle will be able to continue to escape the occupiers watchful eyes long enough to keep both she and her village alive.
The Stars Are Fire: A Novel
�The Stars Are Fire: A Novel,� by Anita Shreve, is a quiet yet gripping novel about a young woman whose resilience and strength are tested by a catastrophic fire and its devastating aftermath.
Set in October 1947, this historical tale is based on the true story of the largest fire in Maine�s history. After a long summer drought, the coast between Kittery and Bar Harbor is beset with wildfires that threaten to rage out of control.
Five months pregnant, 24-year-old Grace Holland is left to care for and protect her two small children, while her husband Gene joins a force of volunteer firefighters determined to stop them. But the fire is relentless. Ultimately Grace and her best friend Rosie are forced to watch helplessly as their homes, and that of all their neighbors are destroyed. In one night, what was once a steady, albeit somewhat quiet, restricted life is replaced with the struggle of a lifetime.
Homeless, penniless, and fearing the worst about Gene�s failure to return home, Grace must find a way to protect and provide for her children. Faced with a profoundly uncertain future, Grace discovers an inner strength she never imagined. Yet, at the same time, she also discovers newfound freedom and release from the constraints of a traditional 1940s marriage.
The question remains whether Gene will ever return� and if he does, will Grace be able to hold onto her newfound independence and spirit?
� Book Smart is a monthly column by Nancy Harris of Scituate, Massachusetts, a practicing psychologist and a former instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.
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Carlisle bought a minority stake in LYFE Kitchen in July 2014 and moved the chain's headquarters to Memphis from Palo Alto, California. The website lists 14 locations.
LYFE Kitchen has two locations in Memphis, in the Chisca on Main apartment building on South Main and 6201 Poplar in East Memphis.
'Ultimately it's still a Memphis company,' said Carlisle.
As part of the transaction, LYFE Kitchen LLC sold the real estate on Poplar to LK Real Estate Holdings LLC for $2.9 million. LYFE Kitchen opened in August 2015 in the building that previously housed Sharky's Gulf Grill and Steak & Ale.
The chain's second Memphis restaurant opened in February at 272 S. Main, the former Hotel Chisca.
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Review: IDLES – Ultra Mono
The day I started writing this review my girlfriend passed out in the bathroom, half-drowned in toilet water and ended up in A&E for a brain scan; yet after one listen to IDLES third album Ultra Mono, it became clear that I’m not nearly as stressed out as frontman Joe Talbot. IDLES work has flirted…
13/10/2020 Continue to read
#BLM, Music, Venue
Iconic voices in music
A voice in music is not always vocal. For centuries, musicians with intimate understandings of their instruments have used it to express emotion like you would a voice. As many jazz musicians have said, what they play, is their voice. While John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, or Mary Lou Williams demonstrate technical ability and a distinguishable…
Reflecting on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar has won thirteen Grammy awards, a key to the city of Compton, and is the first non-classical or jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. His exceptional lyrical ability and keen social commentary has helped cement himself as one of the best of all time. His album To Pimp A Butterfly…
Music Mavericks: Tyler, the Creator
When discussing personality in pop music, it’s impossible to disregard Tyler, the Creator. The loud-mouthed ‘rapper’ is a symbol of self-confidence, progressive Hip-Hop, and acting like a nutter on stage. His progression from controversial misfit to genre-bending maverick is one of the most interesting career arcs in modern music. The self-titled ‘Flower Boy’ conveyed himself…
Sigma Preview
Sigma’s Cam Edwards and Joe Lenzie first met at the University of Leeds, a product of the University’s Drum and Bass Nights, the duo set to bring their music back to University culture at the Nick Rayn’s LCR on the 12th of March. Since their chart-topping breakthrough in 2014, Sigma have been one of the…
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HomeSports & ActivitiesFitnessInterview: Premier League Champion Christian Fuchs launches local training camp
Interview: Premier League Champion Christian Fuchs launches local training camp
For budding young footballers there can’t be many better opportunities than having the chance to train with a Premier League Champion. Now youngsters in Leicester have that very chance as Leicester City’s Christian Fuchs is launching the Fox Soccer Academy in Leicester.
There’s still plenty of time to get involved as the 8 week course kicks off on 31 October based at Judgemeadow Community College, and the course is aimed at both boys and girls aged 8 to 16.
We caught up with Christian to find out a little more about the Fox Soccer Academy and the benefits that it’ll offer to young players.
One of the main unique factors about the Fox Soccer Academy is that you’ll actually get to train with a Premier League Champion. “When I was a kid I wished that professional players would run camps and training sessions where they were actually involved, not just put their name to it and that’s all. I’ll be there for the training sessions and of course I’m a footballer, when I see a ball I want to go after it and play a little bit so we’ll be having plenty of fun.”
But Christian isn’t the only member of training staff, he works with a very talented and experienced team to bring out the best in all players. “On the team we have people who’ve been coaching professional teams for 20 to 25 years, so it’s a very experienced team that are leading the sessions. We’ve worked together already on the Fox Soccer camps in New York and Austria so we know it works well.”
Leicester is the most recent addition to the Fox Soccer Academy group who already run camps in Austria and New York, which have proved really popular among participants. “We started in New York last summer for just a week and America is not the leading place for football but we had 25 kids taking part and then this year we were there again and we had 85 kids take part, so it’s been great to see that grow.”
“The success of the previous camps isn’t just down to me being involved. The parents have commented on how impressed they’ve been with how professional the sessions are that we run, how we bring the best out of the kids and have fun. The success of that led me to start up the first camp in Austria this summer, where we had more great feedback from the 35 kids who took part.”
One of the key methods that the Fox Soccer Academy implements is called S.A.M. (Study, Apply, Motivate) which was developed by Christian along with coach Heinz Griesmayer. “For us the academy is all about having fun. It’s so important that the kids enjoy what they’re doing when they’re with us, but then we also want to teach them something for their game to improve. SAM stands for Study, Apply, Motivate and it really just sums up our aims in looking for talent out there. Maybe we’ll find a future Christian Fuchs. There’s still so much undiscovered talent out there, even here in the UK where football is the number one sport and scouts are all over the country, some players still don’t get spotted.”
With Christian now a Premier League champion and captain of the Austrian national team he has a whole host of wisdom and experience to impart on the youngsters attending the Fox Soccer Academy and it’s his passion for helping young players that makes this so important to him. “I wish there’d been opportunities like this when I was starting out. Kids who play football either want to improve or have fun, or hopefully both. In the camps in New York and Austria some of the kids came along because it’s a chance to train with me and it’ll be great fun, but a lot of others also came because it’s a real chance to learn from a professional. Either way we hope we’ll be able to help them by coming along and we’ll be sure to have plenty of fun along the way!”
Fox Soccer Academy is for boys and girls ages 8 to 16 with training every Monday evening from 31 October to 19 December. The 8 week course is priced at £96. To sign up or to find out more visit the Fox Soccer Academy website.
Diwali Family Fun Day at Curve
Meet Sir Tony Robinson
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Convicted journalist lodges free speech appeal
Sydney-based journalist and documentary maker, Anne Delaney has lodged an appeal in the Queensland District court over her conviction last December for illegally interviewing a female prisoner. The appeal is being managed by Elizabeth Beal, director of the Communications Law Centre at Victoria University in Melbourne. Ms Beal told Crikey that the CLC is interested […]
Sydney-based journalist and documentary maker, Anne Delaney has lodged an appeal in the Queensland District court over her conviction last December for illegally interviewing a female prisoner.
The appeal is being managed by Elizabeth Beal, director of the Communications Law Centre at Victoria University in Melbourne. Ms Beal told Crikey that the CLC is interested in the case because of its impact on the unprotected right of free speech in Australia.
“Free speech arguments always involve a balancing exercise with other interests. The CLC has taken on this case because one of our aims is to ensure that the broader interest in accessing and sharing information between citizens via the media is protected.”
Delaney has lodged 25 grounds for the appeal including that the Richlands Magistrate, Eroll Wessling, misinterpreted the word “interview” in s.100 of the Queensland Corrective Services Act (2000). Delaney’s defence was that her visit was personal in nature and not an interview for the purposes of preparing a media story. The appeal document argues that there was no intention to publish any material gained during the alleged interview.
The appeal also raises again the constitutional issues that Delaney’s legal team sought to introduce in the original hearings of the case. At the core of this claim is the argument that the media should be free to investigate matters – such as alleged miscarriage of justice – regardless of any embarrassment this might cause to the authorities.
Delaney’s appeal is seeking to have the charges dismissed and the conviction quashed. Meanwhile, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has called on the Queensland Corrective Services’ Minister Judy Spence to repeal the archaic section 100 of the state’s Corrective Service Act, which prohibits anyone from interviewing or photographing prisoners without the express permission of the jail superintendent or other senior officer.
The MEAA has requested a meeting with Minister Spence following last year’s conviction of Delaney for illegally interviewing a prisoner that earned her a 12-month $750 good behaviour bond for “interviewing” the prisoner. The Alliance also wants to meet Western Australia’s Attorney General Jim McGinty and Justice Minister John D’Orazio about section 52 of WA’s Prisons Act 1981, which contains penalties of $1500 fines or 18 months jail (or both) if journalists have unauthorised contact with a prisoner.
The Queensland Corrective Services legislation had been reviewed in early 2005, a month before Delaney was apprehended, but there were no recommendations for reform. The report handed down by the review makes no mention of Section 100. The MEAA believes at least two other Queensland journalists have been convicted under this section of the act.
“Legislation that stops journalists or members of the public from seeking transparency within the penal system is dangerously undemocratic and has a sinister potential for human rights violations. Journalists shrouded under the constant threat of repressive laws such as this cannot do their jobs effectively. They cannot question, investigate or reveal information in the public interest,” says Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren.
The journalists’ union says the Queensland Government needs to move urgently to repeal what Warren describes as the “ludicrous provision” of the Corrective Services Act that covers up potential corruption, miscarriages of justice and maladministration by barring journalists from interviewing prisoners.
Warren says Anne Delaney should never have had to endure the process simply for doing her job. “She deserves the thanks of all of us in the media for the stand she’s taken,” Warren says. Throughout her legal case, the Alliance worked with Anne to challenge the constitutionality of the provision.
According to Chris Warren, not only is the law wrong, internal Corrective Services documents make it clear that it is department policy to apply the law so as to prevent the Queensland public from knowing if someone has been wrongly convicted or from learning about corruption inside jails.
“After the debacle in the Queensland health bureaucracy you would have thought the government had learnt that the price you pay for secrecy is always higher in the long run,” Warren says.
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John Howard: the sanest man in the Lodge since Menzies?
When five paid-up members of the commentariat got together to publicly assess John Howard's prime ministership, the sparks didn't fly.
Antony Loewenstein
The Melbourne Writers’ Festival is over for another year and the main sponsor, The Age, has unsurprisingly declared the event a success.
One of the more interesting sessions was a discussion about The Howard Factor, (Melbourne University Press) an assessment of the prime ministership of John Howard. Leading Australian figures Christopher Pearson, Caroline Overington, Nick Cater, Matt Price and Imre Salusinszky reflected on the nation’s political climate and future directions.
Price said that Howard was neither as brilliant nor as dastardly as many claimed but he simply worked harder than any other politician in the country. He argued that Australia went to war in Iraq for the US alliance, but “you can basically trust Howard.” He did acknowledge, however, that Howard used “weasel words” like the best of them, especially over AWB.
Pearson alleged that the Left felt morally superior to Howard and had a licence for moral outrage over conservative rule. When challenged over the Iraq war, he said that, “nobody should have been surprised that we went to war in Iraq” (though one wonders how he feels about the complete collapse of the Iraqi state after our engagement.) “Howard is the “sanest occupant of the Lodge since Menzies”, he proudly stated.
Salusinszky fell into the same trap as Pearson, seemingly incapable of understanding that the ALP and the Left are not one and the same thing, and the so-called Left does not hold identical views on every subject. Salusinszky denied that the country had lost its moral compass under Howard and claimed the electorate had already decided that Kim Beazley was unelectable.
Overington was the least affected by cultural warrior rhetoric or media spin. She explained how many young Australians felt comfortable with Howard’s economic and social changes and voted Liberal in greater and greater numbers. She said that Australians “can’t trust Howard”, especially over the Iraq war and AWB.
She again demanded that Alexander Downer should resign over AWB. As soon as the scandal broke, he “should have behaved more like a man [and stepped down] and less like a minister.”
Disclosure: Melbourne University Publishing recently published Antony Loewenstein’s My Israel Question.
Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist, photographer, filmmaker, and author. His most recent book is Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs.
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Tips and Rumours: Trouble in paradise?
Dumped Defence Minister Kevin Andrews is here to help — just ask him. In an interview with his local paper, the Manningham Leader, Andrews says that he is prepared to challenge Malcolm Turnbull for leadership of the Liberal Party under the right circumstances. In a long profile to mark Andrews’ 25th year in Parliament, he […]
Dumped Defence Minister Kevin Andrews is here to help — just ask him. In an interview with his local paper, the Manningham Leader, Andrews says that he is prepared to challenge Malcolm Turnbull for leadership of the Liberal Party under the right circumstances. In a long profile to mark Andrews’ 25th year in Parliament, he also said he was a leader of the conservative side of the Liberals:
“‘It has never been my burning ambition to be the leader of the party, but if circumstances arose which they did in both of those instances where I thought there should be a change or a contest, I am prepared to do it,’ he said.
Mr Andrews said it was ‘true’ he was a leader of the conservative side of the Liberal party.
‘But I see that leadership as a kind of intellectual leadership,’ he said.”
We think he might have a bit of competition there. Last year Eric Abetz told another local paper, The Advocate, that he was the standard-bearer for conservatives — “the informal leader of the conservative element of the Liberal Party”. Perhaps it’s time for a conservative spill?
eric abetz
Racism, pledges of allegiance, and spying — the human cost of Australian-Sino relations gone bad
Will ScoMo ever cut through in irreligious Australia?
Guy Rundle
What is the true nature of Dutton’s politics?
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A DOSE OF SCIENCE
Jun 15, 2020 |
Regina Kelder
In the Lab: An Interview with Neuroscientist David Fischer, PhD
A seminal finding in Huntington's disease steered David Fischer's career toward finding solutions to this complex condition
Dr. David Fisher, PhD remembers well the day he decided to pursue neuroscience. It was when the gene for Huntington’s Disease (HD), an inherited, fatal neurodegenerative disorder, was isolated in 1993 by a collaborative research group. The gene, called huntingtin, culminated a decade-long detective story.
Fisher had just begun his PhD in molecular genetics at Leiden University in The Netherlands, and reading about the genetic discovery amounted to a kind of epiphany for him. He decided to pursue neuroscience and neurological diseases. Today, Huntington’s disease remains one of his main focuses at Charles River Laboratories, where he currently serves as Executive Science Director.
“The huntingtin gene had such a peculiar mutation at the time,” says Fischer. “Of course, now there are more diseases caused by repeat expansions in the gene, but then it was really one of the first clear molecular signatures that was 100% linked to the onset of disease.”
Knowing the single mutation that triggers a fatal condition doesn’t automatically lead to ways of reversing it. HD is aggressive, brutal, and complex. People with the disease lose their ability to walk and experience delusions, memory loss, and confusion. Twenty-five years after the amazing discovery of the gene, scientists are still on the hunt for how to find drugs to treat HD. Fischer is confident they will be successful, however, buoyed by a promising new drug injected into cerebrospinal fluid that suppresses the production of the huntingtin protein in the brain of HD patients.
Fischer joined Charles River in 2014 through the acquisition of the services division from Galapagos, which he had joined in 2005. During these years he has taken a leadership role in a number of early-stage drug discovery programs in rare and orphan disease indications, including Cystic Fibrosis, HD, ALS, Usher III Syndrome, and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and additional indications such as metabolic diseases, oncology, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s Disease. The work has sparked several preclinical candidates. He brings expertise in complex and primary cell-based assays, including iPSC and hESC models and human primary cell models and their application for drug discovery and functional genomics.
Fischer also holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Leiden. During six years of post-doctoral fellowships at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam (an Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) and the Free University Amsterdam he focused on neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer’s and HD. David also mentored two graduate students at the University of Amsterdam and at Leiden University. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers and patent applications.
Eureka: When HTT was isolated, the possibilities must have seemed incredible to scientists.
DF: Yeah. And then of course we're still more than 25 years forward and we haven't yet solved that disease. But we'll get there, I think. When the gene for cystic fibrosis was cloned around the same time as huntingtin, people were assuming, okay, within a couple of years we will have solved CF. And we are finally here with drugs for 90% of CF patients. But it took much longer than we thought. So genetics are great, they really give us deep insight, but it isn't an immediate road to success.
Eureka: Why has it been so hard to move the needle with Huntington's?
DF: We still don’t really understand what the link is between that mutation and the onset of disease. It’s different from cystic fibrosis, where the mutation immediately causes symptoms. There's this build-up of mucus in lungs, and the children can have problems with their digestive tracts. Compare that to Huntington's, where the mutation is there from birth, but a typical patient will not have any symptoms until they're 45-ish. So there are many steps between that mutation and the clinical symptoms, and then finally the neuronal dysfunction and degeneration of neurons in patients, and we still don't understand that.
Eureka: Can you describe a “Eureka Moment” in your career?
DF: It was before the full human genome was sequenced. There were all these EST [expressed sequencing tag] libraries around, not annotated at all. Nobody knew what those genes or fragments of genes were. I remember I ran a bioinformatics tool—it was not a BLAST search because BLAST was not yet invented—to look for homology in a certain protein in that EST library. Computing power was a lot less than it is today, so you had to run those queries overnight. The next morning there was one hit, and it was clear that the computer had picked up homology. If you looked at the protein sequence, it did make sense. So you could find genes just by searching with a clever algorithm.
Eureka: How exciting! What did you do when you observed this?
DF: Well of course you need to confirm that is truly a gene. You need to find out where it maps on the human genome, and raise antibodies to make sure the protein is expressed where you think it should be. So definitely it is the beginning of a lot of work.
Eureka: What would you like to do if you were not a scientist?
DF: I don’t know. I think that a scientist is so much higher up the ladder than the next choice it’s going to be difficult.
Eureka: What kind of music do you listen to when you are in the lab?
DF: Classical music. String quartets are good for working.
Eureka: What composers do you favor?
DF: Haydn, Beethoven. Sorry, I’m very old-fashioned.
Eureka: No it’s all right. I would have been more surprised to hear that you listen to punk rock. Where do you get your science news?
DF: I think, again, that I’m a bit old-fashioned. I read journals like Science, Nature and Cell. I browse through those every week.
Eureka: Are you the only scientist in your family?
DF: No, my sister is also in biomedical research and my father is a chemist.
Eureka: Lastly, who are your research heroes?
DF: Probably those guys that figured out the genetic code. Not just the structure of DNA but actually how the cell reads the information in the DNA and makes it into proteins. That wasn’t just a single person, of course. It’s a significant number of people, who after the Second World War pulled this off over the course of 25, 30 years. If you just look at the technologies they had to work with back then to decipher the genetic code and understand how to make mRNA and you needed tRNA [transfer RNA] to make the protein. You would be able to do that more quickly today, but back then they didn’t have fancy sequencing or mass spectrometry. They had to do everything by hand.
Eureka: Amazing the painstaking work that went into decoding genes.
DF: Yes, and it has brought us so many opportunities for drug discovery.
Biomarkers: Navigating Fit-For-Purpose
Keith Sutton
What's Hot in 2020: Oncology
Julia Schueler, DVM
Blazing New Trails in Cancer Research
Aidan Synnott
E3: Raising the Platform in Cancer Immunotherapy
Mary Parker
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© 2021 Charles River Laboratories. All rights reserved.
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New Jersey premises liability: Who’s responsible for explosion?
On behalf of James M. Curran Attorney At Law | Nov 16, 2015 | Firm News
Authorities in New Jersey are investigating the cause of a house explosion that occurred on Nov. 11. It has been reported that one person was killed and over a dozen people were injured in the incident. Investigators are now trying to determine who is responsible. Legal actions, such as premises liability and other claims, may be filed by the victims or surviving family members in an effort to seek compensation for their losses.
The house that was destroyed was located in a neighborhood in Elizabeth. It is believed that the home had been converted to apartments, though the legality of this conversion is being questioned. New tenants had moved into the first-floor apartment a little over a month before the explosion occurred.
According to a recent report, the gas line had been turned off sometime in September when the previous tenant vacated the property. At some point in October, the gas had been turned back on, but this was apparently not done by the gas company. Elizabethtown Gas Company claims that it did receive a service call to the property. Upon arrival, the technician claims that the gas had already been turned back on and that everything seemed to be in working order. A gas leak was supposedly never reported by the tenants.
There are a lot of variables in this case, and investigators certainly have their work cut out for them as they try to determine what led up to this explosion. Not only is the role of the gas company being questioned here, but the role of property owner is also likely to be examined. The victims of this explosion and the surviving family members of the deceased may have legal recourse. Premises liability, personal injury, wrongful death and various other legal claims may be filed against those believed responsible for this incident. Claims that are litigated successfully in a New Jersey civil court may receive fair and full compensation for any losses sustained.
Source: NBC New York, “Deadly Explosion That Leveled NJ Home Likely Caused by Gas Line Breach, Mayor Says“, Brian Thompson, Nov. 13, 2015
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Donate Now Buy Tickets Now
About/Mission
Past Seasons Gallery
THE GIN GAME
Curtain Call Cabaret 5
Comedy Nights, Concerts and Murder Mysteries
2019-2020 SEASON OF PLAYS AND MUSICALS
Fall, Winter and Spring Classes for Kids, Teens and Adults
Summer Youth Programs
Buy a Chair / Buy a Brick
Winter 2021 Classes
(December 3, 2020)
As of now, Curtain Call is planning for both in-person and online classes beginning the week of January 25, 2021. Information can be found below and REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN.
In-person classes will take place on limited days of the week (Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays) in accordance with a strict cleaning and sanitizing schedule and the safety and health guidelines listed below. Online classes will take place Mondays and Tuesdays. If our in-person classes are unable to run, they will be offered online. Class listings can be found on and below our calendar.
Curtain Call, Inc. Safety Protocols (Related to COVID-19)
Employees and students who feel sick or have been exposed to anyone feeling sick need to STAY HOME.
Teachers and students who have traveled to (or been in contact with anyone who has traveled to) states experiencing high rates of corona-virus, should quarantine for ten days before returning to class.
Temperature screenings will take place for all staff and students entering our buildings. Any student or staff member with a temperature above 100.4 degrees will be sent home.
Curtain Call staff, students and parents, guardians or sitters dropping off or picking up students, must wear a mask while inside the Curtain Call buildings. (This includes during class time for staff and students.)
Students and parents, guardians, sitters dropping off students need to wait outside the theatre complex until five minutes prior to the start of class. No student will be permitted inside the theatre buildings until five minutes prior to the start time. Parents, guardians and sitters may drop off students at the front door of the theatre buildings but will not be permitted inside any of the buildings or into the classrooms. (For young students who may be shy, apprehensive or nervous about attending class for the first time, we recommend a thorough conversation take place about the class ahead of time. Please contact our Education Director with any questions or to discuss class expectations with students in further detail if needed.)
Parents, guardians and sitters will not be permitted to wait inside the lobbies or any of the theatre buildings during class times.
Students will be escorted from the lobby to our classroom spaces at drop-off. They will also be escorted back from their classroom for dismissal. Parents, guardians and sitters must be on time for dismissal. If there are any emergencies that arise preventing you from reaching the theatre on time for dismissal, please contact our Education Director directly at brian@curtaincallinc.com or 203-329-8207 (dial 2 when prompted).
If more than one class is held in a classroom over the course of a day, those classes will be scheduled one hour apart to allow for cleaning and to avoid any overlap between student arrivals and dismissals at the same building.
Class sizes will be limited to no more than eight students.
Hand sanitizing stations can be found in the entrance area of each of our theatre buildings and in all classroom spaces.
Each class space will be marked out with social distancing squares. Acting and dance students will be spaced six feet apart. Vocal students will be spaced fifteen feet apart.
All students should bring their own water bottles to class. Curtain Call, Inc. will not provide water for students and our water fountains will be off limits. We strongly recommend labeling all water bottles.
No snacks will be allowed during class time. Children who need to eat something before class should do so prior to entering the theatre buildings.
Dance students are asked to arrive dressed and ready for class. No changing will be allowed inside the theatre facilities (except for dance shoes).
Bathroom breaks will not be scheduled. Any student who must use our restrooms for emergency purposes may notify the teacher and restrooms should be occupied by one student at a time. Restrooms are available within or very nearby our classroom spaces, not just in the theatre lobbies.
Classroom spaces, restrooms and common areas will be sanitized regularly, but we still recommend that students and staff continue to wash their hands before and after class and make use of our hand sanitizing stations.
Should local health conditions change, or government shutdowns be put in place, we will continue our educational programs virtually.
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Broadway Melodies: Musical Performance for Kids Grade 3-5 (IN-PERSON)
Instructor: Jonathan Cahr
Wednesdays, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
1/27, 2/3, 2/10, 2/24, 3/3, 3/10, 3/17, 3/24
(No class 2/17 for winter break in most area school systems. Make up dates for weather or emergency cancellation: 3/31 and 4/7.)
Musical theatre singing is not just about vocal quality, but character and storytelling as well. In this class, students will examine a few Broadway numbers, exploring character choices and story line as well building vocal technique and blending as an ensemble.
Registration: $275
Click here to register for Broadway Melodies Grades 3-5.
More about Broadway Melodies: Musical Performance for Kids Grade 3-5 (IN-PERSON)
31January 31, 2021 1February 1, 2021 2February 2, 2021 3February 3, 2021
4February 4, 2021 5February 5, 2021 6February 6, 2021
Grades K, 1 and 2:
Budding Actor’s Workshop (IN-PERSON)
Instructor: Tony Republicano
Saturdays, 10:00am to 11:15am
(No class 2/13 for President’s Day Weekend. Make up dates for weather or emergency cancellation: 4/10 and 4/17.)
This no-pressure class environment allows students to explore a variety pack of acting tools and techniques for budding young talents including improv, character creation, monologues, scenes, sketches, on-camera scenes and commercials. Build confidence, presentation, social and public speaking skills. Highlights of the students’ work will be recorded and made available to families for viewing.
Click here to register for Budding Actor’s Workshop Grade K-2.
Music Box Theatre Online: Aesop’s Fables (ONLINE)
Instructor: Natasha Fenster
Tuesdays, 4:15pm to 5:00pm
1/26, 2/2, 2/9, 2/23, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16, 3/23
(No class 2/16 for winter break in most area school systems.)
Using song, character expression and carefully coordinated gestures as storytelling tools, students will assemble a virtual mini-musical of some of the fabled fables of Aesop, the Greek storyteller who’s given us such tales as The Tortoise and the Hare, The Dog and the Bone, The Lion and the Mouse and more. These stories have offered examples in moral and social responsibility for centuries. Students will be cast in various roles and provided with a script and recorded music tracks. The class will also include special craft projects that can be done with items at home which will be incorporated into their virtual performance. Classes will meet using Zoom. Class materials and recordings will be provided through a Google Classroom.
Click here to register for Music Box Theatre Online: Aesop’s Fables Grade K-2.
Grades 3, 4 and 5:
Broadway Melodies: Musical Performance for Kids (IN-PERSON)
Click here to register for Broadway Melodies Grade 3-5.
On the Spot: Comedy and Improv for Kids (IN-PERSON)
Saturdays 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Laughter is something we all share and enjoy! In this eight-week, low-pressure, workshop, young actors will tap into their own creative ideas and instincts as they explore improv, sketches, physical comedy, parody and joke-telling! They’ll build confidence and teamwork as they learn to trust in themselves and their fellow actors, and recognize the difference between appropriate and inappropriate humor. As this is primarily a skill-building class, students should not feel pressure to hold a showcase performance, but can if the class so decides.
Click here to register for On the Spot: Comedy and Improv for Kids Grade 3-5.
LOL: Comedy and Improv for Tweens (IN-PERSON)
**This class has reached capacity for safe social distancing. Please contact our Education Director at brian@curtaincallinc.com or 203-329-8207 if you wish to be put on a wait list.**
If you’ve got a talent and a love for making people laugh, this eight-week workshop is for you! Sharpen your timing, heighten your instincts, develop your own comedic characters and ideas as you explore improv, sketch, physical comedy, parody and stand-up. As this is primarily a skill-building class, students should not feel pressure to hold a showcase performance, but can if the class so decides.
Click here to register for LOL: Comedy and Improv for Tweens Grade 6-8.
Tweens On-Screen: TV and Film Acting and Audition Prep (IN-PERSON)
Instructor: James Feuer
Saturdays, 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Very different than acting on stage, acting for the camera is very intimate and cameras pick up so much more detail than can translate on stage. This class will explore scene and monologue work for TV and film performance and auditions and also guide students in how to prepare for audition submissions.
Click here to register for Tweens On-Screen Grade 6-8.
Broadway Bound Online: Musical Audition Prep for Tweens with the Music Director of Broadway’s WICKED, Dan Micciche (ONLINE)
Instructor: Dan Micciche
Mondays: 4:00pm to 5:30pm
2/1, 2/8, 2/22, 3/1, 3/8, 3/15, 3/22, 3/29
(No class 2/15 for President’s Day.)
This intensive study in musical performance offers students opportunities for solo work and individual focus. Under the guidance of Broadway music director Dan Micciche, they’ll explore selections from some of Broadway and Off-Broadway’s best to find and prepare new audition songs (up-tempo and ballad) to add to their audition repertoire. Classes will meet using Zoom. Class materials and recordings of student work will be posted through a Google Classroom.
Click here to register for Broadway Bound Online Grade 6-8.
Grades 9, 10, 11 and 12:
Intro to Directing for Teens (IN-PERSON)
Thursdays, 4:30pm to 6:00pm
(No class 2/18 for winter break in most area school systems. Make up dates for weather or emergency cancellation: 4/1 and 4/8.)
This class is for high school drama students who have a yearning to sit on the other side of the production table. Learn how to communicate and collaborate with actors, crew, designers, producers, audiences, and the press. You’ll also investigate plot, theme, character, exposition, imagery, motivation, conflict, blocking, lighting, script analysis and how to revolutionize and transform spaces.
Click here to register for Intro to Directing for Teens Grade 9-12.
An Actor’s Toolbox for Teens (IN-PERSON)
This class offers study in a variety of acting areas: physical theatre, stage speaking, scene and monologue study as well as some theatre history. A new subject will be covered every two to three weeks. Students will build more confidence in how they present themselves on stage and in auditions, learn how to physicalize their creative instincts, make acting choices that are specific and motivated, and create a toolbox of techniques they can use for audition and performance situations.
Click here to register for An Actor’s Toolbox for Teens Grade 9-12.
Broadway Bound Online: Musical Audition Prep for Teens with the Music Director of Broadway’s WICKED, Dan Micciche (ONLINE)
Click here to register for Broadway Bound Online Grade 9-12.
Off the Cuff: Comedy and Improv for Adults ages 16 thru adult (ONLINE)
(No class 2/17.)
Improv is unscripted, allowing artists to draw from their own instincts, shed their inhibitions, build personal ease and confidence onstage, and develop trust among fellow performers. These skills also apply to social, interview, audition and business situations. In this eight-week class, you’ll develop creative reflexes through a series of theatre games, impromptu scenarios, and character and team-building exercises. Classes will meet using Zoom. Any study materials related to the class will be posted through a Google Classroom.
Click here to register for Off the Cuff: Adult Comedy and Improv for Adults.
Between the Lines: Unlocking the Power of Text and Speech for Actors and Non-Actors (IN-PERSON)
Thursdays: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
(No class 2/18. Make up dates for weather or emergency cancellation: 3/31 and 4/7.)
For non-actors looking to overcome their apprehensions with public speaking and add more power and punch to their interviews or presentations as well as actors looking to improve their skills in stage speaking and character analysis. This one-of-a-kind professional training program will help you add strength, specificity and persuasiveness to your presentation, inform you in making more character-driven choices that lead to a more truthful performance, how to speak with intention and not just emotion and how to captivate your scene partners, listeners or audience. Sharpen your interpersonal skills (speaking, listening, presenting, pitching, networking) and intrapersonal skills (self-awareness, nonverbal communication, managing emotions, demonstrating respect, empathy and understanding).
Click here to register for Between the Lines: Actors and Non-Actors for Adults.
For more information or questions, please email brian@ curtaincallinc.com.
General Class Information (including Financial Aid) and Policies:
PHILOSOPHY: For thirty years, Curtain Call has provided a variety of theatre arts classes and workshops for young and old. Our classes focus not only on building performance skills, but social and public speaking skills, self-confidence, creative instincts, teamwork, collaborative and leadership qualities. We cater to all skill levels whether the raw-beginner or experienced professional and offer a low-pressure environment where students are able to explore creative techniques applicable to any performance, presentation and social situation. Full-day, summer vacation programs are also available for ages six thru sixteen as well as onstage and behind-the-scenes opportunities in our Summer Youth Theatre for participants entering fourth grade thru age twenty-one. Click here for Summer Programs information.
*Curtain Call follows the Stamford Public Schools calendar as to vacation, holiday and weather-related closings. For emergency or weather-related closing information, watch our website, News Channel 12 or tune in to 1400 WSTC.
STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS: At Curtain Call, we have a great deal of experience working with special needs students in integrated classrooms, building their confidence and helping them find their own creative voice while respecting and upholding the student’s privacy and that of their family. Please contact us directly if you or your child have any special needs our team should be aware of.
STUDENT AGE RANGES: Classes are offered for ages five through adult. See class descriptions for specific age ranges of each individual class.
CLASS SIZES: Our Fall, Winter and Spring classes normally range from six to sixteen students and run once a week for eight-weeks (avoiding any holiday or school closing dates). Our Summerstock full-day workshop programs accept as many as forty students per session.
SCHOLARSHIPS:
Scholarships cover up to 50% of any workshop tuition. To apply, simply submit the following to our Education Director, Brian Bianco by email at brian@curtaincallinc.com, by fax at 203-322-3656 or by postal mail at Curtain Call, Inc., Attn: Education Director, 1349 Newfield Ave., Stamford, CT 06905:
A copy of your most recent tax return (or a letter claiming work disability or stating that your child is part of a reduced lunch program at school).
A letter of recommendation from a teacher, instructor, mentor or coach who has worked with the student.
A letter from you/the student stating why our workshop program may be beneficial to you/him/her.
For more information, call 203-329-8207 x16 or email brian@curtaincallinc.com.
DISCOUNTS FOR SIBLINGS/SPOUSES: The first student is full price. Each additional student (sibling or spouse) is 10% off.
PAYMENT PLANS: Payment plan options are available in two, three or even four installments. Payment plans can be arranged through direct contact with our Education Director at brian@curtaincallinc.com or 203-329-8207 x16.
100% refund if notified of withdrawal up to 7 days prior to the starting date.
75% refund if notified of withdrawal less than 7 days prior to the starting date.
50% refund if notified of withdrawal prior to the 2nd class date.
NO refunds beyond the 2nd class date.
MAKE-UP DATES: Make-up dates are ONLY provided if a class is cancelled due to a weather-related or emergency cancellation. Make-up classes are NOT provided for an absence on the part of any individual student.
TEACHING STAFF:
Our staff consists of area professionals devoted to education in the arts.
Brian Bianco has been Curtain Call’s Education Director for twelve years. He received his BA in Theatre from Southern Connecticut State University and is a graduate of the National Shakespeare Conservatory. He’s worked professionally in acting, directing, design, scenic artistry and stage management. His resume includes Stamford Center for the Arts, Long Wharf Theatre, the Lamb’s Theatre, National Theatre for the Performing Arts, Bridgeport Free Shakespeare and Radio City Entertainment. He’s been directing and producing youth theatre programs, school drama programs and theatre for young audiences for more than twenty years.
Kristine Bingham Nielsen hails from Tustin, CA and moved to NYC to pursue a career as a dancer. She holds a BA in Dance from University of California Irvine and has danced professionally as well as served as a professional dance captain. She has worked with such choreographers as Tony Stevens and Chet Walker, most notably with Chet’s company Walker Dance.
Jonathan Cahr has two decades of experience in choral arranging for concerts, musicals and his own recordings. His career as an actor and singer spans Broadway, television and national tours.
Karen Casagrande was founder/owner of Hot Shoes Dance Studio in Ridgefield for nearly 30 years and holds a BFA in Dance from Stephens College. She’s been choreographer and/or lead dancer for such musicals as Robber Bride Groom, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Man of LaMancha, Kiss Me, Kate, Once Upon a Mattress, Anything Goes, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, 1776and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Madison Coppola is a Curtain Call native with over twenty years of acting experience. With a BFA in acting from the University of Connecticut, Madison has gained most of her Regional Theatre experience from Connecticut Repertory Theatre. As an Equity actor, Madison has since been seen in numerous commercials for companies such as Geico, Buzzfeed, Angry Orchard, Google Pixel and Sennheiser, along with film credits from Hulu and NBC. She has spent two years working as a teacher in workshops and one on one acting sessions. She is happy to be giving back to the community that helped her be where she is today!
Natasha Fenster received her BM in Vocal Performance from the University of Oregon. This mother of two also teaches with Music Together in Stamford and Rowayton. She’s performed on the Kweskin Stage in The Wizard of Oz, Legally Blonde, Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Nunsense, Mary Poppins and more, as well appearing with several other local companies.
James Feuer holds an MFA from CSULA School of TV, Film and Theatre (where he studied under William H. Macy, Barry Gordon and Armondo Molina), a PGD from Drama Studio London, a Certificate from the British and European Studies Group at Cambridge University, an Intermediate Stage Combat Certificate from the Society of British Fight Directors, and a BA in Drama from Kenyon College, where he won the Paul Newman Award for Best Actor. James has taught at CSULA, Brunswick School, Camp Dudley, Camp Playland, NYC’s GO Project, and many senior centers. He was also an acting coach for the film I Can, I Will, I Did, about a Greenwich martial arts teacher and his students. Specialties include Acting, Improv and Shakespeare. His acting credits include: Theater: Deaf West, Drayton Court, London; C Venues, Edinburgh; Theatre Row; Accomplice: NY. TV: Clinton: His Struggle with Dirt (BBC, Dir. Armando Iannucci); A Crime to Remember; Scorned: Love Kills; Grave Secrets; My Crazy Love; Sopranos. FILM: Antonio in Wonderland (20th Century Fox). VOICE: Zhou Yu’s Train (Sony Pictures
Classics).
Lisa Lelas is a popular CT acting coach and former NY casting director. She’s helped train thousands of actors who’ve attained professional work in TV, film and Broadway. Lisa is a motivational speaker, a performance coach for the Sacred Heart University’s Women’s Skate Team, the film-acting instructor for the annual Moondance International Film Festivals and the founding owner/director of the state’s first TV-acting studio. She’s a well-known author, newspaper/magazine columnist and was the organizing segment host for ABC-TV Channel 8. Lisa was also the creator/host of “Simply Organized” on Cable TV, for which she won an award for best talk show in the northeast by the Alliance for Community Media Foundation. www.LisaLelas.com
Dan Micciche is the current music director/ conductor of Wicked on Broadway and has been with the show for six years and counting including the national/ international tour. For the first six years of living in NYC, he got his start as an actor and played Mary Sunshine in Chicago for 2000 performances on Broadway as well as the national tour/ Japanese/ Thailand companies. Carnegie Hall/ The Kennedy Center: Bernstein’s Mass. Recordings: Bernstein’s Mass (Grammy nom 2008) 54 Below shows: Jessica Vosk/ Patrick Page. Workshops: Stu for Silverton. Masterclasses at major Universities/ Colleges as well a voice coach in NYC. Education: The Boston Conservatory of Music ‘07. Dan is also an alumni of Curtain Call’s Summer Youth Theatre and in his youth appeared in various Curtain Call productions and workshops. Instagram: @danmicciche/ Twitter: @danpmicciche.
Donnie Moody teaches dramatic arts at Westover Magnet School and has been teaching and directing children for over twenty-five years, creating his own storybook stage adaptations.
Tony Republicano has been an instructor here at Curtain Call since the beginning and is proud to be on the Connecticut Office of the Arts Teaching Artist Roster. He brings a variety of theatre programs to schools and community settings throughout the tri-state area, is on the teaching staff at Yale medical school’s Standardized Patient Program and performs social-issue theatre with the mobile Interactive Educational Theatre. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA whose film credits include The Amazing Spider Man 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Annie. Tony also appears on TV and local stages.
CLASSROOM SPACES: Our classroom spaces provide nurturing, creative environments for students of all skill levels, from the novice to the seasoned professional:
The Kweskin Studio
Located on the second level of our Kweskin Theatre, the Kweskin Studio is the same dimensions as the building’s main-stage. It is equipped with full-length mirrors for dance, air-conditioning, bathrooms on the same level and sound-proofing. The room has large windows that look out onto the Sterling Farms property.
The Dressing Room Theatre (DRT) Studio
While slightly smaller than our Kweskin Studio, our DRT Studio (located on the second level of Curtain Call’s Dressing Room Theatre) also provides full-length mirrors for dance, air conditioning, sound proofing and a bathroom within the studio itself. The room allows for considerable classroom privacy.
Box Office Fax: 203-322-3656
1349 Newfield Avenue
Stamford CT 06905
info@curtaincallinc.com
All programming presented in cooperation with
THE CITY OF STAMFORD.
CURTAIN CALL IS A 501(C)(3)
NON-PROFIT ARTS ORGANIZATION
Web Marketing by Webconsuls
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Would You Like Manners with That?
by Liz McGrath
‘Canity’ helping overcome bad customer service
A phone call from entrepreneur and customer service guru Kym Illman to his airline carrier recently ended in him providing the unwitting call centre staff member with some on-the-spot training in phone skills.
Messages On Hold and Canity Head, Kym Illman
As founder and head of voice branding company Messages On Hold, it’s something the Adelaide-born former disc jockey is well qualified to provide advice on.
From a one-man business started in the spare room of his two-bedroom apartment, MOH has grown into a global success story, servicing more than 13,000 sites in 20 countries.
“The voice people hear down the phone is very often their first point of contact with a business and you get only one chance to make sure that impression a great one,” the multi-millionaire and father-of-two says.
“I’ve always had that personality of wanting to please someone. In business I think you have to think ‘what’s the extra, what can I give people that will really get their attention and make them come back?’ That is surely what customer service is all about.”
Illman’s 30-year-record in customer service and marketing is the genesis for his latest business offering, Canity, an online staff training platform aimed squarely at SMEs. It’s already gaining attention in the lucrative US market.
“Canity is an online training course with modules made up of short animated video lessons. Once a company subscribes, these videos are delivered straight into the email inboxes of staff,” he explains.
At MOH headquarters in East Perth, a team of graphic designers, animators and writers storyboard ideas for the videos before they are approved, drawing on their combined experience in customer service.
The resulting animations pack a powerful punch in their colorful and easy-to-understand simplicity, which Illman says makes them easy to digest and most importantly, to remember.
These 1 to 5-minute videos, cover all the fundamentals of customer interaction, from phone skills, effective use of email, through to face-to-face dealing, presentation tips, using social media and much more.
“We deal with everything from different customer personality types; to how to cope with happy, anxious or disappointed customers; from retail and sales skills; to employing empathy – there’s not much we miss and we are constantly adding to the library.”
At the completion of each module, staff complete an interactive online quiz and can download further training content. Video lessons can be embedded into existing learning management systems and there’s a ‘Masters Series’ module for business owners and managers who want to change the way they work.
“In the same way that I have great confidence in my staff, I have absolute confidence this product is a winner,” Illman says. “What I like about it is it all happens online allowing the content to be viewed when it’s convenient for the viewer, so we’re not impacting on productivity.
“The Canity back end allows managers to see who’s done the training, how they’ve scored and where they’re falling down; the system does all the work for managers, they love it.”
Illman argues with more traditional training, ‘onboarding’ of new employees and retraining of existing ones is often a time consuming and expensive process.
“Offsite training takes people away from their desks. You lose productivity with days out of the office and at the end of the day how much do employees remember?” he says. “Learning online means staff can be trained without taking too big a bite out of the HR budget and with participants working at their own pace.”
A Canity subscription provides access to more than 250 training videos, and covers unlimited access for the number of employees specified. Various pricing options are available.
Illman says he is constantly amazed that in general, customer service is as bad today as it was 30 years ago.
“You walk into a café and no-one wants to serve you or you ring an airline, a phone company, whoever, and you’re not helped in the way that you want or need to be helped. I remain stunned that so many managers just don’t seem to care,” he says.
“For a company to be truly customer-focused, an employee must understand how important customer service is to the company and the role that he or she plays in that. And that’s in everything from the way someone might speak on the phone to the way they talk to the photocopy repair man,” Illman says.
“I’m always looking for that ‘extra’ factor,” he says. “What is it that sets us apart. No-one is doing what we are doing at MOH and now Canity, and we are going to continue developing this product and extending its reach.”
Canity July 19, 2017, 5:52 am
Thanks for the article CSM
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Somali-born lawmaker brands Trump 'fascist' after rally taunt
Chants of "Send her back!" targeting Democratic lawmaker Ilhan Omar broke out at a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina
Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar branded Donald Trump a "fascist" on Thursday as the president sought to distance himself from mocking chants of "Send her back!" directed at the Somali-born lawmaker by his supporters.
"We have said this president is racist, we have condemned his racist remarks," said Omar, one of two Muslim women in Congress. "I believe he is fascist."
Chants of "Send her back!" broke out at Trump's "Make America Great Again" rally in Greenville, North Carolina, on Wednesday night as he attacked Omar and three other ethnic minority Democratic congresswomen known as the "Squad."
Trump claimed to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that there was "great energy" at the rally but he was not pleased by the taunts.
"I was not happy when I heard that chant," he said. "I didn't like that they did it, and I started speaking quickly."
US President Donald Trump addresses a 'Make America Great Again' rally in Greenville, North Carolina
Television footage showed, however, that Trump let the chant continue for more than 10 seconds before he resumed speaking.
Trump was rebuked by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday for "racist comments" for saying the four should "go back" to their countries of origin if they are not happy in the United States.
But he made it clear at the rally that without a Democratic presidential candidate to focus on yet, he plans to make inflammatory attacks on Omar and her three fellow left-leaning Democrats a centerpiece of his 2020 re-election strategy.
The first-term lawmakers -- all but one of whom, Omar, were born in the United States -- are of Hispanic, Arab, Somali and African-American descent.
- 'Rallying his base' -
To the delight of his thousands of supporters in Greenville, Trump described Omar and the other three Democrats as "left-wing ideologues (who) see our nation as a force of evil."
A supporter of the US president poses with a Trump doll at a "Make America Great Again" rally in Greenville, North Carolina
"A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American Dream -- frankly the destruction of our country," Trump said.
The crowd responded to his attacks with cries of "Send her back!" reminiscent of the "Lock her up!" chants directed in 2016 at the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Some Republicans have urged Trump to tone down the rhetoric but the president clearly believes -- despite the risk of inflaming racial tensions and widening the partisan divide -- that he has latched on to a winning strategy.
Trump tapped into a vein of grievance among white blue-collar and rural Americans to eke out a narrow victory in 2016 and he's hoping to do the same again next year.
US Representatives Ayanna Pressley (R), Rashida Tlaib (second from R), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (third from R) and Ilhan Omar (L) were urged by Trump to "go back" to their countries of origin
"He's rallying his base," said Wendy Schiller, a professor of political science at Brown University. "He thinks this is a way to get them riled up now."
Trump won 57 percent of white voters in 2016 while Clinton won 37 percent.
Some 70 percent of the electorate next year is expected to be white. African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities account for the rest and tend to vote for Democrats.
- 'Vile' -
Several of the Democratic 2020 presidential hopefuls condemned Trump's remarks.
The crowd at President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, on July 17, 2019
"It's vile. It's cowardly. It's xenophobic. It's racist," said California Senator Kamala Harris. "It's time to get Trump out of office and unite the country."
"These members of Congress -- children of immigrants, just like so many of us -- are an example of exactly what makes America great," said Joe Biden, the former vice president.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the Democratic congresswomen singled out for criticism by Trump, said "his rhetoric is endangering lots of people" and "creating a volatile environment."
Republican reaction has been more muted but some were speaking out.
"The chants at last night's rally were offensive, and I'm glad the President has disavowed them," said Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah.
"I deeply disagree with the extreme left & have been disgusted by their tone," said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. "I woke up today equally disgusted -- chants like 'send her back' are ugly, wrong, & would send chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers.
"This ugliness must end, or we risk our great union."
Trump's remarks also came in for criticism from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European Council President Donald Tusk.
Without referring to Trump by name, Tusk, speaking at an EU-Canada summit, said the comments were "totally unacceptable."
Trudeau, also without naming Trump, said the comments were "hurtful."
Somali-born lawmaker brands Trump 'fascist' after rally...
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Cory M. Sutker
2021 Changes to the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure
By: Shabaz Nizami
Effective January 1, 2021, the Texas Supreme Court has made significant amendments to the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. These new rules attempt to broaden the applicability of expedited action procedures, with the expressed attempt of lowering discovery costs for such lawsuits. The rules also provide changes to the initial disclosure requirements and timing of discovery in all cases, as well the manner in which citations are served on the litigants. This article summarizes some of those changes and provides some observations on how the rule changes could impact cases filed in the new year and beyond.
A. Limitations on Expedited Actions Are Now Expanded
1. Amount in Controversy
Rule 169 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure governs expedited actions. These procedures currently apply to cases seeking under $100,000 as the amount in controversy. The amended expedited action procedures increase that limit and will now automatically apply to lawsuits in which claimants seek monetary relief aggregating $250,000 or less. The amended rule also excludes from the amount in controversy requirement interest, statutory or punitive damages and penalties, and attorney’s fees and costs.
2. Discovery Limitations
The discovery period in Level 1 expedited actions has been narrowed. Now it will start when initial disclosures are due and end 180 days after that date. Each party is now allowed 20 hours of total oral deposition time, an increase from the 6 hours currently allowed. However, the trial court can modify this limit within its discretion.
3. Trial Date and Continuances
Expedited actions must be set for a trial date within 90 days after the end of the discovery period and can be continued twice, up to a total of 60 days.
4. Observations on Amendments
According to the comments to the amendments pertaining to expedited actions, the Supreme Court stated that its intent is to implement relevant portions of the Texas Government Code—Section 22.004(h-1) of the Texas Government Code calls for “rules to promote the prompt, efficient, and cost-effective resolution of civil actions”—by balancing the need for lowering discovery costs against the complexity of the lawsuits. However, this amendment may now give litigants pause in formulating their litigation pleading strategy, in that parties may now be hesitant to plead into the amended expedited action rule for fear of being governed by expedited timelines and verdict limits. Additionally, given the increased case volume the amendment is likely to cause, it remains to be seen if courts will have capacity to set and call to trial these cases—especially in light of the backlog of cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
B. Texas Goes Federal with its Disclosure Requirements
1. Timing on Serving Discovery
Under the amendments to Rule 192.2(a), unless otherwise agreed to by the parties or ordered by the court, a party cannot serve discovery until after the initial disclosures are due.
2. Required Disclosures
Requests for disclosures under Rule 194 will now be known as “required disclosures.” The Texas Supreme Court noted that the amendment was based on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a), to require disclosure of basic discovery automatically, without awaiting a discovery request. A party is not excused from making its disclosures because it has not fully investigated the case or because it challenges the sufficiency of another party’s disclosures. Similarly, the failure of one party to make its disclosures does not excuse the other party of its obligation to comply.
The content of the initial disclosures is similar to the material listed for requests for disclosures under the current version of rule 194, except that rule 194.3 now provides that testifying expert disclosures will be made in conformance with rule 195, discussed below. In addition to the information required under the current rules, parties now also must disclose a computation of each category of damages and provide copies—or a description by category and location—of documents in support of such computation, as well as any documents they may use to support their claims or defenses.
3. Timing of Required Disclosures
Barring an agreement or court order, all parties must make their initial disclosures within 30 days after the first answer is filed. Parties that are served or joined after the first answer is filed must make the initial disclosures within 30 days of being served or joined.
4. Pretrial Disclosures
Rule 194.4 governs pretrial disclosures. Parties now must provide identifying information about witnesses, documents, and exhibits that they may present at trial, other than solely for impeachment purposes, at least 30 days before trial unless the court orders otherwise. The parties are to separately identify the witnesses and items that they expect to be present or offered versus those that they may call or use only if the need arises.
There are both benefits and drawbacks to the requirement that discovery cannot be served until after the initial disclosures are made. For instance, a benefit could be that each party will have a better frame of reference when drafting their later discovery requests. On the other hand, a drawback to this amendment could be that it is viewed as an unnecessary delay to parties who are accustomed to state court litigation and want to get a quick handle on issues that may fall outside of the scope of the initial disclosures.
C. Discovery Regarding Testifying Experts
1. Schedule for Designating Experts
Except as otherwise ordered by the court, parties seeking affirmative relief must designate experts 90 days before the end of the discovery period. All other experts must be designated 60 days before the end of the discovery period. The Supreme Court removed the current language pertaining to designations occurring by the later of the above dates or 30 days after a request is served.
2. Expert Disclosures and Reports
The material from the previous requests for disclosure rule pertaining to experts has been moved to Rule 195.5, with a couple of additions based on Federal Rule 26(a)(2)(B). Without awaiting a discovery request, parties now must disclose information for testifying experts. In addition, for retained experts, parties now must provide (i) the expert’s qualifications, including a list of all publications authored in the previous 10 years, (ii) a list of all other cases in which, during the previous four years, the expert testified as an expert at trial or by deposition, and (iii) a statement of the compensation to be paid for the expert’s study and testimony in the case.
This could prove to be beneficial to the litigants, as additional information will allow each party to more thoroughly prepare for rebutting expert testimony and deposing experts.
D. Rule 106 Substituted Service: the Use of Social Media, Email, and Other Technology in Serving Citations on Litigants
1. Who May Serve Process
The changes to rule 106 take effect on December 31, 2020. Rule 106(a) no longer requires service of a citation “by any person authorized under Rule 103” and expands the methods for service of citation.
For instance, Rule 106(b) dealing with substituted service has been changed to assist plaintiffs that have trouble tracking someone down for service. Rule 106(b)(2) now allows a court—upon motion supported by a statement sworn to before a notary or made under penalty of perjury that traditional methods of service were not successful—to authorize substituted service by social media, email, or other technology that will be reasonably effective to give the defendant notice of the lawsuit.
2. Observations on Amendment
If process servers cannot find the defendant in person, plaintiffs may soon file a motion requesting alternative service “in any other manner, including electronically by social media, email, or other technology, that the [process server’s] statement or other evidence shows will be reasonably effective to give the defendant notice of the suit.” This means courts may soon allow plaintiffs to post lawsuits on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms if there is evidence the defendant regularly uses such accounts and will be likely to see that a lawsuit has been filed against them.
This amendment likely will be more helpful to plaintiffs, as defendants occasionally can elude process servers by avoiding service by mail or process server, even when they remain visibly active on their social media accounts. It will be interesting to see how the Courts address the threshold issue of when a defendant “regularly uses” their social media accounts.
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Singing Whales, Deep-Rumbling Elephants: What Their Sounds Reveal about their Minds
Posted on August 8, 2016 By Continuing Ed and Summer Sessions, Lab of Ornithology
SPEAKER 1: This is a production of Cornell University. CHARLES JERMY: Welcome to the second lecture of the summer series sponsored by the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions. My name is Bud Jermy, and I work there. The other free events in the six week series include Tuesday evening performances at Klarman Hall Auditorium, and Friday concerts outdoors when the weather is with us on the Arts Quad. This Friday, Radio London will be playing Hits of the 1960s from the British invasion bands to Motown and surf sounds. But tonight, we're not here to listen to sounds of the '60s. Katharine Boynton Payne was born on a farm in Ithaca. Her father was a Cornell professor, an apple grower, and her mother a woman who loved books and music. As a child, Katy missed school frequently because of illnesses. But it turned out that was not a misfortune. It was really a blessing, because it allowed her to spend considerable parts of her youth exploring the outdoors and observing animals her maternal grandfather, famous wildlife illustrator Louis Agassiz Fuertes had painted. Although intensely interested in nature, Katy was a music major at Cornell because the molecular orientation of biology did not appeal to her as a major. And so she minored in that. She met Roger Payne, a graduate student in biology, who was playing the cello at a concert in which she was singing. Jane Brody, in a New York Times article, said this about Katy. "This was the first," and I'm quoting. "This was the first of a series of serendipitous experiences that helped make her preeminent in the field of animal communication, despite a lack of formal training and advanced degrees." Katy and Roger married after she graduated and they had four children. And that's relevant as you will see. While the Paynes were on a trip to Bermuda in 1968, a Navy engineer played tapes that he had been making for 31 years. They were recordings of the sounds that humpback whales make. Katy describes this in an NPR interview as the tears rolled down their cheeks as they listened to these sounds. As Roger's academic research turned to focus on these sounds, Katy began to study the 10 years of recordings that the engineer gave her, making use of her special skills as a musician and a biologist. And this was while raising four children. University of California Davis Professor Peter Marler said of her work, quote, "she really was the one who worked out the most extraordinary findings about whale songs. The fact that they rhyme in predictable ways, in which the whales change their song each season." This research was to occupy her for more than 15 years, during which she was teaching herself acoustical biology. In 1985 Katy turned her research attention from whales to another of the largest mammals, this time those on the land, elephants. Once again, it was her knowledge of music that was the important factor in her study of their communication. And this led her to found the Elephant Listening Project at Cornell's Lab of Ornithology in 1999. She led ELP until 2005 when she retired as director. She continues to serve, though, in the lab's bio-acoustics research program where she plays an ongoing role. Over the years, Katy has appeared on television and radio frequently, and she has won numerous awards and honors during her distinguished career. In addition to two books, Silent Thunder, In the Presence of Elephants, and her book for children, Elephants Calling, she has authored many professional articles, Katy's life continues to be full. She lists as current pastimes living on a swamp near Ithaca, maintaining a large vegetable garden, rejoicing in eight grandchildren, and learning to make stringed instruments from scratch. She says she has completed one, as she characterized it, sweet sounding violin. And she actually has the violin with her tonight someplace. Katy Payne, singing whales, deep rumbling elephants, what their sounds reveal about their minds. [APPLAUSE] Oh, where did you find out all of that? Oh, good. That saves me quite a lot of time. Well, I have had an amazing opportunity to spend almost four decades in the presence of whales and elephants. But it wasn't the size of these huge animals that attracted me so much as the sounds they make. People have been interested in both whales and elephants for thousands of years, but for some reason, it was only about 50 years ago, whenever Frank Watlington did those recordings for the Navy, that anybody was listening to the sounds they make in the environment where they live. And I just had the opportunity to be there. Well, if you want to find out about whales, of course, what do you do? You're a human being, so you use your eyes, you climb to the top of the mast, and you look all over this ocean, which is completely huge and completely barren of animal life on the surface. And you're looking for these things, these little puffs of air, that signify that the whale has come to the surface and is blowing. And of course, you can't see that from miles away. You can only see it for a very short distance. And you can only see it very briefly before the whale goes back to his real life. So when Frank heard these wonderful sounds, he was astonished and turned his private life into little boat searches to find out why, who was the source of the sounds. I'm going to play them for you in just a minute. Good old Frank. He established, through lots of trial and error, moving towards little blows that he could see on the horizon, that the sounds he was recording for the Navy. And what the Navy wanted him to record was-- I don't have to talk to that-- what the Navy wanted him to record was explosions that they were making on the offshore banks 28 miles off of Bermuda. Well, he started hearing this. And this is a famous recording because it's so beautiful. I hope that you've heard it before. I'm going to let you listen long time. Listen to the pattern. See if you hear what seems like repeating phrases, repeating themes. And eventually, a return to what you heard at first. One male whale on the breeding grounds in Bermuda at a time when babies are being born. [AUDIO PLAYBACK] [WHALE SINGING AND RUMBLING] KATY PAYNE: One whale and his echoes. Echoes from the undersurface of the waves and from the bottom of the sea. [WHALE SINGING] [DISTANT RUMBLING] KATY PAYNE: That was the explosion Frank was waiting for. [WHALE SINGING] KATY PAYNE: Back to the beginning. [WHALE SINGING] [PLAYBACK ENDS] KATY PAYNE: And so he goes on. It's a song, in the biological definition of a song, a repeating sequence of sounds. He will go on over and over again. That was a very shortened song. Sometimes they last 15 or 20 minutes. And there are certain rules in the composition of these song which all the males in a population follow. It was a rare event to hear only one whale singing at a time. What we see here is a spectrogram, which is machine rendering of sound. And this is not a spectrogram of the song we just heard, but of one that was recorded in 1981, 40 years later, in the same population on the island of Tortola. I'll let you hear just a touch of it. So you see, it sounds very different, partly because this whale is at a different environment. But again, you will hear and you can see in the spectrogram-- [WHALE SOUNDS] --that there are repeating-- [WHALE SOUNDS] --phrases. [WHALE SOUNDS] There's one. [WHALE SOUNDS] Oh, not yet. [WHALE SOUNDS] Oh, we're down on the third line, the squeaks. [WHALE SOUNDS] It always happens in this order. All the whales are doing it. [WHALE SOUNDS] And if you speed this little section up, you will hear that it's really a song that repeats. This is-- and it sounds kind of like birdsong. Try this. [WHALE CHIRPING AND CLICKING SOUNDS] We're now on the third line before the bottom. [WHALE CHIRPING AND CLICKING SOUNDS] Back to the beginning. [WHALE CHIRPING AND CLICKING SOUNDS] There we are. And on and on. You heard a good deal of evolution, a good deal of change in that song. But you also probably heard that there is a pulse that continues throughout the song, and that there are phrases that cluster together into themes. And that the themes repeat in a given order. And at the end, and I don't know what the whale thinks about the end, repeat into what started at the beginning. Well, how did Tortola's song evolve from the Bermuda song, or did it not evolve? That was the question for me. How did this happen that we have whales singing a song that has such a similar structure a few years later? A trip to Hawaii made the best way for us to study this, because Hawaii is not such a seasick environment as the offshore banks of Bermuda. And there we recorded for a number of years, Roger, my husband, and I. And we discovered that there's a gradual and progressive change in every theme in the song continually. And now, having recorded in many different populations, we find that this is the rule. To sing is to change. Here's a little test for you. 1976, in March, the thing that we were calling Theme [INAUDIBLE] 5, had this phrase. [MAKES WHALE SOUNDS] A year later-- [MAKES WHALE SOUNDS] And all the whales were doing that. And every time that that theme came up, the phrases were a little longer than they had been. One year later-- [MAKES WHALE SOUNDS] Now, I ask you, what happened the next year? Who can make a prediction? Anybody got a prediction? I mean, you're noticing the separation between the first and second note, right? You're noticing the lengthening of the phrase? And how about the grunts? OK, do it. Next year, 1979. Everybody grunt. Come on, let's go. [LAUGHTER] Everybody, not in unity, just everybody do it. How many are there going to be? [GRUNTING] Let's take a look and see what really happened. Yeah. You see those. Those predictions that I made were borne out by the whale. And then even the following year, even longer phrases and 13 grunts at the end. Well, you say to yourself, what's going to happen to this song, because there were eight themes, not just one. The fact is that the other theme shortened, and then in 1981, there was a really radical change. In fact, if you look at what happened in the North Atlantic, and what we're looking at here is from left to right, the years between 1969 and 1982. And then from bottom to top, all the various themes that the whales were singing. And the length of the white line tells you the average-- it tells you whether that theme was present in the song or not. And you see that some themes are dropping out. Other new ones are coming in. And the whole thing is a gradual, progressive evolution. Well, what's going on? This is, of course, an example of culture, learned behavior. It wouldn't happen if the whales weren't listening to each other. So they're listening and they are imitating. And they have a sense of how the whole thing that they're producing is changing over time. I think it's amazing. Oh, maybe what was happening was that new whales were coming in, and these present whales were learning from them. Or maybe all the whales were changing. Well actually, we were keeping a database of photographs of the whales that we saw singing, because after-- when they come up to breathe, they take a breath, and then as they dive down, you can see the undersurface of their tails, their flukes. And the undersurface has a fingerprint on it. Look at this. Different whale. Different whale. So we were able to say, this whale sang this song, and to discover repeating, returning whales who were singing the song as it has changed with time. Cultural evolution. How shall we interpret the changing songs? What would drive a strange behavior like that? The best the biologists can come up with, the best explanation, is that the female whales like innovative partners. [LAUGHTER] Like improvisation in human music, changes in whale song seemed to be generated by an internal process. We never heard them repeating sounds that were being introduced into the ocean. And as in music, the imitation that then occurs reveals listening and learning. Song changing seems to be thus a clear example of cultural evolution in non-human animals. Quite rare. And for a novelty to be introduced into a cultural trend, and this is true of human behavior. It must have a certain balance of conformity and originality. And it seems to be that that's true also in the whale song. So I wanted to go on and study them forever. But I was invited to West Coast to participate in a symposium-- oh, what was it? It was on learning in non-human animals. I presented this, and I became aware that there was a zoo nearby that had baby elephants in it. So I went to the Portland Zoo. And there, when I was in the zoo for one week sitting next to [INAUDIBLE] developments that had an old matriarch in it, and a baby, and five or six in-betweeners, I noticed periodically that I was feeling a throbbing in the air that was not associated with any behavior I could see. And eventually, it occurred to me that it was associated with something I'd experienced in the Sage Chapel when I was a child singing in the choir with Donald [? Grout ?] conducting the Saint Matthew Passion. That old organ in Sage Chapel has pipes that go down an octave below most organ pipes. And when those lowest notes were being played, I couldn't hear them, but I could feel them. So I thought huh, maybe elephants, like the organ, are capable of making sound below the range of human hearing. And this would be quite exciting, because it was known that elephants have associations over long distances, and that low frequency sound travels much better than high frequency sound. So maybe this was the basis of a long distance communication system. Well, who knows. But we were sent back. I went back to the zoo with Bill Langbauer and Liz Thomas. And we recorded continually for one month in the presence of the elephants. We slept in an elephant cage with rats. And it was a hairy experience. And this is the kind of thing that we heard. First I'm going to play it the way it really sounded to us. You'll hear the noise of a zoo, a very noisy place. You will hear a heating fan go off. Then you hear Bill's voice say one, two, three, to coordinate the notes that we were taking together. And then you'll hear [CLAPS], which was the old Rosie walking to the far end of the cage and flapping her ears against her neck as she walked. Well, that's not very exciting, but let's listen. [AUDIO PLAYBACK] [RUMBLING NOISES] KATY PAYNE: You hear the heating fan go off. Bill. [RUMBLING NOISES] KATY PAYNE: That was out of her trunk. [RUMBLING NOISES] [PLAYBACK ENDS] The cage was 90 feet long. It was a pretty long walk. And Liz Thomas and I felt a throbbing in the air as she approached the far wall. And she ran outside to see where the old elephant bull, Kunga, who was in the breeding condition called musk, where he was and what he was up to. Well, he had walked a very long distance up to the outside of the wall that Rosie had approached on the inside. And the two were only three feet apart, but separated by a thick concrete wall. Well, let's take that little piece of tape and speed it up as I did with the whale song, and see what will come up into the range of hearing that we couldn't hear at the time. Eee-- that's going to be the heating fan. [AUDIO PLAYBACK] [MECHANICAL NOISE] [HUMMING AND CLICKING SOUNDS] [PLAYBACK ENDS] Did you hear anything extra? It was an instant discovery. So I made my hands a little slower, but you heard perhaps [CLAPPING] the ears clapping 10 times in real speed. So there was sound and there was a lot of it. And nobody had known about this. Even the mahouts who had been working with elephants for 3,000 years hadn't guessed that when they felt a trembling in the body of the elephant, it was actually sound. Well, that was a wonderful experience for me. The next thing we wanted to know was, do all elephants use infrasound, sound below the frequencies that people can hear? And the answer is yes, actually. And what I really want you to look at here is the difference in what we know about how many elephants there were in the world at that time. You'll see that for the forest elephants on the right, you'll see a very compacted habitat, which is the second largest forest in the world, central African forest. And the guess as to how many there are left in the world-- and this was in 2000-- lay between 22,000 and 209,000. So it's completely useless, and nobody knew anything about how many there are. And I thought, well, let's go see if we can use sound to find out. It's a little hard to count them. This is where they live. But there are clearings in the middle of this forest called bais, B-A-I, probably made by elephants. Certainly maintained by elephants, that have delicious mineral water. And there, elephants gather for purposes probably of mating and of drinking and of sociality with their buddies. They are very complicated social animals that live in many different layers of relationships. And there was a researcher, Andrea Turkalo, who had been climbing up onto this platform for some 20 years and watching the elephants and their behavior, and knew many of them by eye. She now knows 4,000 elephants. And she's in her what, Peter? How many-th year? She's been watching them for 23 years. And here she is. This remarkable person who has dedicated her life to this project. But until that time, Andrea had not added sound into the formula of things that she was keeping track of. So we decided we must do it together. And for that purpose, we founded the Elephant Listening Project here at the Lab of Ornithology. And Andrea is one of the founding mothers of it. Well, in order to listen to the forest and to the elephants, we lifted those yellow cases, which are only about this big, which contain inside them automatic recording devices. And this little electronic gizmo can record for up to three months, maybe more. But at the frequencies that we were listening for, the low frequencies, up to three months without you having to go and maintain anything about it. It just does it. There it is stuck in the tree. And we did this with the help of Bayaka men [? Azobe ?] and [? Zu ?], I think these two are, who are fantastic tree climbers, and who are working in Andrea's camp with us. There you see in the middle, the bai, about more than half a kilometer wide, more than a quarter mile wide, and less deep. And each number in the red box represents the placement of one recording unit. The reason we spaced them out like that is that we wanted to know if we heard an elephant call, who made it. If we could do that, and we can do that by triangulating from where the call arrives, at number three, for instance, and number seven, and at number four. And by making a triangle, you can look at the difference between times of arrival of the sound at those spots, and you can figure out, ah, it was the elephant that was right in between them. So that was extremely cool. We were hoping to learn not only how many elephants there were in relation to how much calling, but also what they were saying. Wouldn't that be nice? The elephant dictionary. There are different sounds that tell you whether elephants are mating, that tell you whether there's a family group. And if so, which family group. And judging from the elephant's own responses to the calls that they were hearing, yeah, there's a very sophisticated repertoire or vocabulary. We are in pre-kindergarten in terms of understanding its meaning. But I will give you the experience of being the interpreter now. We'll just look at a couple of little sequences. This is a sequence of videos. So we kept continuous video for much of the time. And at the same time, knew exactly how sound was being correlated with behavior. This is a story of Penelope, a newborn calf-- Penny, a newborn calf in the Penelope family. The matriarch is Penelope 1. Her mother is Penelope 2. So that Andrea was naming them. And this little cap gives a scream before you see her, when we're still looking at two members of another family, the [? Gagna ?] family. The two we're looking at are subadult females. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] KATY PAYNE: Lolling around, having a good drink. [ELEPHANT SCREAM] KATY PAYNE: Penny's off the screen. [RUMBLING] [ELEPHANT SCREAM] KATY PAYNE: Oh, she's being doused. The matriarch of the [? Gagna ?] family pressed her into the pool. Now, here comes one of the subadult females, also a member of the [? Gagna ?] family, and the other. Uh-oh. Here comes her mother. Oh, and a sister, oh, and a grandmother. Oh, and the grandmother's son. That is nephew. And another aunt. And yet another. And now we see Penny following the wrong family. [LAUGHTER] KATY PAYNE: She gets a little smack from her mom. [ELEPHANT TRUMPETS] KATY PAYNE: Her sister gives a scream, a trumpet. The [? Gagnas ?] go away. They didn't want this baby. And now we hear this remarkable series of rumbles. [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING] KATY PAYNE: We also hear a frog, I think. [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING] KATY PAYNE: Can you all hear that? Family united. [CLICKING SOUNDS] What did those calls mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Were they reassurance? But what we know is that little Penny never wandered more than a trunk's length from her mother until the night had fallen and we could see them no longer. [END PLAYBACK] Another series of calls in a different situation. A young calf had been ailing. And we had noticed her come into the clearing underneath our platform a number of times in the previous month looking more feeble each time. It was clear that she wasn't feeding from her mother, while her older sister was. We didn't know what, but on this day, I did feel that she might die. And in my curiosity as to how other elephants would respond, we decided to keep a video record. Oh, sorry. What am I doing wrong. Peter, help? PETER: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: What's that? PETER: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Thank you. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] KATY PAYNE: Peter is the director of the Elephant Listening Project, and has been since 2006. [CLICKING SOUNDS] KATY PAYNE: The body of the calf is in the middle and is being approached by unrelated elephants. [? Oya ?], the adult, and her juvenile. [ELEPHANT TRUMPETS] KATY PAYNE: That's [? Oya ?]. [ELEPHANT TRUMPETS] KATY PAYNE: A call of distress. [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING AND TRUMPETING] KATY PAYNE: This is not their calf. [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING AND TRUMPETING] KATY PAYNE: That's the youngster. [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING AND TRUMPETING] KATY PAYNE: The mother of the dead calf is in behind [INAUDIBLE] and the older sister. [ELEPHANT RUMBLING] KATY PAYNE: Over the rest of that day and the next day, 129-- I think it's 129 unrelated elephants passed by this little body. And 128 of them responded visibly. It was obviously their business, although they weren't relatives. [PLAYBACK ENDS] The most remarkable one to me was an adolescent male who rather than ignoring the scene, became tremendously involved in it. Went back to see the baby five times. Tried to lift it up 57 times. I suppose you can make of that what you think. Reminds me of human behavior. There were some that didn't respond in a dramatic way, like screaming or lifting, and there are many who involved themselves in those way. Well, I think that most lectures on whales and elephants end on a dark note. And on a dark note, I will just say that the Elephant Listening Project is doing amazingly good work under Peter's leadership. By using sound to identi-- from these gizmos which are scattered through forests to record not only elephant calls and figure out how many elephants are present and where, but also to catch poachers through recordings of gunshots, which of course, are on the recordings as well. Something like 90% of ELP's effort is now concentrated on conservation efforts. But my job in all of this was to love the animals and to find out more about who they are. And one of the remarkable things that we saw, I will now let you hear in my final moments. Strangely enough, when the elephants mate, it's a public affair. The news is spread far and wide. And immediately and repeatedly, it goes through the forest and it brings other elephants to the scene where, in fact, a musk male and a fertile female are present. This is an unusual circumstance. Females are only in estrus, breeding condition, for a few days out of every four or five years, because when they're pregnant, it's two years. And then after they give birth, they're nursing. And that inhibits-- what am I saying-- estrus. And so they only come into this breeding condition very rarely. And the males have got to find them, but the males live separately from the females. So you've got spread the news. OK, we've just seen a mating. And the female gave quite a whopping call. Oh, shoot. Try again. [ELEPHANT RUMBLING] Family after family went to the place where the mating occurred, sniffed the ground. Can we up the volume? [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING AND CALLING] And each family, when it came to the place where-- see when they're going onto the ground. Got terribly excited. Individuals ran around in circles and screamed and urinated and defecated. And rained from their temple glands and did everything they could to express excitement. Then a family would move away and another family would move in and explore the same piece of ground. [ELEPHANTS RUMBLING AND CALLING] You hear that constant background rumble? [ELEPHANT TRUMPETS AND RUMBLING] This goes on for an hour, are you ready? [LAUGHTER] Well, it turns out from [? Maya ?] Thompson's dissertation, and she was one of the people on the team, that after a mating, these bursts of calling are unique enough so that they can be used at a distance, and they're loud enough so that they are probably informing distant elephants that there has been a mating. And they can be used in monitoring elephant populations to help establish the health of that population. So what kinds of consciousness are we surrounded by? I think I'll end with that question. [APPLAUSE] Let's have some more babies. Anybody want to ask questions? Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] KATY PAYNE: Say it once again. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Oh, yes they did. Yes, that's right. Multiple males mate with the same female. And the mating event is a pretty short thing. It lasts two or three days, and then she goes out of estrus, and he searches around for another. Yes, in the back. [ELEPHANT TRUMPETS] Oh! [LAUGHS] Oh, how funny. OK, how do we turn this thing off? Escape. That ought to do it, don't you think? OK. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: The mouth is closed when a whale is singing and no air escapes from a blow hole. So it appears that all of this occur in a large internal chamber. And that this air is forced back and forth across vocal chords. It isn't fully known yet how they do it. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: In the elephants, the average call-- in the forest elephants, the average call ensonifies three-- what is it, how much? Three square kilometers. Yeah. But it very much depends on atmospheric conditions. In the savanna, it turns out there's a temperature inversion at night and sound travels 10 times farther, and on a clear night, than it does otherwise. And that may mean many kilometers. 300 square kilometers on a clear night in the savanna environment. This was figured out by some meteorologists, and 30 square kilometers at 10 o'clock in the morning when the conditions have changed. So there are marvelous factors influencing who hears what at what distance. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Well, OK. Did everybody hear that? [INAUDIBLE] is-- all right. The male song is changing. Is it changing in a systematic way so that a rate of change can be compared to the rate of change in the behavior of, say, humans? Well, I don't know which behavior you're looking at, the length of the skirt or-- [LAUGHTER] --what, or the evolution of, for instance, language as it changes. My impression is that human language changes much more slowly than these whale songs. However, it's not consistent. It's not steady. Sometimes we'd have two years in a row in which the whole song was very similar. And then sometimes we'd have a pattern like the one I showed you in which all the changes and all the themes were occurring rather regularly and predictably. And sometimes it was really fast. So yeah, no, I can't answer your question sensibly. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Has anybody tried playing the speeded-up whale songs on land where there are birds? Nice idea. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Well, OK. The explosions-- we did not see any change or hear any change in those particular songs. I don't have very many examples, but we're radically afraid that the human noise that's being pumped into the ocean, not only by military things, but particularly by shipping and by oil exploration, are reducing the distances over which these animals can hear one another. Finback whales, before human noise polluted the ocean, their call went 11,000 miles or more. And I don't think there's anything that goes that far now without being completely disrupted by a human noise. Christopher Clark, who's been the head of the bio-acoustics research program has done wonderful work on sound disruption in whales. And what he fears is sound disruption. And of course, since they are entirely, almost entirely, acoustic animals, they can't see very far, this is really, really to be worried about. Yes. AUDIENCE: Where are the best results of trying [INAUDIBLE]? KATY PAYNE: The best results of trying to-- AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: To analyze the whale songs? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Well, of course, we use visual guides. I mean, I can show you. Well, I guess we need to go home, right? You want to see a little example of it? OK. This is going to be the song that we heard at first. Look for a green line, and that's where the sound is coming from. This is a spectrogram. You'll see harmonic structure. The basic sound that you hear is low frequency, which is down at the bottom. However, we're hearing reverberations in the harmonics. And that gives us the texture of the sound. [WHALE SONGS] I don't think anybody's up there. [WHALE RUMBLING] You can see the echoes. [WHALE RUMBLING] More of the rumble. [WHALE RUMBLING] Much lower frequency. [WHALE RUMBLING] Peter, you want to say something? Peter doesn't want to tell you, but you can catch him afterwards. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: People have thought that perhaps it could-- some of these calls could be used in sonar. Some whales really do use sonar. The sperm whales and some of the dolphins. But I don't think that it would make sense to predict that for the humpback whale songs, because the vocalizations in different songs and in different populations are so different. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: I believe that in the humpback whale, it is spread out. I could be wrong. Certainly, there's a focus being used by sperm whales and dolphins. That's different. But, yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Are you talking about whales or elephants? Is there any evidence of symbolism in the whale song elements? Well, in fact, whales, like many male birds, have some calls as well as the song. And those calls are definitely referential. For instance, if you're in a small boat and you hear [GRUNTS] and you see whales coming toward you, you might as well-- [LAUGHTER] But in the song, it just goes on, just this pattern, this routine. And who knows why it's so long and complex. Think of the energy that must go into understanding what's going on and changing it in a certain way all the time. I don't get it. It's just wonderful. yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Well, I think one-- are there common patterns between songs of the whales and sounds of the elephants? And the answer is basically, no. And yet there's sound, and they use low frequencies. The things that you heard and saw are all that I know about them. But I was hoping that the elephants might have a song. Well, they do have one song. The female, when she's in estrus-- and here, I'm referring to savanna elephants where I've really see this. She goes [RUMBLING SOUNDS]. It goes on as much as 45 minutes. And this is after she's been mounted by a male. By the male she didn't want. [LAUGHTER] And other males come. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Do elephants have something like a culture? Oh, yeah. I'm sure they do. I think that as we learn more about what they're meaning to each other, we'll discover great differences between populations in some populations, and even within a population. And I think probably it changes, but I don't know. You said, do you think, and I told you what I think. Here's an example of-- a really nice example of something we saw. Melissa [INAUDIBLE], who was with us noticed this. Little Penny, when she was just born, we heard her scream way down at one end of that clearing. And there were a whole lot of elephants in the clearing. Nobody paid any attention except one huge grandmother. And she was at the opposite extreme. And she came walloping right down through the clearing to the baby. So she recognized the call. She recognized who the call was made by, even though she probably hadn't heard that baby scream many times. It was very human-like behavior. Grandma. So that the two elephants in a herd, in a family group, who make most of the decisions are the oldest and the youngest. They're a little team. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Well, that's a very good question. She's struck by how passive the mother and older sister of the dead calf were. And asks, did they make any effort to help her? Well, surely they were always together every time they came in the clearing. So the mother and the older sister were slowed way, way, way down to move at the rate that the baby could move. I think that's perhaps the clearest indication I had. And I think that their passivity was depression, if I may use that word. I know I can't, but I did. [LAUGHTER] You got any ideas, Peter? PETER: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: How do they produce them? Oh, their vocal cords enable them to produce them. And the ears are specially modified, the inner ear, for hearing very low frequency sound. So the fact that it's called infrasound refers to human perception. Oh, I'm sorry about that. It's below sound that we're able to hear. But of course, they hear the whole range. How can I choose? This is exciting. All right, the one with the big hand. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Say it again. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: No. [LAUGHTER] Who will play it for me? Will you, Bud? [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Do we have any violinists in the crowd? Oh, come on. No, he is my son-in-law. [LAUGHTER] KATY PAYNE: Open it up, Eddie. Another question? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Oh, yeah. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. What kept you [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Sorry Peter, you've got to stand up here for a minute. PETER: I can only think of [INAUDIBLE] So the acoustics [INAUDIBLE] so that's a big part of what we're doing [INAUDIBLE] acoustics [INAUDIBLE]. And the other key has to do with [INAUDIBLE]. Probably the most frustrating thing is, of course, [INAUDIBLE] But we [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: I hope-- could you hear Peter? Oh, wonderful. There are some-- there's a little bit of literature about ELP at the doors. And I've got a few, do I, Peter? I don't know. Peter has some. Stand up so people can see you. [APPLAUSE] [LAUGHTER] KATY PAYNE: This is awesome. Yeah. AUDIENCE: Don't you play? KATY PAYNE: A little bit. I didn't know why he asked me to bring this. But I thought he just wanted to see it. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: This is my first. AUDIENCE: Oh, my goodness. KATY PAYNE: Yeah. [PLAYS VIOLIN] AUDIENCE: I could keep going. [APPLAUSE] [AUDIO OUT] KATY PAYNE: [INAUDIBLE]. [APPLAUSE] Does anybody want to say something after that? Yes, you're the last question. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Good. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. KATY PAYNE: Perfect question. [APPLAUSE] KATY PAYNE: We do not know. [LAUGHTER] KATY PAYNE: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER 1: This has been a production of Cornell University, on the web at cornell.edu.
Bioacoustics researcher Katy Payne, founder of the Elephant Listening Project, talked about large-mammal communication July 13, 2016 as part of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions' free summer events series. With sound and video, the presentation illustrated Payne's groundbreaking research into the acoustic behavior of elephants and whales, who use sound in a variety of ways to support their complex, far-flung societies.
Founded in the mid-1980s as part of the Bioacoustics Research Program of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Elephant Listening Project focused its early work on the variety and social functions of elephants’ calls in four African countries. Its top priority now is conservation, and remote acoustic monitoring in Central Africa has the potential to reveal poaching activities as well as the presence and condition of endangered elephant populations.
Elephant Listening Project
bioacoustics
Ken Blanchard: Refire! Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life
Brian O. Earle: Civility and Manners—Do They Really Matter?
More from Summer Lectures 2016
Inside Cornell: Elephant Listening Project
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Big Data: Powerful Predictions Through Data Analytics
Posted on April 9, 2013 By Survey Research Institute
SD video audio
YASAMIN MILLER: Welcome to the Survey Research Institute's seventh annual talk. My name's Yasamin Miller, and I'm the director of SRI. I'd like to thank all the co-sponsors of this event today-- the Office of the Senior Vice Provost, Statistical Sciences, Information Science, [INAUDIBLE], Government, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Communications, Cognitive Science, and I also want to give a special thanks to the 88th annual Hotel Ezra Cornell organization here. Yes. [APPLAUSE] They helped coordinate this venue and interact it with their own event. And I want to extend a very warm welcome to all the Hotelies. I'm so pleased to see that this talk has drawn such a large and diverse audience. The goal of these talks is to advance the knowledge and understanding around survey research. And we're really grateful to have a speaker today that's making survey research cool. [LAUGHTER] So please allow me to share some statistics and fun data with you. The Survey Research Institute has been doing polls and surveys since 1996, which is about the same time that our speaker won first place in a high school debate competition in his home in East Lansing, Michigan. So as many of you know, he's shown an unusual aptitude for math and numbers from an extremely early age. And by the time he was six, he was a huge baseball fan. And this would later prove to serve him very well. But I'd like to share with you something that's not well known. Before college, he actually worked as a telephone interviewer at Michigan State Survey Group. And when asked at a job interview at a college, what was the value of that? Like, why would you do a telephone interview? He said, I learned how to call strangers, make them relax, and then cooperate with me. This is a virtue I've been extolling for years now. So I'm hoping, after this talk, we see a huge surge in our applications for our telephone interviewer positions. [LAUGHTER] In 2000, he graduated with a bachelor's in economics from the University of Chicago. And he spent four years at a job that was not really a good fit for him. So out of boredom, he discovered online poker, and for a while he was living the poker dream. He was staying up late and playing poker, and then returning to work the next morning to sleep. To the students out there, take note and be comforted that your first job out of college and out of Cornell, if it's boring, it could be the best thing that ever happened to you. So the earnings he made from gambling allowed him then to pursue his other love, baseball, and he developed PECOTA, the online modeling system for forecasting the career development of major league baseball players, which he sold to and then managed for Baseball Prospectus. He moved from baseball predictions to election predictions, clearly an obvious [INAUDIBLE], but a pretty bold move, because there are countless numbers of survey organizations out there that are dedicated solely to predicting election outcomes. And as you know, he accurately predicted the 2008 and then again the 2012 presidential results. In 2009, he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was only 31. His award-winning blog, FiveThirtyEight, was licensed for publication by the New York Times in 2010. So how's he able to do this? I mean, how's he able to take all that data out there and predict with such accuracy? It is reported that something like 90% of the data in the universe has been generated in the last 10 years, mostly thanks to the web, but also to the proliferation of survey research organizations. [LAUGHTER] And we know that when we have more information than we can handle, we tend to pick and choose those facts we like to believe. And what our speaker has so eloquently proven is that big data does not mean the end of scientific methods-- in fact, quite the opposite, and he does this partly by aggregating polling data. And when used correctly, survey data can tell you a story that represents the truth. The key is to be able to separate out the signal and the noise. And coincidentally, that just happens to be the title of his New York Times best-selling book, The Signal and The Noise-- Why So Many Predictions Fail, But Some Don't. So to help us understand how to use big data, and in particular, survey data, please join me in giving a warm welcome to SRI's seventh annual speaker, Nate Silver. [APPLAUSE] NATE SILVER: Well, thank you everyone. Can you all hear me OK? I really appreciate the introduction. I'm from the Midwest, so we don't-- you can't hear me? Oh, I should probably turn on the mic. Give me one second here. Testing? Oh, there we go. I was going to say, I'm from the Midwest, we don't deal very well in the Midwest with that much, like, praise, really. Or technology, apparently, as well. But I feel somewhat at home here in Cornell-- in Ithaca, rather. I know it's not technically the Midwest, but we're kind of in what I think of as the college hockey belt, basically, which encompasses kind of a certain northern part of the country, not stretching all the way to the Atlantic coast, but pretty far up to Minnesota or so. But yeah. I'm here to talk to you about big data and what it can do, but really kind of what it also can't do, and why we need people like the people in this room to work really hard to translate this stuff into actual working knowledge in society. So I became a big deal, I guess-- this presentation's not loading, actually. Let me-- [LAUGHTER] It's all some metaphor for the failures of-- OK, there we go. So this was the map that we had on November 6, 2012, where we have a forecast of the outcome in every state. You should see it's a probabilistic forecast. We got a lot of credit, for example, for calling Florida right when we had Obama winning-- having a 50.01% chance of winning there, basically a coin flip, and I got really lucky on that coin flip. But we got 50 out of 50 states right. And this FiveThirtyEight site had gotten a ton of traffic, had been very much a source of controversy, though, also, throughout the campaign. And it seemed really out of whack to me. This is a graph of Google search traffic for my name and the vice president's name. It seemed way out of proportion, that why is-- this is definitely humblebrag, by the way-- but why is a data geek getting this much love? Fortunately, though, to make sure America hadn't gone totally insane, Justin Bieber still got 100 times more traffic than the vice president and I combined. But why was this drawing so much attention? This model is-- I'm downplaying a little bit here, but it's not as complicated as the things that are used in other branches of economics or physics or many other fields. We're just basically averaging the polls, counting to 270-- it's how many votes you need to win the electoral college-- and then making some effort to account for the margin of error. That last step is a little bit more complicated. Measuring uncertainty and becoming comfortable with uncertainty is something that people are not usually very good at. But still, it's a fairly basic model. If you'd taken a simpler approach, for example, our competitor, RealClearPolitics, they missed Florida. But just taking a simple average of every poll in the last week would have gotten you the same outcome in, I think, 48 or 49 out of the 50 states as well. But really, in the context of the book I had written last year, The Signal to Noise, the fact that this was seen as such an accomplishment I think kind of spoke to how many problems we've really had in the field. And I think part of the problem is because our expectations are not necessarily matching the realities. This is an article from 2008, from Wired magazine, June, 2008, where Chris Anderson said, because of the deluge of data, we no longer need the scientific method. We no longer need theory, in essence. We will just have the kind of truth rain out from the cloud of data instead. But consider the timing of this article was written in the middle of 2008, when the world's economy was starting to collapse, pretty much. You had a massive housing bubble. You had a financial crisis triggered by the housing bubble and poor ratings given out by the credit rating agencies and a lot of really bad decisions that were data-driven decisions. Finance is a very data-driven field. But if you have a model that has bad assumptions, that doesn't think through the theory of the problem, then it'll get you nowhere in a hurry, in effect, nuke the entire global economy in a hurry instead. And as I talk about in the book, and we'll go through some of these examples today, this is really more the rule than the exception, where there have been failures to predict earthquakes, there have been over and underpredictions in the spread of flu. September 11 might be thought of as a big misprediction, where there were some signals that unfortunately our defense agencies weren't able to detect and prevent the attack in advance. It's not been the best decade, exactly. So, and here's another example, of course, looking at economic growth. We had another fairly bad jobs report today. The red line here represents what GDP growth would be if the economy were at its full productive capacity. The blue line is where we actually are. So the economy is recovering, but we're still way behind. We never made up for the lost hit we took to productivity five years ago. So a lot of people are still unemployed as a result. Even in fields like medicine, for example, this is a very geeky paper published by a guy named John P. A. Ioannidis. He used Bayesian statistics to make a prediction, in essence, that most published research findings in medical journals and other prestigious fields are false, meaning they couldn't be verified, wouldn't stand up to verification or prediction. And in fact, when Bayer Laboratories sought to take findings from the best medical journals, results that were deemed to be statistically significant and true, and tried to recreate those experiments in their own lab, they found that two thirds of the results failed. So you really have kind of a crisis of science, ironically, in this era of big data. Even Google. In Google we trust. But Google is not immune from these problems, as well, where they have a product called Google Flu Trends, and the utility here is that they look at search patterns for terms like "flu," for example, or "flu vaccination." And because there's a lag in the CDC's reporting of flu, you can have basically instant numbers, so you know if the flu is spreading in your area. But this year, they rather badly overpredicted the flu instead. People aren't quite sure why yet. It may be because people are changing their search patterns all the time, and maybe even talking about this affects the way people use Google and use it as a diagnostic tool for the flu. But we've had really a lot of missteps in the era of big data instead. So that's my kind of premise here, is why isn't big data producing big progress? And it doesn't have a simple answer, but there are a few big themes here, I think. First, I want to put this in some historical context, where what happens when we get a lot more information than we're used to historically? So here's a graph of big data. As Yasmin said, by some measures, 90% of the information in the world has been created in the past two years. Most of that is stupid, like YouTube memes. But nevertheless, we're getting a lot more data than we had before. But similarly, if you go back about, oh, 600 years ago or so, the printing press was invented in 1440. Before that, there weren't really any books. There were, but they were hand-transcribed. It cost, in today's dollars, about $25,000 to get a copy of a book. So you think textbooks are expensive now, right, but much, much worse in the 15th century instead. But the printing press reduced the cost of books to about $100 a copy or so. Still kind of expensive-- well, I guess cheap for a textbook, probably, right? But you had a big exponential increase in the number of people who were reading and literacy rates throughout Europe. This technology spread very, very quickly from one place in central Germany in 1450 to all over the continent 50 years later. Even by modern standards, that's a pretty quick spread of a new technological innovation. So did you have a lot of growth through all this enlightened perspective people now had? Well, eventually you did. But first you had a lot of war. You had the English Civil War, the Thirty Years' War, the Spanish Inquisition, all in the first 100 years or so after the printing press. This is just a small smattering here of more wars. It was arguably the bloodiest century in European history, the 20th century being a leading co-contender for that distinction. But what happened is that you had the spread of different ideas, which again, in the long run is a good thing, but Martin Luther's theses, for example, there were 200,000 copies published of them because of the printing press now. So you had people who instead of having some kind of community consensus about values, however right or wrong it might have been, you suddenly had people testifying to different ideas. And unlike in science, this idea that we have that you get more information, you make more progress, instead people just found different ways to disagree with one another. Which kind of brings me to the present day, where you have these guys instead. This is a rather nerdy graph from a system called DW-NOMINATE that measures polarization in the US Congress. And so you have-- you probably can't read the small print, but you have time on the x-axis, and polarization on the y-axis. So we set a record last year for the most polarized Congress in American history. It was also the least productive Congress in history, unsurprisingly, as measured by the number of actual laws passed. Nothing really gets done whatsoever. But if you look at this graph, there's a couple of inflection points kind of around-- first around 1980 and then in the mid '90s. So this is partly coincidental in fact, but what was happening at this time? Well, in 1980, you had CNN debut, so cable news, right? And then '96, you have Fox News and MSNBC come online instead. And so people were perceiving the news through a different filter than they might have before. It wasn't just the three major networks, which they may have been biased, they may have been wrong, but they're kind of presenting a common front as far as the news. Instead, you have something like this, where right now, on a typical night, Rachel Maddow's audience is only 1% Republican. Sean Hannity's audience, for some reason, 5% Democrats. Watch Sean Hannity. But people are literally perceiving two separate sets of information. So why was FiveThirtyEight so controversial in the run-up to the election? It was because people are used to having their news cherry-picked for them. And if, for example, you run this experiment where I took the three best poll [INAUDIBLE] in the last weeks of the campaign. For Obama, on the one side of course, he's winning every state. Three best polls for Romney, on the other hand, he's actually not winning Pennsylvania and Michigan and some states, but enough that he would have won the electoral college instead. That's why people couldn't necessarily believe our simple average, because they were so used to getting a kind of cherry-picked result of polls instead. For example, if they were reading the Drudge Report. This is the Drudge Report on November 6, 2012, or the morning, excuse me, of Election Day, where by this point, Hurricane Sandy had seemed to work to Obama's benefit. It was several weeks after Romney had had his great debate in Denver. But pretty clear that Obama, not a lock, but certainly had the momentum and was likely to win. But instead, every story I've highlighted in red here is a favorable story for Romney. Every one in blue-- there aren't very many-- is a favorable story for Obama instead. So it literally is as biased as the stereotype, where they're presenting only the cherry-picked kind of news that's going to keep partisans and ideologues happy instead. When we have so much news to filter through, so much information to sort through, you're going to get a biased sample a lot of the time, and if you're not careful, you're going to get a sample that's actually quite detached from the consensus evidence that what reality really looks like. So it's easy to make fun of people in politics. And they are pretty delusional, by the way. I mean, the reason I can look smart in politics is because the bar is very, very low there. You have an industry which is all about manipulating the truth basically. And some people, I think, sometimes have trouble distinguishing reality, much less the signal from the noise. But even in academia and other disciplines, there are similar problems. So there's one very basic reason why, which is that as you have more and more inputs, more and more data sources-- so for example, say you have five variables here. You're running a test to test for significance, a relationship between the two variables. So with five variables, you have 10 relationships to look at. But as the number of variables increases, you have an exponential increase in the number of two-way relationships that you have. So you double the number of variables to 10, you more than double, actually quadruple, roughly, the number of relationships to test to 45. Or for example, looking at economic data, where there are now 61,000 stats, in fact, in real time, by the Federal Reserve. So just running a two-way test, you have 1.86 billion combinations to look for. Is there useful data in there? I mean, probably yes. The amount of armadillo production in Nevada is probably useful to someone. And there are some insights here. I'm not bemoaning it totally. But what you really have here is you have some real, legitimate, new relationships that we're discovering and we're understanding causality, not just correlation. We're understanding relationships, not just something you found in a stat package, right? But that's not increasing as fast as the number of tests that we're running, so you have a widening signal-to-noise ratio. The gap between what we think we know and what we really know is increasing. And that's really dangerous, because we're human beings, and that tends to lead us to make some stupid decisions sometimes. Of course, we also have-- excuse me, before I have a Marco Rubio moment here. You know, Marco Rubio has given speakers a reprieve for lifetime, basically. Anything awkward now involving a bottle of water, throughout history now, you can always just make the Rubio joke. But we tend to have very kind of monkey brains, still, for the most part, where our intuitions about how to look at data were honed, in part, by evolutionary advantage. And if, for example, you're a caveman trying to perceive whether the rustling in the wind over yonder is, say, a tiger or a lion or just the wind, then you probably have an incentive to have a very active pattern detection system. There's some biological [INAUDIBLE] that distinguishes us from other creatures aren't very good at making predictions, for example. If you do literally have chimpanzees who are up in trees, right, they have a whole system where when they see a dangerous snake, a cobra, or something, but they can't make inferences as we can. They can't say, oh, there's a path through the grass. It's about snake-sized and snake-shaped. Therefore, we can predict we should get out of the way. They wait till they actually see it, and sound an alarm. Instead, we humans have very active, as I said, pattern detection capabilities. But it can lead us astray sometimes when presented big, often random streams of data. This, for example, is a set of six stock market charts, two which are real. They represent, say, five years of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And four of them are just fake, where I just flipped a virtual coin, ones and zeros, and it has an uptick or a downtick as a result. A Princeton economist named Burton Malkiel-- showed charts like this to a technical trader on Wall Street one time. They were all fake, random noise. And the guy was like, go buy this stock immediately. This stock is a dog. Making all these differences based on, you know, bullshit, in essence. By the way, if you are good, then DNF are the real ones here. You should go apply at CNBC instead of completing your education at Cornell. [LAUGHTER] There is a kind of more advanced form of this that I think people who are working with big data can be prone to. It's a problem which is technically called overfitting. So say you have a nice kind of parabolic distribution of data. So this could be, for example, the temperature in Ithaca over the course of the year, where it starts out really cold and gets still pretty cold, and then it's kind of warm, and then it gets cold again before too long. Or it could be Alex Rodriguez's career, where he's productive, productive, productive, and then falls off a cliff. But fairly typical distribution. So, but usually you don't get this robust a sample. You usually have some subset of the data instead. Maybe here are 20 random cases. Now, having gotten to play God before and knowing what the true relationship looks like, then we can say, well, what's the real structure here? What's the real underlying relationship? We can say it's parabolic, but what people sometimes do instead is try and track down every last outlier. This is called an overfit model, and it might give you a better R-squared in your stats package. It might seem superficially better when you're trying to explain away every data point. But the mask is so rich that it doesn't predict very well at all. And here's kind of one real-world example, where people used data that seemed like big data but was actually very thin and caused some problems. So as I'm sure you guys know, there was a very severe earthquake in Japan in March 2011, magnitude 9.0 or 9.1, depending on which source you look at. But this is a chart showing the long-term relationship of earthquakes in this area. One interesting empirical pattern that earthquakes follow is what's called the Gutenberg-Richter law. And so what that means is that for every degree of magnitude you go up, the earthquakes become 10 times less likely, meaning that for every 100 magnitude 5 earthquakes, you'll have 10 magnitude 6's over the long run or one magnitude 7, et cetera, et cetera. So you can make inferences about the likelihood of larger earthquakes from smaller ones. But this is data from this part of Japan, just off the Pacific coast. And they had not had very many large earthquakes in this region over this 40-year period where you have high-quality data [INAUDIBLE]. Lots of magnitude 7's, 7.5's, but not a 7.8, not an 8.0. So they convinced themselves that there were geological limits on how much of an earthquake you could have in this area instead. Instead of kind of fitting this data this way, which says, yes, you can have a 9.0 from time to time, they had an overfit model that looks like this, where it's like, well, our region is special and different. The seafloor in Japan is different. We can't have magnitude 9.0 earthquakes, so instead we'll design the nuclear reactor to withstand an 8.6 only. But of course, they did have a 9.0 earthquake, and the reactor did fail, because they were somehow using-- well, the reason why, really, is because they were using data that is actually very thin, where there had not been a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in this region. But you're only supposed to have one every 30 years or so, which means you'd have a magnitude 9 once every 300 years or so. To not have a 30-year event occur in a 40 or 50-year time span is not very surprising at all. It's like a 300 hitter going 0 for 4 on one particular day. But people not realizing how little history they really had led them astray, so looking at the broader global pattern, they tried to find something overly local and overfit and underpredicted the disaster as a result. So the idea might be, well, if human beings are so biased in their perceptions, why can't we turn things over to the computers instead? I think this is also kind of an artificial solution that has caused some more problems than you might realize. So this is a position from-- I'm a poker guy, by the way, as Yasamin mentioned. I don't have the patience for chess, really. But if you are a good chess player, you may recognize this position. This is from the first match between Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player then and probably still in human history, against the supercomputer Deep Blue. So Kasparov here has the white pieces, and Deep Blue, the computer program, IBM's program, has the black pieces instead. Now, if you're a really good chess player, you might know which player has the advantage in this position right here. I can't tell, but maybe you can. What's interesting, though, is that Deep Blue and Kasparov might take very different approaches to this question. So computers have heuristics and code that they use to break down a position into discrete elements. So for example, in chess, there are values that are assigned to different pieces, comparing them to pawns. So for example, a queen is worth as much as nine pawns, or a bishop is worth as much as three pawns. So Deep Blue can add up these results and say, I have 30 points. Kasparov has 29. I'm ahead. I'm probably going to win. Kasparov, though, looking at the same position, he has much less computational power, probably 100,000 times less raw computational speed than Deep Blue does. But what he can see that Deep Blue doesn't is relationships, instead. So in chess, if your king is checkmated, you lose the game no matter how much materiel you have elsewhere. And Deep Blue had not thought through its position-- programmed through its position very well strategically, where this king has been descended upon by three different pawns. Kasparov has his queen and his bishop are also able to move across the board quite freely. So all this pressure coming down on one area. In effect, Deep Blue's position is very dire, instead. A good [INAUDIBLE] would much rather have played the white pieces as Kasparov did. So score one for Kasparov, it would seem. But it turned out that he lost the six-game match with Deep Blue, partly as a result of a move that would happen later in the same day. So this is game one, again, and Deep Blue's position has now unraveled quite a bit. But computers don't have any pride, right? They don't get tired. So they'll keep being annoying and fighting on, just in the hope that Kasparov will have an aneurysm or something or will make a big blunder, will need a smoke break and will do something crazy, right? But Deep Blue's position's really in a bad shape here, and it now makes a move which Kasparov can't figure out at all. It seems like a random bug, in essence, where it moves its rook from the square labeled D5, square labeled D1, accomplishes nothing whatsoever. Doesn't move it out of harm's way. Doesn't do anything offensive or defensive or anything else. But so Kasparov keeps thinking about this-- and Deep Blue would actually quit a little bit later on in the match-- and decides that, hey, I'm Garry Kasparov. I can think 15 moves ahead. So if Deep Blue made this move and I can't understand it, that means it must be able to outthink me, right, it can think 20 moves ahead instead. But I talked to IBM's programmers, a guy named Murray Campbell who helped design Deep Blue, and it turns out that what looks like a random bug actually was just a random bug. [LAUGHTER] There's a clock in chess. If you use all your time, then you forfeit no matter what. So it had failsafe in its code-- it's good, if you're coding, by the way, to have some failsafes-- where it would make a random legal move if it was about to time out. That's exactly what it did. But Kasparov misperceived this as a sign of deep genius instead, and played quite badly throughout the rest of the match as a result. The second game, he resigned a position where he probably could have gotten a draw. Played very defensively, and not his normal attacking style, because he was psyched out by a bug. And this is a common problem whenever we encounter some feature that we have a model that gives us a result that we think looks very promising, but we have to wonder, if it defies common sense, is it really getting us anywhere or not? So this is a map showing how to get from point A to point B. This is in Manhattan. I live in Chelsea by Madison Square Garden, basically. I was going to an event at the Guggenheim on-- where is it-- 89th Street and 5th Avenue, roughly, right? So basically point A to point B. It's a grid. Streets are all numbered. Shouldn't be that hard. But here's the route that my taxi driver took instead. [LAUGHTER] So ordinarily you would think, oh, this taxi driver is trying to bilk you for a higher fare, right? But this was actually different, where I was looking at his GPS, and he was dutifully following the GPS the whole time. This is exactly as GPS told him to go. And the reason why is because there's a road here that cuts north to south through Central Park called, I think, East Drive, that's a little bit longer. It's kind of windy and twisty as the crow flies. But still, the GPS said, this road has no traffic on it whatsoever. So it's a really expedient route to take to the Guggenheim. The reason, though, it had no traffic was because it was closed, where it closes on some random weekdays for cleaning and whatever else, and so it was trying to exploit a bug, and as a result got very confused and routed me back and forth through Central Park three times. What's interesting, though, is that, you know, the cabbie was willing to override common sense. I'm sure you guys may all have friends or partners who, they'll go to a city that they've been to 100 times and pull out their phone, right, and can't walk straight anymore till the phone pops up. But it is a problem. I know that some of you guys are in the hotel business, right? And if you find a location that you have an algorithm that says is perfect, for example, but there are no businesses there or there are business that fail, you should be a little bit careful, right? There might be things you're not seeing. In fact, this apartment I bought in New York, I can't really tell all the story for-- but you know. I thought the apartment was underpriced relative to what we were paying for it. And then we found out about the neighbors that live nearby, about whom I shall not say any more. But sometimes there are reasons why variables that are not captured in your model can sometimes be implicit things that can cause a lot of problems instead. So I used to call this last part Solutions, but I think that's a little presumptuous. It's a lifelong process to get rid of some of these issues, so I'll call this Suggestions instead. This, by the way, is a neon sign that describes Bayes' theorem. All these approaches are vaguely Bayesian. I'm not going to talk about it in too much [INAUDIBLE] detail. But basically, Bayes' theorem is about how to weigh new information and new evidence against what you already know. And it's trickier than it might seem. That's the essence behind it. So there are three tips that I think come out of this. Number one is think probabilistically. Number two, know where you're coming from. And number three is trial and error. So think probabilistically first. One more story here. This is a levee, and I know this is kind of a really tacky looking slide, but imagine that you're North Dakota. It's about this time of year. Every time in March, April, you have a lot of runoff. The snow finally melts up in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and whatever, right? It flows into the rivers, and so you have the rivers rise and crest every spring. So in 1997, you had an especially cold and snowy winter in the Great Plains and up in Canada, so the weather service was worried about flooding along the [INAUDIBLE] in North Dakota-- in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in fact. But they said, look, you guys have a levee that goes up to 51 feet, and our prediction is that the flood will go to 49 feet instead. So people, by and large, didn't worry. Very few people bought insurance. People didn't evacuate unless they were close to the river. But what the weather service forgot to tell people is that the margin on their forecast was plus or minus 9 feet. They were afraid, at that point, that if they communicated uncertainty in their forecast, people wouldn't believe it anymore. They would think that people weren't-- you know, there's a misconception that experts don't allow for uncertainty. In fact, the opposite is true. The more someone is willing to admit to self-doubt, to describe their process, the smarter they are likely to be. That's why Dick Morris is very self-confident and kind of an idiot on TV and everything else. But the actual flood, by the way, crested to 53 feet, so well within the margin of error. But it did flood three quarters of the town of Grand Forks, North Dakota, instead, and caused billions and billions of dollars in damage. By the way, this may have been a preventable disaster. You could put sandbags on top of levees. So you could have at least mitigated the damage or at least had the property be better insured and not require a big bailout instead. Since then, though, the weather service has really learned the importance of communicating uncertainty to the public. If you see hurricanes-- I know they probably don't come up to Ithaca, exactly. But if you see forecasts for hurricanes on the East Coast, you'll have what's called a cone of uncertainty, or a cone of chaos. And that's been getting smaller every year, because the weather forecasts are getting more and more accurate. So it used to be, about 30 years ago, that if you had hurricanes sitting in the Gulf of Mexico, they could only predict where it would go within 350 miles on average, three days in advance. So the entire-- you'd have to evacuate the entire South, basically, not a very useful thing to do. But now, they're within about 100 miles instead. It's much more plausible to prepare a given region. And some of the big storms that did hit New York and the Northeast recently, like Irene and Sandy, were predicted especially well. I mean, those storms, you know, the exact county of landfall in New Jersey was predicted correctly four or five days in advance. You can't stop nature, but you can evacuate people and minimize loss of life a lot. But the fact that the weather service makes so much progress, and that they understand uncertainty and literally the chaos of the weather, I think these two things are tied together, that being unafraid of ambiguity and uncertainty-- and this is a lot of what causes, by the way, political partisanship, is people want attitudes that remove all doubt about their having to think hard and answer political questions, right? If you just stick to the party line, you don't have to do very much mental work. And it might be a good shortcut, but it can also lead people astray when there are big problems that we face as a society, or even when they're just trying to forecast an election, potentially, instead. But that gets into point two, which is what I call, know where you're coming from. Another way to put it, though, is just know what your biases are, as hard as that might be to do. So the metaphor here, or the map, is from Pearl Harbor, where we, in 1942, had naval stations-- 1941, excuse me-- in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, the Midway Islands, Wake atoll, and Guam, but we didn't have GPS satellites. They had only a very limited range of about 200 miles across that they could patrol. So say you're Japan, and you want to move a fleet of six gigantic aircraft carriers through the Pacific. Well, where would you go? Well, how about where we have no naval stations at all? They took a path-- this is kind of like the Dallas Cowboys' defense or something, right? But this giant fleet takes two weeks to move here. And we have no way to detect it at all, because there were holes in our defense. You had an asymmetric situation. Any time in national security where you have a weak point, you have a squeaky side door, then you're going to be attacked there and not where you have the armed guards instead. But of course, it's hard to know what your biases are. And that's why, as I'll talk about in a moment, testing yourself is really important. But being aware and alert to the fact that you have biases, for example. One anecdote from-- one study, rather, mentioned in Sheryl Sandberg's new book, Lean In, talks about what happens when CEOs or executives or HR managers are presented with resumes that have the same career record, the same jobs, but one has a female name attached and one has a male name. And often, the female is discriminated against. But the study also found that the people who do the most discrimination are the ones who say they have no gender bias at all. The ones who are alert to the fact that they might perceive things differently based on a name and an implied gender tend to be more alert to self-correction, where people who think they're totally immune to all of it actually had much bigger biases instead. The other bias to watch for, though, the other thing to remember is that, what we really want is accuracy, which is just another way to say truth. People, I think, sometimes have a bias towards having a very precise answer, because it removes the appearance of uncertainty, but without the actual fact of uncertainty instead. You see in polling, for example, you have the Zogby interactive polls, for example. I don't want to demean all online polls. Some have gotten pretty good right now. But the Zogby polls are not. They're kind of pretty much total crap. But they take giant sample sizes. They'll sample 20,000 or 30,000 people and they think that-- if you take a biased sample, though, of 20,000 people who are the types who are bored enough to answer a Zogby online poll, then you're going to have an inaccurate result. You can survey everyone who's bored enough in the world to answer a Zogby online poll. It still won't be representative instead. It's precise, maybe, but not accurate at all. But the third suggestion here, and kind of moving toward a more optimistic take, is that this is really a trial and error process. In most fields where you have data analysis problem, then you encounter diminishing returns, where if you put in just a little effort to get better at quantifying and measuring things then you'll make a lot of progress in the near term, and then you kind of hit speed bumps down the road as you add more variables, more complexity to your model instead. So if you're in an organization or are working on a problem, thinking about where you stand on this kind of learning curve-- you know, sometimes just measuring things can be really quite valuable. And the failure to measure things can be really quite difficult, is the converse of that. So for example, I spoke recently with a group of state school superintendents who want to use more analytics to measure educational performance. The problem there, though, is that we don't even have any agreement on how to measure student progress, really. There are great disputes about standardized tests and whether they really are measuring learning in a good way or not. There's not tracking of students. If you have a student who goes from one part of New York state and moves from here to Syracuse or something, you actually lose track of that student instead. So in many fields, just measuring things, getting things down on paper, having high-quality data, can get you a lot of the way there. In other fields that are more competitive, though, where people are getting the basics right, you have a water level, you have competition, and your advantage does come from the margin. That's why you can't just say, I'll do the easy 20% part and then profit. You know, we are in a market economy, and so everyone else can do that as well. You have to kind of work hard for your edges, but you don't usually expect miracles. Instead, it's hard work. Big data is not going to absolve us of having to be smart and to work hard and to have a really rigorous competition in economy. But there is happiness in the end, potentially. If you apply Bayesian method, meaning that you have a careful way of weighing new evidence, then you eventually converge toward the truth. If you're willing to-- first of all is they're not a sufficient set of conditions, but they are necessary, right, if you're willing to test your ideas through making actual verifiable predictions. Some academic departments I know, not here, tend to resist this idea that, oh, we should make forecasts and make predictions, right? We're just theoretical scientists instead. But OK, theory is great. I'm not a guy who says you should abandon theory at all. But theory is useful because it can help you make better conclusions in the long run and test your ideas out. So prediction is a very intrinsic and important part of science. And number two is be willing to revise your beliefs. People tend to be very stubborn, for the most part. There are exceptions, again, in the political press, and every new poll is a game-changer, right? But more of us tend to be too slow to revise their beliefs when they contradict what the tradition is or the status quo is instead. So that's why Bayes' theorem can be useful in giving us some guidance toward moving toward the truth in the long run, because there is progress in the end. I told you the unhappy story about having all these wars here, but eventually you did have, in part because of the spread of knowledge, having books means you can actually spread and share ideas and record technology and pass it down from generation to generation. And between that and a lot of other things going on, having kind of a commercial economy, you eventually had economic growth, when you had had none before. You had this exponential growth pattern where even with the occasional global financial meltdown, we've had progress when we didn't have it before. So I know this presentation might seem like it's a bit pessimistic at times. What I would say, though, is that through the broader course of human history, until about 1775, there wasn't really any economic growth at all, just enough to sustain a very slow increase in the population. So maintaining progress is hard. We're always going to have new technological developments that help us to do that. But we also need smart people who know how to marshal it and to turn big data and fast computers into actually producing benefits for society, for industry, and for our personal lives. So thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] And so I think we have a fair bit of times for questions here. So there should be mics coming around the room. I'm happy to talk about politics, sports, whatever you guys are curious about. Yeah? Oh, should I-- yeah. AUDIENCE: So we're told the modern era of using computers in elections began in 1952 when Walter Cronkite and CBS contracted with UNIVAC, which on the basis of roughly the first 3.5 million votes, concluded 100 to one odds for Eisenhower, a result which seemed so unlikely in what was thought to be a close election, that they didn't even report it at first. But on the basis of this incredible success, of course, what we know, in all subsequent elections this became the methodology. And my question for you is, now that your methodology has become so successful, where as you accurately describe it, it's not rocket science, it's relatively obvious. But nonetheless, a lot of talent to do it correctly and to properly hedge the efficacy. But I'm wondering if your expectation is now that you'll disappear in the noise, because in the next election, everybody will be employing this methodology. NATE SILVER: No, look. I'm sure there will be a lot of versions of the FiveThirtyEight model in 2016. I mean, there were a few different versions, frankly, last year that were also pretty good. You had a guy at Emory University who had a model that also got all 50 states right, and in fact, had all 50 states right in June. You know, you had other people who had 48 or 49. I mean, any model based in polls is kind of hoping the polls have a good year, number one. You can quantify the uncertainty. But you know you're not going to have that much credibility, wrongly or rightly, if you say, well, you know, these polls were wrong, therefore I was wrong too. But no, there's going to be more competition, I think. And some of it will be bad. But [INAUDIBLE] that look, a lot of people who [INAUDIBLE] politics for a living are kind of hardcore partisans, and do you want kind of the Drudge Report style of filter, where they're getting only good news, basically, or only news that they're going to be interested in? But there is a market for people who come from academic backgrounds or tech backgrounds or economics backgrounds who want more wonky politics coverage. And so it's kind of a market response to that, I think. And so yeah, I expect there to be a lot more FiveThirtyEight competitors four years hence. I also think, though, that-- and this is something to remember if you guys are in a kind of data-driven discipline. The fact that at FiveThirtyEight we take a lot of care with how we write about politics and how we present the information in terms of data and charts and everything else, that's really important, too. That's a big differentiator for us from, say, the other academics that have really good models than maybe the modeling itself. So even if you're a science person, it's really important to work on your writing skills. Don't write like an academic, even though you'll be encouraged to do so at different times. But that communication function is quite key. AUDIENCE: Your results for the election actually seemed too accurate, given that they were-- I really appreciate the fact that they were probabilities, and leading into the election, a lot of the time it was sort of three to one Obama. And if you were an Obama fan, you're thinking, wow, one in four, that's not that unlikely. But to get every single state, I presume after the fact, you look at how your model did and did some sort of analysis. And was it really sort of probabilistically sound after the fact? NATE SILVER: So there are a couple of issues here, which are a tiny bit technical. But one issue is that we assume that the error in different states is correlated, right? So some elections, you will have a very good result, where you get zero or one or two states wrong, and then some, you'll have an election where it's a total disaster and you get 10 states wrong instead. And so because of that pattern, that's why we would expect a [INAUDIBLE] basically to have a disastrous election every once in awhile. Frankly, with response rates to polling going down and down every year, it's a miracle that we haven't had one where the polls have been way off recently. But that's part of what that's trying to measure, where even so, yeah, getting all 50 right, in my view, was lucky. The model would have given itself about a 20% or 25% chance of doing that. So yeah, that was quite fortunate. But even there, by the way, there were some states where we were several points off, but they all happened to miss where Obama kind of did better than the polls predicted, but still one mistake. So in Colorado, he won by five and a half instead of one and a half points. So you call the winner right, but still a four-point miss. Had it been in the other direction, then Romney would have won Colorado instead. Same with Florida, et cetera, et cetera, and you would have missed several states instead. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] NATE SILVER: Well, I don't know that intuition is all that well understood, in terms of it can mean a lot of different things. And the way I tend to think of it is kind of, what's a good-- intuition boils down to kind of shortcuts that we take when we don't have time or the inclination to make a more thorough analysis. In my days playing poker, one thing poker players are pretty good at is sizing up a fairly complicated problem and coming to a fairly good first-cut estimate of how likely they are to be ahead or behind in the hand. Given the way the hand's played, the cards on the board, I'd say, well, I think there's a 70% chance I'm ahead, so I'm going to be pretty aggressive about getting my money. But I'll change my mind if he makes a big bet, goes all in on top of me. I do think people sometimes, though, fall in love with their intuitions. They forget that, yes, we have a lot of things to do in everyday life. We can't apply analytics to figure out how to get to the grocery store faster. It's just not worth the effort, necessarily. But sometimes people fall in love with the shortcuts because they're neater and cleaner than the actual more complicated solution. And again, that's part of what happens with political partisanship, is you kind of have a heuristic saying, oh, taxes are bad, or you're just saying, oh, we want more economic equality. And that might be a good principle, but then people can apply them so dogmatically, sometimes, that they kind of override rational policy-making in some cases. So intuition is great. And work to develop your intuition. But remember, it is an approximation. And so is a model. An model is an approximation as well, maybe a second or a third approximation. But remember that we are kind of humble creatures relative to this whole gigantic world, and our subjective point of view necessarily comes with biases and hang-ups and perverse incentives of different kinds. And being aware of that, and not falling in love with the model of the world, whether from your intuition or even from a stat package instead I think is pretty important. Oh. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] NATE SILVER: So I get this question a lot. And people sometimes say, well, if I read FiveThirtyEight and I know that Obama, or I guess Rubio or whoever in 2016, Hillary is going to win, then why bother voting? And that's a very, very dangerous precedent, I think. One story I know from New York, for instance, is we had a mayoral race there four years ago, 2009, where you had Bloomberg, who was pretty popular, but Bloomberg kind of changed the law to give himself a third term, basically. And so Bloomberg was, like, 15 points ahead in the polls, so I had a lot of friends who said, you know, I was going to vote for Bloomberg. He's done an OK job. But you know, he's going to win, and this whole third term thing is kind of sketchy, so I cast a protest vote for Bill Thompson instead. And Thompson almost won, came within three points, because people reacted to the polls and changed their behavior as a result. Conversely, in the Iowa caucuses last year, you had Rick Santorum who suddenly surged in a CNN poll, with a 300-person sample, really high margin of error, probably just a random fluke. But it triggered lots of news coverage, right, it gets really slow in Iowa in December. A CNN poll showing movement in the race is pretty exciting, right? So it became a self-fulfilling prophecy instead. So yeah, people can react to polls, can react to the news more broadly. I'm not sure that FiveThirtyEight is necessarily any different from that. But yeah, I mean, because people sometimes perceive, oh, you have Romney with an 80% chance-- or, excuse me, Obama with an 80% chance of winning, well, that means that Romney has a 20% chance of winning as well. It's a pretty large probability in context. If you're a Democrat, that's a really catastrophic thing, if you're a Democrat, for Romney to win. If I said, oh, there's a 20% we'll be hit by a meteor tomorrow and the Earth will blow up, you'd take that pretty seriously, probably, right? So people should remember that not only is that contingent on them not knowing what the model is saying, but also that it's contingent on them kind of fulfilling their duty or their interests in voting. AUDIENCE: Mr. Silver, I was actually just going to ask the question the gentleman before me asked, but you know, polls, how we can change, maybe, how a person might vote, supposedly, because Obama was showing to be winning by a large percentage, a voter might think that, you know, maybe I shouldn't vote for Romney, I should vote for Obama. So aren't polls, in a way, biased themselves? Aren't they supporting a candidate by showing that this person has a higher chance of winning? NATE SILVER: Well, you know, in some countries-- I think France, for example, maybe Italy as well-- there's a blackout period where you can't do polling in the 72 hours before people vote. And I think the concern is exactly that. Although keep in mind also that polls can be a way to detect electoral fraud, potentially. I mean, be very careful about this. I don't mean in a US context where you're a couple points off. But if you have a poll that's grossly off in result, then you can-- it could be one sign that something untoward has occurred, potentially. But there's kind of this question of, oh, what's the utility of polling in general? I think the kind of 2012 election kind of demonstrates this, in part. I don't mean oh, it's cool to predict the election in advance. But the fact that actually, instead of having the media say, oh, Romney is surging in Pennsylvania because I saw a lot of Romney yard signs driving around Harrisburg, right? You actually take a random sample, in theory, of actual Pennsylvanians and see what they have to say instead. And the reason why a lot of news organizations like the New York Times still pay a lot for polling-- it's getting really expensive, or it is expensive to do really good polling-- is because you can represent the man or woman on the street and not have a reporter or a pundit make false inferences instead. So I think polling still serves some useful functions, even though it can get sticky in terms of how people, how voters react to polls in a tactical way sometimes. AUDIENCE: What is your opinion on prediction markets? NATE SILVER: So my opinion on prediction markets is kind of like my opinion on markets in general, which is that they have lots of flaws, but probably every other system is worse, right? So we're stuck with them, I think. I mean, the one good thing that prediction markets can do is that they give people good incentives, where money is not a perfect incentive. It's a transparent incentive where people are putting bets on the line in order to be right. A lot of the heroes in my book are gamblers, basically, because gamblers don't have to deal with any BS, right? You put a bet down. If you're right, then you win money, and if you're wrong, then you lose money. There's a lot of luck in the short term, but in the long term, it evens out. With that said, you know, I mean, there have been different studies about whether the markets are better than, say, the FiveThirtyEight method. In theory, they should be, because they can take that information and then layer on top of that other models that are also good, or whatever extraordinary circumstance you might have. In fact, it looks like the [INAUDIBLE] are a little better than the markets instead. I think one reason why is that you don't really have professional traders in these markets, where you have-- you know, the most you can win on [INAUDIBLE] trade is several thousands of dollars or tens of thousands. But you know, for example, oil stocks on November 7 went down by, I think, $15 billion, because Obama winning another term was seen as bad for oil. It was seen as good for health care device manufacturers. Those gained $1 billion in market cap. So people are making bets on the election and making them in the stock market. The person you get on [INAUDIBLE] traders thing is probably not as sophisticated. But still, I would rather have that as a reality check against the pundits and so forth. People are willing to put their money where their mouth is. I think that's a good thing. AUDIENCE: So one question on your thoughts on our ability to process this data, where, I mean, as you said, we're generating more and more data. Like, in my field, biology, we're generating data at a pace that outpaces Moore's law by a factor of 10. So, like, the computational power simply cannot keep up with the rate that we are generating data. And do you have any insight or opinion on how to actually process this? I mean, leaving aside making smart models, it's getting harder and harder to make stupid models about this data. So do you have any ideas on that? NATE SILVER: Well, and so this is kind of-- I can't speak to the hardware issues. I don't know very much about that. But this is one reason why, for example, this idea that we're going to have this kind of singularity occurring seems quite dubious to me, because you always have a limiting factor, for example, where we have cell phones that are getting more and more powerful every day, but the battery lasts for about 45 minutes now, it seems. Maybe you can last through a subway ride playing some Angry Birds or something, and then you can't make a phone call the rest of the day. So there's always limiting factors here, and for growth to occur, if you kind of remember that chart from before, where one reason why the printing press did not really produce progress was because you had other limiting factors in place, like you didn't really have a market economy in place, a lab for competition that gave people incentives to make products and to build technologies instead. And humans are the ultimate limiting factor, though, really, I think. There aren't going to be that many cases where we have this big data set and we know what we want to do with it but the computers aren't fast enough. I think we're more likely going to have the reverse occur, where you have plenty of technology, essentially infinite data, infinite technology, but we are limited in our capacity to make good use of it. AUDIENCE: Hi. With younger generations polling very differently from older generations, particularly on issues such as gay marriage and marijuana legalization, do you see-- are you able to, I guess I'd say, like, predict the future, in terms of a lot of policy changes and things like that, just account for that? I mean, I know there are lots of changing opinions for a whole number of different reasons. But could you just talk about that, like, perhaps anything that you think is inevitable or almost inevitable in the future? NATE SILVER: Well, I mean, gay marriage continually gaining ground is a pretty safe bet, because of this generational aspect, where if you replace-- "replace" is the polite term, right? But when an 80-year-old passes on and is replaced [INAUDIBLE] by an 18-year-old who just registers to vote, the 80-year-old is about 25% likely to support gay marriage rights. This 18-year-old is about 70%, 75% likely to do so, so you have a very organic process. And the process of people actually coming out to their coworkers and their families and their friends also produces shifts of opinion there as well. But apart from that, I think people sometimes have to be careful about assuming that a trend that is moving in one direction will continue to do so. So there's a lot of momentum now behind, for example, marijuana legalization or decriminalization. But there also was a lot of it in the 1970s, and then the kind of crime wave you had in the '80s and the Just Say No campaign really reversed that very sharply instead. So I think in general, you know, if there's not a generational component-- and there is some to marijuana use, right-- but it's hard to assume things are going to change. Abortion, for example, is another case where it hasn't fluctuated for many years. It's been the same number of people across different generations, and it's been 50-50 for 40 years now, ever since Roe v. Wade. So every issue is little bit different. And gay marriage is unique in that it's the one that seems like it's really predictable instead. AUDIENCE: Over here. Could you talk a little bit about outliers and why you stopped playing poker and why Warren Buffett is an outlier and why there are baseball players and poker players who seem to be consistent outliers when most great performers can't achieve that level consistently forever? NATE SILVER: Look, in most things, you have a kind of bell curve distribution of talent, and so you have a few people who are really talented. You also have a lot of people who are really lucky, though, right? Of all the people who have gotten rich from Wall Street, where you have a population of five Warren Buffetts who are true geniuses. You also have a population of thousands of average to good to very good but not Warren Buffett-level traders. Some of them are going to make lucky bets over the course of a career. A few of them are actually going to cheat as well, right? But of all highly successful traders, probably one's a real genius, 90 are lucky, and nine are cheaters or something, right? It's some ratio like that instead. So it doesn't mean there aren't people who can beat the markets. There probably are. If you look at poker, and we can do some online data mining, there really are some players who, over the long run, really are clearly better than their peers. But it really is the 1% or 2%, whereas you have a big middle class of people who are kind of treading water and are very vulnerable to environmental conditions. So every stock trader looked like a genius during the dot-com boom, and then an idiot during the dot-com bust, just by kind of getting the group mean instead. Yeah? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] NATE SILVER: No, so, yeah. So we do weight different polls differently. And we make kind of a strong prior assumption that-- well, there are two different things we do. Number one, we weight polls differently, and number two, we debias the polls. So for example, if a poll, call them, like, Rasmussen Reports, right, always has a poll that is two points more GOP-leaning than the median poll or the average poll, then we just strip that two points of bias right out instead. It's pretty predictable a lot of time. But we weight polls a lot more that do call cell phones. Like, there's no more excuse now to not call cell phones along with land lines. You're missing about a third of the American population outright. And a lot of people, like me, I think I technically have a land line, which came with my cable package, but I never pick it up, right? Only a pollster, or a telemarketer, or maybe my mom, right, but she has email now, would dare call the land line at home, right? So you never answer it, right? And that causes big problems as well. But yeah, I think we really did see this year that some of the cheapo kind of robo-pollsters did quite badly. There's also evidence, by the way, that they cheat off the good polls, that if the good polls-- if, for example, if you have a case in the primaries where you only had robo-polls, and they did quite badly, but when you have a good pollster weigh in as well, then they all calibrate to that and herd toward it as a result. And so I think the really high-quality stuff is still important. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] this is a change of habit, what do you think about cyber-terrorism [INAUDIBLE] NATE SILVER: So cyber-terrorism, it worries me a bit, in part because it's something that hasn't happened before, and I think we're bad at dealing with threats that might be known in theory, but which have not been actuated yet instead. The fact that so many systems in our financial system are now automated, for instance, where the-- I thought the flash crash which happened, I think, in 2010, where the stock market went down by 700 points, the Dow, and up by the same amount all within 15 minutes, like, that was really quite scary, I think. In some ways, that's scarier than the 1987 crash, almost, but didn't get nearly as much attention as well. So yeah, I mean, can you have people manipulate information? If we're kind of an information-based world, can you cause cascades of misinformation and as a result, then yeah, maybe, right? And that can be kind of the forum of cyber-terrorism, apart from just kind of finding some EM wave that disables our computers. It can be more like, are there misinformation campaigns that occur that can cause bad results based on people making decisions very, very quickly? AUDIENCE: You've talked a lot about [INAUDIBLE] NATE SILVER: Well, what do you mean by trends? AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] The type of cars that people will be driving in 10 years. NATE SILVER: So I think trend analysis is usually one of two things. Either it's BS, or some people who are taste makers get credit for being predictors instead. Right, so say, for example, you have a consortium of fashion designers who say, well, we think brown is going to be the in color this season and we're going to manufacture a lot of dresses in brown, and throw big marketing dollars behind earth tones, and have our best models wear these on the runway. Well, you can be sure that brown clothes are going to sell really well. But it's because they're marketed, not because they correctly predicted how public taste will evolve. But yeah, I'm suspicious of people who predict trends. I think usually what that means is they're describing something that's happened in the recent past, and not really making a prediction about what will happen in the future, necessarily. But I don't know. Frankly, just to determine what's going to happen in the near term, in the here and now, is difficult enough sometimes. So what's going to happen 10 years down the road, maybe I'm not as worried about. AUDIENCE: Excuse me? Thank you. What are your thoughts on people who don't quite understand metrics like [INAUDIBLE] replacement in VORP and win shares being used by baseball announcers and general managers like the Seattle Mariners, who don't quite understand how to use them and are kind of misinterpreting it and screwing up their teams instead of just sticking to the role of observation that kind of propelled pre Moneyball Oakland Athletics? NATE SILVER: Well, I mean, look. With anything, [INAUDIBLE] parents using Twitter or something, right? Technology in the hands of the uninitiated can be quite dangerous sometimes. And you had teams, you know, so the Toronto Blue Jays, for example, kind of in the Moneyball era, right, they would take it too far and draft these mediocre college players who no one else wanted who were very low-variance players. So you were guaranteed that they'd be mediocre major league benchwarmers. Most players don't even make the major leagues, so it's good, in a sense, right, but it also means you're never really going to really build a championship team. You have a lot of 4A players, so to speak. But, I mean, the analytic stuff in baseball now is really quite cutthroat. I went to the Sloan Sports business conference this year in Boston, where kind of like the stat geeks are like stars now. It's very, very strange. But almost every team now, teams you wouldn't think of, the Cleveland Browns are a very stat-driven team now, for example. Just hired a whole new front office to try and do new things for that franchise. And so it's kind of at the point now where if you're not doing analytics in baseball, you're guaranteed to do pretty badly. But also some teams that are doing analytics wrongly are going to struggle as well. AUDIENCE: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about if you think there's a difference in the theoretical maximum of how accurate you can be when you're predicting something as complex as human performance, like in baseball, versus predicting something like a vote, which is more like a binary action. Someone's going to go one way or the other. Do you think that we reach a point where we can't get any more accurate when it comes to baseball, or is that sort of always push forward? NATE SILVER: Oh, sure. No, absolutely, right? And there are two things people sometimes say, well, you know, is baseball predictable or not? Well, in one sense, it's predictable, in the sense that we can quantify and measure what happens on the baseball field really, really well. It's probably the world's best data set. In the other sense, though, even the best teams only win two thirds of their games. Even the best hitters only get on base four out of 10 times. So the question is, there are kind of two graphs. It's kind of how, in a cosmic sense, how predictable is this phenomenon or not, and then how close we are to maximizing the available space to us kind of human beings? In baseball, it's not that predictable on a cosmic scale, but we're doing a very good job of predicting what we can instead. And so we're kind of brushing up, I think, against the limits in a lot of respects there. AUDIENCE: In baseball, do you think we're going to reach a point where we have defensive metrics that are as useful for predictive purposes as offensive metrics at the moment? NATE SILVER: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm not quite as up on the state of the art there, but I think we're certainly getting there. If you're now at the point where you basically have a three-dimensional recording of whatever happens on the field, I mean, there's going to be some creativity required in how you manipulate that data. But it seems like that's really what you want in the long term. There are issues, I think, related to-- people forget that just as offensive data can be noisy, so will defensive data, especially from, like, say, the outfield positions where a guy might get a couple of put-outs per game. It's not a terribly large sample size, necessarily. So people sometimes-- defensive stats, because they'll have a guy who's not perceived to be a very good defender had a really good rating one year. Well, Brady Anderson hit 15 home runs one year, right? He was not a great baseball player, right? But you have flukes occur from time to time. So I think the defensive stats have undoubtedly improved a lot. Like I said, I don't know enough about the details of them to recommend one system. But I think we're already pretty much there, and I think some of the smarter teams have begun to understand the value of defense and really incorporate it into their player evaluations. OK. AUDIENCE: So thanks, Nate. It was a great talk. You mentioned earlier the importance of communication, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about sort of the perceptive difference of reporting things like election outcomes as percentages. You know, Obama has an 80% chance of winning, versus talking about things like spreads. You know, a 51 to 49 spread, it might come out, statistically, as the same thing, but it communicates something very different about the numbers and the shape of what's going on. Can you talk about-- NATE SILVER: Yeah, it's really hard, right, in part because maybe we need a different vocabulary to distinguish kind of percentages in polls from the percent probability. Maybe we just have to invent different words that we start to use, because you would have people say, if we have Obama with a 70% chance of winning, Romney 30%, people would say, oh, Nate's predicting Obama will win 70 to 30. It's like, no. That's not really it at all. I tried to use sports analogies a lot, where for example, if you're watching the NCAA tournament, and you have a team that has possession of the ball up by three points with 30 seconds to go, right, that's a really close game. But that team apparently is going to win, 90% or 95% of the time, right? So what I was trying to say is, 2012 was a pretty close election. It wasn't a landslide. But you also had a lot of certainty toward the end, where Obama's lead was pretty robust in the electoral college. You had a lot of polling. So you were 90% sure what was going to happen instead. But no, it's really hard. People don't-- if you look at-- I mean, a lot of behavioral economics is really about how people don't perceive probabilities as they would match the objective function here. And it's really hard to do. And you try and educate your readership to some extent, but that's also why my risks last November were very, very much unhedged, right? You know, in theory you know you're going to get this 10% outcome occurring some of the time. Heidi Heitkamp, the new Democratic senator in North Dakota, we only gave her an 8% chance of winning, and she won instead. But no one cared about the North Dakota Senate race. A lot of people cared about the presidency instead. So you're always kind of dodging bullets, I suppose. SPEAKER 1: And we have time for one more question. AUDIENCE: Thank you. It was a great talk. So I had an opportunity last month to hear another talk about big data from somebody else who was sort of interested in the political realm as well. This was the chief technology officer of Blue State Digital. And when he talked about big data in the context of the Obama campaign, he was looking at it from a very organizational perspective. He used language like "big data will be the backbone of the organization moving forward." And he talked a lot about the relationship of big data to culture. And he used the phrase, "where big data is enabling a culture of optimization." So I was wondering if you have thoughts on the relationship of big data to culture and where you see things going. Thank you. NATE SILVER: So when I hear a phrase like "the culture of optimization," that sounds a little Orwellian to me, almost. And you kind of wonder, who is optimizing for whom? If there's some surplus produced by an efficiency, does that benefit the consumer or the kind of producer instead? And it depends on the field. Obviously, in a lot of ways, for example, I think about restaurant reviews a lot. I really like going out to nice restaurants, and how much do Yelp reviews affect your business, potentially? In fact, there have been some studies saying that if you give a negative Yelp review to a business that hasn't been reviewed that many times, it can do thousands of dollars of damage to their bottom line. Or a hotel, potentially. And how does that change incentives? How much gaming of the system might there be? Will business ever go too far in saying the customer is never wrong, and disadvantage other customers as a result? So yeah. I mean, you do have fields-- so we talk about polls. But they have a lot more data, the Obama campaign, where they have kind of a file on literally every person in the country, with a lot of information about them. By the way, just knowing someone's first and last name, you can make a lot of predictions about them. You can probably infer someone's gender, almost for sure. Very often their race. Very often their age, because certain names go into or out style. If you know someone named George, for example, he's probably older. If you know their zip code, because voting is so geographic now, plus their first name, and you can have a very good model of how they might vote. But you know, so it's an interesting statistical problem, but how that data is used to manipulate them, then sometimes I wonder whether that's really going to help us in the end. But do we have any more time? Or are we-- OK. YASAMIN MILLER: We're about done. I want to thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
Over the past decade, we have mispredicted earthquakes, flu rates and even terrorist attacks. Yet we seem to have access to more data and computing power than ever.
"Why isn't big data producing big progress?" asked statistician, author and NY Times blogger Nate Silver during an April 5, 2013 talk at Cornell.
Known for his innovative analyses of political polling, Silver is author of "The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't" and author of the New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight. Silver first gained national attention during the 2008 presidential election, when he correctly predicted the results of the primaries and the presidential winner in 49 states.
The talk was part of the Survey Research Institute Speaker Series.
Cornell Chronicle: Nate Silver offers tips to improve predicting power
Survey Research Institute
'The Emergence of Network Science' featuring Steven Strogatz
What is CIS?
Jon Kleinberg: What can Facebook, Amazon and Google teach us?
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County will honor Confederate soldier, despite complaint
COSHOCTON - Coshocton County commemorates a single Confederate soldier with small battle flags and bronze flag holders downtown on courtsquare and in a local cemetery.
At least one man, James Murphy, 37, of Keene Township, wants that to change. He has asked the county commissioners to take down the flag on courtsquare. His grandparents moved the family to Coshocton County from Alabama to escape the legacy of slavery, he said.
"My kids shouldn't be growing up here with the hate flag flying," he said.
Murphy said the Confederate battle flag represents hate and slavery and should not stand on the Courthouse grounds.
"This is the North. This isn't the South," he said. "It shouldn't be flying."
Murphy said a Confederate states flag would be more appropriate. He said he plans to circulate a petition asking the commissioners to remove the flag from courtsquare.
The flags honoring all veterans are not back up yet this year at Oak Ridge Cemetery, where Civil War Confederate soldier William Webb is buried, according to Jim Barstow, Coshocton County Veterans Service officer. Members of the Sons of the American Legion Post 65 will replace flags there in May in time for Memorial Day, he said.
The Coshocton County Veterans Service Commission ordered 5,615 flags for distribution throughout Coshocton County cemeteries by veterans groups, private citizens, boy and girl scouts and 4-H clubs, Executive Assistant Patty Dilly said.
All but one of Coshocton County's veterans are commemorated with an American flag and flag holders recognizing the war in which they served, Barstow said.
Only Webb, who served in Confederate Company B of the First Tennessee Infantry, is represented by the Confederate battle flag, both at the cemetery and on courtsquare. Barstow said Webb was a prisoner of war being transported through Coshocton County in 1864 to be traded for a Union prisoner when he fell ill. He died at the home of Union veteran Joseph Sawyer and was buried in Coshocton after officials could not find any relatives.
His remains and gravestone are located in the south side of the old section of Oak Ridge Cemetery, off North Sixth Street. Since 1953, local veterans organizations have decorated his grave with a Confederate battle flag by Memorial Day, according to a story published in the May 30, 1965, edition of the Coshocton Tribune.
"If it weren't for Coshocton, this guy would get no recognition," Barstow said.
The 33 commemorative flags on the courthouse grounds measure 13 by 21 inches and extend about 3 feet up from the ground. They mark four memorials honoring Coshocton County veterans on the south side of courtsquare.
The Confederate battle flag for Webb has been displayed at courtsquare at least since 1985, Barstow said, when current employees joined the Veterans Service Commission. However, officials believe the practice extended back before that year, he said.
County Commissioner Curtis Lee said the county currently has no plans to take it down.
"It's to honor a Confederate soldier, and that's the flag they use to honor their soldiers," Lee said.
Murphy had been scheduled to meet with the commissioners on March 28, but said he did not attend that session because he did not think he could change anything after talking with Coshocton City Council President Cliff Biggers, pastor of Coshocton's Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church.
Biggers told the Tribune he believes the flag is displayed in the proper context, in an historic setting, where the county honors its veterans. It does not fly over the courthouse, but is among other small flags surrounding veterans' memorials.
"Historically, it's their battle flag. It's what they carried into battle," he said. "... People have made it to mean something derogatory. It depends on how you look at it."
Biggers said that given the current political climate "we need to get together. We're all Americans, not Northern Americans, not Southern Americans. We need to all get together."
Last year, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, someone took down the Confederate flag on Coshocton's courtsquare, broke its supporting stick and threw both away - all in view of the Courthouse security guard, Barstow said.
"All he saw, it was a sign of hate, right on the heels of South Carolina," he said.
Barstow related the history and reasoning for the display to that man and declined to press charges.
This year, he has told the local history to Murphy and two other people who oppose the display.
"In no way, shape or form do we want to offend anybody," he said.
By displaying the Confederate flag in Webb's honor, the county is not promoting hate groups, slavery or secession, Barstow said: "We're only trying to honor the sacrifices of a fallen veteran, as we do all the veterans of this county."
jwilliams6@gannett.com
Twitter: @JoeTribune
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Asheboro man to compete in QuiltWeek
The Courier-Tribune
PADUCAH, Ky. — American Quilter’s Society, the largest quilting membership organization in the world, has announced that Scott A. Murkin of Asheboro has been accepted as a contestant with his quilts, Shooflower and Interstices XVII, at AQS QuiltWeek in Paducah, Ky.
AQS QuiltWeek at Schroeder Expo Center, 415 Park St., Paducah, Ky., features over 400 quilts from around the world. The high point of the show recognizes the artistry of today’s quiltmakers as hundreds of quilters in the AQS Quilt Contest compete for $121,250 in cash awards.
Quilts in this international contest and exhibition come from around the world, with entries from 41 states and 16 countries.
Admission to AQS QuiltWeek includes access to all special exhibitions and the Merchant Mall. Hours are Wednesday-Friday, April 22-24, from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. and Saturday, April 25, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
For ticket prices and information, visit quiltweek.com or call 1-270-898-7903.
This event is open to the public.
© 2021 www.courier-tribune.com. All rights reserved.
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Advertisement for the Robert Motherwell School of Fine Art, autumn 1949
The Robert Motherwell School of Fine Art opens in a loft at 61 Fourth Avenue, between Ninth and Tenth Streets. Motherwell’s students include several from Subjects of the Artist. He holds classes twice a week and uses the space as his studio the remainder of the time. Shortly after the school opens, Bradley Walker Tomlin begins sharing the studio with him. Tomlin introduces Motherwell to Philip Guston, who becomes a close friend.
The loft previously used for The Subjects of the Artist reopens as Studio 35, under the leadership of three New York University professors, Tony Smith, Hale Woodruff and Robert Iglehart. Studio 35 continues the Friday night talks begun under Motherwell at the Subjects of the Artist, and he acts as an advisor for the lecture series and introduces many of the talks.
Another group of artists, led by sculptor Philip Pavia, and including Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, rent the loft next door to Studio 35, at 33 Eighth Street. They name their new space the Club, and begin their own series of public discussions. Over the next decade, the Club becomes the intellectual and social anchor of the downtown scene.
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Open Access Organisms
Too Many Species, Too Few Scientists
Kevin Zelnio June 25, 2008 Open Accessplos one
That is the common theme in marine biology. Clara Moskowitz has an article up at LiveScience describing how scientists are struggling to keep up with marine life discoveries. Here is a short snippet:
“Scientists figure there are at least 1 million species of marine organisms on Earth.
Of these, only about 230,000 are known to science now, and some of those have more than one name. To keep them all straight, 55 researchers from 17 countries are working on a new list, the ultimate tally of sea creatures great and small.
The list is about half done, the team announced today. So far, the scientists have counted 122,500 species, which puts them about halfway toward completing the inventory of known marine species by their goal of October 2010.
“Describing species without a universal register in place is like setting up a library without an index catalog,” said Philippe Bouchet, a scientist at the French National Museum of Natural History who is helping to compile the list. “
Much of the problem has to do with synonymy, a case when a species has more than one name. This happens for a variety of reasons. For instance, when a taxonomist describes and names a new species without consulting the full history of literature, two taxonomists describe the species around the same time independently, or the literature on a species is difficult to obtain or in obscure local journals. So far, the winner for most names is the “Breadcrumb Sponge”, Halichondria panicea, described as
“the marine world’s reigning champion of Latin aliases, with 56 synonyms appearing in taxonomic literature since its first description in 1766. Of no fixed address, it’s known to frequent floats, pilings, and the underside of rocks, smells like exploded gunpowder and takes on many guises.”
Cleaning up this mess is serious business. With over 250 years of species discoveries to sift through, scientists need a complete record of the literature to accomplish this task. In my opinion, much of the problem lies in obscurity of taxonomic works. Many scientists choose to publish their work in small local museum or society journals that most people wouldn’t know existed or are very difficult to get ahold of.
Open Access (OA) Taxonomy will alleviate much of this problem. The sooner we move to OA Taxonomy, the sooner we can start to keep better track of whats out there, the sooner everyone around the world with an internet connection can be on the same page.
See also the World Register of Marine Species.
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Kevin Zelnio (870 Posts)
9 Replies to “Too Many Species, Too Few Scientists”
This sort of work sounds very interesting, actually.
And somewhat reassuring in that there’s going to be something to do when I’m done my studies.
kevin z says:
Nico, no shortage of work to be done! Unfortunately, there is a shortage of funding. I think it will start to get better soon but marine sciences has been in a lull for funding right now (in certain areas anyways). For taxonomy, the situation is worse. If you want to do taxonomy or systematics, you should get some other marketable skills along the way (especially computer skills and genetics). Many scientists, including myself, are optimistic about its future. That is why I work hard to make taxonomy relevant to people’s lives and to other fields of study like medicine and ecology.
ChrisM says:
Open Access is a step, but I still think you are overlooking the need for training and supporting more systematists and taxonomists. Universities don’t like to train em’ and positions for people doing this kind of work..just aren’t supported outside of museums.
Its getting a little better for people outside of the US. South America and Australia seem to be producing the new crop of global specialists..
hmm…I should write about this…
I certainly agree Chris. But in order to justify more training, we are forced to justify our field. Making taxonomy more relevant to people and other fields of science increases the visibility and stature of the field. Hopefully, this creates a demand for the services of the field, especially in biodiversity studies.
If there is a demand for a field, the university will hire faculty. The universities do not care what fields they hire, they only want faculty that bring in grant money. Unfortunately, taxonomy doesn’t really take much to do. Collecting can be expensive, but looking at an organism under the scope and describing its anatomy is not a financially consuming endeavor.
I view OA as a step in bettering the field and *hope* that better opportunities for taxonomists arise as a result. But training is a serious issue. Not just in a taxon of choice but in the methodology, philosophy and history.
Got the comp skills, and after my intro taxonomy and genetics lectures, I’ll definitely be taking more indepth classes for sure.
I’m only second year marine science, so I have a long way yet, but I am quite excited for fall term to get started.
Jim Thomerson says:
Some years ago NSF had a program to convert biologists trained in other areas into systematics. I received a grant application to review. The application was good, but I dithered around for a while, and then called the section head at NSF and told him I could not in good conscience review the application. That I thought, given the dearth of systematic jobs, the program itself could not be justified.
I’ve now been retired for ten years and would love to know the ratio of available systematic jobs to searching systematists. What do you think?
I am guessing that was the (Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy) PEET program. I do know several successful graduate students who have gone to get jobs that were funded by the program. A postdoc in my lab right now was a PEET recipient.
This assessment was written in 2004 (available at ScienceCareers online)
“The 21 PEET awards made in 1995 provided at least partial support for 238 scientists over their 5 years, and in some cases, up to two renewal years. This total included 24 postdoctoral researchers, 56 doctoral students, 38 students who went on to get master’s degrees, 119 undergraduates, and one high school student.
From this pool of 238 trainees with some financial connection to the 1995 PEET grants, some 36, at a minimum, had found good full-time jobs in taxonomy–at public and private universities, botanical gardens, government laboratories, museums, and, in one case, in private industry. These aren’t just soft-money, dead-end postdocs: As Rodman put it in a recent e-mail correspondence, these are people who “secured staff/faculty positions in a job with taxonomy as part of their duties, whether U.S. or foreign, but excluding those who simply continued into a postdoctoral position.” (Rodman notes that he “couldn’t always tell for sure” whether the overseas positions were “soft-money quasi-postdocs,” but mostly these are good, permanent jobs doing the kind of science these people were trained for.) Three of these 36 now have tenure.”
Tracking the PEET trainees is a tough nut. My own PEET had two primary trainees, both PhD and both of whom have jobs, one tenure-track and one with potential to convert to tenure-track. Monographic projects were at the core of their dissertations and both received thorough foundation training in systematics. However, over the objections of some I allowed and encouraged them to take time for other projects that would broaden their credentials. I am convinced that this was key to them getting academic positions for which systematics was not a focus; in fact, other experience with marine invertebrates was higher priority. This is the stealth approach to bringing into academia not only systematics, but a deep understanding of comparative biology so lacking and needed among the more favored biological disciplines. I have every confidence that both will be passing along their PEET training to all of their students, some of whom are likely to take on systematic projects. One of the great things about the PEET project was that it allowed me to slipstream additional trainees into parts of our work with minimal added cost but with huge benefits to their projects. Nevertheless, these indirect beneficiaries have been less definitively successful to date, but most are still in the game.
Hi Jon, thanks for your comment! Its good to have your perspective here as part of the PEET program. Advice I have received from several professors, both within and outside of systematics, has been to get a marketable skill set in something else and do systematics on the side. I am glad your trainees are successful! We need more wormy folk in the US.
I still don’t understand the mindset of funding agencies and academia that view knowing something about species as important, but fail to secure the future for future systematics. Defining, describing, identifying and hypothesizing the evolutionary relationships of species is so fundamental to nearly all of biology, yet it is still ignorantly viewed as a non-science. But how much does agriculture, medicine and conservation rely on proper identification and description of species? Everything depends on knowing what you are studying! Systematics is a hypothesis driven science at its foundation. People in the field need to do a better job at explaining the importance to the general public. Which is why I have been outlining a potential center or non-profit for applied taxonomy. A solution and service oriented institute to improve taxonomic knowledge about species of concern to government and industry, including pharmaceutical/medicinal, biodiversity/conservation, and agricultural/aquacultural. Its not well-formulated, but is a dream of mine. The mission includes significant outreach to the public to explain the importance of taxonomy to everyday people’s lives from a variety of viewpoints.
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Tracking Causalities of Escalation towards Dangerous Speech
The past couple of years have seen online vitriol and hate speech proliferating on social media platforms. In many cases this has translated to offline violence towards targeted communities via mob-violence and lynching. Augmented via the ecosystem of misinformation and disinformation along with the fact that speech acts and practices coalesce along communities of supporters, this has even affected national election outcomes. The research is rooted in this context of increased incidences of hateful speech and offline violence. It aims to develop a situated understanding of the dynamic online ecosystem in which such escalation takes place. Given the compound information ecosystem of social media platforms, it aims to understand both the tactics and causality of incitement to violence online. This research aims to move beyond the study of prevalence of online hate speech towards understanding the factors underlying the prevalence or proliferation of speech acts and practices. This research has been funded by Facebook through a global call for proposals studying hate speech and offline violence and was a part of the cohort selected from among 184 applications from 34 countries.
Protecting freedom of information, expression and association on the internet in India since 2011
As part of a global initiative of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), DEF initiated ‘Internet Rights’ in 2011 to advocate ‘Internet access for all’ at the national level.
As its first step of the project, DEF & APC jointly submitted their first UPR (Universal Periodic Review) in 2011 focusing on Internet rights and making Internet an effective tool to access right to information in India. A second report is now under preparation.
In 2014, DEF, being a country partner, along with APC initiated a project titled, IMPACT (‘Networking for freedom online and offline: protecting freedom of information, expression and association on the Internet in India, Malaysia and Pakistan’ in India). The project aims to build awareness among different stakeholders of the enabling role of in freedoms in strengthening human rights and democracy. The project also monitors and documents Internet human rights defenders tools and support to respond to threats and violations.
The project supports the participation of national rights defenders and civil society advocates in regional, national and global multi-stakeholder Internet governance bodies. Through awareness-raising and capacity-building, the project will reach out to human rights defenders – activists, national rights institutes, media rights advocates, judiciary, legal sector, women’s groups – and civil society in general, and provide them with knowledge, tools and networks so that violations can be monitored, reported and addressed.
Read more about the project on www.internetrights.in
200+ Internet-related human rights violations documented
250+ human rights defenders trained in Internet Rights Human Rights
3 country research reports published on the State of Internet Freedom in India
5 issue papers published around topics of Freedom of Expression and Cyberspace
150+ data points published in leading financial daily called Mint
Creating a platform for dialogue around issues of Internet governance, human rights online and future of the Internet since 2016
Digital Citizen Summit aims to provide a multi stakeholder platform to discuss issues relating to Internet governance, human rights online and the future of the Internet. Four main thematic areas drive the discussions – Access, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Digital Literacy & Empowerment. Policy makers, civil society organisations, private players, academics, government representatives and users are invited to discuss the myriad issues facing the digital world at this annual summit.
Digital Citizen Summit seeks to become the South Asia equivalent to other forums like Internet Governance Forum and APRIGF. Care has been taken that minorities – whether that be gender, sexual, ethnic or people with disabilities are represented on panels and the issues they face are brought to the fore. So far, the summit has seen representations from eight countries —Bangladesh, Philippines, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and South Africa.
Read more about the project on http://dsummit.defindia.org
8 countries—Bangladesh, Philippines, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and South Africa—have been represented at the summit
60+ speakers and panelists have shared their ideas with South Asia’s digital citizens
30+ women speakers at the summit have ensured gender equity in the discourse about Internet governance
250+ persons have participated in the summit
30+women speakers at the summit have ensured gender equity in the discourse about Internet governance
20 relevant issues across four thematic areas — Access, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Digital Literacy & Empowerment — have been discussed
Mobile for Social & Behavioural Change
Effective usage of mobile as a social and behavioural change-maker since 2013
The rapid growth of mobiles and the Internet have changed the way in which communication and development take place. It is strongly perceived that the subject of mobile as a tool for social and behavioural change is an emerging area among stakeholders in communication for development space. ‘Mobile Phone as a Tool for Social & Behaviour Change’ is a joint effort of UNICEF India and DEF to explore various projects where women, adolescent girls and youth have effectively used mobiles in areas of health, education, sanitation, environment, monitoring and training of frontline workers. Trying to examine the prospects of ‘Mobile Phone as a Tool for Social & Behaviour Change’, DEF and UNICEF India organised a two-day consultation on 9th and 10th May, 2013, in New Delhi. The second part of the project attempted to scale up at a wider level and provide solution-based tools to various ongoing challenges surrounding the issue of women, adolescents, youth, girls, children and sectors across health, education, nutrition, and empowerment. This project attempts to study concerns around MSBC and create a formidable platform to provide knowledge on diverse MSBC implemented projects and help in developing partnerships between state governments and MSBC players. Targeted states are Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, & Tamil Nadu.
Read more about the project on www.msbcindia.org
100+ case studies reviewed and compiled in MSBC Caselet Directory
50+ shortlisted case studies presented to the relevant stakeholders
1 research report on ‘Mobile Phone: A Tool for Social & Behavioural Changes’ published
5 consultation with UNICEF state offices conducted in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Assam
470 participants engaged in 5 consultations
Empowering a sustainable habitat through ICTs since 2010
Green Prakriya was a dynamic one-time platform created to initiate a continuous process of learning, sharing and collaboration among all stakeholders towards empowering a sustainable habitat. The objective was to create a knowledge eco-web of how information and communication technologies can play an instrumental role in empowering a sustainable habitat. It was an integration of all efforts towards the attainment of the goal of Green India and practicing optimal utilisation of the given natural resources as envisaged in the Prime Minister’s National Action Plan for Climate Change. The platform, when established, aimed to track and monitor the growth of technology waste in the society; promote multi-stakeholder collaboration for using ICTs to protect the environment; create a rich knowledge base of technology solutions for addressing environment issues; conduct awareness and outreach programmes through seminars and workshops; encourage policy advocacy for use of ICTs to protect the environment Having worked on a baseline report on India’s National Policy on e-waste titled ‘ICT and Environmental Sustainability’. We wanted to be holistically involved in the digital domain and hence take up the responsibility to see to it that digitalization that remains an asset to the economy does not turn into a liability.
In 2018, Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with the Association for Progressive Communications rekindled the project; this time with a new mission—to study and understand the e-waste recycling system post the auctions of electronic waste in both public and private institutions. The study aims to understand what exactly goes-on in the system post the e-waste auctions takes place either directly or through MSTC which leads to most of the e-waste ending up in unauthorized dumping and dismantling hubs across the country. The project also looks at doing a Cost benefit analysis to map out the risks and the benefits associated within the e-waste sector.This research project will also be involved in coalition with other organizations working in this domain to strengthen the overall Impact
Addressing challenges and identifying best practices within digital ecosystems of developing nations since 2016
Digital Innovation Ecosystem Review is an initiative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to understand the digital ecosystems of developing nations in an effort to highlight the best practices, identify the challenges and suggest recommendations for a strengthened digital innovation ecosystem where all stakeholder groups contribute and earn benefits. This was achieved through primary survey of six individual groups (academicians, finance, public sector, private sector, entrepreneurs, and support groups), besides secondary data analysis of existing ecosystems with Kenya and Thailand and success models around the world. Further, workshops were hosted by members of ITU and DEF for the stakeholder groups to brainstorm on their respective policies. As an outcome of the initiative, the respective governments of Kenya and Thailand were handed over the research study to incorporate measures to reach their digital ecosystem vision more efficiently.
Creating an environment for accurate and verified information since 2018
Conversations on the Internet, particularly social media, are often a reflection of the conversations that one has offline. However, online conversations come with the advantage of not being restricted to a small group of people physically present around you. The barriers of geography and time do not exist online. However, not everyone uses this opportunity for positive messaging.
In an effort to address the challenge of misinformation and disinformation in the country, WhatsApp has partnered with DEF to create awareness among WhatsApp users about the need to verify information. In the run up to the upcoming Assembly and General elections, DEF has committed to hold 40 training sessions for community leaders in 20 districts of 10 states across the country where there have been worrisome cases of violence or in states that will go to polls before the end of the year.
Under this training workshop-oriented initiative, DEF organises workshops to educate government officials, administration representatives, police officials, civil society organisations and college students to help spread the word about the challenge of the increasing virality of fake news. The training will encourage WhatsApp users to be more open towards other communities, to enable them to differentiate between opinions and facts, and to inculcate a habit of verifying information through simple checks before forwarding it to their friends and family. In addition, DEF will incorporate this new training as part of their network of over 30,000 grassroots community members in five states.
As part of this project, DEF is also working on a survey research project to understand the trends of WhatsApp consumption in Tier III cities and villages of India, and to analyse how users are accessing and processing the information they receive on their messaging application.
DEF’s regional team in Rajasthan is also a contributing partner to the temporary newsroom set up by BBC in Rajasthan, ahead of the 2019 General Elections, to identify viral messages and debunk fake news.
2300 people have been trained in simple verification techniques in 5 states so far
Creating a safe space for digital citizens since 2018
Trolling or cyber bullying is a phenomenon that is on the rise around the world and the United States and India are no exception. A recent National Women in Media in India (NWMI) conference underscored how female media professionals (journalists, bloggers, editors, publishers) and minority communities (LGBTQ+ community, religious minorities) are particularly subject to abuse by online trolls who seek to muzzle, intimidate, misrepresent, and stymie these individuals and their respective institutions or communities.
Tracking the Trolls: A South India Initiative is a survey research project that aims to assess the nature, scale, and impact of trolling targeted at media persons, lawyers, technologists, activists, academics, NGO workers, and civil society at large in South India.
Under this initiative, DEF is carrying out a research survey with 1000 respondents to ask them about the nature of trolling they receive/received. The quantitative findings of this survey, complimented with supplementary research and interviews, will investigate the social, psychological, and professional impact this online behaviour may cause.
Once the research findings are analysed, DEF will present the results through a research report at a two-day workshop in Bengaluru in 2019 with the aim to find ways of building resilience among individuals to counter trolling. This workshop will serve civil society to come together to ideate on solutions and create a consortium of relevant stakeholders who will work to implement potential solutions to target online trolls.
You can take the survey in English, Tamil, Kannada or Malayalam.
Community Network Exchange
Advocating for connecting the remaining 3.5 billion since 2017
Community Network Exchange (CNX) is an initiative of Digital Empowerment Foundation to constantly empower communities, especially marginalised and information-dark communities throughout Asia Pacific Region, with the power of information and know-how of community networks.
Organised as an annual workshop supported by APAC and the Internet Society, CNX 2017 saw community network operators from Asia Pacific engaging with each other to share their models, problems and solutions. The next CNX identified synergies between community networks and community radios in an effort to promote public Wi-Fi system across Asia Pacific.
At the core, CNX works on three levels — Training & Exchange, Knowledge & Network, Research & Advocacy. Through these levels, it aims to develop a comprehensive and self-contained guide to strengthen grassroots expertise by training community members in basic wireless technology and organise country-level exchange programmes for learners and barefoot wireless network engineers. Most recently, 10 international community network operators underwent a 10-day training programme in Guna, Madhya Pradesh, to understand community networks in the Indian context under the Community Network Championship. Under Knowledge & Network.
Read more about Community Networks Exchange on https://cnxapac.org/
Creating a pool of resources for persons facing online harassment since 2018
Online abuse, trolling and cyber bullying are rampant in cyberspace. Reports suggest that 76 per cent of women under age 30 have faced some form of online abuse or harassment. Many of these women never report such incidents out of societal fear. It is crucial that when faced with harassment of this kind, people are aware of the options available to them to counter this abuse.
An initiative by Digital Empowerment Foundation and OLX WebAware, Project Women Act Against Trolls (WAAT) aims to build a community to fight back against trolls, cyber bullies and online stalkers. WAAT provides a central repository of information one must be equipped with to report online abuse. The web page compiles information about cybercrime cells in India, cybercrime laws in the country, digital security tool kits, resources to help those facing cyber bullying, and a discussion board where people can share their stories and find support through our Friends of WAAT.
We understand that DEF can only achieve its goals with the full support of all stakeholders, including the government, industry, civil society organisations and ordinary citizens. This requires advocacy campaigns; and advocacy in turn requires research and knowledge support. Projects in this programmatic area, therefore, address the twin needs of advocacy and research.
Click here to download project brochures
Read our newsletters here
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/ DJTees Blog / Hollywood Music Festival 1970
Hollywood Music Festival 1970
Authored By Johnny Blogger June 25, 2015
No, not that Hollywood. This is the one in Staffordshire, England which was about as far away from the counter culture movement in USA as you're likely to find.
The Hollywood Music Festival was held on a pig farm near Newcastle-under-Lyme on 23 and 24 May 1970. It was notable for the first ever performance of Grateful Dead in the UK. It was one of the first gatherings of British progressive bands. Held across two days these were the proposed line-ups.
Afternoon: Lord Sutch And His Heavy Friends Pete Townshend and Jimmy Page(yeah, right), Radha Krishna Temple(groovy Buddhist-based chanting), Demon Fuzz (not THE Demon Fuzz!), Family.
Evening: Titus Groan (Surely Gormenghast is a better name if you're going down that route), Mike Cooper(nope, me neither), Mungo Jerry (unbearable but went down a storm), Tony Joe White ( ain't no polk salad in Staffordshire), Ginger Baker's Air Force.
Afternoon: (This was the time to stir from your stoned slumber) Colosseum, Quintessence, Black Sabbath(who were VERY new), Grateful Dead. There were hopes of an all-star jam session involving Eric Clapton and debut of Peter Green, since splitting from Fleetwood Mac. Do you think that happened? Of course it didn't.
Evening: Free, Trader Horne (sounds like a DIY store), Traffic, Jose Feliciano (eh? Really?!)
It goes without saying that all these proposed 'heavy friends' and all-star jams never happened.
The company responsible for the festival was Onista Ltd, who promptly went bankrupt after the gig and were unable to pay festival staff. That was careless. Onista was an offshoot of Eliot Cohen's Red Bus company, with Ellis Elias and Elliot Cohen as the promoters. That's a lot of letter 'l's.
This was the first of the major festivals held in the summer of 1970 and part of the festival was to have been filmed by the BBC. Andrew Burgoyne of Burgoyne Film and Audio Services also filmed and recorded audio of some of the festival. Film crews can be seen on 8 mm footage of bands taken by fans at the festival on several occasions, notably during Quintessence and the Dead's performances. A DVD and CD set was issued in 2010, featuring archive material from the Grateful Dead's set, and one number each from Free, Family, Screaming Lord Sutch, and Radha Krishna Temple.
The very wonderful James Gang and The Flying Burrito Brothers were supposed to play but didn't turn up. The reason this is an important British festival is that it was one of the first to evolve away from the old blues festivals of the 60s into a proper rock festival. Pictures show a rather bleak stage scene. For some reason a weird inflatable breast was on one side and some bizarre approximation of a man's doo-dah was on the other. I don't know why. It's awful.
Big metal fences and a stage that was almost unfeasbily high, all added to an ungroovy vibe to this festival. The photos show people tolerating it rather than enjoying it. But that's not to say it's not an important landmark.
Getting The Dead there was a very big deal. Reports suggest they basically played the whole of the Live/Dead album. I'm sure the set is available as Dick Pick volume 457. Other highlights were Free - who later recorded Highway based on their experiences at the Highway Farm where the bands were put up. Jose Feliciano was an unlikely star of a gig like this but it seems he was very popular doing his Spanished-up versions of rock and pop classics.
Hollywood Music Festival 1970 might not have had the counter culture impact of festivals across the pond but it was, nonetheless, an important event in the history of British rock. You might even say that the silly inflatables pioneered their later use by the Stones, Pink Floyd and Elton John.
Related t-shirts
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Main Area and Open Discussion »
Living Room »
Game Design Kit
Author Topic: Game Design Kit (Read 9162 times)
wraith808
« on: April 20, 2017, 12:42 PM »
There was a thread a while back about prototyping games, and the high costs of doing so. But now, there's a kickstarter for that.
The White Box: A Game Design Workshop-in-a-Box
The White Box is a learning, planning, and prototyping tool for tabletop game designers.
It contains a book of 18 essays on game design and production, covering subjects like where to find a great concept, how to use randomness, what to ask playtesters, and whether it’s wise to self-publish.
It includes an abundance of components to get you started right away, from cubes and meeples to dice, discs, and chits.
Maybe you have a golden idea inside you burning to come out. Maybe you want to tell a story or explore a problem. Do you dream of seeing your name on a box at your local game store? Or perhaps you see game design as a path to fame, fortune, and a satisfying career.
The White Box is for aspiring professionals, creative young people, and literally anyone who’s ever wanted to build their own game without having to plunder their game library for bits.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2017, 12:48 PM by wraith808 »
Re: Game Design Kit
« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2017, 12:44 PM »
Looks like a very cool gift to get for someone interested in making their own board game.
Coding Snacks Author
Charter Honorary Member
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2017, 12:17 AM »
OK, the pre-made pieces are cool, and I like that it has a handbook, but this very same idea has been freely available for years:
http://www.piecepack.org
What is a piecepack?
Flexible. Portable. Affordable. Public domain. The piecepack is a set of boardgame parts that can be used to design and play a wide variety of games. Anyone may design and publish a piecepack rule set. Any manufacturer or individual may produce piecepacks.
Basically, it's a set of printable templates, and a website chock-full of user-submitted games to play with them. I suppose 3D-printed piecepacks would be the next step.
But I admit, a nice tidy box o'goodies with a helpful manual sounds pretty cool. Nice find, Wraith808!
Some people have said various things that align with what Edvard is saying. I think that focus is on people that are already designers. However, what I view this project as is a starting place for new designers- to get them into getting the ideas out of their head easily.
From the brick and mortar section:
This product was priced to be an auto-purchase for your customers who're interested in game design. What starts with your recommendation will end, we hope, with a lifelong customer who’s grateful that your advice helped them get started in game design, and who's happy to buy dice, meeples, card sleeves, and games from you for years.
And it isn't just a handbook- but essays from well established designers, that can help with that goal, and more esoteric topics like randomization and other such things.
Meeples Together
From the designers of the White Box comes another look at game design- this time from a cooperative angle. From the blurb: "A new book from the publisher of The White Box for people who play, discuss, critique, design, and love cooperative board games."
What's in the Book
Meeples Together contains 14 chapters about the nature, mechanics, theory, and frontiers of cooperative gaming.
Along the way, 14 in-depth case studies (or more, depending on stretch goals!) of cooperative gaming’s greatest hits — from Pandemic and Battlestar Galactica to Contract Bridge — demonstrate the concepts and ideas. (Not to mention Appendix V’s capsule reviews of more than 90 cooperative titles!)
The physical edition is a 384-page, 6" × 9" trade paperback containing more than 150 illustrated figures.
Digital editions will include a tablet-optimized PDF version, an Epub version, and a Kindle (.mobi) version.
More at the Kickstarter.
I know that a lot of people here are interested in cooperative games, so I thought it would be of interest.
Meeples Together is being funded as a digital or hardcover book on Kickstarter.
The project is currently fully funded, and given their delivery on the White Box, the challenges and risks seem to be few.
Great find.. I'm extremely interested in cooperative boardgames so this is a must read for me. Thanks for sharing
Animated Giffer in Chief
Something like this would have been super useful during one of my uni modules (Design Thinking) - One of my assignments was to make a board game, which...meant me doing a crap load of work just making the pieces and such...was tedious lol.
« Reply #7 on: November 27, 2018, 04:11 PM »
this book came up on Cool Tools this morning - The Art of Game Design
« Last Edit: November 27, 2018, 04:37 PM by Stephen66515, Reason: Fixed BBCode on Link »
-Target (November 27, 2018, 04:11 PM)
I actually have that one. It's a pretty cool take on the subject, applying 'lenses' to the game to force decisions about the game and what it will be.
As an example, the first lens is "The Lens of Essential Experience", i.e. stop thinking about the game as a designer and think about the experience of the game as a player.
One of the best quotes in the book is in the beginning - a definition of Game Design as "Deciding what a game should be". There was a companion app on iOS, but not sure if it's still available.
Though he says that he doesn't really agree with books as texts, it really does read like a textbook.
« Reply #9 on: March 08, 2019, 04:24 PM »
Another Kickstarter that's good for game designers.
Fail Faster
What's is it?
At its core, the Fail Faster Playtesting Journal contains pages to keep track of 36 playtests. The journal is most useful if you dedicate one journal to each game that you are designing, but you could easily use one journal to keep track of all the different games you’re designing. Each section has been tested and planned for optimal use of space.
What's in the journal?
I know that a lot of people here are interested in game design, so I thought it would be of interest.
A print and play preview of Fail Faster is available on Google Drive.
Necro Thread Arise! I figured that this was not enough for a new thread, so I'd post here.
There's currently a Kickstarter in progress that would be useful for Board Game Design. The Board Game Design Starter Kit touted as "A box full of everything you need to get that game out of your head and onto a table!"
https://www.kickstar...e-design-starter-kit
The same creator recently ran a Kickstarter for a book about Kickstarter Board Game design advice (https://www.kickstar...e-kickstarter-advice). I was on it, but forgot to post it here.
The base kit includes the following for $35
There's also an upgrade kit for $15 more
The campaign runs until September 3rd. I'm not sure of the value of these items in a kit vs getting them yourself if you're able to locate them.
Awesome -- thanks for posting this. As for value -- it all comes down to whether it will inspire you (or your kids) to make a game -- if so then it's worth every penny.
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Bona Mors Confraternity
(HAPPY DEATH)
The Bona Mors Confraternity was founded 2 October, 1648, in the Church of the Gesù, Rome, by Father Vincent Carrafa, seventh General of the Society of Jesus, and approved by the Sovereign Pontiffs Innocent X and Alexander VII. In 1729 it was raised to an archconfraternity and enriched with numerous indulgences by Benedict XIII. He authorized the Father General of the Society of Jesus, who in virtue of his office, was the director, to erect confraternities in all churches of his order. In 1827 Leo XII gave to the director general the power to erect and affiliate branch confraternities in churches not belonging to the Society of Jesus, and to give them a share in all the privileges and indulgences of the archconfraternity. The object of the association is to prepare its members by a well-regulated life to die in peace with God. The longer title: "Confraternity of Our Lord Jesus Christ dying on the Cross, and of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, His sorrowful Mother," expresses the chief means to attain that end, devotion to the passion of Christ and to the sorrows of Mary. Besides this union of prayers and good works of the associates and the special instructions at the public meetings help powerfully to prepare for a happy death. The conditions for membership are to present oneself to the director; to express to him one's desire to become a member; to receive from him an outward sign of acceptance, usually in the form of a certificate of admission; and to have one's name registered in the local Bona Mors Register. Only "by an unusual and extraordinary exception", says a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, "is it allowed to enroll those absent." The director is authorized to decide what constitutes such an exceptional case. The practices of the association and the indulgences granted to the members are specified in the manual of the confraternity (New York, 1896).
JOHN J. WYNNE
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Title 40 → Chapter I → Subchapter R → Part 747 → Subpart B → §747.195
Title 40: Protection of Environment
PART 747—METALWORKING FLUIDS
Subpart B—Specific Use Requirements for Certain Chemical Substances
§747.195 Triethanolamine salt of a substituted organic acid.
This section identifies activities with respect to a chemical substance which are prohibited and requires that warnings and instructions accompany the substance when distributed in commerce.
(a) Chemical substance subject to this section. The following chemical substance, referred to by its premanufacture notice number and generic chemical name, is subject to this section: P-84-310, triethanolamine salt of a substituted organic acid.
(b) Definitions. Definitions in section 3 of the Act, 15 U.S.C. 2602, apply to this section unless otherwise specified in this paragraph. In addition, the following definitions apply:
(1) The terms Act, article, chemical substance, commerce, importer, impurity, Inventory, manufacturer, person, process, processor, and small quantities solely for research and development, have the same meaning as in §720.3 of this chapter.
(2) Metalworking fluid means a liquid of any viscosity or color containing intentionally added water used in metal machining operations for the purpose of cooling, lubricating, or rust inhibition.
(3) Nitrosating agent means any substance that has the potential to transfer a nitrosyl group (—NO) to a primary, secondary, or tertiary amine to form the corresponding nitrosamine.
(4) Process or distribute in commerce solely for export means to process or distribute in commerce solely for export from the United States under the following restrictions on domestic activity:
(i) Processing must be performed at sites under the control of the processor.
(ii) Distribution in commerce is limited to purposes of export.
(iii) The processor or distributor may not use the substance except in small quantities solely for research and development.
(c) Use limitations. (1) Any person producing a metalworking fluid, or a product which could be used in or as a metalworking fluid, which includes as one of its components P-84-310, is prohibited from adding any nitrosating agent to the metalworking fluid or product.
(2) A person using as a metalworking fluid a product containing P-84-310 is prohibited from adding any nitrosating agent to the product.
(d) Warnings and instructions. (1) Any person who distributes in commerce P-84-310 in a metalworking fluid, or in any form in which it could be used as a component of a metalworking fluid, must send to each recipient of P-84-310 and confirm receipt in writing prior to the first shipment to that person:
(i) A letter that includes the following statements: A substance, identified generically as a triethanolamine salt of a substituted organic acid, contained in the product (insert distributor's trade name or other identifier for product containing P-84-310) has been regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, at 40 CFR 747.195, as published in the Federal Register of June 14, 1984. A copy of the regulation is enclosed. The regulation prohibits the addition of any nitrosating agent, including nitrites, to the triethanolamine salt of a substituted organic acid, when the substance is or could be used in metalworking fluids. The addition of nitrites or other nitrosating agents to this substance leads to formation of a substance known to cause cancer in laboratory animals. The triethanolamine salt of a substituted organic acid has been specifically designed to be used without nitrites. Consult the enclosed regulation for further information.
(ii) A copy of this §747.195.
(2)(i) Any person who distributes in commerce a metalworking fluid containing P-84-310 must affix a label to each container containing the fluid.
(ii) The label shall contain a warning statement which shall consist only of the following language:
WARNING! Do Not Add Nitrites to This Metalworking Fluid under Penalty of Federal Law. Addition of nitrites leads to formation of a substance known to cause cancer. This product is designed to be used without nitrites.
(iii) The first word of the warning statement shall be capitalized, and the type size for the first word shall be no smaller than six point type for a label five square inches or less in area, ten point type for a label above five but below ten square inches in area, twelve point type for a label above ten but below fifteen square inches in area, fourteen point type for a label above fifteen but below thirty square inches in area, or eighteen point type for a label over thirty square inches in area. The type size of the remainder of the warning statement shall be no smaller than six point type. All required label text shall be of sufficient prominence, and shall be placed with such conspicuousness relative to other label text and graphic material, to insure that the warning statement is read and understood by the ordinary individual under customary conditions of purchase and use.
(e) Liability and determining whether a chemical substance is subject to this section. (1) If a manufacturer or importer of a chemical substance which is described by the generic chemical name in paragraph (a) of this section makes an inquiry under §710.7(g) of this chapter or §720.25(b) of this chapter as to whether the specific substance is on the Inventory and EPA informs the manufacturer or importer that the substance is on the Inventory, EPA will also inform the manufacturer or importer whether the substance is subject to this section.
(2) Except for manufacturers and importers of P-84-310, no processor, distributor, or user of P-84-310 will be in violation of this section unless that person has received a letter specified in paragraph (d)(1) of this section or a container with the label specified in paragraph (d)(2) of this section.
(f) Exemptions. A person identified in paragraphs (c) and (d) of this section is not subject to the requirements of those paragraphs if:
(1) The person manufactures, imports, processes, distributes in commerce, or uses the substance only in small quantities solely for research and development and in accordance with section 5(h)(3) of the Act.
(2) The person manufactures, imports, processes, distributes in commerce, or uses the substance only as an impurity.
(3) The person imports, processes, distributes in commerce, or uses the substance only as part of an article.
(4) The person processes or distributes the substance in commerce solely for export, and when distributing in commerce, labels the substance in accordance with section 12(a)(1)(B) of the Act.
(g) Enforcement. (1) Failure to comply with any provision of this section is a violation of section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 2614).
(2) Failure or refusal to permit access to or copying of records, as required under section 11 of the Act, is a violation of section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 2614).
(3) Failure or refusal to permit entry or inspection, as required under section 11 of the Act, is a violation of section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 2614).
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Bexley Hall names new dean: The Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson has been selected as Bexley Hall Seminary’s new dean:
Ecumenical Leader Chosen as Bexley Hall’s New Dean
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson will begin work in July
From Bexley Hall Seminary’s website
COLUMBUS, OHIO, May 4, 2011—The Board of Trustees of Bexley Hall Seminary today announced the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson as the seminary’s dean.
“We are thrilled to welcome Tom Ferguson to our seminary,” said Bishop Catherine Waynick of Indianapolis, a member of Bexley’s board who chaired the search committee that selected Ferguson. “His background in theological education and extensive ecumenical work make him the ideal person to continue our robust MDiv program, strengthen our ecumenical partnerships and lead our growing commitment to lifelong learning for clergy and laity.”
Ferguson will succeed the Rev. William Doubleday, who was appointed Bexley’s interim dean in 2009 and has served as Bexley Hall’s associate dean and professor of pastoral theology since 2006.
Upon his appointment, Ferguson said, “I am honored to serve as the next dean of Bexley Hall. This is an exciting time in the life of Bexley, as the seminary lives into its partnership with Trinity Lutheran Seminary back in its historic roots in Ohio, reclaiming its place on the frontier with its emphasis on ecumenical partnerships and innovative formation for ministry grounded in community.”
Ferguson currently serves as ecumenical and interreligious relations officer for the Episcopal Church working to foster ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and cooperation with other Christian communions and world religions. He also serves as a part-time chaplain at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
From 2001 until 2010, Ferguson was the interim and associate deputy for ecumenical and interreligious relations for The Episcopal Church. During that time, he was the theological consultant for the bilateral theological dialogues with the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Orthodox Church, and Roman Catholic Church.
Robert Reber, Bexley’s interim president and former dean of Auburn Seminary, said, “Dr. Ferguson brings a rich background in theological studies and engagement in ecumenical and interfaith relations that will enrich Bexley Hall’s ongoing partnerships with Trinity Lutheran Seminary and Seabury Western Seminary. He is passionate about theological education and eager to address the challenges of educating clergy and laity for leadership in the church of the 21st century.”
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Public Release: 2-Dec-2015
Research team finds detailed record of mysterious fast radio burst
Signal identified by Carnegie Mellon's Hsiu-Hsien Lin sheds new light on origin of enigmatic radio waves
IMAGE: This is an artist impression of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) reaching Earth. The colors represent the burst arriving at different radio wavelengths, with long wavelengths (red) arriving several seconds... view more
Credit: Credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium
PITTSBURGH--Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), brief yet brilliant eruptions of cosmic radio waves from the distant universe, have baffled astronomers since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Though they appear to come from the distant universe, none of these enigmatic events have revealed more than the slimmest details about how and where it formed, until now.
By poring over 650 hours of archival data from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT), a team of astronomers, including Carnegie Mellon University's Jeffrey Peterson and Hsiu-Hsien Lin, has uncovered the most detailed record ever of an FRB. The group's research indicates that the burst originated inside a highly magnetized region of space, possibly linking it to a recent supernova or the interior of an active star-forming nebula. The results are published in the Dec. 3 issue of Nature.
Lasting only a fraction of a second yet packing a phenomenal amount of energy, FRBs are brief flashes of unknown origin that appear to come from random directions. Though only 15 have been documented to date, astronomers believe that the observable universe is rocked by thousands of these events each day.
The team -- primarily researchers with cosmology backgrounds -- used new, highly specialized data-mining software to conduct an initial pass through the nearly 40 terabytes of GBT data to flag any candidate signals. The data-mining software, developed by Kiyoshi Masui of the University of British Columbia and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and Jonathan Sievers of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, yielded more than 6,000 possible FRBs. Lin, a doctoral student in Carnegie Mellon's Department of Physics, painstakingly analyzed the data from each of the signals, winnowing the field until only one candidate remained.
The newly discovered FRB, named FRB 110523, is in the frequency range of 700-900 MHz. Previously identified FRBs were all in the frequency range of 1.2-1.5 GHz.
"Until now, only 15 FRBs have been recorded. I feel extremely lucky to have identified the 16th," Lin said.. "Not only is this the first FRB in this frequency range, our FRB has provided us with a great deal of information that help us to better understand this astrophysical phenomenon."
The signal Lin found was exceptional. It contained more details about its polarization than any previously identified FRB. Polarization is a property of electromagnetic radiation, including light and radio waves, and indicates the orientation of the wave. Polarizing sunglasses use this property to block out a portion of the sun's rays and 3-D movies use it to achieve the illusion of depth. The new GBT detection includes both circular and linear polarization data, which is a first. Prior to this detection, only circular polarization was associated with an FRB.
"Hidden within an incredibly massive dataset, we found a very peculiar signal, one that matched all the known characterizes of a Fast Radio Burst, but with a tantalizing extra polarization element that we simply have never seen before," said Peterson, a faculty member in Carnegie Mellon's McWilliams Center for Cosmology.
The researchers used this additional information to determine that the radio light from the FRB exhibited Faraday rotation, the corkscrew-like twisting the radio waves acquire by passing through a powerful magnetic field. This provides clues as to the origin and environment surrounding the bursts, which will help theorists as they attempt to explain the bursts.
Further analysis of the signal reveals that it also passed through two distinct regions of ionized gas, called screens, on its way to Earth. By using the interplay between the two screens, the astronomers were able to determine their relative locations. The strongest screen is very near the burst's source -- within a hundred thousand light-years -- placing it inside the source's galaxy. Only two things could leave such an imprint on the signal, the researchers note: a nebula surrounding the source or the environment near the center of a galaxy.
"Taken together, these remarkable data reveal more about an FRB than we have ever seen before and give us important constraints on these mysterious events," concluded Masui. "We also have an exciting new tool to search through otherwise overwhelming archival data to uncover more examples and get closer to truly understanding their nature."
The researchers wish to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (Grant Number: 1211777) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant Number: 2012AA121701).
Jocelyn Duffy
jhduffy@andrew.cmu.edu
@CMUScience
http://www.cmu.edu
National Science Foundation, Ministry of Science and Technology of China
SPACE/PLANETARY SCIENCE
Artist Impression of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) Reaching Earth (IMAGE)
More in Space & Planetary
Hubble pinpoints supernova blast ESA/Hubble Information Centre
Study: X-Rays surrounding 'Magnificent 7' may be traces of sought-after particle DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Astronomers document the rise and fall of a rarely observed stellar dance University of Washington
Researchers rewind the clock to calculate age and site of supernova blast NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
View all in Space & Planetary
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James E. Dahlstrom, 87
Jim Dahlstrom
Fairmont A Mass of Christian Burial for James “Jim” E. Dahlstrom, age 87, of Fairmont, was Friday, March 4, 2016 at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Fairmont. Burial was in Rice Lake Cemetery in rural Delavan.
Jim passed away Tuesday evening, Feb. 23, 2016 at the Mayo Clinic Health System, Fairmont. He was with his wife, Marge and children and their spouses and his grandchildren some in person and others in their homes in prayer. He died in the embrace of his loving family.
James “Jim” Elmer Dahlstrom was born on Jan. 28, 1929 in Winnebago, the son of Elmer and Nellie (Hart) Dahlstrom. Jim grew up on a farm in the Delavan area and attended school in Delavan. He graduated from Delavan High School in 1947 and then farmed with his family. In August of 1953 he married Clara Roche and they farmed and had five children together. They were later divorced. When Jim was 34 he became a State Farm Agent on June 1, 1963. First working in Springfield, and then moving to Fairmont on January 1, 1970. On July 20, 1985, Jim married Marge Torrence and they lived in Fairmont. Jim retired from State Farm in March of 2000.
Jim loved his farming and made many trips to his farm in Delavan Township, Faribault County. Over the years he enjoyed traveling, reading and especially spending time with his children and grandchildren.
He was a member of St. John Vianney Catholic Church, longtime member of the Early Risers Kiwanis Club and Jaycees.
Those that will cherish his memory include his wife, Marge Dahlstrom, of Fairmont; three daughters, Susan (Tom) Feda, of Salt Lake City, Utah, Mary (Jerry) Dahlstrom-Salic, of Bloomington, Indiana, Karen (Bob Thompson) Dahlstrom, of St. Cloud; two sons, David (Lori) Dahlstrom, of Bloomington, Indiana, Greg (Ruth) Dahlstrom, of Rochester; nine grandchildren, Kent (Nicole) Feda, Cody Feda, David Thompson, Mike (fiance, Alexandra Dye), Nicole Dahlstrom, Tom Thompson, Samuel, Antonella and Nicolas Dahlstrom-Afcha; one great-granddaughter, Libby Feda and one great-grandson whose birth is expected at any time; brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, Tom and Carolyn Roche, David Torrence, Jean and Paul Barnes, Barb and LeRoy Janssen, Deb Wadsley; nieces and nephews; other relatives and friends.
Jim was preceded in death by his parents, Elmer and Nellie; one sister, Carol Stevemer and her husband, John; parents-in-law, George and Mae Torrence.
Memorials are preferred to the Minnesota Autism Center, 3380 Northern Valley Place NE, Rochester, MN 55906 or the St. John Vianney School Endowment Fund.
The Lakeview Funeral Home and Cremation Service assisted the family. www.lakeviewfuneralhome.net
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Terms and Conditions - Privacy policy - Legal Notice
The Services are operated by the Company La Bourguignonne d'Informatique, a simplified joint-stock company with a sole shareholder, registered in the Dijon Trade and Companies Register under number 829 645 803, whose registered office is 14E, Rue Pierre de Coubertin - 21000 DIJON - France.
La Bourguignonne d'Informatique provides Internet users with the Website enabling them to communicate widely with others by a multi-criteria instant messenger and represents a passive connection for online posts, distribution of profiles and other information for entertainment purposes (media). The service is neither a consultancy nor a dating agency, and does not organize encounters between its members. The use of the Services is for personal and private purposes only.
The members confirm having received all necessary documentation on the proposed services and subscriptions from Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and comply without restriction to the present service terms and conditions.
"Subscription": a paid package giving access to the Services offered in the Subscription, for a limited period specified in the Subscription concerned subscribed by a Member. 'member': any natural person acting for purposes not falling within the scope of its commercial, industrial, craft, liberal or agricultural activity, who completed the registration process on the Website. 'subscriber': member who has subscribed to one or more Subscriptions suggested by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique. 'account': space of the website reserved to members. 'service': all services offered by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique, accessible to Members and Subscribers through the Website. There are two (2) types of Services: Basic Services and Additional Services. The Members and Subscribers concerned are informed of their essential characteristics prior to the subscription.
The objective of the present document is to define the conditions of use of the services and selling Subscriptions offered by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique to its Members. These GCUS are concluded between the companies La Bourguignonne d'Informatique, Global Digital Média SA and any person having acquired the quality of Member.
They apply to the creation of an Account on the Website by a Member and to any Subscription by a Member to the Company La Bourguignonne d'Informatique.
The Member declares to have taken note of the present GCUS and to have accepted them by ticking the box meant for that purpose before the creation of an Account and / or the online subscription. Unless it is proven otherwise, the data recorded in the computer system of the companies, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA, constitute the proof of all transactions concluded with the Subscriber through the Website.
The companies, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA, reserve the right to modify the present terms and conditions as it considers necessary and useful. The utmost shall be done to inform the members of the existence and date of application of new terms and conditions.
Email: the purpose of the processing of this data, which is mandatory for user registration, is to send email communications to the Member, Date of birth: the purpose of processing is to allow the Member’s age to appear on their profile, Gender: the purpose of the processing is to create an account that matches the user’s gender, Photographs: the user has the possibility of importing photographs from their Facebook account in order to complete their profile. By default, five photographs are automatically imported. The Member can replace these photographs with other photographs from their Facebook account. The purpose of processing is to allow the Member to fill out their profile with ease. The use of the Facebook connect application is a simple technical feature provided to the user in view of facilitating his/her registration and completing the registration fields for the service: Facebook connect is a third party service to the service and Companies La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA do not in any way guarantee the correct operation and reliability of the information obtained through that application.
As soon as a member subscribes to the service his profile is displayed as 'pending': during that variable period, the member’s profile is checked by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA Companies to ascertain that the data and information supplied by the member meet the present terms and conditions and the ethical charter of the service. Finally, we offer the user the exclusive opportunity to multiply his chances of finding love with the orientation to other sites if already registered or if he wishes to benefit from more contact. Subject to the express agreement of the Member, his profile may be available on other Websites in line with his research.
If the GCUS are not complied with, the member is informed by email of the rejection of his profile and is proposed to modify it. If the member does not modify his profile in conformity with the terms and conditions, companies La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA reserves the right to definitively refuse it.
The companies La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA are not obliged and do not have the technical means to ensure the identity of the persons registering on the Website and opening an Account.
As a matter of principle, Subscriptions to Basic Services and Additional Services are subject to charges, at the rates in force at the time of their subscriptions. Prices are expressed in the currency of the Member's country. These rates are firm and non-revisable during their period of validity. The price is payable upfront at the time of subscription, by credit card or transfer.
It is specified that when the access to Services is free, whether partially or totally, Global Digital Média SA reserves the right to modify it both for conditions of access and financial terms of the service. The member subscribes willingly to a Subscription for a selected duration, at the online price by the time of subscription and according to the payment methods suggested by the Website. Access to the Services of the selected Subscription is possible from the reception by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique of the Member's payment. Access to the Service is immediate if payment is made by bank card. A processing period is required if payment is made by cheque or bank transfer; the Services concerned by the selected Subscription are accessible only after reception and receipt of the sums by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique. In that second hypothesis and when the services of the chosen subscription are unavailable to the member after a period of fourteen (14) days from the sending of the cheque by mail or the bank transfer, it is recommended to the member to send a message to customer services by means of the form accessible from his/her account via the 'Help' menu, to which the customer service is committed to responding as soon as possible.
La Bourguignonne d'Informatique reserves the right to propose temporary promotional subscriptions to new members or existing subscribed members for a certain time. The proposed financial terms are exceptional and cannot be grounds for any complaint by the other members.
The sale of the Subscriptions will be considered permanent (and the contract concluded) only after the Member receives, by email and from La Bourguignonne d'Informatique, the confirmation of the order’s acceptance.
In the event of the use by a Member of its right of withdrawal, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique will refund all the sums paid within fourteen (14) days from the date on which it was informed by the Member's decision to retract.
9. Obligations of Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique
La Bourguignonne d'Informatique endeavours to provide a quality service. It enables members to use the available communication tools under the best possible conditions.
Due to the nature and complexity of the internet network, its technical performance and response times for consultation, viewing or data transfer in particular, the companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique make the best effort, according to the rulebook, to enable the access and use of the services.
Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies make their best efforts to provide a performing service to members. It shall use appropriate means to maintain the service in optimal operational conditions.
The companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique reserve the right, without notice or compensation, to temporarily close the platform or access to services for update, maintenance, modification or changes to operational methods, the platform and access hours, without this list being exhaustive.
The companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique are not liable for damages of any nature resulting from malfunction, impossibility of access or poor conditions of use of the Services accountable to a non-adapted equipment, to internal malfunction of the Member’s access provider, congestion of the Internet network and any other external reasons having the character of a force majeure case.
Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies reserve the right to complete or to improve, at all times, the Website, the subscriptions and the services available according to the development of technologies and shall inform the members by all means.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique are not subject to any obligation of monitoring, moderating or checking the exchanges and contents posted online on the Website by the members who subscribed to the service.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique do not intervene directly in the content of the profiles. They check during the registration of the member and subscription that the terms and conditions are met, but does not check the truthfulness of the information supplied or their validity and does not monitor the later changes to the profile carried out by the concerned member.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique do not intervene in the relations and exchanges between members.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique shall react when illicit content, behaviour or use are not compliant with the present terms and conditions and reported in accordance with the article 'notification of illicit content' in the present agreement or signaled via an 'abuse' link present on the profile of every subscribing member. Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique will then take the measures it considers most appropriate for the situation.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique reserve the right to remove any content which does not comply with the present terms and conditions after informing, if conditions allow it, the concerned member.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique are actively working to remove fake profiles and are taking numerous measures to help in this regard.
Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique make their best efforts, according to the rulebook, to secure the Website.
Considering the exponential nature of technological developments, Companies Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique cannot guarantee the Website’s absolute security nor the absence of defects.
The member also can report to Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies the profile of a member not respecting the present terms and conditions through the 'abuse' link present on every registered member’s profile.
The member shall not behave in an illegal or fraud-inducing way towards Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies, other members and/or third parties.
Overall, the member shall report of any defective services he/she notices to Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies by means of the "help" menu accessible, online, on the Website.
It is forbidden for a member to access/remain fraudulently in all/part of the Website. It is forbidden to use another access method beside the one made available by Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies. Upon discovery of such method, or if the member enters a placeholder, without right, inadvertently, the member agrees to promptly inform Global Digital Média SA to the following address customer@cloverskypay.com so that appropriate actions can be taken.
Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique Companies provide a customer service to its members which can supply all necessary information on the use and services of the Website.
La Bourguignonne d'Informatique makes the best efforts to provide a service accessible to all the members and in the best conditions.
The Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies cannot guarantee absolute technical compatibility of the additional functions and services it proposes with the service as their correct function is subject to the equipment’s software and hardware compatibility used by the members. Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique Companies inform the members of the minimum required configurations to fully benefit from the service and additional services.
The member recognizes that the information and the databases accessible on the platform are the property of La Bourguignonne d'Informatique.
The member grants to La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA a license of use of the intellectual property rights attached to the elements he/she places online, which are his/her exclusive property and which are protected by the laws and regulations relating to the intellectual property in force.
This License of use conceded by the Member to La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA covers the right of La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA to copy, represent, adapt, translate, digitalize, use for execution of the Services or sub-license elements regarding the member on the services, or on any electronic communication means in the context of the services (in particular email, sms, mms, Internet).
The member authorizes La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and to modify elements to comply with the graphic chart or to make them compatible with its technical performance or any format supplied in the context of the services.
The license of use is granted by the member to La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA for everyone, and for the duration of online access of those elements by the member.
The member shall take all necessary measures to protect said third party rights and guarantees its peaceful use to La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA.
In the context of services providing, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique is subject to an obligation of resources.
The member recognizes and accepts that the divulgation of information on the Website is his/her sole responsibility, and relinquishes any claim on La Bourguignonne d'Informatique, in particular on the basis of his/her right to image, his/her honour and reputation, the intimacy of his/her private life, resulting from his/her distribution of that information, unless otherwise it is duly proven by the Member. The member is sole responsible for possible prejudice caused by the divulgation of that information.
The member guarantees and releases La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA from any claim and condemnation originating from default of the obligations the member is subject to by law or the present terms and conditions of the service.
The member cannot hold La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA liable for any delay in information provided to him/her.
The responsibility of La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA cannot be sought in case of fraudulent or abusive use or due to voluntary or involuntary divulgation of the username and/or password for connecting to the member account.
Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies are not liable for the violation of the present terms and conditions by another member, nor for their actions on the Website, whether there’s an offence or not.
The exchanges between Members, profiles, descriptions and other announcements are incorporated within the framework of entertainment and communication. La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and Global Digital Média SA only provide a web platform and cannot guarantee that exchanges between members actually lead to encounters. Furthermore, Global Digital Média SA cannot be held responsible for encounters on or outside the platform, nor for the correspondence between the communicated information on the Website and the reality.
Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies endeavour to check the reliability of information and data of the member profiles, in particular by checking compliance with the present terms and conditions and the information supplied at the creation of an account. However, each member can later modify certain information on his/her profile. Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies cannot guarantee the truthfulness of information supplied by its members, nor protect the members against identity theft and it cannot be held responsible on that basis.
La Bourguignonne d'Informatique provides additional services to improve the communication functions and promote the visibility of the profile of a member on the Website. However, those services are provided up to the same services other members might subscribe to: in case of a multiplicity of members' requesting for a service or for technical reasons linked to the correct management of the Website operation, the member recognizes that La Bourguignonne d'Informatique cannot guarantee an unlimited period for the promotion of visibility of the member's profile or the effectiveness and uninterrupted availability of the additional service to which the member subscribed.
Partner Websites are likely to be accessible to users through hypertext links such as banner ads. Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique companies cannot be held responsible for the data and information spread by their potential business partners.
The data collected is intended for internal use only, specific to Global Digital Média SA and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique. Only those acting under his authority and instructions may access it.
As an exception, banking data are communicated to La Bourguignonne d'Informatique responsible for managing and recovering subscriptions. The Member expressly consents that the above-mentioned banking data will be communicated to said La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and for the sole purpose referred above.
This data may be communicated by Global Digital Média SA to La Bourguignonne d'Informatique with the sole purpose of providing Quality Services. The Member expressly agrees to this communication.
In the event of payment by transfer, the Subscription will not be renewed on due date.
In any case, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique shall inform the concerned Members by e-mail, sent no later than thirty (30) calendar days before the end of their Subscriptions, that they may terminate their Subscriptions free of charge before the due date as well as the procedure to follow.
Whatever the terms of payment, if the Member does not comply with the obligations of the present conditions, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique reserves the right, without compensation or refund, to suspend the access to his account and eventual subscription’s services until the reason for the suspension has been lifted, this within eight (8) calendar days after the reception an email asking the Member to conform with the present service’s conditions.
17.4.2 Termination by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique
If the member does not comply with the obligations of the present GCUs after several warnings, an email asking to do so will be sent. If not answered after within fifteen (15) calendar days from its reception, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique reserves the right to terminate the registration on the Website, to close his Account and to terminate his subscription, without prejudice to any common-law action which might be open to it. This without any compensation or refund.
If the bank refuses the payment method used by the member, an email him/her to pay the outstanding sums with a new payment method will be sent. If not answered after within eight (8) calendar days from its reception, La Bourguignonne d'Informatique reserves the right to terminate the registration on the Website, to close his Account, and to terminate the Subscription, without prejudice to any common-law action which might be open to it.
La Bourguignonne d'Informatique agrees to reimburse the Subscriber in proportion to the duration of its Subscription within a period that may, depending on the Subscriber's bank, vary between two (2) and ten (10) calendar days, starting from reception of the registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt accompanied by the banking details.
Data recorded in the computer systems of the Website will be stored under reasonable safety conditions and considered proof of communications between the parties. Unless it is proven otherwise, this data constitutes proof of all transactions between La Bourguignonne d'Informatique and the Member via the Website.
The information transmitted or received by La Bourguignonne d'Informatique during the use of the platform is considered confidential by nature and is subject to professional secrecy and shall not be communicated externally, apart from exceptions linked to the provision of the 'data-processing and liberties' law.
All disputes to which the creation of an Account, the subscription of the Services, their execution or their termination could lead to and which could not be solved between a Member and La Bourguignonne d'Informatique or Global Digital Média SA will be submitted to the competent courts under the conditions of common law.
The Website is operated by the Company La Bourguignonne d'Informatique, a simplified joint-stock company with a sole shareholder, with capital of 1250€, registered within the Dijon Trade and Companies Register, under number 829 645 803, whose registered office is located 14E, Rue Pierre de Coubertin - 21000 DIJON - France.
This Privacy Policy (hereinafter the ‘policy’) is published by Global Digital Média SA, SA, registered in the trade and companies register of Genève, under number CHE-373 082 366, with registered offices at Rue Muzy 9 - 1207 Genève – Suisse, represented by its current chairman.
This Privacy Policy seeks to regulate the collection and use of personal data processed during registration on the Web Sites published by our company, the management & setting of Cookies as well as the rights of consumers.
1. Personal Data
The personal data likely to be collected during registration on the Web Site is intended for the company, the controller. This collection allows the creation of an account by the Member, prior to use of the Website and the possible subscription to a Membership. In the event where the Member refuses to fill in the information, they cannot then use the Web Site or optionally, subscribe to a membership.
The collected data is only intended for the company’s own internal use. Only the person acting under the company’s authority and on their instructions can access it.
Exceptionally, banking data is shared to service providers in charge of the management and collection of memberships. The Member expressly consents that his above-mentioned banking data be shared to said service providers and in the sole purpose specified above.
By another exception, the personal data collected during the registration process on the Web Site is susceptible to be disclosed to business partners only after the Member’s or Subscriber’s express consent and in order to facilitate their registration to additional Services.
This data shall be kept only for a period strictly related to the purpose of processing and at most two years from the Member’s last visit on the Web Site.
It is intended to be used to offer Members meetups that match their personality. Except for the Member’s email address which is mandatory data for registration, the Member has no obligation to provide further personal data, without effect on the contract.
It is strictly forbidden to retrieve, use or transmit personal data appearing on the Web Site to third parties, whatever the purpose.
It is also strictly forbidden to make contact in any way whatsoever or to send ‘junk mail’, or ‘spam’ mailings to current or previous Subscribers.
In accordance with the legal and regulatory provisions in effect on data protection, the Member has a right of access, correction, deletion and restriction of the personal data concerning them. The Member has a right to opposition, for legitimate reasons, to the processing of their personal data.
Further, the Member has the right to withdraw consent for processing based exclusively on their consent.
In addition, the Member has the right to share to the company their instructions on the fate of their data after his/her death.
Finally, the Member has the option to request their data be exported to a third party when he/she has consented to the collection of this data or when this data was collected as part of the performance of a contract.
All these rights can be exercised with Global Digital Média SA, customer@cloverskypay.com, Rue Muzy 9 - 1207 Genève – Suisse by registered letter, attested by an acknowledgment of receipt.
Further, the Member has the option to lodge a complaint before a data protection authority.
In the event where the Member would have reason to believe that their personal data might have been used, they must notify the company without delay.
When using our Site, different types of cookies are deposited on our Site, by the company or third parties.
2.1 Cookies deposited by our Site
These cookies are linked to the operation of our Web Site. In the absence of some of these cookies, you might not be able to use our Site and all of its features correctly.
2.1.1 Authentication cookies
Authentication cookies allow members to reconnect more easily. This cookie is deleted if the member logs off the site and they will have to re-enter their credentials to reconnect. For the security of the personal data of our members, no password or personal identifiers are visible in this cookie.
2.1.2. Session cookies
Session cookies are cookies which permit access to the Members section of our Site after the member has been authenticated. These cookies are automatically deleted by the Member’s browser when the Member does not use the Site for more than an hour. These cookies can be first party or third party.
2.1.3. Advertising cookies
Advertising cookies allow us to display to our members targeted advertisements based on their age, gender, location, language etc. They also allow us to provide offers that may be of interest to our members according to their affinities and interests.
2.1.4. Visit Statistics Cookies
Visit Statistics Cookies allow us to count the number of pages displayed by our visitors and our members during their navigation on our Site.
2.1.5. Language Preference Cookies
Language preference cookies allow us to remember the language in which our members wish to browse our Site.
2.2 Cookies deposited by third parties
These cookies are implemented by a different area of our Web Site. We do not manage the Data Protection cookie policies of these third parties, who act on their own behalf. The personal information contained in these cookies is only accessible by these third parties. On this occasion, we do not share any personal data.
2.2.1. Sharing cookies (social networks)
Social networks (Facebook, Twitter) allow members to share data with other members of our Site. When you click on the share button, Facebook or Twitter will store a cookie on your device. This cookie allows, when you are logged in to your Facebook or Twitter account and at the same time browsing our Site, to link your account data on our Site to Facebook or Twitter.
2.2.2. Audience measurement cookies
The audience measurement cookies used on our Site are deposited by our partner, Google Analytics. They allow us to analyse the traffic and performance of our Site, particularly by examining the use of various components of our Site (pages viewed, navigation, etc.) to improve the interest and the usability of our site to offer the best service possible.
2.2.3. Unsubscription
We use the email address you provided to send you information about our products. You can unsubscribe and stop receiving emails at any moment by following the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.
This site is owned and operated by Global Digital Média SA, capitalised at 100 000 Fr. registered with the Registrar of Commerce and Companies of Genève bearing number CHE-373 082 366, headquartered in Rue Muzy 9 - 1207 Genève – Suisse.
Email address: customer@cloverskypay.com
Members can modify their alerts settings directly from their account, or choose to stop receiving them, by clicking on the corresponding link at the bottom of each email.
- Affiliate Program - Contact
Global Digital Média SA - Rue Muzy 9 - 1207 Genève – Suisse
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Home Employment Law What constitutes as a breach of trust and confidence?
What constitutes as a breach of trust and confidence?
Carol Gilmore , May 27, 2019 / 6603 0
Constructive dismissal is when an employee, instead of being formally dismissed by his employer, is rather forced to resign from his job due to a poor behaviour on the part of the employer. To pursue a claim for constructive dismissal, it is important that the employee demonstrates that:
There was a serious breach of contract committed by employer
The said breach was not accepted
The employee felt forced to resign due to the said breach
A constructive dismissal is considered to be committed when a serious breach of contract happens that forces the employee to resign due to a poor conduct by their employer. The employee is hence entitled to consider them being dismissed and the conduct of employer is called a repudiatory breach.
Here are some examples of a serious breach of contract which are commonly seen in organisations in the UK in the context of constructive dismissal:
A unilateral pay cut in the employee’s pay which includes fringe benefits and overtime. The employer may also delay payments unnecessarily or fail to pay the employee.
The employer makes changes in employee’s working hours, place of work or job duties
An arbitrary demotion to a lesser role without a valid justification
The employer creates situations where it is impossible to perform effectively
The employer fails to give a reasonable support to the employee to carry out his job duties without being bullied or harassed by colleagues
Forcing the employee to work in conditions where health and safety regulations are not in place
There is a breach of mutual trust and confidence as implied in the employment contract.
What is a serious breach of trust and confidence in context to constructive dismissal?
The term duty means that both employer and the employee must not conduct in a manner which is likely to destroy, or permanently damage, the relationship of trust and confidence between them, especially without a reasonable cause for the same. This is one of the most common breaches claimed by employees when filing a claim for constructive dismissal.
It is also important to understand, if the employee is involved in a breach of contract himself, even if the employer is unaware of the same, he cannot claim for a constructive dismissal.
For an employee, to make a claim for constructive dismissal, it is not enough to prove an unreasonable behaviour by the employer, it is important that they are able to demonstrate a breach of an ‘expressed’ term in their employment contract, such as trust and confidence. It is also important that the breach should be the reason why the employee left the organisation. It is suggested, that when any employee resigns from the job, they must make it clear that they regard themselves to be dismissed constructively.
Having said that, when filing for a constructive dismissal, the employer must be careful to not waive the breach. This often happens in case of long delays in resigning due to an employer’s breach. There must be no action that signifies acceptance of breach. A common example for the same is when an employee takes a long medical leave after the said breach and before resigning them claim for a constructive dismissal.
It is important to understand that it may not just be one incidence, which leads to a breach by your employer causing the employee to leave and make a tribunal claim for constructive dismissal. More often than not, it is a continuous pattern of incidents and actions which as a whole amount to a breach of agreement.
In such incidents, previous breaches, which may have been considered to be accepted by employees should not be treated as waived, or accepted, but also a part of continuous misconduct.
What is a last straw?
There are instances where the final incidence in the series of behaviour towards the employee is not very serious when taken as one single incident, but overall, it amounts to a repudiatory breach. When claiming for a constructive dismissal, this is often known as the “last straw”.
In UK, no win no fee Employment Law Solicitors can assist you to file constructive dismissal claim in employment tribunal. Consult your case with them and get legal assistance.
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Carter CoudrietFormer Staff
Reporting on the world's richest movers and shakers
Though California may boast more billionaires than any other U.S. state, Wyoming has the highest billionaires per capita. These are the 10 states with the largest number of the world's richest.
The world’s tech and finance capitals are the most popular landing spots for billionaires in the United States—and it’s not a close call.
California and New York are the top two U.S. states with the most billionaires, each claiming more than 100 billionaire residents. All told, there are 614 U.S. citizens on Forbes’ 2020 World’s Billionaires list; sorted by residency — including two dozen non-U.S. citizens — altogether 623 list members live in the U.S.
The top ten states with the largest number of billionaire residents are relatively spread out geographically: three are in the Northeast, three are in the South, three are in the West, and one—Illinois—is in the Midwest. Seven states don’t have any billionaires: Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota and Vermont.
Large states are naturally dominant; six of the ten most populous states are also top-10 billionaire locales. But Wyoming, with six billionaires and a national-low of 579,000 residents, sports the most billionaires per capita. One in every 96,460 Wyomingites is a billionaire.
Here are the states with the most billionaires; net worths are as of March 18, 2020.
CALIFORNIA | 165 BILLIONAIRES
COMBINED NET WORTH: $723.7 BILLION
RICHEST PERSON: LARRY ELLISON
The nation’s most populous state is also its most billionaire-heavy. It’s home to three of the nation’s five most popular metropolitan areas for list members: San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose.
NEW YORK | 118 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: MICHAEL BLOOMBERG
Almost half of New York’s billionaires come from the finance & investment sector, unsurprising for the state that houses the world’s two biggest stock exchanges. It’s also home to new billionaire Jay-Z, who celebrated New York City in 2009’s “Empire State of Mind.”
FLORIDA | 58 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: THOMAS PETERFFY
Donald Trump, while officially a Washington, D.C. resident, changed his non-White House address to Florida last fall, which should save him money on taxes. So did financier Carl Icahn.
TEXAS | 56 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: ALICE WALTON
There’s a reason it’s called Texas tea: 20 of the Lone Star State’s billionaires have fortunes rooted in oil, gas or pipelines. Richard Kinder, who chairs the nation’s largest pipeline company, is the state’s richest energy mogul.
(TIED) CONNECTICUT | 17 BILLIONAIRES
COMBINED NET WORTH: $66.3 BILLION
RICHEST PERSON: RAY DALIO
Similar to its westward neighbor, Connecticut is a hot-spot for finance & investment billionaires, with 10. Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, based in Westport, is the world’s biggest hedge fund.
(TIED) ILLINOIS | 17 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: KEN GRIFFIN
Illinois is one of two states with a billionaire governor. Hyatt hotels heir J.B. Pritzker beat an incumbent in 2018 to become the nation’s richest politician, wealthier than President Trump and West Virginia governor Jim Justice.
(TIED) MASSACHUSETTS | 17 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: ABIGAIL JOHNSON
Following Fidelity chairwoman Johnson as richest in Massachusetts is Robert Kraft, owner of the state’s highly successful NFL team, the New England Patriots. Kraft bought the franchise for $172 million in 1994; it’s now worth $4.1 billion.
(TIED) WASHINGTON | 12 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: JEFF BEZOS
Thanks largely to residents Bezos and Bill Gates, the Evergreen State leads the pack in net worth per billionaire. The planet’s two richest people pull up the average fortune for its three comma club members to $26.8 billion
(TIED) GEORGIA | 12 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: JIM KENNEDY
Fast food chain Chick-fil-A, based in Atlanta, has minted two billionaires, Bubba and Dan Cathy. Home Depot, also based in Atlanta, has similarly forged 10-digit fortunes for its cofounders, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. All four still live in the Peach State.
NEVADA | 11 BILLIONAIRES
RICHEST PERSON: SHELDON ADELSON
Adelson is one of Nevada’s three gambling billionaires, along with former spouses Steve Wynn and Elaine Wynn. A happier marriage: Reno residents Eren and Fatih Ozmen, who cofounded aerospace concern Sierra Nevada Corp.
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Carter Coudriet
I am a reporter on the Forbes wealth team, covering the world's richest people. I also work on Forbes' daily Alexa briefing. I'm a proud New Jersey native, Penn alumnus…
I am a reporter on the Forbes wealth team, covering the world's richest people. I also work on Forbes' daily Alexa briefing. I'm a proud New Jersey native, Penn alumnus and New York Jets fan. Follow me on Twitter @CarterCoudriet and email me tips at ccoudriet@forbes.com
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Brees sets NFL all-time TD mark as Saints crush Colts 34-7
Brett Martel, The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) " Drew Brees trotted along the sideline holding his helmet and a Hall of Fame-bound ball in his left hand while using his right hand to wave and blow kisses to an adoring Superdome crowd.
Another milestone, another memory, for an undersized and once underestimated player who has broken just about every significant record a quarterback can break " and doesn't look anywhere near done at age 40.
Brees became the NFL's all-time leader in touchdown passes, throwing for four scores to lead the New Orleans Saints to a 34-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts on Monday night.
'It was special, everything about the night,' Brees said. 'It just kind of makes your whole life and career flash before your eyes, because I never thought I'd have a chance to be part of something like this.'
The scoring strike that broke Peyton Manning's record of 539 career touchdown passes came in the third quarter, when Brees hit tight end Josh Hill for a 5-yard score. Brees' next pass in the game was the 541st scoring toss of his career, a 28-yarder to reserve QB and utility player Taysom Hill that put the Saints up 34-0.
'He's done that to a lot of defenses," Colts coach Frank Reich said. "When he gets like that. I don't know that anybody can stop him.'
Now in his 19th season, the 6-foot Brees " a 2001 second-round draft choice " came into the game already holding NFL records for completions with 6,792 and yards passing with 72,577. He built on those numbers while also setting a record for completion percentage in a game. He completed 29 of 30 passes " 96.7% " for 307 yards before being relieved by Teddy Bridgewater in the fourth quarter. That broke the mark Philip Rivers had held since completing 28 of 29 (96.6%) against Arizona last season.
'He had a hot hand, obviously,' Saints coach Sean Payton said. "Guys were making plays, but that's awfully difficult to do.'
The victory kept the Saints (11-3), who'd already won the NFC South, in the running with Seattle (11-3), San Francisco (11-3) and Green Bay (11-3) for one of the top two seeds in the NFC playoffs.
'There's a lot at stake right now relative to these games when you look at the top of the NFC,' Payton said. "It's about winning and winning and winning and trying to give yourself the best chance in the postseason.'
The Colts (6-8) were eliminated from playoff contention after losing their fourth straight and sixth out of seven.
They were also left struggled to explain their lack of competitiveness in a game they needed to win.
"I wish I knew all the answers," Colts linebacker Darius Leonard said. 'I hate losing more than I love winning.'
Jacoby Brissett struggled at times with accuracy and finished 18 of 34 for 165 yards against a Saints defense looking for redemption after allowing 48 points in a loss to the 49ers a week earlier.
Meanwhile, Colts defenders had no answer for Michael Thomas, who caught 12 passes for 128 yards, including a 15-yard touchdown. Thomas' eighth game this season with at least 10 catches give him 133 for the season, which is also the fourth-highest single-season total in NFL history.
With four more catches, Thomas will pass Antonio Brown and Julio Jones for second most in a season. He needs 11 to eclipse Marvin Harrison's record of 143 from 2002.
Tre'Quan Smith caught a 21-yard touchdown pass for New Orleans.
Jordan Wilkins scored the Colts' lone TD on a 1-yard run in the fourth quarter.
FLUID RECORD
While Brees holds the career touchdown pass record for now, the Patriots' Tom Brady is only three behind at 538.
'It's a fluid record,' Payton said. 'There's still another quarterback in New England, so that will go back and forth as long as those two are playing.'
The next-closest active player is Rivers with 395.
Brees wasn't about to underestimate Brady's ability to keep pace.
'He's such a stud. He's got a lot of rings and records,' Brees said of Brady. 'He's awesome.'
HAILING HILL
Brees said the ball with which he threw his record-breaking TD would go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and also sounded particularly pleased by who caught it.
'I love the fact it was Josh Hill," Brees said, noting that Hill made the team as an undrafted rookie in 2013 and has been reliable both on offense and special teams ever since.
'The epitome of a great teammate, kind of an unsung hero,' Brees said. 'He's done an unbelievable job. I have so much trust and confidence in him.'
Colts: Reserve safety Rolan Milligan left the game with a foot injury in the first half. Cornerback Quincy Wilson left with a shoulder injury.
Saints: Right guard Larry Warford needed help to the sideline with a left knee injury early in the third quarter. Defensive back C.J. Gardner Johnson left the game with a concussion in the fourth quarter.
Colts: Host Carolina on Sunday.
Saints: Visit Tennessee on Sunday.
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GENOCIDEWATCH
Genocide Watch exists to predict, prevent, stop, and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder. Our purpose is to build an international movement to prevent and stop genocide.
Ten Stages
About Genocide
John L. Allen Jr. | Crux
Pope’s meeting with Suu Kyi likely not all sweetness and light
State Counsellor and Union Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, left, is welcomed by Prefect of the Pontifical Household, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, upon her arrival at the Vatican for a private audience with Pope Francis, Thursday, May 4, 2017. (Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini.)
In many ways, pro-democracy and human rights campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar seems a natural Pope Francis favorite. When the two met in the Vatican on Thursday morning, however, it's likely the pontiff may have had some challenging things to say to his guest about the Rohingya, an oppressed Muslim minority who have become a special focus of his concern.
At first blush, Aung San Suu Kyi seems a natural Pope Francis favorite. She represents a small and isolated southeast Asian nation, appealing to the pope of the peripheries. She’s a woman in a position of power, and she’s spent her career, much of it under house arrest, battling for human rights and democracy against military rule.
The two met in October 2013, when Suu Kyi was finally able to pick up an honorary citizenship of Rome she’d been awarded in 1994, after which a Vatican spokesman described “a great feeling of harmony and accord” between Francis and his Burmese guest. Two years later, Francis named the first-ever cardinal from Myanmar, Charles Bo, in a clear sign of respect and affection for the country.
Moreover, relations between the Vatican and Myanmar are warming, with the country’s parliament having approved a measure in March to make Myanmar the 183rd nation to enjoy diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
So why did the second meeting of these two global icons on Thursday, as opposed to the first, feel as much like a collision as a love-fest?
Suu Kyi is in Rome to participate in a conference Thursday afternoon organized by the Italian parliament on gender equality and sustainable development, and also met on Wednesday with Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, who praised her “personal, peaceful commitment to the cause of democracy and human rights.” Also on Thursday, she was to meet Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
The highlight of her schedule, however, was the tête-à-tête with Francis.
There were the usual pleasantries surrounding the encounter, as both figures were smiling and apparently relaxed. Francis presented her with a medallion depicting a desert blooming, illustrating a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, but also a sign of hope for the country.
Yet although no one quite said so out loud, there’s every reason to believe that when Francis and Suu Kyi were behind closed doors, they did more than make nice.
The reason is that while Pope Francis does indeed love an underdog, in the context of Myanmar these days, that’s no longer Suu Kyi, who now serves as State Counsellor, the de facto head of government, but rather an oppressed group of Muslims in the country’s western Rakhine state known as the Rohingya, whose plight has become a special focus of Francis’s concern.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya, perhaps as many as 100,000, are believed to have fled Myanmar, most crossing by land into Bangladesh but others taking boats in an effort to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. In general, those countries don’t feel capable of handling an influx of refugees, and their reception often has been harsh.
Yet the Rohingya continue to flee, escaping what a UN report in February described as a possible “genocide” and set of “crimes against humanity” in Myanmar, where the Rohingya are officially categorized as Bengali “interlopers” despite the fact they’ve lived in Rakhine for generations. They’re subject to systematic discrimination and violence, what the UN also called a “campaign of terror,” and enjoy no citizenship rights - in effect, they’re stateless.
Pope Francis first spoke out on the fate of the Rohingya in August 2015, during a session with youth in Rome.
“Let’s think of those brothers of ours of the Rohingya,” he said. “They were chased from one country and from another and from another. When they arrived at a port or a beach, they gave them a bit of water or a bit to eat and were then chased out to the sea.
“This is a conflict that has not resolved, and this is war, this is called violence, this is called killing!” he said.
One month later, he brought the Rohingya up again in an interview with Portuguese radio.
“Further away from Europe there is another phenomenon which hurt me deeply: the Rohingya, who are expelled from their country, get into boats and leave,” he said.
“They reach a port or a beach, and they are fed and given water and then sent out to sea again, and not taken in. There is a lack of capacity for welcoming humanity.”
Francis came at the subject again in February, saying on the Church’s International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking that “they have been suffering, they are being tortured and killed, simply because they uphold their Muslim faith.
“I would like to pray today with you in a special way for our brothers and sisters Rohingya,” the pontiff said.
“They are driven out of Myanmar, going from one place to another because they’re not wanted. They’re good people, peaceful! They aren’t Christians, they’re good [people]. They’re brothers and sisters of ours,” he said.
The remarks were spontaneous, suggesting the issue is close to Francis’s heart.
For his part, Bo has been equally outspoken, defining the persecution of the Rohingyas as “an appalling scar on the conscience of my country.” He has described them as “among the most marginalized, dehumanized and persecuted people in the world. They are treated worse than animals.”
Addressing the UK parliament in London in May 25, 2016, Bo said no human being deserves to be treated the way the Rohingyas are.
“Without [a solution], the prospects for genuine peace and true freedom for my country will be denied, for no one can sleep easy at night knowing how one particular group of people are dying simply due to their race and religion.”
Bo’s line, and that of the tiny Catholic community in Myanmar (less than one percent of the population of 55 million), stands in stark contrast to hardline elements of the majority Buddhist tradition. Buddhist monks often join protest rallies at ports in Myanmar, for instance, objecting to efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to the Rohingya.
To date, Suu Kyi has either maintained silence or defended the status quo. She recently ruled out Myanmar cooperating with a UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation, saying it’s not “in keeping with what is actually happening on the ground.”
She’s also denied that ethnic cleansing is taking place, saying “it’s a matter of different sides of the divide, and this divide we are trying to close up.”
Granted, many observers believe Suu Kyi has to walk a fine line given the massive influence the military still wields in Myanmar. Nevertheless, some of the shine seems to have come off her reputation, as several human rights campaigners who used to spend their time campaigning for her release are now attacking her record.
As appalling as the situation with the Rohingya is, it’s not the only issue on which Francis may have had some challenging things to say.
Earlier this year, Myanmar’s military confirmed they had arrested two Protestant clergy and charged them with aiding rebels in the eastern Shan State, after long denying they were in custody. The two were accused of serving as “informers and spreading false news on behalf of the armed insurgents.”
By “spreading false news,” what a military spokesman meant is that the two clergymen had helped journalists cover the military’s bombing of a Catholic church and school in Shan State in late November 2016.
In recent years, organizations of Buddhist radical monks, such as one called “Ma Ba Tha,” have increased their campaigns against religious minorities and successfully helped introduce four laws for the “Protection of Race and Religion,” building almost insurmountable hurdles to conversions and religiously mixed marriages.
Christians in Myanmar often suffer a double whammy. First, because they tend to be concentrated among ethnic minorities, especially the Kachin, they’re targeted for racial reasons. Second, because Christians are often (mis)identified with the West, they’re also seen by radical Buddhist groups as the cultural and political “other.”
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recently issued a report on Christian persecution in Myanmar, concluding that Christians face discrimination in employment, forced conversions, violence and desecration of churches and Christian communities.
“Senior leaders in Burma’s government need to publicly acknowledge and remedy the fact that the elevation of Buddhism as the de facto state religion and resulting policies and practices have violated the rights of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities,” the report concluded.
More than 60 Christian churches have been destroyed in Myanmar’s Kachin state, where the country’s Christian population is concentrated, since a long-standing cease-fire broke down in 2011, according to the British-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
For now, we don’t know exactly what cards Francis may have put on the table during his encounter with Suu Kyi. During a news conference on his return flight from Egypt to Rome on April 28, Francis insisted that when he meets a political leader, what transpires stays between them.
“Generally, when I meet with a head of state for a private conversation, it remains private,” he said.
Yet despite that reserve, given the context of what’s happening in Myanmar these days, it’s not difficult to imagine that whatever went on Thursday, it wasn’t entirely sweetness and light.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________(c) 2017 Crux
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Horace Grant fumes at Michael Jordan's 'lie' in 'The Last Dance' about him being a 'snitch'
Steve Gardner / USA TODAY
Calling out what he felt were several cinematic liberties taken in "The Last Dance," former Chicago Bulls power forward Horace Grant saved his strongest criticism for the documentary's central figure, Michael Jordan.
Appearing on ESPN 1000 radio in Chicago, Grant called Jordan's allegation that he was the one who leaked locker room details to journalist Sam Smith "a downright, outright, completely lie."
Grant acknowledged a friendship with Smith, who wrote the best-selling book, "The Jordan Rules." However, he denied being one of Smith's inside sources.
"I would never put anything personal out there," Grant said. "My point is, he said that I was the snitch, but yet and still after 35 years he brings up his rookie year going into one of his teammate's rooms and seeing coke, and weed and women.
"My point is: Why the hell did he want to bring that up? What's that got to do with anything? I mean, if you want to call somebody a snitch, that's a damn snitch right there."
Grant was a major part of the Bulls teams that won three consecutive NBA titles from 1991-1993 before he left Chicago as a free agent in 1994 to sign with the Orlando Magic.
He wasn't the only former teammate to have issues with how they were portrayed in "The Last Dance." For example, Grant says Jordan didn't always get away with bullying and harassing other team members.
"It wasn't real -- because a lot of things [Jordan] said to some of his teammates, that his teammates went back at him. But all of that was kind of edited out of the documentary, if you want to call it a documentary," Grant said.
He said Jordan's involvement in the production of the 10-part series calls the objectivity of director Jason Hehir into question.
"When that so-called documentary is about one person, basically, and he has the last word on what's going to be put out there ... it's not a documentary," Grant said.
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Another rolling rally for Confederate flag
The number of pro-Confederate flag rallies is increasing in the Tampa Bay area.
For at least the third time in a week, grassroots groups cited "southern pride" as they paraded the Confederate flag from Plant City to Lakeland.
"This is a southern heritage; this isn't hate," said Miranda McSorley. "I am going to show my support for it. I believe it in 110 percent, so does she, so does she, and apparently so do all these other people here."
Before they set sail down Route 92, about a hundred gathered at a Walmart, partly to protest Walmart after they stopped selling the Confederate flag when nine Americans in Charleston were killed in a church.
Several insisted the flag can heal, and hoisted it next to an American flag.
"It is USA and freedom," said Junior Decker. "People just don't get the point."
More similar rallies are planned for this weekend, while others were held last week in Brandon.
The NAACP says the developments are deeply concerning and that they are considering their options for a response.
"Lately, everyone said we have come so far," said the Vice President of the Hillsborough County NAACP Natasha Goodley. "I think all of this shows that we still have such a long way to go in this country."
The NAACP said those who fly the flag haven't done nearly enough to distance themselves from the Charleston shooting or other hate crimes.
"I would say I am sorry for what they did in the past," said McSorley. "We are the future. Why should we be punished for what they did?"
The bid to fly the flag was briefly interrupted by Walmart security who asked them, and FOX 13, to leave private property.
In the end, they say, nothing can stop them from making their point.
"I have plenty, plenty of black friends," said McSorley. "I actually have black family, I am not a racist. It is southern heritage to me."
Rallies are planned for this weekend in Plant City, which they expect to be much larger.
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Chelsea O'Donnell Reveals in First TV Interview: I Don't Love Rosie
(INSIDE EDITION) - Chelsea O'Donnell says she doesn't love her adopted mom, Rosie O'Donnell.
In her first TV interview since she moved out of the comedian's home, the 18-year-old tells INSIDE EDITION: "I care about her and I hope she's doing well. But love is a big word and I wouldn't really use that."
The teen, who was adopted by the comedian and her then-wife Kelli Carpenter as a baby in 1997, was days from her 18th birthday when she was reported missing from Rosie's New York home in August.
Rosie says Chelsea ran away from home, but Chelsea says that Rosie kicked her out.
"She got upset with me because I wouldn't talk to her," she says in the interview, which will air in full on Monday. "And said she was getting all that stuff at work and didn't need it at home and to take my dog and 'have a nice life.'"
Chelsea was found at a friend's house in New Jersey but left Rosie's home again the day she turned 18. This time, she says, it's for good.
"I miss the rest of my family a lot but I think there is some much-needed space between me and Rosie. It's been nice having that," she says.
Chelsea is now living with friends. She says she hopes to finish high school and go on to college - but says she doesn't think she'll ever forgive Rosie for kicking her out or saying she had mental health issues.
"I'm not mentally ill," Chelsea tells IE. "I'm in a good place in my life… Yeah I have anxiety and depression but I'm not a crazy person."
INSIDE EDITION contacted Rosie O'Donnell but she had no comment.
Tune in to INSIDE EDITION on Monday for more of Chelsea's interview, and to find out what happened when she met her birth mother for the first time in August.
For more stories and video from Inside Edition check them out online, or on FOX 29, weeknights at 6:30 p.m.
Post Malone donates 10K of his sold-out Crocs to hospital workers battling pandemic
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Price defends cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid
BRANCHBURG, N.J. (AP) - Cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid will give states the freedom to tailor the program to suit their needs, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Sunday, as he defended a narrowly passed House bill that aims to undo parts of the health care law enacted by the previous administration.
The bill's passage buoyed President Donald Trump, but the measure appeared headed for an overhaul in the Senate. Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, said the House bill is unlikely to be the version that ultimately clears the Senate and ends up in front of the president.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican whose vote will be critical in getting a bill to Trump's desk, voiced concerns about potential higher costs for older people and those with pre-existing conditions. She said the House bill was difficult to assess overall because it passed without an updated analysis by the Congressional Budget Office on how the measure would affect health care costs and coverage. The CBO concluded after reviewing an earlier version of the House bill that an estimated 24 million consumers would lose coverage over 10 years.
Collins said she expected the Senate would come up with a "whole new fresh approach" to replacing the Affordable Care Act, enacted under President Barack Obama.
"The House bill is not going to come before us," she said. "The Senate is starting from scratch. We're going to draft our bill, and I'm convinced we will take the time to do it right."
CBO's analysis highlighted an $880 billion cut to Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor and disabled, which Price sought to cast as a way to give states more leeway to experiment with the program. The Obama-era law expanded Medicaid with extra payments to 31 states to cover more people. The House bill halts the expansion, in addition to cutting federal spending on the program.
But Price insisted Sunday, "There are no cuts to the Medicaid program," adding that resources were being apportioned "in a way that allows states greater flexibility."
Price said the changes will make sure that people who rely on Medicaid get the care and coverage that they need.
The House bill, passed 217-213, would end the health care law's fines on people who don't buy policies and erase its taxes on health industry businesses and higher-earning people. It would dilute consumer-friendly insurance coverage requirements, like prohibiting higher premiums for customers with pre-existing medical conditions. The measure would also water down the subsidies that help consumers afford health insurance.
Major medical and other organizations, including the American Medical Association, oppose the bill.
Trump celebrated its passage with House Republicans in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, an unusual move following passage of a bill by one House of Congress.
On Sunday, he urged Republican senators to not fail the American people.
"Republican Senators will not let the American people down!" Trump tweeted. "ObamaCare premiums and deductibles are way up - it was a lie and it is dead!"
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he expected the Senate will improve the House bill, which represents the culmination of seven years of promises by Republicans to repeal and replace what's become known as "Obamacare." Ryan said the House vote was one part of a "multistage process."
"We think we need to do even more support for people who are older," he acknowledged. "The Senate will complete the job."
Price commented on CNN's "State of the Union." Collins and Ryan appeared on ABC's "This Week" and Mulvaney appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Associated Press writer Hope Yen in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap
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GM averts strike in Brazil by delaying layoffs
General Motors Co averted a looming strike in Brazil by delaying the layoff of as many as 750 workers until the end of the year and vowing to invest about 500 million reais ($246 million) at its Sao Jose dos Campos facility.
The accord, reached late on Saturday with leaders of the Sao Jose dos Campos' metalworkers union delays GM's politically sensitive efforts to shut down what it calls an uncompetitive assembly line in that city.
The Sindimetal-SJC union said on its website that the workers are members of the production line for the Classic model. Spokespeople at GM were not immediately available to comment.
Since last year, GM has faced pressure from President Dilma Rousseff to retain workers in exchange for tax breaks that helped lift sales in the world's fourth-largest car market to a record high last year.
Still, auto production in Brazil's auto industry fell for the first time in a decade and productivity plunged to a six-year low, as rising wages, transportation bottlenecks and rigid labor laws eroded the competitiveness of local factories.
GM's standoff with the union is one of the highest-profile labor conflicts in Brazil, where a tight job market has forced companies to concede steep wage increases. Unemployment has fallen to record lows despite two years of disappointing economic growth, helping to shore up the popularity of President Rousseff and her leftist Worker's Party.
GM's complex in Sao Jose dos Campos, near the city of Sao Paulo, produces the Chevrolet Classic at the assembly line in question, as well as the Blazer, S10 pickup, engines and transmissions on other lines, employing more than 7,000 workers.
Workers will vote the accord on Monday, the union said.
(Reporting by Brad Haynes and Guillermo Parra-Bernal; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
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Last Update November 20, 2014
Johnson takes on Watkins Glen in 6-hour Rolex race
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (AP) — Jimmie Johnson has seven career starts in the Daytona Prototype division of the Grand-Am Rolex Series, all at Daytona International Speedway. That's about to change.
Always eager for seat time on a road course, Johnson is splitting time this weekend between the Sahlen's Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International on Saturday and the Sprint Cup race on Sunday at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania.
"It's going to be a bit of a challenge time-wise, but I'm very excited to have this opportunity, so hopefully it all works out," said Johnson, who will co-drive the No. 99 with Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty for Gainsco/Bob Stallings Racing. "The big thing is the timing of it. There's a good chance I'll only have 10 minutes of practice in that thing before I get in it and have to race it."
Johnson also co-drove for Stallings at the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona in each of the past three years. He finished second there with Gurney, Fogarty and Jimmy Vasser in 2008.
"I'm very excited that we were able to make this happen," Johnson said. "I think most people know how much I want to win on a road course and also in a Grand-Am car. It would be pretty cool if we could pull it off."
Despite capturing a record four straight Sprint Cup championships, Johnson has yet to win a Cup race on a road course in 16 tries. It's a gap in his resume that he'd dearly like to fill, and it's a big reason he did double duty at Watkins Glen two years ago, also competing in the Nationwide race.
"I think that it bothers him," said Jeff Gordon, Johnson's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports and winner of a NASCAR-record nine road races. "I think he's really worked hard at it over the years and it's that one (thing) that's eluded him. I think he feels like he can probably win just about anywhere. There's a couple of tracks maybe that they're not as good at, but it's just like Bristol was a track on their list and they went there and won that race (in March)."
Johnson has raced 11 times at Watkins Glen International — eight in Cup and three in Nationwide — but never traversed the famed "boot" section of the 3.4-mile circuit used by the IndyCar Series. The shorter 2.45-mile NASCAR layout does not include it.
That was part of the appeal of making the commitment to the Grand-Am race.
"I've always wanted to run the boot," said Johnson, who won the pole for last August's Cup race at Watkins Glen but finished 12th. "I need to get in the car and make some laps. Hopefully, there won't be any weather issues."
The weekend promises to be hectic. Johnson arrived at Watkins Glen early Friday morning and turned five laps in about 15 minutes before rushing back to Pocono for afternoon Cup practice.
"I talked to Jimmie briefly about it when he told me he was doing it," Gordon said. "I was a little surprised that he was going to do that on a Saturday. It's pretty ambitious, no practice or anything, just to come and jump in the car. I think it's just his desire to want to run a car that drives like that at Watkins Glen."
Johnson is entering a long-standing rivalry between Bob Stallings Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates that's simmering again. On Monday at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, Fogarty slammed the No. 1 BMW Riley of Ganassi teammates Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas on the first turn of the race. The Ganassi car, piloted by Rojas, was heavily damaged and eventually forced out of the race, and the series points leaders finished last.
The teams also clashed twice in the 2007 season finale at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah. Fogarty slammed into Pruett while making a pass and Pruett returned the favor later in the race with Gurney driving the No. 99. But the Stallings team finished ahead and won its first Rolex championship.
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Posted on November 21, 2010 August 2, 2013 by Frederick
Best 5 University Promo Videos
Update (July 24, 2012): This post has consistently remained one of the top visited posts on this site. While I haven’t removed anything from the selection below, Columbia moved their video to YouTube, so I’ve updated the embedded player to reflect that. I also wanted to disclose that I am now a content undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, which is why I’ve added a second Penn video to the Most Inspiring section. I know — I cheated. It’s 6 videos now.
I’ve been watching a lot of promotional videos for universities, generally published by their admissions offices to attract students, and some really stood out. Many are quite long, but they’re definitely worth watching in full.
Most Awesome: “That’s Why I Chose Yale“
The opening might be boring and conventional, but watch past the first minute — a pleasant surprise awaits.
Beautiful cinematography, great music… Yale’s video is a true piece of art, all the more so because it was produced by undergraduates at the university.
Most Inspiring: “True Learning” and “Making History: The Campaign for Penn“
Penn’s 2009 admissions video starts off serenely, and soon crescendos into a deeply moving profile of the students’ lives. The scenery is beautiful, and the music is suited.
The University of Pennsylvania’s video is filled with a sense of purpose, of motivation and of inspiration.
July 24, 2012 update: here’s a fundraising video from Penn. I’m sure it would do a great job at attracting applicants, too. With its exciting music, and faster-paced narration, this new video, too, deserves the title of “Most Inspiring” — if anything, this video is even more engaging than “True Learning” above.
Most Elegant: “Places like Harvard“
This is one of the most beautiful promotional videos I’ve ever watched. Harvard did a splendid job of presenting all the awe-inspiring statistics about the school in a way that is both simplistic and informative. On YouTube, Harvard has combined all its videos into one long video, but the specific segment I am referring to starts at 13:50.
Honestly, though, Harvard doesn’t need advertising.
Most Eloquent: “Columbia, An Introduction“
Although Columbia’s video is heavily dominated by interviews and speaking, in stark contrast to the dynamic singing of Yale’s student-produced video, and even though it doesn’t carry the same wow factor of Harvard’s video, the words spoken in this video are the most moving.
Columbia’s video seems very genuine. Moreover, in the context of Columbia’s status as a world-class Ivy League university, its promo video, juxtaposed with the videos of Harvard and Yale, is unpretentious.
Most Relaxed: “Discover Stanford“
It’s probably a testament to the West Coast lifestyle. Stanford’s video made university seem fun and playful, rather than studious.
Update (August 2, 2013): The original (slightly outdated) “Discover Stanford” video that this post referred to has been replaced by Stanford with a new series of admissions videos.
UPenn’s older video, “There’s Nothing Stopping Our Students” is also an inspirational work of beauty. It does focus more on students’ admission experiences, rather than how great the university is. That’s worth appreciating.
CategoriesVideo Matters Tagsuniversity, US, videos
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TV this week 1 Comment
A Song for Jenny (BBC 1/HD | 9:00pm to 10:20pm | Sunday 5th July 2015)
One-off drama which tells the true story of Julie Nicholson’s response to her daughter Jenny’s death in the 7 July bombing at Edgware Road tube station, exploring the impact of violence on one woman and her family.
The Met: Policing London (BBC 1/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Monday 6th July 2015)
Documentary following the officers of Britain’s biggest and busiest police service as they deal with life, death, crime and its victims, all across the capital. Over 50 per cent of new Met officers are from outside London, and Yorkshireman Tom Hebblethwaite has his work cut out finding his way around. During his training he must achieve some vital goals, from making an arrest to learning to march. The streets of London are a challenge for even the most experienced police constables, and response officers Caroline Hay and Karl Davies are old hands at dealing with the ups and downs of policing the public in Camden, north London. While putting up with verbal abuse from angry buskers is part of the job, it’s protecting some of society’s more vulnerable individuals that makes Caroline reflect on why she joined the service. In east London, Detective Jason Weald is nearing retirement and must call on his years of experience to get to the bottom of the tragic death of a four-month-old baby.
Britain Beneath Your Feet (BBC 1/HD | 7:30pm to 8:30pm | Thursday 9th July 2015)
Dallas Campbell reveals a fascinating and secret world hidden below Britain. In this episode he explores how what goes on underground keeps our country on the move. He delves into the past to discover how a secret wartime pipeline is now delivering fuel to Heathrow Airport. Extraordinary computer graphics lay bare the underwater engineering genius that allowed the iconic Forth Rail Bridge to be built in the 19th century. Along the way Dallas meets some of the hidden army of workers that keep Britain running from underground, from the drivers of the largest tunnelling machines in the world to the engineers running a vast power station under a mountain in Wales. In one memorable scene, he helps dislodge a ‘fatberg’ that’s blocking one of London’s sewers. And he does some secret filming of badgers that are threatening the foundations of a primary school and helps to relocate the whole sett.
The Cycle Show (itv4 | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Thursday 9th July 2015)
The cycling magazine show with celebrity guests, cycling stars and features on all things bike related. Presented by Matt Barbet.
The Last Leg (Channel 4 /HD | 10:00pm to 11:05pm | Friday 10th July 2015)
The award-winning show returns for a sixth series of unique irreverent satire. Adam Hills and co-hosts Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker tear into the week’s main talking points, joined by a live studio audience and weekly celebrity guest.
All TV guide information taken from DigiGuide — www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=15119.
A Song for Jenny Britain Beneath Your Feet The Cycle Show The Last Leg The Met: Policing London
One Reply to “UK TV programmes to watch this week : 04/07/2015”
4 July 2015 at 9:07 am
I note that the Tour De France is missing from your list
02-Jul-2015: First cycle of the month!
Another warm day, more white Lycra!
OMG! Look at them lads in tight morphsuits! 10 views per day | posted on 18/02/2015
Follow Georseny on Instagram 10 views per day | posted on 11/01/2019
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Rosanna Fraire
San Angelo Standard-Times
SAN ANGELO — The San Angelo/Abilene National Weather Service is proposing changes to the current alert system and wants your input.
"Your NWS is proposing changes to make our alerts simpler and more useful," according to a news release.
The survey is available on surveymonkey.com.
The National Weather Service is proposing using plain language headlines and alerts to make reading simpler and more understanding.
For example, NWS uses three headline terms - "Watch", "Warning" and "Advisory", to let people know about hazardous events.
Watch: Life- or property-threatening event is possible
Warning: Life- or property-threatening event is happening or about to happen
Advisory: Less significant event is happening or about to happen and, if caution is not exercised, could lead to situations that threaten life and/or property
The proposed new system would have only two primary headline terms: "Watch" and "Warning."
"The "Advisory” headline would be replaced by a plain language headline," according to the survey.
Here is an example of how the headlines would change:
Current: Wind advisory remains in effect from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
Proposed: Gusty winds from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
The survey is open through Aug. 21, 2020.
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Galion Inquirer on Facebook
Galion Inquirer on Twitter
Posted on August 6, 2020 by Russell Kent
OHSAA cross country meet in Obetz cancelled
News, Sports, Top Stories
Staff report - galnews@aimmediamidwest.com
File photo | Galion Inquirer Galion’s annual cross country invitational, held each season in September, remains on the schedule. Whether it takes place is another question. One of the largest events in the state and easily the largest draw in this area, it annually draws thousands of runners and fans to Amann Reservoir Park. On Wednesday, the OHSAA cancelled a large meet in Obetz, Ohio. The 2020 Tiffin Carnival has already been cancelled this year.
COLUMBUS — With the health and safety of everyone involved as the top concern and due to the large size of the event, the Ohio High School Athletic Association Early Season Cross Country Invitational, scheduled for August 15 at Fortress Obetz and Memorial Park in Southeast Columbus, has been cancelled.
The OHSAA’s decision was made Wednesday.
Cross country events can still proceed around the state beginning August 24, as the sport of cross country has been designated as a low-contact sport by the governor’s office and the Ohio Department of Health.
The OHSAA currently recommends smaller cross country events be held.
Already, the Tiffin Carnival, which was scheduled Sept. 12, has been cancelled. Galion has been a participant in that race for years. It is one of the largest meets in Ohio.
Galion’s annual cross country invitational is still on the schedule. It is scheduled Sept. 19. Each year it brings thousands of runners and fans to Amann Reservoir Park each year.
Considering the ban in Ohio on large gathering and rules governing social distancing, as well as other concerns, it’s fate is certainly up in the air.
Bob Goldring, interim executive director of the OHSAA, talked about the decision to cancel the OHSAA race in Obetz.
“We are very disappointed that the event is cancelled and understand that there will be frustrations from our student-athletes, but we have to put safety first,” he said. “We are meticulously moving forward with reopening our seasons for competition and appreciate the guidance of the governor’s office and the Ohio Department of Health. We also appreciate the cooperation of Fortress Obetz and we look forward to conducting our state championships there November.”
Sparked by additional interest from many schools since the course is the new home of the OHSAA cross country state championships, the OHSAA began putting schools on the wait list in mid-July and adjusted the schedule, race formats and the number of runners in each race in the hopes of providing the opportunity to participate to more schools. A decision had not yet been made regarding spectators.
https://www.galioninquirer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2020/08/web1_web1_galion-xc-festival.jpgFile photo | Galion Inquirer Galion’s annual cross country invitational, held each season in September, remains on the schedule. Whether it takes place is another question. One of the largest events in the state and easily the largest draw in this area, it annually draws thousands of runners and fans to Amann Reservoir Park. On Wednesday, the OHSAA cancelled a large meet in Obetz, Ohio. The 2020 Tiffin Carnival has already been cancelled this year.
galnews@aimmediamidwest.com
Follow @GalionNews
Hi! A visitor to our site felt the following article might be of interest to you: OHSAA cross country meet in Obetz cancelled. Here is a link to that story: http://www.galioninquirer.com/news/56325/ohsaa-cross-country-meet-in-obetz-cancelled
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Arsenal FC / Chelsea FC / Soccer
Hazard’s Brilliance Powers Chelsea
The impact of Eden Hazard the last two years after the departure of Diego Costa is undeniable. This season, 21 goals and 15 assists in all competitions for a player heavily linked to Real Madrid in the transfer window. Hazard holds one more year on his deal, but the 28-year-old is looking for a new challenge and fulfilling a dream by joining the Spanish power.
Hazard stated in post game of Chelsea’s 4-1 shredding of Arsenal in the Europa League Final, “I have made my decision already, and now I’m waiting on both clubs. I think it is a goodbye, but in football, you never know.”
Hazard continued, “my dream was to play in the Premier League, and I have done that for one of the biggest clubs, so maybe now it is the time for a new challenge.”
The clubs have been far apart in their evaluations of the player. Chelsea’s evaluation over the past few months has been no lower than £100m for the star forward. Los Blancos have been reluctant to match the evaluation, but with Hazard’s intentions publicly made there is a good chance a deal will be struck somewhere in the middle.
The Europa Final played even in the first half with Arsenal having a slight edge in chance. Xhaka having the best opportunity for Arsenal in the first half as a blast went off the crossbar. Arsenal was also not awarded a penalty after Alexandre Lacazette hit the deck in Chelsea’s box after appearing to round Kepa Arrizabalaga. VAR did not overrule the referee decision, and the score remained 0-0 going into the halftime.
The second half possession remained close, but Chelsea exposed spaces between the midfield and the Gunners backline continuously and caused the Gunners hopes of making Champions League. Former Arsenal man Olivier Giroud headed in the first from a beautiful cross from Emerson Palmieri. The second goal came from Pedro running freely in the box and receiving a perfect setup from Hazard. Hazard made it 3-0 on a penalty shot after a foul of Giroud in the box.
Alex Iwobi scored Arsenal’s lone goal to cut the lead to two, but all hope was lost as again. Giroud and Hazard teamed up and the Belgian slotted home the Blues fourth goal and the final dagger.
Hazard’s performance again showed why most consider him one of the top six to eight players in the world. His departure with Chelsea’s transfer ban will likely cripple the club going into next season with little to no chance in Champions League. Arsenal will have to try to strengthen their side without the appeal of playing in Europe’s top flight league again next season.
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Home FACT Reviews Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lecarbot's Theatre of Nepturne in New France
Words Are Stones: Impressions of Sicily
Day Shift Werewolf
Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lecarbot's Theatre of Nepturne in New France
by Mandelbrot
Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France (Talon Books), a useful and amusing book filled with fascinating little-known facts. The colony at Port Royal was the only European settlement in North America north of Florida. It had consisted of seventy-nine male colonists until the previous winter, when scurvy reduced their number to forty-four, and several of those had died at the hands of the Natives to the south. Marc Lescarbot, the author of the pageant, was a lawyer and a literary man who later wrote the History of New France. The hardships of colonial life in 1606 did not trouble Lescarbot; he came quickly to love the land and the people he found there. His is a joyous account of the New World. Wasserman’s text contains many references to other scholars and not enough references to Lescarbot’s work, but there is enough here to whet one’s appetite for more. One of the translations, from 1927, renders the speech of a “triton,” identified in Lescarbot’s stage directions as a Gascoyne speaking in his own dialect, as if he were a character in one of W. H. Drummond’s “French Canadian” poems: “Look out, you don’ trusts too queek,/ De peoples wid long beards, all gray;/ For in dis game, dey know one treek,/ Dey trot one while, den race away.” Whether the “Indians’” lines were recited by Mi’kmaq warriors we are not told (“Receive, kind sir, with cheerfulness,/ This gift to you that I address!”). The Theatre of Neptune is to be remounted on November 14, 2006, on the original site of Port Royal in what is now Nova Scotia, regardless of the weather. Optative Theatrical Laboratories of Montreal, having detected that Lescarbot’s pageant “attempts to re-frame First Nations cultures into an exploitative Euro-centric social reality,” will be mounting counter-productions promoted by a graffiti-ized version of the illustration by Charles W. Jefferys (from Picture Gallery of Canadian History, 1942).
Geist 62 books
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Volunteer with Children in India and Nepal
Experience a cultural fusion when you volunteer in South Asia on critical childcare initiatives
Program Code: NPHE0447M
Given over 11,000,000 hours of primary education support
Home Programs Volunteer with Children in India and Nepal
Travel to the mystical lands of South Asia and discover the rich culture and traditions that inhabit both India and Nepal. Join a team of international volunteers and contribute to valuable long-term childcare projects designed to assist the disadvantaged children of both regions by helping them receive a better education and having their basic needs met.
Remote-Working Friendly
Reliable WIFI
Part-Time Options
Immerse yourself in the fascinating culture that both these regions offer, indulge in exotic cuisines and explore the breath-taking Himalayas and stunning Kerala beaches as you volunteer on critical childcare initiatives.
On this multi country project you will volunteer with children and adults, providing important assistance in care, supporting education and child development, while working in various care centres and local schools.
Following the 2015 Nepal Earthquake, our projects adjusted focus to provide disaster relief to those in need. In conjunction with our partners, trucks of supplies and family care packages were taken to some of the most affected areas. Now our projects are focused on initiatives within our local communities, who have needs around education and improving educational facilities.
In Nepal, you will be volunteering with children from poor and difficult backgrounds by working in a local care centre or children’s home, depending on your skills and local needs at the time. During this time, you will be staying with a local host family, giving you the opportunity to experience Nepalese traditions which have remained largely unchanged for centuries.
In India, you will be volunteering alongside local teachers supporting children but also work on specific education of adults in the Southern state of Kerala, famed for its tropical greenery and beautiful backwaters. You will spend the majority of your time volunteering at local schools, which supports low income families, or support other community based efforts with education where needed. Your support will help ensure that their basic needs are met, providing much needed educational assistance to the local teachers as well as making a valuable contribution to schools.
Please note travel between Nepal and India is not included, but please speak to your Country Expert who will be able to advise you on your options and costs involved.
Experience the vibrant cultures and traditions of Nepal and India; take part in local cooking lessons; explore the amazing local environments; indulge your inner adrenaline junkie in Nepal; explore the world’s tallest mountain range; relax on the gorgeous Kerala beaches; meet volunteers from all over the world; make a genuine contribution to the care of disadvantaged children members; learn new skills and feel safe in the knowledge that you will be making a serious and measurable impact in the communities of Kerala and Pokhara.
Location: Asia - India - Kerala - Nepal - Pokhara
Volunteer with Children Teaching
Select Add-Ons
Climate Offset Contribution
A two day orientation, including an introduction to the Nepali language and culture
Internal transportation - related to project work
Local cooking lessons
Project equipment
Follow GVI 's Facebook page for live updates straight from the field. Get an idea of the types of projects you might be involved in, meet our staff and participants, experience life on this GVI base, hear about free time activities, and learn about the local culture and environment.
Regional Director for Nepal and India
Introducing you to Cheryl. Cheryl is the Regional Director of GVI Nepal and India. Her journey with GVI began in 2011. Before this Cheryl had a history of teaching, although she fancied a change, which lead her to volunteer with GVI in Cape Town. After this she became a staff member and subsequently she stayed in Cape Town for the next four years.
Another role came up as Program Manager for Pokara, Nepal, which Cheryl took on before finally getting to where she is now.
Cherly has always possessed a love for travel. She has backpacked across Europe, working as a nanny. Her main highlight however has to be Peru. In fact it was her experience here that inspired her to volunteer in the first place.
Jill Walker
Deputy Director of Programs
Meet GVI’s Jill,also known by her rap name, Rainmaker, or her spiritual name, Field Whisperer. Her journey with GVI began back in 2007 as Thailand's Country Director, where she helped set up GVI’s first TEFL program!
Now she is based in Chaing Rai, Thailand. Jill's role involves providing support for all of our programs around the world. Working closing with each base, she looks to identify and manage any issues that occur so GVI are able to offer the best programs possible.
Paul Whitehouse
Say hi to Paul, the Program Manager at GVI’s Kerala hub in India. Paul is from the UK and came over to India last year. He originally came on a service learning program, however has since become the Program Manager. Paul has a background in experiential education and has previously managed operations of community development programs. They have been in a variety of countries, including: Nepal, Ghana and the UK. Paul’s passion lies with engaging with people in service learning activities so that they are able to get the most out of a experience while also giving back to a community. Lastly Paul is a freelance trainer. He enjoys capacity building and working with people from all walks of life. He is really excited to apply everything he has learnt to his time in India.
Jutten George
Meet Jutten. Heis originally from Kerala in India, where he currently works as a Program Coordinator at GVI’s hub there.
Jutten has been with GVI since 2010. He started his career as a translator and a Community Liaison. He really enjoys the work that he is involved in, as it helps him to empower and help the people in his community.
Kochi City Tour
If history interests you be sure to visit Kochi’s old city, known as Fort Kochi. Here you will find the Chinese fishing nets, which might have existed since the 14th century, St Francis church, the oldest European church on the Indian subcontinent and once the burial site of Vasco de Gama, the beautiful Santa Cruz Basilica, St. George’s Orthodox Christian Syrian Church, and the Paradesi Synagogue, a stronghold for the influential Jewish community of Cochin. You can also choose to simply strong along the beach promenade and by a snack at nearby vendors. There are also plenty of Hindu and Jain temples located nearby if you would like to know more about these traditions.
White Water River Rafting and Kayaking
As a mountainous area abundant in water, white water rafting, kayaking, canoeing, and tubing are popular tourist activities throughout Kerala, and Kochi is no exception. Weekend tours at nearby lake and river spots can be booked in Kochi.
About one hour from central Kochi the waterfall of Areekkal is an ideal weekend spot. Situated in the lush surrounds of a rubber plantation a visit makes for a refreshing afternoon. The much larger Athirappilly waterfall is located two hours from Kochi. It is famed for its scenic beauty and is popular among Bollywood filmmakers. Many wildlife species can also be spotted here. The shallow Vazhachal Falls are located close to Athirappilly. Cheeyappara Falls are also located two hours from Kochi and can be spotted when travelling to Eravikulam National Park via the town of Munnar.
The Sahyadri mountain range, also known as the Western Ghats, stretch along India’s western coast and feature a stunning biodiversity, including numerous endangered species. The large area is home to many National Parks. From Kochi, one of the nearest is Eravikulam, which entails a five hour trip. The park is famous as the location of Anamudi, the highest mountain in the Western Ghats mountain range, named for its similarity to an elephant’s head. The park is famous as a safe haven for a specific threatened Indian deer species. You can also spot other famous Indian species like leopards, lion-tailed macaques, and Indian wild dogs. The nearby town of Munnar is surrounded by famously verdant tea farms hills. A little further from Kochi, about six hours, is Parambikulam Tiger Reserve. The park is known for its leading edge ecotourism activities and for the protection of indigenous peoples living within its borders. Others parks in the area include Periyar National Park and Anamalai Tiger Reserve. Guided safari tours can usually be booked at the park gate.
Kochi is situated on the Malabar Coast, known for its tropical climate and beaches stretching into the warm Arabian sea. Possibly the most famous beach destination in Kochi is Cherai beach. It features thatch umbrellas, walkways, and dolphins are commonly sighted here. Andhakaranazhi beach is also popular. A three hour trip from Kochi, down the western coast of the Indian subcontinent, will take you to Kollam, home to one of the most famously beautiful beaches in India, Mahatma Gandhi beach. Journey South for another hour and reach the beach resort town of Varkala. The area is famous for its red cliffs adjacent to Papanasam Beach. Many tourists love to stroll the beach promenade and shop at the little street food stalls and boutiques. Many also visit the mineral spring and participate in relaxing yoga and meditation sessions close to the beachfront. Further along the coast, about an hour from Varkala, you can also find Kovalam, a town also known for its picturesque beach overlooked by a classic white and red striped lighthouse. Although not traditionally popular surfing, divining, and snorkeling are gaining popularity.
Luxury Houseboat Tours
The Keralan backwaters are the province’s main attraction. They are a series of lagoons, lakes, canals, and other bodies of water along the western coast of Southern India. The area is home to key wetland ecosystems sheltering fragile species such as otters, turtles, and kingfishers. Keralan houseboats are known as kettuvallams, and feature thatched roofs and sometimes walls. They were used to transport grain and other goods, but these days are converted into living areas for tourists. Many have staff on board to assist with cleaning and tidying duties as well as a chef to prepare traditional Keralan food. There are many houseboat tours that leave from and can be booked in Kochi and travel via the lagoons to the popular Keralan backwaters destination of Alappuzha.
Further Travel
There are plenty of destinations to visit throughout India either before or after your volunteer or intern program. There are, of course, the popular UNESCO protected sites of the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort in Delhi, and the Elephanta Caves in Mumbai. You can also visit the city of Amritsar to view the Golden Temple and learn about the Sikh religion or make the trip to Varanasi or Rishikesh, sites of religious significance to the Hindu community. You can also visit the so-called blue city of Jodhpur and the pink city of Jaipur. India has over 150 National Parks and there are many unique habitats to visit and species to spot along the way.
Unique to Kerala:
Thiruvathira: This festival is held either during December or January, depending on the movements of the moon and stars. It celebrates the birth of the god Shiva, in the Hindu tradition. The main customs of the festival are observed by women in the community. It features a specific dance known as thiruvathirakali performed only by women, seen as an embodiment of traditional feminine elegance.
Vishu: This festival is celebrated in April and is seen as New Year celebration in the Hindu tradition. A older family member, typically the mother, create shrines of auspicious items, usually yellow and gold items, to allow them to go into the New Year with good expectations. She lights lambs before the sun rises on the first day of the Hindu New Year and then wakes each family member to ensure that their first sight is one of joy and light.
Onam: This is possibly the most famous Keralan festival which is celebrated during August or September. It is a rice harvesting festival and celebrated with much fanfare including massive parades and boat races. In homes and business, Keralans create flower carpets, large, ornate patterns created using a range of fragrant flowers including marigolds, magnolias, jasmin, and hibiscus.
Other Festivals: Kerala is a multicultural city and the region honours many of the celebrations popular in other locations throughout India. Some of the popular Hindu celebrations include Diwali, Holi, and Navratri. With a high Christian population, Easter and Christmas, are also major festivals. Eid is also popular among the significant islamic population of Kerala. Although there are fewer attendees, significant dates in the Judaic, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh calendars are also honoured in their communities.
Kathakali Masks and Figurines: Kathakali is a symbol of Kerala and as such many of the souvenirs on offer are representations of this performance style. You can buy colorful masks and little figurines of the dancers in many locations throughout Kerala.
Coconut Crafts: The Kerala area is abundant in coconuts. Therefore it is no surprise that many of the local crafts are based on this major resource. You can purchase numerous homeware items that are both functional and beautifully made from coconut wood and fibres.
Pulpaya Grass Mats: Although popular throughout Indian, pulpaya grass mats are particularly popular in Kerala. Making them is an ancient tradition and they are possibly the original yoga mats. Grab one at the local market for your morning yoga practice.
Keralan Saree: The Keralan saree is a symbol of traditional elegance in India. Many of its unique features are lost on those who are not familiar with this style of dress. However, the traditional colours and pattern, of crisp white with a bold gold border, are universally recognisable. While in the province, be sure to try out the Keralan Saree.
In the West, yoga is most commonly associated with a specific physical exercise of holding certain postures. This is, however, a very particular type of yoga activity known as Hatha yoga, falling within the broader umbrella of yoga as a kind of psychological or spiritual practice. The term ‘yoga’ is interpreted in various ways by ancient texts. In general it is seen as the integration of the human body, mind, and spirit and alignment with divine will using discipline and thereby attaining enlightenment. Hatha yoga is practiced throughout India and there are plenty of ashrams, Hindu monasteries, and formal teaching organisations, throughout Kerala, where international visitors can learn Hatha yoga, as well as more about the overarching yoga philosophy. Meditation practices and areyuda medicine are also often taught at these facilities.
Mehndi or ‘Henna Tattoos’
Mehndi, temporary staining of the hands and feet in lace-like patterns, has been popular in South Asia for many centuries. Ancient Vedic texts refer to the use of the leaves of the henna plant and tumeric to create these designs. While it is most commonly applied during weddings, festivals, and other special events, there are many designers available year round to offer this beautifying service to international visitors.
Kathakali dance is one of the eight classical Indian dance forms. Its name derives from Sanskrit and can be loosely translated as ‘story art’ or ‘folktale performance’. It’s designation as a dance form is a bit of a misnomer because it includes not only specific choreography, but unique music, costumes, and acting styles. It is therefore rather a performance style akin to classical opera. Kathakali performances tell stories from Hindu epics, through elaborately dressed and painted male actors, dancers, and singers. More modern Kathakali groups have incorporated women into their performances. The specifics of this artform are detailed and complex ranging from the instruments used to the eye movements of the actors. The Kerala Kathakali Centre is located in Kochi and there will be plenty of opportunities for you to visit one or more of the performances.
Keralan Cuisine
Keralan dishes are typical of South Indian cuisine, featuring lighter, fresher dishes as well as plenty of coconut and seafood. It is also rumoured that southern cooks are more liberal with their use of chillies. A famous Keralan dish is a Sadya, a kind of mini buffet of about two dozen distinct dishes served, with rice, on a plantain leaf. Due to its Hindu heritage many Keralan dishes are vegetarian, and Sadya is no exception. This is however, only popular during celebrations. Everyday Keralan dishes include, dosas, a kind of light crispy pancake filled with vegetable curry, ethakka appam, fried bananas, and, of course, chai, sweet milky tea flavoured with spices. Some ethno-cultural groups like the Jewish and Syrian Christian community have their own specific cuisine. In your free time, feel free to book one of the many Keralan cuisine cooking classes available in the region.
This port town has been a centre of global trade for many centuries, known to European explorers since at least the early medieval ages. Its main trade was in spices and the region’s cuisine still reflects this penchant for flavour complexity. Due to it being a merchant hub, the city has known influences from all around the world including China, Middle Eastern territories, Portugal, Holland, and Britain. This has resulted in a very specific ‘kochiite’ culture. Languages and religions common to the city reflect this diversity. The language of Kerala, Malayalam is popularly spoken, but Hindu, a language more common in North central India is also spoken here. Religious traditions include common practices in the South of India such as Hinduism and Jainism, but specific communities also practice Islam, Judaism, Syrian Orthodox Christianity, and Catholicism. Visitors can learn about these historic influences by visiting the old town, but it should also be noted that Kochi is very much a modern Indian city, and is the economic hub of the Keralan province.
Kerala is one of the Southernmost provinces of Indian, known for its luxury houseboat tours through the region’s lush, tropical backwaters where wildlife like the Bengal tiger, leopard, sloth bear, and lion-tailed macaque can be spotted. It’s uniquely delectable cuisine, featuring lots of coconut, which grow abundantly in the region, and seafood, common in a coastal region, is also a major attraction. The region was popularised in the Western mind, by author Arundhati Roy, who grew up here, and set her Booker-Prize -winning novel, The God of Small Things, in Kerala.
The great diversity of the Indian subcontinent, and a perceived contrast to many Western norms, keeps international visitors coming back for more. India’s unique cultural milieu, featuring over 22 languages, seven major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, 25 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and distinct cooking traditions, make for a life-changing cultural experience, no matter which location in the region you choose to visit. Tourists also flock to its many breathtaking landscapes, including snow-capped mountain ranges, tropical evergreen forests, mangrove swamps, and grasslands, not only to spot endangered species like the Bengal tiger, the snow leopard, the Indian Rhinoceros, and Asiatic lion, but to experience adrenaline-fueled activities like white water rafting, waterfall rappelling, or paragliding.
Known internationally as the gateway to the Himalayas, the tallest mountain range in the world, the city of Pokhara is well-loved by hikers, paragliders, and kayakers and other adventure enthusiasts. Built around the picturesque Phewa Lake, surrounded by snowy mountain peaks, the city offers a unique mix of natural beauty and urban convenience. Our GVI base in Pokhara is situated in the lakeside district, lined with great eateries serving local Nepali cuisine and international fare as well as tiny stalls selling local crafts unique to the region, such as intricately patterned pashmina shawls and vibrantly coloured Buddhist thangka paintings. On a clear day spot the Annapurna range from our accommodation.
Our base in Pokhara is a homestay-style accommodation that gives participants the opportunity to gain first-hand insight into Nepali culture. You will be living in the homestay with participants from all over the world, allowing you to learn about their individual cultures as well. Most rooms are shared, with ensuite bathrooms.
The host family prepares breakfast and dinner. Evening meals include the traditional Nepali dish of dhal bhat, a lentil curry served with rice. More western dishes such as pasta are also sometimes available. Lunch is a local snack. Most food is vegan or vegetarian due to Nepal’s majority Hindu and Buddhist populations.
Most participants use the internet cafes located nearby to keep in touch, as wifi is not available at the homestay.
Some project work sites are located a short walk from our accommodation. For others, transport is provided.
Nepal’s autumn season is considered to be the best time to visit the country and is the most popular among international visitors. Autumn runs from September until December and occurs just after the rainy season. During Autumn, the skies are clear but the region’s abundant plant life is lush after the plentiful rainfall occurring from June to September. If you are looking to see the famous rhododendron forests in bloom then Spring, February to April is the best time to visit. Summer in Nepal, from April to June, can be incredibly hot, with temperatures in the high 30s °C or high 90s °F, while the coolest season, winter, occurs between December and February.
Follow GVI Pokhara's Facebook page for live updates straight from the field. Get an idea of the types of projects you might be involved in, meet our staff and participants, experience life on this GVI base, hear about free time activities, and learn about the local culture and environment.
GVINepalPokhara
Hannah Westcott
This is Hannah, the Program Manager at GVI’s base in Pokhara, Nepal. She has been visiting Nepal for several years now, mostly working in Kathmandu. When she heard about the opportunity with GVI she was very excited, acknowledging that GVI is a purpose-driven organisation, which she respects and values.
Hannah believes that the small things are what have a large impact on communities. The projects she has been working with include teaching, women's empowerment and more. Hannah can observe the positive change the work brings to the communities. On top of this, she also sees the change that the work can have on the volunteers and how it develops them in their journeys.
Rhythm Gautam
Teaching Coordinator
This is Rhythm! He is 22 years old and was born and raised in Pokhara, Nepal. He was originally a trekking guide, then the opportunity to become a Teaching Coordinator popped up and he got involved. At the moment he teaches both Englishs and Math to partner schools for grades one to five.
Sita Thapa
Meet Sita. Sita is one of the Project Coordinator for the Women's Empowerment project in Pokhara, Nepal.
She has been with GVI for a year now, and it has since become family for her. As part of her role she works with community members and leads volunteers. She finds inspiration working with volunteers and is grateful to do the work she does, empowering women in different ways.
Early Childhood Development and Education
We support several educational facilities for young students in Nepal. GVI participants contribute by improving the infrastructure of learning environments, developing educational resources, and helping students achieve learning objectives. In addition, GVI staff and participants also sometimes run informal educational workshops with students from the local community. Subjects we support include English language learning, maths, science, and computer skills. With younger students arts and crafts lessons are held to promote fine motor skills development. Sports lessons help promote gross motor skills development, teamwork, and healthy lifestyle.
GVI participants support health in Nepal by conducting WASH, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, workshops. This includes facilitating practices like hand washing and tooth brushing in the local community.
Staff and participants contributing to our women’s empowerment program in Nepal participated in a number of educational and professional development workshops. These encompass many subjects but might include lessons on topics like conversational English, mathematics, resume writing, and alternative income generation. In addition we also support women’s health workshops to address issues like prenatal health and human rights presentations to address the prevalence of human trafficking in the region.
All these initiatives offer support to the community and local partners, and to address many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as #4 – Quality Education, #3, Health and Wellbeing, #5 – Gender Equality and #6 – Clean Water and Sanitation.
Our Partners In Kerala
Pokhara’s Long-term Objectives:
1. Providing support to students to reach learning goals appropriate to their age, grade level, or individual needs through increasing access to educational resources and their effective use in providing quality learning experiences.
2. Increasing the knowledge and understanding of healthcare in the community with an emphasis on prevention, and developing health-related skills such as Emergency First Aid.
3. Increasing professional and vocational skills held by women in the community, through education and empowerment.
GVI Nepal Pokhara Annual Report 2018
For All Participants at Pokhara
Introduction to local Hindu and Buddhist Culture
Take a short boat trip to Barahi temple at the center of Phewa Lake, introducing you to Hindu culture. Then visit the Buddhist temple in Hemja, a Tibetian settlement.
Anti-human Trafficking Presentation
SASANE is a local anti-human trafficking organisation. Here participants attend a session educating them about human rights and the stat of human trafficking. Participants also complete a cultural cooking lesson, learning how to make momos, Nepali dumplings, using traditional methods.
Nepali Language and Culture Lessons
Complete two lessons with a local Nepali teacher.
You can access several of Nepal’s most abundant wildlife parks via Pokhara. The Annapurna Conservation Area, is not only home to Annapurna I, the 10th highest peak in the world, but also endangered species like the snow leopard and Himalayan wolf. You can also visit Chitwan National Park which is known for its large population of the vulnerable Indian rhinoceros species. Although more remote, you can also make a weekend trip to Bardia National Park, for a more pristine landscape.
This is one of the newly popular activities for international visitors to Nepal. It allows visitors to experience many of the same landscapes as those trekking through the Himalayas while perfecting their mountain biking skills. Rent a bike and gear in Pokhara and choose to either complete a short trail or a two-week tour from Pokhara to Kathmandu.
Explore the river gorges and waterfalls of Nepal through one of the many canyoning tours offered in Pokhara. Bungee jump down cliffs, abseil down waterfalls, raft down fast-moving rapids, or simply kayak or tube gently along the rivers. This is an excellent way to experience Nepal’s breathtaking natural environment first-hand.
Paragliding and Skydiving
Paragliding is incredibly popular in Pokhara and one the best ways to view the spectacular natural landscape. There are many operators working in Pokhara through which you can book a guided tandem paragliding tour starting at around thirty minutes in the air. If you are keen on an even bigger adrenaline kick then why not book one of the many skydiving experiences offered in Pokhara.
India, Bangladesh, and Bhutan
While you are in the region, why not take the opportunity to explore some of the other nations bordering Nepal. Visit India’s capital of New Delhi for an insight into modern India or, Rikshikesh, the world’s “yoga capital” to learn more about India’s historic culture. Travel to Bangladesh to visit its famous wildlife reserves known for their tiger populations or learn more about Buddhist culture by visiting the monasteries of Bhutan.
A short flight from Pokhara, Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal and it’s largest city, is known for its historic religious sites. Visit the sacred stupas, domed structures ubiquitous in Buddhist culture, at Swayambhunath or Boudhanath, or the sacred Hindu complex of Pashupatinath temple, all of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The expansive local markets are also a great opportunity to collect practical souvenirs like blankets and incense for those back home.
Himalayan Treks and Flights
Nepal is perhaps most well-known as the location of Everest, the world’s highest mountain peak. Everest is located in the Himalayan mountain range, which features some of the other highest mountain peaks in the world like Kanchenjunga and Lhotse. There are plenty of trekking tour operators to be found in Pokhara and we even offer inclusive volunteer and adventure packages that include trekking. Most trekking trips take several days to weeks to complete. If you are looking for a less taxing and shorter term option, you can also book a helicopter or small plane flight to get a bird’s eye view of the famous mountain range.
February: The Tibetan New Year celebration, Lhosar, is held in February. Buddhist monasteries decorate their temples, known as stupas, and there is music and dancing in Tibetan communities and families exchange gifts.
March: The Nepalese version of India’s Holi celebration, the festival of colours, is celebrated in March. In Nepal this festival is known as Fagu Poornima. This is an incredible visual festival during which crowds throw one another with coloured powders.
May: As the birthplace of the Buddha, Buddha’s birthday is a big event in Nepal. This is known as Jayanti day and is celebrated during May.
September to October: Probably the most popular and well-known festival celebrated in Nepal is Dashain. Taking place over the course of 15 days, it honours the main goddess of Hinduism, Shakti, in all her forms. This is a time when families come together and celebrate. Parades and feasts are common throughout the festival. It corresponds to the Navratri festival held throughout India.
October to November: Tihar is another festival held around the end of October or early November each year and corresponds to Diwali, the festival of lights, popular in India. The festivities extend for five days and each day features a unique celebration.
Yoga evolved as part of the Hindu tradition. As a country with a large Hindu population, yoga is part of Nepalese culture. Nepal is one of the top yoga retreat destinations in the world. There are plenty of classes you can take during your stay in Pokhara. Mediation is also a central component of both Hinduism and Buddhism. Visit a Hindu tradition meditation class for to learn japa mala meditation or a Buddhist tradition meditation class for a Vipassana meditation class.
Possibly the most well-known Nepalese dish is dal bhat, a lentil stew served with rice. It is a smokey, spicy, wholesome dish which happens to be vegetarian-friendly as well, in keeping with the beliefs of the Hindu religion. Momos, traditionally thought of as a Tibetan food, are popular throughout the Himalayan region, and Nepal is no exception. Momos are a type of steamed dumpling, served with a dipping sauce, and come in a variety of fillings. When you are out and about be sure to stop at a street stall to try a sel roti, a fried, ring-shaped salty snack.
Most of Nepal’s population subscribes to Hinduism, specifically the Shaivism sect. You will find many Hindu temples throughout Nepal. However, Nepal is also home to one of the main Buddhist sites in the world, Lumbini, the birthplace of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama and does have a significant Buddhist population as well. You can learn about both these traditions during your stay in Pokhara, by speaking to locals, and visiting the many religious sites in the area. Visit Tal Barahi, a temple located in the centre of lake Pewa, dedicated to the goddess Durga, or the World Peace Pagoda, a Buddhist stupa.
Although Nepali is the official language of Nepal, over 100 languages are spoken within the limits of the country. Throughout your time on the project you will have plenty of opportunities to learn more about the Nepali language while interacting with locals.
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LinkedIn Is Developing A New Design, And The Company Rolled Out Its Stories Feature For Users In Australia / Digital Information World
LinkedIn initially rolled out the Stories feature in various countries including the Netherlands, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates. The feature became popular in these regions and the company is expanding the Stories feature to other countries as well.
LinkedIn updated in a support page that the company has rolled out the Stories feature for users in Australia (as reported by SMT). This means that users in Australia can now use the new temporary status update feature. The company confirmed a few months ago that LinkedIn is releasing the Stories feature. This feature is similar to Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories and it also functions pretty much the same as Stories function on Instagram and Facebook.
A Stories bar appears along the top of the main feed, and users can view Stories of various people using this bar. In the Stories feature, there are several tools and stickers available which you can use to decorate your Stories frames. The feature can be very useful for you and here we will discuss how this feature works.
When a person first accesses a LinkedIn Story, they are prompted to check their privacy settings for viewing the Stories. Creators can choose to continue viewing the Stories or they can change the visibility. This aligns with the platform’s regular capacity for its users to view who has seen their LinkedIn profile. If a user does not want people to view that they have seen their Story, they can also turn this off. Visit your Story settings to turn this off.
The platform offers 3 different options on this aspect – when a user checks LinkedIn Story, the person who created the Story will either be able to view their name and headline, private profile characteristics, or private mode (anonymous). The private profile characteristics include title, and latest education institution or company. This indicates that you can also view a LinkedIn Story anonymously.
If you want to create a Story, take an image or a video, and add stickers or text. Then, you can publish your LinkedIn Story. For the Australian roll-out, the company has also included localized stickers such as ‘G’ day.’
As the company has now expanded the Stories feature to Australia, this means that the feature is now available in 4 countries. The company is adding another region every few weeks. Considering the number of people who can now access this feature, you might be thinking that the company has enough usage insights to release this feature for all users. However, we will have to wait and see how LinkedIn decides to roll out this option to more countries.
Users have been criticizing LinkedIn Stories and they suggest that this option does not fit with the professional communications focus of LinkedIn’s platform. However, the addition of Stories to the platform does make sense. Broader engagement data have displayed that this feature is increasingly becoming popular among the next generation of social media platforms users. The users prefer Stories over the traditional News Feed.
There are a lot of LinkedIn users who will use the Stories for various purposes. The option may provide new opportunities to connect with your target audiences. It has also been reported that LinkedIn Stories are also available to some users in Germany and Qatar, however, the company has not officially confirmed this news.
Is has also been seen that the platform is developing a new design. According to a famous reverse engineering expert, Jane Manchun Wong, the company is currently working on a new design, and the new design will come with a new color palette as well as new icons. Jane Manchun Wong shared a screenshot on Twitter displaying how the new design will look like. According to the shared screenshot, the new design is similar to that of Facebook.
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 20, 2020
Read next: LinkedIn May Soon Add A Current Status Feature To Let Users Provide More Context About Their Work
Featured photo: Shutterstock / wichayada suwanachun
Read next: Facebook Removed Nearly 9.6 Million Hate Speech Posts During The First Quarter Of This Year
https://www.sharethelinks.com/2020/06/23/linkedin-is-developing-a-new-design-and-the-company-rolled-out-its-stories-feature-for-users-in-australia-digital-information-world/
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The PressRoom
Carol Knecht, 82
Herald-Mail Media
Carol Ann Knecht, 82, of Hagerstown, passed away Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at her home.
Born December 20, 1938 in Beaver Falls, Pa., she was the daughter of the late William Edward and Kathryn Barbara (Irvine) Dwyer.
In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by two brothers and two sisters-in-law, Robert J. Dwyer and spouse, Carol, and William D. Dwyer and spouse, Fern.
Carol was a graduate of Bladensburg Barber School and retired as a barber/stylist at the Southend Center Barbershop.
She was a member of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Hagerstown.
Carol loved to sing, whether it was singing at weddings with her karaoke machine or singing on a cruise.
Carol is survived by her loving husband of 45 years, Robert William “Bob” Knecht; one son, Charles Shepard of Fairfield, Pa.; one brother, Edward G. Dwyer and spouse, Mary Jane, of Beaver Falls; two sisters, Connie M. Dwyer of Beaver Falls and, Catherine S. (Dwyer) Kuzma and spouse, David, of Freedom, Pa.; eight nieces and nephews; 13 great-nieces and great-nephews; and five great-great-nieces and great-great-nephews.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday, January 9, 2021, at 10 a.m. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 224 W. Washington St., Hagerstown, with the Rev. Fr. Ernest Cibelli as celebrant. After Mass, the family will receive friends at Rest Haven Funeral Home, 1601 Pennsylvania Ave., Hagerstown from noon to 2 p.m.
Interment will be conducted on Tuesday, January 12, 2021, at 2 p.m. in Clinton Cemetery, Wampum, Pa.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in Carol’s name to the American Cancer Society or to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
Gift had a great appreciation for beauty in design
Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Herald-Mail publishes “A Life Remembered.” Each story in this continuing series takes a look back — through the eyes of family, friends, co-workers and others — at a member of the community who died recently. Today’s “A Life Remembered” is about Francis Gift, …
Kercheval lived by 'a very strong moral code'
Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Herald-Mail runs “A Life Remembered.” Each story in this continuing series takes a look back — through the eyes of family, friends, co-workers and others — at a member of the community who died recently. Today’s “A Life Remembered” is about Bill Kercheval, who…
Harriett Clopper, once the oldest McDonald's worker in the nation, remembered
Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Herald-Mail runs “A Life Remembered.” Each story in this continuing series takes a look back — through the eyes of family, friends, co-workers and others — at a member of the community who died recently. Today’s “A Life Remembered” is about Harriett Clopper, w…
Substitute teacher remembered for his 'dedication to Waynesboro and its students'
WAYNESBORO, Pa. — The legacy of Charles Thomas, 85, will live on in the lives of the thousands of students he taught in the Waynesboro Area School District.
Big-hearted motorcycle lover leaves legacy of caring for others
Editor’s note: Each Sunday, The Herald-Mail runs “A Life Remembered.” Each story in this continuing series takes a look back — through the eyes of family, friends, co-workers and others — at a member of the community who died recently. Today’s “A Life Remembered” is about Robert “Bobby” Stou…
Kriner worked hard and served his community until the end
When Don Kriner’s family says he was a hard worker, they mean it.
Latimer practiced 'service above self' to support Washington County
Jack Latimer’s roots grew deep in Hagerstown.
John C. Smith captains for country, family
One might think a man named John Smith would shy away from the title of captain. That certainly wasn’t the case for John C. Smith of Williamsport. In fact, it was duly fitting for the Williamsport man who lived a life of care and service to his family and his country.
Rosemarie Williams' legacy is lasting in Washington County
Rosemarie Williams was known as a pioneer in getting girls sports off the ground in the local school system.
In this case, a rose is a rose is a 'Peachie'
Mary Haines was given the nickname “Peachie” on the day of her birth in 1928 in Clear Spring, and she exuded it as an adjective for all of her 92 years, leaving a legacy of wonderful works and deeds for both family and community.
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Herbs and smart consumption
Herbal Books & Resources
By Noelina R. | Updated: Jun 18, 2020
Title American Chemical Society
Main Url https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en.html
The American Chemical's Society official homepage includes information on past and upcoming member meetings, as well press releases and access to their publications. They have a wide collection of materials oriented for public education, as well as online courses, web tutorials, and resources to stimulate scientific curiosity among K-12 students. It also includes the Chemical Abstract Service, one of the world's most comprehensive databases of chemistry-related studies, technical reports, dissertations, and other publications.
The American Chemical Society is a Washington D.C.-based scientific society aimed at supporting, finding, and disseminating new scientific findings in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering. Established in 1876, they are currently the world's largest scientific society and are regarded as one of the world's most eminent sources of authoritative and accurate scientific information. They hold meetings twice a year and publish 38 peer-reviewed journals or publications. Their motto is "Chemistry for Life".
Featured Herbs
Catnip, Catnip
Dried Ginger, Gingerol, Shogaol, and Zingerone, 2011
Ginger Nutrition, Gingerol, Shogaol, and Zingerone, 2011
Ginger Properties, Gingerol, Shogaol, and Zingerone, 2011
Honeysuckle, Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Aspirin – It’s All About Salicylic Acid
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DISCLAIMER: Information provided for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It's based on pharmacological records, scientific research, traditional knowledge, and historical data. HerbaZest.com is not responsible for the accuracy of the information.
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MOVIE REPORT CARD: CHILD'S PLAY
Title: Child's Play
Director: Lars Klevberg
Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, Brian Tyree Henry, Mark Hamill, Beatrice Kitsos
ACTING: 85
DIRECTING: 85
SCREENPLAY: 80
EDITING: 85
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 85
SOUNDTRACK: 70
FINAL: 82/B
Child's Play is good. There, I said it. And by Child's Play, I of course mean both. Look, yes, they remade it. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that the original, will always exist. That film is good for what it is. I love the Child's Play series. Yes, even at its low point, I enjoy the series quite a bit. What kept that series going, and still keeps the series going, is Brad Douriff. He's iconic as the character; as THAT version of Chucky. This is a different interpretation of Chucky. And while I'm shocked that 2019's Child's Play is as good as it is, I'm not entirely shocked as some people may be after seeing it. I was actually on board with this after the first teaser. And once Mark Hamill was added as the voice, I was buying a ticket. Child's Play 2019, is a lot of fun. It's creepy, bloody, funny, and a solid horror remake. It takes elements from the original formula and both updates, and turns it on its head. Everyone in this film is solid. From Aubrey Plaza, to Bryan Tyree Henry, to Gabriel Bateman- they are all fun to watch. Mark Hamill, is PERFECT as THIS version of Chucky. It works so well that after you see it, you will instantly know why they got him to do the voice. The film has a few flaws. Particularly in some misplaced line readings, and a little bit of a weird middle act. However, the magic here, is in the character of Chucky himself. What they do to the character is smart. It's a great balance of heart, emotion, and creepiness, all thrown into the mix. Child's Play, is a genuine surprise. It's a crowd pleaser of a film, and fun time at the movies.
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Dhoni announces his retirement from International Cricket
MS Dhoni announces retirement from International Cricket
Cricket fans all over the country were left teary-eyed after former Indian captain announced his retirement on 15th August on his social media handle. After having a successful 16-year long career in cricket, MS Dhoni, 39, made the retirement announcement by sharing a video capturing his journey through the years. Captain Cool captioned this video saying, “ Consider me retired from 1929 hours. Thanks for your love and support”. The news came in as India was celebrating its 73rd Independence Day.
Dhoni’s Achievements
Dhoni has been the most loved captain of all-time among the players and cricket fans all over the world. He has led the team with his captaincy to win three ICC trophies, T20 World Cup 2007, World Cup in 2011, and 2013 ICC Champions Trophy. He has been the only Indian captain to do so. MS Dhoni is best known for his helicopter shot, which helped our country lift the World Cup in 2011. His unmatchable style and zeal to play the game with full enthusiasm made him the most successful caption.
An all-rounder and game changer
Captain Cool is also known well for his wicket-keeping and leadership skills in every match. After he made his retirement announcement, his videos and audios from the stadiums started going viral, where he was found guiding his balls men and fielders to focus on the game. Indian cricketers such as Virat Kohli, Sachi Tendulkar, Rohit Singh, and many others dropped the comments for our former captain that he was undoubtedly the best captain Indian team ever had.
MS Dhoni had previously announced his retirement from the Test Matches in 2014 and played more than 350 ODIs. He also became the fifth Indian to score 10,000 runs in the ODIs. He had not played any match since the last semi-final match of the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, where India lost to New Zealand by 18 runs. That match will remain the last match played by Dhoni.
Dhoni to play IPL 2020 with his team Chennai Super Kings
However, Dhoni fans will be able to see their favorite play in this 13th Season of IPL, scheduled to start in September in the UAE. Due to him, Chennai Super Kings has had a massive following and fans support for years. As the captain has announced his retirement, fans and people worldwide are waiting for the future plans of the captain.
Suresh Raina also joined MS Dhoni in his retirement by announcing the same on his Instagram handle shortly after Captain Cool announced his retirement. The news came in as a shock, but there is no doubt that these players have left behind a legacy and have made cricket such a beloved sport in our country.
Dhoni retirement MS Dhoni Priyanka Ramrakhiani Suresh Raina
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List of Nominees for Khel Ratna and Arjuna Award 2020
No IPL in 2020? Here’s what Rohit Sharma has to say
Table Tennis Federation of India is all set to hire a new head coach
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Home News Brief Son of Brazil Soccer Legend Pele Laundered Drug Money
Son of Brazil Soccer Legend Pele Laundered Drug Money
Mimi Yagoub
Red Command
Soccer Crime
Pele (left) with his son Edinho (right)
The son of retired Brazilian soccer star Pele has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for the laundering of drug proceeds, becoming the latest criminal to take advantage of his stellar family name to disguise illicit dealings.
Edson Cholbi do Nascimento, or Edinho, was convicted along with four other members of a drug trafficking organization based in Santos — to the south of Sao Paulo — reported The Independent. Edinho is a former professional soccer player and current goalkeeping coach for the Santos team, the same club that kick-started the career of his father, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pele. Edinho has already served time for drug trafficking in 2005, reported the BBC.
The evidence examined by the court included recordings of Edinho speaking with gang leader Ronaldo Duarte Barsotti, alias “Naldinho,” about bringing “the name” to businesses created for the purposes of laundering the group’s illegal drug proceeds, in an apparent reference to his renowned father, reported A Tribuna.
Naldinho has been a fugitive for five years, according to A Tribuna. His gang allegedly moves drugs in southeastern Brazil and is responsible for supplying cocaine in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where it has ties with the Red Command. The group has been accused of drug trafficking, drug production and illegal arms possession.
Latin America’s soccer industry has long had significant links with organized criminal activities in the region, ranging from famous traffickers like Pablo Escobar laundering proceeds through donations to his favorite team, to schemes involving suspicious player transfers and tax evasion.
SEE ALSO: Coverage of Soccer and Organized Crime
This is not the first time a famous name in soccer has been caught up in a money laundering scandal. A December 2013 case saw the father of Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi accused of laundering money for Colombian drug traffickers through charity soccer games involving his son, though this has not been proven.
In the present case, it appears that the family name was the important factor in facilitating Edinho’s money laundering activities, with little sign that his own soccer links played a direct role.
Soccer and Security in Brazil: Organized Crime in Manaus
Rio Militias and Their Complex Empire of Legal Businesses
Counterfeit Money Trade Thrives in Brazil Amid Pandemic
Major Oil Trader Fined for Bribes Across Latin America
Brazil’s Red Command Yet to Find Strong Foothold in Argentina
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These Micronutrients Help With Mood, Anger, Anxiety & Stress
"How is my depression different? It's different because it's non-existent."
"Hardy's took me from basically like an angry and an easily triggered place...to a much more calm and happy state."
"We were trying to look at what caused the problem, not just how to deal with the symptoms. Looking at the underlying things that are producing the problem was really critical, and that's what led to looking at the nutrients."
- Dr. Mel Litman
"They've done studies to show that when your body gets what it needs, it will help you with these related symptoms which show up as anxiety or depression."
- Tamara
What do all these people have in common? They found Hardy's Daily Essential Nutrients, the broad-spectrum micronutrient formulation that provides high potency vitamins and minerals in a super absorbable format.
Over 30 independent university studies have shown that broad-spectrum micronutrients can be effectively used to treat the symptoms associated with ADHD, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and PTSD. In contrast to chemical symptom management, micronutrients aim to treat core underlying deficiencies, providing the body with essential elements in a highly bioavailable format that are central to every metabolic process.
Psychiatry and Micronutrients
The recently published American Psychiatric Association textbook "Complementary and Integrative Treatments in Psychiatric Practice", highlights broad-spectrum micronutrients as a “physiologically sensible approach” to treating mood and mental health disorders.
Citing multiple third-party funded university studies, the authors wrote, "...broad-spectrum micronutrients and psychiatric medications appear comparable in both antidepressant and anti-manic effects, but the micronutrients had far fewer and less severe side effects and much lower relapse rates. Compared with conventional psychotropics, patients stabilized on broad-spectrum micronutrients have fewer residual symptoms and mood fluctuations, fewer necessary dose changes, less need for monthly medication checks, rare hospitalizations, and lower treatment costs. (Kaplan et al. 2017; Rodway et al. 2012)
Not All Multivitamin Mineral Supplements Are Created Equal
The levels of vitamins and minerals found in Hardy's Daily Essential Nutrients are not easily replicated. In fact, the specific ingredients at the levels supported by the published research would cost over $400 to DIY at the supplement store.
At a TEDx event, Dr. Julia Rucklidge, a clinical psychologist who has researched Hardy's Daily Essential Nutrients for years, had this to say about clinical supplements compared to store-bought multivitamin products:
"When I say micronutrients, I am actually referring to a dose higher than what you'd get out of a vitamin pill purchased at the supermarket...it would be unlikely that if you went and got an over the counter supplement, [that] you would see these positive benefits, both because the dose is lower and the breadth of nutrients is lower."
So...Why Not Just Eat Better?
While a healthy diet is an important part of living well, even the best diets have been shown to lack essential nutrients. Further, science has shown that individuals at risk for mental health disorders have higher nutrient needs than those not at risk. This creates a need for supplementation. (Dr. Bruce Ames, 2000).
For example, a person would have to consume several pounds of a wide variety of vegetables and fruits every day in order to achieve the clinical levels of vitamins and minerals found in Hardy's clinical level formula, Daily Essential Nutrients. Even still, quite a few essential elements would be missing. Even Hardy's less expensive, regular-strength micronutrient formula, Optimal Balance, packs a punch compared to simply relying on fruits and veggies.
For those who have higher nutrient needs, the broad-spectrum clinical micronutrients found in Daily Essential Nutrients are a viable, first-line of defense option when it comes to mood and mental health. Available in capsules or powder, Daily Essential Nutrients is non-GMO, soy-free, gluten-free, and vegan-friendly.
About Hardy Nutritionals®
Hardy Nutritionals® multivitamin-mineral products are powered by our proprietary NutraTek™ mineral delivery technology, which combines each mineral with specialized organic molecules—just like nature—to optimize absorption and distribution to body cells. Our flagship supplement, Daily Essential Nutrients, is widely considered to be the most research-backed micronutrient treatment.
Getting Sick Less Often By Supplementing Properly
Daily Essential Nutrients for Anxiety
Hardy Nutritionals is interested in what you think of our articles. We welcome your comments but request that they relate to the article you are commenting on. Comments that do not relate to the article will be marked as SPAM and rejected. Thank you. Hardy Nutritionals.
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Boeing HorizonX • Investing Director
Michael Lohnert as Investing Director for Boeing HorizonX Ventures identifies and invests in startups from around the world that are developing revolutionary concepts and business models. Lohnert is current board member or board observer with C360 Technologies, Gamma Alloys, Cuberg, Myriota, and Aylstor, a peta-scale computational storage company among others in the HorizonX Ventures’ portfolio.
Prior to his current role, Lohnert was a senior strategist for the Boeing Company responsible for emerging business opportunities, corporate strategy, and mergers & acquisitions and partnerships. He was also program manager and instructor for Boeing’s enterprise strategy training course. Outside of Boeing, Lohnert is on the board of directors of Pasadena Angels, ranked by Forbes as a top ten angel investor group, a cleantech startup, and director emeritus for a financial services firm.
Prior to Boeing, Lohnert was director of energy investments for a private equity group where he invested in the alternative energy, natural gas, and electrical generation sectors, as well as led turnarounds of portfolio investments. He was also involved in the acquisition of several operating companies that bolstered the group’s ability to maximize the returns of its portfolio. Lohnert has held strategy and M&A responsibilities for a specialty chemicals division of a major oil company and while living in Zürich, a global financial services company. He has also worked on a foreign currency trading desk and the treasury group for a Fortune 500 utility.
Lohnert received his MBA from the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University where he concentrated in Investment Management and Strategy. His bachelor degree is also from Ohio State with dual majors in Finance and a Real Estate Finance. Lohnert also has also completed programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Swiss Banking Institute at the University of Zürich, and University of California Haas School at Berkeley.
Tuesday 2 October 2018: IAF GNF Industry Stream: IAF Startup Pitch Session
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David oversees Omnicom PR Group (OPRG) operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa, enabling people and organizations to connect with world-class public relations services and support from the group’s dozen agencies and consultancies. He joined OPRG from one of its global networks, Ketchum, where he was chief executive for its European region and senior advisor to many of its global clients. David is known as a modernizer in the industry and an advocate for collaboration, serving as chairman for several national and international trade bodies, and his contributions to the field have been recognized with achievement awards from the United States Army, Public Relations Society of America, the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) of the UK and various magazines and publications. He is a former president of the International Communications Consultants Organization, and former chairman of the PRCA, which he currently serves as co-chair of the international Ethics Counsel. He sits industry advisory boards for the Center for Global Business at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, and Mothers To Mothers, a global non-profit organization employing women to help other women improve the lives of their communities. In the spring of 2021 he and co-author John O’Brien will publish Truth Be Told, a book from Kogan Page on communicating purpose with integrity.
David is a journalism graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and resides primarily in London, England.
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Diana Ross, pictured in 2004. ShowBizIreland/Getty Images
It’s January 14th and these are some of the things that happened on this day in pop music history:
- In 1970, Diana Ross made her final concert appearance with The Supremes at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. She introduced her replacement, Jean Terrell. Ross reunited with Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong in March 1983 to tape a performance of “Someday We’ll Be Together” for the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever TV special.
- In 1992, pop singer Tommy Page, then 22, appeared on an episode of Full House to perform a love song for Stephanie Tanner at her 10th birthday party. The “I’ll Be Your Everything” singer took his own life in 2017 at the age of 46. He had a husband and three children.
- In 1997, an episode of Home Improvement titled “The Karate Kid Returns” aired, featuring an appearance by The Beach Boys. They sang “Barbara Ann” with Wilson.
- In 1968, James Todd Smith was born in New York. He went on to adopt the name LL Cool J (Ladies Love Cool James) and launch a successful rap career with hits like “Hey Lover” and “Ain’t Nobody.”
- In 1984, Madonna appeared on American Bandstand for the first time. After performing “Holiday,” she was asked by host Dick Clark about her dreams for the future. “To rule the world,” replied Madonna.
- In 2014, the L.A. County Sheriff’s department executed a search warrant on the home of Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, who was accused of throwing eggs at a neighbour’s house. The singer later pleaded no contest to misdemeanour vandalism and sentenced to two years of probation.
And that’s what popped on this day.
Follow @jrk_media on Twitter & Instagram
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Home > Articles
Learning to Draw Basic Graphics
Graphics Essentials
Examining Graphics in Windows
Painting Windows
Building the Crop Circles Example
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Beginning Game Programming
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This chapter is from the book
1979 was a critical milestone in the evolution of video games because it brought us Asteroids, which is one of the most enduring games ever. Created by Atari, Asteroids was one of the first vector graphics games, which means that it relied solely on lines to draw graphics, as opposed to little square pixels. Asteroids demonstrated that a very simple concept, with even simpler graphics and a soundtrack that gradually builds tension, creates a mix for success. In fact, Asteroids was so successful that arcade operators had to build larger coin boxes for the games—not a bad problem to have!
A computer game consists of many different pieces, all of which must come together to form a unique entertainment experience for the player. By far, the most important pieces of any game are the graphics. Graphics are used to represent the characters and creatures in a game, as well as background worlds and other interesting objects that factor into the overall game design. Granted, games have certainly done well because of factors outside of graphics, such as game play and sound quality, but those games are very rare. Besides, nowadays game players expect to see high-quality graphics just as we all expect to see high-quality visual effects in Hollywood movies. So, it's important to develop a solid understanding of graphics programming and how to use graphics wisely in your games.
In this chapter, you'll learn
The basics of drawing graphics using the Windows Graphics Device Interface
What a device context is and why it's important to GDI graphics
How to paint text and primitive graphics in Windows
How to create a sample program that demonstrates GDI graphics in the context of the game engine
Before jumping into the details of how graphics work in Windows and how they are applied to games, it's important to establish some ground rules and gain an understanding of how computer graphics work in general. More specifically, you need to have a solid grasp on what a graphics coordinate system is, as well as how color is represented in computer graphics. The next couple of sections provide you with this knowledge, which you'll put to practical use a little later in the chapter.
Understanding the Graphics Coordinate System
All graphical computing systems use some sort of graphics coordinate system to specify how points are arranged in a window or on the screen. Graphics coordinate systems typically spell out the origin (0, 0) of the system, as well as the axes and directions of increasing value for each of the axes. If you're not a big math person, this simply means that a coordinate system describes how to pinpoint any location on the screen as an XY value. The traditional mathematical coordinate system familiar to most of us is shown in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 The traditional XY coordinate system is commonly used in math.
Windows graphics relies on a similar coordinate system to specify how and where drawing operations take place. Because all drawing in Windows takes place within the confines of a window, the Windows coordinate system is applied relative to a particular window. The Windows coordinate system has an origin that is located in the upper-left corner of the window, with positive X values increasing to the right and positive Y values increasing down. All values in the Windows coordinate system are positive integers. Figure 3.2 shows how this coordinate system looks.
Figure 3.2 The Windows XY coordinate system is similar to the traditional coordinate system except that it applies to the client area of windows.
When I talk about drawing graphics in a window, I'm actually referring to the client area of a window, which doesn't include the title bar, menus, scrollbars, and so on. In the case of games, you can think of the client area of the main game window as the game screen. You learn more about the client area of a window later in this chapter in the section titled, "Painting Windows."
If the Windows graphics coordinate system sounds a little complicated, just think of it in terms of a classic game of Battleship. In Battleship, you try to sink enemy ships by firing torpedoes at specific locations on a grid. Battleship uses its own coordinate system to allow you to specify locations on the grid where ships might be located. Similarly, when you draw graphics in Windows, you specify locations in the client area of a window, which is really just a grid of little squares called pixels.
Learning the Basics of Color
A topic that impacts almost every area of game graphics is color. Fortunately, most computer systems take a similar approach to representing color. The main function of color in a computer system is to accurately reflect the physical nature of color within the confines of a computer. This physical nature isn't hard to figure out; anyone who has experienced the joy of Play-Doh can tell you that colors react in different ways when they are combined with each other. Like Play-Doh, a computer color system needs to be capable of mixing colors with accurate, predictable results.
Color computer monitors provide possibly the most useful insight into how software systems implement color. A color monitor has three electron guns: red, green, and blue. The output from these three guns converges on each pixel on the screen, stimulating phosphors to produce the appropriate color. The combined intensities of each gun determine the resulting pixel color. This convergence of different colors from the monitor guns is very similar to the convergence of different colored Play-Doh.
Technically speaking, the result of combining colors on a monitor is different from that of combining similarly colored Play-Doh. The reason for this is that color combinations on a monitor are additive, meaning that mixed colors are added together to become white; Play-Doh color combinations are subtractive, meaning that mixed colors are subtracted from each other to become black. Whether the color combination is additive or subtractive depends on the physical properties of the particular medium involved.
The Windows color system is very similar to the physical system used by color monitors; it forms unique colors by using varying intensities of the colors red, green, and blue. Therefore, Windows colors are represented by the combination of the numeric intensities of the primary colors (red, green, and blue). This color system is known as RGB (Red Green Blue) and is standard across most graphical computer systems.
RGB isn't the only color system used by computers. Another color system used heavily in desktop publishing applications is CMYK, which stands for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black. Colors in the CMYK color system are expressed in terms of the color components cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, as opposed to red, green, and blue in RGB. The CMYK color system is used heavily in printing because CMYK printing inks are subtractive in nature, making it easier to print using a four-color ink combination (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black); hence the term four-color printing.
Table 3.1 shows the numeric values for the red, green, and blue components of some basic colors. Notice that the intensities of each color component range from 0 to 255 in value.
Table 3.1 Numeric RGB Color Component Values for Commonly Used Colors
The Win32 API defines a structure named COLORREF that combines the red, green, and blue components of an RGB color into a single value. The COLORREF structure is important because it is used throughout the Win32 API to represent RGB colors. To create a color as a COLORREF structure, you use the RGB() macro, which accepts red, green, and blue color components as arguments. Here is an example of creating a solid green color using RGB():
COLORREF green = RGB(0, 255, 0);
The color created in this line of code is green because the green component (the middle argument) is specified as 255, whereas the red and blue components are specified as 0. Changing the values of these three arguments alters the mix of the color—with lower numbers resulting in darker colors and higher numbers resulting in brighter colors.
You can experiment with RGB color combinations in the standard Paint program that comes with Windows. Double-click one of the colors in the color palette in the lower left corner of the Paint window. Then, click the Define Custom Colors button in the Edit Colors dialog box. You can then either type numbers into the Red, Green, and Blue edit fields or click to select a color and intensity (see Figure 3.3).
Figure 3.3 The standard Windows Paint program allows you to specify colors via RGB values.
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Home News & Analysis Fundraising US oil and gas deal value hit ten-year high in Q3
US oil and gas deal value hit ten-year high in Q3
Midstream and mega deals helped to accomplish a break-out quarter, the latest analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers US showed.
PEI Staff
The third quarter saw a record level of mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas sector in the US, with deal value hitting ten-year high, thanks to midstream and mega deals, the latest analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) US showed.
A total of 78 oil and gas deals, or a total value of $123 billion, were recorded during the three months ending September, an increase of 81 percent in total deal volume and a 649 percent rise in total deal value from the same period last year, PwC said.
There were 43 oil and gas deals worth $16.4 billion in the third quarter last year, it said in the report.
On a sequential basis, deal volume in the third quarter increased by 20 percent from the 65 deals in the second quarter of this year, with total deal value increasing 152 percent from $48.9 billion in the second quarter, it added.
PwC said there were 14 mega deals during the third quarter, representing $103.5 billion, or 84 percent of total deal value. Eight of them were corporate deals.
Doug Meier, PwC US energy sector deals leader, attributed the “break-out” quarter to three drivers, including the significant impact of $1 billion-plus deals, foreign and private equity interest and the attractiveness of shale plays. In the meantime, the M&A flow in the third quarter was significant especially given crude oil and other commodity prices declined sharply during that period of time, Meier added in the report.
“If we continue to see a sustained lower crude (oil) pricing environment, we will likely witness an acceleration of the portfolio restructuring efforts we’ve been seeing in the past couple of quarters as companies focus on the importance of financial discipline,” he said.
There were 15 midstream deals, including three valued at more than $8 billion each that contributed $74.1 billion in value, a 50 percent growth in deal volume and 517 percent growth in deal value compared to the second quarter of 2014.
Foreign buyers announced 17 deals in the third quarter of 2014, accounting for $22.1 billion in value, an increase over nine deals worth $2.8 billion during the same period last year and the most deal activity in the last five years. On a sequential basis, the volume and value of foreign deals increased by 70 percent and 103 percent from the second quarter of 2014, respectively.
Corporate transactions led total deal value during the quarter, representing $99.1 billion, or 81 percent of total deal value for the third quarter of 2014. The 20 corporate transactions in the quarter represented the highest quarterly level since the fourth quarter of 2012.
According to PwC, there were 36 deals with values greater than $50 million related to shale plays in the third quarter of 2014, totaling $26.6 billion, or 46 percent and 22 percent of total deal volume and value, respectively. There were five midstream shale-related deals in the third quarter of 2014, accounting for $2.5 billion, an increase in value and volume from zero deals in the third quarter of 2013.
The most active shale plays for M&A with values greater than $50 million during the third quarter of 2014 include the Eagle Ford in Texas, which had seven deals with a total value of $1.8 billion, followed by the Bakken with six deals representing $8.6 billion. The Permian play had five deals worth $7.8 billion, the Marcellus Shale had four deals valued at $1.1 billion and the Niobrara had three deals worth $2.4 billion. The Utica Shale generated two deals, while the Haynesville and Fayetteville each generated one deal.
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Indiana Intellectual Property Law News
Published By Overhauser Law Offices, LLC
Articles Posted in Experts
Fourth Circuit Affirms Districts Court’s Injunction and Admission of Evidence in False Advertising Case
By Overhauser Law Offices, LLC
Richmond, Virginia – PBM Products, LLC (“PBM”) sued Mead Johnson & Company, LLC (“Mead Johnson”) alleging false advertising in violation of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(1)(A) and (B), and commercial disparagement. Mead Johnson filed counterclaims against PBM. The district court dismissed the counterclaims and entered an injunction against Mead Johnson. Mead Johnson appealed. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed.
PBM produces store-brand, “generic,” infant formula. Mead Johnson produces baby formula products under the brand name Enfamil, including a standard formula, a formula with broken-down proteins, and a formula with added rice starch. Both companies use the same supplier for two key nutrients–docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA)–which are important to an infant’s brain and eye development. Mead Johnson calls these nutrients by their brand name “Lipil,” while PBM describes them generically as “lipids.” Both companies use the same level of the lipids. As a result, PBM includes a comparative advertising label on their formula that states, “Compare to Enfamil.”
PBM sued Mead Johnson under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a), alleging that Mead Johnson engaged in false advertising and commercial disparagement when it distributed more than 1.5 million direct-to-consumer mailers that falsely claimed that PBM’s baby formula products were inferior to Mead Johnson’s baby formula products.
Mead Johnson filed counterclaims against PBM alleging breach of contract, defamation, false advertising, and civil contempt. Mead Johnson’s defamation counterclaim was based primarily on a press release issued by PBM CEO Paul Manning declaring that “Mead Johnson Lies About Baby Formula … Again.” Mead Johnson’s false advertising counterclaim alleged that labels on PBM’s products conveyed several implied messages comparing PBM and Mead Johnson’s formulas. Mead Johnson’s breach of contract and civil contempt counterclaims related to prior litigation between the parties.
After a jury found that Mead Johnson had engaged in false advertising, the district court issued an injunction prohibiting Mead Johnson from making similar claims, which enjoined all four advertising claims that Mead Johnson had made, including the express claim that “only Enfamil LIPIL is clinically proven to improve brain and eye development.”
On appeal, Mead Johnson presented three clusters of issues for review by the Fourth Circuit: (1) whether the district court erred in its dismissal of Mead Johnson’s counterclaims; (2) whether the district court abused its discretion in its admission of expert opinion testimony and evidence of prior litigation between the parties; and (3) whether the district court erred or abused its discretion in issuing the injunction.
The dismissals of Mead Johnson’s counterclaims for breach of contract, defamation, false advertising, and civil contempt were all affirmed. The allegedly defamatory statement “Mead Johnson Lies About Baby Formula … Again” was held to be true, as it was found that Mead Johnson had made false statements prior to the publication of PBM’s press release (“Mead Johnson Lies”) and had also made previous false statements about PBM’s baby formula (the “Again” portion of the PBM’s press release). The dismissal of the defamation claim on summary judgment was held to be proper as no false statement had been made.
The Fourth Circuit then upheld the district court’s disposal of Mead Johnson’s Lanham Act counterclaims as a matter of law. Those claims accruing prior to the two-year statute of limitations were affirmed to be time-barred. Claims accruing after that period were affirmed as correctly estopped under the equitable principle of laches.
The Fourth Circuit also held that the district court did not err in granting judgment as a matter of law on Mead Johnson’s Lanham Act counterclaim concerning PBM’s rice starch formula advertisements, holding that the district court had properly concluded that, because the consumer surveys that had been conducted by Mead Johnson had failed to address the allegations in the lawsuit, no relevant evidence had been produced by Mead Johnson on this claim. Moreover, it was held that Mead Johnson had failed to show either falsity of the statements or that any damage was caused by any of the “compare to Enfamil” language that had been used by PBM.
The appellate court then addressed Mead Johnson’s contention that the district court erred by admitting (1) expert survey evidence and (2) evidence of prior Lanham Act litigation between the parties. These decisions were reviewed for abuse of discretion.
Mead Johnson had argued that the survey evidence offered by PBM should be excluded as the consumers involved in the survey did not exactly match the “universe” of consumers appropriate to this litigation. The district court was not convinced. It noted that “while Mead Johnson has pointed out numerous ways in which it would have conducted [the] survey differently, its arguments do not demonstrate that the methods used were not of the type considered reliable by experts . . . .” The district court concluded that the possibility that the survey had targeted the wrong universe went to the weight to be accorded to the survey, not to its admissibility. The appellate court cited a Seventh Circuit case, AHP Subsidiary Holding Co. v. Stuart Hale Co., which noted that “[w]hile there will be occasions when the proffered survey is so flawed as to be completely unhelpful to the trier of fact and therefore inadmissible, such situations will be rare” and affirmed the district court’s conclusion “without difficulty.”
Mead Johnson also had also asserted that the district court had erred in admitting evidence of the 2001 and 2002 Lanham Act lawsuits filed by PBM, contending that the evidence was irrelevant and more prejudicial than probative. The Fourth Circuit found that the history of prior litigation was both relevant and that its probative value was not substantially outweighed by any danger of unfair prejudice. Moreover, in upholding the trial court’s ruling, the appellate court opined that a district court’s decision to admit evidence over an objection based on the potential for unfair prejudice “will not be overturned except under the most extraordinary circumstances, where [the district court’s] discretion has been plainly abused.”
The Fourth Circuit then turned to Mead Johnson’s contention that the injunction issued by the district court had been improper. Mead Johnson argued that the injunction was improper for two reasons. First, it asserted that PBM failed to establish any risk of recurrence of the violation. Second, it argued that the scope of the injunction was too broad, as it prohibited conduct that PBM had not proved at trial and that it was beyond the harm PBM sought to redress.
The appellate court was not persuaded. At trial, the jury had returned a verdict in favor of PBM on its false advertising claim and had awarded PBM $13.5 million in damages. In such a case, where a violation has been established and the party seeking the injunction has made a showing that such an injunction is proper, section 1116(a) of the Lanham Act vests district courts with the “power to grant injunctions, according to the principles of equity and upon such terms as the court may deem reasonable, to … prevent a violation under [§ 1125(a) of the Lanham Act].” The Fourth Circuit held that a showing sufficient to support the district court’s injunction had been made and upheld the lower court’s ruling. The appellate court further indicated that the injunction was proper as, “PBM cannot fairly compete with Mead Johnson unless and until Mead Johnson stops infecting the marketplace with misleading advertising.”
Finally, Mead Johnson argued that, because the general jury verdict did not specify which of the four statements in the mailer the jury found to be false and/or misleading, the district court’s injunction must be limited only to the mailer or other advertisements not colorably different from the mailer. The Fourth Circuit rejected the narrow construction suggested by Mead Johnson. It noted again that, inter alia, Mead Johnson’s claim that it was the “only clinically proven” formula had been found to be misleading by the district court. It concluded that because the district court’s interpretation of the jury verdict was plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety, the factual findings upon which it based the scope of its injunction could not as a matter of law be clearly erroneous. Consequently, the scope of the injunction also was affirmed.
Practice Tip #1: These parties are familiar combatants on the Lanham Act battlefield. For example, in 2001, Mead Johnson distributed brochures and tear-off notepads to patients in pediatricians’ offices stating that store-brand formula did not have sufficient calcium or folic acid. PBM sued and obtained a restraining order prohibiting Mead Johnson from making similar statements. The parties settled that dispute. Then, in 2002, Mead Johnson distributed a chart to physicians stating that store-brand formula did not contain beneficial nucleotides. PBM sued and, again, the parties settled.
Practice Tip #2: The Lanham Act prohibits the “false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact, which … in commercial advertising or promotion, misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of his or her or another person’s goods, services, or commercial activities.” 15 U.S.C.A. § 1125(a)(1)(B).
Practice Tip #3: In the Seventh Circuit, as with other federal circuits, “[A] court may find on its own that a statement is literally false, but, absent a literal falsehood, may find that a statement is impliedly misleading only if presented with evidence of actual consumer deception.” Abbott Labs. v. Mead Johnson & Co., 971 F.2d 6, 14 (7th Cir. 1992).
Practice Tip #4: Before an injunction may issue, the party seeking the injunction must demonstrate that (1) it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) remedies available at law are inadequate; (3) the balance of the hardships favors the party seeking the injunction; and (4) the public interest would not be disserved by the injunction. eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, 547 U.S. 388, 391 (2006).
Posted in: Civil Procedure, Experts, Injunction and Intellectual Property Law
Updated: March 14, 2018 12:23 pm
Southern District of Indiana Grants in Part Plaintiff’s Daubert Motion to Preclude Expert Testimony Regarding Damages
Indianapolis, IN – Boston Scientific Corporation (“Boston Scientific”) of Natik, Massachusetts, was granted three of its four requests to exclude Defendant’s expert testimony in its declaratory judgment suit against Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC (“Mirowski”) of Bethesda, Maryland.
The litigation surrounding the Boston Scientific/Guidant Corp. (“Guidant”) / Mirowski / St. Jude Medical, Inc. (“St. Jude”) matter began in the Southern District of Indiana (and also in Delaware) as a patent infringement suit regarding an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. It was appealed to the Federal Circuit, reversed and returned to the Southern District of Indiana. It was later appealed again to the Federal Circuit. The second ruling of the Federal Circuit was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. The matter was finally settled and the case dismissed but a subsequent dispute regarding the settlement resulted in the commencement of the current litigation.
In 1996, patent attorneys for Guidant (Boston Scientific’s predecessor) sued St. Jude for infringement of, inter alia, Mirowski’s Patent No. 4,407,288 (“the ‘288 patent”) which had been issued by the U.S. Patent Office, and for which Guidant had an exclusive license. Mirowski was added as a Plaintiff in 2001. That same year, a jury found that St. Jude had infringed the ‘288 patent that had been licensed to Guidant and jointly awarded Guidant and Mirowski $140 million in damages.
The court disagreed with the jury’s conclusions and, in 2002, entered a judgment as a matter of law for St. Jude on most issues, including finding both the ‘288 patent and another of Mirowski’s patents invalid. It granted a new trial on many of the issues on which St. Jude had not prevailed. The court also sanctioned Guidant $300,000 for misconduct relating to a Guidant expert witness.
Mirowski and Guidant appealed. Guidant also ceased royalty payments to Mirowski, as the agreement for royalties was limited to only those devices that were covered by a valid, unexpired patent. The Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s determination of invalidity of the ‘288 patent and remanded the case for further proceedings.
In 2010, Boston Scientific (which had acquired Guidant in 2006), Mirowski and St. Jude entered into a stipulation of dismissal and the case was closed. Boston Scientific paid Mirowski approximately $5.3 million and later slightly less than $1.4 million, the latter amount covering an error in the calculation of the earlier payment.
Mirowski objected to the amount of the royalty payments, contending that more was due. Mirowski also argued that Boston Scientific breached the parties’ agreement when it settled portions of its claims with St. Jude without Mirowski’s knowledge and approval.
On May 31, 2011, Boston Scientific filed suit against Mirowski, seeking declarations of non-infringement, satisfaction of royalty obligation, and no breach of contract regarding both the Indiana and the Delaware litigation. See a previous post discussing the commencement of this suit here. [NB: The Plaintiff listed in that complaint, Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc., is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Boston Scientific.]
In the current matter, in a motion in limine pursuant to the suit for declaratory judgment, Boston Scientific asked the court to exclude certain testimony regarding damages by Mirowski’s expert witness, Dr. Mohan Rao. After discussing a substantial list of his credentials, the court found Dr. Rao to be qualified to testify as an expert. The court also found the data on which Dr. Rao relied to be sufficient. The court then addressed Boston Scientific’s objections to Dr. Rao’s opinions in the areas of relevancy and methodology under the standard set forth in Daubert.
Dr. Rao summarized his opinions in four points: 1) his opinion regarding baseline royalties, 2) his opinion about the expected damages in the Delaware litigation, 3) his settlement valuations of the Indiana and Delaware litigations and 4) his unjust enrichment analysis. The court excluded the first, third and fourth opinions.
The court excluded the first opinion regarding baseline royalties as irrelevant. Through Dr. Rao, Mirowski argued that a baseline level of damages should be established that reflected the royalty that it would have received had Boston Scientific sought Mirowski’s consent before proceeding with the lawsuit, stating that such consent would not have been forthcoming. The court excluded this opinion, as it had already held that, pursuant to an agreement between the parties, Boston Scientific had no duty to obtain Mirowski’s consent to litigate. To the contrary, under the licensing agreement, Boston Scientific was obligated to sue St. Jude and similar infringers unless Boston Scientific and Mirowski agreed that a lawsuit should not be brought. Because Boston Scientific had an unfettered right to sue under the licensing agreement, Mirowski could not prove a factual predicate – that Boston Scientific had acted improperly by failing to obtain consent to sue – of its baseline-royalties argument. As such, the argument was impossible to win and the testimony was excluded as irrelevant.
The court excluded Dr. Rao’s third opinion, regarding the settlement valuations of the Indiana and Delaware litigations, as inconsistent with his own stated methodology of calculating an estimated settlement value. Dr. Rao had explained his methodology as consisting of two parts: the range of damages that the Plaintiff would accept at settlement and the range that the Defendant would offer. The estimated settlement value, then, would be within the overlap of those two ranges. However, in calculating his estimated settlement value, the court found that Dr. Rao appeared to have considered only the Plaintiff’s point of view. Because Dr. Rao failed to apply the methodology he described, this opinion was held to be inadmissible.
The court excluded the fourth opinion, regarding unjust enrichment, as demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of the doctrine. Specifically, Dr. Rao seemed to believe that a finding of unjust enrichment would result in a payment that would be split approximately evenly between Boston Scientific and Mirowski. He stated, “Mirowski would only get a portion of the proceeds on whatever it is that Boston Scientific was enriched, unjust or otherwise…Boston Scientific’s unjust enrichment would be roughly twice what the expected proceeds would be to Mirowski.” Holding that this testimony evinced a lack of understanding of the doctrine of unjust enrichment, the contractual relationship of the parties, and the parties’ positions at the time the settlement occurred, the court held the fourth opinion to be inadmissible.
The court denied one of the four motions to exclude, allowing in Dr. Rao’s testimony as to “expected damages” (the second opinion). Boston Scientific had characterized the testimony as “irrelevant, confusing, and a waste of time” and argued that, on the issues to which this testimony pertained, Mirowski could not meet its burden of proof. The court found that this issue could have been properly raised on a motion for summary judgment (but had not been) but was not properly excluded on Daubert grounds.
Practice Tip #1: Raising an argument when one of the factual predicates to that argument has already been settled by the court in favor of your opponent is not likely to be a winning strategy. To prevent such an error, it is useful to ensure that you have thoroughly considered each element of each of your claims.
Practice Tip #2: On the surface, the errors with opinions three and four seem easy to avoid: 1) make sure your expert follows his own stated methodologies and 2) make sure your expert is well versed – and conversant at deposition – in all elements of each legal claim at issue.
Posted in: Damages, Declaratory Judgments, Experts, New Decisions and Patent Infringement
Northern District Denies Motion to Strike Expert’s Survey Regarding Likelihood of Confusion in Trademark Infringement Case of Dwyer Instruments v. Sensocon Inc
South Bend, IN – Judge Theresa Springmann of the Northern District of Indiana has denied a motion to strike the report of an expert who conducted an internet survey regarding the likelihood of confusion created by a trademark infringement defendant.
In January 2009, trademark attorneys for Dwyer Instruments of Michigan City, Indiana had filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in the Northern District of Indiana alleging that Sensocon, Inc. and Tony E. Kohl of Highland City, Florida infringed Dwyer’s federally registered trademarks that are placed on Dwyer’s pressure gauge lens covers by placing confusingly similar marks on Sensocon’s own products. The complaint also made claims of trade dress infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin, counterfeiting, false designation of origin and copyright infringement.
The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment, and Sensocon filed a motion to strike the report of Dwyer’s expert who had performed a survey on the likelihood of confusing that is created by the alleged trademark infringement. The Court denied the motion to strike, applying the standards for admission of expert evidence under Federal Rule 702 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993) and its progeny. The Court noted that similar surveys are routinely admitted into evidence in trademark infringement cases. The court quoted a Seventh Circuit case, stating “[w]hile there will be occasions when the proffered survey is so flawed as to be completely unhelpful to the trier of fact and therefore inadmissible, . . . such situations will be rare.” AHP Subsidiary Holding Co. v. Stuart Hale Co., 1 F.3d 611, 618 (7th Cir. 1993).
Practice Tip: The Court noted that Sensocon could still attack the expert’s report by calling its methods into question and asking the court to grant little weight to the report. The court also granted Sensocon permission to file a report of its own expert to rebut Dwyer’s expert.
Posted in: Civil Procedure, Experts and New Decisions
Updated: May 1, 2017 11:48 am
Court Refuses to Strike Expert’s Report in Patent Infringement Case
Indianapolis, Indiana – In a patent infringement case, Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson of the Southern District of Indiana has denied defendants’ request to strike the report of an expert that the plaintiff had attached to a brief. The expert’s report contained a “readily-available summary of the infringement allegations.” The defendants had cited Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) as grounds to strike the expert’s report. The court in its order, however, noted that the Rule cited only applied to pleadings, not briefs, and therefore, was inapplicable. Furthermore, the court noted that the plaintiff had submitted the report for a limited purpose and “The Court will, therefore, only consider the report for that limited purpose, and only to the extent authorized by Federal Circuit precedent.”
This is a patent infringement case involving industrial wood veneer technology. The patent litigation attorneys of Overhauser Law Offices, the publisher of this site, represent Capital Machine Company in this litigation. The Indiana Intellectual Property Law and News Blog has previously blogged about the case. There are six patents at issue, all of which have been issued by the US Patent Office:
5,562,137 Method and Apparatus for Retaining a Flitch for Cutting
5,694,995 Method and Apparatus for Preparing a Flitch for Cutting
5,678,619 Method and Apparatus for Cutting Veneer from a Tapered Flitch
The Case No. is 1:09-cv-00702-JMS-DML, and the Order is below.
Posted in: Civil Procedure, Experts, New Decisions and Patent Infringement
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The Trustees of Purdue University Sue for Alleged Trademark Infringement January 11, 2021
152 Trademark Registrations Issued to Indiana Companies in November 2020 January 7, 2021
Fantasy Gentlemen’s Club Sued for Alleged Lanham Act Violations January 4, 2021
Indiana Intellectual Property: IP Litigation, Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights
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United States Department of State: Congressional Presentation for Foreign Operations, Fiscal Year 1997
"Following World War II, America chose a path of engagement, which made possible the construction of a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world. Standing on its principles and learning from past mistakes, America prevailed in the face of the formidable communist threat. To meet the challenges of the next century and to build an even safer world for our children, we must plot a similar course marked by vision and steadfastness of purpose. Just as American leadership was critical to global peace, stability, and economic progress in the twentieth century, it will remain so in the twenty-first. Our leadership is likely to be even more relevant in the new information age as our world becomes even smaller and more interdependent. In this era of new challenges and opportunities, our security and economic well-being will depend on global events and trends which we can choose to lead or to follow. If we fail to exercise our leadership now, we will pay an enormous price later. Recently, American leadership has spurred major successes in places such as the New Independent States, the Middle East, Bosnia, Haiti, and South Africa. It has strengthened democracy, reduced the risk of nuclear proliferation, expanded world prosperity, and countered the threats of environmental degradation, unbridled population growth, drug trafficking, and terrorism."
United States. Department of State
Research Paper: Temporary Migrants in the United States
Temporary migrants to the United States, known legally as non-immigrants, have grown in number and importance over the 1980s and 1990s. The Immigration Act of 1990 in particular instituted a number of changes that the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform is evaluating for its final report to Congress in 1997. This volume represents a significant contribution to the fact-finding efforts undertaken by the Commission to understand the implementation and impact of these policies. Scholars and policymakers working in the immigration arena have long appreciated the complexity of the different categories of permanent admissions, but only now are they turning their attention to the oftentimes linked temporary system with its rather different complexities. In this volume, leading scholars examine the non-immigrant system's major visa categories for temporary workers and foreign students. The Commission solicited these authors' contributions to help the Commission identify major policy issues and their solutions. The introductory chapter summarizes the authors' observations and recommendations on a range of topics, from the overall system of non-immigrant admissions to the effects of specific visa categories on U.S. businesses and workers, as well as our universities and students. The chapters here, comprising one of the first collections of scholarly studies on the topic, offer considerable scope and a solid point of departure for policymakers evaluating the non-immigrant system.
U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform
Lowell, Briant Lindsay
U.S. Security Assistance to Latin America
From the thesis abstract: "The United States employs security assistance as an instrument of foreign policy. This thesis examines how security assistance was used to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives in Latin America since the end of World War II. Qualitative analysis was used consisting of historical and archival research of government documents and secondary sources. A literature review was conducted to discover general trends concerning security assistance to include its establishment as an arm of foreign policy, its problems, and its purpose. Presidential policies toward Latin America are analyzed during and after World War II, to include Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, Nixon Doctrine, Carter's human rights policies, and the containment policies of Reagan. The histories of five Latin American countries are examined to specifically discover how the U.S. has used security assistance to achieve its foreign policy objectives. The countries examined are Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Findings concerning South American countries include a tendency for the U.S. to use security assistance as an incentive to reward democratic and pro-U.S. behaviors. Findings in Central America include the use of security assistance to fight internal subversion in an effort to maintain the status quo and deter communism."
Air Force Institute of Technology (U.S.)
Payne, Valerie S.
Nuclear Proliferation and Deterrence in a Changing Political World
This collection of selected documents from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) addresses the formidable issue of protecting the United States and its people from potential nuclear destruction. With the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and, concomitantly, the end of the Cold War, new strategies for nonproliferation and deterrence must be devised and implemented. Potential threats from countries not previously seen as a danger, the escalation of regional conflicts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are but a few of the considerations to be addressed. The authors of the following papers propose various plans and tactics to ensure United States national security and maintain world peace.
Defense Technical Information Center (U.S.)
Cupp, Christian M.; Levine, Phyllis; Lee, Catheryn . . .
Muslim Secessionist Movement in the Philippines: Issues and Prospects
From the thesis abstract: "The Muslim Secessionist Movement in Southern Philippines was for a time the most serious threat to the stability of the country. It had its beginnings in the late 1960s with the formation of the Muslim Independence Movement In the 1970s, the Moro National Liberation Front emerged as the lead secessionist organization. Through its military arm, the Bangsa Moro Army, the MNLF [Moro National Liberation Front] waged a furious war against central authority. The objective of the MNLF is to establish a separate state comprising the islands of Mindanao, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Palawan. The hostilities reached its peak in the mid 70s when the MNLF received foreign support from Libya and Sabah. The Marcos administration used a combination of military, socioeconomic development and diplomatic means to try to resolve the Muslim problem. Through the intercession of the Organization of Islamic Conference, peace negotiations between the government and the MNLF resulted in the signing of the Tripoli Agreement in 1976. A divergent interpretation of the autonomy issue caused a breakdown in negotiations and a resumption of hostilities. Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency after the February 1986 revolution. Her meeting with Nur Misuari, the MNLF Chairman, resulted in a ceasefire agreement in 1986. The peace negotiations however broke down because of rigid stand on both sides on the autonomy issue. The secessionist issue continues to be a daunting problem of the government in the 1990s. The government of President Ramos renewed peace negotiations with the MNLF. Spearheading the government reconciliation effort is the National Unification Commission. This thesis will examine the issues and prospects of the Secessionist Movement in Southern Philippines in light of the developments in the country and in the international scene."
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Domingo, Ruben G.
Vigilant and Invincible
'Vigilant and Invincible' was the motto of the U.S. Army Air Defense Command, or ARADCOM. From the first deployment of World War II-vintage antiaircraft guns in 1950 to the inactivation of the last NIKE HERCULES missile system in 1974, ARADCOM provided a deterrent to the Soviet strategic bomber threat for the U.S. homeland. During this period, the Army built, operated, improved and then dismantled a vast network of defenses. These defenses protected the nation's capital, key industrial areas, ports, atomic weapon production facilities and Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases from air attack. World War II generated a tremendous leap in military technology, especially in strategic bombers, air-breathing missiles like the German V-I, ballistic missiles like the German V-2, jet-powered airplanes and atomic bombs. These advances in technology, combined with the Soviet Union's threat of world domination in the post-war years, caused the United States to take action to prevent yet another war this century. And if deterrence failed, the objective was to limit the damage to its citizenry and war-making capability. During the final months of World War II, several major defense contractors studied the likelihood that evolving technologies could produce guided missiles to intercept bombers and surface-to-surface missiles. One of these projects, called NIKE after the Greek goddess of victory, would grow to a full deployment of more than 240 missile sites in the United States. Operating these sites were nearly 45,000 active duty and National Guard soldiers. ARADCOM controlled these missiles and antiaircraft guns and a vast network of command centers to communicate with them. This research will view ARADCOM in the light of various threats, and also of national and military events of the times. Threat-wise, the Soviet Union dominated the scene; its bombers and ballistic missiles.
U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command
Moeller, Stephen P.
Use of Covert Paramilitary Activity as a Policy Tool: An Analysis of Operations Conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1949-1951
Research Question: Was the return worth the investment for those covert paramilitary operations conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency at the outset of the Cold War? Discussion: This evaluation of covert paramilitary operations conducted by the CIA in the very early years of the Cold War period is a combination of pure cost-benefit analysis and a more subjective evaluation of return on investment. Included is a collection of brief case studies of OSS operations during World War II, for they established the precedence for conducting similar activity during the Cold War. There were significant differences, however, between the CIA's "operating environment" in the late 1940's and early 1950's and the wartime situation OSS officers operated within several years earlier. Success of post-war operations depended to a large degree on the ability of US policy officials and CIA paramilitary specialists to recognize the changes and adjust accordingly. Conclusions: From a pure cost-benefit perspective, covert paramilitary action conducted by the CIA between the end of World War II and the Korean conflict was a complete failure… Cost was not a factor, and US policy officials felt that the need to maintain some form of pressure on the Communists outweighed the risk of fallout from failed covert activity. Although individual covert paramilitary operations failed to achieve objectives, the cumulative effect was constant pressure on the Communist perimeter. These operations provided the CIA with a wealth of lessons learned, which paramilitary officers applied in subsequent successful paramilitary operations during the 1950's such as Guatemala and Iran.
Marine Corps Command and Staff College (U.S.)
Berger, D. H.
Radical Responses to Radical Regimes: Evaluating Preemptive Counter-Proliferation
"On December 7, 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin announced that the United States was adding a military dimension to its fight to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The new program, called the Counter-Proliferation Initiative (CPI), provides funding to prepare for combating foes with nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) and missile weapons on future battlefields, improves monitoring for locating rival NBC/missile programs, improves theater defenses, and develops weapons capable of penetrating and destroying underground facilities. U.S. efforts will include a diplomatic offensive to persuade U.S. allies to take similar counter-proliferation steps. The central thrust of the CPI is to prepare U.S. and allied forces for dealing with future enemies on the battlefield who are armed with weapons of mass destruction. An important secondary thrust of the CPI is to provide the Commander-in-Chief with the tools to disarm an adversary unilaterally if necessary, before the adversary can initiate the use of WMD in situations where we are on a collision course with such an enemy and no alternative course seems feasible."
National Defense University. Institute for National Strategic Studies
Schneider, Barry R.
Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1994
This document produced by the State Department in April 1994 provides graphs and analysis of international terrorist acts for the year of 1993. Topics discussed include regional analysis of terrorism activity, international counterterrorism efforts, HAMAS attacks, background on major groups discussed in the report and a map of incidents.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: New Perspectives on Counterproliferation
The United States has achieved a great deal of success in the post- Cold War era. Our forces are more capable and better equipped than those of any conceivable adversary. The quality of our troops is good and morale in the armed forces is high. Analysts do point out that we might have problems in executing a strategy of fighting nearly simultaneously two major regional contingencies. But these problems lend themselves to straightforward analysis, and the solutions are straightforward if challenging in an era of tight defense budgets. In the immediate future, there does not seem to be a threat to our interests from a nation that we cannot handle militarily. Yet, a handful of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons in the hands of the wrong country, can change this situation overnight. The use of a few of these weapons, or even the threat of their use, changes the context in which our national command authority makes decisions about the terms under which we go to war or whether we go to war at all.
Johnson, Stuart E., 1944-; Lewis, William H.
Profile Series Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Human Rights Since 1990
"At present, the primary groups at risk in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia1 are ethnic minorities. The most serious abuses reported have been against ethnic Albanians, and Bosnians and other refugees fleeing the armed conflict in former Yugoslavia who are in transit through Macedonia. Romas (Gypsies), ethnic Turks and ethnic Serbs also may face difficulties, depending on individual circumstances. Although ethnic Albanians actively participate in the political process and presently are represented in the National Assembly, they face serious discrimination in their access to political representation (notably dilution and limitation of their voting rights). They also face police brutality and repression by government officials, are under-represented in the civil service, have limited access to education, and are restricted in the right to use their native language. Substantial ethnic prejudice and a growing sense of nationalism among ethnic Macedonians are exacerbating existing problems for ethnic Albanians. So too is the increasing influx of ethnic Albanian refugees from the Serbian province of Kosovo, and Macedonia's fear that if Serbian repression in Kosovo escalates, ethnic Albanian refugees will flood Macedonia. February 1995 clashes between ethnic Albanians and police (with one death and numerous injuries) over the opening of an Albanian-language university, and over the detention of proposed officials of that University, have raised the possibility of rapidly escalating ethnic tensions. At first, refugees from Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia were welcomed in Macedonia in substantial numbers. However, the resulting economic and social pressures soon caused the government to place a moratorium on new entries, and to seek resettlement of the refugees to other nations. At least three major public demonstrations against these refugees have taken place, causing many to flee Macedonia and seek asylum elsewhere."
United States. Immigration and Naturalization Service; INS Resource Information Center
U.S. Policy and the Iranian Threat
"Topics include 'dual containment' as it affects Iran. International community thoughts; external pressures being applied on Clinton administration: conventional arms buildup from threat it poses to GCC. Israel and U.S.; external threat poised against a weakened Iran; dangers Iran's unconventional weapons program pose to GCC, Israel. Iraq and West; why Iran believes such a program is essential to its existence; capability of Iran to export its terrorist and revolutionary zeal. Iran overcoming odds on its domestic front; U.S.--GCC relationship and GCC--Iranian relationship and questioned policy of excluding Iran from regional security agreements."
Naval War College (U.S.)
Kerstanski, Paul
American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989: Book I: The Struggle for Centralization 1945-1960 [Part 1, excised]
This section of Thomas Johnson's history of the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Cold War contains pages i-xvii and 1-155 of Book 1. This encompasses the first three chapters, titled 'Cryptologic Triumph and Reorganization, 1941-1949,' 'AFSA (Armed Forces Security Agency),' and 'Cryptology under New Management.' Throughout Book 1, Johnson "explains how cryptology responded to the landmark events and challenges of the post-World War II era. He next provides profound analysis of how events and personalities affected the development of cryptology institutionally and professionally. Finally, and even better, Dr. Johnson spins a fascinating tale of the success or failure of cryptologic operations in the various crises that have challenged the SIGINT system."
United States. National Security Agency
Johnson, Thomas R.
This section of Thomas Johnson's history of the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Cold War contains pages 157-287 of Book 1. This encompasses the first one chapter, titled 'The Soviet Problem.' Throughout Book 1, Johnson "explains how cryptology responded to the landmark events and challenges of the post-World War II era. He next provides profound analysis of how events and personalities affected the development of cryptology institutionally and professionally. Finally, and even better, Dr. Johnson spins a fascinating tale of the success or failure of cryptologic operations in the various crises that have challenged the SIGINT system."
National Military Strategy of the United States of America, 1995
"Challenges to our global interests did not disappear with the end of the Cold War. Today we face a world in which threats are widespread and uncertain, and where conflict is probable, but too often unpredictable. The strategic landscape is characterized by four principal dangers which our military must address: regional instability; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; transnational dangers such as drug trafficking and terrorism; and the dangers to democracy and reform in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Many ethnic, religious, territorial, and economic tensions, held in check by the pressures of the bipolar global competition, erupted when the constraints posed by the Cold War were removed. Regional instability also results when regional powers such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea pursue aggressive policies in attempts to dominate their neighbors militarily, politically, or economically. Despite progress, the process of economic and political reform in the successor states to the Soviet Union is subject to reversal. Moreover, Russia will continue to retain large numbers of nuclear weapons and associated delivery systems. Thus, it is important for us to work with Russia and the other newly independent states to stem the proliferation of all types of weapons of mass destruction and to support the process of democratic reform."
United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Serial No. 104-56: Puerto Rico Status Plebiscite, Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Native American & Insular Affairs of the Committee on Resources and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the Committee on International Relations, House Of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, First Session on Examination of the Political Preferences of the U.S. Citizens of Puerto Rico, October 17, 1995
This is the October 17, 1995 hearing on "Puerto Rico Status Plebiscite," held before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Native American & Insular Affairs of the Committee on Resources and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the Committee on International Relations. From the opening statement of Elton Gallegly: "The Puerto Rico legislature enacted Concurrent Resolution 62, which asked the 104th Congress to respond to the results of the 1993 Puerto Rico plebiscite and to indicate the next steps necessary to resolve Puerto Rico's political status. [...] This may well be the most important territorial matter in the 104th Congress. Let me assure the people of Puerto Rico that we will listen to the views of all sectors of Puerto Rico. You have a collective right to pursue full self-government whether under or outside the sovereignty of the United States and within or wholly without application of the Constitution. The Federal Government has an obligation to clarify which factors in a proposed political status are attainable, and what status directions are possible." Statements, letters, and materials submitted for the record include those of the following: Hector Luis Acevedo, Miguel Hernandez Agosto, Ruben Berrios-Martinez, Jose Antonio Casillas, Angel M. Cintron-Garcia, Jeffrey Farrow, Luis A. Ferre, Arturo J. Garffer, Howard L. Hills, Carlos Vizcarrondo Irizarry, Fernando Martin, Kenneth McClintock, David Noriega-Rodriguez, Miriam Ramirez de Ferrer, Roberto F. Rexach Benitez, Charles A. Rodriguez, Pedro Rossello, and Luis Vega-Ramos.
United States. Government Publishing Office
Terrorist Assets Report: Year-End Update 1994 Annual Report to the Congress on Assets in the United States Belonging to Terrorist Countries or International Terrorist Organizations
From the Summary: "Nearly $3.5 billion dollars in assets of the seven state sponsors of international terrorism are located within U.S. jurisdiction. Of that total, over $2.8 billion are blocked by the U.S. Treasury Department pursuant to economic sanctions imposed by the United States against five of the terrorist countries. The total of terrorist country assets has increased by $280.5 million since the August 1994 report. This increase in large part because bank and other liabilities to Syria increased by $188 million, and in part because assets blocked by the Treasury grew by nearly $92.5 million. In addition, nearly $882,000 in currency and other assets was seized by the Customs Service over a five year period in cases that involved persons believed to be connected to international terrorist organizations. [...] On January 23, 1995, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12947, blocking assets in the United States of terrorist organizations that threaten to disrupt the Middle East peace process, and prohibiting financial transactions with those groups. Future reports will include treatment of the assets blocked as a result of the new Executive order."
United States. Office of Foreign Assets Control
DoD Directive 5220.22-M: National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual
Show summary Open resource [html] (open full abstract)
On behalf of the Secretary of Defense as Executive Agent, pursuant to Executive Order 12829, "National Industrial Security Program" (NISP), and with the concurrence of the Secretary of Energy, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Director of Central Intelligence, I am pleased to promulgate the inaugural edition of the NISP Operating Manual (NISPOM). The NISPOM was developed in close coordination with industry and it represents a concerted effort on behalf of hundreds of individuals throughout the Executive Branch and industry. The NISPOM represents the beginning of a new industrial security process which is based on sound threat analysis and risk management practices and which establishes consistent security policies and practices throughout the government. It creates a new government and industry partnership which empowers industry to more directly manage its own administrative security controls.
Homelands and Hostility: Measuring Levels of Nationalism
From the thesis abstract: "In this study, the reaction by the national minorities to governmental policies was used as an indicator of nationalism. Occasionally, minorities express good relations with the indigenous nationality but feel unfairly treated by the government. [...] This study has attempted to accomplish two tasks. The first was to test a basic premise of nationalism concerning one of its prime catalysts, ethno-demographic change. The second task was to test the theory by measuring levels of nationalism in comparable cases. No previous study known to the author has attempted to provide longitudinal data to quantify nationalism. Though the scale is rough, it has allowed for a comparison of levels of nationalism in multinational states. [...] A better understanding of nationalism is necessary to help multi-national states accommodate their minorities. By identifying crucial catalysts, perhaps states can work to overcome the inclination to use homeland psychology and instead include their national minorities in the democratic process. Different relationships and catalysts can be examined allowing eventually for predictive power regarding the intensity of emerging nationalism. Such a tool would be invaluable in today's world of nationalistic conflicts."
Webster, John A.
Denial and Jeopardy: Deterring Iranian Use of NBC Weapons
This study is part of a larger effort at the NDU Center for Counterproliferation Research to identify regional strategies that contribute to enhanced deterrence of employment of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons and their means of delivery. This particular assessment of Iran and the challenges of deterring its use of NBC weapons was the annex to a broader evaluation of regional deterrence, which includes Iran and North Korea as case studies. Both the broader deterrence paper and the North Korean case study will be published separately. While much unclassified literature is available on both deterrence theory and Iran, the present study was facilitated by the fairly narrow scope of the questions being asked about Iran: what makes Iran easier or harder to deter, and what can the United States do to enhance our ability to deter Iran's use of NBC weapons? The Islamic Republic of Iran presents a particular challenge to the Western analyst: Iranian leaders do not see the world from the Western view and have demonstrated a willingness to undertake actions at times seemingly contrary to their national interests and at a cost other states would find unacceptable. This does not make them irrational or necessarily undeterrable. The factors that influence their cost/benefit calculations, however, may be very different than those that have guided Western concepts of deterrence over the past 50 years. Thus it was important throughout the research to make every effort to avoid imposing Western perspectives and values on the evidence. Conclusions based on superimposed but inaccurate perspectives are often wrong and, in light of the need to deter Iranian NBC use, could be dangerously wrong in the not-distant future.
Desutter, Paula A., 1958-
Strategic Assessment 1995: U.S. Security Challenges in Transition
Contents include: The Strategic Setting; Asia Pacific; Europe; Russia and Neighbors; Greater Middle East; Western Hemisphere; Sub-Saharan Africa; Oceans and the Law; Weapons of Mass Destruction; U.S. Force Structure; Arms Transfer and Export Controls; Information Technologies; Peace Operations; Transnational Threats; Trends in the Sovereign State; Economics.
Clawson, Patrick, 1951-
Multi-Agency Ocean Rescue Disaster Plan and Drill: Broward County, Florida
"This report discusses the Broward County off-shore emergency response plan, the background considerations made that were used to set up the drill, the drill itself, and lessons learned from the drill. Many fire and rescue organizations can benefit from the concepts in this response plan, even though the plan was specifically designed for an off-shore response at a particular location. Its concept and design can be applied to almost any type of disaster that involves multiple agencies. The lessons learned are applicable to almost any type of multi-casualty incident or exercise. […] On December 6, 1994, the Broward County, Florida, Fire and Rescue Division and a host of other local, state, and federal agencies participated in an aircraft disaster drill in the intracoastal waterway near the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. The purpose of the drill was to test the interagency response plan for a downed aircraft in the water. The plan was devised to integrate the response capabilities of multiple agencies under a unified command system. Each of the agencies participating in the drill was charged with a specific emergency response role, and each brought different rescue capabilities which would be necessary to efficiently and expediently handle an off-shore crash with multiple victims. The drill was designed to be as realistic as possible. It included hundreds of victims both on land and in the water, mutual aid fire and emergency medical agencies, the airport fire department, private ambulances, boats, helicopters, the media, and hospitals."
United States Fire Administration
Joint Force Quarterly: Autumn/Winter 1994-95, Issue 6 [November 1994]
"NDU Press produces Joint Force Quarterly in concert with ongoing education and research at National Defense University in support of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JFQ is the Chairman's joint military and security studies journal designed to inform and educate national security professionals on joint and integrated operations; whole of government contributions to national security policy and strategy; homeland security; and developments in training and joint military education to better equip America's military and security apparatus to meet tomorrow's challenges while protecting freedom today."
Canby, Steven L.
Global Proliferation-Dynamics, Acquisition Strategies, and Responses: Volume 2-Nuclear Proliferation
"The proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as their associated missile delivery systems, is increasingly acknowledged to be one of the most important threats to U.S. security and global stability in the emerging post-Cold War world. Prepared for the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), this report: a. Assesses the current proliferation situation, including incentives and disincentives for acquisition, current outcomes, and future trends. b. Highlights different weapons acquisition strategies that countries have pursued and continue to pursue. c. Describes current policies to contain, cap or rollback, or deal with proliferation. d. Identifies key policy challenges as well as new initiatives to help strengthen U.S. efforts. e. Identifies areas in which the Department of Defense (DoD) may be able to make significant contributions to U.S. nonproliferation efforts."
United States. Defense Nuclear Agency
Dunn, Lewis A.; Bailey, Charles; Bernstein, Paul I.
Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflict Short of War
"Although much of the examination of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) has focused on mid- or high-intensity conflict, the authors examine the potential impact of an RMA in that portion of the spectrum of conflict between peace and war. They conclude that while the impact of purely military innovation will always be less in conflict short of war than in conventional warfare, nonetheless there may be utility in applying emerging technology and new operational concepts in that arena. They caution, however, that risks are associated with the pursuit of revolutionary change, and that seeking an RMA in conflict short of war could demand fundamental changes in American attitudes and values."
Army War College (U.S.). Strategic Studies Institute
Kievit, James; Metz, Steven, 1956-
Terror 2000: The Future Face of Terrorism
"Each year the Department of Defense convenes its Worldwide Combatting Terrorism Conference in order to review the nature and level of terrorist activity around the globe. The purpose is to identify changing motives, tactics and targets so our government may better defend our interests and those of our friends and allies. The fifth annual conference, held in June 1993, was somewhat different. This time the focus was not on the immediate future, but included an examination of the long-term threat. Participation which traditionally had been limited to preeminent intelligence, military, political and academic specialists from around the world was broadened to include leading futurists. This elite group was given two assignments. First, they must forecast, to the best of their ability, the course of terrorism for the next fifteen years. Then on the basis of their projections, they would help craft policies, strategies and tactics by suggesting courses of action and specific initiatives to meet the developing threat as they foresaw it. There would be no sacred cows. All aspects of America's policy for combatting terrorism would be on the table for examination and discussion. It was decided that a study would be prepared to apprise the government and the public of the conference findings and of subsequent research that would focus on the long-term terrorist threat and what must be done to meet the challenge. The object would be to stimulate discussion and examination by providing a provocative, unconstrained and independent point of view rather than a coordinated, homogenized distillation of current thinking."
United States. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
Cetron, Marvin J.
Joint Force Quarterly: Spring 1994, Issue 4 [May 1994]
Will the United States Eventually be Held Hostage by its Own High Technology Conventional Weapons? The Effect of Technology Transfer on International Terrorism
"This thesis reveals a disturbing transformation. International terrorists' present unsophisticated arsenals are slowly evolving into high- technology conventional weaponry. Alarmingly, an increasing portion results from U.S. and Western technology because of technology transfer. With the abating trend of terrorist attacks predicted to continue, the thesis discerns this does not suggest a decline in terrorism. On the contrary, through product and process technology transfers, the number of organizations that possess the technological capabilities to produce advanced Western weapons has skyrocketed in the last decade. Therefore, though attacks continue to decrease, terrorists' carnage will likely increase due to the technologies they acquire. With the global diffusion of technologies, countries are relying less on U.S. markets. This thesis acknowledges it is virtually impossible to restrict U.S. exports to industrial countries without severely restricting American competition. However, 'strong fences' must be built around 'small areas' to thwart the terrorist acquisition of U.S. and Western private arms suppliers."
Kovarovic, Paul C.
Research Paper: Immigration Emergencies: Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future
This paper attempts to review various aspects of preparedness, institutional responses, long-term adjustments, and special cases that must be considered in addressing immigration emergencies. In discussing these components through the lens of the Cuban-Haitian crisis and the Central American influx, the paper focuses on: Expectations on the eve of the Cuban-Haitian crisis in 1980 and in relation to the expansion of direct migration from Central America to the U.S. in the ensuing years; Results and impact of such expectations on existing procedures; Legislative and administrative changes instituted during that period, and; Lessons that can be distilled from the U.S. experience with immigration emergencies in the 1980s.
Bolton, Gretchen
Terrorism and America: A Comprehensive Review of the Threat, Policy, and Law, Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session on Examining the Scope of Current Threats of Terrorism to the United States and Its Allies, Focusing on Explosives and Explosives Regulation, and Related Extradition, International Law, and Immigration Issues, April 21 and 22, 1993
From the opening statement of Joseph R. Biden, Jr.: "Almost 2 months ago, a massive bomb exploded in the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people died, over 1,000 people were injured, and at least $1 billion of damage resulted as the explosion ripped through seven concrete floors and destroyed the buildings' power, communications, and safety systems. The terror felt by those present at the explosion was visible on the faces of the survivors as they streamed out of the building, and this terror was shared by all Americans who felt suddenly vulnerable because terrorism was no longer an abstract concept to them. It threatened an American landmark on American soil. Since the bombing, law enforcement officials have made substantial progress in uncovering who carried out the World Trade Center bombing. Several suspects are now under arrest and indictment, and many facts about the attack and how it was carried out are now known. Nonetheless, it is clear that many questions remain to be considered and hopefully answered." Statements, letters, and materials submitted for the record include those of the following: Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Orrin G. Hatch, Patrick J. Leahy, Carol Moseley-Braun, Dianne Feinstein, Arlen Specter, Charles E. Grassley, Alan K. Simpson, R. James Woolsey, William S. Sessions, Laurence Pope, James L. Brown, Bill Davis, Frederick Smith, Jr., Joseph C. Lund, Sr., Mark Richard, Michael D. Cronin, James L. Ward, and Robert K. Harris.
United States. Government Printing Office
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United Way Accused Of Retaliation Against Women Employees
Three women filed federal charges against United Way Worldwide, accusing CEO Brian Gallagher of targeting them after they spoke up about sexual harassment. Two were fired.
By Emily Peck
11/23/2020 05:45 am ET Updated Nov 23, 2020
Top photo by Peyton Fulford for HuffPost
Three former female executives at United Way Worldwide, one of the largest nonprofits in the country, say that they were retaliated against by the organization after speaking up about sexual harassment, HuffPost has learned.
After reporting the misconduct, these women were abruptly sidelined by leadership, according to three separate claims filed in the past 18 months with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that handles civil rights claims. Two were fired. The CEO unsuccessfully pushed for the other woman’s termination. The man whom she complained about has received a promotion.
A beloved institution, recently named America’s Favorite Charity by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, United Way had an opportunity to lead the way on how to handle sexual harassment in the nonprofit sector, the women said. Instead, the organization did everything it could to bully them into silence.
One of the women, former marketing chief Lisa Bowman, filed charges in March alleging sex discrimination and retaliation. Bowman was fired in January by United Way Worldwide’s CEO Brian Gallagher, months after she made a formal complaint about the behavior of a male colleague to human resources, according to the EEOC charge.
Bowman told HR not only how this man treated her — a pattern of ogling and inappropriate comments about her body — but how he had also flirted and “stalked” a female administrative staff member at a public event, even as she was gunning for a promotion onto his team, according to the complaint.
After filing the formal complaint, Bowman’s standing at United Way began to sink. Some of the employees on her team were moved over to the alleged harasser’s team. She was still required to do the same amount of work, with fewer resources, she said. Those left on her team were burning out, she told HuffPost. In hindsight, she views this as a “deliberate” effort to get her to quit. She didn’t.
In Gallagher’s office at the beginning of 2020, the longtime CEO bluntly told her he “no longer needed her,” according to Bowman’s complaint. She burst into tears. “It was a shock. So much a piece of my identity,” she told HuffPost. “I’ve lost my job when I shouldn’t have, through no fault of my own.”
When Gallagher recruited her to United Way Worldwide in 2015 from an executive position at the shipping company UPS, Bowman, now 53, told him she wanted to spend the rest of her career at the nonprofit. “I wanted to work for an organization to make people’s lives better,” she said. “To use what I do to make a difference.”
The firing crushed her expectations and instantly changed her career plans. Now Bowman is nervous about her job prospects and still looking for work. “I feel like I had 10 years of my career stolen from me,” she said.
Patricia Monteiro/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Brian Gallagher, president and chief executive officer of United Way Worldwide, speaking during the 2018 World Economic Forum on Latin America in São Paulo.
Another female executive went to HR about the same man Bowman had complained about. A woman who worked for her had said that this man was flirting with her at a work event in an uncomfortable way.
After reporting the incident, the executive also started experiencing backlash, according to her EEOC filing and an interview with HuffPost. The woman asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
“My whole lot changed at United Way after I went on record with that,” she said. This woman filed her EEOC charge in March, and left United Way shortly after for another job.
In the case with perhaps the most egregious allegations, United Way’s former vice president for labor participation, Ana Avendaño, said she was fired after Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO (the largest labor organization in the U.S.), complained to CEO Gallagher about Avendaño’s work on sexual harassment within the labor movement.
The AFL-CIO, a federation of 55 labor unions that covers nearly 13 million workers, is one of the United Way’s oldest fundraising partners, with union members donating hundreds of millions to the nonprofit every year.
Through her work, Avendaño had uncovered sexual harassment in this network, according to her complaint. Some local labor leaders were propositioning and groping female United Way workers who were hired to coordinate union fundraising. When these women spoke up about mistreatment to their local United Way leadership, their complaints were ignored or they faced retaliation, according to Avendaño’s filing.
Avendaño was trying to change this. She had addressed the issue publicly at several United Way events and at labor conferences. She reached out to these women to tell them they should not have to put up with this behavior, and advocated on their behalf. Avendaño also published articles about sexual harassment in the labor movement, and posted about it on her Facebook page.
She believed United Way would drive the unions to do better. Instead the AFL-CIO pushed United Way Worldwide to silence her, according to her EEOC complaint filed in June 2019, which HuffPost obtained.
“President Trumka oversees a nearly 13 million-member federation of unions that is dedicated to improving the lives of America’s workers. The task is enormous. And that’s his focus every single day, not personnel decisions at another organization,” Tim Schlittner, an AFL-CIO spokesman, said in response to questions about Trumka’s involvement in Avendaño’s situation. He did not respond to the specifics of her complaint.
Avendaño was not able to speak directly to HuffPost about her claims against United Way. To settle her legal case, she signed a restrictive nondisclosure agreement that forbids her from discussing how she was treated there, and prevents her from disparaging the nonprofit.
But throughout her fight to address harassment within the organization, and later in her legal negotiations with the nonprofit, she confided in a friend and a trusted colleague, Linda Seabrook, the general counsel at the social justice organization Futures Without Violence. Seabrook had also cohosted conferences on sexual harassment in the labor movement with Avendaño, and was able to share Avendaño’s story with HuffPost.
“Ana’s fearless. She’s always going to be an advocate,” Seabrook said, adding that Avendaño is driven to improve circumstances for women in the workplace. “She just wants to make change.”
Kyle Green for HuffPost
Ana Avendaño stands for a portrait at Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park in Meridian, Idaho, in November 2020.
United Way Worldwide did not respond to any of HuffPost’s specific questions, citing an ongoing investigation by the law firm Proskauer Rose into “allegations of misconduct.” The firm is also conducting an “independent” review of the nonprofit’s policies, according to a statement from Pamela Rucker Springs, United Way’s vice president of communications.
“United Way Worldwide (UWW) takes all workplace issues and reports of misconduct very seriously,” said Rucker Springs in an email. “Any type of misconduct is met with zero tolerance and UWW has strong policies and procedures in place to report and address this type of behavior; including protections for those who lodge complaints about misconduct.”
The charges against United Way demonstrate that three years after #MeToo got the world to listen to women about sexual misconduct, there is still a difficult road ahead for those who speak up. Seven in 10 women who report sexual harassment are retaliated against, according to a recent study from the Time’s Up Foundation.
Retaliation included being sued for defamation, losing out on promotions, and even physical harm, but its most common form was firing. This kind of blowback occurs regardless of where women are in their careers or on the socio-economic ladder — whether you’re someone like Bowman (an executive earning a high six-figure salary) or a union worker in a manufacturing plant, as Avendaño uncovered.
“No matter how high up you can go, this can happen,” said Sharyn Tejani, the director of Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.
A Boys’ Club
The United Way is a sprawling organization. The Worldwide office, which Gallagher runs, functions like a franchise owner, taking a cut of the money raised by the more than 1,200 local United Way branches around the world that fundraise for their communities’ specific needs.
Though the Worldwide office describes itself as a $5 billion operation, that includes money raised by all of its affiliates. Practically, the Worldwide arm had $218 million in revenue in 2018, the last year for which public information is available. That includes the locals’ fees and grants from big companies and their nonprofits. In 2018, the Pepsi Foundation gave $7 million, the Citi Foundation donated $20 million, and AT&T gave $4.6 million, according to data provided to HuffPost by Candid.org, a nonprofit that tracks philanthropic giving.
Since COVID-19 hit earlier this year, United Way has raised enormous sums to help communities around the world deal with the fallout by stocking food banks, distributing personal protective equipment, and helping parents who have children doing distance learning.
In addition to the three women who filed official complaints, HuffPost spoke to six other women who used to work at United Way Worldwide about how the nonprofit treats women. All asked for anonymity, fearing career fallout and citing United Way’s outsized influence in the nonprofit community. All of them also emphasized the importance of the nonprofit’s work and mission.
They were hesitant to publicly criticize an organization that does so much good, but added that this reticence allows harassment and misconduct to flourish unchecked.
“Within the United Way [network], we’re all cautious because we don’t want to harm the brand that helps people,” said one former employee. “So people have kept their mouths shut. We don’t want to cause problems for the mission.”
“A lot of the old white guys, that’s been their entire career. I don’t think they ever had a moment where it’s like, the world has moved on.” Former United Way employee
Under Gallagher, the 133-year-old nonprofit is run like a boys club, where women have to work harder to get ahead, those who spoke with HuffPost said. That means going along with the men, including tolerating problematic conduct, to succeed.
Bowman, the former chief marketing officer, described the culture as “sexist.”
“You couldn’t get opportunities. You couldn’t compete. There was favoritism,” said one woman who left United Way after working there for a decade. She recalled being told she wasn’t seasoned enough to get a promotion, only to watch a man the same age as her — with less experience — get it instead. “That’s the kind of environment it was.”
Gallagher, who launched his career at United Way in 1981, has long presided over an old-fashioned culture, she said, echoing the comments of the other women who spoke with HuffPost.
“A lot of the old white guys, that’s been their entire career,” she said. “I don’t think they ever had a moment where it’s like, the world has moved on.”
Gallagher was working at a local United Way branch back in 1992 when the nonprofit’s then CEO William Aramony was forced to resign amid a sex and financial scandal that reads like an episode of a 1980s primetime soap opera.
“The case was a humiliation for the United Way,” the New York Times reported in 2011 in Aramony’s obituary. The disgraced CEO had stolen $600,000 from the nonprofit, and spent some of its money on an extramarital affair with a woman 42 years younger than him that included flights on the Concorde, vacations around the world, and “even a fax machine to send love notes.”
He was indicted and jailed for fraud.
Even those who criticized the culture said the United Way has moved on from Aramony’s era, and that working there taught them a lot about the nonprofit sector. One former employee told HuffPost that United Way isn’t much different than any other large organization mainly run by men.
“I wish there were more women in leadership at the United Way Worldwide just like I wish there were more women in leadership at every other organization that I see,” said Nicole McNamara, who left United Way Worldwide in 2015 and said she had a great experience there. She still works with the nonprofit in a pro-bono capacity. “I don’t think this is endemic to them.”
Still, there’s a sense that it’s past time for donors to hear the truth.
Bowman said as much in a letter to several members of the United Way Worldwide board of directors in October, informing them of her charges.
“Like me, I truly believe that all of you became involved in United Way for good reasons, based in a desire to improve your communities by serving others in need,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, Mr. Gallagher’s leadership at United Way is jeopardizing those noble goals and putting your reputations — and the reputations of the companies you represent — at risk.”
As of press time, the board had not responded to her email beyond confirming its receipt.
Board members did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
‘Don’t Mess With The Unions’
Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, speaks at a labor conference in February 2020. Avendaño believes that her anti-harassment work upset Trumka and that he pushed United Way Worldwide to fire her.
Since World War II, the United Way and the AFL-CIO have run a program through which union members donate money to their local United Way directly through their paychecks. Avendaño’s job was managing the relationships between United Way and the unions, which bring in an estimated $250 million a year to local United Way branches.
The local branches run the program by hiring “labor liaisons,” men and women who are typically union members (and part of the AFL-CIO) who help raise awareness and drum up money for the local United Way.
A couple years into her job, Avendaño learned that female labor liaisons were getting sexually harassed by union leaders. She received a report in the fall of 2016 that a liaison from Florida resigned after being sexually harassed by a labor leader, according to her complaint.
The woman had reported the incident to her United Way supervisor, whose only suggestion was that she work remotely. Meanwhile, her union representative accused her of having an affair with the man who harassed her, Avendaño alleges in her complaint.
“I was shocked and appalled,” she said in her EEOC complaint.
Avendaño convened a conference call with labor liaisons, and told them this behavior was not tolerated. She said she had their back. More liaisons came forward to tell her their own stories, the complaint said.
At the same time, Avendaño and her boss went to Gallagher to figure out what to do. He gave the go-ahead to address the issue by providing a code of conduct to local United Ways outlining what kind of behavior would constitute sexual harassment, according to the complaint.
Back then, Avendaño also reached out to the national AFL-CIO about the Florida case. She was told that there was nothing they could do.
In response to a question about the Florida incident, the AFL-CIO didn’t address specifics. “All harassment is unacceptable and the labor movement is fully committed to eradicating it from our society, including our own ranks,” Schlittner said in an email.
Even within the bounds of her nondisclosure agreement, Avendaño was able to talk with HuffPost about the pattern of harassment she says she found.
“These women were fundraisers and the men harassing them had control over their ability to raise money,” she told HuffPost. “They complained to their bosses or their local entities and they found nothing changed. So they turned to me at Worldwide.”
Avendaño said she worked with these women to address the issue and to raise awareness. “We learned together,” she said.
Still, Avendaño was clearly wading into treacherous waters. The AFL-CIO is a powerful and influential partner to United Way.
“You don’t mess with the unions at United Way,” one former employee told HuffPost. “That is a no-no.” Others familiar with the relationship said it was extremely important to the nonprofit.
Chase Castor for HuffPost
Sara Wilder outside her home in Topeka, Kansas. Wilder was a labor liaison when she was sexually harassed by a member of her local United Way’s board of directors.
In Avendaño’s EEOC charge, she describes a series of talks about sexual harassment she convened or participated in, beginning in 2016, through which she drew attention to the problems faced by labor liaisons and talked more generally about sexual harassment in the labor movement, as part of her work for United Way.
At first, the arrangement seemed to work.
At a conference about sexual harassment hosted by United Way Worldwide and Seabrook’s organization in the fall of 2016, Gallagher gave the opening remarks, declaring the nonprofit’s commitment to taking on the issue, according to the complaint. He praised Avendaño’s work. A Canadian labor leader talked about how they handle harassment up north. The AFL-CIO adopted some of those practices, according to the complaint.
The following spring she received a $1,000 bonus and “superior” rating during her annual performance review based on that work, according to the complaint.
In August 2017, Avendaño hosted a conference bringing together labor liaisons from around the country.
Then something changed. In October 2017, the Me Too movement took off, after The New York Times published revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
As part of the fallout, many other organizations came under the spotlight, including the AFL-CIO. On Nov. 7 of that year, a Bloomberg article reported on allegations against Terry Stapleton, a Trumka aide, who was accused of sending lewd messages to a secretary. He told her he’d protect her from a round of layoffs if she’d have a sexual relationship with him, according to the report.
Stapleton was sent to mandatory training by the AFL-CIO, but then resigned months later, after Bloomberg News asked the labor organization about the allegations.
Three days after the Bloomberg story, Avendaño and Seabrook co-authored a post for a labor blog called “Top 10 Things Unions Can Do Right Now To Address Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.” This was with United Way’s backing, Seabrook said.
That same month, at another conference hosted by Futures Without Violence, Avendaño talked about the situation with labor liaisons at United Way Worldwide.
That may have been a tipping point.
In February 2018, the AFL-CIO removed Avendaño’s name from a list of people invited to a sexual harassment meeting at its headquarters, she said in the EEOC complaint.
At that meeting, titled “Labor has a Special Responsibility to Stop Sexual Harassment.” Trumka gave a powerful speech affirming his commitment to its code of conduct and combating harassment.
In his response to HuffPost, the AFL-CIO spokesman sent HuffPost a transcript of Trumka’s remarks.
“I’ve worked hard to get where I am today. But there is no denying I am a white man in a position of power,” Trumka said. “Social and cultural norms have been specifically enforced to benefit people like me.” He also acknowledged that labor has “been part of the problem.”
“The sexism and misogyny in our ranks has been tolerated for far too long. Some of you have personally experienced it. The looks. The comments. The innuendo,” he said. “This old boys’ club mentality must die, and it must die today.”
After that, Avendaño was excluded from all AFL-CIO meetings on the topic, according to her complaint.
She was still speaking out about sexual harassment in the labor movement in other venues, at universities and at United Way Worldwide conferences.
In the summer of 2018, she hosted a conference that appears to have been her last for United Way that included another panel on sexual harassment in the labor movement. This appears to have set in motion her dismissal, according to the events outlined in the complaint.
After that panel ended, United Way Worldwide CEO Gallagher got a call from AFL-CIO president Trumka, who was “upset,” according to the complaint.
Avendaño found out about the call the next day when Gallagher relayed the conversation. According to the complaint, Trumka was upset that Avendaño posted an article about him possibly endorsing President Donald Trump to her Facebook page. Trumka also said he didn’t like the title of the panel, “Sexual Harassment and the Labor Movement,” according to the complaint.
“Trumka objected to me ‘defaming good guys who have passed through his shop’ and ‘got caught up in the #MeToo stuff,’” Avendaño said she was told.
She offered to meet with Trumka, which wasn’t unusual; the two met often. But that meeting never transpired, according to the complaint.
“[M]onths before the emergence of #MeToo, the AFL-CIO Executive Council adopted a comprehensive code of conduct that is read at all federation gatherings and reiterates our commitment to ensuring safe workplaces, activities, meetings and events,” Schlittner, the AFL-CIO spokesman, said. He also pointed HuffPost to guidelines the AFL-CIO issued last year on how to handle harassment.
Avendaño told HuffPost that she advocated for the creation of those guidelines.
Avendaño is pictured at Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park in Meridian, Idaho on Nov. 18, 2020.
Trumka may have been upset with Avendaño’s work, but the labor liaisons — who’d long had their complaints overlooked — were thrilled to finally have someone on their side.
After hearing Avendaño discuss sexual harassment on that first conference call in 2016, Wilder, the former United Way labor liaison in Topeka, reached out to Avendaño and told her that at fundraising events where there was alcohol, she had been groped and propositioned by a local United Way board member repeatedly over the years. He was also a member of her union (part of the AFL-CIO network) in Topeka, where she works at a manufacturing plant.
When she’d complained about harassment in the past, union leadership offered no help, essentially telling her to deal with it herself. She kept quiet until the fall of 2016.
At a Halloween fundraising event, according to Wilder, the board member who had been harassing her actually paid a waitress $20 so he could “motorboat” her, e.g., place his mouth between her breasts and blow. The incident, widely witnessed, caused a stir.
Wilder was asked about it by leaders at her local United Way, and revealed that this man had harassed her for years. Her local United Way said it was obligated to investigate her claim that she had been harassed by him. And even though Wilder asked to keep her name private, the branch did not.
What happened next was a nightmare for Wilder. Word got out that she reported the board member. The backlash from her fellow union members and her local United Way was swift, she said.
She ran into a fellow union member, who “walked by and whispered in my ear, ‘fucking cunt,’” Wilder told HuffPost.
In 2017, when the man was kicked off the local United Way board, it was too late for Wilder, who left her position at the nonprofit.
Wilder said the one person throughout this ordeal who helped her was Avendaño. “Ana was the only person I had in my corner,” she said.
When Avendaño was fired last year, Wilder had no doubt why. “I know Ana was fired because of her work with sexual harassment,” she told HuffPost. “She has balls of steel and isn’t afraid to call people out.”
Meanwhile At Headquarters
Lisa Bowman had spent decades in marketing, rising to the top of her profession in an executive role at UPS, where she spent 15 years. From there, she jumped to United Way Worldwide in 2015 with high hopes of spending the rest of her career at the esteemed nonprofit.
She took a high-paying position and worked directly for Gallagher, the CEO. Her base salary the year she was fired was $305,000, plus a 15% bonus.
The future looked bright, until the day in 2018 that she met a man brought in by Gallagher from a United Way branch to interview for a vice president position.
At the request of Bowman and the other female executives interviewed for this story, HuffPost is not publishing the vice president’s name. Their issue now isn’t with him, but with how the nonprofit handled their complaints about him, they said.
Bowman said the new VP acted strange around her from the start. At a job interview before he was hired, he looked down at Bowman, who is 5 feet tall, and sarcastically told her she was “intimidating,” Bowman said.
Afterward, Bowman told Gallagher she thought the man was “awkward,” but qualified for the job. Since he was a peer, she didn’t have decision-making capability anyway. He was hired.
From then on, he continued to comment on her appearance frequently and would look at her in a way that was creepy, she said. In meetings and conversations at work, he’d never comment on her actual work; instead, it was always something personal about how she looked.
The feeling of being objectified in a professional setting can be humiliating, especially for someone so senior. It’s a signal that your worth isn’t about your professional success or expertise but purely your looks.
It was “degrading,” Bowman said.
“It felt really uncomfortable. It was hard to engage with him for work. I was always afraid there was going to be some comment or something,” she said. “I don’t expect any male colleague to ever be commenting on how something fits my body. I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
“She replied, ‘Oh, that’s just him.' I said, 'It’s inappropriate.' Lisa Bowman
She didn’t formally speak to HR, though, until February 2019, when the situation reached a tipping point. The man approached her at a United Way conference and looked her body up and down. “That skirt looks great on you,” he said, according to Bowman.
“That was the snap moment for me,” she said.
Bowman was standing with a woman subordinate to her in the organization and felt like she needed to be a role model. “I’d been enduring comments and looks from him for a really long time, but he did this in front of other people,” she said. “It was really embarrassing for me.”
She later sent the other woman an email saying, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“She replied, ‘Oh, that’s just him,’” Bowman told HuffPost. “I said, it’s inappropriate.”
A male colleague suggested Bowman speak to HR, and she did, according to her EEOC charge. Bowman later heard from HR that the man had been spoken with.
After that, the retaliation started, according to the charge. Bowman had staff pulled off her team and moved to different roles, with some now reporting to the man she had complained about. Her team was still required to do the same amount of work, and Bowman herself was working harder than ever, but felt like she wasn’t doing well. Her performance rating was downgraded, she said in her complaint.
Bowman felt like she was being targeted and didn’t understand why. “Something had absolutely changed,” she said.
Peyton Fulford for HuffPost
Lisa Bowman at her home in Atlanta in November.
Meanwhile, another executive at United Way headquarters had also gone to HR in February 2019 to lodge a complaint about the same man, the VP. Like Bowman, this woman said she was retaliated against for coming forward and has also filed an EEOC charge against United Way.
The executive has since left United Way Worldwide, and asked that HuffPost not publish her name out of fear of retaliation.
She made the report on behalf of a subordinate, who had complained that the VP flirted with her and made her feel uncomfortable. United Way Worldwide’s sexual harassment policy requires supervisors to “immediately report” any potential incident of harassment, the executive said. But ultimately, the subordinate decided not to file a complaint of her own.
That makes what happened next even more stunning: Gallagher asked the executive’s boss to fire her, despite her having no performance issues, according to the charges she filed at the EEOC. When the executive’s boss asked Gallagher why, he only said that she was “bad for culture.”
“He wanted to shut me up by getting rid of me,” the executive told HuffPost.
United Way declined to respond to specific allegations, citing its ongoing internal investigation.
Like Bowman, this woman had planned on becoming a United Way “lifer,” spending the rest of her career there.
She’d taken all the harassment training the nonprofit had to offer, an increasing amount in recent years, she said. When the executive brought her subordinate’s complaint to HR, she believed she was simply following the nonprofit’s rules.
“I was all-in,” she said. “I worked my ass off. And because I did what’s right, everything changed.”
Finally, a few months after she first went to HR — and after her own boss ignored Gallagher’s order to fire her — the executive found a new job and left United Way Worldwide.
It turned out that other women had complained about the VP. In April 2019, Bowman’s then-executive assistant, a Black woman, said that she had a “creepy” encounter with the man, according to Bowman’s complaint. He had picked up one of the executive assistant’s braids and made a comment about how good her hair looked.
Apparently, HR was conducting a full investigation into other complaints about the VP’s “inappropriate” behavior, Bowman said in her EEOC charge. (Bowman had also lodged a complaint on behalf of the woman whose hair was touched by the VP.)
That investigation came to an abrupt end, according to Bowman’s complaint, because the HR executive’s role at the organization was eliminated.
It’s unclear if anything ever came of those complaints. The VP still works at United Way Worldwide and has been promoted at least once.
The women who complained are the ones who are gone.
United Way declined to answer specific questions about the situation.
From Marketer Of The Year To Fired
In January 2020, Gallagher called Bowman into his office and fired her. He said her position was no longer needed because he’d hired someone else to handle her role. And that was it. There was no other explanation, she said.
“I was beyond blindsided,” Bowman told HuffPost. “I’d never been reprimanded, fired — nothing less than a stellar review.”
Up until that point, the Bowman had had a spectacular career. Only the month before, she had been named 2019 Marketer of the Year by a national trade magazine. United Way’s chief of staff was quoted in the magazine saying glowing things about her.
In 2017, Gallagher himself praised Bowman in print when she was awarded Nonprofit Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association.
“Thanks to Lisa’s vision and willingness to challenge the status quo, we’re raising our awareness, motivating more people to engage with the issues that matter to them and becoming the place people turn to create social change in the 21st century,” he said.
It took getting fired for her to get a clear picture of what changed.
“I sat back and was like, ‘What just happened’?” she said. It didn’t hit her until she sat down and sketched out the timeline.
“Oh my god. This is retaliation,” she recalled realizing.
She got a lawyer and filed her EEOC complaint in March.
Recently, she made her case to Gallagher’s bosses, the board of directors at United Way Worldwide.
“I firmly believe my termination was a direct result of the reports of sexual harassment I made to HR,” she said, in a letter to them sent on Oct. 14 that she shared with HuffPost.
Bowman, who lives in Atlanta, knows the risks in coming out publicly against the powerful nonprofit. But she felt compelled to speak up, she told HuffPost repeatedly.
“Please know that it was not an easy decision for me to come forward with my story, but I simply could not continue to remain silent,” she wrote to the board members. “To do so makes me also complicit. I am speaking out on behalf of all of those other employees who are too afraid or intimidated to do so.”
While the board acknowledged they received her letter, as of publication, they had not sent Bowman a substantive response.
‘It’s Your Tone’
Things went rapidly downhill for Avendaño, the VP for labor at United Way, after her August 2018 meeting with Gallagher about AFL-CIO chief Trumka’s complaints, according to her EEOC complaint.
About two months later, she had a medical issue — a pinched nerve — and asked to work remotely. Instead of granting the accommodation, she was told to go home and not to work.
After intense negotiations, she was permitted to do some remote work — which was odd. According to Avendaño’s complaint, other employees frequently worked remotely without issues.
Then, her boss, a vice president named Mary Sellers, along with an HR representative, told her that employees had complained about her attitude. There were reports she was bullying them, and Avendaño was under investigation, she was told.
“It’s your tone,” Lori Malcolm, United Way Worldwide’s chief culture officer told her, according to Avendaño’s EEOC complaint. “You are very aggressive.”
Employees had complained that Avendaño was “reacting emotionally, angry and mean,” Malcolm told her in a subsequent conversation that is described in the EEOC filing.
Avendaño was never provided with specifics, but defended herself, according to the complaint, admitting that at times, she could be irritable or curt — especially given her current pain issues — but she had never yelled at anyone or threatened or bullied a worker.
Until this period, Avendaño had only gotten good performance reviews, and there was no record of complaints against her at United Way Worldwide, according to her EEOC filing.
HuffPost spoke to several people who know Avendaño; they all said she is a fighter and a tough advocate, but certainly not a bully.
Avendaño wrote that United Way Worldwide’s response to her complaint rests on portraying her as an 'angry Latina' and a 'tyrannical supervisor.'
Nevertheless, on a conference call with her direct boss and Malcolm on March 5, 2019, while she was still at home, Avendaño was told “there is no way back,” according to her complaint.
She was told she was fired because of United Way’s “nonviolent workplace policy.”
“I was shocked,” Avendaño said in the EEOC charge, adding that she is concerned about the reason given for her abrupt termination. After 25 years spent defending workers’ rights, being accused of bullying subordinates could be career ending.
Sellers, the vice president, did not respond to HuffPost’s interview request, nor did Malcolm. United Way declined to respond to these specific allegations.
Avendaño filed her charges against United Way Worldwide in June 2019.
“I believe I was also subjected to a discriminatory and retaliatory work environment on the basis of my gender,” Avendaño said in the complaint, “because I brought the issue of sexual harassment of women within our industry to the forefront, and was a frequent lecturer and presenter on these issues.”
This summer, the nonprofit settled her charges for $300,000 and required her to sign a nondisclosure agreement, although she remains free to talk about the pattern of labor liaison harassment she discovered.
In June, as she was negotiating the settlement with United Way Worldwide, Avendaño wrote an email to the chair of the board, a copy of which was obtained by HuffPost, protesting the “onerous” restrictions in the NDA.
In the email, Avendaño wrote that United Way Worldwide’s response to her complaint rests on portraying her as an “angry Latina” and a “tyrannical supervisor.”
This is “both demonstrably false and sexist,” she said. “I do not believe that the public or a jury will take well to UWW casting me in the trope of the Angry and Emotional Latina. “
Avendaño had believed that United Way would want to help with her mission to root out sexual harassment inside labor. She never dreamed it would go south the way it did, Seabrook — whom Avendaño confided in and is not bound by the NDA — told HuffPost.
“She thought United Way would step up,” she said.
Seabrook said she’d tried to talk Avendaño out of filing a case at the EEOC: Making a complaint against a big, well-funded enterprise is a challenging endeavor, she said.
“It’s so hard. Financially. Emotionally. Professionally.”
These things usually don’t come to light — even now three years into the post-Me Too era — because of the impact cases can have on a woman’s career.
Bowman, the former chief marketing officer, said something similar. She doesn’t know what’s next for her professionally, and she knows that speaking up will have a cost.
“People will say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re not going to hire her. She ratted out her company,’” Bowman told HuffPost. “I’m a believer that you have to do the right thing.”
She Was My Protector
Wilder outside her home in Topeka.
Not one to stay silent, Avendaño is now writing a bill — and hopes to push it through Congress — that would prohibit nonprofits from requiring victims of harassment, sex discrimination and retaliation to sign nondisclosure agreements. Part of the bill would require nonprofits to disclose to donors how sexual harassment complaints are handled.
“Speaking generally, not about any particular nonprofit, I do believe that it is highly questionable whether nonprofits should have the right to require that anybody sign NDAs,” she told HuffPost. “[T]hat shields important information from donors and others who might hold the organizations accountable.”
Wilder, the former labor liaison from Topeka, had been organizing a working group with other women focused on combating sexual harassment in the labor movement. She said Avendaño’s departure put a halt to that work.
“I stopped that immediately. I was like, I am not going to get targeted,” she told HuffPost, adding that though United Way told her Avendaño wasn’t fired because of this work, it didn’t offer an alternate explanation.
Wilder said there’s no way she could continue without Avendaño.
“She was like my protection. She was my great white shark. She was gone. That right there sent a very clear signal as to what happens to people that speak out.”
Wilder pointed out that it absolutely didn’t have to end this way. The unions and United Way could’ve taken action on this issue and been leaders in making work better for women and fighting sexual harassment.
“They’re supposed to support people,” Wilder said, referring to unions and the United Way. “The working class. Well, it just depends on what your problems are.”
Do you have a story of workplace harassment and retaliation you’d like to share with us? Email: emily.peck@huffpost.com
Emily Peck
Politics Sexual Harassment Brian Gallagher Me Too United Way Worldwide
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Boy awarded £26 million for lifelong care after catalogue of maternity failures cause severe brain damage
A boy who was left with severe learning disabilities and behavioural problems requiring 24-hour care for the rest of his life after a catalogue of failures at a Chelsea and Westminster Hospital caused brain damage has been awarded a lifelong care package totalling £26 million.
The compensation, which will enable the boy and his family to have some semblance of a normal life, was today given High Court approval after being agreed by his legal team at JMW Solicitors and the hospital trust.
The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, will never be able to live independently or work and will require a team of specialist carers with him every day and night to manage his extremely challenging behaviour. He cannot speak. He requires specially adapted housing so that he can be kept safe and managed while at home.
Appalling mistakes made by the London maternity hospital during his birth caused his brain to be starved of oxygen. After fearing something had gone badly wrong with his delivery his family asked brain injury specialists at law firm JMW to investigate.
The team at JMW found a myriad of errors had been made which included not treating the delivery as high-risk when it ought to have been, poor communication between midwives and doctors and poor monitoring of the baby’s heart rate. After JMW brought a case for medical negligence against the hospital trust on behalf of the family it admitted that its poor care had caused the boy’s brain damage.
Eddie Jones, a specialist brain injury solicitor at JMW who represented the boy and his family in their legal battle, commented: “This is an extremely tragic case as the truth is no amount of money can ever fully compensate this boy and his family for what they have been robbed of. However it can provide the support and care that will enable them to live a better quality of life than they otherwise would have had.
“The mistakes that were made were shocking and avoidable. Guidelines that exist to keep babies and mothers safe were not followed and for that the family is paying an awful price. With adequate management and a few basic steps being taken the boy would have been born without the severe brain damage that he sustained and his family want more than anything for lessons to have been learned.”
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Kelly Hindle or Samantha Meakin on the details below:
Kelly Hindle
D. 0161 828 1868
E. Kelly.hindle@jmw.co.uk
Samantha.meakin@jmw.co.uk
JMW Solicitors LLP is a leading Manchester law firm and offers a broad range of legal services to both commercial and private clients.
JMW’s Clinical Negligence team is headed up by leading clinical negligence lawyer, Eddie Jones.
http://www.jmw.co.uk/services-for-you/clinical-negligence/
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Arkhangelsk, Russia
On the picture of Spaso-Preobrazhenski Cathedral of the Solovki Monastery, the sixth dome appeared in the rose-coloured shine.
The picture was taken by a pilgrim on her mobile phone.
The Orthodoxy in the Northern Land website reports Friday that it is symbolic that the monastery's history began with the vision to St. Zosima of a church in celestial shine. The first wooden church of Transfiguration was built at the place of this vision.
About Solovki Monastery
Located on the Solovki Archipelago in the White Sea, the Solovki (Solovetski) monastery was founded between 1429 and 1436 by the hermits Savaty and German, followed by the monk and future abbot Zosima. By the early sixteenth century, Savaty and Zosima had become the patron saints of the White Sea region. Solovki, also a garrison, was one of Russia's most important cloisters with extensive territories, earning income from trade, salt, fishing, and rents. Metropolitan Phillip II of Moscow contributed significantly to Solovki's architectural development while serving as abbot (1546 - 1566). Its monastic rule, formulated in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, became a template for later communities.
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's troops besieged Solovki from 1668 to 1676 in a conflict traditionally linked to Old Belief. Solovki's leaders and a large part of the brotherhood first accepted, then rejected, Patriarch Nikon's liturgical reforms. However, rebellion against central authority combined religious concerns with anti-Moscow sentiment fostered by political exiles imprisoned at Solovki. After their defeat, many monks left, ultimately to swell the number of trans-Volga elders - hermits who served as spiritual fathers to disaffected Orthodox communities.
Solovki remained an active monastery and popular pilgrimage site until the October Revolution, after which the Soviet government transformed it into a military training camp. It became a labor camp in the 1920s and 1930s for political prisoners. Abandoned soon afterward, Solovki was reopened as a museum in the 1970s, then closed again until the end of Soviet rule, when it was reopened to the public.
Michels, Georg. (1992). "The Solovki Uprising: Religion and Revolt in Northern Russia." Russian Review 51:1 - 15.
Spock, Jennifer B. (1999). The Solovki Monastery, 1460 - 1645: Piety and Patronage in the Early Modern Russian North. Ph.D. diss. Yale University.
Labels: Miracles, Orthodoxy in Russia
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Health minister's announcement on public inquiries welcome
Health minister Robin Swann has moved with remarkable speed to order a public inquiry after serious concerns were raised about the clinical practice of Craigavon Area Hospital-based consultant urologist Aidan O'Brien, who retired earlier this year.
It was only last month that this newspaper's health correspondent revealed that a major patient recall was to take place after a review into the clinician's work at the Southern trust, with the minister revealing yesterday that hundreds of families have been contacted.
In a statement to the assembly, Mr Swann said on July 31 the trust reported concerns to the department of health regarding treatment delays for some surgery patients under the consultant's care.
After a review of more than 1,000 patients, nine have so far been identified as meeting the threshold for a serious adverse incident review.
This is plainly a profoundly worrying time for patients and their families and the minister is to be commended for acting quickly to establish a public inquiry.
In a further unexpected move, he also announced that the current independent inquiry into neurologist Dr Michael Watt, who was at the centre of the biggest patient recall in Northern Ireland, has been upgraded to a public inquiry, which will have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
The establishment of a public inquiry also sends out a strong message that there is an overriding determination to uncover the full truth about matters that directly relate to the care and treatment of patients.
Although the decisions disclosed yesterday are welcome, they are also highly unusual as the health authorities here have shown a marked reluctance to set up public inquiries, which can be far-reaching in terms of their findings.
Indeed, the decision to establish such an inquiry into the scandal at Muckamore Abbey Hospital only occurred following intense and prolonged pressure by the families of patients amid shocking allegations of abuse and ill-treatment at the Co Antrim facility.
The fact that the health service in Northern Ireland is now facing three public inquiries at one time inevitably raises wider questions about oversight and governance in our healthcare system.
It is absolutely vital we discover what has gone wrong and why, but also to ensure that any problems in our system are identified and addressed at an early stage.
robin swann
25 November, 2020 01:00 Leading article
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Newspapers in peril as trends change in age of new media
Mon, Jan 4, 2010, 00:00
One advantage of big media organisations is that they have the size to mobilise populations when wrong is done, especially by the state. Now consider a world in which the state, freed from scrutiny by powerful watchdogs, seeks to control content.
Can the media as we know it survive the medium term? Probably not, writes ROY GREENSLADE
TO IMAGINE the media future, it’s important to take you on a trip into the media past and remind you of the media present. I plan to guide you on a journey to 2020, to what I’ll call the post-media age, but I need to set the scene with history and context.
News travelled slowly for centuries, going only as fast as human messengers could travel, whether by foot, horse or ship. It also tended to be specific – from individual to individual – and controlled. The people received only the news the authorities, church or monarch, deemed fit to release.
That changed in various European countries from the mid-17th century with the foundation of newspapers. Though they had a long struggle to secure the freedom to publish, they did impart “unauthorised” knowledge.
Editors, however, were dependent for their material on relatively slow, if exotic, communication systems.
In the autumn of 1845, for instance, a young man called Paul Julius Reuter used carrier pigeons to convey the stock market news from Paris to Berlin because they were swifter than the available train. Some six years later, with the development of telegraphy, the man now renowned for starting the Reuters news agency made the birds redundant. News was now on the move through electrical wires. Some 25 years afterwards, the first telephones were in use, though international networks took an age to develop.
By 1935 reporters were beginning to use telex machines and they enjoyed a long life. I recall that as recently as 1986, I was still receiving telexed copy from Sunday Timesforeign correspondents.
Just before the dawn of the 20th century, wireless telegraphy (aka radio) arrived. Then, within 40 years, came television. In diverse ways, newspapers, TV and radio spawned all manner of innovations that increased the range and speed of news transmission.
At each stage of technological progress, not only did the quantity of news increase but also the style of presentation. Moving pictures, quite obviously, made a huge difference.
Then came the personal computer and, in 1991, the foundation of the global system of interconnected computer networks we know as the internet. Hard on its heels came the mobile phone, a device that allowed people to talk and send messages from wherever and whenever they fancied.
The digital revolution was under way and within the last decade it has transformed the way people across the world communicate, especially with the spread of ever-faster broadband speeds. It has enabled millions to publish their words, pictures and films without needing to beg for permission from traditional mainstream media moguls or state bureaucrats.
The net has created a new media hierarchy headed by a range of brands – Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and Amazon – that have either generated profits on a scale the great giants of the industrial revolution could never have imagined or secured audiences that promise a golden future.
The names of social networking websites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, are known to millions of people on every continent. Young people use these sites as naturally as they walk and talk. They upload photographs to Flickr. They upload videos to YouTube. They seek information from Wikipedia. They strike bargains on eBay. In Britain, people routinely watch television programmes online by using the BBC’s iPlayer service.
RTÉ’s website is offering a similar kind of “catch-up TV”. In the United States, Hulu allows people to see major shows from TV networks to be screened online. Whatever is shown on a computer can also appear on increasingly sophisticated mobile phones too.
Nor should we forget the new, improved generation of e-readers either. Scores of books and copies of daily newspapers can be downloaded on to devices slimmer than a paperback. They are catching on fast.
The net has not eradicated old media but it has certainly hollowed out the profits of newspapers and commercial TV and radio outlets by attracting the advertisers who funded their content. Some companies have gone to the wall, though the wiser, and more financially stable, have sought to cuddle up to the new media, trying to find an accommodation that will allow them to continue in some form, to go on turning a profit.
Did I say wiser? Well, let’s get that in perspective. I’m referring in most cases to short-term commercial wisdom. Their chances of survival to 2020 look slim because the digital revolution has a good way to run yet. Even those who regard themselves as digital revolutionaries have no clear idea what’s around the corner. Could anyone in 2004 have forecast that by the following year a site set up merely to receive video clips from all and sundry would become one of the most accessed sites on the web? That’s YouTube.
Even so, I have a dream of the future, a dream that I also realise could just as well turn into a nightmare. Let me share the sweet dream with you first.
There may not be as many newspapers, but there will be plenty of journalism. It will have assumed a new form in which, to use Jay Rosen’s unmatchable phrase, “the people formerly known as the audience” will play a key role in the gathering and transmission of news events. They will surely do this on a local or, to use another fashionable buzzword, hyperlocal, basis. Their work will appear largely online, on sites that are unlikely to be connected to the major publishing chains that have ruled the news roost in the US and Britain for so long.
A similar change will be wrought at the national level. There will be fewer print titles, though online audiences previously attracted by the strength of a brand name will ensure its survival. But there will be much fewer journalists in full-time employment. It does not mean the elimination of professional journalism, by which I mean people paid to carry out daily journalistic work in order to hold power to account, which is the prime task of our trade. Simple economic reality will ensure that news outlets – whether they are publishing brands that exist today or small start-ups – will not host large staffs on the old newspaper model.
These professional news “hubs” will work in concert with, for want of a better term, amateur journalists. Call it participation or collaboration or, to borrow a term coined by Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, mutualisation. It is how news gathering is already developing and, in 10 years that will have become the norm.
Start-ups will be common. Many young would-be journalists, especially those streaming out of university courses in the coming years, will have set up their own sites because jobs in old “big media” will have vanished. Entrepreneurial journalism will flourish, servicing niche interests. These may be as unspecific as generalised “investigative journalism” or narrowly focused, on travel, say, or the transport system or health.
Did I hear someone, Rupert Murdoch perhaps, ask a pertinent question about funding? Who will be paying for this collaborative journalism in 2020? I predict that we will have a mixed economy – advertising, subscription, micropayments, sponsorship, philanthropy, donation, charity and a range of payments for add-on services formed around news hubs.
People will not pay to place classified ads, but large-scale advertisers will be drawn to support sites that achieve either high volumes of traffic or attract niche audiences. State funding is unlikely, though I imagine that the BBC’s and RTÉ’s licence fee arrangements will still exist on a roughly similar basis as today. Then again, the further fragmentation of TV audiences by 2020 will reduce the advertising take for broadcasters – in favour of online – which will be a threat to RTÉ unless it can renegotiate higher licence fee income.
Online journalism will secure funding because, despite the current cynicism about the big media corporations that tend to dominate in every market across the world, collaborative journalism will give it a new credibility. Indeed, smaller outlets will have a greater chance of gaining public trust.
So there is a dream. A new news paradigm. An unmediated media emerges with a public service remit. It will not mean the termination of human interest journalism, of course. There will be plenty of celebrity sites to satisfy the appetites of those who seek tittle-tattle.
But let me also concede that the idealistic dream of a smaller scale journalism unfettered by commerce could turn into a nightmare. One undoubted advantage of big media is that it has the size to mobilise populations when wrong is done, especially by the state. Newspapers and broadcasters strive to keep governments honest.
Now consider a world in which the state, freed from scrutiny by powerful watchdogs, seeks to control content. China has devoted untold resources to seal off its population from net freedom. Even the technologically challenged states of Burma and Iran managed to block the web. In Britain, anti-terrorism legislation has the power to curb online freedoms.
Down the centuries, people have fought for the right to know more. It would be truly ironic if that struggle were to be halted in the face of history’s most liberating communications technology.
Roy Greenslade is professor of Journalism at City University London
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Illness Experts Say Lessons Must Be Learnt To Avoid Future Legionnaires’ Cases
Three Victims Now Taking Legal Action As Health Experts Identify ‘Probable Source’ Of Stoke Outbreak
Expert lawyers representing three people suffering from Legionnaires’ Disease in the Stoke-on-Trent outbreak say lessons must be learnt to avoid future illness after a ‘probable source’ was identified.
All three people now represented by illness specialists at law firm Irwin Mitchell were admitted to hospital after losing consciousness and suffering with high temperatures, severe headaches and vomiting, chest problems and flu-like symptoms.
They had all visited the JTF Warehouse in Fenton just days before they fell ill and had spent time in the cafe directly above the hot-tub believed by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) to be the ‘probable source’.
As well as three people affected by Legionnaires’ Disease in Stoke-on-Trent, Irwin Mitchell is currently representing more than 30 people who fell victim to the recent outbreak of the illness in Edinburgh.
Amandeep Dhillon, a specialist at Irwin Mitchell, has extensive experience of representing victims of Legionnaires’ Disease and the families of those tragically killed by the disease. He said: “It is very worrying to see the number of confirmed Legionnaires’ Disease cases increasing and two people diagnosed with the illness have now died so it’s an extremely serious situation.
“Now that a probable source has been identified the focus must turn to finding out what went wrong so that lessons can be learned to prevent similar outbreaks in future. Our clients want answers as to what happened and why they have become ill.
“Most important of all has to be the health and welfare of the victims and final confirmation of the exact source of the Legionella bacteria to reassure people that the risk of further illness has been prevented. From our experience of working with the victims of Legionnaires’ Disease, it is crucial that if members of the public do start experiencing any of the symptoms they seek immediate medical assistance.”
There are now 20 confirmed cases in the outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease in Stoke-on-Trent with two having died and 18 others needing hospital treatment.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said the spa pool which is on sale at the JTF Mega Discount Warehouse, off King Street, Fenton, is the ‘probable source’ after it was revealed that at least 17 of the 20 victims had recently visited the store. The spa was shut down two weeks ago as a precaution but the rest of the store remained open.
Legionnaires’ Disease victim Kenneth Hill, of Islay Walk, Stoke-on-Trent, is one of the people who has now instructed Irwin Mitchell to investigate legal action. He said it was a ‘terrifying experience’ as he collapsed on two consecutive days and was rushed by ambulance to hospital where chest x-rays confirmed his diagnosis.
The 69-year-old was in hospital for 10 days and had to be hooked up to a drip and oxygen mask. He had visited the JTF Warehouse just a week earlier.
Kenneth said: “The roof in the shop was leaking in many places and buckets were placed in some of the aisles to catch the water. I was sat in the cafe for a while which was directly above the hot tub. It’s been a terrifying experience, not only having to be rushed to hospital but then to be placed on a drip with an oxygen mask.
“I was in the hospital with a few others too and we were all interviewed by Environmental Health officers who were investigating where we had all been.
“I just hope others don’t now get ill and hopefully now they think they might have found out what caused it they can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Peter Martin, 60, from Stone, Staffordshire, who has also instructed Irwin Mitchell, said: “I just popped in to JTF to buy paper plates for our Scout group’s AGM. I went in the cafe for about an hour and was mingling around where the hot tubs were.
“It was about four days later when I was ill and at first, I thought I just had flu or something like that but, after a couple of days off work, I was still suffering and was referred to Stafford Hospital by my GP. They did all sorts of tests and x-rays and, when I found out it was Legionnaires’ Disease, I was shocked. You just don’t expect to get such a serious condition.”
Peter Talbot from Werrington, Staffordshire, became ill four days after visiting the store to buy boots for his son. The 58-year-old first suffered the same serious flu-like symptoms as others on 13 July - four days after visiting the JTF store.
He had two days off work before going to the doctors believing he had a bad chest infection.
Peter Talbot said: “The doctor immediately admitted me to hospital and told me it was likely to be pneumonia but after running tests they found out it was Legionnaires’ Disease.”
While at the University of North Stafford Hospital he was in intensive care and lost consciousness on a number of occasions.
“I have read the news about the Legionnaires’ Disease and it’s been so scary not really knowing what is going on. So many people must have walked past the hot tub as it was near the entrance to the shop.”
Other recent cases being pursued by the firm include those for the victims of the recent outbreak among guests at the Diamante Beach hotel in Calpe, Spain. In that case, the firm’s experts have been instructed by the families of four British guests who died, as well as several other victims left seriously ill.
Dhillon added: “There are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk of infection with Legionella bacteria. The disease is normally contracted by inhaling contaminated droplets of water which means the hot tub would fit the criteria as a potential source.
“While it is too early to tell exactly what happened in this case, in our experience the reason for infection has usually been the failure to take simple preventative steps. These include maintaining stored water within the safe temperature range and making use of an appropriate level of chlorination. Protocols specifically designed to reduce the risk of infection are widely known and it is a concern to see several major outbreaks within a few months.”
Environmental health specialists, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Stoke-on-Trent City Council are continuing to investigate the outbreak.
Personal Injury Group Actions Amandeep Dhillon
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