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How To Guides, News, Reviews and UnBoxing
Monthly archives for March, 2019
Watch the creepy first trailer for AM...
AMC has released the first trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Joe Hill’s horror novel, NOS4A2. The network also announced that the series will premiere alongside the next season of Fear the Walking Dead on June 2nd, 2019. First published in 2013, NOS4A2 follows the story of Victoria “Vic” McQueen (played by Ashleigh Cummings in […]
Mark Zuckerberg says the internet nee...
In an op-ed for The Washington Post and Independent.ie, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that he believes that there needs to be “a more active role for governments and regulators” in order to counter broader threats to society, while balancing freedom of expression. He outlines four broad areas where he feels that new […]
Valve just surprise revealed its own ...
Unexpectedly on a Friday night, Valve has surprise launched a teaser site featuring a brand-new virtual reality headset, called the Valve Index, that appears to be a device of its own making and not one in partnership with its longtime VR partner HTC. The teaser site spotted by Ars Technica offers no information other than […]
Tesla Model 3 hack shows new cars can...
Two security researchers and self-described “white hat hackers” found a trove of unencrypted location, camera, and other data on a wrecked Tesla Model 3, according to a new report from CNBC. And while it’s not a problem unique to Tesla, the example serves as a stark reminder that newer cars can become a security risk […]
Rocket Lab successfully launches smal...
Small satellite launcher Rocket Lab successfully pulled off its first flight of the year out of New Zealand this evening, sending an experimental communications satellite into orbit for DARPA. It marks the third commercial flight of Rocket Lab’s small Electron rocket, and the fifth flight overall for the fledgling company, which just began launching rockets […]
Kaz Hirai is retiring from Sony
Sony chairman Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai has announced his retirement, drawing a 35-year career with the company to a close. Hirai stepped down as CEO a little over a year ago, passing the role to Kenichiro Yoshida, the CFO with whom he orchestrated Sony’s turnaround from a money-losing gadget maker to a profitable company focused on […]
Trump’s vehicle emissions rollback is dicey, so he’s lowering the fine for guzzling gas
Here are the best Amazon Prime Day 2019 deals so far
The US Army will test armored robotic vehicles in 2020
Facebook’s $5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke
aasim on Installing and Configuring Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on Windows Server 2012
amirthascvv@gmail.com on 4 rising startups in India – Jan 11
prasantashee2017@gmail.com on Installing and Configuring Remote Desktop Services (RDS) on Windows Server 2012
siiyobi@hotmail.com on How to Transfer Files Between Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive Online
Ads from Google
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TOS Review: Maestro Classics - Swan Lake
Over the holidays, we had the chance to review another product through The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. We received a CD from Maestro Classics, The Story of Swan Lake. Maestro Classics CDs combine beautiful classic music with children's stories like Swan Lake, Peter and the Wolf and many others. The CD is made for kids ages 6 - 12, especially ones interested in ballet. Maestro Classics has a special page on their website for incorporating their music into all the different subjects (Math, Science, History, etc.) in your homeschool, which I found to be very interesting.
Here's a bit more about Swan Lake, from the CD: The Story of Swan Lake is the tale of a prince who falls in love with a beautiful princess. The princess, however, has been turned into a swan by an evil magician, and only the prince's love can break the spell. Additional tracks about Tchaikovsky's life, what to listen for in the music, "Speed Metal Swan," a heavy metal version of the main theme, and the "Tchaikovsky Wrote a Great Ballet" sing-along, transform this into a modern classic.
I am *big* lover of classical music and just music, in general - we listen to a wide variety in our house and have been exposing the kids to different types pretty much since they were born. While my antsy six year old had a hard time sitting and listening to the half hour long Swan Lake story set to music, two places he has no trouble listening to things are in the car and at night when he's going to bed - so I was able to pop the CD in at those times. He *really* loved "Speed Metal Swan," the heavy metal version of the main theme from Swan Lake. What can I say...he loves to rock! He also enjoyed flipping through the 24 page booklet included with the CD that told more about the composer, the story and different kinds of guitars - he was especially fond of the guitars...go figure! He's all boy! ;)
Maestro Classics are available on CD for $16.98 or as downloadable MP3s for $9.98. Visit the Maestro Classics website and listen to some of their music samples - you can also find them on Facebook and Twitter. To see what other TOS Crew members thought, go HERE.
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Home/All News/Squash World Unites for 2016 World Squash Day
All NewsRegional News
Squash World Unites for 2016 World Squash Day
Squash facilities around the world will be opening their doors to welcome newcomers to the sport on the 13th edition of World Squash Day tomorrow, Saturday 22nd October.
The theme for 2016 is to promote the social side of the game and, for the second year, the event is raising funds for Unicef.
England’s three-time world champion Nick Matthew, who recently launched his own Squash Academy in Sheffield, has encouraged every squash club in the world to support the 2016 event.
“Every champion began playing in their local squash club. I know I did,” said the 36-year-old former world No.1 who this month celebrated his 72nd appearance in a PSA World Tour final at the US Open. “The wonderful thing about squash is that it creates lifelong friendships. Two players can be hugely competitive on court during their match and then go for a drink together afterwards.”
Matthew, from Sheffield, was awarded the OBE for his services to the sport and he is a vocal campaigner for squash to be included in the Olympic Games.
He added: “While it was great to watch all those amazing athletes in action in Rio, that joy was tempered with a degree of bitterness that squash was not involved.
“World Squash Day gives us the opportunity to showcase the sport and show the rest of the world what they are missing.
“My own club, Hallamshire in Sheffield, has always been a keen supporter of World Squash Day and we will be working flat out this year to promote the sport and raise money for Unicef.”
Squash is rated one of the healthiest sports in the world. It is also a sport for life, with competitions starting at under-11 level and continuing through all the age groups to Masters events for players aged 80 and above.
National Federations and clubs across all continents will be arranging ‘open door’ sessions, running events, or simply fundraising for Unicef UK and their own charities.
World Squash Day
Serme and Elshorbagy claim U.S. Open titles
Wadi Degla Men's World Championship - Quarters
Diego set to Dazzle in Namibia World Championships
Jahangir Khan Elected To Pakistan Olympic Association
Egypt & Pakistan To Contest Sixth World Junior Final
WSF President In Fact-Finding Visit To China
World Squash Day Reaches Out On Saturday
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Globalization: Meaning, Advantages and Disadvantages
Let us make in-depth study of the meaning, advantages and disadvantages of globalisation.
By the term globalisation we mean opening up of the economy for world market by attaining international competitiveness. Thus the globalisation of the economy simply indicates interaction of the country relating to production, trading and financial transactions with the developed industrialized countries of the world.
Accordingly, the term globalisation has four parameters:
(a) Permitting free flow of goods by removing or reducing trade barriers between the countries,
(b) Creating environment for flow of capital between the countries,
(c) Allowing free flow in technology transfer and
(d) Creating environment for free movement of labour between the countries of the world. Thus taking the entire world as global village, all the four components are equally important for attaining a smooth path for globalisation.
The concept of Globalisation by integrating nation states within the frame work of World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an alternative version of the ‘Theory of Comparative Cost Advantage’ propagated by the classical economists for assuming unrestricted flow of goods between the countries for mutual benefit, especially from Great Britain to other less developed countries or to their colonies.
In this way, the imperialist nations gained much at the cost of the colonial countries who had to suffer from the scar of stagnation and poverty. But the advocates of the policy of globalisation argue that globalisation would help the underdeveloped and developing countries to improve their competitive strength and attain higher growth rates. Now it is to be seen how far the developing countries would gain by adopting the path of globalisation in future.
In the mean time, various countries of the world have adopted the policy of globalisation. Following the same path India had also adopted the same policy since 1991 and started the process of dismantling trade barriers along with abolishing quantitative restrictions (QRs) phase-wise.
Accordingly, the Government of India has been reducing the peak rate of customs duty in its subsequent budgets and removed QRs on the remaining 715 items in the EXIM Policy 2001-2002. All these have resulted open access to new markets and new technology for the country.
Advantages of Globalisation:
The following are some of the important advantages of globalisation for a developing country like India:
(i) Globalisation helps to boost the long run average growth rate of the economy of the country through:
(a) Improvement in the allocative efficiency of resources;
(b) Increase in labour productivity; and
(c) Reduction in capital-output ratio.
(ii) Globalisation paves the way for removing inefficiency in production system. Prolonged protective scenario in the absence of globalisation makes the production system careless about cost effectiveness which can be attained by following the policy of globalisation.
(iii) Globalisation attracts entry of foreign capital along with foreign updated technology which improves the quality of production.
(iv) Globalisation usually restructure production and trade pattern favouring labour-intensive goods and labour-intensive techniques as well as expansion of trade in services.
(v) In a globalized scenario, domestic industries of developing country become conscious about price reduction and quality improvement to their products so as to face foreign competition.
(vi) Globalisation discourages uneconomic import substitution and favour cheaper imports of capital goods which reduces capital-output ratio in manufacturing industries. Cost effectiveness and price reduction of manufactured commodities will improve the terms of trade in favour of agriculture.
(vii) Globalisation facilitates consumer goods industries to expand faster to meet growing demand for these consumer goods which would result faster expansion of employment opportunities over a period of time. This would result trickle down effect to reduce the proportion of population living below the poverty line
(viii) Globalisation enhances the efficiency of the banking insurance and financial sectors with the opening up to those areas to foreign capital, foreign banks and insurance companies.
Disadvantages of Globalisation:
Globalisation has its disadvantages also.
The following are some of these disadvantages:
(i) Globalisation paves the way for redistribution of economic power at the world level leading to domination by economically powerful nations over the poor nations.
(ii) Globalisation usually results greater increase in imports than increase in exports leading to growing trade deficit and balance of payments problem.
(iii) Although globalisation promote the idea that technological change and increase in productivity would lead to more jobs and higher wages but during the last few years, such technological changes occurring in some developing countries have resulted more loss of jobs than they have created leading to fall in employment growth rates.
(iv) Globalisation has alerted the village and small scale industries and sounded death-knell to it as they cannot withstand the competition arising from well organized MNCs.
(v) Globalisation has been showing down the process to poverty reduction in some developing and underdeveloped countries of the world and thereby enhances the problem of inequality.
(vi) Globalisation is also posing as a threat to agriculture in developing and underdeveloped countries of the world. As with the WTO trading provisions, agricultural commodities market of poor and developing countries will be flooded farm goods from countries at a rate much lower than that indigenous farm products leading to a death-blow to many farmers.
(vii) Implementation of globalisation principle becoming harder in many industrially developed democratic countries to ask its people to bear the pains and uncertainties of structural adjustment with the hope of getting benefits in future.
Advantages and Disadvantages of International Trade
Trade Credit: Meaning, Features, Advantages and Disadvantages
Globalisation and Indian Agriculture and Industry
Globalisation and its Impact on Indian Economy
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“The Story” ski and mountain sport film premieres in Palm Desert
Posted By: Steve Bellamy on March 7, 2011 9:44 pm
The Ski Channel Film Tour continues to storm the nation this week as it takes hold in Palm Desert for 4 shows at the beautiful Cinemas Palme d’Or theatre Wednesday, March 9th through Saturday, March 12th. All 4 shows are at 7:15PM.
The film starring Bode Miller, Lindsey Vonn, Reggie Crist, Lynsey Dyer, Bobby Brown, Chris Davenport, Leif Whittaker, Stephani Victor and many other incredible athletes is a unique portrayal of the typical ski film and is garnering extensive praise. “The Story manages to do the impossible. Disguised as a ski documentary, it is actually a riveting examination of what compels us–especially the most driven of us–to excel when facing the most extreme circumstances. Along the way, we meet amazing and eccentric characters; heroes, misfits, heroes who are misfits. In the process, we learn more than we could have imagined about ourselves.” Tony Berg, Record Producer – Bob Dylan, Wallflowers, Till Tuesday,
Whereas a who’s who of celebrities came to the Manns Chinese Theatre Premiere, notably absent were the pro tennis players who made up the soundtrack to the film. At Wednesday NIghts show, all the pro players should be out in the full force. The Bryan Brothers and Sam Querrey will be in attendance along with a cast of others.
The soundtrack for the film was composed of nearly all tennis players and included the Bryan Brothers, the Jensen Brothers, the Seguso Brothers, Mark Witsken, Joey Ryan and the films director and founder of The Tennis Channel, Steve Bellamy.
Click here to view the trailer for the film.
Click here to view the video from the Mann’s Chinese Theatre Premiere.
Tickets are available at the box office.
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Volcom sells for over 600 million
Posted By: The Ski Channel on May 3, 2011 7:45 am
Volcom, a brand widely regarded for its presence in snowboarding and skateboarding, has been acquired by the French parent of the Gucci and Puma brands for $607.5 million.
“Volcom is arguably one of the most desirable global action sports brands with an authentic legacy rooted in surf, skate, and snow sports” said François-Henri Pinault, Chairman and Chief executive officer of PPR. “We admire Volcom’s brand management capabilities and the unique voice in which it speaks to its customers, expressed in high-quality, fashion-forward, innovative apparel and accessories. Volcom is complementary to Puma and we are convinced that its integration into our Sport & Lifestyle Group will speed up its development.”
PPR SA will pay $24.50 per share for Volcom’s stock, according to a statement issued Monday by both companies. The price represents 7.5 times Volcom’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, and a 24% markup over the stock’s closing price last Friday.
Richard Woolcott, Volcom’s Chairman and Chief executive officer added, “PPR is the perfect partner to help take the Volcom and Electric brands to the next level of success. For more than 20 years we have worked to inspire a movement that provokes freedom of thought and expression, and celebrated this spirit through our athletes, worldwide events, rock tours, feature films and, of course, our apparel. PPR, with its expertise gained through both Puma and its Luxury Group, could bring international market knowledge, sourcing capabilities and other operational expertise in areas such as product development and retailing to help the company grow Volcom globally, while preserving the elements that make the brands authentic.”
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What Critics Are Saying About Beatles-Inspired Movie ‘Yesterday’
When the Beatles-inspired musical Yesterday debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in May, it was greeted with a standing ovation. Not long afterward, a response came from those within the Beatles camp.
“We got a lovely message back from Ringo and Olivia, George’s widow," boasted director Danny Boyle. "I don’t think Paul has seen it, but he saw the trailer and said, ‘The trailer seems to work -- that’s a surprise!'”
Yesterday’s plot centers on Jack Malik, a struggling musician hoping for his big break. Following a freak power outage that leaves the world briefly in darkness, Jack discovers he is somehow the only person on Earth who remembers the Beatles. The singer becomes a superstar by claiming the band's songs as his ow. But fame is a double-edged sword and Jack’s celebrity status takes him away from Ellie, the woman he’s secretly loved for years.
In its review of Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune notes the movie “requires its viewers to take quite a few leaps of faith” when imagining a Beatles-less world. Vulture, pointing out that “a lot of good movies are born from dopey adolescent fantasies,” categorizes the story as “a good, dumb premise.”
Even Yesterday’s director has confessed difficulty in comprehending a culture bereft of the Beatles. “It’s impossible to imagine it actually,” Boyle explained during a conversation with Variety. “They changed the world, really. They were the first really to say, We want to concentrate on love and pleasure and music … we want to celebrate humanity. And they do that in a wonderful way.”
Despite the difficult-to-digest premise, USA Today claims that fans who suspend their disbelief and embrace the film will be in for a “mostly enjoyable stroll down Penny Lane.”
Newcomer Himesh Patel stars in Yesterday, with a standout performance that has earned a significant amount of praise. The Atlantic called his portrayal of Jack Malik “extremely charming,” while the Chicago Tribune labeled it a “star-making heartthrob turn.” “As Jack, Patel has an inviting, Everyman manner and lack of ego that make you want to root hard for him," USA Today proclaimed. "Plus, the dude can flat-out sing.”
Of course, any film that utilizes the Beatles catalog will earn its fair share of scrutiny. “The songs, to be fair, are iconic,” noted Variety in its review, criticizing Yesterday for featuring “nothing but the Beatles tracks that you would put on a '12 All-Time Greatest Songs of the Beatles!' collection.” The movie trade magazine went on to surmise that “the filmmakers reduce the Beatles to a kind of karaoke kitsch epiphany.”
Yesterday hits screens tomorrow, with early box-office estimates predicting the movie will pull in $10 million its opening weekend, roughly the same amount producers reportedly spent on acquiring the music right needed for the project. It faces stiff competition from the horror film Annabelle Comes Home, also in its first weekend, and the continuing success of Toy Story 4, which debuted last week.
Despite labeling Yesterday as “a rom-com wallpapered with the Beatles’ greatness,” Variety admitted the flick is still “cute and watchable.” The Chicago Tribune echoed those thoughts, noting that “even if this modern fairy tale doesn’t hold up on close inspection, Boyle does his best to make sure the ride is enjoyable.”
Everything You Needed to Know About 'Yesterday'
Next: Every Beatles Song Ranked
Source: What Critics Are Saying About Beatles-Inspired Movie ‘Yesterday’
Filed Under: the beatles, Yesterday
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Howard Stern Chosen to Induct Bon Jovi Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Dimitrios Kambouris / Diane Freed, Getty Images
Now that we have the 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction class, the next major thing for organizers is to line up the speakers who will induct this year's honorees, and for the New Jersey hard rock icons Bon Jovi, it will be longtime radio host Howard Stern doing the honors.
Jon Bon Jovi appeared on Stern's SiriusXM radio show where the announcement was made. According to Bon Jovi, he and Stern met in private to discuss the possibility, though Stern had hoped the ceremony would have been in New York rather than Cleveland. "I am so honored that you asked me," Stern stated (as transcribed by Billboard), before once again asking if the ceremony could be moved, then adding, "I am thrilled to do it."
During the chat, Bon Jovi also stated that there would be no problems at all with Richie Sambora taking part in the ceremony. The guitarist left the band in 2013 and has continued to work solo away from the group. "There is no issue," said Bon Jovi. "There is no animus." He added that while they haven't spoken in several years, their reps have been in touch and Sambora will be on hand at the ceremony.
Bon Jovi will be part of the 33rd induction class, joining Dire Straits, Moody Blues, the Cards, Nina Simone and Sister Rosetta Tharpe as the newest members. The ceremony will take place April 14 at Cleveland's Public Auditorium.
33 Hard Rock and Metal Acts Who Deserve to Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Source: Howard Stern Chosen to Induct Bon Jovi Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Categories: Rock News
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Just Jump In
On a scientist's meandering career path, we confront many questions. There are the obvious questions: what major should I choose? What graduate school should I attend? Which post-doc(s) should I apply for? Should I stay in academia, go into government, or find a job in a private sector?? Then there are the less obvious questions, the questions that plague most of us, not just scientists: Why am I doing this? Does my work even make a difference? How can I make a more positive impact on society? For Kelly Fleming, one of the leaders of 500 Women Scientists who has struggled with all of these questions, her path in science and in life demonstrates that sometimes, it's best to not waver and just jump in. She is discovering that she can only make a difference if she is moving forward.
What does 500 Women Scientists mean to you and why have you chosen to become a leader of the movement?
After the election, I felt a mixture of fear, insult, and motivation to do something. I wanted to help the people who would be most impacted by the outcome. 500 Women Scientists represented everything I wanted to promote; it is the intersection of science with economic and social issues. I became a leader so that I could use the resources that I have to help move the country back in the right direction. I want to be the role model for girls and a voice for science.
I’m excited that 500 Women Scientists has gained enough momentum and support to start making a global impact. We have women scientists in nearly every state and over 100 countries! That is a huge pool of resources to do some good for the world. The fact that there are over 16,000 women scientists who have pledged with us is heartening and encouraging and I cannot wait to see what kind of difference we will make when we put that many brilliant minds together.
I want to work to highlight the struggles that women and other underrepresented groups face from childhood through their entire STEM careers. Understanding the systemic reasons that groups are underrepresented are the first steps in ensuring that we push to include voices and ideas from all corners of the world. Unique ideas from diverse people are what fuel innovation and solve complex problems.
Give us a little background. How did growing up in Colorado influence your path as a scientist?
I had the amazing fortune to grow up in the foothills of Colorado, in Lakewood. I was raised by employees of the National Park Service, which gave me a unique fondness for the environment and the diversity of the United States’ landscape.
My dad is an environmental engineer and encouraged my curiosity about the universe. I incessantly pestered him with questions about why there were seasons, why the sky was blue, and how airplanes could fly. He patiently used props and metaphors to explain complex issues to me. My mom encouraged me with examples of independent women. I was lucky to have strong female role models teaching me math and science in high school.
The mixture of these experiences, paired with a specific enlightening high school class led me to the conclusion that I would be a chemical engineer. We watched a documentary on climate change when I was in high school. I was genuinely concerned about what humans were doing to the planet, and I wanted to use science and engineering to solve that problem by discovering a new energy source. Throughout college, I made it my goal to learn about the diverse energy landscape and learn how each of those sources impacts the planet.
How did you end up in Washington, DC as a AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Science and Technology Policy Fellow?
While doing research as an undergraduate in the Colorado Fuel Cell Center and then the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, I came to the realization that I needed to continue going to school if I wanted to be a research scientist and find a new, clean source of energy. My love of outdoor recreation and the prestige of the program led me to graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle. There, my research used theoretical chemistry to learn previously unknown details about chemical reactions that are important for turning biomass into fuel.
I’ve always been a political junkie, and I found myself closely following the growing political divide on climate change. While I was in graduate school working to find the very specific, small (literally) details of a single reaction, I had trouble explaining why my research was important, even though I knew it was part of the bigger solution in climate change. So, I set out to fix that and enrolled in courses to help scientists communicate. It was frustrating watching politicians and political correspondents incorrectly represent the science on energy and the environment. I started wondering why scientists aren’t more involved in forming and explaining the policy that their work is informing.
Through my journey, I decided communicating science to policymakers and the public was how I could make the most impact (plus, I really enjoy it). The AAAS fellowship was the most logical way to start a career in science policy, and I did everything I could to make sure I was a top candidate for it. Little did I expect that my first year in the government would be the same year as one of the most shocking election outcomes in history. It is more important than ever to engage scientists in policy roles, and my time in the fellowship will be a unique one.
You came to DC for science policy. Where do you see yourself heading from here?
Although I haven’t pinpointed my long-term career aspirations, I do want to stay in science advocacy and policy. The path that the U.S. goes down in the next few years will shape science in the United States and the world for decades. I want to spend the next few years doing everything I can to make sure the U.S. continues to be global leader in science and does so as a diverse and inclusive melting pot of brilliant minds.
In the future I would like to become a policy advisor, or perhaps run for office at some point in my life. I have also always wanted to teach at the high school or college level at some point in my career. Overall, I just want to make a positive impact on society using the skills and training I have been fortunate enough to receive.
For women looking to enter the science policy arena, what advice would you give?
Scientists can enter into policy at any stage in their career, and scientists are needed in policy more now than they ever have been. My advice would be to practice telling your science like a story – instead of focusing on the “how” (AKA the methods), focus on the “why.” Policy-makers and the people who benefit from your research don’t care what kind of spectroscopy you are using. Other than that, jump right in! Policymakers need you!
Kelly Fleming is a Science and Technology Policy Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She grew up in Colorado with a special appreciation for the environment, raised by National Park Service employees. She always had an interest in preserving the environment combined with scientific curiosity, which led her to choose a career in chemical engineering with the goal of using science to help make the earth a better place to live.
In addition to actively participating in AAAS fellowship outreach groups, she currently serves on the leadership board of 500 Women Scientists, as the Policy and Advocacy lead. With outreach, she hopes to promote an inclusive and diverse scientific community to solve global challenges. Kelly earned a a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington focusing on molecular simulations of reactions relevant in processing biomass into fuels.
In her spare time, Kelly enjoys spending time in the outdoors hiking, backpacking, snowboarding, snowshoeing, and climbing. She is also an avid NFL viewer and has previously blogged about the Broncos for SB Nation.
Older PostWeekly Wrap-Up
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Stanford's attorneys appeal no bond decision
HOUSTON Stanford's attorneys on Monday asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to overturn an order issued last month by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in Houston that revoked Stanford's $500,000 bond. Stanford is being held at a privately run detention center north of the city.
Stanford and four executives of his now defunct Houston-based Stanford Financial Group are accused of orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme by advising clients to invest more than $7 billion in certificates of deposit from the Stanford International Bank in the Caribbean island of Antigua and then misusing the money, in part to pay for Stanford's lavish lifestyle.
Hittner, in overturning a magistrate judge's decision to allow Stanford to be free on bond, said the once highflying financier is a "serious flight risk."
But the appeal, which reiterates many of the arguments made by his attorneys in previous court hearings related to his bond, says Hittner made his decision based on misleading and inaccurate statements from prosecutors. Prosecutors claim Stanford would flee because of his international ties, including holding dual U.S. and Antiguan citizenship, having an international network of wealthy acquaintances, and possibly having access to vast wealth hidden around the world.
"The inferences drawn by (Hittner) from other findings of fact are also clearly erroneous and simply do not support its ultimate conclusions that Stanford is a flight risk and that no conditions of bail would reasonably assure his presence at trial," Dick DeGuerin, Stanford's defense attorney wrote in the 46-page appeal.
DeGuerin said his client has deep and long-standing ties to the Houston community, including having a home in the Houston area since the mid-1980s, and doesn't have access to an international network of friends or to secret money.
"He had no access to funds to flee," DeGuerin wrote in the appeal.
Stanford was considered one of the richest men in America with an estimated net worth of more than $2 billion. But DeGuerin said his client is now penniless and the question of the missing funds is not relevant to whether he should be freed on bond because prosecutors have not proven Stanford has access to that money.
However, investigators say Stanford secretly diverted more than $1.6 billion in investor funds as personal loans to himself and they believe he could have access to vast wealth hidden around the world.
Stanford's attorneys also filed a 10-page motion asking he be released while his appeal is considered by the 5th Circuit.
Justice Department spokesman Ian McCaleb declined to comment about Stanford's appeal. Prosecutors will have a chance to respond with their own court filing later.
Stanford and executives Laura Pendergest-Holt, Gilberto Lopez and Mark Kuhrt pleaded not guilty last month to various charges, including wire and mail fraud, in a 21-count indictment issued June 18. The three Stanford executives are free on bond.
James M. Davis, ex-chief financial officer for Stanford's business empire, was charged with three counts in a criminal information also issued June 18. Davis, who's been cooperating with prosecutors and is free on bond, is set to plead guilty to the charges as part of a deal with the Justice Department during a court hearing Aug. 6.
Also indicted is Leroy King, the former chief executive officer of Antigua's Financial Services Regulatory Commission. King, accused of taking bribes from Stanford to overlook irregularities at his bank, is awaiting extradition to the United States.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in February accusing Stanford and his top executives of committing crimes similar to those in the indictment.
QUICK HEADLINES | MORE LOCAL | GET NEWS ALERTS
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Notary School of Bologna, Renaissance Italy, 1228
Tags:Byzantine Empire, Code of Justinian, Constantine, imperial notary, Irnerius, Marconi, medieval Europe, Nicolaus Copernicus, Notary School of Bologna, notary seal, papal notary, Pope, Renaissance, Roman Empire, Roman law, Thomas Beckett, university
November 28, 2016 Notary History Jerry Lucas
In 1228 AD, before the Renaissance began, the Notary School of Bologna, Scuola di Notariato, started in Bologna, in northern Italy. The school developed and refined notarial law and practice, and inspired a renewed study of ancient Roman law.
The Bologna “Studium” was founded by students, and for students, in 1088 AD. It is the oldest university in the Western world. The fame of the Studium spread throughout Europe.
Many scholars came to study at the Notary School of Bologna including Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Nicolaus Copernicus, Renaissance mathematician and astronomer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the developer of wireless radio telegraphy.
Irnerius, Legal Scholar
At the end of the 11th century, masters of grammar, rhetoric and logic began to apply themselves to teaching law in Bologna. The earliest recorded legal scholar was a man named Irnerius. His activities, cataloging the Roman legal materials, soon ran beyond the boundaries of Bologna.
His Formularium Tabellionum was a directory for notaries. At the Notary School of Bologna, he taught the newly recovered Roman law code of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople, issued from 529 to 534 AD, known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, Codex Justinianus, or the Code of Justinian.
Notaries in Medieval Europe
The Notary School of Bologna emphasized the legal and technical qualifications of the notary. It drew up procedures for the preparation of notarial acts in a correct form of law. From the notarial studies in Bologna during that era, the concept of the notary as a qualified jurist arose. The school led to the expansion of the notarial system throughout medieval Europe.
During the Renaissance, notaries became less connected to the courts. The independent acts, with a notary seal, gained public trust in their own right. The laws for executing legal instruments became so technical that European courts relinquished power for authenticating documents to highly trained notaries.
In 330 AD, Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, now modern-day Istanbul, Turkey, which he founded as a second Rome on the site of Byzantium. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarians in 476 AD, the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, continued the traditions of Roman law until defeated by an invading Islamic army of the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD.
During the Middle Ages, the conquered provinces of the former Western Roman Empire integrated Roman law into their civil institutions. In the lands that became modern-day Spain, France, Germany and the other nations of Western Europe, notary practices were widely adopted.
Notaries had to complete training and pass an exam, and were often registrars at district courts, recording proceedings. They attached the court seal on deeds and other documents to make them public and authentic acts. These palatine notaries were appointed by the local count palatine, who also appointed judges.
Notary Investiture Ceremony
In a ritual similar to appointing a knight, rather than using a sword, the count palatine appointed notaries in a “pen and inkwell” (Latin: cum penna et calamario) ceremony, the symbol of the evangelist St. Matthew, and administered an oath, sworn on the Bible.
One record of the notary oath reads:
“I swear by the Holy Gospel that I will perform the duties of a notary justly, clearly, faithfully and lawfully. I will not draw up false papers or false documents; I will not falsify old instruments or exchange individual phrases. I will do no harm to the rights of churches, hospices, orphans, widows and other wretched persons but instead protect and defend them within my power.
I swear loyalty to the Holy Empire, to the Palatine Count, and to everyone in his entourage. If it comes to my attention that anyone has opposed the Palatine Count or attempted to take away his jurisdiction, I commit myself to defend him with all my power and inform him about this either in writing or orally.”
The count palatine then symbolically gave a light slap (alapa), representing authority and the hand of God, to the humbly kneeling notary, and handed him the pen and inkwell, signifying a transmission of authority from the King or Emperor. Then they exchanged a kiss of peace, to seal the contract.
The investiture was announced by the town crier in the town square. The notary would be received at a dinner of notaries, and be enrolled in their art.
Notary Deed of Authority
The new notary received a deed of authority from the notary recording the event, registered his personal signum, (sign, mark, or seal) and adopted the formal title ser or sir.
One deed of authority of an imperial notary investiture reads:
From the Count Palatine, to all who see this public record,
[notary name, of town name] has asked us to grant him this office, having sworn fealty to the Holy Roman Church and Empire, and to duly perform his office, in virtue of the power given to us and our ancestors by the Sainted Emperors, we invested him with the pen, reed and parchment, which we held in our hands, and gave him the kiss of peace.
Granting him the power to make instruments, acts, protocols, and to make copies of, and publish letters, receive and examine witnesses, publish their evidence, make wills and codicils, to take admissions of contracts and all other writings, to take down decrees of judges and arbitrators, and enter appeals in court or out of court, with powers of appointing guardians, and maintenance, of taking emancipations, manumissions and adoptions, and exercising the office of Ordinary, and of performing the said office of Notary throughout the world.
[made by notary name, of town name] (usually written by the new notary’s teacher)
Once the new notary’s name was inscribed in a register of notaries (Matricola), he was able to begin practicing.
There were city notaries with local authority, and imperial notaries, appointed by emperors, and papal notaries appointed by the Pope in Rome, with no territorial restrictions on their authority.
John of Bologna
John of Bologna, a notary of the papal curia, was brought to England by John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1289, he completed a Summa Notarie handbook for notaries in ecclesiastical courts. Its purpose was to instruct them, so the practices of the Roman curia in judicial processes could be imitated in the court of Canterbury.
University of Bologna Notary Training
Today, the University of Bologna has over 80,000 students, and continues to offer legal and notary training.
Current notarial studies include:
Civil Law I (Personal, Successions)
Civil Law II (Property, Rights in Rem, Family Law)
Civil Law III (Obligations and Contracts, Real Estate Advertising)
Civil Procedure Law (Voluntary Jurisdiction)
Commercial Law I (Business and Company Law)
Commercial Law II (Credit Securities)
Commercial Law III (Company Law)
Administrative Law (Town Planning and Public Residential Building)
Notarial Legislation and Code of Conduct, and
Tax Law.
The Notary School of Bologna had a lasting effect on preserving and teaching Roman law and spreading notary law across Europe, and eventually to overseas colonies.
1. University of Bologna Seal, vectorized by User: Nandhp [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
2. University of Bologna library
[Last-Modified Date 2017-10-02] added new image, Byzantine Empire info
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The origin of yoga – Part 2 – Indus Valley Civilization – Vedas
April 29, 2018April 29, 2018by Nishanth Babu Vasireddyin yoga
The roots of yoga that we practice now were developed in India. Proof of which was found from the archaeological excavations made in the Indus valley. The artifacts unearthed at these sites depicted Indian mythological characters in various yoga postures and some were depicted to be meditating. Carbon dating of these artifacts estimate them to be some 5000 years old. These discoveries prove that yoga was practiced in India well before the so called Aryan Invasion.
Aryan Invasion is a myth propagated by the British during their reign in India. According to the theory of Aryan Invasion, the vedic era in India started once the Aryans invaded and settled in India. According to the theory, the Vedas and Hindu philosophy was given to India by the Aryans, before which the Indian race was barbaric. This propaganda was intended to downplay Indian civilization and to create a divide between the pre-independence Indian population. They succeeded in doing so by using the Sanskrit terms ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’ to differentiate the people of north and South India. Sadly, this faulty account of Aryan and Dravidian races still does echo in our books of history. Anyway, the discoveries from the ruins of Indus Valley put the false accounts of Aryan invasion at rest.
Yoga was first mentioned in the ancient Vedas, which are known to be at least 5000 year old texts. Though specific yoga practices are not mentioned in the Vedas, they mention yoga in a symbolic form. The verses of Vedas are believed to be vocalized while being in the state of total spiritual bliss (Samadhi). For this reason Vedas are considered as scriptures that are revealed, but not composed. They are considered to be the medium of transferring divine knowledge.
Vedas illustrate the essence of yoga in an indirect manner, they are considered the first scriptures on yoga. Rig Veda has repeated mention of the word yoga in relation to abilities, for example the ability to earn yoga was referred to as ‘Dhana Yoga’. The context and real essence of the usage of the word yoga in Vedas would be difficult for us to comprehend today. If we read the Vedas today, we would be lost and end up confused in the verbal and symbolic references instead of grasping the essence.
Concepts like Dharana (concentration with effort) and Dhyana (meditation or effortless concentration) were explained very briefly in Vedas. These brief references were enough as the concepts of ‘Self’ or ‘Consciousness’ were fully understood by the seers at that time. They lived in a time when highly evolved yogis were everywhere. Even members of a simple household would be aware of consciousness and that it is beyond body and mind which needs to be realized from within.
Self realization is not an indigenous concept of India. Often referred by different names, realized people existed in many cultures, in every part of the world and in every time period. This could be understood as the confluence of different rivers from different parts of the earth into one ocean. Self realization is universal, no religion or culture or a person can have monopoly over it.
Vedas briefly expound on the essence of Chakras (pranic centers), a concept to understand and work with the energies of the body. Along with Chakras, Vedas emphasize on the usage of mantras (psychic sounds) to attain material and spiritual goals. In this sense, the people of vedic times were probably more advanced in terms of spiritual understanding than the people of today. Though the knowledge of yoga existed thousands of years before the vedic period, it is quite possible that the system of yoga wasn’t well expressed during the vedic period. At that time, the yogic essence was known to many, but it was not yet available as a systematized form of today. It is after the time of Bramhanas and Upanishads that Yoga started taking a definite form.
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Conclusion
3The origin of yoga – Part 1The Origin of Yoga Part – 3
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On Eric Byler, and Asian-American sex relations
Just got back from a trip to find that Charlotte Sometimes arrived from GreenCine while I was gone. I can't really say that I like it, but it has some virtues, and it's interesting at least. It's a super-low-budget film that, apparently, made a splash on the festival circuit, won a couple of awards, and was championed, with effusive praise, by Roger Ebert. It's also one of the rare American movies with Asian-American lead characters who are distinctive individuals, with real dialogue, complex motivations, etc., rather than stock caricatures or representatives of Archetypal Ethnic Verities.
Anyway, I'm posting about this only because I'm watching one of the DVD extras, an interview by Roger Ebert, from a post-screening session at Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival, with the director, the producer, and two cast members. The director, Eric Byler, who also wrote the film, turns out to be an unexpectedly thoughtful person.
More precisely, it is not the fact that he's thoughtful which surprises me (many directors are), but rather the manner of his thoughtfulness, which seems writerly, almost novelistic. When most film directors give interviews or DVD commentaries, they seem preoccupied with the nuts-and-bolts craft of filmmaking. They'll go on and on about the travails of shooting in some special location, or building some peculiar set, or how the gears of a plot's mechanics mesh together. Film directors also tend, on average, to be primarily visual thinkers, and so --- aside from the obvious fact that they talk more about the visual aspects of a film than its verbal aspects --- they're often pretty bad at expressing complex thoughts in words. For example, I think that Quentin Tarantino, despite his gift for writing dialogue and his extraordinary personal loquaciousness, sounds completely goofy in interviews. Byler's different --- he seems preoccupied, above all, with the interiority of his characters, and he's reasonably articulate at explaining his thinking about them.
Byler also has interesting things to say about Asian-American inter-sex relations (he is mixed-race, by the way):
EBERT: You mentioned, at Hawaii, that there were what you felt were specifically Asian-American gender issues in the film, which you doubted that would be obvious to every audience. You said something about that.
BYLER: Yes.
EBERT: Could you talk about that?
BYLER: You know, I didn't, I didn't really think about the audience very much in any of the artistic choices that I made. But what sort of inspired the beginning, and I have to go all the way back to there to talk about it, 'cause I don't like to, myself, deconstruct the movie, but when I started, the way that I saw the world was, I saw a lot of couplings between Asian-American men and Asian-American women that were platonic, or that's what they called them. But there was always this tacit understanding that, uh, he would pretend not to love her, and she would pretend not to know.
And it's not necessarily an Asian-American thing, I betcha everybody here has been in a situation like that. But there's sort of a suspicion among Asian-American men, I think, that somehow the choice as to whether this new person who comes into your life is gonna be a lover or a friend is somehow contingent upon race. And, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, I was growing up south of the Mason-Dixon line on the East Coast, before I moved to Hawaii. I looked a lot more Asian when I was young, and the, uh, well there's a certain sense of isolation when there's only two other specimens in the whole school. And, of course, there's a little bit more isolation when you're not the same race as your, either one of your parents. So then your siblings, if you have them are the only, you know, the only being that you know when you're a child that's like you. But, you know, as you come of age and you start to say well, how, what kind of sexual being am I gonna be? You look at the images that you see on television. And you know, usually an Asian man is a technician, and he's never a lover. And if he does express sexual desire, it's ugly or unwanted. So if you're an Asian boy and you're growing up in this country, and you're thinking how do, where do I fit, as a sexual being, the message is the more you repress your sexual desire the more you'll be able to be accepted, or be able to fit in.
And, if you think about the messages that Asian girls get in this country, watching the images that we have on television and movies of Asian women, it seems as if sex is the only thing we want from them. The more sexy, the more beautiful you are, the more we want you. And so they misinterpret, I guess what we'd call exotification, as acceptance.
And so these two creatures, this Asian-American boy and this Asian-American girl grow up, and he's a little bit more tied to traditional values, and not surprisingly, because the traditional values, whether they're Christian or Buddhist or Shinto religions, those values are more in line with what, I guess, mainstream society wants from Asian men. And Asian girls are sort of encouraged to be more sexual, and so they're sort of breaking through into another more, I guess, Western set of values, or more like, Greek or, you know, the hedonistic sense of values that have overcome Christian values here. And so these, these creatures don't know how to interact very well. They sort of slide into this, they're attracted to each other, they want to be together, but they slide into this friendship thing. And I think there's a fundamental lie at the core of that friendship. And it often leads to some very difficult emotional situations.
Now, I should make a few things clear. First, I usually try to avoid generalizations about Asian-Americans as a whole. Second, I usually feel that I, personally, am pretty atypical for almost any recognizable subgroup of Asian-Americans, or stereotypes thereof (for those who don't know me, this claim probably sounds incongruous coming from an Asian-American grad student in computer science, but if you knew me better I hope it would seem less so). Third, I've never been the male half of the above-described quasi-platonic unrequited-infatuation friendship situation.
Nevertheless, I find Byler's statements very astute. Byler's saying, out loud and in public, things that are rarely said, even though (I think) nearly all young, adult Asian-Americans today recognize them on some level, whether they consciously acknowledge them or not.
Note, by the way, that one should be wary of confusing the view Byler expresses with a superficially similar sentiment that is unfortunately rather common among Asian(-American) men: the belief that Asian(-American) women are effectively a form of racial property, and therefore for an Asian(-American) woman to refuse an Asian(-American) man is an infringement on that property right, and a form of betrayal. This sentiment is, of course, reprehensible for all sorts of reasons that should be obvious.
The superficial similarity to Byler's view is that both views describe circumstances that seem potentially frustrating for Asian-American men. The difference, however, is that Byler doesn't indulge the racist, sexist premise of racial ownership of women. He merely acknowledges the obvious fact that sexual attraction, like all human emotions and behaviors, can be modulated by cultural influences, including racist assumptions embedded in the culture, and that the results can be painful for all involved.
Posted by Keunwoo Lee (Cog) at 12:07 AM
Labels: race, sex, sexual-preferences
Andrew Thu Sep 01, 02:48:00 AM PDT
"even though (I think) nearly all young, adult Asian-Americans today recognize them on some level, whether they consciously acknowledge them or not."
Yes, I absolutely agree; I certainly recognize what Byler's talking about.
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Phaethon, Narcissus, Arachne, and Icarus Essay
Just as modern society turns to the news, the Bible, and science for explanations, the Greeks and Romans turned to mythology. Ovid s Metamorphoses is a collection of explanatory myths. The myths, Phaethon, Narcissus, Arachne, and Icarus, are used to explain general scientific phenomenon as well as teach ethics. The myth, Phaethon, explains the occurrence of an eclipse, and it teaches children to be humble and obedient. Phaethon grew up with his mother, Clymene. When he discovered that his father was the sun, Phaethon journeyed to his father s palace.
Upon entering the palace, Phaethon was greeted by his father. Phaethon was still unsure as to whether his mother had told him the truth, so he asked the sun to prove that the sun was indeed his father. The sun promised to grant Phaethon a wish. Phaethon immediately asked to drive the sun s chariot. The sun was saddened by this request because the sun knew that it would cause his son s death: What you want to do is dangerous You are but a mortal, whereas the thing you desire is not one that a mortal can attempt (51).
This did not dissuade Phaethon, for Phaethon was full of confidence in himself (53). When the brazenfaced Phaethon began his flight, he soon discovered that he was unable to control the horses. Death was soon a welcomed wish for Phaethon as the sky burned and the earth was set on fire. Finally, Jupiter sent a thunderbolt to kill Phaethon and stop the destruction that he was causing. Meanwhile, even Atlas himself is in difficulties, and can scarcely hold up the flowing sky on his shoulders. If earth and sea and the citadel of heaven perish, we shall be thrown into primeval chaos.
Save anything that still survives from the flames (58). All of this destruction caused simply because a son was too egotistical to obey his father. After Phaethon was given his burial rites, his father grieved. His father was so devastated that he was clad in sordid mourning, his usual brightness gone (60), and he was angry too, and refused to perform his duty to the world (60). Thus, the earth was covered in darkness and the sun suffered an eclipse. A flower with a circle of white petals round a yellow center was so created by a young man who fell in love with himself.
The myth, Narcissus, teachers the evil of vanity and explains the existence of a new flower. Narcissus was a young man who was loved by all the nymphs and women. He was especially cherished by Echo. Yet, the boy never found love for any, and he played with her affections, treating her as he had previously treated other spirits of water and the wood, and his male admirers too (84). Finally, one of his scorned admirers prayed the he wold fall in love with someone he could not have. The gods heard and granted his prayers. Narcissus soon fell in love with himself.
He loved his beauty and admired himself in the water s reflection. Finally, he became emotionally overwhelmed and beat himself to death. As his blood spilled on to the grass, his body was transformed into a flower. His vanity caused his heart to reject his lovers, it caused him to fall in love with himself, and it caused his death. During the process in which Pallas teaches Arachne to be humble, the beautiful weave of a spider s web is explained. Originally, Pallas had taught Arachne to weave beautiful tapestries. Yet, the girl herself denied this (134), so she challenged Pallas to a weave-off.
Pallas attempted to warn Arachne of her fatal error, for a mere mortal cannot be better than a god. Arachne, however, persisted in going on with her plan and, in her eagerness for a victory which she foolishly though she could win, rushed upon her fate (135). The competition began. Pallas wove the rock of Mars with twelve gods and four scenes depicting various contests. Arachne s tapestry was a picture of Europa. Both tapestries were exquisite, and neither Pallas nor even Jealousy personified could find any flaw in the work (137).
Pallas became angry and tore the tapestry to pieces, and then she punished Arachne. Arachne was unable to endure her punishment, so she hung herself. Pallas took pity on Arachne, and she turned her into a spider: from that belly, she yet spins her thread, and as a spider is busy with her web as of old (138). Hence, Arachne was punished for her conceited behavior, but the beautiful web that a spider relentless spins was thusly explained. Finally, the story about Icarus teaches how an insolent, disobedient son gives rise to a new land-bound bird.
Daedalus and his son, Icarus, were trapped on the island of Crete by King Minos. Daedalus grew weary of being on the island, and he longed to be home. Since he was surrounded by the sea without a boat, it was necessary to invent a new means of escape. Daedalus fastened the feathers together in the middle with thread, and at the bottom with wax; when he had arranged them in this way, he bent them round into a gentle curve, to look like real birds wings (184). Then, Daedalus and Icarus fastened the wings to their arms, and they took flight.
Daedalus continually warned his son not to fly too close to the sun so that wings would not melt. He also warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sea so that the feathers would not get wet. But, Icarus was audacious and soon forgot his father s warnings. He flew in great swoops gliding from the sea to the sun. Finally, he got to close to the sun, and his wings began to melt. As he fell from the sky, he screamed his father s name, but he soon drowned in the sea. When Daedalus went to bury the body of his ill-fated son (185), a bird appeared from a ditch.
The bird was Daedalus s nephew; the same nephew that Daedalus was jealous of and flung headlong down from Minerva s sacred citadel (186). Therefore, Icarus earned the death of a presumptuous soul, and a bird that have feathers and wings but never leaves the ground was introduced into the world. While the accounts of Phaethon, Narcissus, Arachne, and Icarus explain the phenomenon of an eclipse, the development of a new flower, the intricate weave of a spider s web, and the creation of a new bird, the lessons of obedience, respect, modesty, and humility are taught.
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So what kind of concrete actions are airports undertaking to genuinely reduce their CO2 emissions? With so much happening on an airport site, there are many factors, influences and systems which can contribute to the carbon footprint of the airport. Here is a selection of some of the most popular ways that airports are achieving reductions in their CO2 emissions.
CHOOSING SMARTER ON-SITE TRANSPORT
On an airport site, there are many vehicles facilitating airside services such as runway and apron maintenance, ground handling, and passenger transport, all of which only operate within the perimeter of the airport. A concerted effort is being made by airports big and small (including airports in Amsterdam, Bologna, Cork, Dublin, Oslo, Trondheim, Zurich and many more) to replace these mainly diesel-powered vehicles with electric, hybrid or gas powered ones. The distances travelled by these vehicles may be small when compared with the average road vehicle, but by moving to more sustainable sources, the CO2 emissions associated with on-site transport are falling.
CONVERTING TO ECO-EFFICIENT LIGHTING
As public spaces, airports have to provide well-lit facilities and naturally this is a substantial part of their energy consumption. In recent years, the benefits of LED (Light-Emitted Diode) technology have led a lot of airports to invest in replacing their lighting systems with LEDs, resulting in a significant drop in their energy consumption (and associated CO2 emissions). For example, lighting at part of Helsinki Airport improved and energy consumption decreased by 85% when they replaced 2,100 old light fixtures with LED lighting.
INVESTING IN SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
A growing number of airports are now seeking to become more energy independent and more than that, to use sustainable energy sources such as wind, hydro and solar. Athens International Airport was one of the pioneers in harnessing the abundant sun in its location, through its €20 million investment in a photovoltaic park. The park produces approximately 11 million kWh a year - that’s 20% of the airport operator’s energy needs (equivalent to a reduction of 10,000 tonnes of CO2). Other airports in Europe and Asia-Pacific are making similar investments, each helping to lower their part of the industry’s carbon footprint.
HELPING THE PASSENGER TO HAIL A BETTER TAXI
While rail intermodality is now a must for capital city airports, we are already seeing several airports in Europe which are working with their taxi partners, to lower the taxi-related CO2 emissions at the airport site. Stockholm-Arlanda was one of the first, by giving exclusive priority to hybrid and electric cars – a move which quickly saw all the airport taxis voluntarily move to these technologies. At Amsterdam-Schiphol, the airport company revised its taxi partnership, making cleaner taxis as a key objective. The airport is now served by a substantial fleet of 167 zero-emission Tesla Model S taxis.
INITIATING BETTER COLLABORATION WITH AIR TRANSPORT PARTNERS
Air transport is collaborative effort between airports, airlines, ground handlers, air traffic controllers and others. One action that is helping lower CO2 emissions is the implementation of something called Airport Collaborative Decision-Making (A-CDM). By sharing real-time updates on operations, over 15 major European airports including Heathrow, Paris CDG, Frankfurt, Munich and Brussels are lowering waiting times for landings and takeoffs, resulting in less fuel burn, less CO2 emissions and better punctuality.
INVESTING IN SUSTAINABLE ENERGY – PART 2
A growing number of airports are now seeking to become more energy independent and more than that, to use sustainable energy sources such as wind, hydro and solar. Paris CDG and Keflavik Airport in Iceland are examples of airports which use geothermal energy to power their facilities – an entirely natural and sustainable energy source. In 2011, Aéroports de Paris commissioned a geothermal power plant at Paris-Orly, and a biomass power plant at Paris-Charles de Gaulle in 2012, significantly increasing its production of renewable energies. To date, the geothermal energy plant at Paris-Orly has enabled Aéroports de Paris to reduce GHG emissions by 9,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and the biomass plant by 18,000 tonnes of CO2.
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DNA Sequencing Technique Finds COL4A5 Mutations in 2 Alport Patients With No Relevant Family History
by Jose Marques Lopes, PhD
A technique called whole-exome sequencing (WES) that screens the protein-coding region of the DNA enabled the identification of mutations in the COL4A5 gene in two girls with Alport syndrome and no family history of the disease, a case study reports.
The study, “De novo mutations in COL4A5 identified by whole exome sequencing in two girls with Alport syndrome in Korea,” appeared in the Korean Journal of Pediatrics.
X-linked Alport syndrome (XLAS) represents about 80% of all disease cases and is caused by mutations in the type IV collagen alpha5 chain gene (COL4A5) in the X chromosome. Women have a milder clinical presentation that is associated with different alterations in the glomerular basement membrane (GBM), which plays a key role in the kidney’s filtration barrier.
This complicates diagnosis in cases of isolated hematuria (blood in urine) — a hallmark sign in Alport — in the absence of either a family history of hematuria or end-stage kidney disease.
A COL4A5 mutation test, available in the U.S. and Europe, has a reported 80% detection rate in males with XLAS. However, insufficient data on COL4A3 and COL4A4 mutations complicate the distinction between autosomal recessive and autosomal dominant Alport syndrome.
WES has previously been used in Alport patients. The team used this technique to identify mutations in two Korean girls with suspicious GBM changes associated with Alport syndrome, but without relevant family history.
The first case describes a previously healthy 11-year-old girl who first went to the hospital due to proteinuria, or excess amounts of protein in urine. The patient had episodic hematuria, large corneal astigmatism — irregularly shaped cornea causing blurred vision — and mild lumbar scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. She had no family history of kidney disorders and had normal hearing, as assessed by pure tone audiometry and speech audiometry, and renal ultrasound results were unremarkable. The patient then underwent a kidney biopsy.
The second case was a 12-year-old girl who had had recurrent hematuria since she was 24 months old. She had been diagnosed with Alport when she was around 7. However, direct DNA sequencing did not reveal a COL4A5 mutation. She also did not have extra-renal symptoms, including hearing loss or ocular lesions, nor a family history of kidney diseases. Her kidney function was normal, except for persistent hematuria and proteinuria.
For WES, the team extracted DNA from the patients’ and the parents’ peripheral blood leukocytes, or white blood cells. The investigators focused on gene variants that could alter protein function. A total of 31 genes, including COL4A3, COL4A4, and COL4A5, were then analyzed.
The first patient revealed a likely pathogenic (disease-causing) variant in COL4A5, known as c.4688G>A, causing the substitution of an arginine for a glutamine amino acid, not observed in her parents. As such, this is a de novo mutation, which refers to DNA alterations that occur during embryonic development, as opposed to inherited mutations. This variant has previously been reported in a family with Alport. This patient also had one variant of uncertain significance in COL4A4 (c.4817G>A).
The second patient revealed a different likely pathogenic variant (c.2714G>A), causing the substitution of a glycine for an aspartic acid amino acid, also not found in either parent. This de novo mutation has been reported in an Alport patient.
“We therefore suggest that WES is an effective approach to obtain genetic information in [Alport syndrome], particularly in female patients without a relevant family history, to detect unexpected DNA variations,” the scientists wrote.
Tagged case report, COL4A5 gene, de novo mutations, DNA sequencing, family history, Genetic mutations, hematuria, Whole-exome sequencing.
Jose Marques Lopes, PhD
Previous: Newly Identified DDR1 I Inhibitor Can Prevent Kidney Fibrosis, Loss of Function in Alport Syndrome Mice
Next:Urinary Levels of CD80 Protein Not Suitable to Distinguish Between Types of Kidney Disease, Study Suggests
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REPORT OF THE OFFICIAL G.S. ALTSHULLER FOUNDATION
The website of the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation was created five years ago. This is the Foundation’s fifth annual report presented on the birthday of Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller, the creator of TRIZ...
ALTSHULLER’S ANNIVERSARY: THE POSITION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS
2006 is the 80th anniversary year of the birth of Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller, the creator of TRIZ-CID-LSCP (15.10.1926 - 24.09.1998).
This year, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation (whose staff were members of Altshuller’s family and were both witnessing and contributing to the TRIZ movement for several decades) reviews the accomplished work and outlines perspectives for further developments.
1. It is well known that in the period 1956-1986, TRIZ was developing and spreading at high pace. Such tools, concepts and methods as the inventive principles, ARIZ, the course on creative imagination development (CID), the Index of Sci-Fi Ideas and Situations, the laws of technological system evolution, the Life Strategy of a Creative Person (LSCP) were introduced during that period, while ten Altshuller’s books were published (total circulation – over 1 million copies), and some two hundred TRIZ centers were founded. Various public organizations offered seminars on TRIZ. TRIZ schools were established at large industrial firms (e.g., at Uralmash, the Kirov Plant, the Rostov Helicopter Plant, Electrosila, among others), at R&D enterprises (e.g., at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna). Various organizations for advanced professional development offered training in TRIZ.
G.S. Altshuller’s bibliography contains over 500 books and articles.
In summary, this period of TRIZ evolution was characterized by:
Free exchange of information on theoretical and applied aspects of TRIZ and allied disciplines
Cooperation in conducting theoretical and applied research projects
Organizing various (both official and otherwise) scientific conferences.
2. By the mid-1980’s, Altshuller’s health started to rapidly deteriorate. As the demolition of the USSR began, many TRIZ theorists and practitioners left the country for good.
3. Association TRIZ was founded by the initiative of some TRIZ specialists (not by Altshuller’s, as it should be noted).
4. The present period of TRIZ development is characterized by the following negative tendencies:
Tendency 1: There are cases when basic works of G.S. Altshuller and of some other TRIZ experts are illicitly translated and circulated (i.e., without obtaining permission from the copyright owners).
Tendency 2: Some works on TRIZ are published and used in a distorted form (often, with “comments” by nonprofessionals), which misleads the readers.
Tendency -3: The quality of new TRIZ developments has plunged, and the information exchange among TRIZ specialists has dramatically declined.
Tendency 4: Very few young TRIZ specialists turn into original theorists.
Tendency -5: Despite the adoption of TRIZ by a number of leading corporations both in Russia and globally, the quality of TRIZ implementations (as well as their quantity) could have been much higher.
Tendency 6: Many new TRIZ specialists (especially outside Russia) are not familiar with G.S. Altshuller’s works.
It is worth mentioning that dissemination of TRIZ outside Russia follows the patterns similar to those in the former USSR. For example, judging by the available publications, the inventive principles appear to be the most widely adopted tool of TRIZ. Other tools, for instance, the laws of technological system evolution, are not being used – not because they are difficult (they are not), but because of the triviality of research topics and problems being solved, and because of the fashion.
5. In response to these tendencies and in total accordance with the viewpoints of the first TRIZ developer, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation has taken the following steps:
- Prevented trademark registration of the words ТРИЗ and TRIZ (that shameful attempt will become part of the history of TRIZ).
- Created a Web site with materials in 5 languages, http://www.altshuller.ru
- Released a free e-book “Introduction to TRIZ: The Main Concepts and Approaches,” http://www.altshuller.ru/e-books (in Russian)
6. In anticipation of the upcoming Altshuller’s anniversary, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation declares the following:
Further development of TRIZ is impossible without adopting a civilized attitude toward the intellectual property of G.S. Altshuller and other developers of TRIZ. This is not a sufficient but a necessary condition. Violations of intellectual property rights affect all parties: those interested in TRIZ as well as TRIZ consultants and educators do not receive the latest information.
The following is required to ensure further development of TRIZ:
- Solid knowledge of the original publications on TRIZ-CDI (Development of creative imagination) -TCLS (Theory of Creative Life Strategy)
- Compliance of new research topics with the demanding criteria formulated by G.S. Altshuller (see the following chapters in the e-book:
Conducting new research projects in TRIZ
How to present the results of new research in TRIZ
Evaluation of new developments in TRIZ)
- Setting high research goals.
7. And the last…
G.S. Altshuller always maintained an ironic attitude toward his own anniversaries and asked no to “arrange any kurultais (parties).” The best celebration of the approaching anniversary would be new, high-quality works in TRIZ, CID, and particularly, in LSCP, as well as new releases of Altshuller’s books and translations of his works into foreign languages.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation
OFFICIAL G.S. ALTSHULLER FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT
October 15, 2005 is the second anniversary of the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation’s Web site. This site was opened on G.S. Altshuller’s birthday in 2003.
In its second year, the website has had over 100,000 visits from 108 countries. The total number of visits since October 15, 2003, has reached over 180,000.
In the same period, there have been over 27,500 downloads of the e-book, “Introduction to TRIZ: The Main Concepts and Approaches,” from one server only (in Russian), not counting downloads from other servers. The total number of downloads throughout the two-year period has exceeded 50,000.
The mission of the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation is to foster a free dissemination of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) – in accordance with the will of its first architect, G.S. Altshuller.
To achieve this goal, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation provides an open access to the original works in TRIZ.
1. Over 490 works of both G.S. Altshuller and V.N. Zhuravleva have been published on this site. These include some not yet well-known and never-published works on TRIZ, RTV (Development of creative imagination), TRTL (Theory of Creative Life Strategy), sci-fi stories, children’s stories, as well as letters, photographs, video- and audio clips.
Thus, in the site’s second year, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation has published over 300 documents there.
2. The site has begun to provide an opportunity to learn TRIZ online.
The following educational materials are presently available:
29 lessons for adults. It’s recommended to start with Altshuller’s “The formulas of creative thinking: A prelude to a theory” (in Russian).
40 lessons for schoolchildren (in Russian).
3. The site has begun publishing all the versions of ARIZ (in Russian ).
The following versions are available (in Russian):
ARIZ-56
АRIZ-65
АRIZ-85V
Now, TRIZ practitioners and researchers have an opportunity to trace the logic of evolution of ARIZ. This effort will continue.
4. The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation strives to eliminate any obstacles to a free use of TRIZ.
4.1. As is well known the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation has prevented a pirate attempt to monopolize the abbreviation ТРИЗ/TRIZ. The Foundation states once more that the organization which has made that attempt has never received any rights on G.S. Altshuller’s works.
4.2. By making TRIZ/ТРИЗ available to everybody, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation follows the principle that respectable individuals and organizations should prove their worth through their real achievements, and not through “certificates,” “diploma,” and other illicit documents.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation will not cease to propagate this idea.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation thanks from the bottom of our hearts all the colleagues who during that difficult year stood for Altshuller’s cause and supported Valentina Nikolaevna Zhuravleva in her quest to cancel this trademark.
Special thanks go to Igor Leonardovich Vikentiev, Sergey Valerievich Sychyov, Vadim Valerievich Uskov, the consulting companies TRIZ-CHANCE, Sychyov and Co, Ltd., the law firm USKOV and Partners, for their moral and active support, for the great deal of hard yet necessary efforts they made and for representing the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation at the Patent Disputes Board’s meetings.
5. Over the last year, the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation has participated in the Fifth International Conference on Mechanisms of the Introduction of New Science and Technology Trends into Education Systems, held in Moscow on October 18-20, 2004.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation has published the following works (in Russian):
Komarcheva, L.D., “How G.S. Altshuller Taught TRIZ,”
Komarcheva, L.D., “Preparation of TRIZ Instructors,” in the Proceedings “How to Develop and Advance a New Business or a Business Seminar,” 2nd Conference of the St. Petersburg Club of Consultants and Instructors.
6. The projects of the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation:
40 topics are presently discussed at the professional Internet Forum on TRIZ-RTV-TRTL (In Russian and in English).
A comprehensive survey of leading TRIZ specialists has been conducted within the framework of a project, TRIZ as an Emergent Science. Some 60 TRIZ specialists from 14 countries participated in the survey. Several hundred pages of answers as well as several hundred pages of various works on TRIZ (both of applied and theoretical natures) have been received.
We are grateful to all the participants.
7 open Internet-surveys on various aspects of TRIZ have been conducted among the site visitors. The results of these surveys are published at http://www.altshuller.ru/vote . (in Russian).
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation has continued its effort to translate the main TRIZ terminology to the world’s languages. At present, 89 TRIZ terms have been translated to11 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Czech, Vietnamese, and Chinese.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation is grateful to the colleagues who helped with the translations:
V. Fey (USA), М. Barkan (USA), А. Lubomirsky (USA), Z. Royzen (USA), А. Zakharov (USA), S.V. Kozlovsky (Belarus), V.A. Lopan (Belarus), S. Sladkov (Germany), Horst Nahler (Germany), Bernward Kahmann (Germany), T. Zagorodnova (Argentine), Juan Carlos Nishiyama (Argentine), Carlos Eduardo Requena (Argentine), Eduardo Cordova Lopez (Mexico), A. Seredinsky (France), Bohuslav Bushov (Czech Republic), V. Dostal (Czech Republic), S.E. Aleksandrov (Belarus), Marco Aurelio de Carvalho (Brasil), Phan Dung (Vietnam), O.I. Deinega (Ukraine), Massimiliano Cannatello, Gaetano Cascini, Pierluigi Petrali, Daniele Regazzoni, Caterina Rizzi (all from Italy), Hyman Duan (China), and Alp Lin (China).
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation continues the translation of other TRIZ materials to English, German, French, and Spanish.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation thanks the following colleagues:
Richard Langevin (USA) – for his help in editing a number of English translations
Victor Fey (USA) – for translating some of the materials to English
Tatyana Zagoronova (Argentine), Juan Carlos Nishiyama (Argentine), Carlos Eduardo Requena (Argentine) и Jérôme Laforcade (France) for translating a number of materials to Spanish and French, respectively.
7. The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation replies to all letters received.
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation is grateful to Sychyov and Co, Ltd., and to TRIZ-CHANCE for providing the technical support. Also, we want to individually express our gratitude to the following colleagues:
I.L. Vikentiev
O.I. Deinega
R.A. Levitsky
S.G. Menyailenko
G.B. Sokolov
S.V. Sychyov
Larisa Dmitrievna Komarcheva
E-mail: foundation@altshuller.ru
Send mail at:
185 002 Россия, г. Петрозаводск, аб/ящ. 16.
NEW PUBLICATION: BALLAD OF THE STARS
This 300 page book is a compilation of 7 fantasy stories written by Genrikh Altshuller and Valentina Zhuravlyova, with some exquisite pictures of Genrikh and Valentina from the Official Altshuller foundation. This new publication is available from the General Store of the Altshuller Institute We hope that this project will introduce TRIZ to a new audience and bring some new material to the current TRIZ community.
THE CORPORATE WAY FROM IDEAS TO INNOVATION
4th European TRIZ-Conference/QFD-Symposium in Frankfurt/Main (Germany)
June 29 – July 01 2005
The skill to create effective innovations and the skill to master them promptly are prerequisites for corporate and personal success in a global and competitive market. Today becomes increasingly important not only to generate new ideas, but also to turn them into successful products and processes. That is why creativity and creative problem solving should be made accessible both for formalization and learning to everybody.
The most successful and best known framework for creative problem solving is the so called TRIZ (Teorija Rešenija lzobretatel‘skich Zadac), the author G.S. Altshuller (www.altshuller.ru).
TRIZ has achieved world wide recognition, materials on TRIZ and information about extensive areas of application of TRIZ served as the basis for carrying out the European TRIZ Conference, which is held by now for the forth time.
The Conference is aimed at persons in charge and people engaged into research and development work, design, IT elaborations, marketing and sales, quality management as well as innovation- and knowledge-management.
Two days of the Conference will be given up to reports. They will be accompanied by tutorials both for TRIZ beginners and advanced TRIZ users.
This conference is presented to you by:
IHK-Innovationsberatung Hessen,
Technologietransfer Netzwerk Hessen,
European TRIZ-Center for Innovative Problem Solving e.V.
Internet portal TRIZ-online.
Cooperating partners are:
QFD Institut Deutschland e.V.,
Symposium Publishing and VW (Volkswagen) Coaching.
More information and invitation flyer can be found at www.triz-online.de
People returning to Earth will always find something unexpected. It’s natural, mankind is constantly finding out new things. But they must always have the firm assurance that Earth itself will still be there. Otherwise one couldn’t seek the stars. That is the conclusion we, who had lived without Earth for nine minutes, have come to.
TRANSLATION OF THE BASIC TRIZ TERMS INTO THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
In the division "Basic TRIZ Terms" is represented the translation of the basic TRIZ terms into the Chinese language
The author of translation: IWINT, Inc. Hyman Duan ( ), China.
PRESS RELEASE. OFFICIAL G.S. ALTSHULLER FOUNDATION.
THE TRADEMARK "ТРИЗ TRIZ" WAS ABOLISHED
The trademark "ТРИЗ TRIZ" was abolished by the Board for Patent Disputes on Trademark "ТРИЗ TRIZ" (certificate of registration No. 251307), previously registered in the name of public association "MATRIZ" (International TRIZ Association), Petrozavodsk, Russia (President Rubin M.S.) is abolished.
The decision was made on December 8, 2004 by the "Board for Patent Disputes of the Federal Executive Agency for intellectual property of Russian Federation". The decision was made based on an Objection against protection...
STARLIGHT RHAPSODY
"You see," she said, "any discovery seems simple and understandable once it has been made. Just think about it. Let’s suppose that Procyon has a planetary system of its own. Let’s suppose that reasoning creatures on one of the planets have decided to send out signals into space. Radio waves are useless: they disperse too easily. Nor can gamma or X-rays be used — they are quickly absorbed...
Rusanov stepped to the window. A bright star was quivering above the rooftop, and its light seemed to emit a mysterious and solemn music.
REPORT OF THE OFFICIAL FOUNDATION OF G.S.ALTSHULLER
The web site of G.S.Altshuller Foundation was opened officially on the 15-th of October 2003 - on the day of G.S.Altshuller’s birthday.
During the first year the website had more than 75 000 visitors from 89 countries.
The free-spreading e-book "Introduction to TRIZ: Basic Concepts and Approaches" has been download about 21 000 times from just 1 server.
The website hosts 196 works by Altshuller and Zhuravleva, some of which are not very known and even unpublished materials. A new section "For Students, Teachers and Parents" (in Russian), has been opened where Altshuller’s works about teaching TRIZ to children are presented. The Althsuller’s Science-Fiction Register (in Russian) was published for the first time on the website.
The Official Altshuller Foundation took part in the following:
The International Conference "Information-Communication-Society" on the 11-12th of November 2003,
The "V International Congress of marketing, advertisement and PR" on the 23-29 of November 2003,
The 4-th International Conference "Management of the XXI century: quality problems" on the 15-16 of April 2004.
On February 25, 2004, Valentina Nikolaevna Zhuravleva and Juna Evgenievna Komarcheva filed a complaint against the issue of the TRIZ trademark with the Patent Dispute Chamber (PDC) of the Russian Federal Intellectual Property Administration. The next meeting in PDC will be on 11 of November 2004.
Projects of the Official Altshuller Foundation:
Russian language reprint of "Creativity as an exact science",
Creation of "The multi-lingual TRIZ-terminology". Now there are translations to English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Vietnamese and Italian languages,
Update of English, German, French and Spanish pages - some Altshuller’s and Zhuravleva’s works are available there in these languages.
The Official Altshuller Foundation thanks colleagues for the participation in the translating of TRIZ-terminology: V. Fey; M. Barkan, A. Lyubomirsky, Z. Royzen, A. Zakharov, S.V. Kozlovsky, V.A. Lopan; Semen Sladkov; Horst Nahler; Bernward Kahmann, Tatyana Zagorodnova, Juan Carlos Nishiyama, Carlos Eduardo Requena, A.Seredinski, Bohuslav Bushov; V. Dostal; S. E. Aleksandrov, Marco Aurelio de Carvalho, Phan Dung, S. E. Aleksandrov, O. Dejnega, Massimiliano Cannatello, Gaetano Cascini, Pierluigi Petrali, Daniele Regazzoni, Caterina Rizzi.
The Official Altshuller Foundation thanks Richard Langevin (USA) and Igor Vertkin (GB) for the help in edition some translations and Jose M. Vicente Gomila for the discussion of the translation.
The separate gratitude for the technical support: Vikentev I., Sychyov S., Sokolov G.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE SYSTEMS
A technical System is similar to an orchestra of musicians. It is as good as the synchronized play of the musicians. Therefore, the inventor’s effort in the beginning should be concentrated on finding the right formula for the System, the best combination of its parts. This is how the First Period in the life of a System starts.
There are four Periods, and every period has its own problems and methods to find solutions.
STONE FROM THE STARS
V. Zhuravleva’s story "Stone From the Stars" treats of bio-automatons. The problem posed is "to synthesize the highest forms of biological matter, learn to control electronic processes and induce living and non-living matter to work together. The story is about a bio-automaton serving as the "brain" of a space ship in which "living cells take the place of electronic tubes."
THE INTERVIEW THAT NEVER WAS, BUT WHICH TOOK PLACE AT THE SAME TIME
The battles considered the greatest have long ago ceased to have an affect on history. Octavian Augustus destroyed Mark Anthony’s fleet at Actium; for how long have we felt the results of this battle? Cervantes lost a hand in the battle for Lepanto. You remember with whom he was fighting and how it ended?.. And Don Quixote helps those trying to do something impossible even today. He has a share in every victory. The practical reimbursement will be felt even longer…
TRIZ-TERMS IN THE LANGUAGES OF THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD
A new section has opened on our site, "TRIZ terms in the Languages of the Peoples of the World" , where a number of translations of TRIZ / TRIZ terms have already been published in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech and Vietnamese. New translations will be added to this section in the near future.
Discussion of the translation of some of the terms has started at the TRIZ-Forum:
Those interested in suggesting their translation ideas may send their suggestions to the address of the Official G.S.Altshuller Foundation: e-mail: foundation@altshuller.ru (please do not forget to include the term’s index number when you do this).
The Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation would like to express its thanks to all Colleagues who participated in this arduous but necessary project.
This press release may be reprinted, without restrictions, in any media, on websites and via e-mailings.
IT IS WITH DEEP REGRET THAT THE OFFICIAL G.S. ALTSHULLER FOUNDATION INFORMS YOU OF THE DEATH OF VALENTINA NIKOLAEVNA ZHURAVLEVA
From the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation (March 12, 2004)
It is with deep regret that the Official G.S. Altshuller Foundation informs you of the death of Valentina Nikolaevna Zhuravleva, the well known science-fiction writer; wife of G.S. Altshuller, creator of the Theory of Invention Problem Solving (TRIZ); and one of the founders of the G.S. Altshuller foundation ...
PRESS RELEASE. OFFICIAL G.S. ALTSHULLER FOUNDATION
On February 25, 2004, Valentina Nikolaevna Zhuravleva – the well known fantasy author and widow of Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller (15 October 1926 – 24 September 1998), the developer of the Theory of Invention Problem Solving (TRIZ) and Juna Evgenievna Komarcheva – filed a complaint against the issuance of the TRIZ trademark with the Patent Dispute Chamber of the Russian Federal Intellectual Property Administration...
WHY WAS THIS WEBSITE CREATED?
Briefly put:
to serve as a reference point for people interested in learning about TRIZ independently;
to present the undistorted (or sometimes little-known) works of G.S. Altshuller to users and developers of the theory...
THE OFFICIAL SITE HAS BEEN LAUNCHED 15 OCTOBER 2003
The official site of the G.S. Altshuller Foundation has been launched 15 October 2003.
The official website of Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller - the first proponent of TRIZ-RTV-TRTL theory - was launched today, on the anniversary of his birthday, at the address www.altshuller.ru. The website includes...
RIGHTS HOLDERS
The heirs to the copyright of G.S. Altshuller are...
The Foundation was created on the basis of the archives - compiled over a period of nearly 50 years - of Genrikh Saulovich Altshuller (15 October 1926 - 24 September 1998).
This unique collection includes published and unpublished works, card indices of scientific and historical data, correspondence with colleagues, opponents and organizations, and much more...
E-BOOK "INTRODUCTION TO TRIZ. BASIC CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES"
(THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE G.S. ALTSHULLER FOUNDATION)
You can download the e-book "Introduction to TRIZ: Basic Concepts and Approaches" (in Russian), Version 1.02. The file is approximately 2.3 megabytes...
A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH GENRICH ALTSHULLER
Question 1 . What do you think the long-term effect of TRIZ might
be on the wellfare of humanity?
GA: "Of course, I would like to answer...
40 INVENTIVE PRINCIPLES FOR SOLVING TECHNICAL CONTRADICTIONS
Genrikh Altshuller developed the 40 Principles about 30 years ago. He reviewed thousands of wordwide patents selected specifically from leading industries for the inventive nature of their solutions to technical comtradictions.
STANDARDS FOR SOLUTION OF INVENTIVE PROBLEMS
(…)The first standards have been found empirically: some combinatic of techniques and physical effects were of a such frequent practical use and produced so potent solutions that an idea was suggested itself to convert them into standards.
Thus, standards are rules of synthesis and transformation of technical systems directly resulting from laws for development of these systems.
LEVELS OF NARRATIVE IDEAS: COLORS ON THE SF PALETTE
(…) I do not wish to suggest that the four-level model is the most important or only avenue open to the development of new SF ideas. Probably several such lines of logic exist: probably there exist devices for coming upon "iso-level" ideas, and some complex, only very vaguely known mechanism that facilitates’the interaction of "technical matter" and "study of man." All this is material for future research.
TO FIND AN IDEA. UNIT 1
(...) Analysis of the patent fund shows that a higher degree of ideal state of technical systems is a general rule, although a transfer of the function is not the only way to reach it.
This conclusion could be a beginning of scientific technology applied for solving inventive problems: if one rule has bean found, other rules may be discovered as well...
ON THE THEORY OF SOLVING INVENTIVE PROBLEMS
Work on creating a scientific theory of solving inventive problems was begun in 1946 by the author of this study. From the very beginning the research was directed towards discovery of the objective laws of the development of technological systems, and not towards examination of the secondary and outward symptoms of creativity: "revelation", "inspiration" etc.
CONTRADICTIONS: ADMINISTRATIVE, TECHNICAL AND PHYSICAL
The inventor’s problem is often confused with problems of technology, engineering or design. Building a normal house, having readymade blueprints and calculations is a technical problem. Making the calculations for a normal bridge, making using of available formulae is a matter for engineers. Designing a comfortable and cheap bus, finding a compromise between ’comfortable’ and ’cheap’ is a designer’s business. In solving these problems one does not have to overcome any contradictions. The problem becomes that of an inventor only in the event that contradictions have to be overcome for its solution.
RECOMMENDATIONS ON APPLICATION OF SYSTEM OF STANDARDS
In an easiest way standards can be applied individually (not in a system). When using standards(or after 3-4- time reading a text) many standards are remembered and while getting know a problem a required standard involuntary comes to a mind. Of course this is not the best method of their application…
LEVELS OF PROBLEMS
(…) The scientific approach to the study of the inventor’s art begins with grasping the simple truth that problems are various and can never be studied "in toto". There are some very simple problems which are susceptible to solution after a few trials...
The website of the Official G.S. Altshuller foundation
was developed by "Sychev & Co" Ltd. (TRIZ-RI Group),
Webmaster: R.A.Lushov
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Cooper, Davidson lead Jacksonville State over ETSU 34-27
JACKSONVILLE, Ala. (AP) — Zerrick Cooper threw three touchdown passes to Shaq Davidson and Jacksonville State held on to beat East Tennessee State 34-27 on Saturday night in the first round of the FCS playoffs.
Jacksonville State (9-3) will play at seventh-seeded Maine (8-3) in the second round on Saturday.
Cooper was 20 of 32 for 226 yards passing and is the first quarterback in the program to surpass 3,000 yards in a season. Davidson had five catches for 69 yards.
Austin Herink was 17-of-39 passing for 260 yards with a touchdown and interception East Tennessee State, and his 10-yard run capped the scoring. It was the first playoff appearance for ETSU since 1996.
Trailing 34-27 late in the fourth quarter, Quay Holmes rushed for 20 yards and caught a 25-yard pass to help drive the Buccaneers to the Jacksonville State 4. But Zack Woodard forced Holmes to fumble the ball into the end zone for a touchback with 2:38 to play. ETSU got the ball back with 1:39 left and no timeouts, and drove to their own 44-yard line but the drive ended with an incomplete pass on fourth-and-10.
ETSU built a 20-10 halftime lead on two JJ Jerman field goals, a 3-yard TD toss from Herink to Evan Wick, and Titus Tuckers’s 60-yard interception return for a touchdown.
But it was all Jacksonville State for much of the second half.
Davidson made a juggling catch in the corner of the end zone from five yards out, and Cade Stinnett’s 22-yard field goal tied the game at 20 in the third quarter. In the fourth, Cooper threw a strike to Davidson in the middle of the field, who broke one tackle and stretched over the goal line for a 13-yard score. Marlon Bridges’ 32-yard pick-6 gave the Gamecocks a 34-20 lead with 10:35 remaining.
ETSU receiver Kobe Kelley was taken off the field on a stretcher late in the game. He gave a thumbs-up in response to the ovation from the crowd.
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September 29, 2010 | Published By Parfit
Is the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League the best production team in the game right now? Listen to their breakdown of the making of Rick Ross’ Aston Martin Music.
Many fans of Rick Ross know that his best material on his last 3 albums has been courtesy of the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League. Key tracks include Maybach Music, Luxury Tax, Magnificent and, most recently, the instant classic Aston Martin Music. Few people know much about the men behind the boards who together make up the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League. Here’s a candid glimpse of them detailing the making of Aston Martin Music (why does everything look more classic in black and white?):
Click here to download the extended version of Aston Martin Music with Drake’s full verse.
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Deluge that could drown an industry
Europe's floods could cost insurers €6bn and put at risk firms already hit by terrorism and markets
Jill Treanor
Thu 15 Aug 2002 06.25 EDT
Such potentially large payouts come at a difficult time for the insurance industry, which is still recovering from the September 11 terrorist attacks and dealing with the turmoil in world markets that is sapping their financial strength.
Yet, as the major insurers start to tot up their exposure, there are signs that governments rather than the industry might end up paying the largest portion of what threatens to be an enormous bill.
This is because cover against flooding is not provided as standard by insurers in many parts of western Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic - three of the countries hit hardest by the torrential rain which is the heaviest recorded to date in some regions.
As many householders are without direct cover, insurance industry experts expect them to turn to governments for help with rebuilding their homes and livelihoods.
Even so, the scale of the floods and their geographical spread means that insurance companies will still face claims running to hundreds of millions of pounds. Insurance companies such as Munich Re and Allianz of Germany are thought to have some of the greatest exposure.
Ivo Menzinger, who heads the flood group at Swiss Re, the major reinsurance company, said: "What is unusual is the special extent of the phenomenon - from the UK to the continental areas down to the Black Sea."
Early estimates are starting to be made for the economic losses in the flood-hit areas. Austria is estimating €3bn; the Czech Republic is warning that it expects the cost to be bigger than the €2bn in curred in July 1997; Germany has made no official estimate but industry sources believe the total amount will top €1bn.
Mr Menzinger, however, believes the bill for the insurance industry could be much lower. Comparisons with past events suggest that in the Czech Republic only 20% of homes and businesses will be covered. In Germany only about 10% of Bavarian residents are likely to have cover, although in parts of the former East Germany the coverage against floods is historically higher.
In assessing the bill, loss adjusters will also be looking at the type of water damage, particularly whether it was caused by flash floods or slowly rising river water. Flash floods, for instance, tend to cause more damage to infrastructure.
German insurer Allianz yesterday admitted that it was very difficult to give realistic estimates. In Italy, Allianz expects claims to run to the low single digits of millions of euros, while in Austria it will be low double digits of millions. A spokesman said that many people were not insured in Germany.
While the insured losses may prove to be small in comparison with the scale of the total damage, the rating agency Standard & Poor's pointed out that one insurer collapsed as a result of the last major flooding in 1997 and that others needed emergency cash injections.
In most parts of mainland Europe insurance against flooding has traditionally been sold separately, and not as part of a wider insurance policy as is commonly the case in Britain.
But this way of selling insurance may be about to change in Britain. The Association of British Insurers said yesterday that its members had agreed to provide cover to those in areas prone to flooding until the end of the year, pending more details about a promised £150m national flood defence scheme. This has prompted many householders in the UK to fear they may be "red-lined" and subsequently unable to buy cover against flooding.
Natural disasters and extreme weather
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A rape victim in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The scale of rape has led some to define the conflict as "a war against women". Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Forty-eight women raped every hour in Congo, study finds
Research shows 12% of the country's women have been raped at least once, and the crisis is not confined to conflict areas
Jo Adetunji
Thu 12 May 2011 11.39 EDT
About 48 women are raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo every hour, a study has claimed.
The study, due to be published in the American Journal of Public Health in June, found sexual abuse was rampant not only in conflict areas but also in the home, with nearly one woman subjected to some form of sexual abuse every minute.
The DRC has been racked by war, with rapes widely documented in the conflict-hit east of the country. However, the study suggests the problem is bigger and more pervasive than previously thought, and goes further in documenting domestic sexual abuse.
It found 1,152 women are raped every day – a rate equal to 48 per hour. That rate is 26 times more than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the United Nations.
"Not only is sexual violence more generalised, but our findings suggest that future policies and programmes should focus on abuse within families," the study's researchers said.
The study, carried out by three public health researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute at Stony Brook University in New York, and the World Bank, was partly financed by the US government and based on figures from a nationwide household survey of 3,436 Congolese women aged 15 to 49 in 2007.
The figures showed 12% of women had been raped at least once and 3% of women across the country were raped between 2006 and 2007. About 22% had also been forced by their partners to have sex or perform sexual acts against their will. The study also revealed alarming levels of sexual abuse in the capital, Kinshasa.
The UN has called the country the centre of rape as a weapon of war. Commentators have also described Congo as the worst place on Earth to be a woman.
Over the past 15 years, civilians have been drawn into the conflict, which has been driven by a weak government and rich mineral resources, often in remote, forest-covered areas.
The highest levels of rape were found in North Kivu, an eastern province ravaged by conflict, where nearly 7% of women were raped at least once between 2006 and 2007, according to the study.
Comprehensive statistics on rape in the DRC have been difficult to collate, although widespread anecdotal evidence has been collected on atrocities.
There have been many reports and witness accounts of the gang rape of young girls and elderly women by armed militia, and also accounts of men being raped. Because of the stigma of rape, many married women find themselves abandoned by their husbands.
"There are two big surprises in the study," said Anthony Gambino, a former mission director for the US Agency for International Development in the Congo.
"First, the magnitude of the problem – rates of rape that are much higher than seen elsewhere. And second, that these alarming, shockingly high rape statistics are found in western Congo as well as northern and eastern Congo."
Gambino said 40 years of "steady economic and political decline" may explain the high incidence of rape in the DRC.
While the authors have extrapolated their figures to show that as many as 1.8 million women out of the country's population of 70 million people have been raped, with up to 433,785 raped in a one-year period, some have urged more caution in the interpretation of the figures and their date.
Michael VanRooyen, the director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which has sent doctors to Congo to treat rape victims, said there were "some limitations in the methodology, such as the sampling methods and the sample sizes" of the new rape study.
But, he said, "the important message remains: that rape and sexual slavery have become amazingly commonplace in this region of the DRC and have defined this conflict as a war against women".
However, Michelle Hindin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who specialises in gender-based violence, said that because the figures were collected during face-to-face interviews – where women could be less forthcoming – the figures could be much higher.
Margot Wallstrom, the UN special representative for sexual violence in conflict, said the figures in the study were higher than the UN's because they covered all sexual violence, including domestic and by known partners.
She said UN figures tended to be conservative because they had to be verified by the UN itself. "The number of reported violations are just the tip of the iceberg of actual incidents," she added.
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Diyarbakır Ulu Camii
Diyarbakir, Turkey
The Great Mosque of Diyarbakır is the oldest and one of the most significant mosques in Anatolia. Following the Muslim capture of Diyarbakır in 639, a church in the city was used in part as a mosque. According to an inscription in situ, Seljuk sultan Malikshah directed the local governor to rebuild the mosque in the year 1091/484 AH. Natural disasters and the building campaigns of later rulers resulted in numerous changes to the mosque and led to its current form.
The Diyarbakır Mosque consists of a rectangular courtyard measuring 63 x 30 meters, bound on the east and west sides by a single-aisled portico, on the north by an agglomeration of buildings of later date, and on the south by a long and narrow prayer hall. The main entrance to the mosque is through a monumental portal on its east side. Today a large public square paved with stone adjoins the portal. The portal itself consists of a large two-story block with an arched iwan-like space at its center through which visitors enter.
Passing through the portal leads visitors onto the courtyard’s east portico. The east and west courtyard facades are both two stories high and ornately decorated with stone carving. The north facade only rises one story. The prayer hall facade (south facade) is divided into three sections that reflect its internal organization: two lateral arms one story high are broken in the center by a section that rises to more than twice the height of the arms and is surmounted by a gable. Doorways surmounted by large lunettes, now filled with glass, puncture the facade of the prayer hall's lateral arms, and inscription bands detailing the date of their construction run above these under the eves of the roof. The prayer hall as it stands today is the result of several building campaigns. According to the inscription band on its facade, the east arm was completed in 1091/484 and the west arm completed some decades later. The central gabled portion is a newer structure, possibly Ottoman, although it likely replaces an older structure of a similar form.1
The interior of the prayer hall comprises a wide central nave housed under the gabled section flanked by two lateral wings three aisles deep (from courtyard to qibla wall) and five bays long (from central nave to lateral walls). A pitched roof, running perpendicular to that of the nave, covers the lateral arms.
Several features of the Diyarbakır mosque bear an unmistakable resemblance to the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, constructed in 715/97 AH. The proportions of the courtyard and prayer hall, the eastern entrance, and the plan of the prayer hall with its central nave and lateral arms, are all conspicuous aspects of the Damascus mosque.2 The status of the Damascus mosque as one of the earliest mosques of Islam made it culturally significant throughout the Islamic world, spurring a number of imitations.
A fire and earthquake in 1115/509 AH occasioned renovations to the mosque. Inscriptions dated 1117-1118/511 AH and 1124/518 AH on the west side of the courtyard, and an inscription dated 1162/557 AH on the east side indicate the dates of several of these renovations.
In addition to local basalt blocks, parts of Byzantine buildings were reused to construct the mosque. Antique columns and capitals, friezes with vine scroll ornament, and fragments of Greek inscriptions show the use of spolia on the courtyard facades.
Later additions to the mosque occupy the north side of the courtyard. Occupying the west end is a small, three-aisled prayer hall known as Şafi Kısmı as it was reserved for followers of the Shafi’ite school of Islamic law. Across an uncovered walkway that opens onto the center of the north side of the courtyard is a portico that leads onto a madrasa known as Mesudiye Medresesi. It was constructed during the last decade of the twelfth/sixth century AH and first decade of the thirteenth/seventh century AH.
An octagonal ablutions fountain covered by a pyramidal roof occupies the center of the courtyard. This feature was constructed in 1890.
Sinclair, Eastern Turkey, 178.
For Damascus Mosque and its impact see Ernst Herzfeld, "Damascus: Studies in Architecture IV," Ars Orientalis 13-14 (1948): 118-138.
Akurgal, Ekrem, and Léo Hilber. The Art and architecture of Turkey. New York: Rizzoli, 1980.
Aslanapa, Oktay. Turkish art and architecture. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971.
Çakmak, Ahmet. "Diyarbakir Ulucamii." Islam Ansiklopedisi, 2014. http://www.islamansiklopedisi.info/ (Accessed 20 October, 2017).
Sinclair, T. A. Eastern Turkey: an architectural and archaeological survey. London: Pindar Press, 1989.
Sözen, Metin, and Ilhan Aksit. The Evolution of Turkish Art and Architecture. Istanbul, Turkey: Haset Kitabevi, 1987.
Diyarbakır Ulucamii (Alternate transliteration)
Great Mosque of Diyarbakir (Translated)
Ulu Cami (Abbreviated)
Great Mosque (Translated)
1091-1092/483-485 AH
Style period
Seljuk of Rum (Anatolia)
Selame oglu Mehmet (architect/planner)
Hibat Allah al Gurgani (architect/planner)
Diyarbakır (place) (founded ca 350 CE)
Sultan Malik Shah (client)
educational, religious
madrasa, mosque
Associated collections
Madrasas
Building for Education
Mardin and Diyarbekr
Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell, Gülru Necipoğlu
Circular Visions of Fertility and Punishment: Caliphal Ivory Caskets from al-Andalus
Gülru Necipoğlu, Francisco Prado-Vilar
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Fresh Off the Bus: Chanel Preston
Alaska native launched adult movie career in January
March 04, 2010 12:19 PM Entertainment - By
LOS ANGELES—Chanel Preston tells AVN she has never considered herself a wild girl, but then admits “maybe I am a little bit.” (photo gallery)
“We’ll say I’m medium. I’m medium wild,” she jokes.
Preston’s sense of adventure has led her to Porn Valley, where she began her adult film career in January. The 24-year-old native of Fairbanks, Alaska who now lives in Honolulu had only performed in three scenes so far at press time. Her first was with Nick Manning for Vivid Entertainment’s Brand New Faces series. Then she did a volume of Jack’s POV for Digital Playground before landing her first acting role—in Wicked Pictures’ upcoming release Hooked, which was directed by and stars Jessica Drake.
“I played Claire. It was fun,” says Preston, who did a threeway scene with Drake and Brad Armstrong in the movie about call girls. “My character kind of pimped [Jessica] out. I’m very lucky I got that role.”
Playing a part was anything but foreign to Preston, who realized she had a flair for drama at a young age.
“I grew up acting. I was like the little girl that controlled everything. I was in elementary school writing plays for all my friends. ‘OK, now let’s get together and act this out during recess,’” Preston recalls with a laugh. “I did a lot of Shakespeare theatre and made my mother put me in any drama-related programs whatsoever. ... So I was like I’m pretty sure I can still act so I’m sure I can do this.”
Now that the licensed aesthetician and former high school wrestler has gotten a taste of the adult industry, Preston is committed to going as far as she can.
“I have a lot of confidence in myself that I can do well,” she says.
In her first interview, Preston talks about growing up in Alaska, working at Nordstrom’s, the men in South Dakota and her love of ass play, among other things.
DM: What was it like working for Vivid in your first scene?
CP: I did their Brand New Faces thing. It was fun and interesting. I got to work with Nick Manning though. That was fun.
Did you want to work with Nick?
Not in particularly. Actually when I had heard about him I was like, ‘Oh no, Oh my gosh...But then it ended up being a lot of fun. I would definitely work with him again. I liked him. He was high-energy, which I like so...
So you’ve only done three shoots?
Yes. ... I’m excited to do more. I had fun on all them. So I’m excited for the future.
How did you hook up with your manager Nakita Kash?
I am a dancer so she has a traveling entertainers’ thing where she sends girls to different clubs. And I contacted her because I wanted to travel a little bit, and that’s where I met her. And then I actually asked her how she got into it and she told me she did porn and I was kind of curious about it and we got to talking and it just kind of evolved from there. I think she trusted that I was in it for the right reasons so.
So she helped you get started?
Yeah definitely. I told her I was interested. I had to think about it and I was like I want to do that because I love dancing but I’m kind of over the hustling part. So I told her I think I’d enjoy porn a lot more than dancing. So she kind of helped me along and she’s managing me now.
Why did you move to Honolulu?
It was kind of impulsive. My best friend had moved there a year before I did. And I was dating someone and ….something happened and I ended up breaking up with him and I thought you know I want to get out of here. I figured it’d be an easy move because she already lived there and I’ve been stuck there ever since.
How long have you been dancing at Femme Nu [in Honolulu]?
I actually haven’t been dancing that long. I’ve been dancing maybe a year and a half. I’ve probably been at Femme Nu for a year. It’s definitely a pussy show as I like to say because you’re not very active. I actually don’t like that, I like to dance but I make a lot more money over there... But I’ve noticed people either love it or they hate it. I’ve met guys that are like, ‘Oh my God I love Femme Nu,’ and it’s probably because they come from a place where you can’t drink and look at pussy at the same time.
Where do you live in Honolulu?
Kahala. It’s near Diamond Head. Diamond Head is at the very end of Waikiki and then it’s a little bit farther. It’s kind of the edge of town I guess you could say.
What is your plan, to commute back and forth to LA to do movies or to relocate to LA?
I would actually really like to move here because I’ve kind of been looking for an excuse to get out of there anyway. If I did, summer would be the soonest. I’m going to come out every few weeks or so probably until the lease is up and then we’ll see what happens but I would love to live out here. I always thought that I wouldn’t like it. I like that it’s a little bit colder. I miss cold weather. I miss bundling up. I’m sick of wearing tank-tops and skirts.
I need a change. I like Hawaii I just don’t love it so far. It’s a nice place to visit…There’s more opportunity here anyway. It’s definitely not a place where you can necessarily excel unless there is an industry that is specific to Hawaii there. Especially now, it’s very hard to get a job and everything. ... I think I moved there the end of 2005.
What was your familiarity with adult before this?
I'll be honest, not very much. I watched it. I really didn’t know very many people. I knew the obvious ones—Tera Patrick, Jenna Jameson— but I didn’t know a lot about it, and then, I don’t know what drew me to it so much. I guess I like to perform. I’m kind of an exhibitionist and I really like that and so when I sat down and thought about it, I thought that I’d really enjoy it.
When did you make up your mind that you were going to do it for sure?
Like a week later, after the idea was brought up…Yeah it was maybe August. I thought about it because I wanted to make sure I was doing it for the right reasons. I said yes, I want to do it and then I ended up going to the gentlemen’s club convention with Nakita so I got a little more acquainted with the industry there, met some people. I met her in July. I saw a blog about her company and so I thought I should look into it. I thought it’d be something different to do. And so I called her... I was going to Vegas anyway to dance and so I ended up flying to Florida to meet her and talk to her.
I was traveling for a month dancing after I had decided to do it and then I went to Vegas for the convention and then I ended up going home and then I came back to Vegas and then I did some photo shoots. And then it was just kind of slow when the holidays rolled around and I was traveling again dancing and we just decided to wait until after the holidays. She thought that going out [to AEE] would probably be the best bet.
Were you traveling as a feature dancer?
Just a house dancer. Some clubs will hire girls to come in if they need a fresh look or sometimes it’s a really small town and they don’t have access to very pretty women, so they’ll hire girls to come in and show themselves off to all the local men. It’s actually really fun. It’s interesting. I meet a lot of different people.
Like I’d never been to the Midwest and that was very interesting to dance there. I have no idea why I would ever have gone there, except for that reason. I actually really enjoyed it. I went to the club there twice because I liked it there so much, not to live, just to dance. In South Dakota. I think the men there are just…bored, but friendly. And they had money…Yeah I liked it. They’re so friendly like Midwestern boys and they’re so nice… and they’re very easy.
Easy to... seduce?
Yeah [laughs]. Not like these LA guys, they know all our tricks. I would love to feature eventually. I would love that because I love performing. I love dancing.
What was going through your mind at that first shoot?
I had actually never seen the Brand New Faces website and when I went to go look at it I had a bad connection...It was at Nick’s house in Simi Valley. I was really excited. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be I was kind of excited…and we did the interview. Actually I told Nakita I really don’t want to do one of those scenes where they interview you and you have to pretend like you’re kind of naïve and goofy and then they have sex with you, and that was totally what it was. [Laughs] And so when I started doing the photo shoot he said you need to act a little more... shy. So I said, ‘Oh ok,’ I wasn’t real sure how to do that.
So then I did the interview and Nick came in and we went at it and it was actually a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. It’s not very often you get to just scream and yell and have sex on film and just do whatever you want. It’s very liberating. ... And like I said, Nick had a lot of energy and I like that. I kind of like aggressive men, pull my hair spank my ass. Especially if you’re performing…I don’t like slow, and he’s goofy of course. I’m ready to do another one.
What volume was it?
It’s on the internet. They just posted it like a week ago and I was so embarrassed. I thought oh it’s going to be terrible. And I watched it and I was like oh, that wasn’t bad.
What about your next shoot?
Then I did Jack’s POV for Robby D. with Scott Nails. I liked him. He was a gentleman. It was kind of, not a very serious scene. They were supposed to shoot a feature that day, some scenes for a feature, but it didn’t work out so they decided just to shoot some POV scenes. So it was fun.
How did the Wicked shoot come about?
We were talking with them when we were at the AVN’s and Jessica was like, ‘Oh she needs to play Claire,’ and [Brad Armstrong] was like, ‘But that’s kind of an older lady.’ I’m supposed to pimp her out. We’re both call girls and I’m trying to make money off of her. She’s like ‘No she has to play Claire she’d be perfect for it.’ So he gave me the chance to play her and it was kind of a big deal because it was my first type of role. ... I wanted to play Claire. I said this is my part, this is me! I can do this! So I’m very thankful to Brad for giving me the opportunity to do that.
Had you ever done a threeway before?
In my personal life.
So your threeway was with a girl and a guy?
No. It was actually with two guys. Which was very fun. So I was excited to do a scene with a girl and a guy.
Had you ever been with a girl before that?
No. …If it was anyone else I’d be a little scared. I don’t know because girls can be kind of gross but Jessica is not. …So I was very excited that my first time with a girl was her. But I guess men can be gross too. I wasn’t worried about it. I was excited.
How do you see this now, as a career?
I told myself when you decide to do this you better go all the way. There’s no a little later saying I don’t want to do this. If you’re going to do it, just do it. And I want to, because I’m the type, I have to be good at everything I do. So I have to be good at this. I want to be. I love it so. I have a lot of confidence in myself that I can do well. I kind of have a business mind so I know once I get more experience with it, then I can really see myself going somewhere with it even if in the future it’s behind the scenes or anything else….so I definitely want to make this my thing, my career. It’s not temporary. I see a good future in it.
Did you have the name Chanel Preston before?
I had the name Chanel before. When I started dancing I wanted something kind of classy. I always wear black or white. And it’s not too fake of a name…I didn’t want like Passion Fruit or something as my dance name.
What was it like growing up in Alaska?
It was interesting. I guess I feel like…Kids are very bored there. I actually noticed as I got older people that a lot of people were like ‘I’ve never even seen drugs before until I moved to Alaska.’ And they’re like ‘I’m from California!’ and it’s probably true. It’s very dark there a lot, very cold, you’re stuck indoors a lot. But I had a lot of fun too.
I was into snowboarding when I younger and snow machining. We had like seven snow machines. We were always doing winter stuff and the snow is always fun. I love the snow. I was definitely like a woodsy girl.
What were you like in high school?
I’ll be honest. I was kind of stoner. I liked to party a lot. But I got into some trouble. So by the time I got into my junior year I had straightened up and I was just normal going to school, working. But before that I was a stoner, party girl. But yeah I just wanted to have a good time pretty much.
What extra-curricular things did you do?
I was a wrestler in junior high and high school and I was a swimmer. I was also really into art. I was painting, drawing. I was always doing different stuff, so I had something on my mind that I wanted to try then I would do it then it would last for a little while and then I would do the next thing so I’ve probably done a little bit of everything.
Wrestling, with the boys?
Yes.... They didn’t have a girls’ team at the time. There was some national girl teams that I wasn’t trying for but I kind of ….I don’t think they even now have girl teams. So in high school it’s still guys. So I wrestled with the guys. Junior High there was two of us on the team, in high school there might’ve been three maybe even four girls on the team. But the coach didn’t like that very much so I had to prove myself. ... I had to show him that I wasn’t just trying to be cute.
But I won sometimes! I won a takedown tournament. That was junior high. The guys got a little bit bigger in high school.
Besides dancing, what were a couple of previous jobs that you had?
I actually worked for my Dad. He owns a coffee shop. And I ran that right before I left to Hawaii. I was actually managing it. Then when I moved to Hawaii I started bartending and cocktailing and then for a little while I tried to get out of the restaurant industry and I worked as a manager for a skin care line at Nordstrom’s. So I have my aesthetician’s license. And I hated it. It was boring. It was so boring so I left there and I couldn’t find a job. Actually that’s when I started dancing. I couldn’t find a job. I was in Hawaii. I was having a hard time. And I really didn’t want to start doing any kind of serving work again. That’s when I started dancing. Because I’d always been kind of curious about it.
That just kind of pushed me. I worked in clubs and I worked in a wine bar for a couple years. That was actually nice because I got a lot of training in wine.
... I used to read about wine all the time when I was eating because I have to do something when I’m eating so I’d always be reading about wine. But I think I lost a lot of it unfortunately. At least can pretend like I know what I’m talking about it.
When did you lose your virginity?
15. I was stoned….I can’t remember much about it, honestly. I had the typical after a party, drunk and stoned. It was very movie-like. It was actually with a good friend and I’m still good friends with him to this day. So lucky me it wasn’t with someone disgusting or gross. So I can’t say it was a good experience but it wasn’t bad.
What turns you on now?
I don’t know if I want this out there [smiling]… I’m not doing any anal scenes but I absolutely love ass play. I like to fuck with butt plugs in all the time. I have a new one waiting for me at home. It’s bigger and better. [laughs] Yeah I figured that out two years ago. I love ass play. Um, it’s really weird but I totally love gay porn. It’s very weird. I don’t know what it is about it. I think it’s something about…He can’t seem gay though. Yeah he can’t be kind of fruity. It has to be like a normal guy that comes off straight and I think it’s the fact…It’s very intriguing to me like when I find out guys like that are gay or bisexual. Any time somebody has something kind of different. I kind of like that. I like bisexual men. There. That’s a turn-on to me. It’s a little weird I know, I can’t help it though.
I like very confident men. Of course, I think most girls will say that…yeah, those are my turn-ons.
Does your family know you’re in porn yet?
They actually don’t know I’m in porn. My mother knows I dance. …it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they found out. They wouldn’t be surprised. My sister was like a phone sex operator, and when she lived with us she would go in the other room and work…so it wouldn’t be this terrible, devastating thing if they found out. I actually wanted to wait until I was a little more established so that they knew that I actually had thought about it…it wasn’t something that someone just asked me to do and then I was like, ‘Yeah I’ll do it’ and then they ruined my life. I didn’t want them to think it was like that. So I wanted to wait until I was a little more successful so I could say see, this is my business now, I’m going about this the smart way. That’s when I’m going to tell them, so they know I wasn’t just naïve and got tricked into doing a porn.
We’ll see when that will be. And I haven’t told my sisters because they have big mouths. And they would joke about it when they probably shouldn’t. ... So I haven’t told them. I have two older sisters. I’m the baby, no brothers.
What made you want to get your aesthetician’s license?
Because I kind of have a passion for skin care. Well I originally was trying to get into makeup artistry. I wanted to do that and then I started to care more about what’s underneath the makeup.
So I got my license and I really wanted to go into the medical field with it. I wanted to get into medical aesthetics. But it’s so hard in Hawaii…it’s hard enough to get any job and then especially aesthetician work and I was very picky because in Hawaii anyone can say they’re an aesthetician if they want to just work at some salon that’s crappy. And I wanted to work for a doctor and it’s really difficult to get into it. …I did aesthetician work at Nordstrom’s. There was an actual salon there so I did the facials and everything. And if it wasn’t so focused on retail I would probably have stayed there. But it’s Nordstrom’s so it’s sell, sell sell!
It still interests me though. I still enjoy reading about cosmetics. Even cosmetic dermatology is very intriguing to me.
What is your ethnic background?
I’m German, English and Spanish mainly, I’m sure there’s some other stuff in there, very European.
Have you ever done any sort of modeling work before?
I had worked with a few photographers before, but more artsy stuff, like artsy nudes. People always commented to me like you should get into modeling but it always irritated me because it’s not like you can just go down the street and get into modeling. It takes a lot of effort especially mainstream work. It takes a lot of effort, even if you are beautiful. There are so many beautiful women that are willing to model. Like every woman wants to model, so I didn’t really feel like pursuing it that much. I said that if it ever came along it would be something that I wanted to do but I definitely wasn’t going to push for it very hard. But yeah I liked working with the artsy guys. That was fun.
But when I was a kid I wanted to be a model and we had a modeling crew come in and pick girls out. But of course they’re going to pick out any decent girls because it’s like a money scam and I remember being devastated because my mother wouldn’t let me go to Seattle. ‘But they want me to go to Seattle!” and she’s like ‘it’s just a money scam you gotta pay for everything.’ And I remember I was so mad at her, ‘this is my future!’ Mother knows best.
What are some of your hobbies?
I work out a lot. I’m very active. So in Hawaii I’m always hiking or running or swimming or always doing something like that. I can’t really say that I have a hobby…
I like to be very active, and Hawaii’s definitely a place to do that. So if I have a chance to go kayaking or something or someone asks me to go do something fun…I’ll try anything.
... I actually don’t go to the beach that often I just like swimming laps because I just get so bored sitting there. I can play volleyball or go camping or picnicking but I can’t go lay out on the beach by myself. I actually have to force myself to be there for 45 minutes. Because I feel like that’s the minimum time you should be there for some reason…
(Ed.—Preston on Thursday was scheduled to shoot with AVN Hall of Fame photographer Earl Miller.)
Management: [email protected]; Booking: AlistTalentManagement.com.
Nick Manning
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Home-News
2016 Ford C. Frick Award Winner Graham McNamee
Part of the FORD C. FRICK AWARD series
Written by: Bill Francis
More Frick Award Winners Hall of Fame Awards Related Hall of Famers
Graham McNamee, one of broadcasting’s first and brightest stars as a beloved voice to millions of listeners in the first half of the 20th century, was named the 2016 Ford C. Frick Award recipient “for major contributions to the game of baseball” on Dec. 9.
It would have been almost impossible to miss McNamee’s voice if you owned a radio from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s. Not only was he was quite possibly the first celebrity sportscaster, but he was also a pioneering broadcaster, renowned as the most recognized personality during radio’s formative years.
McNamee was a concert baritone when in 1923 he wandered into the WEAF radio studio in New York City looking for a job. Hired as an announcer at a station that would soon become home to the National Broadcasting Company, McNamee quickly became radio’s best all-around announcer. Soon, no football game, World Series, horse race, tennis match, inauguration, or other major event was complete without him.
His first sports assignment was the Harry Greb-Johnny Wilson middleweight championship at the Polo Grounds on Aug. 31, 1923. A few weeks later he broadcast the 1923 World Series between the Yankees and Giants. Over the next two decades he would call 12 World Series as well as 10 other sports. As a result of McNamee’s coverage of the 1925 World Series, WEAF received nearly 50,000 letters of appreciation.
Graham McNamee photographed broadcasting the second game of the 1924 World Series on October 5, 1924. BL-102.62j (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)
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According to Red Barber, a longtime broadcaster for the Reds, Dodgers and Yankees, as well as the 1978 Frick Award winner, McNamee was the greatest sports announcer we ever had, adding “How he did what he did when he did…suddenly…completely unprepared…is to me a miracle.”
Regarded as the pioneer of sports announcers, McNamee set many broadcasting standards during his tenure. It wasn’t long after he began his radio announcing career that statisticians computed that the voice of McNamee had been heard for more hours by more human ears than any other voice in history.
Graham McNamee conducting an interview with New York Yankee Babe Ruth for NBC. BL-1389.68 (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)
Listeners to McNamee’s baseball broadcasts not only enjoyed his vivid description of the action on the field but also what was happening off it. In fact, McNamee once estimated that he used more than 10 times the number of words in an unabridged dictionary.
In his 1926 book “You’re on the Air,” McNamee described his baseball broadcasting style: “You must make each of your listeners, though miles from the spot, feel that he or she, too, is there with you in that press stand, watching the movements of the game, the color, and flags; the pop bottles thrown in the air…Gloria Swanson arriving in her new ermine coat; McGraw in his dugout, apparently motionless, but giving signals all the time.”
Jim Murray, 1987 winner of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing,” penned in 1978 that McNamee “was a great announcer because he never let the action on the field get in the way of his imagination. He called the game as it should be. If he forgot the score, he described the sunset. Ring Lardner said sitting next to McNamee was like having a doubleheader – the game you were watching, and the game you were hearing.”
Among the three sports events that McNamee broadcast that he considered most memorable was the fabled long count of the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney heavyweight fight in 1927, the comeback of Philadelphia Athletics pitcher Howard Ehmke in the 1929 World Series, and the Babe Ruth “called shot” home run in the 1932 World Series.
Heywood Broun, the winner of the 1970 Spink Award, once wrote, “A thing may be a marvelous invention and still as dull as ditchwater. It will be that unless it allows the play of personality. Graham McNamee has been able to take a new medium of expression and through it transmit himself – to give out vividly a sense of movement and of feeling. Of such is the kingdom of art.”
Plaque honoring McNamee by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame when he was inducted in 1964. B-355.68 (Milo Stewart, Jr. / National Baseball Hall of Fame)
A contemporary in the field, Phillips Carlin, described McNamee’s voice as the most vibrant and vital in radio, adding, “For nearly 20 years it thrilled those who heard it. Things, places and people became alive in the homes of America when he spoke.”
When McNamee passed away at the age of 53 in 1942, The New York Times wrote, “He was voluble in extemporaneous description and narration of events that took place before his eyes while a live microphone was before him and he had developed a technique for portraying accurately and interestingly, in fluent language, the sights at fast-moving sports contests, exciting political gatherings and many other varied assignments.”
In his eulogy for McNamee, Dr. Franklin Dunham said, “Thousands of little children now grown up will remember his ability, as we of broadcasting do, to make the simple thing vivid and real.”
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience,” was a familiar opening refrain from McNamee. Although his devoted audience would not need the identification, the young baritone who would become a trailblazing sports broadcaster in radio’s infancy would sign off his broadcasts with, “This is Graham McNamee speaking, Goodnight, all.”
Bill Francis is a Library Associate at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Graham McNamee, right, with future HOFer Waite Hoyt. McNamee later signed the photographed and presumably sent it to Hoyt with his “best wishes.” BL-5061.69 (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)
More Frick Award Winners
2014 Ford C. Frick Award Winner Eric Nadel
2015 Ford C. Frick Award Winner Dick Enberg
Ford C. Frick Award
For broadcasters' contributions to baseball.
Frick (broadcasters), Spink (writers), and O'Neil (lifetime achievement)
J.G. Taylor Spink Award
For meritorious contributions to baseball writing
Buck O'Neil Award
For lifetime achievement
Related Hall of Famers
Right Fielder
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Tag Archives: Strait of Hormuz
BBC Radio 4 promotes unsupported allegation concerning Israel
The June 14th edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme included an item concerning the previous day’s attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
Presenter Justin Webb first spoke to former US official James Clapper (from 01:36:48 here) before introducing his next guest: Labour peer Lord West of Spithead.
Webb: “Let’s talk to Admiral Lord West, chief of naval staff of course in this country between 2002 and 2006…”
After listeners had heard about the UK’s naval forces in the relevant region and an assessment that “should by any mistake a war start” the United Kingdom would be “very, very involved”, Webb went on (at 1:41:12) to ask his next question. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]
Webb: “Do we have a way, separately from the Americans, of making our own determination of what is actually going on because at the moment the foreign secretary I think has said he accepts the American view and you just heard James Clapper saying in his view there isn’t any other view of who is responsible. But do we have a kind of a way of sorting out for ourselves what’s actually going on and what our…our…our vital interests are?”
West: “Well certainly our agencies and the defence intelligence staff, for example, will be analysing the tapes and looking at that and our agencies will be looking at any other evidence they’ve got to ascertain whether we are absolutely certain the Iranians are doing it. It does…it does look as though they’re doing that but let’s not kid ourselves: there are powerful groups within Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US that would – I’m afraid rather stupidly – would rather like some sort of war with Iran because they think there could be some knock-out blow and there’d be a revolution in Iran. They’re deluding themselves; it would be a catastrophe. So because there are those groups and because within Iran itself there are splinter groups, you know I think we need to be quite careful about being sure who exactly is doing this. It does look as though the Iranians are doing it at the moment.”
Rather than asking his interviewee to name those “powerful groups” or challenging the claim that they “would rather like some sort of war with Iran” when that would undoubtedly put Israeli civilians in considerable danger, Webb proceeded directly to his next ‘question’.
Webb: “And also make our own political decisions as well I suppose on what degree of escalation we wanted to take part in.”
As the BBC’s researchers were presumably aware before seeking his participation, that bizarre and unevidenced claim had been made by Lord West of Spithead before – in the House of Lords on May 13th. [emphasis added]
“There is no doubt that there are powerful factions within Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US that feel that an attack on Iran would be a good thing, believe it or not. They think that they would very quickly be able to suppress the enemy capability and then there would be regime change. They are wrong. It would be an absolute catastrophe. The passage of any shipping through the Straits of Hormuz would be problematic for weeks, there would be an outbreak of terrorist attacks throughout the region and there would possibly be some missile attacks.”
As we see, then too no evidence to support his claim was provided by Lord West of Spithead – who also believes that terrorism in the UK is caused by Israeli actions (or cannabis) and told BBC audiences (and others) in April 2018 that it did “not ring true” that the chemical attack in Douma that month was perpetrated by the Assad regime.
Not only did Justin Webb make no effort whatsoever to challenge West’s unsupported statement, but BBC Radio 4 even chose to further highlight it on Twitter.
So much, once again, for the BBC’s obligation to provide “duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of…the wider world.”
By Hadar Sela Posted in Accuracy, BBC, Impartiality Tagged 'Today', BBC, BBC Radio 4, Gulf of Oman, Iran, Israel, Justin Webb, Strait of Hormuz, Twitter, US Administration
BBC News website showcases Paul Danahar’s Middle East narrative
An AFP report from May 14th about the WhatsApp security flaw story states: [emphasis added]
“”This attack has all the hallmarks of a private company that works with a number of governments around the world” according to initial investigations, it [WhatsApp] added, but did not name the firm.”
AFP’s article goes on:
“The spyware appears to be related to the Pegasus software developed by Israeli-based NSO group, which is normally sold to law enforcement and intelligence services, according to Washington-based analyst Joseph Hall.
The spyware “could have gotten into someone’s hands” outside legitimate channels for nefarious purposes, Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told AFP.
“It’s unclear who is doing this.””
Former BBC Jerusalem bureau chief Paul Danahar however has no such doubts and on May 14th he published an article on the BBC News website’s ‘US & Canada’ and ‘Middle East’ pages titled “Why the WhatsApp spies may have eyes on Iran”.
Readers got some early signposting in the form of the main photograph used to illustrate the article. The image – which has no connection whatsoever to the story itself – was captioned “Young Israeli soldiers take a selfie”.
Danahar opened his article as follows: [all emphasis added]
“Time to join some dots.
The WhatsApp hack, “sabotaged” oil tankers, the push in the US to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood and “plans” to deploy American troops to the Gulf are all strands of the same story. At its heart is the struggle between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran.”
Danahar then spent the next seven paragraphs establishing linkage between the Israeli army and tech companies while promoting an unsupported claim regarding the function of intelligence units.
“The Israeli army takes in every youngster, assesses their greatest strength and parks them where they can do the most national good.
The computer nerds who would otherwise be locked in their mum’s basement are forced out into the light and into doing their national service in cyber-warfare.
When they leave the army, they take the skills and the connections they made into the industrial sector and they form companies like the NSO Group.”
That section also promotes a link to another report on the WhatsApp story written on the same day by the BBC’s North America technology reporter, Dave Lee. In that report Lee linked to an article he wrote in 2016 in which he made some dubious claims concerning NSO and the IDF’s 8200 unit which remain in situ.
Danahar next managed to bring Palestinians into the story:
“The NSO Group makes hacking tools to sell to governments to fight crime and terrorism.
But – and it is a big but – they’ll only get an export licence from the Israeli government if it deems that the sale does not harm the national interest.
In the past that meant no sales to Iran and nothing to Arab Gulf states either.
That’s because in the past the Gulf states stood with the Palestinians against Israel.”
Ignoring the fact that the Gulf Cooperation Council states ditched the Arab League boycott of Israel in 1996, Danahar went on to claim that:
“In the post-Arab Spring period, the Gulf states (apart from Qatar) have all but abandoned the Palestinian cause and moved to side with Israel against Iran.
This slow shift was accelerated by the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of so many anti-Iran hawks to his administration, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton.”
The Gulf states’ recognition of threats posed by Iran was of course amply evident long before Donald Trump ran for president. Providing no concrete supporting evidence, Danahar then promoted “speculation”.
“There’s much speculation that the Israeli government would, to build relations with their new friends in the Gulf, have allowed the NSO Group to sell their software to Gulf states.
What suggests that? Well it’s perhaps not a coincidence that among those reportedly targeted by the WhatsApp hacking software were lawyers investigating human rights abuses in Gulf states, a Saudi dissident and a Qatari citizen.”
Failing to inform readers of Iran’s financing and support of terror groups such as Hizballah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas and ignoring the regular Iranian threats against Israel, Danahar continued:
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his reason for being (and his only political legacy) his effort to contain Iran, which he projects as Israel’s only existential threat.”
Danahar – now the BBC’s Americas Bureaux Editor in Washington – then went on to promote his notion of how US foreign policy is made.
“The Saudi rulers see two existential threats. One from without: Iran. And one from within: the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis are scared of Iran because of its military might.
They are scared of the Muslim Brotherhood because they offer political Islam as an alternative to the dynastic rule of the royal family.
The Trump administration is made up of people who hate the Iranian regime and everything it stands for.
So, this new “Axis of Egos” is all doing each other favours to position themselves collectively to fully unite against Iran.
Lots of trades are taking place.
Some involve arms sales, some involve the price of oil and gas, some involve political trades like the one that some in the White House are doing for the Saudis by trying to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.”
A photo caption tells readers that: “The Trump administration decided to pursue sanctions against the Muslim Brotherhood following an April meeting with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi”.
As was noted here when the BBC previously promoted that claim in late April, “the idea of designating the Brotherhood” predates both the Trump administration and that meeting.
Danahar next invoked the Iraq war spectre while a photo caption once again used scare quotes around the word “sabotaged” to suggest to readers that damage done to four ships off the coast of the UAE on May 12th may not have been deliberate.
“In a replay of what happened before the invasion of Iraq, it appears that any strand of intelligence that can be spun into a reason to ratchet up the pressure on Iran is being used.
This atmosphere is all very familiar to those of us who were around to witness the build-up towards the war in Iraq.”
Danahar closed his polemic by trying to persuade audiences that if the US did go to war with Iran, it would ultimately be because of Israel.
“The present occupant in the White House has far fewer ideological bones in his body, perhaps none. […]
He’s unlikely to sign up to another war in the Middle East, certainly not this side of the 2020 election, unless he is seriously provoked.
That would require being able to pin some very bad action on Tehran. The best way to do that is to gather intelligence.
And the best way to gather intelligence is for all your allies to be spying on as many people in the region as you can.
One of the best ways to do that is to hack into the Trojan horse we all voluntarily carry with us, our smartphones.”
As we saw in November 2012 when Paul Danahar – then head of the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau – signed off and personally promoted inaccurate reports concerning the death of a child in the Gaza Strip, he apparently does not find it necessary to have verified evidence before promoting a version of events which fits in with his chosen political narrative.
And as we see in this item, Danahar’s chosen narrative includes an Iranian regime which is so passive and innocuous that it would have to have “some very bad action” pinned on it by underhand actors.
Notably, that is being presented to BBC audiences as “news that you can trust”.
Odd claim from BBC Technology appears – and disappears – on Wikipedia
Superficial BBC News reporting on Muslim Brotherhood
By Hadar Sela Posted in Accuracy, BBC, Impartiality, Omission, Public Purposes Tagged 8200, BBC, BBC Americas Bureaux, BBC News, BBC Online, Dave Lee, GCC, hacking, IDF, Iran, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Paul Danahar, Saudi Arabia, Strait of Hormuz, US Administration, WhatsApp
Context lacking in BBC report on developments in Strait of Hormuz
On April 30th a short report appeared on the BBC News website’s Middle East page under the title “US Navy to assist US-flagged ships through Strait of Hormuz“. The article’s subject matter is portrayed as follows:
“Defence officials have said that US Navy ships will accompany US-flagged commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, to make sure they are not interfered with by Iran. […]
The US navy will not be escorting the ships – a different procedure from accompanying them. Instead, it will monitor the area as the ships pass across the strait.”
The BBC report does not expand on the meaning of the term “monitor”, but some explanation of what that means in practical terms has been provided by retired US Navy officer JE Dyer:
“The Navy won’t be running convoys through the strait, or pulling literal “escort” duty. It appears that the Navy will be on-call to monitor Iranian activity in the strait while U.S.-flagged ships are in transit, a posture that can be ramped up to dedicated escort at need, but without naval escort being imposed on U.S. merchant ships as a routine condition of passage (something the president has authority to do).
The profile of operations is thus as open-ended as the timeframe for the requirement. The best way to put it is to say we’ll be having to keep a duty warship in the SOH [Strait of Hormuz] for escort contingencies.”
CNN adds:
“Pentagon officials provided clarification Thursday afternoon that not every ship will necessarily be accompanied by the Navy. But this is still a significant change in the U.S. military posture in the Strait.
The classified plan was approved by the Pentagon earlier Thursday, according to a senior defense official.
While the Navy maintains a routine ship presence in the Persian Gulf and the North Arabian Sea, this new effort specifically requires an armed warship to be in the narrow channel between Iran and Oman when a U.S. commercial vessel passes through.”
The BBC report notes the incidents which took place last week in the Strait of Hormuz:
“Iranian patrol boats surrounded a US cargo ship in the strait on Friday.
Earlier this week, Iranian naval ships reportedly fired warning shots near a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship before seizing it and its crew. […]
The crew of the Marshall Islands-flagged container ship seized by Iran in the strait on Tuesday are safe and “in good spirits”, Danish shipping company Maersk said.
Maersk said it still did not know the reason why the Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was seized, and noted it had been in an international shipping lane.
Iranian media cited an official as saying the ship was seized based on a court order in connection with a complaint made by a private Iranian company about debts.”
Neither in this report nor in its two previous related articles (see here and here) did the BBC clarify the significance of the Iranian actions. JE Dyer again:
“Iran purports to be at war with no one, and hasn’t claimed a national-defense need to take the unusual and arguably criminal step of detaining a ship exercising the right of innocent passage in an international strait.
Maersk Tigris isn’t an asset of the Maersk Line – the ship’s not owned by Maersk – and neither is the cargo she carries. Iran has impounded the assets of innocent third parties, in an alleged attempt to collect a debt from 2005 owed by Maersk because of an Iranian court judgment.
A coastal state’s prerogatives in an international strait don’t give it the right to do this. In fact, the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) prohibits what Iran did on Tuesday. The only prerogative it recognizes for a coastal state to stop a ship exercising innocent passage is to enforce national laws which that specific ship may be in violation of. (See Article 28.) According to the reason Iran gave for detaining her, Maersk Tigris is a third party in breach of no Iranian law or judgment.” [UNCLOS text here]
Writing on the legal aspects of Iran’s seizure of the Maersk Tigris, Professor Eugene Kontorovich notes that:
“Iran’s seizure clearly violates international law, and one might add, a branch of international law that is ordinarily well-respected, and quite fundamental for global commerce. Moreover, no maritime lien gives Iran any authority to detain the crew.
Given the flagrant breach of international law, there seems to be a surprising silence from the “international community” and proponents of global governance.”
With regard to conventions concerning the Strait of Hormuz – through which approximately 30% of all seaborne traded oil is transported – the BBC states:
“The strait connects the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. […]
The narrow strait lies partly in Iranian waters.
Shipping traffic is allowed to pass through under an internationally-recognised protocol called “innocent passage”, so long as the ships are not carrying weapons, collecting intelligence, or violating other restrictions.”
Clearly then the latest move by Iran – and the US reaction to it – is of prime significance, as noted by JE Dyer.
“The decision to accompany U.S.-flagged shipping in the SOH is a finger in a dike, and what it actually means is that the international convention that has governed safe transit of the Strait of Hormuz for decades has already collapsed. Appointing a U.S. Navy escort in the conditions of 2015 is an acknowledgment that there’s nothing we can do about the chaos that is now cracking the pillars of international order. We can try to protect our own shipping, but there will be no enforcement of a principle of safe passage through international straits, as a basic building block of order among the nations.”
Obviously a lot of context essential for comprehensive audience understanding of this story and any related future developments is absent from this BBC report and others.
By Hadar Sela Posted in BBC, Omission, Public Purposes Tagged BBC, BBC News, BBC Online, Iran, Strait of Hormuz, US Administration
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Oliver of the Levant
Author(s): Debra Jopson
It's 1969 and the world is alight with revolution. Oliver Lawrence, a Bondi Beach kid, is transported to one of the world's most bewitching cities: Beirut in the Levant.
The city is on the verge of civil war, but Oliver, who idolises Jimi Hendrix and Lawrence of Arabia, is more concerned with holding his family together. This mission becomes complicated as Oliver's ravishing, gin-swilling stepmother, Babette, and cavalier playboy pilot father indulge in unbridled expatriate partying.
And Babette has a secret that Oliver is determined to uncover. Beirut is a confusing place to learn how to be a man, involving snipers, codes of honour and purloined letters.
As Lebanon begins to disintegrate, no one can avoid being caught in the crossfire. It's bad enough when Oliver develops a very public crush on the local warlord's girlfriend, but it turns disastrous when his young guerrilla friend, Ringo', enlists his misguided enthusiasm to turn his exploding cigar magic trick into a suitcase bomb.
When Oliver is given an old Box Brownie, he finds a way into the world, into the lives of others and, finally, into adulthood. Oliver of the Levant is by turns h
Debra Jopson began this novel when she participated in the Faber Academy novel writing course. She has worked as a journalist in Melbourne, Hong Kong, Beirut, London and Sydney, specialising in indigenous affairs, health and rural affairs as well as major investigations. She was in July 2014 named the Walkley Awards Freelance Journalist of the Year. After working as a journalist for mainstream outlets, Jopson has for the last couple of years committed herself to producing in-depth pieces as a freelancer. The four stories for which she was awarded, published in print and online, represented a body of work requiring an amount of time and effort most media outlets will no longer support. Jopson's award-winning work covered diverse topics including ASIO, Tennant Creek's indigenous housing crisis, misuse of housing funds, and the loss of indigenous rock art.
Publisher : Random House Australia
Imprint : Vintage (Australia)
Author : Debra Jopson
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BelarusDigest > All > New Agreement with EU, Reviving Embassies with the US – Belarus Foreign Policy Digest
New Agreement with EU, Reviving Embassies with the US – Belarus Foreign Policy Digest
Igar Gubarevich
Encouraged by "non-negative dynamics" in Belarus, the European Union is drafting a new kind of framework agreement with Minsk. It will take into account the realities of their relationship. In the meantime, Minsk and Washington are discussing the practicalities...
American (left) and Belarusian embassies
Encouraged by "non-negative dynamics" in Belarus, the European Union is drafting a new kind of framework agreement with Minsk. It will take into account the realities of their relationship. In the meantime, Minsk and Washington are discussing the practicalities of resuming the normal functioning of their embassies, which have been frozen since 2008.
In two months from now, Belarusian and Israeli citizens will begin enjoying the convenience of a visa-free regime between the two countries. Several UN institutions have adopted their assistance programmes for Belarus over the next five-years amounting to $94 million in total.
Belarus and the US: Re-establishing Full-Scale Embassies?
On 11 September, foreign minister Vladimir Makei received a delegation from the United States Department of State led by Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy. In their press releases about the meeting both the Belarusian MFA and the US embassy confined themselves to a vague formula about the deliberation by the parties on the status of their bilateral relations.
Belarus and US are ready to discuss re-establishment of full-scale embassies Read more
In fact, the true purpose of Patrick Kennedy's trip to Minsk was to discuss the modalities of resuming the normal functions of the American embassy in Belarus. In 2008, Belarus restricted unilaterally the number of US diplomats allowed to reside in Minsk to five (later six) persons. The United States also had to withdraw its ambassador.
Patrick Kennedy's primary sphere of responsibility is human resources, budget and foreign missions. In all probability, Belarus and the US have reached a point in their step-by-step strategy of improving relations where they can discuss practicalities of restoring full-scale diplomatic relations. Both parties assume at this stage that the forthcoming presidential election will clear the way for such an arrangement.
Belarus and the EU: A Formal Agreement in Sight?
Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, who's country holds the EU presidency, said to journalists on 4 September that the European Union was preparing new agreements with Belarus and Armenia. These documents would bind the parties less than the association agreements. The diplomat failed to find a name for such agreements or elaborate on their modalities. However, he noted that they would be a "lighter and less fundamental version" of the association agreement and would not include tariff concessions.
Jean Asselborn noted the "non-negative dynamics" in Belarus. "Europe should not lose an opportunity, which is emerging [in relations] with this country. We should not think about the regime, we should think about people".
Currently, no framework agreement governs relations between Belarus and the EU. The parties signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 1995; but the EU did not ratify this document. The Belarusian government has not commented so far on Asselborn's revelations.
Meanwhile, deputy foreign minister Alena Kupchyna went to Brussels on 3 September to attend the sixth round of consultations on modernisation between Belarus and the European Union. The parties took stock of the results of the previous discussion rounds and discussed prospects of cooperation in priority areas.
Belarus foreign ministry seeks recognition of "certain progress" in the presidential election Read more
A week later, on 8 – 11 September, Alena Kupchyna visited Romania and Sweden for political and economic consultations with her counterparts in the respective foreign ministries. The trip to Stockholm also included a meeting with Kent Härstedt, special coordinator of the short-term OSCE observer mission at the presidential election in Belarus.
Back in Minsk, Alena Kupchyna and her boss Vladimir Makei have been meeting on a regular basis with the observer missions of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The ministry's task and ambition is to have European observers find "certain progress" and "positive developments" in the forthcoming election while recognition of Belarus having a free and fair election is still out of the question.
Securing UN Assistance to Belarus
Several UN agencies at their regular meetings in New York adopted development blueprints for assistance to Belarus for the next five years.
On 31 August, the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS) adopted the UNFPA country programme for Belarus for 2016-2020. The programme's indicative budget amounts to $3.7 million. The money will be spent primarily on strengthening sexual reproductive health policy, including family planning, prevention of cancer and HIV, as well as counteracting gender-based violence.
In two days, the same UN body adopted the UNDP Country Programme for Belarus for 2016-2020. The UNDP programme is the main UN development assistance package for Belarus with resources requirements estimated at $82 million. Under the new programme, the UNDP will contribute to strengthening effective governance systems, pursuing a green growth trajectory and ensuring universal access to basic services for vulnerable groups.
The EU and the US are among the main donors of UN assistance programmes in Belarus Read more
Finally, on 9 September, the Executive Board of the United Nations Children's Fund adopted the UNICEF Country Programme for Belarus for 2016–2020 with an estimated budget of $8.5 million. The programme will focus on children with disabilities, children deprived of parental care, juveniles in conflict with the law, children and female survivors of violence, as well as adolescents.
Only a small part of the funding will come from the regular UN budget. The bulk of the financing has so far been provided by international donors such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the European Commission and the US Agency for International Development. However, it is unclear whether UNDP and other agencies will manage to find the required resources for Belarus in the current global economic situation.
Facilitating Travel between Belarus and Israel
Starting on 26 November, citizens of Belarus and Israel will be able to travel visa-free between each country. The visa agreement only concerns holders of national passports and factors out holders of diplomatic and service passports. No biometric passports will be required.
The governments of Belarus and Israel signed the agreement on visa exemption for holders of national passports on 19 September 2014 in Minsk. Belarus completed all internal procedures in January 2015.
Thousands of people in Belarus and Israel may benefit from a visa exemption Read more
In Israel, the ratification of the agreement has taken much longer. First, a legal counsellor of the Israeli government blocked the procedure because of snap elections in Israel. Then, the Israeli ministry of the interior advised the government against the ratification, citing the threat of illegal migration as a reason.
The visa-free regime should facilitate business contacts, tourism and people exchanges between the two countries. Currently, over 120 thousand people of Belarusian descent live in Israel. Belarus has about 30 thousand ethnic Jews.
https://belarusdigest.com/story/new-agreement-with-eu-reviving-embassies-with-the-us-belarus-foreign-policy-digest/
Igar Gubarevich is a senior analyst of the Ostrogorski Centre in Minsk. For a number of years he has been working in various diplomatic positions at the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.
all articles » Follow @IgarGubarevich
Tags embassy European Union Israel Luxemburg ODIHR OSCE PACE Romania Sweden UNDP UNFPA UNICEF United Nations United States VISAS FOR BELARUS
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Aleś Alachnovič15 September 2015
Looking Back at Lukashenka’s Fourth Term
On 11 September candidates for Belarusian president officially started their campaigns. From the previous presidential campaign slogan “For independent, strong and prosperous Belarus”, Lukashenka left only “independent”.
In order to buy voters in 2010, Lukashenka embarked on excessive wage growth in the public sector, while exploiting international reserves to sustain the Belarusian ruble. However, this year, given the shortage of resources Lukashenka has to abandon his policy of cheap populism.
Despite promises in 2010, there has been no change in economic freedom, the private sector share in GDP remains at a minimum, and the number of the small and medium enterprises still remains low.
Belarus Moves Away From Populism
Until recently Lukashenka focused his election campaigns primarily on raising living standards. The authorities and society had an unwritten “social contract”. Lukashenka who has ruled the country for over 21 years substituted the lack of political change with a substantial increase in social welfare.
Lukashenka's current fourth presidential term has become his worst Read more
In each presidential campaign since 1994 Lukashenka had vowed to increase the populace's average wage by the end of that presidential term. So far, the economy in 2001 and 2006 delivered the expected outcome with ease, while in 2010 artificial help from the officials was needed. In 2010 Lukashenka promised to raise the average monthly wage to $1,000 by 2015. Yet, in July the average salary fell below the level that was reached by the end of 2010.
For the first time Lukashenka is running for re-election without any commitment to guarantee a certain wage. Unfavourable external conditions and the ineffectiveness of the Belarusian economy, has left the authorities with no sources to boost the economy in the near future. Minsk has simply no extra money to buy voters.
Economic Stagnation Instead Of Bright Promises
Lukashenka's current fourth presidential term has become his worst. In early 2011 the Belarusian authorities forecasted that GDP would increase by 62-68 per cent by the end of 2015. In reality, growth will likely only hit 6 per cent. The discrepancy between the official forecast and the performance of main economic indicators affects all other measurements.
The Belarusian economy faces a systemic crisis. In the period 2001-2008 economic growth amounted to 8.8 per cent annually, while in the period 2009-2015 growth was limited to 1.9 per cent. With such a performance the economic gap between Belarus and the EU, measured by GDP per capita on Purchaising Power Parity (PPP), has remained unchanged for the past five years. That has disappointed many Belarusians who are the absolute leaders in the world on the number of Schengen visas per capita. Through access to the EU, Belarusians can compare the living standards at home and abroad.
Minsk has avoided reforming the economy in the past five years. According to the main national forecasting document, the Socio-Economic Development Programme for 2011-2015, Belarus had to join the Top-30 countries in the world for the ease of doing business by 2015. However, Belarus’ position in the World Bank ranking has barely changed as the table below demonstrates. Despite promises, experts saw no change in economic freedom, the private sector share in GDP, and the share of small and medium enterprises.
The Doomed Future of The Belarusian Economy
During Lukashenka's current term for the first time since 1995 Belarus has experienced a recession. In January-July 2015, GDP plummeted by 4 per cent year-on-year. In addition, the IMF forecasts a minor recession in Belarus in 2016 (-0.1 per cent).
Lukashenka faces rising unemployment, the unpredictability of the automotive industry, a shorter working week in many industrial plants, declining real wages, and currency devaluation by 50 per cent since the beginning of the year. How to solve them remains unclear, and Lukashenka keeps silent about this.
The Belarusian economy in 2015 is more unstable than in 2010. In 2006-2010 the US dollar in comparison to the Belarusian rouble went up by 40 per cent, while in 2011-2015 the currency rate grew six fold. A similar deterioration happened in regards to inflation. Furthermore, Belarus has become more vulnerable to external shocks. The international reserves have decreased while foreign debt has increased.
Minsk seems to have learnt a lesson that populism has ruined the economy since the last political cycle of 2010. The new government, elected at the end of last year, has conducted in 2015 quite a reasonable economic policy which has gained positive feedback from representatives of the international financial institutions. Since the beginning of 2015, each IMF mission, the World Bank and the Eurasian Development Bank has praised the new authorities for a responsible economic policy.
On the positive side, the Belarusian government consciously decided to control the economy's total foreign debt. Because of that the foreign debt in terms of GDP has increased insignificantly in the past five years, only by 1.4, from 51.6 per cent. That manifests a profound change in Belarusian economic policy in comparison to the second half of the 2000s when foreign debt increased dramatically.
Belarus still has great potential to benefit from liberal reforms Read more
Belarus still has great potential to benefit from liberal reforms. Privatisation of state owned enterprises and a favourable business climate for establishing new entities could support Belarusian fiscal policy and boost the economy. For example, income from the privatisation of one of the biggest Belarusian company's, Belaruskali, could pay off a half of Belarus's total foreign debt.
The standard of living in the recent 5 years has slightly improved. Suddenly, Lukashenka has stopped declaring any progress in the social well-being in the near future. Deeply rooted traditional statement “if only there was no war” and national security issues has replaced economic rhetoric. The reason is simple: Lukashenka has nothing to boast about since no economic prediction for his current 5-year presidential term has come true.
Although many experts often predict the quick collapse of the Belarusian economy, it still allows for small growth. Yet, in the absence of decisive reforms and low oil prices Belarus could stay in stagnation for coming years. However, the stagnation would not bring immediate political changes since Belarusians have accepted living under state propaganda and are afraid of any revolution after the Ukrainian Maidan in 2014.
Time will show whether Lukashenka goes down in history as a reformer or as the captain of a sinking ship.
https://belarusdigest.com/story/cartoon-fields/
Aleś Alachnovič
Aleś Alachnovič is the Vice President at CASE Belarus and PhD candidate at the Warsaw School of Economics, an alumnus of the London School of Economics.
Tags 2015 presidential elections Belarus economic crisis doing business economic crisis economic policy economic reforms GDP reforms unemployment
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INTERIM CONTENT
In late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Canada referred to British colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
Brookes and Marshall, New Universal Gazetteer, 155; “Canada, the Church in” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:251.
Brookes, R., and John Marshall, comps. A New Universal Gazetteer, Containing a Description of the Principal Nations, Empires, Kingdoms, States, Provinces, Cities, Towns, Forts, Seas, Harbours, Rivers, Lakes, Canals, Mountains, Volcanoes, Capes, Caverns, Cataracts, and Grottoes, of the Known World. . . . Philadelphia: W. Marshall and Co., 1839.
Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Edited by Daniel H. Ludlow. 5 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1992.
Divided into Upper Canada and Lower Canada, 1791; reunited 10 Feb. 1841.
Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer of North America, 148; Brookes and Marshall, New Universal Gazetteer, 155; Frenette and Pàquet, “French Canadians,” 552.
Cohen, Saul B., ed. The Columbia Gazetteer of North America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Frenette, Yves, and Martin Pàquet. “French Canadians.” In Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, edited by Paul Robert Magocsi, 538–586. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Boundaries corresponded roughly to present-day Ontario (Upper Canada) and Quebec (Lower Canada), with exception of unclear western boundary.
Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer of North America, 148; Brookes and Marshall, New Universal Gazetteer, 155.
Population in 1831 for Lower Canada about 550,000.
“Census of Canada 1665 to 1871: The 1800s (1806 to 1871),” Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/98-187-x/4064809-eng.htm (accessed 25 Oct. 2011).
Statistics Canada. http://www.statcan.gc.ca.
Population in 1831 for Upper Canada about 240,000.
JS proselytized in Upper Canada, Oct. 1833 and July 1837.
JS, Journal, 14–18, 20–25 Oct. 1833 ; “Canada, the Church in” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:251; Berrett, Sacred Places, 3:46–47; JS History, vol. B-1, 767; JS History, vol. B-1, addenda, 6nS.
Berrett, LaMar C., ed. Sacred Places: A Comprehensive Guide to Early LDS Historical Sites. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1999–2007.
JS History / Smith, Joseph, et al. History, 1838–1856. Vols. A-1–F-1 (original), A-2–E-2 (fair copy). Historian’s Office, History of the Church, 1839–ca. 1882. CHL. CR 100 102, boxes 1–7. The history for the period after 5 Aug. 1838 was composed after the death of Joseph Smith.
About 2,500 people in Canada joined Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, forming at least thirty-eight branches, by 1840s.
“Canada, the Church in” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:251; Bennett, “Plucking Not Planting,” 28.
Bennett, Richard E. “‘Plucking Not Planting’: Mormonism in Eastern Canada, 1830–1850.” In The Mormon Presence in Canada, edited by Brigham Y. Card, Herbert C. Northcott, John E. Foster, Howard Palmer, George K. Jarvis, 19–34. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1990.
However, most Canadian Saints emigrated to Latter-day Saint communities in U.S., by late 1840s.
“Canada, the Church in” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:251; Brown et al., Historical Atlas, 108.
Brown, S. Kent, Donald Q. Cannon, and Richard H. Jackson, eds. Historical Atlas of Mormonism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834]
History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 [2 November 1838–31 July 1842]
Elders’ Journal, August 1838
General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, 7 February 1844
Times and Seasons, 1 August 1842
Times and Seasons, 1 October 1842
Times and Seasons, 15 August 1842
Times and Seasons, 15 July 1842
Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842
Agreement with Martin Harris, 16 January 1830
Appendix 1: First Theological Lecture on Faith, circa January–May 1835
Appendix 3: Discourse, circa 4 July 1838
Charges against Joseph Smith Preferred to Bishop’s Council, 29 May 1837
Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846; Volume 1, 10 March 1844–1 March 1845
Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846; Volume 2, 1 March–6 May 1845
Discourse, 7 March 1844–B, as Reported by Willard Richards
Editorial, 15 July 1842–A
Editorial, 15 July 1842–B
History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838]
History, 1838–1856, volume C-1 Addenda
History, 1838–1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843–30 April 1844]
History, 1838–1856, volume F-1 [1 May 1844–8 August 1844]
Instruction on Priesthood, between circa 1 March and circa 4 May 1835 [D&C 107]
Journal, 1832–1834
Journal, December 1841–December 1842
Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 2, 10 March 1843–14 July 1843
Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 3, 15 July 1843–29 February 1844
Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 4, 1 March–22 June 1844
Journal, March–September 1838
Letter from John Mills, 1 September 1843
Letter from Parley P. Pratt, 23 May 1837
Letter from Thomas Rawcliff, 24 May 1843
Letter from “Old Fifty,” 15 October 1842
Letter to Henry Clay, 13 May 1844
Letter to Moses Nickerson, 19 November 1833
Letterbook 1
License for John P. Greene, 25 February 1834
Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845
Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845
Minute Book 1
Minutes, 11 August 1834
Minutes, 13 July 1833
Minutes, 20 February 1834
Minutes, 3 September 1837
Minutes, 6 June 1833
Nauvoo City Council Rough Minute Book, February 1844–January 1845
Notice, circa Late August 1837
Plan of the House of the Lord, between 1 and 25 June 1833
Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, circa August 1829–circa January 1830
Recommendation for Heber C. Kimball, between 2 and 13 June 1837
Revelation Book 1
Revelation, 12 October 1833 [D&C 100]
Revelation, 22–23 September 1832 [D&C 84]
Revelation, circa Early 1830
“A History, of the Persecution, of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints in Missouri,” December 1839–October 1840
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Inside Tbilisi’s Small, Yet Resilient Armenian Catholic Community
November 28, 2018 at 11:32 am Raffi Elliott Notes from the Pink City 0
Just off Tbilisi’s Marjanishvili Street lies the beautiful Saint Peter & Paul church. This Catholic house of worship, built in the Baroque style as part of a Zubalashvili Brothers initiative, was completed in 1877. The parish has served as a focal point for the city’s Catholic community ever since—bringing together ethnic Armenians, Georgians, Russians, and Western expats around a common faith.
While some of the city’s lesser Catholic sites were closed by Soviet authorities, as were the many Armenian Apostolic churches, Saint Peter & Paul church survived until Independence. The church was later renovated in time for the official visit of Pope John Paul II, who celebrated mass there in October of 1999. This event was immortalized by the erection of a statue of the pontiff just south of the church entrance.
According to the hours posted on the front door, services are offered in English, Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and even Latin—a testament to the city’s cosmopolitan heritage.
Despite its official affiliation with the Church of Rome, Saint Peter & Paul has become the home for Tbilisi’s relatively obscure community of Armenian Catholics. Father Mikael celebrates mass there with his flock every Sunday at 1 p.m. sharp. Despite the size of the building, almost all the pews are full. These include the elderly, who lead the chants, families with small children, as well as young adults. Additional services are also held every morning.
Before gaining access to this Saint Peter & Paul, the Armenian Catholic community gathered in a much smaller house, complete with its own chapel, common room, and kitchen.
Legend has it that the Armenian Catholic Church lends its origins to the Crusades, when a number of Armenians living in Cilicia converted to Catholicism under the influence of the Frankish Lusignan kings. More likely, most communities across Western Armenia were the results of proselytizing by Jesuit missionaries in the early 19th century.
Armenian Catholic communities can be found across the Armenian Diaspora, but usually, make up no more than five-percent of the faithful. A disproportionately large number of Armenian Catholics live in the Shirak province of Armenia, as well as the Samtzkhe-Javakheti province of Georgia. Most are descendants of genocide survivors from the Erzurum area, a known region for Armenian Catholicism before the Genocide.
Though these communities are better known, Armenian Catholics have called Tbilisi home for several centuries. As Catholic Armenians living in Georgia, they effectively form a “minority within a minority.”
“The Armenian Apostolics don’t always consider us true Armenians,” says Harout (name altered), an altar boy. “The Georgian Orthodox don’t like us all that much either,” he continues. In this sense of double-isolation, they share a unique fate with another underreported-on community: Georgian Catholics.
With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Pope John-Paul II reorganized all Catholic communities of Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia into the care of the Armenian Catholic Church under the newly-formed ‘Eastern European Diocese’ based in Gyumri. Thus, the tiny Georgian Catholic community switched to the Armenian Rite liturgy.
Father Mikael says that despite the lack of visibility, the Armenian Catholic community is much more resilient than it may seem. By the looks of the gathered crowds in the sanctuary, he may be right.
Columnist & Armenia Correspondent
Raffi Elliott is a Canadian-born entrepreneur and occasional journalist who likes to ramble on about socioeconomic and political issues in Armenia. He lives in Yerevan with his family. He also holds a masters degree in International Relations.
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#PorUnaVenezuelaLibre - July 10, 2019
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Armenian government approves healthcare for minors, minimum wage hike - July 2, 2019
Armenian Diaspora
Saint Peter & Paul church
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The ASCO Post / November 1, 2013
Roswell Park Cancer Institute, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Receive $11 Million Spore Grant for Joint Research in Ovarian Cancer
The National Cancer Institute has awarded more than $11 million in funding to Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), to begin an aggressive, multipronged search into preventing and treating ovarian cancer. Distributed over 5 ...
Matthew Stenger / November 15, 2013
Focal Adhesion Kinase Regulates YB-1–Mediated Paclitaxel Resistance in Ovarian Cancer
It has been found that focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibition sensitizes ovarian cancer to the effects of taxanes. In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kang and colleagues evaluated the response of taxane-resistant and taxane-sensitive ovarian cancer models to a...
Jo Cavallo / November 15, 2013
One Dose of HPV 16/18 Vaccine Produces Durable Response, Study Finds
Results from the Costa Rica HPV 16/18 Vaccine Trial indicate that 4-year efficacy against 12-month HPV 16/18 persistent infection was similarly high among women who received one, two, or the recommended three doses of the bivalent HPV16/18 L1 virus-like particle vaccine (Cervarix). The findings...
Alice Goodman / November 15, 2013
Two Trials Explore the Evolving Role of Bevacizumab in Ovarian Cancer
The optimal use of bevacizumab (Avastin) in ovarian cancer appears to be in high-risk subgroups and in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, according to results of two phase III trials presented at the 2013 European Cancer Congress (ECC) in Amsterdam. AURELIA investigated the safety and ...
Trebananib Improves Progression-Free Survival in Recurrent Ovarian Cancer
Trebananib, an investigational antiangiogenesis inhibitor with a different mechanism of action than bevacizumab (Avastin), significantly improved progression-free survival in recurrent platinum-resistant and partially platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer in the phase III TRINOVA-1 trial. The addition...
Cediranib Achieves 'Groundbreaking' Results in Relapsed Ovarian Cancer
The investigational oral vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitor cediranib extended progression-free survival when given with platinum-based chemotherapy and improved overall survival when given as maintenance therapy in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer. Experts are hopeful that...
Charlotte Bath / December 1, 2013
Impact of Pelvic Radiotherapy and Lymphadenectomy on Endometrial Cancer Mortality
Analysis of data from 58,172 patients identified from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries as having stage I or II endometrial adenocarcinoma found that pelvic radiotherapy and lymphadenectomy were associated with statistically significantly reduced noncancer mortality,...
'Reasonable but Not Required' for Women With BRCA Mutations to Have Hysterectomy Concurrent With Salpingo-Oophorectomy
For women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations who choose to have salpingo-oophorectomy to reduce their risks of ovarian and breast cancer, also choosing to have a hysterectomy is “reasonable but not required,” noted Noah D. Kauff, MD, Director of the Ovarian Cancer Screening and Prevention Program and...
The ASCO Post / December 1, 2013
Mount Sinai Health System Appoints New Director and Faculty to Division of Gynecologic Oncology
Peter R. Dottino, MD, has been appointed Director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York. He also holds an appointment as Associate Clinical Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine ...
Caroline Helwick / December 15, 2013
Continuous, Combined Hormone Replacement Therapy Protects Against Endometrial Cancer
According to an analysis of the Women’s Health Initiative, continuous combined use of estrogen plus progestin reduces the risk of endometrial cancer among postmenopausal women. The study was reported at the 2013 European Cancer Congress by Rowan T. Chlebowski, MD, PhD, Professor and Chief of...
Charlotte Bath / January 15, 2014
Effects of Oral Contraceptives on Breast/Ovarian Cancer Risks Are Similar Regardless of BRCA Mutation Status
The effects of oral contraceptives on breast and ovarian risks are similar for women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations and for women in the general population, according to analyses of observational studies. Oral contraceptive use “is inversely associated with ovarian cancer risk, whereas a modest but...
Using Hyperthermia for Cancer Treatment: Proofs, Promises, and Uncertainties
With the headline, “Rare Cancer Treatments, Cleared by F.D.A. but Not Subject to Scrutiny,” a recent article in The New York Times reported that several medical centers were treating patients with cancer using a hyperthermia system that had received a Humanitarian Use Device approval from the U.S....
Annie Parker, as told to Jo Cavallo / January 15, 2014
Cancer Is in My Soul
The threat of getting cancer began for me before I was born. In 1950, when my mother was pregnant with me, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and refused treatment until after she gave birth, so I have always felt that cancer was woven into my soul. For the first year of my life, I was raised by...
The ASCO Post / January 15, 2014
Genetic Flaw That Drives Some Ovarian Cancers Identified
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, have identified an overactive gene that drives about one-third of high-grade serous ovarian tumors—the most common and malignant type of ovarian cancer. The gene, GAB2, isn’t mutated or abnormal, but triggers cancerous cell growth because the...
Suzann Vera, as told to Jo Cavallo / February 15, 2014
Nothing Prepared Me for Cancer
Fourteen years ago, when I was just 29, I was feeling weak and fatigued and had severe pain in my abdomen. I’d had these symptoms for about a year, but none of the several doctors I saw or any of the tests they performed could find the source of my problems. I even had one nurse practitioner tell...
Jo Cavallo / February 15, 2014
An Early Chemotherapy Innovator, Franco M. Muggia, MD, Now Focuses on Advancing Therapies for Ovarian Cancer
Looking over an illustrious career in medical oncology that spans 5 decades, Franco M. Muggia, MD, told The ASCO Post that he is excited about the future and hopes to continue making contributions to the field of oncology in years to come. At the forefront of the early clinical development of...
The ASCO Post / March 1, 2014
Dana-Farber Receives $900,000 Grant to Research Ovarian Cancer
The Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation has awarded researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute a $900,000 grant to test new combinations of targeted drugs against the disease. Ursula Matulonis, MD, Director of the Gynecological Cancer Treatment Center in the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s...
President’s Cancer Panel Issues Urgent Call to Action for HPV Vaccination
Achieving widespread human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination is one of the most profound opportunities for cancer prevention, according to a report recently released by the President’s Cancer Panel. The Panel’s report, Accelerating HPV Vaccine Uptake: Urgency for Action to Prevent Cancer, issues an ...
Charlotte Bath / March 15, 2014
Aspirin Associated With Reduced Risk of Ovarian Cancer, Especially in Low Daily Doses
“Aspirin use was associated with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer, especially among daily users of low-dose aspirin,” according to an analysis of pooled individual data from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium. Analyzing data from 12 population-based case-control studies of ovarian cancer,...
Sharon Timins, as told to Jo Cavallo / March 15, 2014
Cancer Has Allowed Me to Put My Goals First
Despite my family history of cancer—my father had colorectal cancer, his father had gallbladder cancer, and my father’s mother died of what was believed to be uterine cancer—when I complained to my gynecologist about postmenopausal bleeding in the spring of 2011, I was told not to worry about it....
Charlotte Bath / May 1, 2014
Desensitization Protocols May Allow Reintroduction of Chemotherapeutic Agents After Hypersensitivity Reactions
Hypersensitivity reactions to chemotherapeutic agents used to treat ovarian cancer are “increasingly common and can greatly limit their use,” according to an article published in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. “Drug desensitization has emerged as a safe and effective way...
Matthew Stenger / May 1, 2014
AURELIA Trial: Adding Bevacizumab to Chemotherapy Improves Outcomes in Platinum-Resistant Recurrent Ovarian Cancer
Single-agent chemotherapy is standard in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. In the open-label phase III AURELIA trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Eric Pujade-Lauraine, MD, PhD, of Université Paris Descartes, and colleagues found that the addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to...
Alice Goodman / May 1, 2014
Preliminary Study Suggests Veliparib May Be Effective in Resistant, BRCA-Mutated Ovarian Cancers
Veliparib, an oral poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, appears to be of value in treating women with BRCA-mutated gynecologic cancers that are resistant to other therapies. These preliminary findings of a phase II study support the concept that BRCA-associated ovarian cancers are...
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Is My Pallet Safe For Reuse?
Around the world it’s estimated that around two billion pallets are used every day, and that’s not counting the ones lying around depots and factories awaiting reuse or recycling. It’s not surprising then that pallets are the basis of many projects that make use of the material.
But how do you know if the timber in a pallet is safe for reuse? Depending on where it’s from and how it’s been used, a pallet may have marks indicating how it’s been treated. Understanding these can help you determine whether a pallet can be used again.
Clean and Tidy
The first thing to check for if you’re planning to make use of a pallet in a creative project is that it’s clean. Pallets are used to transport all kinds of goods, and they’re subject to spillages, some of which may be quite nasty materials, so if there are stains or marks it’s best for pallet safety to avoid it.
Check for the overall condition too. Pallets can have a hard life and may get damaged or broken. Check for splits and splinters and damage caused by nails and fastenings coming loose.
Pallet Markings
Once you’ve found a clean pallet in good condition, the next thing is to check for markings. If a pallet is unmarked, it generally means that it’s a ‘national’ pallet used within a particular country. The wood in these is generally untreated but may still be safe to use.
Pallets for international use have to be in accordance with the ISPM 15 regulations. These ISPM 15 pallets have to be treated either using heat or chemicals to ensure that they don’t harbour any pests, and they will carry a stamp mark to confirm that this has been carried out.
There are a number of codes on these stamps that it’s important to understand. Most will carry an International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) mark; this indicates that the pallet is made of wood that’s had an approved treatment.
Further marks will indicate the type of treatment that’s been carried out. HT indicates heat treated pallets, MB shows that it’s been treated with methyl bromide, DB means the wood has been debarked, and KD means kiln-dried.
Using heat treated pallets in your recycling projects is fine; they’ve undergone a process of heating in a kiln in order to eliminate any pests in the timber. Kiln-drying is similar but involves a longer, slower heating process aimed at reducing the moisture content of the wood and therefore making it less prone to warping and distortion.
Debarking means that the rough outer layers of wood have been removed, although the pallet may be otherwise untreated. The one to worry about is methyl bromide treatment: this is a pesticide fumigation used to kill insects. It’s now banned in some countries and can be harmful to humans. MB-treated pallets should not therefore be used in DIY projects, and the wood shouldn’t be burned. MB-treated pallets should be taken to an approved waste disposal site for safe handling.
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0 Posted by Reve' Fisher - June 20, 2018 - BLACK MEN, BLACK MUSIC, CELEBRITIES, Celebrity, ENTERTAINMENT, FEATURED, LATEST POSTS
Lionel Hampton was a popular vibraphone player and a well-known band leader. This African-American celebrity earned a name after he worked as an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, bandleader, actor, and a percussionist. He has worked with many great jazz musicians including Buddy Rich, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and Quincy Jones. In 1996, he was honored with the National Medal of Arts.
Hampton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 20, 1908. He was a drummer before the famous vibraphonist. In the 1930s, Lionel became an important part of a racially incorporated group of four by Benny Goodman. Later in 1940, he created a group of his own and named it ‘Lionel Hampton Orchestra’.
He was honored for his great achievements by two presidents of America; namely H.W.Bush and Bill Clinton.
Lionel Hampton was raised by his grandmother when he along with his mother moved to Birmingham, Alabama, the hometown of his mother shortly after his birth. He documented Kenosha, Wisconsin as his early life’s most favorite places where he had spent his childhood. Thereafter, the family shifted to Chicago, Illinois in 1916.
He became a young member of Bud Billiken Club. The Bud Billiken Club was a replacement of a racial group ‘Boy Scouts of America’. He was a keen teen who started taking xylophone lessons and learned how to drum from Jimmy Bertrand. He was raised in Roman Catholic environment which influenced him to play the drum in Holy Rosary Academy.
Benny Goodman came to Los Angeles to play Palomar Ballroom through ‘Benny Goodman Orchestra’ in November 1936. Goodman was brought by John Hammond to Hampton’s performance and from here the two started working together. After this, the trio of Goodman became Quartet with four members in it; Goodman, Hampton, Teddy Wilson, and Gene Krupa. This amazing group of four was the first racial jazz group to perform in front of audiences.
In 1992, Hampton was appointed to the Board of the Kennedy Center by then-president George H.W. Bush. And in 1997, he was also elected for the prestigious honor of National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.
After giving some magnificent performances, Hampton passed away on August 31, 2002, in New York City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Hampton
http://www.biography.com/people/lionel-hampton-9327170#ambassador-and-legacy
african americanAfrican American menBenny Goodmanblackblack menLionel HamptonMusicNew York CityPresident Clinton
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Prayer Shawl Tallit: 12 Tribes, Purple Yissekhar, 24 inch
Acrylic 24" long & 72" around the shoulders. The crown (neck) says "Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us by the law and has commanded us to wear the tzitzit (fringe)."
Understanding Your Tallit God instructed the Israelites to attach fringes (called tzitzit in Hebrew) to each of the four corners of their garments so that when they saw them, they would remember all of Gods commandments and do them (Numbers 15:38-40; Deuteronomy 22:12). Centuries later when fashions changed and garments no longer had four corners, the Jewish people created the prayer shawl (Tallit) so that they could fulfill Gods command to wear tzitzit. The prayer shawl has become the time-honored Jewish tradition of submission to Gods will revealed in his Word (the Torah).
The Twelve Tribes The Israelites were divided along family lines, each called a shevet or mateh in Hebrew meaning literally a "staff" or "rod". The term is conventionally translated as "tribe" in English, although the divisions were not small isolated distinct ethnic groups in the modern sense of the term. Some English speaking Jewish groups view the pronunciation, English transcription and Hebrew spelling of the tribal names to be extremely important.
845246000564 2402 $ 44.95
24" long & 72" around the shoulders. The crown (neck) says "Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us by the law and has commanded us to wear the tzitzit (fringe)."
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Premiere nears for epic tale: It’s time for the Outlander cheat sheet
By Rachel Carter|2018-09-14T17:20:52-04:00June 13th, 2014|Fiction|
My name is Rachel Carter, and I am an Outlander junky. I read the first book in high school, and after that I couldn’t get enough – it only took me one summer to make it through Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, and The [giveaway giveaway_id=1520 side=”right”]Fiery Cross. And this was no small feat; every book is around a thousand pages. But it didn’t matter. I was hooked on the romance, the Scottish history, the time traveling heroine, and the fascinating medical procedures. I devoured these epic stories. After that, life was just a blur as I waited four, then five years for the next two books to come out. It’s pathetic but true – my life can be measured in time I’ve spent waiting for Outlander novels to be released.
Luckily for me (and for you too), this is going to be the summer of Outlander. Not only is there a new book, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, out June 10, but there’s also – finally! – a Starz TV series premiering in August:
Wondering why I can’t get enough of Claire and Jamie and those insanely hot Scottish accents? Here’s the lowdown on Outlander and why you should love it just as much as I do:
While on a second honeymoon in Scotland, 1945, Claire Randall touches a standing stone on the hill of Craigh na Dun and suddenly finds herself transported back to 1743. England and Scotland are on uneasy terms, and Claire ends up at Castle Leoch under the “protection” of the MacKenzie clan. From there she must try to make her way home, all the while fighting for her survival in an unknown, dangerous land. The only person she thinks she can trust is Jamie Fraser, a young Scotsman with secrets of his own and an enemy who is coming for both of them. Soon Claire finds herself with the toughest choice she will ever make – stay in the past, or return to a future she’s no longer sure she wants.
played by Caitriona Balfe
Claire (Beauchamp) Randall: Intelligent, independent, and practical, Claire was a nurse in World War II before getting sent through the stones and into the past. Other than her husband, Frank, she has almost no family – her parents died when she was young and she was raised by her uncle, an archeologist who took her on digs around the world. Once in the past, Claire’s passion for medicine and botany make her a valuable addition to the castle, and she often finds herself acting as a physician and healer. Her strength and resourcefulness help her survive as she’s able to think quickly on her feet and never loses her courage or hope.
Jamie Fraser
Played by Sam Heughan
Jamie Fraser: Jamie has a complicated past and secrets he’s not ready to tell, but he instantly finds a companion in Claire. The two are both outsiders at Castle Leoch and it helps create a bond that gets stronger and stronger – sometimes through forces outside of their control. Jamie is smart, loyal, funny and handsome—making him likeable and a natural leader. He’s also educated and an excellent fighter and would die to protect those he considers his own – including Claire.
Jonathan Randall: Sometimes referred to as “Black Jack,” Jonathan is a British officer and the ancestor (and spitting image) of Claire’s husband, Frank. But Jonathan is a sociopath with an unnatural obsession with Jamie and he uses his power to pursue both Claire and Jamie throughout the story.
Frank Randall: Claire’s husband in 1945, he’s a World War II veteran and a history professor. Claire spends a large part of her time trying to return to him.
Geillie Duncan
Played by Lotte Verbeek
Geillis Duncan: The wife of the castle’s procurator fiscal, Geillis is widely thought to be a witch. She befriends Claire, though Claire is rightfully suspicious of her intentions; Geillis is secretive and powerful, with the ability to almost always get her way.
Colum MacKenzie
played by Gary Lewis
Colum MacKenzie: Cunning and manipulative, Colum suffers from a bone disease that leaves him in pain and will shorten his lifespan. Despite it, he’s still the Laird of the MacKenzie clan, as well as Jamie’s uncle. He appears to be protecting Claire and Jamie from the English, though his motives are questionable.
Dougal MacKenzie: Colum’s brother, a crusader of the Jacobite cause (the belief that the Roman Catholic Stuart King James II was the rightful ruler of England, leading to a Scottish uprising), and the clan’s leader in battle, as Colum is too ill to fight. Just like Colum, his motives are questionable, especially when it comes to his nephew Jamie.
Laoghaire MacKenzie: A young girl of clan MacKenzie who’s in love with Jamie, violently jealous of Claire and more malicious than her innocent looks might imply.
Why You Should Read It Despite the Intimidating Page Count
Who isn’t a fan of sweeping historical drama and era-spanning love? Seriously, this series has something for everyone – steamy love scenes, interesting historical details, gruesome battles. The storyline is unpredictable. No one is safe. It’s like Game of Thrones set in 18th century Scotland. OK, maybe not as bloody, but definitely as epic.
Outlander also has some of the most rabid fans of any book series around. Not only are there countless appreciation Internet sites and YouTube videos of dream-casts, but last week there was even an Outlander retreat, where fans got to meet Diana Gabaldon and snatch up early copies of Written in My Own Heart’s Blood. I’m pretty much dying of jealousy.
The Starz show doesn’t premiere until August, which gives you almost two months to get reading. I can’t guarantee you’ll make it through all eight books (unless you’re some kind of speed-reading machine), but I can guarantee that you’ll get hooked on this epic tale of history and love.
DOWNLOAD #POCKETJAMIE
Print it, Cut it Out, take photos, share #PocketJamie and Starz will share their favorites!
About the Author: Rachel Carter
Rachel Carter grew up surrounded by trees and snow and mountains. She graduated from the University of Vermont and Columbia University, where she received her MFA in nonfiction writing. She is the author of the So Close to You series with Harperteen. These days you can find her working on her next novel in the woods of Vermont.
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Welcome to The Bowery Theatre
The Bowery Theatre is a new performance, exhibition and arts space in the heart of one of Melbourne’s cultural melting pots, St Albans.
a home for the arts and entertainment in Melboune's north west
Arts and entertainment is our main game. See performances including theatre, music, dance, talks and more.
Get involved in youth events, art for children and families, music classes, dance workshops and more!
Connect with people in your community! We're a meeting place for community groups to share their stories, food and culture. Come and meet old and new friends.
The Bowery Theatre recognises the late Leigh Bowery who was born and raised in the West and went on to become one of the most influential international arts figures of the 80s and 90s.
GET THE LATEST ON THE BOWERY THEATRE STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX
Princess Street, St Albans Vic 3021
PO Box 70, Sunshine Vic 3020
bowerystacc@brimbank.vic.gov.au
Ticket Sale and Venue Entry Terms
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Wurundjeri people, and pay our respects to elders past and present.
Proudly owned by Brimbank City Council.
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MEDICAL MIRACLE
Hospitals are losing millions of dollars each year because of inefficient business operations. ORHub is changing that. This new transformative software created by Dr. Bill Dobkin provides intelligence into the operating room that helps hospitals attain better resource allocation, real-time monitoring of surgery and predictive surgical analysis.
As a revered surgeon for 30+ years, Bill Dobkin has treated the most complex problems associated with the spine and has been involved in more than 15,000 surgeries involving the brain and spine, mostly at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, Calif.
As a businessman and entrepreneur, Dobkin is equally brilliant. He is the founder and creator of a new technology that is changing the medical field. The surgical software is known as ORHub – the “OR” standing for “operating room,” where Dobkin has spent more than half his life.
Dr. Bill Dobkin is the founder and creator of a new surgical software technology that is changing the medical field: ORHub
The technology is ultra-transformative and a genuine industry game-changer because it not only solves the huge financial problem that has crippled hospitals for more than a half century, but it impacts taxpayers as well, saving them – and the government – millions of dollars annually.
Equally important is that ORHub fuses every element of a surgical procedure with a hospital’s business operations by delivering real-time monitoring of surgery through intelligent insight into the operating room. At the same time, it helps medical professionals achieve better resource allocation, enabling them to make accurate, cost-effective financial decisions, along with predictive analysis to keep expenses at a fair and reasonable level.
Historically, as a surgical procedure begins, the operating room nurse begins to craft handwritten notes on every move and every action – and every product used — by the surgical team. This is where Dobkin’s innovation changed the industry and the OR – and elevated the entire process of patient care and the hospital’s business entity to a new level of efficiency.
“Hospitals have been using an archaic system for decades and decades,” Dobkin says at his Hoag Hospital office. “It’s ineffective. It’s inefficient. It doesn’t work. Someone needed to do something to fix this broken system.”
The system is so cracked that “when I’m doing surgery – when any doctor is performing surgery – the people on the other side of the room have no idea what I’m doing and how much it will cost,” Dobkin says. “Therefore the hospital has no idea what you’re doing and how much it will cost.”
As difficult and disturbing as this is, one doctor could be spending 10 times more on a surgical procedure than another physician and he doesn’t even realize it, according to Dobkin.
Dr. Bill Dobkin
The finances of surgeries aren’t even seen and evaluated by the hospital’s upper management until several months after the fact so they do not have any comprehensive as how much they could have saved if they had a better and more economical system in place – a system that has now been ushered into the digital age by ORHub.
The software is so unique and effective that it can compensate medical product vendors from the operating room rather than the traditional 90- to 120-day time frame, thereby helping hospitals make accurate, cost-effective business and financial decisions.
Delivering surgical care to just a single patient is a very complex process – it takes nearly a half dozen companies and a dozen departments cooperating inside and outside the hospital. “What we’ve done is simplify and streamline the entire process by enabling surgeons, vendors and providers to collaborate on providing care in real time,” Dobkin says. “As a result, hospitals and surgeons can make smart, data-driven decisions to improve business profitability.”
This is first time in medical history that a technology of this nature has been used in the operating room to track every move and action by the medical team and tie it all back to the hospital’s business functions.
“Our software automatically translates a procedure into an intelligent electronic report that links every detail of surgery, including implant location, surgical techniques, product usage, and all clinical parameters to create a dynamically new source of comparative information,” says ORHub CEO Colt Melby.
ORHub eliminates the need for anyone in the OR to write anything – the root of where mistakes are made — because the software tracks the entire surgical process moment by moment, step by step.
“Our technology is the eyes and ears of the OR,” Melby says. “It is a complete digitization of the OR.”
Richard Lee, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Hoag Orthopedic Institute, says, “We [doctors] desperately needed the ability to objectively compare treatment options with patient outcomes to determine the most effective method of managing a given diagnosis. Many hospitals across the nation still use pen and paper to track ordering, sterilizing, implants, and vendor invoicing. ORHub has brought the healthcare system advance into the digital age.”
The key in improving hospital costs without sacrificing quality of care is “understanding diagnosis, medical procedures, possible complications, operation materials and reimbursement,” Dobkin says. “ORHub enables doctors and other care providers at every stage of the surgical process to collaborate, organize, deliver, measure and reimburse.”
Whether it’s a one-hour procedure that requires a single tube of tissue sealant or a 10-hour surgery that necessitates 50 implants along a patient’s spine, ORHub creates an accurate record of the implants used, allowing surgical data collection and analysis at its highest and most efficient digital level.
ORHub is a certified dream come true for the American health care system and individual hospitals, which are losing billions of dollars each year. Of the $3.8 trillion that health care makes up in the U.S. gross national product (GDP), reportedly one trillion of it is considered waste.
“ORHub will help our health care system get back $250 billion of that waste,” Melby says. “With costs rising every year due to an aging population and increasingly expensive treatments, providers are under a lot of pressure to become more efficient and reduce costs. The world has to face it: these are very turbulent economic times facing hospitals.”
Hoag Hospital and Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine, Calif. are the first medical institutions to utilize ORHub. Hoag saved $462,000 in 2017 alone with ORHub, simply by consolidating its product list and by tracking surgeries to make sure its doctors are mirroring each other’s cost-effective operations, particularly with the use of medical products like implants.
Now with ORHub every other hospital in the world can see and understand a 360-degree view of every action taken in the OR to treat a patient for a condition — and the predictive outcome that resulted from it. It eliminates inefficiencies, duplications of effort, and errors and omissions that result from “siloed hospital processes in outdated software and poor handoffs from one part of the care process to another,” Dobkin says.
ORHub operates on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. Microsoft is a partner in the development of ORHub and has a team of engineers, programmers and developers handling the process in its Bellevue, Washington headquarters.
When Microsoft Venture Capitalist Jim Brisimitzis heard what Dobkin had created, he immediately reached out, knowing how much of a transformative technology it was. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft was ‘all in.’
Dobkin glances out of his huge office window at Hoag Hospital with a gorgeous view of the Newport Beach coastline.
“It’s amazing – hospitals are trying to run these multi-billion dollar businesses and they had no idea what is going on in the OR, the cardiac labs or radiology,” he says. “The hospital doesn’t know what occurs so they have no way of analyzing and comparing if they’re doing a bad job or a cost-efficient job. They simply have no idea. Now they do.”
Melby anticipates signing up more than 100 hospitals by the end of 2018 “and thousands more after that,” he says.
When it comes to an authentic game-changing technology, ORHub is the definitive example of what that means. It is altering the medical field in the same way Amazon changed purchasing and delivery.
“I always wanted to do something great,” Dobkin says with a shy smile. “I always liked being the hero. As a kid, I couldn’t dunk, hit 400 foot home runs or throw a football 70 yards, so I had to do something else. As a neurosurgeon, I got to be the hero and save people’s lives.
“Medicine is great but it’s so ineffective and expensive from the business side,” he adds. “The doctors’ excuse was always ‘don’t worry about money, we’re saving someone’s life.’ But it’s not realistic in the way you run a business. It’s just not cost effective. Fortunately, I found a way to change that.”
And be a hero once again.
Copyright © 2018 California Business Journal. All Rights Reserved.
Thomas Vanderbilt / December 28, 2018
Really? Are you kidding me? That’s incredible that hospitals are so discombobulated.
Gabe Jackson / December 28, 2018
Unbelievable article. I didn’t realize how much money hospitals were losing. That’s insane!
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UCL cohorts, biobanks and big data
Written by Rob Davies, Public Affairs Manager for CLOSER, UCL Institute of Education
What are the opportunities and challenges facing cohort and longitudinal studies? Do we need more biobanks or more extensive (and imaginative) use of existing ones? What more can we do to capitalise on administrative records and other forms of big data?
These were some of the questions discussed at UCL cohorts, biobanks and big data symposium, which brought together researchers from across UCL and further afield to showcase activity in this area.
No other country in the world is tracking as many people and in such detail throughout their lives
Professor Dame Anne Johnson introduced the afternoon and how the cohort studies are a resource not just for the nation but for the world. More than 2.2 million people in the UK are currently participating in population based cohort studies, with 15 of these hosted at UCL.
These include the oldest and newest cohort studies and CLOSER, the UK longitudinal studies consortium, which is charged with maximising their use, value and impact both at home and abroad.
Past, present and future: innovation in cohort studies
This first session began with Helen Pearson, author of The Life Project, who explained how a chance encounter with the MRC 1946 National Survey of Health and Development Cohort website, the largest study of human development in the world, led to five years researching and writing about the British cohort studies.
“The cohort studies have influenced and shaped policy on pregnancy, birth, schooling, adult education, foetal development, chronic conditions and ageing and touched the lives of everyone in the country today,” she said.
The ways in which cohort studies collect data from participants have changed over time, said Professor Alison Park, who discussed use of new technological advances, including wearable devices.
Professor Nishi Chaturvedi argued that to achieve precision medicine we need to pay more attention to the phenotype and the role cohorts can play in this.
Professor Ruth Gilbert described ADRC’s work on approaches to data linkage and the enormous value in administrative data, either in its own right or when linked to survey data.
Finally, Professor Caroline Sabin introduced the UK Collaborative HIV Cohort (UK CHIC) Study and explained the value of linking clinic and surveillance databases for HIV research.
Making the case for cohorts, biobanks and big data
In this ‘Question Time’ session speakers made the case for cohorts, biobanks and big data.
Cohorts are vital, nationally representative, scientific resources which enable us to understand the link between early life circumstances and life’s many and varied outcomes, argued Professor Alissa Goodman.
Professor Sir Rory Collins spoke in favour of large scale studies and biological repositories, pointing out the value of establishing prospective cohorts in different populations who have different types of diseases and risk factors.
T he case for big data and potential for access to real time data was made by Professor Harry Hemingway in the context of the new UK health and biomedical informatics research institute, Health Data Research UK. This institute will, for the first time in the world, incorporate on a national scale the whole breadth of data science research aimed at improving human health.
Opportunities and challenges for investment in cohorts, biobanks and big data
Professor Graham Hart chaired the final session with some of the funders of major longitudinal and cohort studies.
Representatives from the MRC, ESRC, British Heart Foundation and Wellcome Trust emphasised how cohorts are hugely influential, a vital part of the national infrastructure and uniquely placed to study the interplay of factors in a population over time.
We heard about how the funding landscape has changed, with ever increasing pressures on budgets, and the need to bring cohorts together, citing CLOSER as an important initiative in this space.
Increasingly funders are working in partnership to fund these large investments. A recurring message was the value of talking to funders before submitting bids, the importance of an interdisciplinary approach and data access and discoverability.
Those interested in the use of new technologies can get a flavour of what’s on offer at two events organised by CLOSER in May.
Filed under Medical Sciences, Population Health Sciences, Social & Historical Sciences, Uncategorized
Tags: Big data, Biobanks, Cohort studies, health, Health data, health inequalities, Health research, UCL
UCL Festival of Culture: Urban Well-being
James LRussell31 May 2016
As part of the UCL Festival of Culture, Dr Gustav Milne – Honorary senior lecturer in the UCL Institute of Archaeology – gave a talk on Tuesday 24th May, entitled ‘Urban well-being: How to live paleolithically-correct lives in a 21st Century City’.
The idea that we as humans are not necessarily designed for the urban environments that many of us now dwell in is not necessarily a new one, but the extent to which this affects our health and life expectancy is more strikingly marked than might be expected.
Gustav began by outlining how our biology evolved thousands of years ago to support the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and explained that while the environments we live in have changed, our basic physiology hasn’t. We were told that our biological legacy dates back 6 million years – our physiology and lung system have not really developed since then.
Gustav mentioned the Grand Challenges project that UCL Archaeology has partnered in with Transport for London and Arsenal football club, along with several other organisations, which examined the health profiles of different social groups and populations within Greater London.
The research carried out for this project discovered a noticeable difference in life-expectancy between residents in boroughs with large areas of green space, from those who live which are densely built-up and populated. Contrary to what we often hear, the figures obtained during this research indicate that it’s not about social class or income but where you live.
Filed under Social & Historical Sciences
Tags: archaeology, cities, green space, health, health inequalities, healthy cities, town planning, UCL Festival of Culture, UCL Institute of Archaeology, urban planning, urbanisation
A widening European health divide…it’s enough to drive you to drink
newseditor28 February 2012
Far from ‘closing the gap’ in life expectancy, health inequalities in Europe have deepened further. Drawing upon his forthcoming review of health inequalities in Europe, Michael Marmotargued that social inequalities, with their impact on life expectancy, should be at the top of the public agenda and we should place fairness at the heart of decision-making for health.
Integral to Marmot’s work is the graded relationship between social deprivation and a multitude of health outcomes. He reports that male life expectancy in the Russian Federation is 20 years less than in Iceland, but also highlights “huge differences within countries” and that “the gradient is increasing”.
Alcohol use: a cause or consequence of inequality?
What is driving the social gradient in health? Panel member Christopher Gerry stressed that “Alcohol matters”, and quoting Richard Peto said: “More than half of all deaths of people of working age in Russia are caused by alcohol.” But importantly, Gerry identified alcohol as just the proximate cause: “What makes people drink in the way that they do is the real question.”
Marmot was quick to distinguish between immediate causes and the underlying psychosocial mechanisms that drive unhealthy behaviours. In the case of Russia: “Some people are utterly convinced that alcohol plays a role, the main role” in health inequalities. But he disagreed, while acknowledging its role in violent deaths.
Filed under Population Health Sciences
Tags: alcohol, anthony costello, epidemiology, global health, grand challenges, health inequalities, michael marmot, public health, public policy, UCL Institute for Global Health
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with Cara Cooper
Bassett graduate Jonah McReynolds a homegrown Ranger
caracooper5 Reporting November 16, 2018 6 Minutes
By CARA COOPER
On Saturday afternoon, while friends and family members sat in Jonah McReynolds’s living room watching the Major League Baseball draft on TV, McReynolds was in the other room on the phone.
One-by-one, scouts from as many as seven different teams called and texted McReynolds to keep him updated on their plans for the day.
After texting with a couple of teams that assured him they were going to choose the Patrick Henry Community College shortstop in the next round, McReynolds said he heard everyone gathered in his living room start cheering.
On the TV, it was announced that with their 13th round pick in the Major League Baseball first year players draft, the Texas Rangers chose Bassett graduate Jonah McReynolds.
Less than a minute later McReynolds got the call.
“It was kind of crazy,” McReynolds said. “I was texting back and forth with a couple other teams, not even the Rangers, like ‘hey we’re going to take you in this round’… Then the Texas Rangers just came out of nowhere. I didn’t even get the phone call until after I got drafted. I heard it on the TV and everyone was cheering and I was like ‘what just happened?”… And literally I get a phone call like 30 seconds after they called my name, and that was pretty cool.”
Saturday was not only historic for McReynolds, but for Henry County baseball.
He is just the third Bassett graduate and the second Patrick Henry Community College graduate to be drafted in the MLB first year players draft. He is the highest draft pick in PHCC history.
It’s not hard to believe in McReynolds’ draft potential. The 5-foot-11-inch sophomore hit .326 this year with 54 RBIs and 51 runs scored in 59 games for PHCC. He also had an .870 fielding percentage in 148 attempts at shortstop for the Patriots.
Last fall McReynolds attended several pre-draft camps and in November was named No. 57 on the list of top 100 junior college prospects.
The ranking got scouts from all over MLB talking.
“Obviously you see things, the tools, the arm strength, the defensive capabilities, the bat but it’s all about him going out and performing and doing it right now,” said PHCC head baseball coach Frank Jagoda. “A lot of people took notice. We played 60 games this spring, and in 59 of those games pro scouts were there to watch him play and other guys on the team play. That doesn’t happen by accident. That was proven by his play on the field.”
McReynolds said constantly being watched took some time to get used to.
“I felt the pressure,” he said. “They videotape you walking out of the locker room to the dugout and everything. If they’re going to invest money in you they want to know everything about you.”
Even though he met with more than half a dozen professional teams, McReynolds said secretly the Rangers were always near the top of his list.
“I went to a pre-draft camp for the Texas Rangers and I got to know the staff really well. Actually that was one of my favorite organizations I visited and I’m really, really glad to be a part of that organization,” he said.
Baseball has always been in McReynolds’ blood, and he’s been around the fields since he was in diapers.
His father was the late Ronald Matthews, a legendary PONY league coach in Henry County for 35 years until his death in 2011.
“He was probably the most influential person in my life,” McReynolds said of his father.
A 2011 Martinsville Bulletin article makes mention of McReynolds’ awe-inspiring glove at shortstop to others around Henry County when he was as young as six years old.
But it wasn’t always easy on the field for McReynolds.
Starting out at Patrick Henry during his freshman year, he was fourth on the shortstop depth chart, and didn’t play until 20 games into the season. McReynolds said he considered hanging up his cleats for good, but instead decided to face the test head on.
“I was really thinking about quitting but I stuck with it and I worked harder. Me not playing well and me not playing made me work harder to go after what I wanted,” he said.
“He came in and like every young player he certainly had a lot to learn. He would admit that from a baseball sense,” said former PHCC and current Washington & Lee head coach Lucas Jones. “His tools were there, he had the arm and speed right off the bat but needed to fine tune some things offensively and learn the game a little more. He’s a product of hard work and his story is pretty incredible to get to this point. From day one there was never a sense he wasn’t going to work. Just over the course of 2 years at PH he just developed and put himself in position to be a draft pick.”
Jagoda, who just finished his first year coaching at PHCC, said McReynolds proved both on and off the field why the Rangers made a good choice in their 13th round pick.
“The on the field stuff speaks for itself. His ability to put himself into this position, he’s turned some heads on the field with the things he did over the last two years. Some of them are unprecedented,” Jagoda said. “But the off the field stuff is more impressive. He would come to work every single day to put in his time. To get himself into this position for himself and his teammates is remarkable. His life story is truly something special.”
“When I got here in the fall, I kind of knew what I was getting myself into with the team coming in. From the very beginning I could see some things,” Jagoda added. “It’s all on Jonah. He went out and showed it on the field. He showed why he was good draft pick.”
Jones said he always saw a glimmer in McReynolds that proved he was capable of playing baseball professionally.
“I knew off the bat his arm is a pro arm throwing across the diamond. Even though he’s not a pitcher, off the mound he’s 88 to 91, pretty raw. I know from a pro standpoint you look at him and say you’ve got some tools to compete at that level,” Jones said. “He’s young too so there’s still room to grow. Hopefully with the organization he’ll be able to do that. There was always that sense the tools were there just what was he going to do with those tools… and he took those and built on them. That’s all him, he did that.”
McReynolds credits Jones and Jagoda, as well as PHCC associate head coach Casey Hodges with helping instill the love of baseball back in him after so many struggles early on. Jones, he said, convinced him to keep working and gave him the eye opener he needed to see what it took to be a college baseball player.
“All the stuff I’ve been through with the game of baseball has slowly prepared me for what I’m going to get into,” McReynolds said. “I know I’m not fully prepared mentally but that’s where growth comes. You’ve got to have a growth mindset in anything you do. I truly believe that from the bottom of my heart. There’s going to be obstacles. There’ll be games where you’re going to go in a 28-game streak… and you may be in a slump but you’ve got to trust the process. You’ve got to trust what the organization is giving you. You’ve got to become a student of the game.”
The next step for McReynolds will begin as early as today when he makes the trip out to the Rangers’ facility in Arizona to begin rookie ball.
But Henry County will always be home to the talent who worked his way up from Bassett to Post 42 to Patrick Henry Community College and the Piedmont All-Stars.
“He kind of represents Martinsville,” Jones said. “He’s kind of blue collar. He stayed home to play and worked hard and is now getting his chance.”
“Even in high school baseball I never thought I would ever get the chance to play professional baseball,” McReynolds said. “I’m thankful for this opportunity. I know a lot of people are rooting for me and I’m going to try to give it my all… For those kids out there, I’m just going to try to do it for the kids to give them hope that it can happen to any one of us if you buy into the process and really believe what your coach and everybody is telling you.”
As seen first at The Martinsville Bulletin
Published by caracooper5
View all posts by caracooper5
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Pro Services Manager in Hampton, Virginia.
First Name 4ceae900
Last Name 0d7f3611
Email a47b3428
8c7953e7 Email me about jobs like this
Pro Services Manager
Hampton | Virginia | United States | 23666
This position is responsible for providing leadership of the Pro business within a designated sales territory by driving sales growth and profitability using appropriate marketing and sales methodologies and building account relationships. Monitor key performance indicators for assigned professional customers, and meet or exceed financial performance to plan by working with the Chief Executive Merchant and Regional Pro Services Manager. Review pertinent Pro customer satisfaction results to understand customers' perspectives, and use the information to drive local decisions and strategies to improve competitive edge.
Prospect continuously for new clients through a variety of techniques, including telephone solicitation, in-store sales and occasional outside sales.
Maintain current list of all prospects in electronic database as specified by company
Develop pricing and business development strategies in collaboration with and under the direction of company and/or location management
Work with company sales, operations and marketing department to focus sales efforts on developed and internet leads and in developing campaigns to maximize sales efforts
Participate in trade associations, trade shows and assists in other promotional efforts
Analyze local market to identify market opportunities, prospective companies and associated buyers
Follow-up on referrals and self-generated leads to identify buyer influences and any timing issues, monitor prospects’ contract calendars, prepare reports on status of leads and other reports as required
Plan prospect visits with appropriate operations personnel, such as the Regional Pro Service Manager or Chief Executive Merchant
Make sales presentations to prospective customers
Solicit orders and process approved services to achieve sales goals
Meet regularly with new clients to assess level of satisfaction with services and to develop a list of strong referrals
Develop and submit proposals and responses to RFQs and RFPs issued by prospective clients after obtaining pricing and specifications approval from management as appropriate
Enhance and maintain business development skills through participating in a variety of training programs as assigned
MINIMUM ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
High School Diploma or equivalent (College degree preferred)
Three years of outside sales experience (Retail industry preferred)
Demonstrated skills in the areas of sales and business development
Ability to analyze sales data, develop recommendations and solutions
Excellent planning, organizational and time management skills
Ability to interact effectively at all levels and across diverse cultures
Persuasive communication skills (oral and written) and be able to deliver “executive-level” presentations
Ability to be an effective team member and handle project assignments responsibly
Must possess excellent customer service skills and be results oriented
Ability to multi-task, meet deadlines, and work in a fast-paced environment
Must have a valid driver’s license and proof of automobile insurance
WORKING CONDITIONS (TRAVEL, HOURS, ENVIRONMENT)
Frequent travel required including air and car travel
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally exposed to a warehouse environment and moving vehicles. The noise level in the work environment is typically moderate to noisy.
PHYSICAL/SENSORY REQUIREMENTS
Medium Work – Ability to exert 20-50 pounds of force occasionally, and/or 10-25 pounds of force frequently, and/or greater than negligible up to 10 pounds of force constantly to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects. The employee is often required to use their hands and fingers, to handle or feel. The employee is occasionally required to stand, walk, reach with arms and hands, climb or balance, and to stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl.
NOTE: All duties and responsibilities listed are considered to be essential job functions and requirements, and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. Marginal functions of the position (those that are incidental to the performance of fundamental job duties) have not been included. However, the omission of specific statements of duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related or logical assignment to the position.
This job description does not constitute an employment agreement between the employer and the employee, and is subject to change by the employer as the needs of the business and requirement of the job change.
Wichita Kansas United States Wichita, Kansas, United States, 67207 Warehouse Warehouse
Burlingame California United States Burlingame, California, United States, 94010 Store Operations Specialist Store Operations Specialist
Roswell Georgia United States Roswell, Georgia, United States, 30076 Warehouse Warehouse
Overnight Supervisor
Albuquerque New Mexico United States Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, 87109 Warehouse Warehouse
It’s great being part of a culture where entrepreneurship and team spirit are not just buzzwords. If you love working with a great group of people and desire the opportunity to grow, this is the place for you. PurposeThe Overnight Receiving Super...
Littleton Colorado United States Littleton, Colorado, United States, 80126 Customer Service Customer Service
Houston Texas United States Houston, Texas, United States, 77034 Warehouse Warehouse
First Name fcb87d09
Last Name 780f31c0
Email ae4ccada
Department and Location 76fcf380
Departments 8e788725 Departments bb2a1ca3 Accounts Payable Admin Customer Care Operations Customer Care Services Customer Service Design Services Distribution Operations Distribution Operations Leadership Distribution Warehouse Ecommerce Inventory Merchandising Leadership Merchandising Operations Operations Pro Services Product Review Store Operations Store Operations Leadership Store Operations Specialist Store Sales Store Sales Specialist Supply Chain Systems Support & Enhancements Technology Warehouse
Locations e241ef0e Locations 165eaf22 Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States Alexandria, Virginia, United States Arlington, Texas, United States Arlington Heights, Illinois, United States Arvada, Colorado, United States Atlanta, Georgia, United States Aurora, Illinois, United States Austin, Texas, United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States Birmingham, Alabama, United States Bloomingdale, Georgia, United States Boynton Beach, Florida, United States Bridgeton, Missouri, United States Brookfield, Wisconsin, United States Buford, Georgia, United States Burlingame, California, United States Carson, California, United States Charlotte, North Carolina, United States Chicago, Illinois, United States Cincinnati, Ohio, United States Clearwater, Florida, United States Concord, North Carolina, United States Countryside, Illinois, United States Dallas, Texas, United States Denver, Colorado, United States Devon, Pennsylvania, United States Downey, California, United States Draper, Utah, United States Edgemere, Maryland, United States El Paso, Texas, United States Everett, Washington, United States Farmingdale, New York, United States Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States Fort Myers, Florida, United States Fort Worth, Texas, United States Fountain Valley, California, United States Fullerton, California, United States Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States Glendale, Arizona, United States Greensboro, North Carolina, United States Gretna, Louisiana, United States Gurnee, Illinois, United States Hampton, Virginia, United States Henderson, Nevada, United States Henrico, Virginia, United States Hialeah, Florida, United States Hilliard, Ohio, United States Hollywood, Florida, United States Houston, Texas, United States Indianapolis, Indiana, United States Jacksonville, Florida, United States Katy, Texas, United States Kennesaw, Georgia, United States Knoxville, Tennessee, United States Lakeland, Florida, United States Las Vegas, Nevada, United States Levittown, Pennsylvania, United States Littleton, Colorado, United States Lombard, Illinois, United States Louisville, Kentucky, United States Marietta, Georgia, United States McDonough, Georgia, United States Memphis, Tennessee, United States Mesa, Arizona, United States Mesquite, Texas, United States Miami, Florida, United States Milpitas, California, United States Mission Viejo, California, United States Moorestown, New Jersey, United States Moreno Valley, California, United States Morrow, Georgia, United States Nashville, Tennessee, United States New Orleans, Louisiana, United States Norco, California, United States North Charleston, South Carolina, United States North Richland Hills, Texas, United States Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States Orlando, Florida, United States Overland Park, Kansas, United States Paramus, New Jersey, United States Pasadena, Texas, United States Phoenix, Arizona, United States Plano, Texas, United States Pompano Beach, Florida, United States Port St. Lucie, Florida, United States Reno, Nevada, United States Reynoldsburg, Ohio, United States Riverdale, Utah, United States Rocklin, California, United States Roswell, Georgia, United States Saint Petersburg, Florida, United States San Antonio, Texas, United States San Diego, California, United States Sanford, Florida, United States Santa Ana, California, United States Sarasota, Florida, United States Saugus, Massachusetts, United States Savannah, Georgia, United States Seattle, Washington, United States Skokie, Illinois, United States Smyrna, Georgia, United States St. Louis, Missouri, United States Sugar Land, Texas, United States Tampa, Florida, United States Tempe, Arizona, United States The Colony, Texas, United States Thornton, Colorado, United States Tucson, Arizona, United States Utica, Michigan, United States Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States Wayne, New Jersey, United States West Palm Beach, Florida, United States Wichita, Kansas, United States Woodbridge, Virginia, United States Woodland Hills, California, United States
First Name fd66c6f0
Last Name bba6bc2d
Email c88d1de4
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__label__wiki
| 0.942553
| 0.942553
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Warehouse Associate in Avon, Massachusetts.
First Name 0deb2838
Last Name c4e67894
Email e2130056
1c34dfa5 Email me about jobs like this
Avon | Massachusetts | United States | 02322
Overnight Merchandise Associate
Avon Massachusetts United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States, 02322 Store Operations Specialist Store Operations Specialist
Receiving Associate
Avon Massachusetts United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States, 02322 Store Operations Store Operations
Avon Massachusetts United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States, 02322 Customer Service Customer Service
Dept Manager in Training
Avon Massachusetts United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States, 02322 Store Sales Store Sales
Manager Warehouse Operations - 2nd Shift
Bloomingdale Georgia United States Bloomingdale, Georgia, United States, 31312 Distribution Operations Distribution Operations
First Name b2430bb8
Last Name dc2ef87f
Email 4283eb2a
Department and Location 1ad5728b
Departments a2f877c7 Departments 3ab90bfc Accounts Payable Admin Customer Care Operations Customer Care Services Customer Service Design Services Distribution Operations Distribution Operations Leadership Distribution Warehouse Ecommerce Inventory Merchandising Leadership Merchandising Operations Operations Pro Services Product Review Store Operations Store Operations Leadership Store Operations Specialist Store Sales Store Sales Specialist Supply Chain Systems Support & Enhancements Technology Warehouse
Locations d847696e Locations d57751f2 Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States Alexandria, Virginia, United States Arlington, Texas, United States Arlington Heights, Illinois, United States Arvada, Colorado, United States Atlanta, Georgia, United States Aurora, Illinois, United States Austin, Texas, United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States Birmingham, Alabama, United States Bloomingdale, Georgia, United States Boynton Beach, Florida, United States Bridgeton, Missouri, United States Brookfield, Wisconsin, United States Buford, Georgia, United States Burlingame, California, United States Carson, California, United States Charlotte, North Carolina, United States Chicago, Illinois, United States Cincinnati, Ohio, United States Clearwater, Florida, United States Concord, North Carolina, United States Countryside, Illinois, United States Dallas, Texas, United States Denver, Colorado, United States Devon, Pennsylvania, United States Downey, California, United States Draper, Utah, United States Edgemere, Maryland, United States El Paso, Texas, United States Everett, Washington, United States Farmingdale, New York, United States Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States Fort Myers, Florida, United States Fort Worth, Texas, United States Fountain Valley, California, United States Fullerton, California, United States Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States Glendale, Arizona, United States Greensboro, North Carolina, United States Gretna, Louisiana, United States Gurnee, Illinois, United States Hampton, Virginia, United States Henderson, Nevada, United States Henrico, Virginia, United States Hialeah, Florida, United States Hilliard, Ohio, United States Hollywood, Florida, United States Houston, Texas, United States Indianapolis, Indiana, United States Jacksonville, Florida, United States Katy, Texas, United States Kennesaw, Georgia, United States Knoxville, Tennessee, United States Lakeland, Florida, United States Las Vegas, Nevada, United States Levittown, Pennsylvania, United States Littleton, Colorado, United States Lombard, Illinois, United States Louisville, Kentucky, United States Marietta, Georgia, United States McDonough, Georgia, United States Memphis, Tennessee, United States Mesa, Arizona, United States Mesquite, Texas, United States Miami, Florida, United States Milpitas, California, United States Mission Viejo, California, United States Moorestown, New Jersey, United States Moreno Valley, California, United States Morrow, Georgia, United States Nashville, Tennessee, United States New Orleans, Louisiana, United States Norco, California, United States North Charleston, South Carolina, United States North Richland Hills, Texas, United States Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States Orlando, Florida, United States Overland Park, Kansas, United States Paramus, New Jersey, United States Pasadena, Texas, United States Phoenix, Arizona, United States Plano, Texas, United States Pompano Beach, Florida, United States Port St. Lucie, Florida, United States Reno, Nevada, United States Reynoldsburg, Ohio, United States Riverdale, Utah, United States Rocklin, California, United States Roswell, Georgia, United States Saint Petersburg, Florida, United States San Antonio, Texas, United States San Diego, California, United States Sanford, Florida, United States Santa Ana, California, United States Sarasota, Florida, United States Saugus, Massachusetts, United States Savannah, Georgia, United States Seattle, Washington, United States Skokie, Illinois, United States Smyrna, Georgia, United States St. Louis, Missouri, United States Sugar Land, Texas, United States Tampa, Florida, United States Tempe, Arizona, United States The Colony, Texas, United States Thornton, Colorado, United States Tucson, Arizona, United States Utica, Michigan, United States Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States Wayne, New Jersey, United States West Palm Beach, Florida, United States Wichita, Kansas, United States Woodbridge, Virginia, United States Woodland Hills, California, United States
First Name 8c1f4ac0
Last Name 1b331149
Email b4675eb5
8ecbbc78 Email me about jobs like this
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cc/2019-30/en_head_0039.json.gz/line4090
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__label__wiki
| 0.94822
| 0.94822
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Warehouse Associate in Sarasota, Florida.
First Name 015e7681
Last Name 2e6c1553
Email 964921d2
b6279de0 Email me about jobs like this
Sarasota | Florida | United States | 34243
Sarasota Florida United States Sarasota, Florida, United States, 34243 Customer Service Customer Service
Sarasota Florida United States Sarasota, Florida, United States, 34243 Warehouse Warehouse
Wood Department Manager
Kennesaw Georgia United States Kennesaw, Georgia, United States, 30144 Store Sales Store Sales
Boynton Beach Florida United States Boynton Beach, Florida, United States, 33426 Store Sales Store Sales
Utica Michigan United States Utica, Michigan, United States, 48315 Store Sales Store Sales
Reynoldsburg Ohio United States Reynoldsburg, Ohio, United States, 43068 Store Sales Store Sales
First Name 29048262
Last Name 31eefdd2
Email 1e507954
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Locations fed152a1 Locations 1f679555 Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States Alexandria, Virginia, United States Arlington, Texas, United States Arlington Heights, Illinois, United States Arvada, Colorado, United States Atlanta, Georgia, United States Aurora, Illinois, United States Austin, Texas, United States Avon, Massachusetts, United States Birmingham, Alabama, United States Bloomingdale, Georgia, United States Boynton Beach, Florida, United States Bridgeton, Missouri, United States Brookfield, Wisconsin, United States Buford, Georgia, United States Burlingame, California, United States Carson, California, United States Charlotte, North Carolina, United States Chicago, Illinois, United States Cincinnati, Ohio, United States Clearwater, Florida, United States Concord, North Carolina, United States Countryside, Illinois, United States Dallas, Texas, United States Denver, Colorado, United States Devon, Pennsylvania, United States Downey, California, United States Draper, Utah, United States Edgemere, Maryland, United States El Paso, Texas, United States Everett, Washington, United States Farmingdale, New York, United States Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States Fort Myers, Florida, United States Fort Worth, Texas, United States Fountain Valley, California, United States Fullerton, California, United States Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States Glendale, Arizona, United States Greensboro, North Carolina, United States Gretna, Louisiana, United States Gurnee, Illinois, United States Hampton, Virginia, United States Henderson, Nevada, United States Henrico, Virginia, United States Hialeah, Florida, United States Hilliard, Ohio, United States Hollywood, Florida, United States Houston, Texas, United States Indianapolis, Indiana, United States Jacksonville, Florida, United States Katy, Texas, United States Kennesaw, Georgia, United States Knoxville, Tennessee, United States Lakeland, Florida, United States Las Vegas, Nevada, United States Levittown, Pennsylvania, United States Littleton, Colorado, United States Lombard, Illinois, United States Louisville, Kentucky, United States Marietta, Georgia, United States McDonough, Georgia, United States Memphis, Tennessee, United States Mesa, Arizona, United States Mesquite, Texas, United States Miami, Florida, United States Milpitas, California, United States Mission Viejo, California, United States Moorestown, New Jersey, United States Moreno Valley, California, United States Morrow, Georgia, United States Nashville, Tennessee, United States New Orleans, Louisiana, United States Norco, California, United States North Charleston, South Carolina, United States North Richland Hills, Texas, United States Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States Orlando, Florida, United States Overland Park, Kansas, United States Paramus, New Jersey, United States Pasadena, Texas, United States Phoenix, Arizona, United States Plano, Texas, United States Pompano Beach, Florida, United States Port St. Lucie, Florida, United States Reno, Nevada, United States Reynoldsburg, Ohio, United States Riverdale, Utah, United States Rocklin, California, United States Roswell, Georgia, United States Saint Petersburg, Florida, United States San Antonio, Texas, United States San Diego, California, United States Sanford, Florida, United States Santa Ana, California, United States Sarasota, Florida, United States Saugus, Massachusetts, United States Savannah, Georgia, United States Seattle, Washington, United States Skokie, Illinois, United States Smyrna, Georgia, United States St. Louis, Missouri, United States Sugar Land, Texas, United States Tampa, Florida, United States Tempe, Arizona, United States The Colony, Texas, United States Thornton, Colorado, United States Tucson, Arizona, United States Utica, Michigan, United States Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States Wayne, New Jersey, United States West Palm Beach, Florida, United States Wichita, Kansas, United States Woodbridge, Virginia, United States Woodland Hills, California, United States
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JCT Trio
Name: JCT Trio
Website: https://rockportmusic.org/jct-trio/
Stefan Jackiw, violin | Conrad Tao, piano | Jay Campbell, cello
IVES: Trio for violin, cello and piano, Op. 86
CHRISTOPHER TRAPANI: Passing Through, Staying Put
DVORAK: Piano Trio in F minor, No. 3, OP. 65
Three renowned artists of the next generation combining talents in this piano trio, JCT (pronounced “junction”) which is hailed for their “bracing technique and jaw-dropping precision… A sense of unity, especially in dynamics and rhythmic thrust…” (Aspen Times). Violinist Stefan Jackiw, with a tremendous solo career, returns to Rockport with Conrad Tao (composer/pianist who curated and produced the critically acclaimed UNPLAY Festival in Brooklyn) and cellist Jay Campbell (member of JACK quartet), who has also performed in the Festival previously. Tao, who appears worldwide as a pianist and composer, has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by the New York Times. Approaching both old and new works with the same curiosity and emotional commitment, Campbell has been called “electrifying” by the New York Times. Recent concerts of the trio have included performances at Washington Performing Arts, Portland Ovations and the Koerner Hall in Toronto.
Stefan Jackiw, violin
Violinist Stefan Jackiw is recognized as one of his generation’s most significant artists, captivating audiences with playing that combines poetry and purity with an impeccable technique. Hailed for playing of “uncommon musical substance” that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” (Boston Globe), Jackiw has appeared as soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, among others. Born in 1985 to physicist parents of Korean and German descent, Stefan Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, and is the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Conrad Tao, piano
Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by the New York Times, a “thoughtful and mature composer” by NPR, and “ferociously talented” by TimeOut New York. In June of 2011, the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and the Department of Education named Tao a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts awarded him a YoungArts gold medal in music. Later that year, Tao was named a Gilmore Young Artist, an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation. In May of 2012, he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Jay Campbell, cello
Armed with a diverse spectrum of repertoire and eclectic musical interests, cellist Jay Campbell has been recognized for approaching both old and new works with the same probing curiosity and emotional commitment. His performances have been called “electrifying” by the New York Times; “gentle, poignant, and deeply moving” by the Washington Post; and on WQXR by Krzysztof Penderecki for “the greatest performance yet of Capriccio per Sigfried Palm.” A 2016 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Jay made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2013 and worked with Alan Gilbert in 2016 as the artistic-director for Ligeti Forward, a series featured on the New York Philharmonic Biennale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Equally enthusiastic as a chamber musician and teacher, Campbell is a member of the JACK Quartet, and has served on faculty at Vassar College and has been a guest at the Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab, Heidelberger-Fruhling, DITTO, and Lincoln Center festivals.
Tickets: start at $35
Buy Tickets Here!
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The Top 10 Most Expensive Cars in the World
The choice of luxury cars is both wide and limited. From the Lamborghini to the Bugatti, Ferrari to Aston Martin, there are plenty to choose from. But which ones are the most expensive? Here we round up 10 of the most expensive cars in the world.
Criteria such as speed, technology and design collide in a merciless battle among the producers of these cars at increasingly staggering prices. They are reserved for millionaires or billionaires. Competition is becoming increasingly fierce, as are the prices, due to car shows where new contenders are launched and have been able to join the very closed and selective circle of the most elite cars in the world. This is the case with the Bugatti Chiron that beat the Bugatti Veyron to the title of the most expensive production car in the world. However, the throne of most expensive car still belongs to the Lamborghini Veneno. But let’s take a look at the rest of this ranking that when added together totals a staggering $28 million.
1. Lamborghini Veneno Roadster: $3.8 million
Equipped with a 750 horsepower, V12, 6.5 liter engine, the Lamborghini Veneno Roadster is in first place in our ranking. And while it is true that it now has two roll bars to offer greater safety to its passengers – increasing its weight to 1.6 tons – its acceleration and top speed capabilities remain spectacular: from 0 to 62 miles per hour in just 2.9 seconds, for a top speed of 220 miles per hour. With only nine units produced, its price is just as spectacular: about $3.8 million excluding tax.
2. Lamborghini Veneno: $3.4 million
The Lamborghini Veneno is also equipped with the 750 hp, V12, 6.5 l engine, but weighs 88 pounds less than the Roadster. This ensures an acceleration from 0 to 62 mph in just 2.6 seconds (3 less), for a maximum speed of 220 mph. For its 50th anniversary in 2013, the gift the luxury brand offered was this model made with only three units. The price? About $3.4 million, excluding tax.
3. Ferrari Pininfarina Sergio: $3.4 million
Ferrari completes our top three with its Sergio Pininfarina: a model produced in homage to the famous designer, who died in 2012. The six units made are equipped with the a 4,497 cm3 V8 engine. With its power increased to 605 hp, it allows acceleration from 0 to 62 mph in 3 seconds. As for its price, it costs about $3.4 million, sharing second place in our ranking with the Lamborghini Veneno.
The Ferrari Pininfarina Sergio
4. Lykan Hypersport: $2.9 million
Unveiled at the Qatar Motor Show in January 2013, the W Motors Lykan HyperSport not only benefits from a sublime carbon design but also from a mechanical design by RUF – the famous German specialist. In this respect, it is equipped with the 750 hp twin-turbo engine, which ensures an acceleration from 0 to 62 mph in 2.8 seconds and a top speed of 245 mph. The price of this rare delicacy is around $2.9 million.
5. Bugatti Chiron: starting at $2.7 million
The Bugatti Chiron is one of the world’s most expensive production cars, ahead of the Bugatti Veyron, in particular. Indeed, with its 1,500 horsepower and 260 mph top speed, the Chiron slips into our top 10 with a price to melt even the most stoic among us: starting at $2.7 million.
The Bugatti Chiron
6. Ferrari FXX K: $2.5 million
This racing beast, reserved for the circuit, is a model from F1, and this can quickly be seen through its hybrid system with kinetic energy recovery. Thirty two units were produced with a 860 hp V12 – which can reach 1,050 with the hybrid. The price of this jewel is about $2.5 million.
7. Koenigsegg Regera: $2.4 million
Unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show and produced in 80 units, this Swedish pearl offers its owner a 1,800 hp hybrid engine through its 100 hp twin-turbo V8 and three electric motors. It is thus able to rev to 249 mph in less than 20 seconds. But like any pearl, it has a price: about $2.4 million, optional extras not included.
8. Bugatti Veyron: starting at $2.3 million
Although it is no longer the most expensive production car in the world, it is still one of the fastest. In its “Super Sport” version, its W16 quadriturbo engine goes from 1,001 hp to 1,200 hp. In this regard, let us add that this engine enabled it to beat the world record in 2011, exceeding 268 mph! The vehicle is available in many versions and its price starts at $2.3 million, but can reach more than $2.8 million in the “Super Sport” version.
The Bugatti Veyron
9. Aston Martin Vulcan: $2.3 million
Presented at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, there are only 24 units of the Aston Martin Vulcan produced. It is a track car with an impressive 800 hp. However, its price is also impressive, reaching more than $2.3 million.
10. Pagani Huayra: $2.3 million
This splendid vehicle shows a refined blend of Italian design and German mechanics. It is equipped with a V12 AMG with 730 hp and 1000 Nm of torque. The Pagani Huayra can accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in just 3.3 seconds. As for its price of about $2.3 million set by the manufacturer, it is interesting to note that it can sometimes exceed $2.6 million on the resale market.
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English Lesson: “I feel like ~ing”
During one of my Boston Lessons, my client was talking about Halloween. He wasn’t too big of a fan and had this to say about buying a costume:
“I feel like wasting money.”
But unfortunately, that doesn’t work in this context. If we take the sentence as it is: “I feel like wasting money” actually means “I want to waste money.”
This is what happens when we use “I feel like” followed by the gerund form.
Now maybe, just maybe, my client wants to waste money, but I’m going to assume he meant to say “Costumes are a waste of money”. And if so, he would want to change his original sentence to either:
I feel like I’m wasting money.
I feel like I wasted money.
In both cases, you need a second subject indicator.
Remember: using “I feel like” with the gerund means you want to do that action.
I feel like eating sushi. = I want to eat sushi.
I feel like taking the day off. = I want to take the day off (i.e. stay home from work).
Improving English Fluency
English Lesson: “Say You, Say Me”
Girl Talk: Pick-up Lines
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Lisa Siegman
9/11 Anniversary
Ten years after 9/11, remembering New York City educators’ role in responding to tragedy
As the city commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, new attention is going to the largely unheralded role that educators played that day.
Modest increase in budget restorations follows spike in appeals
Two-thirds of principals who pushed back about the budgets allocated to their schools got good news last week — and money in the bank. Of…
Number of principals who appealed their budgets up 50 percent
The total number of budget appeals filed by principals are way up this year, confirming our report last month that school leaders were finding their budgets more unworkable. The Department of Education received 253 official budget appeals from principals last month, a 50 percent spike over last year, according to figures released today. The surge reflects the fiscal challenges facing many of the city's public school system, where principals say they are doing more with less. This year, the DOE trimmed $178 million from its schools budget, its third straight year of cuts. As a result, we wrote last month, some principals were forced to stretch their dollars are far as they could go and were still unable to come up with enough funds for basic needs. Lisa Siegman, a principal at P.S. 3 in the West Village who publicly lobbied for more money, said she wouldn't be able open in September because she “couldn’t staff the school" with enough teachers. The last-ditch effort in the budget process, which ended on July 22, was to an file appeal. An appeal is a formal request that requires principals to propose how much more money they need and to provide a doomsday scenario of what services they would lose if funding weren't restored. Principals also have to include any significant changes that affected their latest budget, such as the loss of Title 1 funding and student population changes.
As budget deadline nears, strapped school lobbies on class size
As they wait to hear the results of their principal's budget appeal, parents and teachers at Manhattan's PS 3 are sounding the alarm over rising class sizes. Tomorrow is the deadline for principals to tell the city how they plan to spend their budgets. With schools experiencing average cuts of 2.43 percent, they are likely to see class sizes grow as teaching vacancies go unfilled. In April, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said that 4,000 planned layoffs would cause average class sizes to rise by about 1.5 students. But the School Leadership Team at PS 3 says the elementary school has been warned that, even now that layoffs have been averted, classes could grow to as large as 30 students in the fall. Last week, we reported that PS 3's principal, Lisa Siegman, has filed an official appeal of her budget, saying, “I couldn’t staff the school for the classrooms" with the $5.4 million allocated to the school. Yesterday, the SLT sent a letter to Walcott — and a host of other public officials — imploring him not to let class sizes skyrocket. "Even excellent teachers have limits to their energy, time, patience, and ability to solve the infinite array of problems that facilitating learning involves," the letter reads. "At PS 3, we have seen firsthand how increase in class size can negatively impact teachers’ energy and students’ ability to learn." The full letter is below.
Creative budgeting not enough to close gaps, principals say
Principals are famously told to “be creative” during school budget season. This year is no different, but with cuts to city, state, and federal funding all taking their toll, some school leaders are saying creativity isn’t enough. Some of them are pushing back, filing appeals with the Department of Education to restore hundreds of thousands of dollars back into to their schools. Joseph Nobile, a veteran principal at P.S. 304 Early Childhood School in the Bronx, said he and his budget liaison tweaked projections, shuffled funds, and excessed staff to stretch his $4.7 million as far as it could go. “After all of the moving around, we were still down $350,000,” Nobile said. So for the first time in his 12 years on the job, Nobile said he had no choice but to file an appeal. Nobile said the money he requested would go toward retaining the school’s lone curriculum coach, as well as four special education specialists. The additional personnel is especially important at P.S. 304 because it is part of a citywide pilot to move as many special education students as possible into mainstream classes. Schools are feeling the pinch more than ever because of third consecutive year of budget cuts. Adding to that, the city made it tougher for some schools with large percentages of poor students to qualify for federal aid.
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This Small Mexican Border Town Prizes its Human and Environmental Links with the US
Lucia Orosco holding her daughter, Arely, in Boquillas. Much of the embroidery created here reads ‘no el muro’ (no wall). Matthew Moran, CC BY-ND
The tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen sits nestled between the Sierra del Carmen Mountains and the Rio Grande. Its Chihuahuan Desert location is strikingly beautiful, with green vegetation along the river, the brown soil of the surrounding desert and pink mountain cliffs creating splendid color contrasts.
I have been taking students to this magnificent landscape for 20 years – mostly to Big Bend National Park in Texas, just a mile north of Boquillas. My colleagues and I have also studied the ecological and economic value of this habitat, one of the most biodiverse and ecologically important desert regions in the world.
Recently I returned to study the ecotourism and conservation potential of Boquillas. In the process, I learned about a local vision for the border that is markedly different from the prevailing U.S. view.
Mexican jays range north into the U.S. through the Big Bend region and in southeastern Arizona. NPS/Cookie Ballou
Here the Rio Grande forms the line between the United States and Mexico. The river is an ecological gathering place that draws humans and wildlife. For Boquillas residents, the idea of building a wall here is sacrilegious. As Lilia Falcon, manager of a local restaurant, said to me, “We have friends on both sides of the river, we want these interactions to continue.” Her husband, Bernardo Rogel, was more succinct: “We love both countries.”
View of Boquillas, Mexico. Matthew Moran, CC BY-ND
A fragile ecotourism economy
Boquillas was originally a mining town, with local deposits of silver, lead and zinc that attracted prospectors. By the early 20th century, 2,000 people lived there and a thriving industry was exporting ore.
That boom turned to bust, and by the end of World War I the mines were closed. The town nearly disappeared in the 1960s, but in 1999 when I first visited there, it had about 200 residents. They made their living from cross-border tourism, with U.S. visitors to Big Bend National Park entering Mexico via a legal but unofficial border crossing.
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, the United States closed all of these informal crossings. Overnight Boquillas lost its income source, ruining livelihoods and jeopardizing years of effort by residents and government officials to build cooperative border relations.
The nearest place to get supplies was now a 300-mile round trip over rough roads deep into rural Mexico. Just three miles away on the U.S. side, gas, food and services in Big Bend National Park’s Rio Grande Village campground were now inaccessible. Relatives who were citizens on opposite sides of the border were separated, 115 miles from the nearest legal crossing point.
After more than a decade of lobbying by residents, the U.S. government created a “remote” passport facility, where people crossing the border could present their documentation by phone to a border agent located in El Paso. Boquillas reopened and merchants and guides returned. In 2018 more than 11,000 visitors crossed over from the United States.
Crossing to Boquillas by rowboat from Big Bend National Park. NPS / T. VandenBerg
Today Boquillas residents are working again to teach visitors about this part of Mexico, and ecotourism companies are expanding. People here envision a future for the border in which respect, cooperation and shared economic gain will create a prosperous and sustainable future for communities on both sides.
Welcoming visitors and valuing connections
It is obvious to me that people in Boquillas love their town and are hopeful about the future. “I want to show visitors the beauty of my home and to have a more prosperous life for my family,” Lacho Falcón, a local guide whose family owns the only grocery store in town, told me on my most recent visit as we hiked into Boquillas canyon, its massive vertical walls gleaming in soft morning light.
Lacho Falcón (second from left, rear) and his family in Boquillas. Matthew Moran, CC BY-ND
I have heard that sentiment repeated many times as I have gotten to know more people in the town. Thanks to economic activity from tourism, “We have been able to buy a vehicle, improve our house, and most importantly, send our oldest daughter Wendy to college,” said Lucia Orosco. She sells crafts to help support her family, which includes husband Adrián, who manages the ferry crossing over the Rio Grande, and their three children.
Canoeing the Rio Grande is a favorite tourist activity. The river cuts through spectacular canyons, supports abundant wildlife and provides water for this thirsty land. I spoke with Ernesto Hernández Morales from Vera Cruz, Mexico and Mike Davidson from Terlingua, Texas about the river’s potential to unify their countries. As partners with Boquillas Adventures, a Mexican registered ecotourism company that focuses on natural and historic interpretation, they are working to expand sustainable tourism opportunities in nearby protected areas, hiring local residents as guides.
“We see our work as more than a business,” said Hernández Morales. “It’s an opportunity to show Mexico and the U.S. working together for security and prosperity.” Davidson concurs: “It is our goal to provide our guests a high-quality, safe experience…and offer them a glimpse of daily reality on this part of the border.”
Ernesto Hernández Morales helps run Boquillas Adventures, an ecotourism company in the Boquillas region. Matthew Moran, CC BY-ND
Chalo Diaz, a local guide who takes visitors on river trips, is excited about his work. “Boquillas is a beautiful town where you can visit friendly people. Now that the border has reopened, we have improved it and are connected to the world,” he told me.
United ecologically, separated politically?
In 2011 Mexico and the United States signed a cooperative agreement to conserve the spectacular Chihuahuan Desert landscape. This initiative builds on proposals dating back nearly a century to create a cross-border international peace park.
American black bears, mountain lions, bighorn sheep and a host of smaller animals, as well as over 400 species of birds, move across this landscape. Studies show that conserving this region requires maintaining free movement for wildlife. Researchers warn that building a border wall through the area could threaten thousands of plant and animal species by preventing them from moving between patches of the best habitat.
Currently Boquillas is the only access point where people can cross between the protected areas in this region. This makes it critical to future conservation success. People in Boquillas believe that building a border wall would sever this connection, causing hardship and insecurity on both sides.
MATTHEW D. MORAN is a Professor of Biology at Hendrix College.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION.
Tags wildlife, ecotourism, tourism, travel, explore, Mexico, United States, border, environment, politics
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You are here: Home / Archives for HB 17-1248
Bills Signed Adding Water Right for Industrial Hemp, Amending Collections of Delinquent Taxes on Mobile Homes, Changing Election Laws, and More Signed
June 1, 2017 By Susan Hoyt Leave a Comment
Though the legislative session is over, the governor continues to sign bills. He signed two bills on Friday, May 19; three bills on Saturday, May 20; three bills on Sunday, May 21; six bills on Monday, May 22; six bills on Tuesday, May 23; four bills on Wednesday, May 24; 28 bills on Thursday, May 25; one bill on Friday, May 26; and one bill on Tuesday, May 30. To date, the governor has signed 285 bills and vetoed one bill this legislative session. The bills signed since May 19 are summarized here.
HB 17-1354: “Concerning the Collection of Delinquent Taxes on Certain Mobile Homes,” by Rep. KC Becker and Sens. John Kefalas & Kevin Priola. The bill modifies the county treasurer’s duties in connection with the collection of delinquent taxes on mobile or manufactured homes that are not affixed to the ground.
SB 17-305: “Concerning Modifications to Select Statutory Provisions Affecting Primary Elections Enacted by Voters at the 2016 Statewide General Election to Facilitate the Effective Implementation of the State’s Election Laws, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Sens. Stephen Fenberg & Kevin Lundberg and Reps. Patrick Neville & Mike Foote.
HB 17-1113: “Concerning Electronic Participation in Committee Meetings During the Legislative Interim,” by Reps. Yeulin Willett & Jeni Arndt and Sen. Ray Scott. The bill gives the executive committee of the legislative council the ability to consider, recommend, and establish policies regarding electronic participation by senators or representatives in committee meetings during the legislative interim.
HB 17-1258: “Concerning Renaming Delta-Montrose Technical College to Technical College of the Rockies,” by Reps. Millie Hamner & Yeulin Willett and Sens. Kerry Donovan & Don Coram. The bill changes the name of ‘Delta-Montrose Technical College’ to ‘Technical College of the Rockies’.
SB 17-280: “Concerning Extending the Repeal Date of the Colorado Economic Development Commission, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Sen. Jack Tate and Reps. Dan Thurlow & Tracy Kraft-Tharp. The bill extends the Colorado economic development commission by changing the repeal date of its organic statute to July 1, 2025.
HB 17-1003: “Concerning a Strategic Action Plan to Address Teacher Shortages in Colorado,” by Rep. Barbara McLaughlin and Sen. Don Coram. The bill requires the Department of Higher Education in partnership with the Department of Education to examine recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers and to prepare a strategic plan to address teacher shortages in school districts and public schools within the state.
HB 17-1077: “Concerning the Useful Public Service Cash Fund,” by Rep. Donald Valdez and Sen. Don Coram. The bill creates the useful public service cash fund in the judicial branch to facilitate the administration of programs that supervise the performance of useful public service by persons who are required to perform such service pursuant to a criminal sentence.
SB 17-117: “Concerning Confirmation that Industrial Hemp is a Recognized Agricultural Product for Which a Person with a Water Right Decreed for Agricultural Use may Use the Water Subject to the Water Right for Industrial Hemp Cultivation,” by Sen. Don Coram and Reps. Donald Valdez & Marc Catlin. The bill confirms that a person with an absolute or conditional water right decreed for agricultural use may use the water subject to the water right for the growth or cultivation of industrial hemp if the person is registered by the Department of Agriculture to grow industrial hemp for commercial or research and development purposes.
HB 17-1104: “Concerning the Exclusion from State Taxable Income of the Monetary Value of any Medal Won by an Athlete while Competing for the United States of America at the Olympic Games, so long as the Athlete’s Federal Adjusted Gross Income does not Exceed a Specified Amount,” by Rep. Clarice Navarro and Sen. Kevin Priola. The bill specifies that for the purpose of determining the state income tax liability of an individual, income earned as a direct result of winning a medal while competing for the United States of America at the olympic games is excluded from state taxable income.
HB 17-1283: “Concerning the Creation of a Task Force to Examine Workforce Resiliency in the Child Welfare System,” by Reps. Jonathan Singer & Dan Nordberg and Sens. John Cooke & Leroy Garcia. The bill creates a task force to organize county-level versions of and guidelines for child welfare caseworker resiliency programs modeled on national resiliency programs.
HB 17-1289: “Concerning a Requirement that the State Engineer Promulgate Rules that Establish an Optional Streamlined Approach to Calculate the Historical Consumptive Use of a Water Right,” by Reps. Donald Valdez & Chris Hansen and Sens. Larry Crowder & Don Coram. The bill directs the state engineer to promulgate rules that take into account local conditions that an applicant can use to calculate historical consumptive use.
SB 17-074: “Concerning the Creation of a Pilot Program in Certain Areas of the State Experiencing High Levels of Opioid Addiction to Award Grants to Increase Access to Addiction Treatment, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Sen. Leroy Garcia and Rep. Daneya Esgar. The bill reates the medication-assisted treatment (MAT) expansion pilot program, administered by the University of Colorado College of Nursing, to expand access to medication-assisted treatment to opioid-dependent patients in Pueblo and Routt counties.
SB 17-105: “Concerning Consumers’ Right to Know their Electric Utility charges by requiring investor-owned electric utilities to provide their customers with a comprehensive breakdown of cost on their monthly bills,” by Sen. Leroy Garcia and Reps. Daneya Esgar & KC Becker. The bill requires an investor-owned electric utility to file with the public utilities commission for the commission’s review a comprehensive billing format that the investor-owned electric utility has developed for its monthly billing of customers.
SB 17-153: “Concerning Establishment of the Southwest Chief and Front Range Passenger Rail Commission to Oversee the Preservation and Expansion of Amtrak Southwest Chief Rail Service in Colorado and Facilitate the Development and Operation of a Front Range Passenger Rail System that Provides Passenger Rail Service In and Along the Interstate 25 Corridor,” by Sens. Larry Crowder & Leroy Garcia and Rep. Daneya Esgar. The bill replaces the existing southwest chief rail line economic development, rural tourism, and infrastructure repair and maintenance commission, the current statutory authorization for which expires on July 1, 2017, with an expanded southwest chief and front range passenger rail commission.
HB 17-1248: “Concerning the Funding of Colorado Water Conservation Board Projects, and, in Connection Therewith, Making Appropriations,” by Rep. Jeni Arndt and Sens. John Cooke & Jerry Sonnenberg. The bill appropriates the following amounts from the Colorado Water Conservation Board construction fund to the CWCB or the Division of Water Resources for certain projects.
HB 17-1279: “Concerning the Requirement that a Unit Owners’ Association Obtain Approval Through a Vote of Unit Owners Before Filing a Construction Defect Action,” by Reps. Alec Garnett & Lori Saine and Sens. Lucia Guzman & Jack Tate. The bill requires that, before the executive board of a unit owners’ association (HOA) in a common interest community brings suit against a developer or builder on behalf of unit owners based on a defect in construction work not ordered by the HOA itself, the board must notify the unit owners, call a meeting of the executive board, and obtain approval of a majority of unit owners.
HB 17-1280: “Concerning Conforming Colorado Statutory Language Related to Disability Trusts to the Federal ’21st Century Cures Act’,” by Reps. Dafna Michaelson Jenet & Dave Young and Sen. Bob Gardner. The bill conforms Colorado statutory language relating to the creation of a disability trust to conform to the language established in the federal ’21st Century Cures Act’. Specifically, it clarifies that the individual who is the beneficiary of a disability trust can also be the person who establishes such trust.
HB 17-1353: “Concerning Implementing Medicaid Initiatives that Create Higher Value in the Medicaid Program Leading to Better Health Outcomes for Medicaid Clients, and, in Connection Therewith, Continuing the Implementation of the Accountable Care Collaborative and Authorizing Performance-based Provider Payments,” by Rep. Dave Young and Sen. Kevin Lundberg. The bill authorizes the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to continue its implementation of the medicaid care delivery system, referred to as the accountable care collaborative (ACC).
SB 17-209: “Concerning Access to the Ballot by Candidates,” by Sen. Kevin Priola and Rep. Mike Weissman. The bill makes various changes to the laws governing access to the ballot.
SB 17-232: “Concerning Continuation under the Sunset Law of the Bingo-Raffle Advisory Board, and, in Connection Therewith, Implementing the Recommendations of the 2016 Sunset Report of the Department of Regulatory Agencies,” by Sen. Stephen Fenberg and Rep. Paul Rosenthal. The bill The bill implements the recommendations of the sunset review and report on the licensing of bingo and other games of chance through the Secretary of State.
HB 17-1155: “Concerning the Ability to Cure Campaign Finance Reporting Deficiencies Without Penalty,” by Rep. Dan Thurlow and Sen. Bob Gardner. The bill requires the Secretary of State to give notice to the particular committee by e-mail of deficiencies alleged in a complaint pursuant to the campaign finance provisions of the state constitution or the ‘Fair Campaign Practices Act’ (FCPA).
HB 17-1317: “Concerning the Authority of the State Historical Society to Dispose of Real Property Located on the Former Lowry Air Force Base,” by Reps. Daneya Esgar & Chris Hansen and Sens. John Kefalas & Randy Baumgardner. The bill grants the state historical society the authority to sell a vacant cold storage facility located on the former Lowry Air Force base.
HB 17-1342: “Concerning Authorization for a County to Submit a Ballot Question for a County Public Safety Improvements Tax at a Biennial County or November Odd-year Election,” by Rep. Adrienne Benavidez and Sen. Larry Crowder. The bill authorizes a county to submit a ballot question at a biennial county election or an election held in November of an odd-numbered year.
HB 17-1356: “Concerning the Temporary Authority of the Colorado Economic Development Commission to Allow Certain Businesses to Treat Specific Existing Income Tax Credits Differently,” by Reps. Crisanta Duran & Daneya Esgar and Sens. Leroy Garcia & Jack Tate. The bill allows the Colorado economic development commission to allow certain businesses that make a strategic capital investment in the state, subject to a maximum amount, and subject to the requirements of the specified income tax credits, to treat any of the following income tax credits allowed to the business as either carryforwardable for a five-year period or as transferable under certain circumstances.
HB 17-1072: “Concerning Human Trafficking for Sexual Servitude,” by Reps. Lois Landgraf & Polly Lawrence and Sen. John Cooke. The bill amends the language defining the crime of human trafficking for sexual servitude to include that a person who knowingly advertises, offers to sell, or sells travel services that facilitate activities defined as human trafficking of a minor for sexual servitude commits the offense of human trafficking of a minor for sexual servitude. ‘Travel services’ are defined in the bill.
HB 17-1190: “Concerning the Limited Applicability of the Colorado Supreme Court’s Decision in St. Jude’s Co. v. Roaring Fork Club, LLC, 351 P.3d 442 (Colo. 2015),” by Rep. KC Becker and Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg. The bill provides that the decision in the St. Jude’s Co. case interpreting section 37-92-103(4) does not apply to previously decreed absolute and conditional water rights or claims pending as of July 15, 2015. The interpretation of section 37-92-103 (4) in St. Jude’s Co. applies only to direct-flow appropriations, without storage, filed after July 15, 2015, for water diverted from a surface stream or tributary groundwater by a private entity for private aesthetic, recreational, and piscatorial purpose.
HB 17-1209: “Concerning Peace Officer Designation for the Manager of the Office of Prevention and Security Within the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management in the Department of Public Safety,” by Reps. Jovan Melton & Terri Carver and Sens. Rhonda Fields & John Cooke. The bill designates as a peace officer the manager of the office of prevention and security within the division of homeland security and emergency management in the department of public safety.
HB 17-1223: “Concerning the Creation of a Fraud Reporting Hotline to be Administered by the State Auditor, and, in Connection Therewith, Establishing Referral and Reporting Processes and State Auditor Investigative Authority,” by Reps. Lori Saine & Tracy Kraft-Tharp and Sens. Cheri Jahn & Tim Neville. The bill requires the state auditor to establish and administer a telephone number, fax number, email address, mailing address, or internet-based form whereby any individual may report an allegation of fraud committed by a state employee or an individual acting under a contract with a state agency. This system is referred to in the bill as the ‘fraud hotline’ or ‘hotline’ and any report to the hotline as a ‘hotline call’.
HB 17-1238: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of Laws Related to Debt Management and Collection Services from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Rep. Pete Lee and Sen. Chris Holbert. The bill relocates the laws related to debt management and collection services from articles 14, 14.1, 14.3, and 14.5 of title 12.
HB 17-1239: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of Laws Related to Private Occupational Schools from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Rep. Cole Wist and Sen. Lucia Guzman. The bill creates a new article 64 in title 23 of the Colorado Revised Statutes and relocates the repealed provisions of article 59 of title 12 of the Colorado Revised Statutes to that article 64 and repeals article 59 of title 12 of the Colorado Revised Statutes.
HB 17-1240: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of the Laws Related to the Department of Public Health and Environment from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Rep. Cole Wist and Sen. John Cooke. The bill relocates Article 29.3 of title 12 to part 6 of article 1.5 of title 25 and Article 30 of title 12 to article 48 of title 25.
HB 17-1243: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of the Laws Related to Wholesale Sales Representatives from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Rep. Yeulin Willett and Sen. Lucia Guzman. The bill relocates article 66 of title 12, which relates to wholesale sales representatives, to title 13.
HB 17-1244: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of the Laws Related to Cemeteries from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Rep. Leslie Herod and Sen. Bob Gardner. The bill relocates article 12 of title 12, which relates to cemeteries, to title 6.
HB 17-1245: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of the Laws Related to Public Establishments from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Rep. Mike Foote and Sen. Daniel Kagan. The bill relocates parts 1 and 3 of article 44 of title 12, which relate to public establishments, to title 6.
HB 17-1251: “Concerning the Scheduled Repeal of Reports by Higher Education Agencies to the General Assembly,” by Rep. Dan Nordberg and Sen. Dominick Moreno. The bill addresses the reporting requirements of higher education agencies.
HB 17-1255: “Concerning the Scheduled Repeal of a Report by the Board of Veterans Affairs to the General Assembly,” by Rep. Dan Nordberg and Sen. Andy Kerr. The bill continues indefinitely a reporting requirement of the board of veterans affairs.
HB 17-1257: “Concerning the Scheduled Repeal of Reports by the Department of Natural Resources to the General Assembly,” by Rep. Jeni Arndt and Sen. Jack Tate. The bill continues indefinitely reporting requirements of the Department of Natural Resources that were scheduled to repeal according to section 24-1-136(11)(a)(I).
HB 17-1265: “Concerning an Increase in the Total Employer Contribution for Employers in the Judicial Division of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association,” by Reps. KC Becker & Dan Nordberg and Sens. Andy Kerr & Kevin Priola. For the calendar year beginning in 2019, for the judicial division only, the bill increases the AED to 3.40% of total payroll and requires the AED payment to increase by 0.4% of total payroll at the start of each of the following 4 calendar years through 2023.
HB 17-1267: “Concerning the Scheduled Repeal of Reports by Educational Agencies to the General Assembly,” by Rep. Jeni Arndt and Sen. Dominick Moreno. The bill addresses the reporting requirements of educational agencies.
HB 17-1295: “Concerning the Repeal of the Governor’s Office of Marijuana Coordination,” by Rep. Bob Rankin and Sen. Dominick Moreno. The bill repeals the office of marijuana coordination, effective July 1, 2017.
HB 17-1298: “Concerning the Date by Which the State Personnel Director is Required to Submit the Annual Compensation Report,” by Rep. Millie Hamner and Sen. Kevin Lundberg. The bill changes the deadline for submission of the state personnel director’s annual report to September 15 of each year beginning with the 2017 report.
HB 17-1346: “Concerning the Sale of More Than Fifteen Acres of Land at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs for the Expansion of Fort Logan National Cemetery,” by Rep. Susan Lontine and Sen. Owen Hill. The bill grants the Department of Human Services authority to execute a land sale, at fair market value, to sell 51 additional acres, or up to 66 acres. The bill specifies that the proceeds of the sale of the additional 51 acres to the United States department of veterans affairs must be credited to the Fort Logan land sale account in the capital construction fund.
SB 17-222: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of the Laws Related to Fireworks from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Sen. John Cooke and Rep. Yeulin Willett. The bill relocates article 28 of title 12, which relates to fireworks, to a new part 20 of article 33.5 of title 24, which title pertains to the department of public safety.
SB 17-225: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of Laws Related to Farm Products from Title 12 of the Colorado Revised Statutes as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Sen. John Cooke and Rep. Yeulin Willett. The bill relocates part 2 of article 16 of title 12, the ‘Commodity Handler Act’, to article 36 of title 35; and part 1 of article 16 of title 12, the ‘Farm Products Act’, to article 37 of title 35.
SB 17-228: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Relocation of the Laws Related to Licenses Granted by Local Governments from Title 12, Colorado Revised Statutes, as Part of the Organizational Recodification of Title 12,” by Sen. Bob Gardner and Rep. Cole Wist. The bill relocates article 18 of title 12, which relates to dance halls, to title 30, which pertains to counties; article 25.5 of title 12, which relates to escort services, to title 29, which relates to local governments; and relocates article 56 of title 12, which relates to pawnbrokers, to title 29.
SB 17-242: “Concerning Modernizing Terminology in the Colorado Revised Statutes Related to Behavioral Health,” by Sen. Beth Martinez Humenik and Reps. Kim Ransom & Joann Ginal. The bill updates and modernizes terminology in the Colorado Revised Statutes related to behavioral health, mental health, alcohol abuse, and substance abuse.
SB 17-243: “Concerning the Continuation under the Sunset Law of the Motorcycle Operator Safety Training Program by the Director of the Office of Transportation Safety in the Department of Transportation, and, in Connection Therewith, Transferring the Operation of the Program to the Chief of the State Patrol Beginning in 2018,” by Sens. Nancy Todd & Randy Baumgardner and Rep. Dominique Jackson. The bill continues the motorcycle operator safety training program for 3 years, until 2020.
SB 17-279: “Concerning Clarification of the Applicability Provisions of Recent Legislation to Promote an Equitable Financial Contribution Among Affected Public Bodies in Connection with Urban Redevelopment Projects Allocating Tax Revenues,” by Sens. Beth Martinez Humenik & Rachel Zenzinger and Reps. Matt Gray & Susan Beckman. The bill clarifies the applicability provisions of legislation enacted in 2015 and 2016 to promote an equitable financial contribution among affected public bodies in connection with urban redevelopment projects allocating tax revenues.
SB 17-291: “Concerning Continuation of the School Safety Resource Center Advisory Board,” by Sen. Beth Martinez Humenik and Rep. Jeff Bridges. The bill implements the recommendations of the sunset review and report on the school safety resource center advisory board by eliminating the repeal date of the board and extending the board through September 1, 2022.
SB 17-293: “Concerning Updating the Reference to a National Standard Setting Forth Certain Specifications Applicable to the Type of Paper Used to Publish the Colorado Revised Statutes,” by Sen. Daniel Kagan and Rep. Pete Lee. The bill updates the statutory reference to the current applicable alkaline minimum reserve requirements and acidity levels for uncoated paper as established by the American national standards institute and the national information standards organization.
SB 17-294: “Concerning the Nonsubstantive Revision of Statutes in the Colorado Revised Statutes, as Amended, and, in Connection Therewith, Amending or Repealing Obsolete, Imperfect, and Inoperative Law to Preserve the Legislative Intent, Effect, and Meaning of the Law,” by Sen. Bob Gardner and Rep. Pete Lee. The bill amends, repeals, and reconstructs various statutory provisions of law that are obsolete, imperfect, or inoperative. The specific reasons for each amendment or repeal are set forth in the appendix to the bill.
SB 17-304: “Concerning the Authority of the Joint Technology Committee,” by Sens. Angela Williams & Beth Martinez Humenik and Reps. Dan Thurlow & Jonathan Singer. The bill adds definitions of ‘cybersecurity’ and ‘data privacy’ for the purposes of the joint technology committee. In addition, the bill modifies the definition of ‘oversee’ for the purposes of the committee to be consistent with other statutory provisions.
SB 17-254: “Concerning the Provision for Payment of the Expenses of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Departments of the State of Colorado, and of its Agencies and Institutions, For and During the Fiscal Year Beginning July 1, 2017, Except as Otherwise Noted,” by Sen. Kent Lambert and Rep. Millie Hamner. The bill provides for the payment of expenses of the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the state of Colorado, and of its agencies and institutions, for and during the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017, except as otherwise noted.
SB 17-267: “Concerning the Sustainability of Rural Colorado,” by Sens. Lucia Guzman & Jerry Sonnenberg and Reps. KC Becker & Jon Becker. The bill creates a new Colorado healthcare affordability and sustainability enterprise (CHASE) within the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), effective July 1, 2017, to charge and collect a healthcare affordability and sustainability fee that functions similarly to the repealed hospital provider fee. Because CHASE is an enterprise for purposes of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), its revenue does not count against the state fiscal year spending limit.
For a list of the governor’s 2017 legislative actions, click here.
Filed Under: Legislation Tagged With: agricultural law, business law, criminal law, disability law, domestic relations law, education law, elder law, election law, employment law, energy law, family law, government law, HB 17-1003, HB 17-1072, HB 17-1077, HB 17-1104, HB 17-1113, HB 17-1155, HB 17-1190, HB 17-1209, HB 17-1223, HB 17-1238, HB 17-1239, HB 17-1240, HB 17-1243, HB 17-1244, HB 17-1245, HB 17-1248, HB 17-1251, HB 17-1255, HB 17-1257, HB 17-1258, HB 17-1265, HB 17-1267, HB 17-1279, HB 17-1280, HB 17-1283, HB 17-1289, HB 17-1295, HB 17-1298, HB 17-1317, HB 17-1342, HB 17-1346, HB 17-1353, HB 17-1354, HB 17-1356, health law, HOA law, Human trafficking, industrial hemp, juvenile law, marijuana law, Medicaid, medical marijuana, motor vehicle law, real estate law, SB 17-074, SB 17-105, SB 17-117, SB 17-153, SB 17-209, SB 17-222, SB 17-225, SB 17-228, SB 17-232, SB 17-242, SB 17-243, SB 17-254, SB 17-267, SB 17-279, SB 17-280, SB 17-291, SB 17-294, SB 17-304, SB 17-305, transportation law, trust & estate law, trust and estate law, water law
Bills Closing Torrens Title, Allowing Electronic Preservation of Plats by Clerk & Recorder, Adopting Revised Uniform Notorial Acts Law, and More Signed
Although the legislative session is over, the governor continues to sign bills. This week, he signed one bill on Monday, May 15; four bills on Wednesday, May 17; and 13 bills on Thursday, May 18. To date, he has signed 231 bills and vetoed one bill this legislative session. The bills signed this week are summarized here.
HB 17-1204: “Concerning Juvenile Delinquency Record Expungement, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Rep. Pete Lee and Sen. John Cooke. The bill restricts access to juvenile delinquency records by making certain records public only after a court orders that a child be charged as an adult, consistent with recent changes to the direct file statute, and by eliminating the requirement that the prosecuting attorney notify the school principal of minor offenses.
HB 17-1248: “Concerning the Funding of Colorado Water Conservation Board Projects, and, in Connection Therewith, Making Appropriations,” by Rep. Jeni Arndt and Sens. John Cooke & Jerry Sonnenberg. The bill makes certain appropriations from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) construction fund to the CWCB or the Division of Water Resources.
HB 17-1301: “Concerning Protecting Colorado Citizens who are Engaged in an Act that is Protected by the Colorado Constitution from Outside Agencies,” by Rep. Steve Lebsock and Sen. Tim Neville. The bill prohibits a state agency from aiding or assisting a federal agency or agency of another state in arresting a Colorado citizen for committing an act that is a Colorado constitutional right; or violating a Colorado citizen’s Colorado constitutional right.
SB 17-129: “Concerning the Electronic Preservation of a Plat Recorded by a County Clerk and Recorder,” by Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg and Reps. Jon Becker & Jeni Arndt. The bill permits a county clerk and recorder to preserve an original plat in an electronic format. If an electronic filing system is established, then the board of county commissioners is authorized to provide additional funding and space suitable for a county surveyor or any other appropriate local government official to store original mylar, paper, or polyester sheets of subdivision plats and land survey plats.
SB 17-140: “Concerning the Torrens Title Registration System,” by Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg and Reps. Jon Becker & Jeni Arndt. The bill closes the Torrens title registration system to new applications to register land title in this state, effective January 1, 2018.
HB 17-1162: “Concerning Action that can be Taken Against an Individual Based on the Individual’s Failure to Pay for a Traffic Violation, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Rep. Matt Gray and Sen. Bob Gardner. The bill decreases the penalty for driving under restraint to a class A traffic infraction if the basis of the restraint is an outstanding judgment.
HB 17-1201: “Concerning Authorization for Granting a High School Diploma Endorsement in the Combined Disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,” by Rep. James Coleman and Sens. Kevin Priola & Rachel Zenzinger. The bill authorizes a school district, board of cooperative services, district charter high school, or institute charter high school to grant a high school diploma endorsement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to students who demonstrate mastery in STEM. To obtain the endorsement, a student must complete the high school graduation requirements at a high level of proficiency, successfully complete 4 STEM courses selected by the local education provider in addition to the high school graduation requirements in these subjects, achieve a minimum score specified in the bill on one of several specified mathematics assessments, and successfully complete a final capstone project.
HB 17-1211: “Concerning Professional Development for Educators Regarding Disciplinary Strategies for Young Students,” by Rep. James Coleman and Sen. Kevin Priola. The bill creates the discipline strategies pilot program to provide money to school districts, boards of cooperative services, and charter schools for professional development for educators in the use of culturally responsive methods of student discipline for students enrolled in preschool through third grade and developmentally appropriate responses to the behavioral issues of students enrolled in preschool through third grade.
HB 17-1214: “Concerning Efforts to Encourage Employee Ownership of the State’s Existing Small Businesses,” by Rep. James Coleman and Sen. Jack Tate. The bill requires the Colorado Office of Economic Development to engage the services of a local nonprofit organization that supports and promotes the employee-owned business model to educate the staff at the office on the forms and merits of employee ownership in order for the office to promote employee ownership as part of its small business assistance center.
HB 17-1227: “Concerning an Extension of Demand-Side Management Goals for Investor-Owned Utilities as Set by the Public Utilities Commission,” by Reps. Faith Winter & Polly Lawrence and Sens. Stephen Fenberg & Kevin Priola. The bill extends programs establishing electricity goals for investor-owned utilities until 2028.
HB 17-1246: “Concerning Implementation of the STEMI Task Force Recommendations Relating to Reporting Confirmed Heart Attack Incidents in the State,” by Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp and Sens. Leroy Garcia & Jack Tate. The bill implements recommendations of the STEMI task force regarding hospital reporting of heart attacks.
HB 17-1266: “Concerning Allowing Persons who were Convicted of Misdemeanors for Marijuana-Related Behaviors that are No Longer Illegal to Petition for the Sealing of Criminal Records Relating to Such Convictions,” by Reps. Edie Hooten & Jovan Melton and Sens. Vicki Marble & Stephen Fenberg. The bill allows persons who were convicted of misdemeanors for the use or possession of marijuana to petition for the sealing of criminal records relating to such convictions if their behavior would not have been a criminal offense if the behavior had occurred on or after December 10, 2012.
HB 17-1354: “Concerning the Collection of Delinquent Taxes on Certain Mobile Homes,” by Rep. KC Becker and Sens. Kevin Priola & John Kefalas. The bill makes the process to enforce the collection of delinquent taxes on mobile or manufactured homes that are not affixed to the ground permissive, and therefore gives the county treasurer more flexibility to enter into partial payment agreements with the owners of such mobile or manufactured homes. The bill authorizes the county treasurer to declare tax liens on mobile or manufactured homes that are not affixed to the ground as county-held to address title deficiencies in conjunction with the collection of taxes.
SB 17-132: “Concerning Enactment of the ‘Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts’ as Amended,” by Sen. Bob Gardner and Reps. Jovan Melton & Cole Wist. The bill enacts the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts, and creates a working group to study and make recommendations by December 1, 2017, regarding electronic remote notarization. The Secretary of State must promulgate rules regarding electronic remote notarization, after which notaries may perform a notarial act by electronic remote notarization in compliance with the rules.
SB 17-193: “Concerning the Establishment of the ‘Center for Research into Substance Use Disorder Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Support Strategies’ at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Sens. Kevin Lundberg & Cheri Jahn and Reps. Bob Rankin & Brittany Pettersen. The bill establishes the Center for Research into Substance Use Disorder Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Support Strategies at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
SB 17-207: “Concerning Strengthening Colorado’s Statewide Response to Behavioral Health Crises, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Sens. John Cooke & Daniel Kagan and Reps. Lang Sias & Joseph Salazar. The bill clarifies the intent of the General Assembly for establishing a coordinated behavioral health crisis response system. The crisis system is intended to be a comprehensive, appropriate, and preferred response to behavioral health crises in Colorado. By clarifying the role of the crisis system and making necessary enhancements, the bill puts systems in place to help Colorado end the use of jails and correctional facilities as placement options for individuals placed on emergency mental health holds if they have not also been charged with a crime and enhances the ability of emergency departments to serve individuals who are experiencing a behavioral health crisis.
SB 17-297: “Concerning Revising Higher Education Performance Requirements,” by Sen. Kent Lambert and Rep. Millie Hamner. The bill repeals a performance-based funding plan for institutions of higher education that was included in the master plan for Colorado postsecondary education. The performance-based funding plan was not implemented.
SB 17-305: “Concerning Modifications to Select Statutory Provisions Affecting Primary Elections Enacted by Voters at the 2016 Statewide General Election to Facilitate the Effective Implementation of the State’s Election Laws, and, in Connection Therewith, Making an Appropriation,” by Sens. Stephen Fenberg & Kevin Lundberg and Reps. Patrick Neville & Mike Foote. At the 2016 general election, the voters of the state approved 2 initiated measures affecting primary elections: Proposition 107, which restored a presidential primary election, and Proposition 108, which allows participation by unaffiliated voters in primary elections. The bill makes several modifications to some of the statutory provisions that were affected by Propositions 107 and 108 for the purpose of facilitating the effective implementation of the state’s election laws.
For a complete list of the governor’s 2017 legislative actions, click here.
Filed Under: Legislation Tagged With: business law, criminal law, education law, election law, employment law, HB 17-1162, HB 17-1201, HB 17-1204, HB 17-1211, HB 17-1214, HB 17-1227, HB 17-1246, HB 17-1248, HB 17-1266, HB 17-1301, HB 17-1354, health law, juvenile law, legislation, marijuana law, medical marijuana, mental health, motor vehicle law, notary law, real estate law, SB 17-129, SB 17-132, SB 17-140, SB 17-193, SB 17-207, SB 17-297, SB 17-305, tax law, title insurance, trust & estate law, trust and estate law, water law
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Key word "complexity"
Publications Found: 127 · Show All Abstracts
al-Rifaie M. M., Leymarie F. F., Latham W. & Bishop M. J. (2017) Swarmic autopoiesis and computational creativity. Connection Science 29(4): 276–294. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/5027
In this paper two swarm intelligence algorithms are used, the first leading the “attention” of the swarm and the latter responsible for the tracing mechanism. The attention mechanism is coordinated by agents of Stochastic Diffusion Search where they selectively attend to areas of a digital canvas (with line drawings) which contains (sharper) corners. Once the swarm’s attention is drawn to the line of interest with a sharp corner, the corresponding line segment is fed into the tracing algorithm, Dispersive Flies Optimisation which “consumes” the input in order to generate a “swarmic sketch” of the input line. The sketching process is the result of the “flies” leaving traces of their movements on the digital canvas which are then revisited repeatedly in an attempt to re-sketch the traces they left. This cyclic process is then introduced in the context of autopoiesis, where the philosophical aspects of the autopoietic artist are discussed. The autopoetic artist is described in two modalities: gluttonous and contented. In the Gluttonous Autopoietic Artist mode, by iteratively focussing on areas-of-rich-complexity, as the decoding process of the input sketch unfolds, it leads to a less complex structure which ultimately results in an empty canvas; therein reifying the artwork’s “death”. In the Contented Autopoietic Artist mode, by refocussing the autopoietic artist’s reflections on “meaning” onto different constitutive elements, and modifying her reconstitution, different behaviours of autopoietic creativity can be induced and therefore, the autopoietic processes become less likely to fade away and more open-ended in their creative endeavour.
Key words: creativity, autopoiesis, stochastic diffusion search, dispersive flies optimisation, generative art.
Alhadeff-Jones M. (2008) Three generations of complexity theories: Nuances and ambiguities. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40(1): 66–82. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/330
The contemporary use of the term ‘complexity’ frequently indicates that it is considered a unified concept. This may lead to a neglect of the range of different theories that deal with the implications related to the notion of complexity. This paper, integrating both the English and the Latin traditions of research associated with this notion, suggests a more nuanced use of the term, thereby avoiding simplification of the concept to some of its dominant expressions only. The paper further explores the etymology of ‘complexity’ and offers a chronological presentation of three generations of theories that have shaped its uses; the epistemic and socio-cultural roots of these theories are also introduced. From an epistemological point of view, this reflection sheds light on the competing interpretations underlying the definition of what is considered as complex. Also, from an anthropological perspective it considers both the emancipatory as well as the alienating dimensions of complexity. Based on the highlighted ambiguities, the paper suggests in conclusion that contributions grounded in contemporary theories related to complexity, as well as critical appraisals of their epistemological and ethical legitimacy, need to follow the recursive feedback loops and dynamics that they constitute. In doing so, researchers and practitioners in education should consider their own practice as a learning process that does not require the reduction of the antagonisms and the complementarities that shape its own complexity.
Alhadeff-Jones M. (2009) Revisiting educational research through Morin’s paradigm of complexity. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education 6(1): 61–70. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/332
The aim of this paper is to question the way one conceives the use of a specific theoretical approach (i.e., theories associated with the concept of complexity) in order to promote changes in educational practices and theories. The position I am adopting translates the conviction that any reform of thought has to be conceived in conjunction with a reflection about the idea of reform itself (Morin, 1999). It is therefore assumed that the use of the notion of complexity, to be critical and to bring significant changes, supposes not only to use a specific theoretical vocabulary, but also and above all to change the way scientific activity itself is conceived in order to bring about such a transformation. Following Edgar Morin’s constructivist and non-dualistic contribution, this paper discusses concepts such as program, strategy, prescription, interpretation, monoreferentiality and multireferentiality, in order to discuss researchers’ implication and the way they manage the relationships between the conditions of production of scientific discourses and the ″realities″ to which they are referring.
Alhadeff-Jones M. (2010) Challenging the limits of critique in education through Morin’s paradigm of complexity. Studies in Philosophy and Education 29(5): 477–490.
This paper is inspired by Edgar Morin’s paradigm of complexity and his constructivist and non-dualistic critique of scientific and philosophical forms of reductionism. It aims to challenge the fragmentation and the reduction framing the understanding of the notion of “critique” in educational sciences, and more broadly in the academia. Based on a review of the literature identified in French-speaking and English-speaking critical traditions in education, several factors determining the way the idea of critique is reduced are highlighted. Stressing the tacit character of those variables challenges the limits of traditional conceptions of critique in contemporary education. According to the constructivist, complex and non-dualistic position adopted, this paper illustrates the relevance of an epistemological framework integrating more systematically the conditions of emergence, the limitations, as well as the antagonistic, complementary and contradictory relationships, that connect educational theories of critique to one another. Based on this position, this paper finally suggests that a distinction be made between “hypocritique” and “hypercritique” as a semantic artifact, stressing the importance of challenging educational research and theories according to the level of complexity that one may attribute to them.
Alhadeff-Jones M. (2012) Transformative learning and the challenges of complexity. In: Taylor E. W., Cranton P. & Associates (eds.) Handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research and practice. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco: 178–194. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/488
In order to illustrate what is at stake in the definition and in the development of a complex and constructivist epistemology of transformative learning, this chapter introduces Edgar Morin’s paradigm of complexity and explores six challenges that appear particularly illustrative with regards to the advance of research and practices related to transformative learning.
Alhadeff-Jones M. (2013) Complexity, methodology and method: Crafting a critical process of research. Complexity and Education%22\ title=\List all publications from Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education\>Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education 10(1/2): 19–44. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/920
Alhadeff-Jones M. (2013) Complexity, methodology and method: Crafting a critical process of research. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education 10(1/2): 19–44. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/920
This paper defines a theoretical framework aiming to support the actions and reflections of researchers looking for a “method” in order to critically conceive the complexity of a scientific process of research. First, it starts with a brief overview of the core assumptions framing Morin’s “paradigm of complexity” and Le Moigne’s “general system theory.” Distinguishing “methodology” and “method,” the framework is conceived based on three moments, which represent recurring stages of the spiraling development of research. The first moment focuses on the definition of the research process and its sub-systems (author, system of ideas, object of study and method) understood as a complex form of organization finalized in a specific environment. The second moment introduces a matrix aiming to model the research process and nine core methodological issues, according to a programmatic and critical approach. Using the matrix previously modeled, the third moment suggests conceiving of the research process following a strategic mindset that focuses on contingencies, in order to locate, share and communicate the path followed throughout the inquiry. Relevance: This paper provides the readers with a constructivist methodology of research inspired by Morin’s paradigm of complexity and Le Moigne’s general system theory.
Anderson M., Deely J., Krampen M., Ransdell J., Sebeok T. A. & von Uexküll T. (1984) A semiotic perspective on the sciences: Steps toward a new paradigm. Semiotica 52(1/2): 7–47.
Semiotics has itself thrived in a generative atmosphere of specialization and synthesis. Now, in an expanding intellectual universe, we converge with several other strains of scholarship. In this brief paper, we not only acknowledge this convergence and complementarity, but actively welcome the emerging rapprochement, which we interpret as representing a radical shift in scientific paradigm. This conceptual revolution transcends a dichotomous Cartesian, analytic view of the world, in the direction of a view embracing the whole, respecting complexity, and fostering synthesis.
Key words: natural selection, dissipative structure, human language, annual international conference, competitive unit.
Arnellos A. & Darzentas J. (2007) Exploring Creativity in the Design Process: A Systems-Semiotic Perspective. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 14(1): 37–64. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/3329
This paper attempts to establish a systems-semiotic framework explaining creativity in the design process, where the design process is considered to have as its basis the cognitive process. The design process is considered as the interaction between two or more cognitive systems resulting in a purposeful and ongoing transformation of their already complex representational structures and the production of newer ones, in order to ful?ll an ill-defined goal. Creativity is considered as the result of an emergence of organizational complexity in each cognitive system participating in the design process, while it is trying to purposefully incorporate new constraints in its meaning structures. The meanings generated in each system are identi?ed as the contingent and anticipatory content of its representations, and where self-organization is the dominant process in which they are continuously involved. Furthermore, Peircean semiotic processes appear to provide the functionality needed by the emergent representational structures in order to complete the cycle of a creative design process. Creativity originates in the abductive stage of the semiotic process, the fallible nature of which is maintained in the proposed framework by the fact that the respective emergent representations can be mis?ts. The nodal points of the framework are identified and analyzed showing that a cognitive system needs the whole interactive anticipatory cycle in order to engage in a creative design process.
Key words: Anticipations, Creativity, Emergent Representations, Peircean Semiotic Processes, Self-organization
Ashby W. R. (1962) Principles of the self-organizing system. In: Foerster H. von & Zopf Jr. G. W. (eds.) Principles of self-organization. Pergamon Press, New York: 255–278. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/4372
Questions of principle are sometimes regarded as too unpractical to be important, but I suggest that that is certainly not the case in our subject. The range of phenomena that we have to deal with is so broad that, were it to be dealt with wholly at the technological or practical level, we would be defeated by the sheer quantity and complexity of it. The total range can be handled only piecemeal; among the pieces are those homomorphisms of the complex whole that we call “abstract theory” or “general principles.” They alone give the bird’s-eye view that enables us to move about in this vast field without losing our bearings. I propose, then, to attempt such a bird’s-eye survey.
Baecker D. (2012) Observing Networks: A Note on Asymmetrical Social Forms. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 19(4): 9–25. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/3308
The paper looks at a combination of systems theory, cybernetics, and sociological theory in search of a tool for inquiring into contemporary social forms. The idea of observing networks, drawing on Heinz von Foerster’s and Niklas Luhmann’s notion of observing systems and Harrison C. White’s network calculus of identity and control, is outlined to enable basic sociological intuitions about social forms to be integrated with an understanding of both complexity and recursivity organizing our perspective on the human condition in a precarious world. Social forms are shown to gain robustness not from substantial identity but from relational ambiguity. Observing networks, or so the hypothesis goes, combine bodies, minds, society, and – soon perhaps – intelligent machines. The paper looks at how an understanding of complexity, recursivity, system, form, and network may help flesh out the calculus of our human condition.
Key words: complexity, form, network, recursivity, society, system
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Articles, Sports & Fitness
You Don’t Need to be a Strongman to Train Like One
MY FITNESS PAL—Similar to “American Ninja Warrior” and the obstacle-based fitness trend it spawned, strongman training first started as a hit TV show strictly for our own entertainment. In 1977, CBS aired the first edition of a contest called “World’s Strongest Man,” where participants — a mix of bodybuilders, weightlifters, football players and the like — literally strapped refrigerators to their backs and sprinted for 17 seconds.
Four decades later, strongman training techniques and equipment have evolved, and the trend is making its way into commercial gyms. While this fitness method is much more thoughtful, functional and safe than it once was, it still tends to attract spectators. But you no longer have to sit on the sidelines. You can try these muscle-building, fat-torching moves regardless of your fitness level. In other words, you don’t need to be a strongman to train like one.
“[Commercial gyms] are starting to get variations of strongman equipment that won’t destroy their facility. You might see super heavy medicine balls that people use to simulate a stone load. Or you’ll see people carry dumbbells like farmer handles. There might be sandbags for people to lift and carry,” says Chad Canter, a trainer at the strength and conditioning studio, TS Fitness, and coach for PowerNYC, where he works with 20 male and female strongman athletes, including four pros, a national and world champion.
Read the full story on MyFitnessPal!
FeaturedMyFitnessPalSports & Fitness
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Jerry Nadler: 'Hope Hicks Gave Us A Lot Of Useful Information'
Rep. David Cicilline said Hicks was asked about the president's alleged relationship with former Playmate Karen McDougal although he did not say how she answered.
3 weeks ago by Susie Madrak
Rep. Jerry Nadler said yesterday that the House Intelligence committee did obtain useful information from Hope Hicks that did not involve her work in the White House.
NADLER: Hope Hicks answered some questions. She gave us a lot of good information. The White House asserted so-called absolute immunity, which is ridiculous, which we will destroy in court.
Hicks did answer some questions about her time on the campaign including Russia interference and Wikileaks references in meetings, Lawrence O'Donnell said.
"Democratic Congressman David Cicilline said she was asked about the president's alleged relationship with Karen McDougal, although he did not say how she answered. A transcript could be released in 48 hours. Leading off our discussion is Eric Swalwell of California and a House intelligence committee member and also a Democratic candidate for president.
"How much of what the committee wanted to hear did the committee get to hear?" O'Donnell asked.
"I was a part of that interview team today. What we saw principally was just how far the president is willing to go to protect the country from knowing what he did with the Russians and what he did to obstruct the investigation into that and show us what he is willing to do to obstruct Congress and a witness in Ms. Hick, who I interviewed and who hasn't changed," Swalwell said.
"She was quite forthcoming in some ways. She has a deep knowledge and a front row seat to what the president and candidate Trump did, but also she knows where the red lines are. That's where she stops and refuses to answer. I think it's important for us to see where the red lines are for the Trump team and work around them and the subpoenas and document requests we send out. We are going to get to the truth whether they want to tell us now or later."
"Let's listen to what Madeline Dean said about it," O'Donnell said.
DEAN: I asked her about communications with Russians or Russian officials. She tried to say that there were no communications whatsoever. When i asked more specifically, she said probably an e-mail or more. She didn't think they were relevant. I tried to impress upon the witness it was not up to her to decide what was relevant. We wanted the facts and the truth before the American people. I had stonewalling there.
"Congressman Swalwell, did she say anything about that part and the questioning about contacts and activities during the campaign and did she say anything that was different from what she appeared to say in the Mueller report?" O'Donnell asked.
"I will characterize it this way. She knew what she was not supposed to say. Her memory would be foggy or she would refuse to answer. She wouldn't really go into the Mueller report, citing it as a time she was at the White House. What this shows me is how guilty this gang is," Swalwell said.
"Innocent people don't come in and act this way. Innocent presidents don't tell aides or former aides to go in and put up walls around what you can say. Innocent people say 'You know what? We didn't do anything wrong, so you go in there and tell them everything we did and we will be cleared. That's not what we've seen, and that's not what we will see."
Hope Hicks, House Intelligence Committee, immunity, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Rep. Jerry Nadler, trump
House Judiciary Chair Nadler: Over 60 Trump-Related Documents To Be Requested
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler tells ABC's George Stephanopoulos that his committee will be issuing document requests to over 60 different individuals from the White House, DOJ to the Trump Organization.
Rep. Nadler: The President Must Not Be Allowed To Become A King
"We cannot allow Donald Trump and his minions to convert a democratic government into what amounts to a monarchy where Congress elected by the people has no real role," Rep. Nadler said.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler: 'The Role Of Congress Is Not To Protect The President'
Rep. Jerrold Nadler explains to Meet the Press host Chuck Todd what the role of Congress is supposed to be when dealing with the sort of lawlessness we're witnessing from Trump, members of his family and his administration right now.
Rep. Jerry Nadler: Evidence Will Show If 'Offenses Rise To The Gravity' Of Impeachment
The new Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee told ABC News' THIS WEEK, he's against any impeachment proceedings unless compelling evidence is found to put "the country through the trauma of an impeachment process."
Rep. Jerry Nadler: 'We Have A President Who Lies Incessantly To The American People'
Rep. Jerry Nadler, who will lead the House Judiciary Committee in January tells NBC's Meet the Press that Trump has continually lied to the American people on big and small issues and with the Cohen revelations he may still be compromised [...]
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← Jewish Authors and Characters
Characters Who Are First in Prominence, But Not the First to Appear →
Fifty Shades of States
I’d like to state that some novels capture a state — the feel, the ambiance, the streets, etc.
That obvious fact occurred to me last week as I read Tom MacDonald’s The Charlestown Connection, a mystery set in Massachusetts — mostly Boston’s Charlestown section (pictured above). The novel has interesting characters, but just as interesting is its you-are-there descriptions of various places in Beantown.
Many other novels, of course, do the same with other states in the U.S. I won’t give examples from all 50 states, but will mention one or more books from more than 20 states — listed alphabetically. They might or might not be the ultimate novels set in those states, but they’re in the discussion. And my apologies to non-U.S. readers of this blog for today’s U.S.-centric post. 🙂
Alabama: Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café contains a double bonus — great evocations of The Yellowhammer State’s present (as of the novel’s 1980s publishing date) and past.
Arizona: Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale is the story of four women who live in Phoenix.
Arkansas: Charles Portis’ True Grit has an 1870s setting in places such as the rural Dardanelle area and the more citified Fort Smith.
California: Way too many novels to name are set in The Golden State, but, to offer just some examples, there are various John Steinbeck books (East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and so on). Also, the crime fiction of Walter Mosley (such as Devil in a Blue Dress) and Sue Grafton (her alphabet mysteries) expertly conveys the vibe of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara (the city that Grafton’s Santa Teresa is based on), and other California locales.
Florida: Also set in the 1870s, The Yearling captures the atmosphere of a rural/backwoods part of The Sunshine State as author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings focuses on a boy and his fawn.
Georgia: Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye — a hypnotic 1941 novel that includes an unusual (for its time) look at homosexuality — takes places at an Army base in The Peach State.
Hawaii: David Lodge’s Paradise News is initially set in the United Kingdom but then moves to Hawaii — with the state’s many charms depicted amid the plot involving an ill relative and a romance.
Indiana: Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, which has a strong theme of “old money” vs. “new money,” is set in Indianapolis.
Louisiana: Anne Rice’s multigenerational The Witching Hour spends many chapters in New Orleans — an evocative place for a spooky novel.
Maine: Many of Stephen King’s intense works are of course set here, and Richard Russo’s Empire Falls and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge also unspool in The Pine Tree State. Strout’s title character is…flinty.
Maryland: A number of Anne Tyler novels, including The Accidental Tourist and Ladder of Years, are set in or near Baltimore.
Michigan: Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex stars the gender-confused Cal/Calliope, but a major supporting “character” is Detroit.
Minnesota: Sinclair Lewis placed many of his memorable novels in the Midwest, with Main Street set in The North Star State.
Mississippi: The setting of many a William Faulkner novel, including As I Lay Dying and Light in August.
Missouri: The adventures in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer happen in The Show-Me State.
New Jersey: Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao toggles between the Dominican Republic and a well-described Garden State.
New York: Like California, New York (and especially New York City) is the locale for countless novels. Just five examples from different times would be Adam Langer’s Ellington Boulevard (set in the 21st century), James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain (20th century), Jack Finney’s Time and Again (20th and 19th centuries), Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (19th century), and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer (18th century). Time and Again‘s superb photos of NYC in the late 1800s add to the effect.
Ohio: Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio — of course.
Pennsylvania: The Keystone State’s two biggest cities are covered in Lisa Scottoline’s Philadelphia-set mysteries (such as The Vendetta Defense) and in more than one Michael Chabon novel (including Wonder Boys).
Rhode Island: In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, Subhash leaves India for graduate studies in Rhode Island and stays there after college as the novel’s dramatic events continue to unfold.
South Dakota: The roamin’ Jack Reacher goes to The Mount Rushmore State in Lee Child’s 61 Hours, and boy is it cold and snowy in that thriller.
Tennessee: Cormac McCarthy’s atmospheric novel Suttree is set in Knoxville.
Washington: Maria Semple’s colorful Where’d You Go, Bernadette includes a satiric look at Seattle.
It of course helps if authors live in/have lived in a state they’re writing about, but there’s always visiting and/or researching the place — as Lee Child did for 61 Hours.
I know I left out many states, authors, and books. Which novels do you associate with certain states? If it’s a state you live or lived in, did the author render things accurately and interestingly?
My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.
In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about the November 6 election — is here.
Tagged authors, books, fiction, literature, novels, settings, states
128 thoughts on “Fifty Shades of States”
ssanjoy
Thoroughly enjoyed reading and so relevant. Have been to USA only once for four months and have visited quite a few states. Becomes easier to relate and be on the same page. Thanks for sharing! 👍
Thank you for the kind words, ssanjoy! Much appreciated.
Four months is a long visit. 🙂 Glad you got to visit a number of states!
I’ll add Swamplandia! to Florida. There’s a town in Florida called Everglades City that I refer to as Swamplandia because it reminds me of the book.
Thank you, Kira, for the mention of “Swamplandia!” I love that name. 🙂
In today’s day and age, with the intolerance of trump administration I thought to mention a delightful book by one Brave Novelist John Irving.
” In One Person ” deals with several themes such as homosexuality, bisexuality, and AIDS. Other elements mentioned in the book concern transgender-ism and the idea of sexual awakening.
The narrator William grew up in New England , recounted his High School Years.
His grandpa Harry enthusiastically dons falsies to play women in Shakespearean plays . It is not lost on William, who is sexually interested in both boys and girls (with often charmingly funny results)
Thank you, bebe! That’s a John Irving book I’d like to read. That’s a John Irving book Trump would not like to read. (If he ever decided to read a book.) But Donald would like “The Shyster House Rules.”
I would encourage you to read this book Dave, Brave Writers like Irving are slowly disappearing, the book is riveting one.
I will look for it! 🙂
In the book cover, those hands belong to a man
Given the book’s theme, that makes sense. But it sure looks like a woman’s hands!
Bay State Books:
Starkfield MA is the fictitious locale of Edith Wharton’s brief classic, “Ethan Frome”.
“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” by George V. Higgins is a crime novel, largely told through spot-on dialogue. The setting is Boston MA.
I appreciate the mention of two more Massachusetts-set novels! “Ethan Frome” is a powerful book that in many ways is as compelling as Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” and “The Age of Innocence.”
Not only Stephen King , John Irving’s Cider House Rules , the orphanage was in Maine as well. What a book , the movie won several awards . The Doctor performed an abortion to end an unwanted Pregnancy.
I bet con don have never read this one or any other books in your blog Dave.
Great mention, bebe! “Cider House Rules” was indeed set in Maine. A terrific novel — funny, moving, socially conscious.
You’re right, I’d be amazed if Trump read any of the novels people have discussed in this blog for four years — a length of time I hope is the limit of his White House tenure. (Of course, he’s welcome to resign or be impeached before 2020.)
Now, Donald J trump ended up being the loser, which is his own making.
He was supposed to work for Us not create his own dynasty being dictator, and doing what he pleases no matter how illegal it is..
All trump did was make Jim Acosta is a household name, man is a good reporter with age and looks on his side , while trump has none.
Presidents comes and goes but reporters are forever on their own terms.
You’re right, bebe — Trump made Jim Acosta even more famous. If the Wants-to-Be-a-Dictator-in-Chief stopped lying all the time, maybe the questions he’d get at press conferences wouldn’t be quite as tough.
I just re-watched Obama’s speech at his last White House Correspondents Dinner, most of which was very funny. But at the end, when he talked more seriously, he made such a great statement about the importance of what they do and freedom of the press. Trump, of course, has never had the guts to speak to this kind of gathering, so he’s skipped it completely. What a coward he is, but he’d rather demean the entire lot of them, except for his friends at Fox News.
Obama definitely had eloquence and some courage, Kat Lit. Trump, as you note, has neither. But he has LOTS of non-eloquence and non-courage.
And his definition of “fake news” is of course any news that is accurately negative about him…
CA, City of Angels With Dirty Faces Dept.:
In his detective fiction, Raymond Chandler reported on the mores and morals or lack of same as were current and undercurrent in the Loss Angeles of the 1930’s, with a good eye for telling detail and a good deal of cynical humor. Ross MacDonald, successor in style and locale, describes the 1940-60ish period similarly, the difference being mostly, in my reading, the institutionalization of depravity in that later period.
(‘Loss’ Angeles was a typo, but I like it enough to keep)
Thank you, jhNY! The only Raymond Chandler I’ve read is “The Big Sleep,” but I liked it a lot — and one got a very evocative sense of the Los Angeles of that time. And, yes, “Loss” Angeles is a great typo — especially after last month’s World Series… 🙂
So many books, so little etc., but keep an eye out for Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”. Stretches the genre in pleasing ways….
Last month’s World Series was a life-changer for me, in a small way– having heard about Alex Cora’s doings in Puerto Rico, and the Red Sox ownership’s support of those doings, I became, though a Yankee fan for decades, a fan of the Red Sox. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Sox have an excellent team, or that its star pitcher of the Series, David price, comes from a small town in TN, and attended Vanderbilt.
It’s a matter of comparative decency– there is much proto-fascist undercurrent to the Yankee presentation, and the Steinbrenner family is, as far as I am aware, wall-to-wall GOP.
Next season, I may buy a cable package that allows me to see more Sox games (I already receive all the Yankee games with my current package). Doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t cheer on the Yankees when they play anybody else, but when the Yankees and Red Sox play, my loyalties will be tested.
Part of me feels like a turn-coat, but it’s only a small part.
I definitely want to read more of Raymond Chandler, and “The Long Goodbye” would be the one when I do.
Yes, rooting for the Red Sox is less problematic in a way than rooting for the Yankees. A “minority” manager (which the Yankees have never had), no restrictions on hair length and beards, no Steinbrenner “legacy” (though George’s children seem nicer than he was, albeit probably still Republican, as most team owners are), etc. Of course, the Bosox did have the highest payroll this year, were the last team to sign an African-American player, etc.
The Yawkey family were pretty narrow and awful people, but they’re gone now, and present ownership, principally John W. Henry, is a nicer sort, though he is, as such types nearly always must be these days, a billionaire…
Well, sort of better is something. 🙂 And, yes, mere millionaires would find it tough to own a team these days…
Looked up Mr. Henry on wikipedia, and he made his fortune in commodities– soybeans to be exact. hard to believe he appreciates our president for his China trade shenanigans even a little bit…
True — many businesspeople don’t like Trump’s trade and tariff nonsense. And there are worse things than soybeans!
Crime fiction of Walter Mosley (such as Devil in a Blue Dress) , the detective Easy Rawlins .
The last one I read was ” Charcoal Joe”, another one where detective Easy Rawlins . gets into trouble from Los Angeles. Detective Easy Rawlins is an African-American private investigator, a hard-boiled detective and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
He is featured in a series of best-selling mysteries set from the 1940s to the 1960s.
I love these books because of his stories are from 1940`s to 1960`s. and the author himself lives in Los Angeles. The description of houses, settings .
Sex was easy, comes and goes and no mention of the lie threatening diseases caused by casual sex.
Thank you, bebe! Walter Mosley definitely “captures” California in general and Los Angeles in particular (along with racism and many other things). I really enjoyed the two Easy Rawlins novels I’ve read (“Devil in a Blue Dress” and “A Red Death”) after you recommended Mosley’s work to me!
So far, I’ve enjoyed Easy Rollins more, and more often, but have you read any of Mosley’s Leonid Magill series? The character is based in New York City.
I haven’t. Would you recommend it?
Yes, but being more familiar with the setting, I find New York City, in Mosley’s imagining, to be rather broadly and oddly drawn.
Thanks! I put that series on my list for a future possible try.
Interesting that Walter Mosley seems to depict Los Angeles better than NYC. Wikipedia tells me he’s an LA native who now lives in New York.
Kat Lib
When putting together my list of states below that it was only about crime fiction but realized I was hard pressed to come up with American novelists not in that genre. I finally came up with a few books I’ve read not too long ago:
Virginia – “Prodigal Summer” by the wonderful Barbara Kingsolver, where I lived for a while, who also wrote a novel set in Tennessee – “Flight Behavior”
Wisconsin/Vermont – “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner that goes between these two states and is a great novel. I lived for a short while in WI though never in Vermont, but I’ve visited it several times. 🙂
I just saw a report that Lee Child is having Tom Cruise replaced by a more appropriate size actor as Reacher. I’m sure that will make my brother and other fans happy.
Didn’t know about Tom Cruise being replaced by a more appropriate size actor as Jack Reacher! TERRIFIC news! Reacher is 6’5″, Cruise is…not.
And the latest in the number one best seller in nyt, and I ready for me to pick up at the Library.
A tv series someone else will be Reacher who is laller 😉
Oh, a TV series not a movie? And I can’t wait to read the new Reacher book! Great that you’ll be able to get it soon!
Good news is Tom will never play in a TV series, I just hope they get an appropriate actor , more than 5 ft.whatever.. 🙂
True, bebe! I can’t remember Tom Cruise ever acting in anything on TV. Yes, a tall actor is needed!
Thank you for mentioning those novels, including the two by (the I agree wonderful) Barbara Kingsolver. “Prodigal Summer” is a GREAT book and “Flight Behavior” is pretty darn good, too. (Are you still calling yourself “Kat Lit” or are you back to “Kat Lib”?)
No, I’m still going by Kat Lit, not sure what happened there, but Word Press and I still have issues that pop up here and there. I do recommend people I know who are looking how to set up a blog to try Word Press
Thanks, Kat Lit! Overall, I think WordPress is an excellent blogging “platform,” but it does have its quirks once in a while…
I’m not sure what has occurred where you live in NJ, but we had our first snowfall for the winter up here in the Poconos. I think we had at least the 5 inches that was predicted, but for the first time since I became an adult I once again find it quite pretty, mainly because I don’t need to be worried about driving in it, or losing power with the generator I have now, etc.
Snow can be nice when you look at it that way! 🙂
Five inches is a lot for mid-November. We got a good amount of snow, too — not sure how many inches, but schools are closed today. Nightmarish commute for people last night.
It’s still a gray day and I think it’s getting worse, because Trump is still looking for a government shutdown because of the border wall. Other than being a campaign promise, who really wants a wall on the border that keeps out who knows who? It’s ridiculous, and it keeps Dems out of the spotlight. I’ve been half-listening to MSNBC this morning/early P.M. and what happens with Nancy Pelosi, I don’t care what anybody says, she is so much more important about having the smarts to run her party to gain all the seats she did this last election, as well as her
herding her caucus to get the ACA passed. People forget about this, but I do not.
That border wall idea IS ridiculous, Kat Lit. And sick, worthless, racist, unrealistic, unaffordable, etc.
As for Nancy Pelosi, I have some mixed feelings. She is indeed very smart and very effective — one of the most effective House Speakers ever. But while Republicans paint her as a San Francisco lefty, she is in fact rather centrist — I think too centrist for an era when the GOP has tacked so far right. For instance, I wish she would endorse Medicare for All. I wouldn’t mind seeing a new (Democratic) House Speaker in, say, 2020.
Dave, I agree that she is a centrist, but I think that helps in her keeping the caucus together than either a more conservative or a more progressive could do. But that may well change in 2020. I do think there will be more progressives in leadership positions this year, which is a good thing.
Excellent point, Kat Lit. But the Democratic caucus is already getting more progressive than it was when Pelosi was Speaker during Obama’s first term. Hopefully there will indeed be more progressives in House leadership positions this year — even if one of them is not Speaker.
The geography of the USA fascinates me, so thanks for the great topic! In Australia, we only have 6 states, and they’re all pretty similar. So for me words like New York and California and Florida have always been pretty much interchangeable. I’ve gotten better in recent years though. And probably a lot of my education comes from reading. I’m slowly making my way through John Jakes’ “Kent Family Chronicles” for the second or third time, and it’s amazing how different the books are compared to when I was a teenager. Back then it was all about the fiction and the drama. I didn’t realise how much real life history was in there. I’m up to book 5, and the civil war is about to start, so I guess it’s kind of important to realise not all states are the same.
Of course, I’ve read lots of King books set in Maine, but I guess they are fictional states. I’m sure it would make the news if clowns really lived in the sewers there! King also set part of his “Dark Tower” series in New York though, and that was fun. It’s interesting to know how much difference can be present in one little city, let alone a state. Or a country. Of course, in Australia, we don’t have any national borders either, so I’m not quite why the people on the other side of the borders are so scary, and must be stopped at all costs, but that’s a topic for another day…
On a completely unrelated note, I think I’ve decided to try JK Rowling’s detective fiction as my random Christmas book 🙂
Thank you, Sue! Many of America’s 50 states are indeed rather different from each other (politically, climate-wise, etc.) but I imagine there are also significant variations between Australia’s six states. Reading novels set in a certain country and in a certain section of that country is definitely educational, as you note.
Ha — clowns are probably not in Maine’s real-life sewers. 🙂 Maybe a few mimes. Stephen King’s fictional Maine is clearly creepier than the actual Maine.
I think the majority of Americans are not that worried about people on the other side of the border. Heck, everyone but Native Americans are immigrants or descendants of immigrants (or slaves). Trump drums up anti-immigrant fear for political gain. Unfortunately, the guy has an enormous amount of power at the moment.
I think (and hope) you’ll like Rowling’s debut detective novel “The Cuckoo’s Calling”!
Dave – I hope my comment didn’t sound like I think America as a whole is xenophobic. It’s only really He Who In My World Has Been Voldemorted that I was thinking of. I’m just baffled about why this ‘caravan’ that I’ve been hearing about is so frightening. But I won’t try and figure it out. I’ll never understand why people’s differences must be persecuted, rather than celebrated.
I’m almost finished reading Paulina Simon’s “Red Leaves” which surprisingly turned into a whodunit. I’m not normally a fan of crime solving when reading, I prefer to have stories absolutely spelt out for me, but I enjoyed this one, so I’m very much looking forward to “The Cuckoo’s Calling” although it’s not a genre of fiction that I would normally rush into.
I hear you, Susan. The caravan is not frightening in any real sense; America’s far right (including the president you aptly compared to Voldemort) is making believe it’s frightening. The caravan is basically a bunch of people (many of them children) fleeing their countries’ poverty and violence — some of which the U.S. has caused. And they’re together because it’s safer than traveling alone or in small groups.
“I’ll never understand why people’s differences must be persecuted, rather than celebrated” — sad and, yes, not understandable. 😦
Dave and Sue, what I always remember from one of my sociology classes I took in college, is that there are more differences within a race or other group, than between them. I’ve tried to live by that throughout my life, because it holds true, except for groups such as the KKK or other racist organizations. But I hate to make exceptions wherever possible; however, such things are impossible to judge.
“…there are more differences within a race or other group, than between them” — I like that, Kat Lit!
As a local once put it, I’m in a New York state of mind.
“The Locusts Have No King”, by Dawn Powell, is set in post-WW2 Greenwich Village, and concerns itself with the literary and art demi-monde, in the process describing the neighborhood and its denizens with a knowing accuracy.
“The Subterraneans” by Jack Kerouac, is a piece of misdirection in scene, as the author has based his novel (if I remember right, composed on a single roll of butcher paper he fed through his typewriter) on the doings of his associates and himself in the druggy and seedy areas of 1950’s New York City, but out of fear of police interest in the thinly-disguised people and places, changed the city to San Francisco, along with names and streets, etc. It remains a pretty telling description of one underside of the Beat era.
“He” is a short story by HP Lovecraft, and concerns a lonely man who meets a stranger dressed in 18th century clothes while wandering in Greenwich Village late one night. After some conversation, the lonely man accompanies his new acquaintance on a trek through an old section of the neighborhood, having previously written:
“My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me.”
The “teeming labyrinths” he had wished for, he experiences, not by merely following his guide through “forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts”, but by following him through time itself! Lovecraft manages not so much to invoke any actual New York, but he does a wonderful and even terrifying description of a dream New York– a dream New York, although everybody’s dream is different, is what I believe most of us here walk around with inside our heads…
Thank you, jhNY, for those well-described examples of New York-based literature!
I was particularly intrigued by that Lovecraft story, which I’ll try to read soon. I’ve read a number of H.P.’s creepily excellent tales (and his “At the Mountains of Madness” novella), but not “He.” Excellent/eloquent summary and analysis of it.
BTW, I was at my local library this morning, and found a Joseph Roth book! (Combining “Right and Left” and “The Legend of the Holy Drinker.”) I grabbed it, of course.
Wow– as for those Roth titles, lucky you! I have read neither, but will– as soon as I clap eyes on that book!
Also– as I mentioned a New York state of mind, I should also make mention of a New York State of mind: William Kennedy, who set things in Albany often, if not always, in his novels,most of which center on the fictional Phelan family. “Ironweed” won him a Pulitzer. I remember liking “Legs”, which concerned that Diamond fellow, a Prohibition Era gangster.
“He” is, probably because of that paragraph I excerpted, a thing that is only ever so far from my thoughts, because it does, though in a typically purple and overwrought way, conjure up something hoped for and occasionally realized in my own experience, though most often I too find that modernity in all its manifest guises and structures, to be more oppressive than uplifting. There really are times here when you suddenly and unexpectedly get a view that fills your entire field of vision– and everything you see derives from two centuries back.
Also: it’s short, so it takes no great commitment of time. Given that To Read list you’ve got, that’s a blessing…
I guess I did get lucky — there were no Joseph Roth books there the last time I looked a while ago. Today, the one I found was next to about 10 other Roth books…Philip Roth.
“Ironweed” is an excellent novel. Or did I just see the movie? There are certainly plenty of New York-set books that are not New York City-set books. I’m currently reading Richard Russo’s really good “Nobody’s Fool,” which is set in a small New York State town not that far from Albany.
Yes, there can be glimpses of the past in many places, and a longing for a less-cluttered time (though of course there were plenty of pre-Industrial Age problems — poor sanitation, diseases that hadn’t yet become curable, etc.). That partial longing for the past is one reason I love historical fiction, as well as watching YouTube film footage from more than a century ago.
Your discussion of “He” reminded me of a book I read as a kid called “The Magic Tunnel,” about a couple of 20th-century kids who descend into the subway and come out in 1600s Manhattan. I later learned it was illustrated by Jerry Robinson, who, as I think we’ve discussed before, created The Joker in Batman comic books and who I got to know when covering cartooning.
I found “He” here: 🙂
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/he.aspx
Never ran into or read “The Magic Tunnel”, but I would certainly have loved it as a boy (if not now)– and the pix. Batman art style is a fave, though odd.
Also, whenever the yearning for the golden past overtakes me, I have a corrective: I imagine two weeks without rain in July in NYC before automobiles, when the horse dung, if unshoveled, turned to dust and filled the air with its fine particulates. Then I yearn for right now!
Imagining that definitely makes one happier to be a New Yorker in the 21st century than in the 19th century!
bobess48
Posting problems again; here’s my second attempt at a comment:
For evoking a regional climate, James Lee Burke has described the Louisiana bayous as well as any author has done in creating geographic atmosphere. I’ve only read the first two and one of the others of his Dave Robichaux novels. Although some of those novels take place elsewhere (I believe Dave lives in Montana in the next one in the series), he’s most closely associated with New Orleans and the Delta area. You feel steamy and humid as you read them and sense mosquitoes in the air. Some would even argue that Burke spends too much time on evoking a setting and not enough on plot development but that hasn’t bothered me so far.
For dark sides of rural areas of particular states, I will cite James Dickey’s depiction of the mountain people in northern rural Georgia in ‘Deliverance’. For anyone who’s seen the film but not read the novel, you know what I mean. As I recall, the film is even more intense than the novel.
Then there’s the Ozark area of Missouri in ‘Winter’s Bone’ by Daniel Woodrell, another one made into a memorable film. The backwoods meth heads in this novel seem almost immune from any law enforcement and enforce their own system of justice. This is particularly oppressive for someone who’s been raised in the environment but is perceptive enough to know how destructive it is and how much better her life could be if she could ever escape it.
Finally, for a novel set in a place where I have walked, I was particularly struck by the portion of Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ set at Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. When he describes the winding mountain path I could recall myself walking that same ground a couple of years before I read that novel. There’s no way that Neil could not have visited that place to do his research.
Thank you for another wide-ranging and descriptive comment, bobess48! Glad your second attempt got through.
I’ve heard very good things about James Lee Burke’s work from you and others. There is a lot of atmosphere to capture in Louisiana, and it sounds like Burke does an excellent job of it. Another Louisiana-set novel I know you admire is Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer,” set in New Orleans.
Great James Dickey and Daniel Woodrell mentions, too!
And glad to hear Neil Gaiman’s (probable) in-person research rang true in the VERY interesting novel “American Gods.”
thepatterer
When Gerald O’Hara spoke of his love for Georgia as he pressed a clod of her red earth into the palm of his eldest daughter, Scarlett, in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind,” I felt as though I ,too, lived at Tara. Their neighbors, the Wilkes family, lived at Twelve Oaks, also etched in memory so well that I can almost smell the food when the Tarleton Twins argued over which of them would eat barbecue sitting next to Scarlett. Whether Mitchell’s ancestors’ memories of the Civil War, passed down to her, becoming the basis for GWTW, were true or not, they certainly painted a strong and lasting picture of antebellum Georgia, plantation life, and of the gallant south.
Thank you, thepatterer! Silly me to forget to mention “Gone With the Wind” — perhaps the most famous novel associated with the state of Georgia. You painted a very evocative, descriptive picture of the “GWTW” setting. I might argue with the word “gallant,” but you may have been using it ironically. 🙂
I think it’s possible to be utterly wrong-headed, and still ‘gallant.’ From an online dictionary:
“Synonyms: brave, courageous, valiant, valorous, bold, plucky, daring, fearless, intrepid, heroic, lionhearted, stouthearted, doughty, mettlesome, dauntless, undaunted, unflinching, unafraid”
Confederate soldiers were outnumbered, usually by a lot, in every major battle of the war, yet won more than a few, with fewer weapons, from rifles to cannon, and a lot fewer regular meals. To, me, it’s more depressing than anything else, to see the daring and sacrifice so many Southerners devoted to the sorry attempt at preserving slavery– but those who did so can, by dictionary standards, be called ‘gallant.’.
I see your point, jhNY. But somehow an almost-synonymous word like “brave” sits better with me than “gallant” in this case.
So happy to see my beloved “Empire Falls” mentioned again in one of your blogs, Dave. What a list you’ve compiled! Your knowledge of books and reading lists are amazing! This post reminded me of Mildred Walker’s fabulous novel, “Winter Wheat” set in Montana. This book inspired me to read more of her work and other books set in that state. “Montana 1948” but Larry Watson was another novel I found powerful. Two other authors that came to mind represent states you’ve mentioned in your post – Carl Hiaasen who writes about Florida and is hilarious. And James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux series set in New Orleans gave me such a feel for that city that when I eventually went to New Orleans it felt like a return trip instead of my first encounter.
Thank you for the kind words, Molly!
“Empire Falls” richly deserves to be mentioned more than once. 🙂 I’m now reading “Nobody’s Fool” (by the same author, of course), and it’s almost as good — which is saying something. The Sully and Beryl characters are fascinating.
And great/well-described mentions of those Montana-, Florida-, and New Orleans-set novels! (Carl Hiaasen was the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ 2010 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award winner for his newspaper writing.)
I’m glad you are enjoying ‘Nobody’s Fool.’ Loved the Sully/Beryl characters and I read this one before Empire Falls – before Russo was famous for winning The Pulitzer. His more recent release, ‘Everybody’s Fool,’ is okay but not not nearly as good as ‘Nobody’s Fool.’ That is cool about Carl Hiaasen – such a good writer!
Molly, I can see how Russo developed as a writer — going from the excellent “Nobody’s Fool” to the off-the-charts-good “Empire Falls” a few years later.
Emily Ruskovich’s “Idaho” is the best example I can think of for recent reading. It is a tragic family story told over the course of many years, and like the name would suggest, the setting of Idaho provides an amazing backdrop for the story as it it adds to the sense of isolation and vastness. It’s like Idaho is a character itself, which is why I suppose she chose the title she did. It was a very beautiful read – I highly recommend it!
An Idaho-based novel! Thank you, M.B.! I couldn’t think of one when writing my post, though I had a vague (perhaps erroneous) memory that maybe Jack Reacher had been there or passed through. Very nicely stated comment/analysis!
Sharon McAlister
I can understand that you are not including authors you haven’t read, but, in your spare time (lol) Louise Erdrich’s “The Round House” gives a definitive picture of Native American life in North Dakota. It’s excellent and well worth the read.
Thank you for the recommendation, Sharon! I will eagerly look for “The Round House” in a certain library on South Fullerton. 🙂
Almost Iowa
Some novels have a strong sense of place. How about taking this idea one step further by asking the readers to identify novels that render their hometown or neighborhood in an accurate or compelling manner. Taking that even further, I have read great novels that took place in the buildings I have worked in and one, had several scenes in the room where I worked for ten years. It would be fun to have a “novels that walked where I walked” post.
Thank you, Almost Iowa! Excellent suggestion — I just added the question.
Novels that took place in buildings you’ve actually worked in? Nice! I sort of touched on that in this post last year:
https://daveastoronliterature.com/2017/01/22/perceiving-the-personal-in-the-pages-we-peruse/
I’ll just mention a few states, many of which I lived in. This is one reason I love series in that genre, because it affords one the opportunity to get to know the characters and their settings better over time:
GA – the Will Trent series and the Grant Co. (fictional) series, both set in Georgia where the author Karin Slaughter lives
IL – Sara Paretsky and her detective V.I. Warshawski take place mostly in Chicago
FL – the Travis McGee series by John D. McDonald set in Ft. Lauderdale
MN – William Kent Krueger whose detective is Cork O’Connor, and most often take place in northern MN, where both my parents grew up
MD – one writer who I don’t think ever wrote novels that didn’t take place in Baltimore detective, Tess Monaghan, or her standalones
NJ – we’ve discussed lately about the Janet Evanovich books set in Trenton and think she captured the essence of that city quite well
DC – Barbara Michaels, whose books were mostly considered romantic suspense, were still quite interesting to me and set around the D.C. area, even though that’s not a state
CA – too many to even mention here, but I’d add to my list the Ross MacDonald/Lew Archer series, the Spellman series (SF) and Marcia Muller
Dave, I think I went over my self-described “few series,” so I’ll try to become more focused with my next comment. 🙂
P.S. It’s Veterans’ Day officially today, and while I’m an anti-war person, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what every vet goes through in combat or coming back home, which many soldiers don’t get to do. We watched “The Guns of Navarone” last night which was a very good movie, but still so heartbreaking. I can only hope that our POTUS doesn’t get us embroiled in another war, but I’m not heartened by what’s occurred this weekend.
Thank you, Kat Lit, for the VERY comprehensive list! The more the better! 🙂 And you made a great point that I should have mentioned in my column: Series can explore settings in a much more in-depth way than an individual novel can.
I completely agree that people can be antiwar while deeply appreciating the sacrifices of veterans — who didn’t start the wars they fought in, even as the wealthy politicians and others who did start the wars almost never serve (and their children almost never serve, either).
If it benefits him, Trump would not hesitate to start a war and put many soldiers and civilians in harm’s way. Heck, his recently sending troops to the southern border was a total political stunt to try to influence the midterm elections. The so-called “caravan” was no threat at all.
Yes, as most of us are becoming quite familiar with, we keep excusing Trump with his outrageous behavior on the world stage. I think there are many or most of us who don’t agree with what we’re doing in Trump’s world. Almost of all of us are appalled by the comments made by him and his minions that are just outrageous, including his stance for the persons involved in our states. This doesn’t mean that I’m not somewhat supportive of him when he does something that we can support (which isn’t often). This author already wrote “The Bootlegger’s Daughter” that doesn’t also take place in NC and is about the rest of them that mention the rest of her family
When there’s one outrage after another, it’s hard to keep track and a person gets sort of numb. Any single thing Trump has said or done would probably sink the careers of most politicians; he’s said and done hundreds of awful things. Maybe the sheer volume of his transgressions is his Teflon… 😦
I’m trying to think of anything Trump has done since 2016 that I could even somewhat support, and I came up empty.
Of course you’re right about Trump, but I was trying to appear open-minded, even though that’s impossible with someone who is a complete narcissist and pathological liar, among other things. If someone wrote a novel about anyone in power said anything he says all the time, most of us would consider it too far-fetched and unbelievable, but here we are and it’s scary to think that he might be president for the next 6 years.
It’s good of you to make that effort, Kat Lit. But I guess the guy does not have one redeeming value. “…a complete narcissist and pathological liar, among other things” — exactly. And, yes, if he were created as a fictional character, he would seem completely far-fetched. I don’t know if I could take it if he were reelected — which is possible with Republican voter suppression, dirty tricks, media propaganda, etc. 😦
I reread what I wrote in my comments above and realized that there were some that were quite disjointed. I suppose I was doing some cutting and pasting that didn’t work quite the way I wanted. Most notably, “The Bootlegger’s Daughter” was written by NC native Margaret Maron, including all of her Deborah Knott mystery series that takes place in that state. While I never lived in that state it’s where my best friend has lived ever since she graduated from UNC in Chapel Hill.
Thank you, Kat Lit, for the mention of Margaret Maron and her Deborah Knott series! If your best friend lives in North Carolina, you’re sort of an honorary resident of that state. 🙂
Another NC-set novel that belatedly occurred to me was Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain.”
Such a fun topic! I thought I’d add Alaska to the mix: Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” isn’t a novel but it reads like one. It’s nonfiction account of a young man’s life and death (of starvation) in Alaska. I happened to be reading it while hiking (in Scotland, not Alaska, but still), and it scared the heck out of me! And Eowyn Ivy’s “The Snow Child” is a reworking of the Russian fairy tale “Snegurochka” set on a homestead in Alaska.
Thank you, Elena! I love nonfiction books that read like novels. 🙂 I appreciate the mention of those two very interesting Alaska-based books!
When writing this blog post and trying to fill the Alaska slot, I was thinking of the half-dozen or so novels I’ve read by the great Jack London. One or two might spend some time in Alaska, but the setting in “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang” is Canada’s Yukon.
I was really struggling not to include some Canada-based books!
I hear you, Elena! I wrote a post about Canadian literature in 2014, so decided to keep that country out of this piece. 🙂
https://daveastoronliterature.com/2014/10/12/oh-canada-has-great-literature/
Bill Tammeus
Wait, David. If someone is going to mention Sinclair Lewis, Minnesota is fine, but his true influence came in “The Jungle,” set in Chicago, which I bet you know is located in my home state of Illinois — where residents voting on a governor would do well to elect at the same time a special prosecutor to investigate that governor.
Thank you, Bill! I should have also mentioned Upton Sinclair and “The Jungle” and Chicago and Illinois. (Richard Wright’s “Native Son” is another iconic novel set in The Windy City.) And, yes, as you funnily put it, Illinois has had its share of corrupt politicians.
lulabelleharris
And let’s not forget about the thinly disguised town of Monroeville, AL in Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”.
Yes! Thank you, lulabelle! Not a coincidence, I’m sure, that the fictional Maycomb started with the same letter.
Becky Ross Michael
Nicholas Sparks does a nice job in his books of using the shore areas of North Carolina to offer his trademark appeal. In Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles mysteries, the Texas Hill Country often becomes somewhat of a character in its importance to many of her plots.
North Carolina! Thank you, Becky! I was trying to think of novels I’ve read set in that state and couldn’t come up with any, but your comment reminded me that the two Nicholas Sparks books I’ve read — “A Walk to Remember” and “Message in a Bottle” — have NC settings.
And I appreciate the Susan Wittig Albert/Texas mention! Cormac McCarthy has also set several novels in The Lone Star State — “Blood Meridian,” “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men”…
Stephen King from Maine author of Misery, Shining and so many more. Speaking of this author, I started having day dreams about what could happen in in real life but I rather not say any more. 🙂
Mark Twain from Missouri, Adventure of Tom Sawyer and so many others once lived in Cincinnati, Ohio once was known to say , “ When the World comes to end , I would rather live there because they are 20 years behind.”or Something like that. But it was never proved if Mr. Twain actually said it. But being in OH now I tend to believe it.
Thank you, bebe! Stephen King has indeed written many memorable books with Maine settings. I’d like to see Trump made a character in a King novel and watch what happens to him. 🙂 I see King’s tweets on Twitter, and he loathes the Oval Office occupant — as he should be loathed.
Twain lived in SO many places, also including Missouri, Connecticut, California, New York, etc. I remember that Cincinnati quote, but I liked the city when I attended a conference there this past June. Of course, I only visited for four days — too short a time to really know any place.
Would you believe we lived in Overland Park, KS for 30 years and it is turning Blue with a female Governor ? And OH so Red now it hurts, while Nashville being sort of Blue TN got itself Marsha.. a screeching witch 😦
While in KS long ago, I voted for Dole , I worked on a Dole grant, also Nancy Kassebaum , both Republicans and very good.
So great, bebe, that your former state is turning at least partly blue!
Ohio’s recent political bent is very disappointing, but at least Sen. Sherrod Brown was reelected. And I guess Taylor Swift’s tweets weren’t enough to bring a bit of blue to Tennessee. 🙂 😦
Yes, there used to be somewhat-moderate Republicans like Robert Dole and Nancy Kassebaum in office. Almost none left anywhere. GOP pols like Jeff Flake and Susan Collins are fake “moderates.”
Spent my formative teenage years going to high school in Nashville TN, and Marsha Blackburn really reminds me of some of my contemporaries therein, none of whom were people I would have been close to, except by enforced seating arrangement.
If there’s one teensy sliver of silver in the black cloud that is the senate vote result, it’s the polls taken before the vote. Bredesen was ahead in a few, which I’ve taken to mean some number of people lied about who they were going to vote for, ashamed to say so. Next step? Being too ashamed to actually vote for Blackburn or others of her ilk. This particular step could take some time…
Ironically, as my mother and brother live there still, I have good reason to move close, and would like to, were it not for the politics in the state, which have devolved into something cruel and stupid.
Thank you, jhNY! You hit the nail on the head — some politicians are adult versions of our worst-nightmare fellow students from high school.
I hope your “next step” theory is correct…
And I hear you about part of you wanting to move closer to your mother and brother and part of you not wanting to be in a very red state. Heck, my late mother asked me about moving to Florida; one of the many reasons I said no was not wanting to be in a reddish state.
FL is no place for those who seek life to be– it seems to inspire dissolution in the young and is a traditional destination for those who expect to live nowhere else after.
My sister contracted AIDS there, and spent 14 hours on a wooden bench in a public hospital waiting, before being refused admittance, resident of the state though she was. Fortunately, when my mother came down and flew her back to Nashville, she was admitted to a hospital there immediately, and lived another two years.
As you might have concluded, I hate the place, but then, given my experience, I would. When she first got sick, my mother and I came to Miami and spent nearly every minute at her bedside. One evening, when we needed a break, I suggested we drive out into the Everglades. We drove for a while, and parked in what looked like a pleasant spot. It wasn’t; in the distance from where we pulled over a barbed wire fence was visible. Behind it, Haitian refugees.
So sorry about your sister, and about your experiences in Florida. Your sister’s public hospital nightmare — awful. Fenced-in Haitian refugees — awful.
It’s definitely a state of contradictions — some positives, but a nasty place in other ways. (I’ve been there four times this year alone dealing with my mother’s estate, with a fifth trip next month.) Even with voter suppression, it’s telling that the vile Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis got enough support to seemingly “win” the recent Senate and gubernatorial elections.
My father-in-law always said it would have been better as a wildlife refuge, and I always agreed with him.
Hope your fifth time’s the charm!
Ha! Maybe the wildlife would’ve been “snowbirds” dividing their time between Florida and the North. 🙂
Thanks! I also hope the fifth trip will be the last. But an even half-dozen might be required…
Actually Nashville is my favorite place , I worked there , have friends there. Not too long ago I also heard Bredeson was ahead. I still wonder oh he won in Nashville, who knows. We would like to go back there. Sounds like Screeching witch will be there for a long time.
I would bet my last dollar that Nashville voted for Bredeson– based on what I observed during the 2016 election at a local polling place: a line that stretched for half a city block outside and several dozen feet inside– and in the spot reserved for political placards nearby, not one Trump sign. Not one. The rest of the state did what it could to negate the will of most Nashvillians, effectively. I suspect there’s a similar tale to be told re Bredeson.
The little bit of me that has Pollyanna tendencies imagines a single term in the Senate for Blackburn, as she has tied herself to the mast of the Trumpy (an actual builder of yachts, by some odd coincidence) yacht, and she will not be able to cut herself loose when it’s time to abandon ship. And even if she did manage somehow to get free, the rats would long before have taken up all the room in the lifeboats.
Me as well, and I hope you are right, we want Marsha together with the liar in chief be gone.
Alex Call, singer and songwriter from Nashville
I love this song, bebe! Thanks for posting it. 🙂
You are welcome, I know Ales a true blue gentleman who refused to shut up during W s time.
Good for him!
Of course many novels set in New York including “Julie & Julia” which I have on my bookshelf near Sue Monk Kidd’s, “The Mermaid Chair” which is set on an island off coast of South Carolina. I think when a story is set on an island it leads to isolation, pathos because people can be cut off from mainland but can also breed serenity as opposite of densely populated areas sometimes. Perhaps a future blog topic, Dave,books set on islands off of a state or country. If you said country, England particularly, I’d add the book, “The Guernsey Potato Peel Society.”
Thank you, Michele, for the New York and South Carolina mentions!
Yes, as you skillfully noted, an island setting can evoke all kinds of feelings and situations. That IS a good idea for a blog post. I’d have to think if I’ve read enough other novels with part or full island settings. “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “The Light Between Oceans”…
Michele, I just remembered that I’ve already written about islands in literature! Here’s the 2016 piece:
https://daveastoronliterature.com/2016/02/14/long-island-books-and-short-island-books/
literaturepoliticsfamilylife
Dave, shame on you.
At the crossroads of the upper Midwest and great plains, you did not mention two great American authors: Sinclair Lewis, who was writing about Minnesota, while cleverly avoiding the subject, and Louise Erdrich, who is all about NoDak, and “located” her novels.
Yikes! I can’t believe I forgot Sinclair Lewis and Minnesota! I’ll revise the piece in the next few minutes. Since I’m only including authors I’ve read, I unfortunately can’t add Louise Erdrich.
Thank you, literaturepoliticsfamilylife!
Also: can’t say how many– if any– of his creations concern MN, but F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul.
Fitzgerald’s good-not-great debut novel “This Side of Paradise” had some scenes in Minnesota, where semi-autobiographical protagonist Amory Blaine lived before going to Princeton University.
I read that so many decades ago that I’m afraid nothing, or very nearly, remains in my memory about it. Mostly just a feeling of burgeoning anticipation that resides in youth generally.
“…burgeoning anticipation that resides in youth generally” — that definitely pervades the novel. I don’t remember many details of the book, either; I had to refresh my memory via Wikipedia. 🙂
Not on the tree of fiction, but this bit of history from Bill Bryson: https://applemcg.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/one-summer-america-1927-minnesotans-in-its-pages/ includes F Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and the real hero of the year: Charles A Lindbergh. I didn’t include Fitzgerald, as I’m not so big a fan as of Lewis. Garrison Keillor has been a huge fan, fellow resident of Summit Ave, St Paul. If you have heard yet, let me be the bearer of glad tidings,GK has returned to TWA (The Writer’s Almanac), which I hope many of you here pick up on. He, of course, is no longer supported by MN Public Radio, but has found funding to return to the internet at: http://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/. I trust this reference adds to Dave’s work here. e.g. “Why does Wendy’s locate close to McDonalds?”
Thank you, literaturepoliticsfamilylife! A lot of great history in your first link!
I’m a fan of Garrison Keillor’s writing, and once interviewed him by phone around the time his newspaper column began — perhaps a dozen or so years ago?
After spotting it for sale on a card table here in NYC, I picked up a book a few years ago, titled “Why Is Your Country At War?”, which was written by Charles August Lindbergh, the aviator’s father, himself a Congressman from MN, and an ardent critic of the Federal Reserve, and of the US’s participation in World War One, which Lindbergh the father believed, among other things, was a conspiracy to preserve the financial hierarchy of international banking. Ironically, his own father was an embezzler who fled Sweden..
Charles the aviator flew his father to campaign rallies, at least once with near-fatal results.
Few today bother to trace Charles the aviator’s anti-war stance at the eve of WWII to his father’s during WWI– but there it is.
As for Mr. Keillor, I will always be grateful he had room on his radio show for Chet Atkins, guitarist. I’d guess that most people who know his name today know it because of those broadcasts.
Anonymous, in this instance, would somehow be me…
jhNY, that’s a very interesting history of Charles Lindbergh the father, who, along with his much more famous son, was not…Anonymous.
Garrison Keillor does seem to be an open-minded guy with wide-ranging tastes. (I guess he also recently had his “MeToo” moment, which took him down a peg in my estimation.)
Thanks to Suzette Martinez Standring for recommending “The Charlestown Connection”!
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Home Social Media Twitter Inc. (TWTR) User-Base To Inch Closer To 400 Million Mark By...
Twitter Inc. (TWTR) User-Base To Inch Closer To 400 Million Mark By 2018: APAC To Secure King’s Share Of Over 40% !
Varun Nayak
Initiatives or changes brought in by World’s largest micro-blogging platform, Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) to attract world-wide users is bearing them fruits in baby steps. According to a report by eMarketer user base of 140-char limit micr-blogging network is likely to surge by 24.4% in 2014 and with over 10% growth in successive years it will embark the 400 million mark by 2018. Major share of user base is likely to be from Asia-Pacific region, where Twitter is yet to strengthen its foothold.
Twitter added about 14 million users in Q1 of 2014, taking its overall users tally to 255 million monthly active users. Although, the user base is showing continuous improvement year-over-year but the figures are not up to the expected level, especially when compared to growth rate of other contemporary networking sites. The micro-blogging site is undoubtedly tweaking in many changes to attract users but its confined niche, limited visual effects and mere 140 characters limit seem to turn major share of registered folks into wayward users.
Twitter’s User Base Growth Likely To Decline For Next 4 Years
Twitter’s user base is predicted to increase for next 4 years and reach closer to 400 million by 2018. However, CAGR (Common Annual Growth Rate) is projected to decline, resulting in slow growth of its user base in next few years. By the end of 2014, about 24.4% increment is likely to be observed in user base growth. This trend would be followed by 18.5%, 15.1%, 12.7% and 10.7% growth in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Asia-Pacific To Host More Than 40% Of Overall Twitter Users By 2018!
If we look at country/region-wise user demography of Twitter, a major share of it seems to be swaying in favor of emerging markets of Asia-pacific. By 2014, Asia-pacific region is likely to account for 32.8% of Twitter’s user base, and would further increase to 40% by 2018. By the end of 2014 majority of Asia pacific Twitter users are likely to emerge from India and Indonesia, making it 3rd and 4th largest country on Twitter by the number of users.
Increasing social media obsession, penetration of mobile devices and continually evolving user-friendly features can be attributed to growing user base in developing nations. The 140 char device firm had recently tweaked their website by adding more visually engaging content and a revamped look to enhance user experience. It had earlier added visual tweets – inclusion of photos and videos within the tweet itself – to make the tweet more engaging, like that of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB). Twitter for Android users enhanced its push notifications, reduced the number of steps involved in the sign-up process and allowing users to link their mobile address book with their Twitter accounts to find their friends and peers on the micro-blogging site.
In developed countries of North America, Twitter user base has almost reached the saturation stage and growth rate is likely to slow down in future. The shift would be due to the difference in timeline of social media usage between developed states and developing nations. The San Francisco based micro-blogging firm needs to dive an inch deeper if it has to retain user engagement and lure back wayward users from developed states of North America. Evoking Twitter ban from internet obsessed countries, like China, can boost the firm’s user tally beyond imagination.
Will The User Growth Rate From Emerging Markets Boost Its Revenue From The Region?
Although, predictions suggest that user base of Twitter will rise in emerging markets but its reflection on revenue growth is still an unresolved mystery. In Q1, 2014 Twitter’s advertising revenue totaled $226 million, an increase of 125% year-over-year. Mobile advertising revenue was approximately 80% of total advertising revenue attributing to the fact that 198 million or 78% of Twitter folks access the site through mobile device. Even though the revenue figure of Twitter might be zooming higher but it is also, along with Facebook, facing problem of uneven revenue distribution.
Like Facebook and other networking sites Twitter’s major revenue share is from developed states, whereas revenue from emerging markets is significantly lower compared to user base share from the latter. In 2013, nearly 3/4th of Twitter’s revenue came from the U.S, whereas rest of the world accounted for about 28%, these figures are not well aligned with user base share of above two regions. Rest of the world accounts for over 75% of user base share where the U.S. accounts for hardly a quarter of total active users.
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No Charges On Paytm Transactions: Paytm Refutes All Claims
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November 12, 2015/Elisabeth LaMotte
What happens when two misfits find each other? Why is intimacy sometimes trigger for anxiety and self-doubt? What does it mean to have a true friend?
Mary and Max, a 2009 film by writer/ director Adam Elliot, delves into the friendship that builds through the unexpected correspondence between kindred spirits turned pen pals. Set in 1976, the plot follows the trajectory of Mary (Toni Collette), a nerdy, neglected eight year old girl living in Melbourne, Australia. While visiting the post office with her alcoholic mother, Mary makes an impulsive decision — in a fit of desperate isolation — to open an American phone book, place her finger on a random name and address, and write a letter to Max in hopes of finding a pen pal and maybe even a friend. Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman) turns out to be a Jewish, atheist recluse with Aspergers Syndrome living in New York City. Mary and Max share a curiosity about language, a passion for chocolate, and an enthusiasm for an obscure animated television show, “The Noblets”.
Mary is plagued by a large birthmark in the middle of her forehead, a mother who chain smokes while sipping sherry, and a father who plays with dead birds. Max is overweight, isolated and initially unaware that his exceptional difficulty identifying emotions or relating to others is due to Asperger’s Syndrome.
The humorous but dark animated claymation motion picture begins with the proclamation that it is based on a true story. Adam Elliot explained in an interview with The Wrap that, for more than twenty years, he has corresponded with a pen pal in New York who is a Jewish atheist with Asperger’s. He also acknowledged that he identifies with Mary’s character.
Mary and Max (available to stream through Amazon) invites viewers into a psychologically rich tale about the interplay between intimacy, friendship, isolation and anxiety. The friendship gives both Mary and Max a newfound sense of purpose and connection. At the same time, their attempts to build the friendship — and maybe even meet in person — generate tremendous anxiety. Mary and Max are never romantic or sexual in their correspondence. They are friends, nothing more. And yet, the friendship generates a tremendous sense of well-being for each character in their otherwise isolated lives. Mary and Max evolve and mature, then suffer setbacks, then evolve further as their friendship serves as a steady stream of both inspiration and longing. To point out that these characters and their difficult eccentricities are extreme is an understatement. Nevertheless, their conscious and unconscious conflicts about intimacy make for a moving and memorable tale that — while not necessarily relatable — deftly describes the relatable reality that intimacy often requires more work than expected. The film celebrates its protagonists and demonstrates that even the most isolated outcasts among us are capable of intense love and meaningful connections.
Posted in Films, Intimacy & Commitment, Love
← Love and Mercy
Ricki and the Flash →
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← How news happens in Baltimore
What’s new in the journal Industrial and Corporate Change? →
More liquor licensing and music venues coverage
Posted on January 29, 2010 by Ben under cultural regulation, implicit cultural policy, independent artists, music industry
The controversy over liquor licensing regulation and its effect on small bars continues, with coverage in Melbourne’s Herald-Sun today. One of the interesting points – which I think sums up some of the issues of over-regulation in the sector – is the laws currently causing concern have actually been on the statutes since the 1990s. It’s just that they have only begun to be enforced now, in the wake of community concern about alcohol-fueled violence:
The rules covering late-trading venues with amplified music had been unchanged since the late 1990s. But the crackdown started in the middle of last year when a new compliance directorate, nicknamed “Sue’s Stormtroopers”, started work.
Removing the link between live music and a venue being classified as high risk would not involve a change to the law, Perring says.
Gigs, where people come together to share their love of music, are “exactly the kind of thing you want happening” in licensed venues, he says.
“People who go to see live music are part of a community, they’re there to see a band — and it’s generally all over by 1am.”
The Tote’s closure is unfortunate timing. After years of being hit by nightclubs, live music is having a renaissance.
“Considering all the woes of the record industry, the live industry in Melbourne is alive and well,” tour promoter and record company boss Michael Gudinski says.
“I have full respect for the police and Sue Maclellan trying to clean up the trouble, but live music venues, particularly the ones that support Australian music, aren’t the trouble places. Live music venues are completely different to the nightclub scene. They’re looking in the wrong places.”
Young says the new laws are hitting the Cherry hard.
“I might want to put on Spencer P. Jones on a Tuesday night to play for an hour and hopefully bring in 20 people who are music fans. You wouldn’t do that now because you have to pay security $35-$40 an hour, you have to have two of them working for a minimum of five hours,” he says.
“You’re in a scenario where the musician gets paid $200 and the security guard gets $500 — and you only expected to attract 20 people. So you close on Tuesday and close on Sunday.”
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About Us Sub Menu
Evergreen Is the Voice of Washington’s Mountain Bike Community
Almost every day, somewhere, someone is trying to keep bikes off trails. In fact, our organization was originally formed in response to trail closures and a lack of riding opportunities around Seattle.
While things have gotten much better, and we now have hundreds of miles of trails to ride, it won’t stay that way unless someone is always paying attention and taking action
Because we have more power when we work together to achieve a common goal, Evergreen acts as a single point of contact representing thousands of mountain bikers across Washington when working with land managers, politicians and other government agencies. We regularly team up with a variety of other organizations to work towards common goals of resource protection and recreational access.
Our goal is to protect the trails that we have, and continually push for new opportunities and access.
Ensuring Washington Trails are Open and Rideable
Because it’s not enough to simply get, or protect, access to trails for mountain biking, we also do trail work. Last year Evergreen donated more than 10,000 volunteer hours to trail maintenance and building new trails. Our proven ability to plan, build and maintain sustainable trail goes a long way towards making us valuable and respected partner when it comes time to negotiate for trails and access. Learn more about our volunteer Trail Work Parties here.
To continue to be successful, we need your help in making our collective voice stronger. Join Evergreen today!
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Tag Archives: Jhene Aiko
My Top 10 Songs of the Week “From the Hood to Japan” : MYFAVORITES
Posted by d1esel6 in MUSIC, MYFAVORITES, Top 10 Songs of the Week
Brian McKnight, Christina Aguilera, Frank Ocean, Future, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Jhene Aiko, No Doubt, Pharrell Williams, Tamar Braxton, Tamar Braxton Future, Tamar Braxton Let Me KNow, Tamar Braxton New Song, Vanessa Williams, Vanessa Williams Brian McKnight
So obviously, once you look at this weeks lists, I have been on a serious Gwen Stefani/No Doubt kick this week. I have always loved Gwen, and I have to say that watching her on “The Voice” has made me love her even more. Additionally, I’m tapering off from my HOV kick last week and trying to get into more new music… like Jhene Aiko’s “Souled Out” album which is GREAT. I also have a REAL ‘Blast from the Past’ here, a song I haven’t even thought about for probably over a decade.
Enjoy! Have a GREAT Weekend!
10. Jay-Z featuring Frank Ocean “Oceans”
9. Jhene Aiko “Lyin King”
8. Gwen Stefani “Crash”
7. Vanessa Williams & Brian McKnight “Love Is”
6. Tamar Braxton featuring Future “Let Me Know”
5. Christina Aguilera “Let There Be Love”
4. Gwen Stefani featuring Pharrell “Yummy”
3. Gwen Stefani featuring Eve “Rich Girl”
2. Jhene Aiko “Spotless Mind”
1. No Doubt “NEW”
My Top 10 Songs of the Week “Dot Com Period” : MYFAVORITES
Anthony Hamilton, Brandy, Chris Brown, Chrisette Michele, Jhene Aiko, Jill Scott, Lil Wayne, Maxwell, Top 10 Songs of the Week, Tyga
This weeks Top 10 list was almost a photo finish, because I couldn’t decide which of two songs should get the coveted #1 spot. At the beginning of the week, I synced new albums to listen to (because I had been seriously stuck on Sia, Beyonce and Rihanna for the past few months). Karen O, Jhene Aiko, Interpol, and a few others including Chris Brown’s “X”. I got stuck on a few songs on “X” and I was certain one of the songs would be my #1 pick this week, until Wednesday when I was working and found myself craving the Neo-Soul sounds of the likes of Maxwell, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Anthony Hamilton and Chrisette Michele. That altered things a lot, and makes for a pretty interesting Top 10 this week. Enjoy, and have a great weekend.
10. Jhene Aiko “W.A.Y.S.”
W.A.Y.S. = Why Aren’t You Smiling. I love Jhene and her acronyms (“W.T.H.” still cracks me up). I didn’t get too far into her solo debut, but this song stuck to me for a few reasons. It’s really inspiring, and I really related to the struggle she talks about in the song. Also, it’s just a nice song overall, I’m really digging this girl and her style.
9. Chrisette Michele “Epiphany (I’m Leaving)”
I LOVE CHRISETTE MICHELE. I don’t know how many of you watch “R&B Divas LA”, but she’s a part of it this season, and though I liked her before, I was really surprised that the reality show made me like her even more. So much so I finally decided to give her back catalogue a listen. This of course was a big hit, so I was most familiar with it and I played it out a bit this week. Great song.
8. Chris Brown featuring Brandy “Do Better”
That Brandy sure can sang! This is an awesome song.
7. Jill Scott “He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)”
This has always been a favorite of mine, it’s so pretty and poetic. No shade, but I don’t think Jill ever topped her debut album, simply because her style was so unique. This song, among others, is a testament that she brought something really new and completely HERS to the industry. Classic shizz!
6. Maxwell “Pretty Wings”
I do. I love me some Maxwell, and even though I didn’t fully get into this song as much as his others it’s definitely an excellent song. Melodies, Instrumentation, Lyrics and Vocals are ALL on point.
5. Anthony Hamilton “I’m A Mess”
“CALL ME. WRITE ME. LOVE ME. COME HOME.” I LOVE a good majority of Hamilton’s soulful debut album, but this one takes the cake. The lyrics are so intense, the instrumentation is dripping with that old school soul-stank, and that ending choir and the pitch effects… AMAZING!
4. Jill Scott “A Long Walk”
Again, Jill and her debut album are so frikkin unique. I was into this massive hit this week and marvelled at her flawless ability to mix soul, poetry and hip hop into such a lovely song. I was actually surprised I remembered most of the lyrics, and how much the song made me smile.
3. Chris Brown “Lost in Ya Love”
I like “X” a lot, but DAMN… 22 songs! It took me pretty much ALL of Monday to finally get through the album and before this song I was getting bored of the album. This hit, with such a lovely beat and sweet harmonies and lyrics, I fell in love.
(I see Breezy is on his PRINCE-game, because I can’t find the audio to this song anywhere on YouTube. I’m not sure how to Embed shit from Tumblr so I’ll just link it… click on the song title above to hear the track)
2. Chris Brown featuring Lil Wayne and Tyga “Loyal”
“Just got rich. Took a broke nigga’s bitch. I can make a broke bitch rich. But I don’t fuck with broke bitches.” I swear I never got into this song until this week (I had heard of it, but never heard it until the BET Awards), because it’s MAD Nigger-ish and Ignorant and Misogynistic and all’a’dat! But that beat is sick, I hella wanna go out to a club and get my dance on to it. Thus all the plays this week, I was working on my moves!!
1. Chrisette Michele “Charades”
THIS SONG IS SO GOOD “dot com period” !!! Yeah, I don’t even have anything else to say, it’s just a perfect flow and perfect mood. I was WAY into it this week. LOVE YA CHRISETTE.
My Top 10 Songs of the Week “The FIX” : MYFAVORITES
Posted by d1esel6 in James Blake, Janelle Monáe, Jhene Aiko, Justin Timberlake, Miguel, MUSIC, MYFAVORITES, The Black Keys, The Drums, Top 10 Songs of the Week
absoul, childish gambino, James Blake, Janelle Monae, Jhene Aiko, Justin Timberlake, Miguel, The Black Keys, the drums, Top 10 Songs, Top 10 Songs of the Week
10. Justin Timberlake “Amensia”
I had this crazy Timberlake kick the last few days, this morning I was hella into this one. It’s a cute song, but I love the slowed down second part where he’s like “I almost forgot, who-oo-ooo you are!”
9. Jhene Aiko featuring Ab-Soul “WTH”
This Jhene girl and her “Sail Out” EP are steadily growing on me. This song is cute and mellow like most of the EP, but mainly what I love is the acronym… “Way Too High”.
8. The Black Keys “Lonely Boy”
The other day at work, I had this odd craving to hear this song. I was humming it, than just started singing it out loud and I just ended up having to go to YouTube and play it out! Great song, and hilarious video.
7. Janelle Monae featuring Miguel “Prime Time”
There is no end to how Awesome this song is. So mellow and sexy, with great lyrics and harmonies and all that. There is also no end to how underrated and under-appreciated Miss Monae is, which is a shame, but it doesn’t really matter that the masses sleep on her… us non-idiots know she rocks!
6. James Blake “Overgrown”
I had a variety of Music fixes this week. It started with Jhene Aiko, later in the week it was Timberlake, and for MOST of the week I was in a real James Blake zone. He’s just awesome, and this particular song reminds me of the weeks leading up to me seeing him perform Live in New York City.
5. The Drums “Money”
Speaking of New York City, there are a lot of songs that remind me of my short stay there (blog post will be coming probably next month) and this awesome-ly peppy song is one of them. I really really love this and was seriously addicted to it for a while, and I think I’m about to relapse.
4. James Blake “Our Love Comes Back”
Might have been my favorite James song this week.
3. Miguel “Use Me”
Today, a new Music fix began and his name is Miguel. This dude is also amazing, such a great writer, and this song is just so good that I almost always replay it at least 3 times before moving on to the next track.
2. Jhene Aiko featuring Childish Gambino “Bed Peace”
This song starts, and it sounds like it’s gonna be this cornball ass pop track. The lyrics make me laugh though because I relate so hard. “If I had it my way, I’d roll out of bed say, 2:30 mid day, Hit the blunt then hit you up to come over to my place. You show up right away, We make love and then we fuck, and then you give me my space.” < YES! All of that!
1. Justin Timberlake “Spaceship Coupe”
I have never liked this song, the scratchy falsetto used to always get on my nerves where I couldn’t listen. But for whatever reason (maybe I’m feeling some kinda way if you know what I mean) I was addicted to it. It’s a little retarded still, but it’s a relaxing kinda of groove that’s actually fun to sing along with.
#TopTwentyFiveTuesday “…of Twenty Fourteen” : MYFAVORITES
22 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted by d1esel6 in A Great Big World, Alicia Keys, Babyface, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Christian Falk, Christina Aguilera, Coldplay, Drake, Duke Dumont, Jessie J, Jhene Aiko, Justin Timberlake, K Michelle, Kanye West, M.I.A., Mariah Carey, MUSIC, MYFAVORITES, OutKast, Pharrell Williams, Rihanna, Robin Thicke, Robyn, Royksopp, Shakira, St. Vincent, Tamar Braxton, The Black Keys, Toni Braxton, Top25Tuesday
Alicia Keys, Andre 3000, Andre Benjamin, Babyface, beyonce, Black Keys, Calvin Harris, Christian Falk, Christina Aguilera, Coldplay, Drake, Duke Dumont, Jax Jones, Jessie J, Jhene Aiko, Justin Timberlake, K Michelle, Kanye West, Mariah Carey, MIA, Music 2014, Ola Salo, OutKast, Pharrell Williams, rihanna, Robyn, Royksopp, Shakira, Songs 2014, St Vincent, Tamar Braxton, The Black Keys, Toni Braxton, Toni Braxton and Babyface, Top 25 Music 2014, Top 25 Songs of 2014, Top Music 2014, Top Songs of 2014, Whitney Houston
#TopTenThursday didn’t really happen, but that IS a weekly thing I want to keep going on this here blog. But, in the effort of trying to keep this blog active, I’m going to add another weekly list – TopTwentyFiveTuesday, or maybe this will monthly, we’ll see. (Mind you, BOTH the TopTenThursday and TopTwentyFiveTuesday won’t be exclusive to Music)
This post is to make up for two things actually, the #TopTenThursday thing AND the post I planned on making about my favorite music of 2014 so far. I could have easily posted something quick and easy at the end of June, the official halfway mark of the year, but I have downloaded so much music that I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to yet. I wanted to give those albums (Agust Alsina, The 1975, Beck, Jack White, et. al.) a fair listen and have a broader, more researched list of my favorite albums of 2014. Unfortunately I still have a bunch of albums in my iTunes that have zero plays… and it’s damn near August already. SO – instead of doing that (it’ll just have to wait until the end of the year) I’m just going to post the songs that I’ve been obsessed with this year. Some new, some old, all great.
And here we go…
25. Toni Braxton & Babyface “Roller Coaster”
Their “Love, Marriage & Divorce” album is really good, and this opening track is one of the stand outs.
24. Shakira featuring Rihanna “Can’t Remember to Forget You”
Sexy video. Fun song. And… well, RIHANNA!!!
23. Robin Thicke featuring Tamar Braxton “For the Rest of My Life Part 2”
22. M.I.A. “Bad Girls”
I was obsessed with this song my last month in New York City. Nice flow.
21. Pharrell Williams featuring Alicia Keys “Know Who You Are”
My absolute favorite from Pharrell’s “GIRL” album.
20. Jessie J “Thunder”
19. Justin Timberlake “Not a Bad Thing”
This is such a cute little Pop song, don’t “fuck around” and sleep on it.
18. The Black Keys “Waiting on Words”
Black Keys’ “Turn Blue” is an excellent album, and this has become my favorite.
17. Calvin Harris “Summer”
16. Christian Falk featuring Robyn and Ola Salo “Dream On”
I OWNED Robyn’s self titled 2008 album, but somehow never paid attention to this. I really got into it this Spring as I was easing back into the Bay Area life.
15. Drake “Connect”
14. K. Michelle “Can’t Raise a Man”
Great great song with a strong message that ladies NEED to pay attention to.
13. St. Vincent “Digital Witness”
Randomly saw St. Vincent on “Saturday Night Live” this Spring, and I fell in love with this quirky (and seemingly Prince-inspired) track. YAAAH!
12. Andre 3000 & Beyonce “Back to Black”
I was late to the party on this one, but this Amy Winehouse remake is so weird and strange – right up my alley.
11. Kanye West “Hold My Liquor”
10. Jhene Aiko “The Worst”
Thank the BET Awards for this, I seriously had never heard the song before the show. Really addictive song.
9. Coldplay “Midnight”
Just one word : AMAZING! (it reminds me of How To Dress Well though)
8. Jessie J “Sexy Lady”
Probably the most FUN song I’ve discovered this year, this girl is so terribly underrated and under-promoted. This song could be HUGE, but oh well.
7. Robyn & Royksopp “Monument”
Robyn and Royksopp’s collaboration album has highs and few lows, but this opening track is just EPIC!! Amazingly textured and one of the best aural experiences of the year. (It’s just a tad long, but worth it when you get to that Saxophone effect)
6. Beyonce featuring Drake “Mine”
I always find myself coming back to this beautifully complex track.
5. Duke Dumont featuring Jax Jones “I Got U”
I heard this on some random commercial and just had to have it. The steel drums, the low-key House bump and the Whitney Houston sample just make this one of the best FEELING songs I’ve gotten into this year.
4. Mariah Carey “Make It Look Good”
3. A Great Big World featuring Christina Aguilera “Say Something”
Can’t even explain why I love this song, it’s so simple but makes such an emotional impact. Great stuff.
2. Mariah Carey “Faded”
This song is so sad, but the groove of it and Mariah’s vocals make it very addicting for me.
1. Coldplay “Magic”
Everything about this song is on point, the lyricism, the production and even Chris’ vocals are … well, they fit the song and mood.
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East Timor: A Forgotten Crisis
Jia You
Many things could come to mind when one imagines a hospital; but could livestock be one of them? Visit East Timor’s national hospital in 2008, and you’d see goats, pigs and chickens wandering around the premises. These walking health hazards had persisted for two years because their owners, some 1,500 refugees encamped on paths of the hospital, had lost everything else to the arson and looting that had rampaged the capital city, Dili, in 2006. One tenth of East Timor’s population had been displaced during the crisis, which erupted with fighting between police and the army; this quickly escalated into widespread communal violence. The crisis has torn the country apart and revealed the deep scars left on Timorese society after 24 years of Indonesian occupation.
The year 1975 was a turning point in the history of East Timor. The nation had declared independence from Portugal that same year, after rejecting neighboring Indonesia’s offer of annexation. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Indonesia the following month, amidst rumors of an impending Indonesian invasion; the day they left the country, Indonesian paratroops landed on Timor Island.
“The Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor,” Kissinger recalled 20 years later, when questioned by activists during a speech on his new book, Diplomacy. “To us that did not seem like a very significant event… so when the Indonesians informed us, we neither said yes or no.”
Instead, the administration doubled American weapon supply to Indonesia over the next three years - weapons the Indonesian troops used to massacre thousands of Timorese every year. To Ford and Carter, what mattered was not human rights records, but Indonesia’s strategic value as an anti-communist ally in Southeast Asia.
Until the Cold War ended, American ambassadors at the United Nations would block the UN from any effective action in East Timor, while the administration would consistently supply military aid to Indonesia. These refills continued even when they violated U.S. laws prohibiting the shipment of American weapons to countries that used them for aggression. As a result, one third of East Timor’s pre-occupation population disappeared.
The story could have been different. The same year the UN finally held a referendum in East Timor to determine its future status, NATO began to bomb Serbia in retaliation for killing ethnic Albanians in its Kosovo province. Serbian forces withdrew that very year, and Kosovo achieved independence nine years later. It took 27 years for East Timor to reach this kind of freedom.
And the scars of occupation didn’t heal with the independence. Years of occupation and resistance had drained East Timor’s economic resources and divided the country between the veteran resistance fighters in the East and pro-integration militia in the West. In Dili, where new arrivals from both regions competed for limited economic opportunities, such division bred a fertile ground for conflict. For this reason, discrimination against Westerners in the army created a national crisis in 2006 and turned the Dili National Hospital into a refugee camp.
But East Timor has some good news this year: The refugees have finally returned home. All refugee camps closed at the end of last year, and only 52 families remained in transitory shelters as of January 2010. What put an end to the tents was the UN peace-building mission, or the United Nations Integrated Missions in Timor-Leste (UNMIT). Deployed immediately after the 2006 crisis, UNMIT played an instrumental role in restoring stability in East Timor through its efforts in bridging political dialogues, reforming the security sector, and coordinating humanitarian relief for the refugees. The extent of UNMIT success was put to test when a radical faction of the army attacked the Timorese president and the prime minister in 2008. Contrary to the 2006 crisis, society remained stable, and the newly-elected democratic government resolved the crisis peacefully and constitutionally.
East Timor’s recent recovery once again attests to the importance of UN peacekeeping and peace-building efforts in vulnerable states. Yet the U.S. has a poor track record in supporting the UN financially. In 2009 alone, U.S. debt accounted for 90 percent of all member state debts to the UN regular budget, and Fiscal Year 2010 was the first time the U.S. paid off its debt to the United Nations since the early 1980s.
While East Timor is on the road to recovery, a similar tragedy is ongoing in Indonesia, and the Obama administration could be perpetuating that tragedy. The administration recently lifted a decade-long ban on U.S. training and military assistance to Indonesia’s special force Kopassus in an effort to strengthen bilateral cooperation in anti-terrorism. Kopassus has a notorious human rights record: it was involved in the killing of five Australian journalists in East Timor prior to the full-scale Indonesian invasion, and it has retained and promoted soldiers convicted of kidnapping student activists in 1997 and 1998. Yet the crimes of Kopassus are not only in the past. As Obama touched down in Indonesia, secret files leaked from the Kopassus showed the Kopassus engaged in systematically murdering and abducting civilian targets in the West Papua, another region annexed by Indonesia.
Apparently, not all are oblivious to what’s at stake. House representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) submitted Resolution 1355 in May that calls for the Indonesian government to stop human rights abuses in West Papua. The resolution is currently endorsed by twenty representatives. None of them are from the Illinois General Assembly.
It is time we remember the story of East Timor. We have reached a critical juncture, where our decisions could determine whether history repeats itself.
As President Obama nostalgically praised the Indonesian meatball soup during a visit to his former country this November, he has perhaps forgotten another childhood memory.
“We had arrived in Djakarta less than a year after one of the more brutal and swift campaigns of suppression in modern times,” wrote President Obama in his book, Dreams from My Father.
He was referring to the mass killing of communist sympathizers during General Suharto’s 1965 coup.
Few remember that America actively supported Suharto’s authoritarian regime and its invasion of East Timor, a country on the south of the Indonesian archipelago. Now, as East Timor continues to suffer the repercussions of the occupation eight years after regaining its independence, President Obama could be shaping policies that perpetuate a similar tragedy as he seeks to strengthen ties with Indonesia.
This article was created by an affiliate of The Daily Northwestern. The Daily is not responsible for the article’s content. For more information, please contact The Daily’s editor in chief at eic@dailynorthwestern.com.
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Northwestern moves up to 11th place in U.S. News rankings
Members of the Class of 2017 stand at Commencement. Northwestern was named the 11th best university in the nation, up a spot from last year, in the 2018 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Daily file photo by Colin Boyle
Erica Snow, Campus Editor
Northwestern was named the 11th best university in the nation — up one spot from last year — according to this year’s rankings by U.S. News & World Report.
NU tied with Johns Hopkins University and Dartmouth College in the 2018 rankings, released Tuesday. NU has been ranked 12th almost every year since the 2009 report, except for a drop to 13th place in 2015.
Princeton University was named the top university, followed by Harvard University. University of Chicago placed third.
The report draws on data such as first-year retention rates and graduation rates to determine which universities provide the best academic value.
“It’s always good to be ranked highly, and it’s always good to go up a notch as well,” University spokesman Al Cubbage said. “The rankings kind of shift each year. … Obviously, we hope that next year, we’ll be in the top 10.”
According to a recent Politico article, the data U.S. News uses can increase economic inequality in higher education because the rankings push universities to favor more affluent applicants.
“The criteria used in the U.S. News rankings — a measure so closely followed in the academic world that some colleges have built them into strategic plans — create incentives for schools to favor wealthier students over less wealthy applicants,” Politico reported.
Cubbage said NU “has gone the opposite way” in terms of accepting wealthier applicants over those in lower-income households, citing the University’s loan-free financial aid packages. He said the number of students eligible for Pell Grants, which are awarded to undergraduate students on the basis of financial need, has increased as well.
In June, associate provost for University enrollment Michael Mills told The Daily he expected about 19 percent of first-year students to be Pell Grant-eligible this year.
Allyson Mauch contributed reporting.
Email: ericasnow2019@u.northwestern.edu
Twitter: @ericasnoww
Tags: U.S. News & World Report
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Back To Baja Beginnings (Basics)
Article & photos by That Baja Guy - Gary Graham
There’s little doubt or controversy about Los Cabos having grown into an international resort city renowned for sport fishing, golf, luxury hotels, beaches and so much more and looking for Baskin Robbins? Costco? Walmart? Or many, many chain restaurants and hotels, you’ve come to the right place!
Any questions about finding comfort and convenience in these areas would soon be put to rest while strolling through Cabo’s IGY Marina. Just look around, and you’ll see the fleet of sport fishers that have grown to include anything that floats -- from well-equipped outboard-powered pangas to mega-yachts -- huge, fast, sleek -- all underscoring the popularity of larger boats that can easily venture farther and more comfortably in search of gamefish.
And yet, that’s an obvious veer from course for many knowledgeable Baja anglers seeking that "classic, old-Baja style" that first ignited the imaginations of Baja pioneers like John Steinbeck, Ray Cannon, Earle Stanley Gardner, Gene Kira, Neal Kelly, and others.
Perhaps we’re returning to a time when revisiting fishing and fun matters more than all the other factors.
The 34-room “Rancho,” perched on a rug- ged point, is only accessible by a dirt road and overlooks a submerged reef teeming with sea life and a broad view to the north and south of the Sea of Cortez.
Development has overwhelmed some of the larger, more popular areas, but many visitors have resisted that trend. They have heralded a return to the basics, and there have been several large areas that have fought to remain relatively undeveloped by today’s standards -- remaining outposts in populated areas attempting to stay as authentic an “Old Baja” as possible.
John Ireland, from East Cape’s Rancho Leonero, is an example of a long- time owner who has insisted on providing a remote and authentic “Baja experience” to his guests. The 34-room “Rancho,” perched on a rugged point, is only accessible by a dirt road and overlooks a submerged reef teeming with sea life and a broad view to the north and south of the Sea of Cortez. His resort has a fleet of 10 super pangas up to 25 feet that are preferred by many anglers for a variety of reasons. With only the captain on board, everyone becomes part of the crew and enjoys the openness the boats offer.
The versatile pangas are equally as effective for inshore fishing for wahoo, dorado, roosterfish, and jacks along the miles of sandy beaches in both directions, while offshore, they offer a stable platform to chase billfish and yellowfin tuna.
For those wanting to stay even closer to shore, not only are kayaks available, but also there is the opportunity to walk the beaches, fishing from shore using either fly or conventional tackle.
Meanwhile, farther down the Baja Peninsula on the Pacific side, surf fishing has also earned a following of anglers using spin-gear to cast over the huge waves that often crash on the beaches. Their success can be remarkable, landing huge roosterfish, jacks, snook, sierra, and even dorado.
Because of the lack of swells or surf at East Cape most of the time, the beaches are more user-friendly. That soft water feature has not been unnoticed by the fly-fishing community that flock to the area. Although most commonly known for its success on freshwater lakes and streams, fly-fishing has taken a big bite out of the saltwater scene. Case in point: roosterfish. Many guides are now plying the surf line with anglers at their sides, spotting gallos cruising close to shore searching for food.
You can spot the roosterfish crowd generally in early spring after the north winds subside until late fall when the north winds return; this is a popular pastime for hordes of fly-flinging anglers!
Farther up the road at a popular spot also located on the beach, the Hotel Buenavista Beach Resort offers mostly cruisers and a panga or two.
At the heart of East Cape is Los Barriles, where the Van Wormer Resorts located right on the beach offer a wider variety of accommodations and choices. Also, Martin Verdugo’s, a small RV park where many DIY-type anglers (do-it- yourselfers) gather for the season to fish in their trailer boats. In addition to the RV Park, Verdugo’s offers rooms and areas for camping.
Muertos Bay boasts a large fleet of independently owned pangas that launch every morning attracting anglers from La Paz and the East Cape area as well as some who choose local accomm
Roughly 30 miles north of Los Barriles up into the Sea of Cortez, and twice that distance south of La Paz, there is another remote area – Muertos Bay and Las Ventana. This area offers one high-end resort, Rancho Costa, Bahía de los Sueños, plus a few very basic family-owned operations that are spread out along the shore at La Ventana facing Isla Cerralvo and offering ocean adventures including sportfishing in spring, summer, and fall plus windsurfing in the winter months.
Muertos Bay boasts a large fleet of independently-owned pangas that launch every morning attracting anglers from both La Paz and the East Cape area as well as some who choose local accommodations.
This area is unique as knowledgeable anglers know because of how inexhaustible the bite is! It is important to have your tackle rigged when boarding the boat as often the moment the boat pulls away from shore, the fishing begins. There are no long boat rides here. Most of the time the best fishing is within a few miles of the shoreline -- the bottom drops off rapidly, and it is not uncommon for folks arriving late to see fish already being caught as they are loading their gear into their respective boats. The area offers a broad array of species -- from billfish to triggerfish.
Another rustic and remote destination at the very end of a barely passable one-lane dirt road, almost an hour from La Paz or La Ventana/Muertos Bay is Rancho Las Cruces, truly in the middle of nowhere!
Although built in 1948, the hotel lays claim to being one of the oldest in Baja Sur and is distinguishable by the three crosses perched on a point near the hotel overlooking the Sea of Cortez. Many old-timers still swear the fishing here is better because of the light pressure that is the result of its seclusion.
Next, on our return to basics list, La Paz is often described by locals as “tourist friendly” but NOT “touristy!” The capital of Baja California Sur, this old colonial city is more like the old-Mexico of decades ago. It is family-oriented and still offers plenty of DIY fishing from shore as well as on similar pangas as Muertos.
Several islands to the north outside La Paz bay offer not only some extraordinary sportfishing for a laundry list of species, but some unique snorkeling areas also.
There is a paved road extending to the northward accessed from Mex 1 just north of town at El Centenario. This road allows anglers to explore the rocky points and sandy beaches that extend northward along the western side of La Paz Bay.
On the eastern side of the Baja Peninsula – both north and south – there are miles of rocky coastline easily accessible by local pangas and cruisers and home to trophy-sized grouper, snapper, cabrilla, and many other fish.
Traveling approximately 105 miles north is Ciudad Constitución, where there is a turnoff to Puerto San Carlos, which is 32 miles west on a paved road. It is the epicenter of the only deep-water port on the West Coast of Baja with a population of approximately 6,000.
For those truly seeking the basics of Baja, Magdalena Bay is one of those places that time has virtually left behind and is considered one of the most important wetland ecosystems on the Pacific Coast! It is as large as San Francisco Bay, and stretches approximately 132 miles along the West Coast of southern Baja, encompassing nearly 1,500 square miles approximately 600 miles below the border as the frigate bird flies.
Protected by five barrier islands along the West Coast of Baja, it has remained an enigma, tantalizing and bewildering even the most seasoned Baja traveler.
With its stunning, rugged desert landscape shaping a backdrop for hundreds of miles of mangrove-lined channels, Magdalena Bay attracts an overwhelming collection of wildlife unduplicated anywhere else in Baja!
Most visitors are drawn to the larger, more popular tourist destinations scattered across the Baja landscape with easy access by commercial aircraft. Even those who drive the length and breadth of Baja’s peninsula seldom venture the extra 32-plus miles out to Puerto San Carlos or Lopez Mateos, the largest villages on the bay.
More services are offered in Puerto San Carlos than in any other village on the bay, including a few hotels, motels, markets and restaurants along with pangas and some cruisers for sportfishing in the bay and Pacific.
The miles of mangrove-lined channels are considered the largest snook habitat in Baja. Water temperatures peak in the fall months and produce the best snook action. Sizes range from a few pounds to a respectable 40-plus. By far the most productive method is fishing live sardines or shrimp. Live bait drifted in the deeper channels up against the mangroves provides the best shot to catch snook.
If you were to poll seasoned captains from around the world, their consensus would be there are few spots on earth where so many billfish congregate offshore so predictably, usually from October through late November or later.
From Puerto San Carlos, Five Barrier Islands create the bay. The channel to the Pacific is about 19 miles to open ocean and from there to the north is Santa Maria Bay where many boats can be found anchoring at night during the fall months. There are banks where large quantities of sardine and mackerel are scattered up and down the Pacific.
Crews will likely hook more fish in a week or two here than they will see anywhere else in the world over a handful of seasons in these fishing grounds.
Boats and crews, dazzled by the sheer volume of fish, often think that triple- digit totals are what it’s all about. Over the years, many seasoned captains wisely focused on taking advantage of the volume to fine-tune their techniques on a variety of tackle – light, heavy, spinning and fly – or who wanted to improve their boat handling, cockpit management, and fish finding capabilities, ultimately return home much more skilled than when they arrived.
Adolfo López Mateos, located about 30 miles up the bay from Puerto San Carlos, is about a third of the population with a little over 2,100. It has a few hotels and motels, as well as a small fleet of individually-owned pangas and cruisers that anglers can hire for sportfishing in the bay and open Pacific. The bay continues up the West Coast nearly 40 miles farther. There is also a dirt airstrip available, the only one around.
For the last Back to Baja beginnings’ destination on our list, Bahía Concepción lies 625 miles south of the Tijuana border, but just 28 miles south of Mulegé. Those 28 miles of highway hug the coast offering direct access to what are considered by many to be some the finest beaches in all of Baja.
This rugged paradise is the real “old” Baja -- just over 20 miles long and varies in width from two to five miles, uncrowded and just plain “fishy.” One of the most beautiful spots in Baja, it is another place that offers a variety of ways to fish: shore, kayak, inflatable, panga or small cruiser.
With its dramatic scenery along the western coastline of Bahía Concepción, the ultimate photo opportunity for those traveling south by car or boat is available for Baja visitors. This giant bay, within the Sea of Cortez, offers travelers a glance of what “The Real Baja” is all about, but it must be seen to be appreciated.
The incredible bay once teemed with scallops, oysters, butter clams and nice-sized game fish. On my first visit to Bahía Concepción in 1973, after Mex 1 had opened,
I lay in my sleeping bag dazzled by the dark star-filled sky adjacent to a mound of scallop and oyster shells higher than I was tall.
These days, the clams and the larger fish are found only along the beaches of the eastern shore. Though the bay inhabitants still include: cabrilla, grouper, snapper, triggerfish, sierra, jack crevalle, roosterfish. At the mouth of the bay, yellowtail, amberjack, snook, plus dorado, striped marlin, sailfish are still found offshore.
It is still known as one of Baja’s favored spots for campers, kayakers, those with RV’s, and those who love beautiful beaches and quiet coves; the bay is especially good for kayakers as it is usually quite calm with light winds and not much in the way of strong currents. There are beach-side campgrounds, with varying degrees of services for RV’s and campers scattered along the coast below Mulegé. Some of these campgrounds offer complete services and even a restaurant or two.
Mulegé is the home of the iconic Hotel Serenidad that also boasts an airstrip for fly-in visitors. In the town of Mulegé, there is a complete array of stores and services available.
There are other destinations for those looking to return to the basics that we haven’t mentioned here.
And for other visitors who look for the beautiful, well-developed locations with cookie cutter comforts, there are many places we didn’t even try and name; there are many articles that have been written about them.
But for the many out there who choose to have experiences where beaches are unspoiled, the food is basic but wholesome, and the local culture takes you back to a time where life is simple, and adventures are fun, give some of these a try. You’ll be glad you did.
It’s Mango Time!
Culinary Cabo – Family Dining
Walk a Dog or Make a Kitty Purr
All That’s Fishy – July 2019
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Doug Rohde
“Infinite Potential” cover art
Published on July 11, 2016 July 27, 2016 by unkagug
I’m excited to be able to give you a sneak preview of Infinite Potential by The Auto Body Experience. It’s the band’s fifth record, and my first with the band. I’m especially excited because we began recording in early 2009! I think the long process has been totally worth it, though. Besides, bandleader Scott Yoho has hardly been dilly dallying. The other thing that happened in early 2009 was the birth of his second son. (For a beautiful portrait of their relationship, buy the record and listen to track 7.)
The release party isn’t until August 5, but Scott said I could post an image here ahead of time. I think it’s helpful to see the junkyard full of cars along with the album title, which is a bit of a sleeper. (For an explanation of the word sleeper, buy the record and listen to track 8.)
Finally, I’ll stop with the teasers and say that a preview of the record itself, in the form of track 9, is available here on my recordings page. I included this track, “Wound Too Tight”, because it’s the one where I got to play with the most toys.
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One thought on ““Infinite Potential” cover art”
unkagug says:
“Infinite potential” can also mean “limitlessly high voltage” – Ed.
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While musical theatre productions at the high school level are a given today, that wasn’t always true. In the early 1960s, Dramatics Editor Leon C. Miller noted a rise in popularity among member schools producing musical shows.
HAVING TRAVELED throughout the country during the past six weeks attending Thespian state and regional conferences, I am tremendously impressed with the number of our affiliated schools that will present and already have presented musicals this year. This kind of theatre is mushrooming everywhere. And why not? Whether or not we favor musicals is no longer a moot question. They are accepted by our public, for they are the shows that bring out the SRO signs.
I have to date seen three productions of Bye Bye Birdie since October 1 at Hibbing, Minn.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Cincinnati, Ohio. They were excellent shows, but more impressive is that the houses were sold out for each performance — and there were from three to four performances at each school! In Cincinnati, tickets went on sale for an additional presentation because of the demand.
Connersville, Ind., High School presented The King and I on November 16 and 17. And at the time of this writing, I am sure that many other schools have likewise presented or will present other productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical shows — Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific — as well as Show Boat, Annie Get Your Gun, and Babes in Arms.
All play publishers are aware of this demand for musicals. Samuel French now offers such non-Broadway musical comedies as First Impressions, Abe Burrows’ adaptation of Helen Jerome’s Pride and Prejudice. Other French musical productions which are rapidly becoming popular in the amateur field are Plain and Fancy, Good News, Vagabond King, and Seventeen.
The Dramatic Publishing Company likewise is keeping up with the times by adapting a number of straight plays as musicals, including Around the World in 80 Days, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, Lute Song, and Cheaper by the Dozen.
Music Theatre International also controls outstanding musicals popular with our high schools, such as The Boy Friend, Damn Yankees, Guys and Dolls, Where’s Charley?, Tom Sawyer, All in Love, and Little Mary Sunshine.
And, of course, Tams-Witmark’s musicals, in addition to Bye Bye Birdie, are also much in demand, including Kiss Me, Kate; Brigadoon; Calamity Jane; Finian’s Rainbow; Girl Crazy; Li’l Abner; Wildcat; and the operettas of Victor Herbert.
This 1963 advertisement in Dramatics touts Bye Bye Birdie as the most-produced musical in member high schools during the 1962-63 season.
Current Broadway musicals and still nationwide traveling musicals not yet released for amateur production which are worth watching are The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Carnival, Camelot, and The Music Man, which may now be available.
Of course, it costs more to produce a musical show, but on the other hand, sell-out performances will still net sizable profits. I know of one school in the south that presented The King and I for four performances at a cost of $2,500; yet this school had a net profit of $2,500.
But there is more to be said about musical shows than SRO signs and net profits. What other activity in a school will encourage and challenge all other departments to work on one project? — music department; workshops for building and painting scenery; home economics for costumes; art department for scenery, posters, program, and stage settings; language departments when accents are required; history and English departments for research; physical education departments for choreography.
Even other extracurricular activities have their work cut out for them, such as the school newspaper (publicity), annual (photography), student council (organizational work) — this listing can be so broad to cover all activities.
Thus, the musical becomes an all-school project — and rightly so. In some school districts, it is really a school and community project. The musical show is indeed a real shot in the arm for the drama department of your school.
The 1967 Aurora (Ill.) West Senior High School production of Little Mary Sunshine.
From the above, you will conclude that I am enthusiastically in favor of musical shows, and you are so right. On the other hand, the musical is only a part of the entire theatre program. It is not the only production of the year. There are still the straight three-act plays, one-act plays for assemblies and festivals, and of course the all-important theatre for children. They must not be discontinued, nor hastily presented. I firmly recommend, as I have throughout the years, a well-rounded and comprehensive theatre program. Such must be the aim of every theatre department.
“Live” musicals are the answer to the competition of the living room television. And if they are done well, your community will again become conscious of your other productions. There is no substitute for theatre with its color, costumes, and living characterizations. Most persons want an occasional night out — and good high school theatre gives them that opportunity. Get on the musical bandwagon — your neighboring high school may have already taken that ride.
This story appeared in the January 1963 print version of Dramatics. Learn about the print magazine and other Thespian benefits on the International Thespian Society website.
Thespian Throwback: Troupe 2000
Milestone passed in June 1959
Thespian Throwback: There All the Honor Lies
Celebrating 25 years of Thespians in 1954
ITS 90th
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This week in AI #17: Time to build AI and get it out there!
by Léo Paillier | Tech
We’re back from WebSummit, and we picked up the 5 best AI news of the week and everybody, yes EVERYBODY is talking about it. It is time to build AI and get it out there!
1 — Invest in AI
Artificial Intelligence will become a multi-billion industry in the near-future.
If you cut through the noise, there’s still one thing that’s for sure: AI is on everybody’s lips. Whether it’ll be for better or for worse, whether it’ll take a year or a decade, whether it should be heavily or self-regulated, nobody can tell you. Nevertheless, people have strong opinions about it which means… they’re willing to bet money on it! AI stocks are starting to pop left and right, and following NVIDIA latest earnings report we’re ready to wager it isn’t going to stop anytime soon!
2 — Just do it !
Andrew Ng wants the community to focus on transitioning AI from the labs to the real world.
Speaking of NVIDIA, they’re betting big on deep learning in what could be a make-it-or-break-it moment for the company. They have one objective: ensure AI makes its way into society and that it fulfills its potential. One of the main challenges they are facing is the talent shortage in the industry; which explains why they just announced a major step-up for their Deep Learning Institute for students. They’ve even struck a deal with deeplearning.ai, whose founder Andrew Ng, has been advocating for the community to do less researching and more actual building!
3 — Democracy 3.0
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” — Churchill
Build, okay, but build what and build how? Right now there are two polarized opinions in the community: either we should stop and take the time to reflect on what AI should be allowed to do, or we should figure it out as we go and try to make society a better place. According to Ursula Frankin, the technology that we’re developing today should not be considered neutral at all, that “it can’t be divorced from society or values.” The solution? Involve our policy-makers from the get-go to make sure they don’t just react to new trends. Easier said than done…
4 — Skynet
Choose your dystopian world: Terminator or Matrix?
Or what? What if we just wait and see where it leads us? On the one hand, you have a technology that excels at optimization, doing it faster and better than humans, and on the other hand, you have the human brain, the product of thousands of years of evolution with all the loopholes and technical debt that comes with it.
What if you decide to use one to affect the other? How about hacking the brain of someone who has lost their arm and now uses a brain-computer interface to move their prosthetic limb around? Optimizing warfare?
It sent chills up my spine just thinking about it, and I’m not the only one. Researchers in all fields are starting to formalize the ethical priorities that we should respect, making it easier to not cross the line. Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton even launched a call for an International ban on the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence!
5 — It’s me, Mario!
All is not grim in the AI wonderland though! Great advances are being made, lives are being saved and… video games are being played! That’s why we wanted to share with you the latest take on Super Mario. Be sure to watch the fun video above. The author will take you through how he built his system. Very inspiring! If you want more, head over to the reddit discussion…
Small Favors: If you like this article, share it with your friends! If you love it, give us some claps and subscribe! It’s Monday morning and we need those claps!
Originally published at blog.deepomatic.com on November 13, 2017.
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Lockheed Martin Receives $492M U.S. Army Contract for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System Launchers
Air Asia-Pacific
Insitu Demonstrates Broad-area Airspace Situational Awareness System for UAS
January 16, 2018 DP Press Releases 0 Comments Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B), Boeing, Boeing Phantom Works, Insitu Inc., Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV)
Insitu, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, announced the successful completion of a flight demonstration for its ground-based Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) airspace situational awareness system.
Insitu is tackling one of the toughest challenges for UASs — the ability to detect nearby aircraft flying both within and beyond UAS operators’ line of sight.
Insitu — in collaboration with Boeing Phantom Works International — designed, developed, and tested the airspace situational awareness system in Australia under a program sponsored by the Queensland Government. The system is designed as one of the optional “layers” of safety to enable broad-area, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) capability for commercial UAS operations by providing airspace situational awareness for UAS operators, specifically to help detect and avoid so called “non-cooperative” traffic. The system incorporates radio over internet protocol (ROIP) to expand its ability to communicate with air traffic control and local traffic in the operations area.
Currently, UAS ground control operators fly their aircraft only to a point where the UAS is within line-of-sight, as operators are unable to discern the location of other aircraft within the same airspace, potentially creating hazardous flying conditions. Using either mobile or fixed infrastructure, the system combines Airborne Dependent Surveillance Broadcasts (ADS-B) and transponder returns to provide a correlated common operating picture — enabling UAS operators at ground control systems to see real-time information about the local airspace.
Remotely detecting and tracking other airspace users, the system immediately sends the air traffic information back to a ground-control station — assisting operators in safely operating UASs over extended ranges.
Insitu conducted a test flight of its BVLOS system at the Mississippi State University (MSU) Raspet Flight Center in November 2017. This successful flight showcased the work done by Insitu, the MSU Raspet Flight Center, and Boeing Phantom Works International, while demonstrating a key airspace integration tool which potentially could be used in the United States.
“We now have integrated a significant capability that will dramatically improve airspace safety,” said Dara Albouyeh, Chief Engineer, Certification, at Insitu. “This successful demonstration of our ground-based situational awareness system confirmed our ability to achieve deconfliction of the air traffic at the Choctaw County Airport and surrounding areas.”
The application of UAS enabling-technologies will benefit a wide range of sectors including mining, oil and gas operations, search and rescue, environmental management, and more. The technology supports UAS data collection for analysis in areas such as infrastructure monitoring and inspection, change detection, subsidence, stockpile volume measurements, intelligence, and others. The Insitu system will provide operators with the ability to collect and analyze data using an airborne platform such as Insitu’s ScanEagle UAS on a broad scale, and turn that data into business knowledge for informed decision-making.
“We’re developing our ability to fly long distances with our UASs that satisfies the airspace regulators, providing UAS operators with access to information that we previously just couldn’t obtain otherwise,” said Mark Bauman, Vice President and General Manager, Insitu Commercial. “Now, we can prevent conflicts far more reliably, and will be able to access wide areas for commercial purposes,” Bauman explained. “This system shows great promise as one of many solutions or “layers” that we are pursuing to increase safety and allow BVLOS flights in the U.S.”
Insitu
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A scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report released Tuesday reveals decades of child abuse allegations against more than 300 accused “predator priests” as well as claims that Roman Catholic Church leaders covered up the crimes and obstructed justice in order to avoid scandal.
More than 1,000 child victims were identifiable from the church’s own records, according to the report.
“We believe that the real number — of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward — is in the thousands,” the grand jury said.
“Today, Pennsylvanians can learn the extent of sexual abuse in the dioceses and for the first time we can begin to understand the systematic cover up by church leaders that followed,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a news conference in Harrisburg on Tuesday, the deadline set by the state’s Supreme Court for the release of the 884-page report with some of the names of the accused clergy temporarily redacted.
“Let me be very clear — my office is not satisfied with the release of a redacted report,” he added. “Every redaction represents an incomplete story of abuse that deserves to be told.”
See More- Source: NBC News
Related Items:300 Priests, Abuse, Children, Ear Hustle 411, Pennsylvania, Predator Priests, priests, sexual abuse
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Well, the academic one at least. Over the last couple of weeks, on my various commutes, I have watched the countryside grow gradually greener, which is very cheering. On Tuesday evening, I had my final session with my Liverpool Hope University students at Holy Cross College, one of whom kindly made me this card and the attached badge, which I will wear proudly! We brought ourselves some treats for tea and settled down to get our teeth into them, and early modern witchcraft. As well as our usual primary source analysis and discussion of the secondary reading, we role played the differences between Scottish and English witch trials and read the witches’ scene from Macbeth.
Finally, we sang a seventeenth century ballad about a case of witchcraft in Lincolnshire in 1619: Damnable Practises of Three Lincolnshire Witches Joane Flower and Her Two Daughters. According to the ballad, the three accused women, Joan, Margaret and Phillipa Flower, were taken into the employ of the earl and countess of Rutland when they fell on hard times, even though there had long been suspicions that they were cunning women. Margaret soon began to steal from the household and was dismissed from her post. Thereafter, the earl and countess heard rumours that Margaret’s disorderly mother, Joan, was not only a woman ‘full of wrath’ who swore, blasphemed and prophesied death, but also a witch who ‘dealt with spirits’. Moreover, Margaret’s sister, Phillipa, had apparently bewitched a young man. The earl and countess were suitably worried by these rumours and commanded the trio to leave the house, never to return. In revenge, the three women vowed revenge. The devil spotted his opportunity and provided the women with familiars in return for their souls, the covenant sealed with drops of blood. Matters went from bad to worse. Not content with killing cattle and local children, the witches turned their attention to the earl’s family. First, the earl and countess themselves suffered ‘fits of sickness’, then their eldest son, Henry, Lord Ross, sickened and died. He was followed to his grave by his brother, Lord Francis, and his sister, Lady Katherine, also fell ill.
When Phillipa was taken before the magistrate, she confessed that she, along with her mother and sister, had taken revenge upon the nobles who had turned them out of doors. She explained that Margaret had taken Henry’s glove, pricked it full of holes and ‘layd it deepe in ground’ that he, like the glove, might rot away to nothing. Margaret confirmed her sister’s account, adding that they had all three conspired to ensure that the earl and countess should have no surviving children. Once implicated by her two daughters, Joan Flower also confessed to her crimes, and the three were transported to Lincoln jail to await the assizes. Joan, however, then recanted her confession and claimed that she had had ‘no hand at all’ in Henry’s death. She offered to take a test of her guilt, by attempting to eat a piece of bread and butter: ‘God let this same (quoth she) / If I be guilty of his death / pass never thorough me’. She immediately choked and died. Her daughters were tried, found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for their crimes.
It’s an excellent ballad, not least because it includes so many aspects of early modern witchcraft. They were women on the edge of a community, with no male head of the household to keep them in order. They long had a reputation for cunning, which might be useful to the community at times, but also posed a threat, especially when they fell on hard times and were able to use their skills to harm instead of heal. The incident which led to their trial was borne out of a grudge against their former employers, who had not, in their eyes, acted charitably towards them. Furthermore, there was clear evidence of maleficium (actual harm caused by witchcraft) as well as diabolism – they confessed to a pact with the devil, sealed by their blood, which gave them access to spirits which would do their bidding. All this, in a piece of cheap, popular and ephemeral print. I am very grateful to my students for allowing me to record a couple of minutes of their performance and share it here.
This will be my last blog post for a couple of weeks. My daughter will be undergoing major surgery and I’m going to be taking some time off to be with her.
Preparing for MedRen
For a while now, I’ve been preparing for the MedRen conference in Maynooth in the summer. The research has been slotted in between my various teaching sessions and all the commuting, and it very quickly progressed beyond the conference paper itself. I’ve nearly finished the first draft of an article, which I hope will be ready for submission to a music journal in the summer. I’ve got some finishing touches to put to the article this week, then I am going to put it to one side for a few weeks before I read it through again, in the hope that by then, I’ll be able to look at it more dispassionately. Then I should be able to see where some of the problems are before someone else points them out to me.
It’s meant really getting stuck in to sixteenth-century English music printing and, in particular, the sort of metrical psalms that, up to now, I’ve only looked at in passing. I’m enjoying re-reading Beth Quitslund’s The Reformation in Rhyme, as well as Timothy Duguid’s Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice. All of this also forms essential background reading for my epitaphs project too, so it’s great that for once I am able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I’m looking forward to reading some works on domestic devotions and probably even the history of emotions over the summer, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.
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Posted by Jenni Hyde under Conferences, Historical Association, public engagement, Uncategorized | Tags: Conferences, Historical Association |
This is the final entry in a short series of posts about the Historical Association conference, held in Chester in May 2019.
After the break, it was time for me to reprise my lecture from the Historical Association’s ‘Teaching the Tudors’ CPD day in York, ‘A History of the Reformation in 5 Ballads’. It was great fun giving the paper again, not least because it has so much singing that it’s almost like a performance rather than a lecture.
After lunch, the first lecture was given by Claire Hickman on ‘The Doctor’s Garden’. She described how the 1760s saw a real interest in natural history and importing exotic plants. The plants had economic value as well as being beautiful. People spent a lot of money creating immense collections
Dr Claire Hickman
Dr John Lettsom was a well-trained doctor, with many important roles in natural history and medicine. His patients were sometimes recruited through his plant collecting networks, and he was very well connected – his admission to the Royal Society was signed by Benjamin Franklin and James Ferguson, among others. He had a city practice but bought himself a rural estate, where opened his garden to visitors, even writing a guide book. Everything in the garden was labelled with the correct scientific name, so you could teach yourself botany from walking round the garden through practical experience. The garden was used to trial agricultural techniques. Lettsom thought the mangel wurzle could be useful as a cheap food to feed the poor, because they grow very large; it was known as ‘the root of scarcity’. He was one of the first people to grow the mangel wurzel in England. But Dr Hickman argued that Lettsom also saw it as a beautiful plant, as it was planted among larches in the garden borders. Lettsom published his findings as a pamphlet on how to grow and use them.
William Curtis, another Quaker, opened a botanic garden for training medics but it was also open to the public. Doctors were already trained in botany and students needed to see the plants, but the gardens also attracted visitors who wanted to see the new exotic plants from the rest of the world, so Curtis included agricultural plants and grasses as well as medicinal plants. Botany was seen as a public interest as well as an academic interest.
By 1777, the Leith Walk Garden was laid out not on a straight path like a botanic training garden, but on picturesque walk. The public had to start applying to see the gardens through ticketing policies, and announcements were made when interesting plants flowered.
The final session of the conference was given by Tara Morton on ‘Suffrage Lives 1866-1914: Researching the Database’. Tara had worked on building the Suffrage Lives database for the HA, which was based on two key sources: the 1866 petition for female suffrage, and the Home Office Index of Suffragettes Arrested, 1906-1914.
The 1832 Great Reform Act extended the franchise slightly through the enfranchisement of male persons, but women were excluded. Debates prior to this had been about ‘persons’, which meant the principal of women’s enfranchisement was included before the reform act because person does not specify man or woman. But the Great Reform Act replaced this phrase with ‘male persons’ meaning it removed the ‘women’ argument. Tara suggested that the shared struggles against this oppression brought women together.
Tara Morton
The original petitions from 1866 no longer exist, but one of the founders was Emily Davies and she got printed copies printed, published and circulated. These include names, occupations and locations where the signatories signed the petition. Some gave their full names, others didn’t. Addresses are likewise vague at times. This makes it difficult to trace them all, but it does show that support for women’s suffrage was socially more widespread than we might expect – echoing the keynotes by Yasmin Khan and Fern Riddell, she pointed out that the signatories were not just the stereotype of staid, white middle class women. There were blacks and working-class women too.
Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy
Even when we look at the supposedly staid white middle class women, they turnout to be unseemly. Tara gave two examples:
Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy founded her own school; later, the Manchester Schoolmistresses Association; and the Women’s Franchise League with Emmeline Pankhurst. She gave evidence to the first royal commission set up to look at secondary education. She described marriage as ‘a lifelong sentence of pauperism and dependence’. Nevertheless, the fact that she lived as man and wife with a man who wasn’t her husband made other suffrage campaigners unhappy, as they thought that she brought the campaign into disrepute. She was on the committee on the WSPU but left in 1912, possibly because of the increased violence. She led some of the suffrage pilgrimage through Congleton even though by this stage she was in her 80s. Her photograph appears to show a staid white middle class woman – but only because that’s what we expect to see.
Viscountess Katherine Louisa Amberley was member of the Stanley family. An outspoken member of the suffrage community, she was a public speaker in favour of women’s rights, and one of her lectures was published. However, she was not acceptable among her class and particularly offended Queen Victoria.
The 1867 and 1884 Franchise Reforms enfranchised more men, but not women, so lots of women’s suffrage societies were set up afterwards. They had to decide on tactics and ideologies: should they campaign to promote wider social reforms to benefit women, or concentrate on the franchise?
In 1897, the umbrella group National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was set up, promoting the women’s franchise through peaceful means. But there were more radical women in the industrial north who thought traditional means wouldn’t work so they set up the WSPU. Their tactics escalated from heckling to arson and bombings. This is where the Index of Persons Arrested comes in, although even at the National Archives they don’t know quite why it was created. It includes names, dates and places of arrest. There are anomalies, such as the random placement of names in the index out of alphabetical order, and also suffragette aliases.
The document shows that there was more diversity in suffragettes than the stereotypical images, for example, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who lived at Hampton Court Palace and was an Indian princess, and Verla ‘Jack’ Holmes, a cross-dressing lesbian. The database also shows how many working-class suffrage campaigners there were. Again, Tara gave two examples:
Adelaide Knight was born in Bethnal Green. Her father was an alcoholic and committed suicide. She was crippled and used walking sticks, but also loved poetry and music. She married the son of a naval officer in a mixed race marriage in which her husband took her surname, and they shared the household chores. She was arrested in 1906 for disturbing the peace. She was sent to prison for 6 weeks unless she agreed not to take part in any further suffrage activities, but she chose prison. Her husband looked after the children during her imprisonment and fully supported her decision. Tara argued that she was representative of many working class women who were concerned about the motivations of the WSPU, who seemed happy to use working class women but only when it suited them. As a result she left the WSPU and eventually joined the Communist party.
William Ball was twice arrested for the suffrage cause. We know little with certainty but his ordinariness makes him interesting. He was probably from the Midlands, and he was married with 5 children. He believed in adult suffrage – that women should be enfranchised in line with men before more men were enfranchised – and said that he wanted as much protection for his girls as his boys. He was a member of the men’s wing of the WSPU, the Men’s Political Union. He was arrested and sent to prison for breaking two Home Office windows. He declined prison food, but he wasn’t given the option to order his own food because he was not classified as a political prisoner. Ball was also subject to force feeding. The prison officers quickly discharged him to a lunatic asylum. He was eventually moved to a private nursing home through the intervention of well wishers. An inquiry into his case was heavily biased in favour of the prison authorities, belittling Ball by saying the mental ill-health was not down to his prison ordeal but his own defective character and the excitement of indulging in suffrage activities.
These are only a few snapshots of the evidence recorded on the HA’s Suffrage Lives database.
This is the third in a short series of posts about the Historical Association conference, held in Chester in May 2019.
The opening session on Friday morning was a keynote talk from Dr Fern Riddell called ‘Uncomfortable Histories: From sex to the suffragettes’. Considering that the audience was mainly made up of teachers, Dr Riddell’s lecture hit just the right note, celebrating the teachers (both at school and university) who had helped her make a career in history by believing in her when others didn’t. She commented that this is an incredibly exciting time to be a historian.
She opened by commenting that sex and violence, especially female violence, is difficult to deal with. Our belief in the naïve and prudish Victorians has dominated our understanding of the 19th century. But she argued that throughout the Victorian era, sex was universally acknowledged and celebrated, with, for example, condom advertisements on the front page of newspapers specifically marketed towards women. Dr Riddell commented that we are fixated on the cold, drab view of Queen Victoria, but the fact that she had many children and wrote movingly in her diary of seeing Albert naked for the first time on her wedding night shows how much she enjoyed sex. Dr Riddell further argued that we should talk about these sorts of facts with students, especially at secondary school, to show that it has always been normal to desire and want to talk about sex. The Victorians also advocated birth control, and lived openly queer lives. When cases of immorality are tried in court, they tend to result in a view that people should be allowed to live as they wish. What the dominant power said about sex, and what the culture actually shows (from newspapers, letters, diaries et cetera), are two different things.
Dr Fern Riddell opening her Friday morning keynote lecture
1860 is the year when ‘pornography’ enters the English language. The Art of Begetting Handsome Children was published that year, albeit reprinted from many earlier versions of book that had been published over the centuries. The book promoted foreplay and argued that women should not be coerced into sex. One of the most important messages is that under no circumstances should children come from a marriage in which there is no love. Furthermore, sales of a guide to contraception skyrocketed after a trial at which Annie Besant spoke, and the birth rate plummeted over the following few years.
Moving on to look at the suffragettes, Dr Riddell commented that our traditional view is based on Emmeline Pankhurst: strong women, marching, speeches and the WSPU. We have forgotten their real actions. She reminded the audience that the term ‘suffragette’ applies only to members of the WSPU. Their motto was “deeds not words” – they had done talking. One of their tactics was violence, especially arson and bomb attacks. She argued that the WSPU was the most violent and dangerous domestic terror organisation we have ever had and that not even the IRA come close if you look at the size of the bombs and where they were left. This claim, however, was the subject of some debate amongst conference delegates over the morning tea break! Nevertheless, the WSPU wanted to create a sense of fear and terror. Christabel Pankhurst asked in a 1913 newspaper interview that when men throw bombs it’s called war, so why shouldn’t women make use of them too?
Dr Fern Riddell
Dr Riddell suggested that despite our discomfort with the facts, there is no evidence at all that the suffragettes didn’t want to hurt anyone: it is just not true. Their bombs were full of nails and they gave no warnings. They were referred to at the time as terrorists. They are idolised because of the result, but we need to tell all sides of the story and give the rounded view. We sanitise the story and can’t believe that women would really do that. The histories are uncomfortable to the present as well as the past. We need to show what radicalises people and how: the suffragettes, for example, were deeply harmed by the state through marginalisation, suffering violence themselves, and force feeding. But it doesn’t matter what we feel about the need for women to have the vote, we need to show that no one is perfect and that in every civil rights movement there has been an extremist element. Men and women fought for the economic, political and social freedoms of women. Dr Riddell finished by concluding that we make change together.
The first Friday general pathway session was given by Professor Peter Gaunt on Chester in the Civil War. He commented that the Civil War had a dramatic effect on Chester. In summer 1639, it was a prosperous city. Seven years later, its population had halved, it had suffered plague, and the bombardment of the civil wars had caused destroyed parts of the city. Two of the suburbs had been completely removed by the Royalists holding the city. It was Royalist almost throughout the war, although in Feb 1646, shortly before the end of the war, it surrendered on terms to the Parliamentarians. Prof Gaunt’s lecture addressed what the Royalists and Parliamentarians hoped Chester would be, what role it played in reality, and why.
Prof Gaunt described how the Civil Wars used to be seen as a single national war, with major battles between national commanders. He argued that this national picture has relevance no here, because Chester’s role is as part of a local war between garrisons which supplied a longer term civil war. The aim was to tie down key places and territory such as roads, ports, and resources such as men, horses, fodder, food drink and above all, cash!
Chester is often referred to as a regional capital. Even though it was never a really big regional town, it was the largest in the north west, bigger than Lancaster, Liverpool or Manchester. It had a population of between 5 and 10 thousand. It was a centre of trade and manufacture, partly because it was the centre of road network and also a port. The city was often the departure point for going to Ireland, as it was more accessible than Holyhead.
He argued that the king certainly accorded Chester a high priority, as he visited early in the war shortly after raising his standard at Nottingham. He arrived in Chester in September 1642, in an attempt to capitalise on the swell of support for the king in the west. Although some people didn’t want the king there because they didn’t want to get involved in the war, they let him in. The king apparently gave the same speech in each location he visited, flattering the residents by saying he could think of nowhere better to make his residence, then asking them to open their magazines and taking men and armaments.
The king’s two nephews were given southern armies and were ordered to come up and secure Chester, but the king himself didn’t return until nearly the end of the war, by which time the city was under great threat. Although he ordered one of his few remaining field armies to come up and protect the city, his reinforcements were torn to pieces at the Battle of Rowton Moor. The king left, leaving the city leaders permission to surrender.
Prof Peter Gaunt
But Prof Gaunt pointed out that we are not sure why he thinks the city is so important as it is barely mentioned in his letters. There are a number of possible reasons:
A buffer to help protect the royalist heartland of north wales.
The prestige of holding established county towns.
After Marston moor and the loss of north of England, Chester is one of the few key towns he still held so might serve as launching point to link up with Montrose and recapture the north.
Above all it allowed access to Ireland where the king had links with the Irish Catholic rebels. He had made a truce with the Catholics, which meant that his Protestant army could be brought home as they didn’t have to fight the rebels any more. Chester was his best bet for bringing in reinforcements from Ireland
The Cestrians themselves just hunkered down and hoped to avoid as much of the problem as possible. The locals provided a garrison of horse and foot, which was one of a string of garrisons across the area. Most of the garrison commanders tried to take the fight to the parliamentarians, trying to disrupt the parliamentarian hold, but even though Chester was on the edge of parliamentarian territory, it didn’t do much. Prof Gaunt asked why? He outlined several factors which encouraged the local commanders to sit back as they knew they could hold out.
Successive governors were pretty incompetent. Even the most active didn’t take much part in the fighting.
Governors had to liaise with king’s northern commanders, and they weren’t competent either.
The situation was made worse when Capell from Hertfordshire was moved in as northern commander – as he was not local he was not trusted.
The city had strong stone walls and these were supplemented by mud walls round the suburbs, so there was no incentive to leave them.
The city sits on a corner of the river Dee, so again, it was relatively easy to defend.
Royalist north wales was on their doorstep
From the Parliamentarian perspective, one local commander, Brereton, tried unsuccessfully to raise forces in Chester. He thought Chester was a priority. He couldn’t sleep easy holding half to two thirds of the county while the county town was in the king’s hands. But he knew how difficult it was to capture Chester with only his own forces, so he tried to induce other regional parliamentarians to join him in attacking Chester. In 1644 Fairfax intervened at Nantwich, and Brereton suggested that he came further west and helped to capture Chester, but Fairfax wasn’t interested and, moreover, it did not form part of his orders from Parliament. Brereton also tried to persuade the Earl of Manchester and others, but none of them would help.
Parliament and the Committee of Both Kingdoms were worried about Chester’s strategic importance in 1642, especially when Byron’s forces were reinforced by Irish troops. But they didn’t respond with land forces. Instead they sent in the navy to patrol the Irish Sea in order to stop the king’s reinforcements getting across in the first place. When some did try to land at Milford Haven, the Parliamentarians threw them, bound, into the sea. Brereton attempted to play the Irish card, suggesting that bloodthirsty murderers might still get through, but parliament took no notice. Because Chester is on a road to nowhere, as long as the king couldn’t use it to get men in from Ireland, it was of no strategic importance to the Parliamentarians – it’s just a road to Royalist Wales. They knew that the king’s army would be defeated in the Midlands, not near Chester.
Only in the closing weeks of the war did Parliamentary high command finally turn its attentions to Chester and order other regional commanders to support Brereton.
This is the second in a short series of posts about the Historical Association Conference 2019, held in Chester in May.
The first general pathway session that I attended was given by Dr Tim Grady on ‘German Jews, the First World War and its Devastating Aftermath’.
Gorlitz War Memorial is illustrative of German Jewish history in the aftermath of World War I. It was erected in 1921 but it was later destroyed in the run up to World War II; the destroyed memorial was left in place but they recently replaced it with a new once. The memorial shows the scale of Jewish participation in the First World War, and also tells us about the scale of loss from Jewish communities – 25 Jews from Gorlitz alone died in the war. But it also shows that German Jews were also heavily involved in the memorialisation of the war and finally it tells us about the rise of persecution between the wars as the memorial was destroyed.
Dr Tim Grady
Dr Grady asked why German Jews wanted to be involved in the First World War? Many Jews and many other Germans didn’t support the conflict and opposed the war. Once the war did start in early August, the picture changes to an image of total support. German Jews rushed to volunteer. They had good reason to be supportive – the war was against Russia which was at the time renowned for its anti-Semitic attacks.
The Kaiser declared that he only recognised ‘Germans’; not parties, not divisions. This was a boost for German Jews who felt they had never been seen as proper Germans up to that point. Moreover, no matter how they were seen by others, they saw themselves as Germans, so they wanted to defend their country.
Dr Grady argued that we can see the foundations of total war in the conflict. Everyone in Germany would have been effected, and Jews were no exception. They had little choice over this. Nonetheless, they did their best to assist in the militarisation of the home front: they turned over buildings for hospitals; the Cologne Jewish community took in Belgian refugees; and it was Walter Rathenau, a Jew, who took steps to ensure that raw materials and food supplies were available, with his work central to the organisation of wartime supplies. Jews also produced a lot of German propaganda. One example was Ernst Lissauer, who wrote the ‘hymn of hate’ against England, which was satirised in Punch.
There was, however, more to the war than just Germany defending its borders. German Jews were fairly opposed to expansion for the sake of it, but they could see some sort of logic to an expansionist war because the more the military moved eastwards so the more Jews came under German control. These were large areas with an east European Jewish population within them. So a logic started to form that it would be an opportunity to rescue them from the Russians.
Nevertheless, anti-Semitism was a defining aspect of the conflict. This was a form of continuity from before to after the war, so maybe the Jews were naïve in thinking that the war would get rid of anti-Semitism. The other question is whether the war exacerbated the problem, because the suffering and length of the conflict had a big impact. Once food shortages began in 1915, Germans began to look for someone to blame. People start pointing the finger at different regions, the establishment, women, and the Jewish communities. Jews were targeted because they are seen to be shirking, not doing their duty, or profiteering. From 1916 the archives contain anonymous letters to the war ministry ‘making them aware’ of Jews who weren’t fighting. That summer the war ministry counted the numbers of Jews who were fighting so they could prove the nay sayers wrong. But they weren’t counting Protestants or Catholics so it was in itself an anti-Semitic act. It is sometimes seen as an indication of the change in attitudes, towards the Jews. But as Grady pointed out, this didn’t change their actual involvement in the conflict.
The fact that Germany lost the war left difficult legacies. Dr Grady suggested that we need to examine the mismatch between the end of the war and people’s expectations. There was no excitement or joy – it was more resignation. This was a contrast to the way the war had been fought and the belief that a unified Germany would achieve great things. There had been so much sacrificed for the war effort but attempts to grow Germany had failed. There is no doubt that Jews made a complete contribution to the war effort, yet they start to be blamed very quickly for the problems at the war’s end. There are soon claims that they shirked, profiteered, or were disloyal. The finger of blame for the war’s failure points to the Jews – they stabbed the country in the back.
The horror of this is that German Jews had sacrificed themselves, they had shaped the war experience, they had set up the possibility of total war, and created propaganda which shaped people’s expectations. In the end it was they who were reshaped as outsiders.
Over lunch, the branches and members committee (of which I am vice chair) held a ‘meet and greet’ for HA branch members. It was good to meet up with several old friends and make some new ones, and we had some interesting conversation about how branches work in different places.
The first lecture after lunch was from Prof Elaine Chalus on ‘Gender, Place and Power in Controverted 18th Century Elections’. This was really interesting, as I know less than I should about the 18th century at the best of times, and even less about how elections worked in practice. Controverted elections are those which were fought all the way up to parliament.
Prof Chalus pointed out that the depiction of the election processions in the 18th century describe lots of participation. They were like celebrations, with processions and banner carrying which included the involvement of women and children. Women were not, as has been suggested, just part of the window dressing – they were part of the organisation, and in some places women could make their husbands into voters. They sewed banners, provided food and benefitted financially from the increased business in towns at the time. But they were also canvassed by candidates and were presumed to have influence over their husbands votes. They were believed to be open to flattery and persuasion, or cowed into acquiescence (although they sometimes stood up against it).
Although they themselves didn’t or vote, women could shape the outcome of elections. The more hotly contested the election, the more likely it was that women would be involved. For women of the political elite there were two aspects:
socio-political – going to court, hosting dinners, visiting, and marrying for political ends;
directly political – serving as their husbands agents, running election committees, canvassing, standing in for men who were away.
What I had never realised was that where the vote was attached to property, if a women owned the property technically she could vote, but she didn’t and appointed a proxy. This meant that women might be canvassed for their proxy vote. Prof Chalus then gave examples of cases where women’s influence really mattered because the elections went all the way through the contest.
Prof Elaine Chalus
Canvassing was the crucial point of contact. There were public or personal canvases. Public canvasses took place early in the campaign, to introduce the candidates and see if there were enough support for different candidates to contest the election all the way to the polls.
After a processional entry, there would be introductions, speeches, and a procession round town. They mopped up the easy votes – those who ‘plumped for’ or promised their 2 votes to one candidate were given a sweetener. But the more difficult votes were pushed for by agents, through private canvassing, often in people’s homes. They were the most intense and intimidating experiences, not least because sometimes the canvassers visited when they knew the men were out.
Prof Chalus used the 1830 Taunton election as a case study. Taunton was a potwalloper borough where everyone who wasn’t on the poor relief had a vote. The franchise went right down the social scale to include artisans and traders. The borough had 2 MPs. In 1830, we can recapture some female voices and we can tell that they knew how the system worked. They thought of some votes as theirs, in that their husband had one, they ‘had’ the other. They also know they might be intimidated if they don’t vote the way the canvasser wants. She argued that we can use the records of controverted political campaigns to help restore the personal dimension of 18th century elections. They bring voices back from those who are otherwise voiceless.
Friday evening’s keynote was given by Dr Yasmin Khan on ‘The Raj at War’. This session had resonances with Tim Grady’s lecture on the German Jews in the First World War, as it was based on commemorative work which wants to restore black and Asian voices to the narrative. Dr Khan pointed out that the publishers’ first version of her book had a man in a spitfire on the cover. She challenged the design, saying that she wanted to emphasise minority voices, and the published version now has an Imperial War Museum poster of two Indian women in the Home Guard.
Dr Yasmin Khan
Although the Japanese swept across Asia into Burma, India itself was not invaded. Many soldiers from all over the world mobilised in India ready for the fight in Burma. George Orwell, like many, feared that India might fall, and for 10 weeks in 1942 it became the centre of the war. At the same time, however, the Quit India campaign was working to force independence before they aided the war effort. So during this time, many of the Congress Party including Gandhi and Nehru were imprisoned, to be released at the end of the war.
Dr Khan described how 2.5 million men volunteered for the Indian army, making it the largest ever volunteer army. Like Tim Grady, she asked why they joined up?
In some areas there was a family tradition of joining the British army and these areas were nurtured by the British by ensuring the fields were irrigated and education was provided. But in the 1940s they needed more men so the recruiters had to go to other areas too.
A way of securing independence from their background.
For many, it was the salary which was sent straight back to the family. An army job came with meals too.
Meanwhile, women served on the home front, even down mines and building roads with picks and shovels.
The Indian famine was caused by inflation as prices rose and wages didn’t keep up. Then a major cyclone in Calcutta wiped out the rice harvest. Although there had been shortages before, this one was different because, due to the war, they couldn’t import rice from Burma. People started to hoard, and because there was no rationing until 1944 there was no way of equalising supply. Churchill was not keen on sending supplies to relieve the problem, and Dr Khan described the attitudes behind preventing the relief of the famine as ‘a horrible cocktail’.
Dr Khan then turned to the experiences of individuals, noting that for British officers and soldiers we have many documents, but its difficult to find rank and file soldiers for whom you can trace a lot of documents across their life, or even across the war. She presented 4 case studies:
Aruna Asaf Ali joined the Congress, but was not rounded up in 1942 with the other congress leaders because she was not seen as troublesome even though her husband was arrested. This radicalised her and she turned to violence with the Quit India campaign, conducting acts of sabotage. Her husband was horrified because he followed Gandhi, but she became a popular hero, working against the war effort.
Clive Branson was a communist, and a very vocal anti-fascist, from an elite family. He was conscripted and sent to India. He is interesting because, like of lots of men from Britain, he saw things that he wouldn’t ordinarily have seen. He wrote home, and his letters were collected and published by his friends when he was killed on the Japanese front in 1944. He saw the problems with colonialism, and wrote about the maltreatment of servants, men visiting brothels, and the effects of the famine, but he was also a soldier fighting for that colonial power.
Bhajan Singh was court-martialled and sent to the Andaman Islands penal colony.
Walchand Hirachand seized opportunity to make money. He had a lot of ships so turned them over to the army to ship troops and materials. He managed to gain a $4million dollar investment into an aircraft factory, yet he constantly complained that he was overlooked in favour of British suppliers. He was a supporter of independence and siphoned off some of the money to support the independence campaign.
Dr Khan concluded by remarking that although we think we know everything on the Second World War, there are whole areas that are untapped which can take us beyond celebrating the soldiers – there are contradictions and complicated relationships with empire which need exploring.
Final Countdown
Posted by Jenni Hyde under ballads, family, Henrician politics, Historical Association, Historical research, music, PhD life | Tags: ballads, early modern ballads, early modern history, Henry VIII, Historical Association, Reading, viva |
This afternoon I had my mock viva, which was an interesting experience. It was reassuring, in that I survived and there was only one question that I felt I completely flunked. That said, there were several others that brought home to me the need to be certain of my own position, which of course is only possible if you’re completely in command of your material and of what others have said about it.
So I’ve come home armed with two bag-loads of books and a lot on my mind – which is not to say that it’s all bad. The first job when I got in was to have a brew (this thesis was definitely fuelled by tea and chocolate, in a way that perhaps Huw and Tony Williams would have appreciated), the second to have a chat with my Fiend to take my mind off things and the third, to write my ‘to do’ list. You can see it above. I have another Fiend (yes, I manage to have more than one Fiend despite the fact that I spend a lot of time in the company of dead people and their preoccupation with death) who is the Queen of Lists. She would approve, I’m sure. That was once the wall on which my huge list of 16th century ballads used to hang. Now it holds all the things I need to do in the next ten days. I think I’ve got my work cut out. I have to admit that they aren’t all viva-related – there’s a section on research proposals, on articles and on the lecture I’m preparing for A level students on Henry VIII’s break with Rome, as well as for the Bolton Historical Association work that I need to get on with and for family matters. Happily, the conference proposal for Reading is nearly ready and the one for Voices and Books has gone (thanks, Una!). But I’ve certainly got plenty to keep me occupied. Which is good.
Tidings of Good News
Posted by Jenni Hyde under ballads, Henrician politics, Historical Association, Historical research, manuscripts, Uncategorized, writing | Tags: Ballad, ballads, Books, chapter, commonwealth, Early Modern, early modern ballads, early modern history, Endnote, historical research, history, music, PhD, planning, Research, writing |
I was warned on Wednesday that my luck will have to run out eventually. That may not sound too much like good news, but the converse is, of course, that, in order to provoke the comment, things must be going relatively well at the moment. Work on the commonwealth chapter continues, with some quite major revisions to the opening of the chapter and smaller changes to individual sentences. It’s getting closer. I still need to check a couple of references and make some alterations to one of the musical examples, but it’s certainly getting closer. (And about time too, I might add, considering that it’s taken the best part of six months!)
I spent almost all of yesterday just working on the footnotes, trying to get Endnote to play ball. Don’t get me wrong, I do like Endnote. I used to enjoy writing my footnotes by hand, but the way that Endnote does it for me is, usually, enormously labour saving. But for some reason, yesterday, it got its knickers in an almightly twist and started putting in references to whatever manuscript it felt like. It wasn’t a problem with the books, or the journal articles, or the webpages: just the manuscripts. Since the chapter is based around manuscript collections, it caused a bit of a problem. I have no idea what caused the glitch, but I ended up typing in the manuscript references manually.
I’ve also started secondary reading for my concluding chapter on the news. If anyone has any suggestions of things I should read on early modern news, I’d be very glad to hear of them. The reading that I’ve done this week surprised me by giving me several ideas for my first couple of chapters on ballad music. In fact, I had to leap out of bed at 11 one night this week to write down an idea! It’s the first time that that’s happened for a very long time, so I think I can safely say that the thesis is out of the doldrums and on the move again.
This afternoon I briefly revisited my chapter plan, taking into account some of the comments that my supervisors made when they looked at it last and writing an abstract for the commonwealth chapter now that it’s completed. The rest of the afternoon I spent transcribing documents in the State Papers. For once, the handwriting is relatively easy to read. Unfortunately, the digital scan of one page is so dark that it is illegible in places – I suppose a girl can’t have everything.
On Wednesday evening I went to the committee meeting for the Historical Association in Bolton. A very productive meeting and plenty of things to work on in the coming months, not least of which is putting together the programme of lectures for next season.
Seminars and an article
Posted by Jenni Hyde under Henrician politics, Historical Association, PhD life, seminars, Uncategorized, writing | Tags: Angela McShane, Ballad, Bolton, England, John Rylands Library, Knowingness, Lancaster University, Manchester, Manchester University, Materiality, NWEMSS, Thomas Cromwell |
An interesting week. I’ve spent most of it smoothing out the wrinkles in my epitaph ballad article. I think it’s nearly ready to go, which is quite pleasing. The process of refinement is interesting and one that I really quite enjoy, as it brings out the pedant in me. I’ve spent most of the week trying to marry together the three elements of the article – the research, the historiography and the background information. I think, now, that I’ve been fairly successful. I have a supervision meeting later in the week so the first job for Monday (when I’ve been to visit a possible new hall for the Historical Assocation in Bolton) is to send it off to my supervisors to see what they have to say, then I have to decide where to send it.
I’ve also been rewriting the paper on ‘Knowingness and the Mid-Sixteenth Century Ballad’, mainly about the flyting on Thomas Cromwell. I hope to be able to do away with the script by Tuesday evening, when I give the paper at the Postgraduate History Seminar Series at the University of Manchester. There will be a repeat performance in Lancaster on Wednesday for the North West Early Modern Seminar Series. At the beginning of last week, I wasn’t entirely looking forward to it, but having thought it out again I’m much happier about it. I was trying to cram too much information in, but having taken a lot of examples out and replaced them with ideas, it seems to work much better. I’m rather looking forward to the chance to discuss my work with everyone on both days. I plan to go out on something of an academic limb, so I hope that there aren’t any people clinging to the tree trunk with chainsaws! I still have a handout to finish to go with it, so that will have to be a job for Monday too. Oh… Monday is tomorrow. Hmm. Busy day then.
On Wednesday I went into Manchester. I spent a nice day working in the John Rylands Library and then went to the Print and Materiality in the Early Modern World seminar, where I heard Angela McShane give her paper on ‘The Seventeenth Century Political Ballad as Subject and Object’. We had an interesting conversation afterwards, too, which was great.
Then today I started again on the secondary reading that’s been backing up for weeks. M. L. Bush on the Government Policy of Protector Somerset, but I’m finding it slow and heavy going, if I’m honest. There’s not going to be much time this week to catch up.
Transcribing and Broadcasting
Posted by Jenni Hyde under archives, ballads, family, Historical Association, Historical research, manuscripts | Tags: archives, Ballad, ballads, Books, British Library, children, Early Modern, early modern ballads, early modern history, Historical Association, historical research, history, London, Preston FM, Reading |
I went back to work on Wednesday, when my children went back to school. Most of my work this week has been on transcriptions of manscripts from the British Library but I’ve also read some secondary material. I’ve carried on working today, because despite my intentions to spend three whole days immersed in my primary material, it didn’t quite happen – I ended up doing a favour for a friend over two lunchtimes instead. Anyway, palaeography is a challenge which, for the most part, I quite enjoy. I have to admit that I don’t do enough of it to be fluent at it, but once I get going I find a lot of it reasonably straightforward, if a little slow. That is, until I reach the point where I can’t make out a word, at which point I feel like throwing the computer through the window.
On Thursday, my work was pleasantly interrupted by a trip to Preston FM to talk about the Historical Association. I was very nervous that morning, but when it came to the broadcast I surprised myself by quite enjoying it. I must say thank you to the station for inviting me and to presenter Hughie Parr for creating such a relaxed atmosphere that we talked for twenty minutes!
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Home > ~ Tangents > Non Sequiturs > Ongoing Harreld Hire Updates — 14
Ongoing Harreld Hire Updates — 14
February 17, 2019 By Mark 9 Comments
I will continue to add updates about J. Bruce Harreld and his illegitimate presidency to this threaded post. If this post scrolls you will be able to find it by clicking the link in the sticky post at the top of the home page. You can also bookmark this post, or search for it using various keywords and phrases, such as Harreld, fraud, co-conspirator, or carpetbagging dilettante.
For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.
06/28/19 — The Face of Crony Corruption in Higher Education.
06/07/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Affiliated Foundations.
05/30/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and the UI Children’s Hospital.
05/23/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Naming Rights.
05/17/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Fiduciary Duty.
05/10/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and the AAU.
05/03/19 — The Iowa Board of Regents and Economic Development.
04/26/16 — An Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor.
—————^^—– Published as Regular Indexed Posts —–^^—————
04/13/19 — J. Bruce Harreld and the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview: Part 2. Updated 04/15/19.
04/10/19 — J. Bruce Harreld and the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview: Part 1.
04/09/19 — In advance of next week’s meetings of the Iowa Board of Regents, two very sharp reports from the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller. First, the regents are postponing their tuition hikes for next year, despite having imposed perennial hikes precisely to provide “predictable” tuition. (The idea of “predictable” tuition was in fact a deliberate perversion by the board’s president, Mike Richards, who substituted that concern for very real concerns from students and families that tuition hikes were announced at the last minute — as will again be the case this year.) Second, Miller provides critical context for the University of Iowa’s request to once again explode the budget for the new children’s hospital, after years of downplaying the school’s exposure to additional charges in the tens of millions of dollars.
03/30/19 — J. Bruce Harreld’s Entrepreneurial Insurgency at the University of Iowa is a Massive Grift — Part 5.
02/19/19 — Harreld the Ogre Backs Down on Closing the UI Labor Center.
« « Ongoing Harreld Hire Updates — 13 | An Open Letter to the Iowa State Auditor » »
If I have learned anything over the past three-plus years, since a small cabal of co-conspirators rigged the 2015 presidential search at the University of Iowa, and in so doing fraudulently appointed J. Bruce Harreld, it is that there is no end to the crony corruption in Iowa. Although that momentous act of betrayal was my personal introduction to the rot in the Hawkeye state, it was not the inception of the corruption that currently pervades state government, including the three state universities under the crippling influence of the Iowa Board of Regents. When the leadership of that corrupt board foisted Harreld on UI, that egregious abuse was merely an extension of prior bad acts which allowed the individuals who perpetrated that fraud to ascend to the requisite positions of power. And of course chief among them was Bruce Rastetter, the brazen former president of the regents, who engineered his own appointment to the board by showering former governor Terry Branstad with big bags of campaign cash.)
In retrospect, my assumption that Iowa was immune to such crony abuses was simple naivete on my part, and I have come to learn that hiring fraud is pervasive in higher education in America. If there is a secretive selection process, you can bet it will be exploited by those in power, who are usually crony associates of the dominant political machine in that locale. While the blue-blazer types give each other plaques in noble ceremonies, behind the scenes they are rigging promotions and contracts and appointments for each other, for relatives, for friends and for their professional peers.
Still, peeling back layer after layer of sleaze, only to find more sleaze, has been an interesting education in itself. The impetus of the conspiracy to appoint Harreld dovetails with Rastetter’s failed attempt, in late 2014 and early 2015, to implement — via crony political means — a so-called performance-based funding plan at the state schools. Having goaded the presidents at Iowa State and Northern Iowa into pushing his plan — which would have shifted tens of millions of dollars away from UI, to the other schools — in May of 2015 Rastetter’s plan ultimately stalled and failed in the legislature.
Even with the governor in his back pocket, and with two of the university presidents willing to gang up on the third, Rastetter would prove unable to crippled the University of Iowa while former UI President Sally Mason was in charge — despite paying top dollar for his presidency at the Board of Regents. (Not that he didn’t mightily try, including twisting Mason’s arm, ridiculing her in public, and forcing her to work without a contract.) As regular readers know, however, in late 2014 Mason let the board know she would be retiring in mid-2015, thus opening another avenue by which Rastetter could corrupt the school — only this time from the inside out.
Seizing that opportunity, in early 2015 Rastetter unveiled a search committee stacked with crony insiders, including the two key partners in administrative crime who would help him steer Harreld through the selection process. Those men were: Jean Robillard, then UI Vice President for Medical Affairs, whom Rastetter also made chair of the search committee, and would later appoint as interim UI president during the transition, and who would later appoint himself as Dean of the UI College of Medicine subsequent to Harreld’s appointment; and Jerre Stead, a UI alum and mega-donor, as well as the former mentor, peer, and long-time Colorado neighbor and pal of one J. Bruce Harreld. (Needless to say, during the search none of these fine, upstanding men disclosed their prior contacts or relationships with Harreld.)
Several months later, when Rastetter almost certainly knew his performance-based funding plan was doomed to fail, Robillard popped up out of nowhere and said that the board might hire a CEO-type like Bill Gates at Iowa, as opposed to someone who was actually qualified for the job. At the time it almost seemed like a non-sequitur, but in retrospect we now know that Robillard was not simply being prophetic. Instead, his comment tipped the rigged hand that he, Rastetter and Stead were already playing in order to install Harreld in office. (That particular moment was likely prompted by what we have previously described as a ‘missing meeting’ between those three individuals, and perhaps others, which took place at Stead’s Arizona residence in early-to-mid-April of 2015.)
While Sally Mason was president, Rastetter could only corrupt the University of Iowa by injecting his bile from the outside. That not only included trying to shift resources using legislative and administrative might, but imposing board spies on each of the regent campuses, so the presidents would know he was always looking over their shoulders. To truly corrupt any institution, however, you have to do that from the inside, which means either promoting someone who has the requisite lack of ethics and integrity, or hiring an outside mercenary to wreak havoc.
To his credit, Rastetter did both. First, by using corrupt UI administrator Jean Robillard to implement the rigged search process, then to oversee the final critical phase and transition as the acting UI president. Second, by appointing J. Bruce Harreld, who had no prior experience in academic administration or in the public sector, and no prior association with the state or the school, but who was more than willing to lie to the press, the people of Iowa and the UI community to obscure the conspiracy that led to his hire.
Once installed at the top of the org chart at UI, Harreld was then free to rig the new UI Strategic Plan, to rig the ‘new’ budget model and allocation process, to rig new hires and appointments, and even to rig political hit jobs for his political minders, including particularly the closing of the Iowa Labor Center. Without a tool like Harreld in the president’s office, Rastetter and the regents would have been powerless to effect any of that corruption, let alone to convert the University of Iowa from an academic institution to an engine of economic development, which they had long sought. With businessman J. Bruce Harreld at the helm, however — and having hired him on the basis of his experience in the corporate world — every decision in central administration could now be made with profit potential in mind.
Although there are organizational protections for academic programs at the University of Iowa, Harreld now also controls the hiring of individuals into the positions which govern academic administration, and not surprisingly there has been a trend in that regard. Three years ago the new dean of the College of Education was introduced primarily as a former entrepreneur, who also happened to have an academic background. More recently, the new dean of CLAS — who has yet to take office — comes to UI after serving two years as the Vice Chancellor of Research and Economic Development at Nebraska-Lincoln, from 2016 to 2018.
And of course on the executive side there was the recent hire of Jon Darsee as the new chief innovation officer (detailed here), into a brand new job that Harreld himself created, which will cost the school a quarter of a million dollars each year. (It was initially asserted that Darsee would report to the UI VP for External Relations, but a subsequent correction noted that Darsee would also report directly to Harreld. Note also that Darsee’s position was originally titled “chief entrepreneurial officer”, but the name was changed at the last minute — presumably to obscure the profit-making focus of his hire.)
While it is always risky to interpret history as it unfolds, there are times when we can see an arc playing out, even if we do not know when or how it will end. The Harreld hire is one such example, having begun with his appointment in early September of 2015, and now three-plus years into his five-year deal. Whether the regents can or will entice him to stay by throwing more money his way, or have grown tired of the bad press he has engendered while covertly corrupting the school on their behalf, it is safe to say that Harreld is well along in converting the university to the ostensible goal of generating revenue from inventions and intellectual property.
And yet, on closer inspection even that turns out to be a lie. What Harreld and the regents are actually running is a massive grift in which money is being taken by compulsory means, under false pretenses, then used to fund aspects of the university that the state will no longer support. That this is quite literally the same justification that Harreld and the board are using to kill off the UI Labor Center merely exposes the depth of their hypocrisy.
Setting the Entrepreneurial Hook
Inherent in the very premise of business is the notion that for-profit ventures will be launched in the private sector, as opposed to the public sector. Because the private sector is a very risky place, however, when the modern entrepreneurial movement first exploded on Wall Street in the early 1980’s, it became clear that colleges and universities — including public institutions of higher learning — could abet private-sector greed in two ways. First, by encouraging every college student to become an entrepreneur, thus massively increasing investment opportunities for pools of capital, and second, by injecting entrepreneurial activity into colleges and universities themselves, thus using public money to drive private profits.
The obvious academic hosts for these symbiotic initiatives were business colleges and MBA programs, which also exploded in popularity in the early 1980’s as college students were encouraged to put profit-making at the top of their educational agendas. Flash forward thirty-plus years, and for most Americans the word ‘entrepreneur’ now conjures up images of sexy, self-made millionaires and billionaires, if not attendant greed and consequent drool. How this lusty branding came to be is for another day, but in the context of J. Bruce Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency at the University of Iowa, it is again worth noting that business colleges across the country have been aggressively pushing entrepreneurial programs for decades.
As a result of this new, rising tide of cultural greed, waves of business graduates entered the American marketplace with mercenary zeal, reckless abandon, and a conviction that squeezing profits out of anything or anyone was objectively good. While people have obviously been starting new businesses since time began, what set these entrepreneurs apart was their willingness to embrace increased risk in exchange for a chance at astounding returns. Typically, that risk was diversified across pools of investors who were also willing to accept the attendant risk, including venture capitalists who expected to take the lion’s share of early profits. (Fortunately there is a small but growing backlash to the VC pipeline, which is producing healthy, stable companies which are not crippled by debt or profit-obsessed shareholders.)
In the state of Iowa, you will probably not be surprised to learn that former regent president Bruce Rastetter is a notable and successful entrepreneur. From a 2008 post on the Iowa State Foundation website, years before Rastetter was appointed to the board:
Three years ago, when Bruce Rastetter was invited to an Iowa State University agriculture classroom to speak to students, the successful Alden, Iowa entrepreneur had no idea it would be the beginning of a rich and rewarding relationship. “I would talk to students about their life experiences and perspectives on how you go about starting a business,” he says, “and over a couple of years I became interested in helping the college reach its goals in both a personal and a monetary way.”
Last fall, Bruce made a $1.75 million commitment to the entrepreneurship program in Iowa State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Since then, he has made a $500,000 commitment, so his total pledge of $2.25 million will enable the college to establish an endowed chair in entrepreneurship and renovate space in Curtiss Hall to house the program.
“Entrepreneurship is something that those of use who have been successful ought to encourage,” he says. “Even students with humble beginnings and backgrounds can work hard in life, accomplish things and have that feeling of success.”
Because the word ‘entrepreneur’ portends riches, while ‘businessperson’ reeks of menial labor and limited profit potential, even people who open simple small businesses these days tend to think of themselves as entrepreneurs. In a financial sense they aren’t, but because all new ventures feel risky to those who launch them, the relationship between entrepreneurs and risk has expanded to include emotional and psychological risk, which is compensated for by wealth fantasies. For the most part there is no real harm in this — just as there is no harm in calling yourself a custodial engineer instead of a janitor, or an executive assistant instead of a receptionist — because the bottom line is literally the bottom line, meaning whether your business makes a profit or not.
Still, whether you are opening a restaurant or launching a high-tech startup, risk is not benign. For every entrepreneurial success that is hyped in the press, there are a hundred or more anonymous failures which lead to bankruptcies, divorces, litigation, suicides and even the occasional homicide. Also note that while every business school teaches undergrads and graduate students to avoid making simple, basic mistakes, that simply raises the level of competition in the marketplace. It does nothing to increase the number of entrepreneurs whose products or services are ultimately successful.
Ironically, one thing that does differentiate small-business owners from true entrepreneurs is not only the degree of risk involved, but the additional steps that entrepreneurs often take to defray their personal risk exposure. If you open a mom-and-pop diner in your home town, chances are you will be the only person on the hook if that business fails — or perhaps a few relatives or friends, if they chipped in. On the other hand, if you secure venture capital to launch a startup, you can not only walk away if the business fails, you can pat yourself on the back for ‘failing faster‘.
In modern parlance, the main appeal of the word ‘entrepreneur’ is that it has largely been shorn of any negative connotations. If you literally cannot fail — even when you burn through a billion dollars and leave a smoking hole in the ground — who would not want to be an entrepreneur? That’s where all the money is, that’s where all the fun is, that’s where all the fame is, and yet you can never fall short because failure is also defined as future success….
The only thing that would make the entrepreneurial racket perfect would be a perpetual source of investment capital which could be directed at an endless stream of risky ventures, all without incurring any risk. If a business failed someone else would bear the loss, but if it succeeded the profits would be spread not among the original investors, but only among those who could make a legal claim of ownership. Even better, in hosting those entrepreneurial ventures, various charges and fees could also be taken off the top of that same risk-free pool of investment capital, thus ensuring an institutional profit whether a venture succeeded or failed.
In a little over three years, this is the reality that J. Bruce Harreld and his entrepreneurial minders have foisted on the University of Iowa. We will dig into the details in this multipart post, but for now we will simply note that this is in keeping with Harreld’s background in the private sector. After purportedly saving IBM from possible reorganizational bankruptcy, Harreld could have gone on to found new startups, thus putting his entrepreneurial genius to work. Instead, he spent the next six-plus years pontificating at the posh Harvard School of Business, until an old friend and a couple of crony insiders stole a public-sector job for him. Instead of risking it all, or risking anything, Harreld played it safe until he could suck on the Iowa government teat, to the tune of $4M over five years. (Whether he does minimal damage or drives the university into the ground, Harreld gets paid.)
If Harreld had any purported strength as a private-sector businessman — albeit as a second-banana, because Harreld was never the CEO of anything — it was in supporting the managers of startups in IBM’s Emerging Business Opportunities division. Apparently on that basis alone, Rastetter and his small cabal of co-conspirators rigged the 2015 presidential search to inject Harreld into the UI campus to pursue a similar agenda. That this put the entire university at risk as an academic institution, yet none of the people involved — including Harreld — gave that a second thought, only underscores the narrow intellectual bandwidth of what I call money junkies.
To be sure, as Rastetter’s 2008 cheerleading makes clear, entrepreneurial lust had long been encouraged at the state schools — including particularly by Des Moines venture capitalist John Pappajohn. Until Harreld was imposed on the UI campus, however, there was at least a pretense of differentiating between the academic heart of the school and peripheral concerns like economic development. Now, with Harreld’s hire, the profit-first ethos has became an all-consuming focus at UI, to the delight of others on campus who also want a risk-free shot at the entrepreneurial big-time.
J. Bruce Harreld Gets to Work
As regular readers know, there is a world of difference between academic or scholarly research, and commercial or applied research. Generally speaking, the goal in the former is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, while in the latter the goal is cash money. Not surprisingly, the money junkies lurking on campuses all over the country routinely use the common word ‘research’ to shift resources from the former to the latter, abetted by the private-sector rationale that if you’re going to spend money you ought to get some return on that investment. This of course obliterates any distinction between higher education and capitalism — and particularly so at public universities — but because greed does not discriminate, it is pretty easy to hook scholars with the promise of a percentage, no matter how many degrees they may hold.
Over the past three years, in these virtual pages, we have documented Harreld’s step-by-step progress in converting the University of Iowa from an academic institution to an engine of economic development. One important component of that administrative switcheroo was infusing every document and plan with entrepreneurial rhetoric, and that included talking about research in an ambiguous way. For example, when Harreld pushed through the development of the new UI Strategic Plan in record time, the three main goals were, in order, Research & Discovery, Student Success, and Engagement.
At a cursory glance that all seems in keeping with the mission of a public research university. It is not the broad-brush themes or high-flying aspirations which are important in that document, however, but the specifics — the concrete details — no matter how bland they may seem. For example, when we drill down into the section on Research & Discovery, we find this university-wide, for-profit goal listed last in the Metrics section [p. 9]:
Number of faculty, staff, and students participating in disclosure, patent, licensing, and startup processes.
2021 GOAL: Increase by 10% over FY16 value
Likewise, under Student Success we find another for-profit goal — again listed last in the Metrics section [p. 15]:
Number of students exposed to entrepreneurial and innovation activities.
In the section on Engagement — which is a euphemism for prying money out of the pockets of faculty, staff, students and alums — we first find this over-arching goal [p. 16] —
Our goal is to engage with Iowa and the world to broaden education, improve health, and enhance economic development
— followed by this emphasis on profit-making [p. 19]:
Support the translation of intellectual work into applications to enhance economic development.
Critical Tasks
• Explore increased opportunities for entrepreneurial education, new venture creation, technology transfer, and innovation
• Connect faculty, staff, and students to organizations to solve social, technical, and business problems
Indicators for Success
• More faculty, staff, and students licensing intellectual property, participating in community engagement, or creating new businesses
Despite an abundance of metrics throughout the strategic plan, including elsewhere in the Engagement section, there are, oddly, no metrics for measuring the success of entrepreneurial ventures at UI, even though multiple line items clearly call for increased investment. Precisely because of that intentional omission, Harreld is thus free to use that document as justification for whatever he wants to do on the entrepreneurial front, yet — like a good little entrepreneur — he can never actually fail. The details of the strategic plan give Harreld license to commit money and resources to entrepreneurial ventures and economic development, yet nowhere is there any mechanism by which it can be objectively determined whether those plans are on track, off track, or a financial black hole for the university.
There are indeed plenty of nifty strategies and goals in the UI Strategic Plan, but relative to Harreld’s entrepreneurial focus, most of them simply function as distractions or cover. As long as there is a through-line of emphasis on entrepreneurial ventures, Harreld can endlessly point to that document as proof of consensus, even if the specific are little more than footnotes or fine print. For example, here is J. Bruce Harreld on April 12th, before the Iowa Board of Regents, using the strategic plan to justifying cuts to centers and institutes on campus [1:02:36]:
….however, if we are to continue delivering against our strategic plan — which we have all approved — we have no choice but to focus our scarce resources on student success, research, and economic development.
Two important things to note in this quote. First, the transcription does not do justice to the audio of Harreld delivering that line. Whether the aside was in the prepared text or not, when Harreld says, “…which we have all approved…”, he sticks it in like a rhetorical shiv. It’s not that he wants to kill off programs and institutes on campus — including the Iowa Labor Center — it’s that the the strategic plan compels him.
The second thing to note is what Harreld says at the very end, which is an obvious and telling lie. As noted earlier, the UI strategic plan focuses on Research & Discovery, Student Success, and Engagement — yet that’s not what Harreld said to the board. Instead of engagement, he substituted the real reason he was hired, which was to pervert the University of Iowa’s teaching and academic research missions in service of “economic development”. In that Freudian moment we see that Harreld is not a good man who is doing what’s best for the people of Iowa and the UI community, but is instead a shyster business executive in academic clothing — who, with the tacit support of the corrupt Board of Regents, happily lied to any rubes or yokels who may have been listening on that day. (Truly, you would be hard-pressed to find a more telling example of Harreld’s corruption than the quote above. In one breath he asserts that everyone agreed to the UI strategic plan, then intentionally misstates the strategic plan for his own benefit.)
The Reality of Entrepreneurial Ventures
Notwithstanding Harreld’s endless willingness to lie to the press, to the people of Iowa and to the UI community, you may still be thinking it makes sense to profit from any research conducted at the university. As sensible as that sounds, however, the determining factor is how much it would cost to pursue that end, against whatever revenue might reasonably be expected in return. (That is in fact the point of developing the kind of business plan that MBA students are so good at crafting — and of course Harreld himself has a Harvard MBA.)
For all of Harreld’s real-world business experience, however, he was clearly hired at UI as a salesman, and what he is selling is the idea of success. Scour every word Harreld has uttered since he was fraudulently appointed on September 3rd, 2015, and you will find no cautions about how difficult it is to engineer a profitable startup, and no concerns about whether it is proper to gamble university funds on for-profit businesses. Interestingly, however, two days before Harreld was hired by the corrupt Board of Regents, he actually did shine a passing light on the difficulty of engineering profits in an academic setting. From Hareld’s candidate forum on 09/01/15 [29:30]:
Second thing I noticed is this IP issue. And the IP issues — we did some work and said, “How many things have we worked on collectively with the corporate world that we’ve patented, and have made a significant financial impact to Purdue?”
And it was damn few. I mean, a lot of things were patented, but in terms of the overall scheme of things, in terms of the budget, the notion that somehow we’re gonna strike it rich by having a long conversation to control intellectual property, was in fact getting in the way our ability to collaborate with industry to solve first-of-a-kind problems. And frankly they often put it back in the public domain.
Here Harreld explicitly pooh-poohs the idea of making money off of IP, and instead pushes the vague concept of “collaborat[ing] with industry to solve first-of-a-kind problems”. What is not clear is how that would foster “economic development” for the school, or why a public research university would even need to “collaborative with industry” to tackle such issues. On the other hand, using a public research university to conduct free or subsidized research would obviously be of great benefit to private industry, and could also potentially increase tax revenue. (Although in Iowa many companies pay little or no taxes, and can often generate an actual tax credit for “research activities“, so that doesn’t make much sense either.)
In any event, just prior to his appointment at Iowa, Purdue-grad Harreld — who, predictably, has a bachelors in engineering from that school — freely admitted that his alma mater went down the wrong road. In fact, only moments before the above quote Harreld also admitted that he was on the “early board” of Purdue’s Discovery Park, so he clearly did have relevant experience to draw from on that narrow question. And that experience convinced Harreld — only two days before he was appointed at UI — that trying to make money from IP was a fool’s errand for academic institutions.
There are or course multiple reasons why academic institutions have a hard time leveraging IP, and particularly so outside of generational technological advances, such as occurred with the invention and widespread adoption of the personal computer and internet. (One hidden impediment is that anyone who truly believes they have a billion-dollar idea will probably be loathe to lock themselves into a long-term profit-sharing arrangement with a ponderous bureaucracy, such as exists at even the most nimble college or research university.) Despite Harreld’s clear-eyed assessment of the difficulty of driving profits at an academic institution, however, from the moment he was appointed two days later he became a full-on evangelist for spending millions of dollars on entrepreneurial ventures at UI, and he has never once revisited the difficulty of profiting from inventions and IP. Instead, between substituting “economic development” for engagement in the UI strategic plan, and rigging the ‘new’ budget model to automatically fund such ventures on the UI campus — about which we will have more to say in the next post — Harreld has been wholly committed to that money-losing cause.
Driving financial success from intellectual property at a private-sector corporation is risky. Attempting to do so at an academic institution, let alone on an ongoing basis, is a long-term, costly, and exceedingly dubious proposition — and that is not a subjective assessment. In April of 2018, two and a half years into Harreld’s illegitimate presidency, the Gazette’s Matthew Patane published a story titled, Getting to market: Iowa’s universities work to commercialize research. Despite Harreld’s non-stop entrepreneurial cheerleading, Patane’s article was a surprisingly sober look at how difficult it is to generate a profit, or even prevent a net loss, while attempting to commercialize academic IP at both Iowa and Iowa State:
Universities can make money from their research discoveries due to the Bayh-Dole Act, a federal law passed in 1980. Rather than having the rights of discoveries from federally funded research go to the government, the legislation let universities maintain ownership.
Iowa’s three regent universities report millions of dollars a year in revenue they received through licenses of their discoveries.
The annual amounts are variable, though, and royalty revenues for all three universities have only surpassed $50 million once in the past 10 fiscal years.
Even so, if state universities are facing a budget crunch, could they turn up the rate of commercialization, rake in more money from royalties and fill in those gaps?
Largely, university research officials said no.
“There is not a ready money stream that is going back into the university that is going to be big enough to support the kinds of budget issues the university faces,” Iowa State’s [Sarah] Nusser said.
While a “home run” invention may come along every once in a while, a vast majority of spin-outs can fail, [Marie] Kerbeshian said.
“It enables the university to build a new building or create a new program that it might not have been able to before, but you really can’t count on a steady stream of revenue” from commercialization, she said.
Sarah Nusser is the VP for research at Iowa State, and Marie Kerbeshian is the executive director of the UI Research Foundation. Like Harred during his candidate forum, they both take pains in Patane’s report to stress that Iowa’s state universities are not going to start generating hundreds of millions of dollars in new annual revenue, even if the schools aggressively pursue entrepreneurial ventures or the exploitation of intellectual property. Despite those cautions, however, I am sure most people think that if $50M is good, then $100M would be great, and $500M would be even greater — thus also proving out Harreld’s infamous “great to greater” promise at his candidate forum.
So why not encourage Harreld to shoot for the moon? Well, to begin with that $50M total for a single year was not only the high-water mark over the past decade, but it covers all three state universities. If we assume a proportional split roughly equal to the budgets of each university, that might give us $30M in revenue at UI, $15M at ISU, and a charitable $5M at UNI. While even $5M would be a lot for you or me — or at least me — $30M would still be less than one percent of the University of Iowa’s $4B annual budget. Now add the fact that intellectual property often has a short shelf life, because the market quickly evolves and moves on, and it is exceedingly unlikely that UI is suddenly going to start generating a massive amount of reliable new revenue based on existing IP, or from bootstrapping a string of successful new businesses. It’s easy to imagine that happening, but as anyone from the private sector can tell you — including J. Bruce Harreld — it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off even once, let alone recurrently.
Countering Greed With Common Sense
In the context of “generational disinvestment” by the state, which Harreld is always wailing about, it certainly seems as if the regent schools should try to earn as much money as possible, but even if the speculative numbers above are wildly wrong, those aren’t the numbers that matter most. Again, in order to determine whether it makes sense to follow Harreld’s entrepreneurial game plan we would have to be able to calculate the university’s return on investment, but we can never do that because the investment side of the equation is routinely obscured by the university and the board.
Even in the cautionary comments by Nusser and Karbashian in Patan’s Gazette report, there is no accounting for the amount of money that was invested in order to generate a peak return of $50M in revenue in one year. And that omission is not an aberration. Look at every document you can find on the Board of Regents website, or at the state schools, and you will be lucky to find a few fragments of the total spending behind any exploited IP.
Despite the frank insight Harreld provided during his candidate forum, from the moment he took office Harreld incongruously moved to expand Iowa’s efforts to generate revenue from intellectual property and new businesses. Again, that seems to make sense given that part of Iowa’s core mission is conducting research, so someone probably should check to see if each discovery has some value in the marketplace. And yet…there is also a cost to making that tentative determination, and a cost to testing that conclusion, and that’s on top of the cost of conducting the research in the first place.
The reality, of course, is that the cost of exploiting even a single invention at the University of Iowa, or spinning out one new company, is considerable and distributed across the school. There is a legal cost, including the cost of patent searches, and defending against lawsuits which claim infringement. There are personnel costs. There are startup costs. There is a cost for office space, and there may also be lab costs, production costs or storage costs. And then come marketing costs, and the cost of attending or hosting meetings.
If history is any guide, more often than not the economic value of a given discovery will not cover all of those costs, let alone produce a profit. As they say in the private sector, it takes money to make money, but even risk-tolerant entrepreneurs do not throw money at every invention — and that’s particularly true if it’s their money. Then again, as they say in the lottery business, you can’t win if you don’t play — although playing is quite literally gambling, and the odds are prohibitively against you.
The first question we should ask — how much it costs to try to make money from intellectual property at the University of Iowa — is the last question anyone is willing to answer, and it’s not hard to see why. The one sure way to interrupt the fantasies that fuel individual and collective greed is to ask people how much they’re willing to risk on a lottery ticket. If it’s only a few bucks, why not? But what if it’s tens of millions of dollars, with no guarantee of any return on that investment? Because that money could be put to better uses, Harreld does not want people asking that question.
So let’s ask that question. Over the ten-year period in the Patane article, which included a peak annual return on investment of $50M between all three state universities, how much money did the state schools invest to generate that revenue? And by invest, I don’t just mean in trying to exploit ideas, inventions and new businesses after the research was conducted, but including the total cost of research across those schools.
On the profit side, we know that all three state schools generated less than $500M over that decade, because the best year was $50M. Assuming an average profit of $40M per year, that would mean all three schools generated $400M over the decade in question, but what about the total cost?
Well, it turns out that the National Science Foundation (NSF) compiles an annual ranking of “total R&D expenditures” by school, and included in those listings are Iowa (ranked #49), Iowa State (#73) and the University of Northern Iowa (#449). From the NSF data table, here are the totaled research expenditures for each school, for 2017:
Iowa: $494M
Iowa State: $300M
Northern Iowa: $3M
2017 Total: $797M
As you can see, a massive amount of money is being spent on research at Iowa’s regent universities, the vast majority at Iowa and Iowa State. Over the same decade in which the regent schools reaped a guestimated $400M in revenue from IP and inventions, they spent almost $8B to generate that modest 5% return. And yet that still doesn’t include the cost of exploiting any research for gain, which is not covered by the NSF data.
The good news is that much of the money that the regent schools spend on research each year is not state money, but comes from federal grants. As noted in the Patane article, the Bayh-Dole act allows schools to profit from that research directly, which further incentivizes schools not only to conduct federally funded research, but as much federally funded research as possible. In that specific context it clearly does make sense to have the capacity to exploit research for economic gain, even if doing so adds to the total cost of operating the school, because the cost of the underlying research is subsidized. And of course once you have that capacity in place, you could then also use it to entertain other licensing and business opportunities, further defraying your overall cost of generating revenue from IP.
Despite that silver lining, however, it should be abundantly clear that even in a good year most of the research that the state universities conduct will count as a financial loss, and there is no reason to believe that massively increasing Iowa’s efforts to exploit that research will alter that reality. It may be, at the margins, that UI can recoup a bit more money overall by following Harreld’s zealous entrepreneurial agenda, but that merely brings us back to the question of what it costs to buy that profit. And here we are no longer talking about federally funded research, we are talking specifically about an investment by the university itself, into driving greater profits from IP.
In truth, we don’t need to debate hypotheticals to understand why the University of Iowa is never going to produce a net profit from the exploitation of intellectual property. It may make some money as opposed to no money, but it will always be conducing research at a loss, and the best that can be hoped for is that targeted exploitation — including keeping associated costs under control — may generate a relatively small amount of additional revenue. We know this to a certainty not because Harreld is, demonstrably, a liar and a cheat, or because the Board of Regents is, demonstrably, corrupt, but for the blatantly obvious reason that if there was a sure-fire way to generate profits from any kind of research — whether in conjunction with private-sector partners or not — every state would be shoveling billions of dollars at its public colleges and universities.
Even in the private sector, where the only motivation for doing anything, ever, is making money, research is an acknowledged gamble. The hope — and no matter how exhaustive the vetting process, it is only a hope — is that one or two ideas will pan out in a big way, thus covering the cost of all of the failures. But even that does not happen with any certainty. (Again, if it did, everyone would follow the same research template to guaranteed profits.)
For a public-sector institution, the proposition is considerably more complicated because making money is not — and should not be — a core part of that organization’s mission. (There are laws in many states which prevent entities of state government from competing with private enterprise. Not only is Iowa covered by such a law, but the Iowa Board of Regents produces an annual report to show that it is in compliance.) Like all states, Iowa does subsidize economic development in various ways, but in the context of higher education we are talking about diverting money away from education in order to gamble those funds on a possible positive return.
Even putting the same money out at interest, or investing in an index fund, would probably produce a greater guaranteed return, yet Harreid is determined to throw more and more money at the riskiest sorts of investments there are — which is precisely why such speculative ventures are usually confined to the private sector. Put all of that money toward teaching or “student success” and you get a guaranteed benefit. Put that money toward inventions and spinouts, and you would probably get better odds if you simply dropped it all on the pass line at a craps table.
Clearly, when Harreld misrepresents his own strategic plan in order to emphasize ‘economic development’, or raves about investing in intellectual property and building new companies, what he wants is for the UI community to see dollar signs dancing in front of their eyes. What he does not want is anyone applying simple common sense to the idea of spending precious dollars on risky entrepreneurial ventures, because that will prompt additional questions that he does not want to answer — like why he is determined to do so, and why the regents support him, despite the obvious intractable risk.
To the inevitable financial losses, which may or may not be marginally mitigated by revenue down the road, we can also add the very real concern that prioritizing profits will impact the research that the university decides to undertake. Setting aside overt abuses like fudging data in order to get funding, it stands to reason that if you’re trying to make money, the last thing you’re going to do is devote resources to research that has little chance of generating a financial return on any resources you invest. That research could be important in other ways, and perhaps even produce a quantifiable public benefit, but if it doesn’t generate cash it simply adds to the loss column, which puts that much more pressure on other ventures.
How long will it take before Harreld’s profit motive begins affecting academics on the UI campus? In fact, we’ve already seen Harreld make multiple academic hires which have an entrepreneurial bent, while other hires seem dictated by disciplines which are more likely to become profit centers on the UI campus. If you’re in the arts, or the humanities, you’re probably not going to roll out a billion-dollar invention, so does that mean your research proposal goes to the bottom of the pile? How about knowledge that is of value to Iowans? Should that be pursued if it cannot be monetized?
As long as we’re asking common-sense questions, here’s another. Where is Harreld going to find credulous investors for this money-losing scheme? In the governor’s proposed FY2020 budget there is a $3M line item for “innovation” in the Board of Regents budget (p 684), and there is money set aside for ‘economic development’ at the three regent universities. Even with $2.2M specifically devoted to that objective at UI, however, that is peanuts compared to the comprehensive entrepreneurial insurgency that Harreld intends to bankroll. In fact, while ISU and UNI will receive lump sums of $2.4M and $1M for “economic development” respectively, at UI that $2.2M total is broken out as just $200K for “economic development”, and $2M for “entrepreneurship and economic growth” — which will, as usual, be used to cover the operating costs of the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (p. 681). And since that $2M appropriation remains flat for 2020, there won’t be any extra to throw at Harreld’s new campus-wide entrepreneurial initiatives.
Slapping the term ‘economic development’ on the millions of additional dollars that Harreld will inevitably hose down the drain while trying to commercialize research does nothing to improve the odds of financial success for any of those ventures. Given the “generational disinvestment by the state” that Harreld endlessly decries, it should be equally clear that the state is not interested in investing any new money. And of course the federal government will not be throwing more grants at the university simply because Harreld is convinced he’s about to go on a hot streak….
If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this the next time Harreld or the regents talk about innovation and entrepreneurial ventures. If it was easy to make money from IP and new businesses, the state would be investing heavily, and private investors would be lining up for Harreld to make them rich. Neither of those things is happening, nor will they happen.
As in the private sector, Harreld needs people to invest significant sums of money to do what he was hired to do, but the smart money has already said no, which leaves us with two important questions. First, where will Harreld and the regents dredge up the suckers they need to fund new entrepreneurial games of chance at UI? Second, why are Harreld and the regents determined to spend time, precious revenue and other resources on risky entrepreneurial ventures which are unlikely to ever turn a profit? We will delve into the second question, about the motives driving this apparent insanity, in Part 3. As to the first question, if you have read any prior posts on the Harreld hire you already know par of the answer, bug we will dig into the details in Part 2 of this post.
In the previous post I referred to the closing of the University of Iowa Labor Center in the past tense, because the Iowa Board of Regents — at J. Bruce Harreld’s insistence — officially ordered the closing of that center during its November meetings. Along with several other centers and institutes on the UI campus, the Labor Center would thus be terminated on June 30th, at the end of the current academic and fiscal years, though the director was given a disingenuous opportunity to find long-term outside funding prior to that deadline. As Harreld pointedly made clear, however, on multiple belligerent occasions, under no circumstance would the university continue to provide funding for the Labor Center — either from the general fund, or from the College of Law, where the center currently resides.
Apparently that all changed today, according to a press release from UI, and subsequent reporting from the Daily Iowan’s Marissa Payne, and the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller. While I encourage you to follow those links for the full story — and to remember that Harreld and the board cannot be trusted — there are a couple of important particulars in the apparent resolution to this saga, including this from the press release:
College of Law Dean Kevin Washburn and Center Director Jennifer Sherer have signed a memorandum of understanding to eliminate General Education funding for the Labor Center while providing limited financial support for four years to give the center time to generate new or additional revenue.
The most important thing to note here is that four years puts the final resolution of this memorandum well outside the current contract window for J. Bruce Harreld. While he could certainly be signed to an extension, and could also betray the Labor Center between now and then, this provision leaves open the possibility that the memorandum might be revisited or even commuted at a later date.
As noted in a series of posts beginning late last summer (see here, here, here, here, here, and here), J. Bruce Harreld’s determination to close the Labor Center began with a premeditated lie and went downhill from there. Over the following months his evolving justifications for closing the center were discredited again and again, yet Harreld repeatedly doubled down in pursuit of his petty, bratty and vindictive agenda.
To her enduring credit, as soon as Labor Center Director Jennifer Sherer realized last summer that she had been sandbagged by Harreld, not only did she publicly assert that Harreld’s plan would not succeed, but despite his belittling attacks, she continually took the high road. I cannot think of any other person on the UI campus who has been targeted in this way over Harreld’s three-plus illegitimate years in the president’s office, but it is to her credit — and to the credit of Dean Washburn at the College of Law — that this new plan has emerged.
As I said in one of those earlier posts, Jennifer Sherer is exactly the kind of leader that the University of Iowa campus needs.
In Part 1 of this post we discussed the outright fraud of J. Bruce Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency at the University of Iowa. Contrary to his non-binding promise of glittering riches on the horizon, even Harreld admits that generating profits from intellectual property will almost certainly produce a meager return on investment — and that is one of the better possible outcomes. Yes, there could be a freak hit, just as you could win the next big lottery, but more than likely any money invested by the school will simply be lost to failed ventures, and may produce a net loss overall.
Whatever the corrupt Iowa Board of Regents had in mind when they rigged the 2015 presidential search in Harreld’s favor, they did not hire the man because he said he was lucky. Harreld was fraudulently appointed over three eminently qualified academic administrators because the regents wanted someone to run the University of Iowa like a business, and the one thing any business must do is make money. For that reason, and despite his candid admission to the contrary during his candidate forum, that is what J. Bruce Harreld has been promising to do for over three years: to make money by leveraging intellectual property, by patenting and marketing new inventions, and by starting new ventures — just like a for-profit corporation.
And yet, despite having gone to the trouble of orchestrating multiple flagrant abuses of power in order to jam Harreld into the president’s office at UI, the state — ironically, yet appropriately — has largely refused to fund the risky initiatives that Harreld was hired to implement. While that would seem to call into question the decision to hire Harreld in the first place, that’s not actually true if the state knew in advance that Harreld would be gambling with other people’s money, instead of putting taxpayer revenue at risk. And of course as regular readers know, that clearly turns out to the case.
J. Bruce Harreld Solves the Funding Problem
For all the self-aggrandizing heroism in Harreld’s claim that he helped save IBM from “near bankruptcy“, the reality is that IBM was sitting on a massive amount of capital that could be quickly repurposed to fund new ventures. And by massive I mean billions of dollars in assets and equity, which could be recycled and reinvested in order to generate new revenue. (At worst IBM was looking at reorganizational bankruptcy under Chapter 11, not going out of business.)
While the budget of the entire regents enterprise is about $6B, and $4B of that total covers the University of Iowa ($2B for the school, and $2B for UI Healthcare, which includes University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics), as a government entity the Board of Regents cannot raise large pools of investment capital by selling stock or assets. Although the board does routinely issue bonds for construction projects, as it did on multiple occasions for the new $370M children’s hospital at UI, private investors will never beat down the door to provide risk capital for J. Bruce Harreld, or anyone else in state government. They might donate money if they have already cashed out themselves, but anyone still actively betting on home runs — as opposed to safe investments like revenue-backed municipal bonds — will put their money to work in the private sector, because that’s where the greatest profit will always be found.
To fund their own for-profit fantasies in the absence of outside investors or new money from the state, Harreld and his corrupt regent minders had to come up with another way to raise capital. To that end, the ever-helpful board pushed through a massive tuition hike in the summer of 2016, only six months after Harreld took office. Importantly, that hike was in advance of the collapse of the state budget, which did lead to two years of cynical budget cuts at the state universities. Seizing that opportunity, however, Harreld and the regents used those state cuts to increase tuition again and again, resulting in four abusive hikes in just under two years.
For every $1 cut by the state over that time, Harreld and the regents increased tuition at UI by about $2.8, thus looting student and family bank accounts on a pretext. Despite endlessly wailing about “generational disinvestment” by the state, in every year since Harreld’s fraudulent hire the University of Iowa has significantly increased its overall revenue, to the point that the school is now easily bringing in $35-$40M more than it was in FY2016, when Harreld first took office. And again, that’s after accounting for all of the cuts in state appropriations. (We have covered this topic in multiple prior posts, but you can see a quick rundown of the key numbers here.)
Whether resulting from naked greed, gross mismanagement or both — including blowing the children’s hospital budget by a whopping $90M or more — Harreld and the regents recently decided to grant themselves a minimum 3% tuition hike for each of the next five years. Importantly, those hikes may balloon substantially depending on the rate of inflation, and whether the state sufficiently increases appropriations to compensate. (If not, the regents have already approved tacking on an inflation adjustment pegged to the Higher-Ed Price Index, which further disincentivizes any state contributions at all.)
While some of the money appropriated by the state is unrestricted, meaning Harreld can spend it however he wants at UI, much of the state’s standing appropriation is already devoted to existing programs, and new money is often tied to specific line items in the budget. (Legislators may be corrupt, but they are not fools.) Because tuition revenue is not appropriated by the legislature, however, and comes from student and family bank accounts, it can be spent however Harreld sees fit — up to and including risking that money on for-profit ventures.
Despite the fact that revenue comes to UI from different sources, however, one thing that must be stressed is that the moment the University of Iowa collects a dollar in tuition, that dollar belongs to the state. While student tuition does not come from the state treasury, it is not ‘private equity’ or ‘private money’ once it is received. Unfortunately, this sort of semantic deceit occurs at the highest levels of Iowa state government, and was recently employed to justify spending $4M in state funds to pay off the sexual harassment victims of one of the governor’s old drinking buddies. Fortunately, in subsequent testimony the governor’s crony fixer was forced to walk back false claims that the money would not come from the state.
As regular readers know, this shell game about what is and is not taxpayer money or state money is a constant at the Board of Regents. At UI, it is complicated by the fact that school can also draw from, and launder money through, the UI Foundation — which is now known as the UI Center for Advancement, and uses a third name (‘ForIowa.org‘) as its official URL. While it may matter at times what the source of funds is, particularly with regard to restricted funds from the state or UI Foundation, the fact is that all of the money in the UI Gen-Ed Fund — including any unrestricted tuition revenue that Harreld chooses to throw at risky for-profit ventures — is state money.
Having said that, on a bipartisan basis the governor and state legislature are more than happy to have Harreld and the regents piss away tuition revenue on for-profit ventures, because from their craven political point of view there is no downside. If all that money is lost they won’t be held accountable, but if there are a few hits along the way that’s more money they won’t have to appropriate to UI in the future. (If you’re thinking it’s shameful that both Republicans and Democrats have been silent about the abusive tuition hikes at the board, let alone about what Harreld intends to do with some of that money, I agree. Unfortunately, there are no political heroes in this journey.)
From Harreld’s point of view as the mercenary president of the University of Iowa, the board’s statutory ability to raise tuition revenue — let alone to do so without ever publicly accounting for expending that money in any detailed way — is a literal gold mine. Instead of having to convince sophisticated private-sector investors that he knows what he’s talking about, Harreld can simply put in a request for more money from the president of the regents. Because the former board president was one of the three men who rigged Harreld’s hire, and the current board president is a casino owner and political ally of the former board president, Harreld’s requests are routinely granted.
But it gets better. As noted in Part 1 of this post, because much of the money that Harreld intends to throw at for-profit ventures will be skimmed from students and families, none of those unwitting compulsory investors are entitled to any profit participation on the back end. Unlike private equity — which, for some reason, not only expects to be paid, but to be paid first — venture capital raised by soaking students and families comes with no strings attached.
Better still is the fact that Harreld can now strip-mine new startup capital on a recurrent annual basis, which is not only a boon to the university, but will prove reassuring to private-sector partners. Nothing makes private money skittish like the fear that a public-sector commitment may suddenly change, whether due to political expediency or public outcry. By abusing the board’s power to raise tuition without any oversight from elected officials — to the tune of 18% in three short years, and another 15% minimum over the next five years — Harreld can promise private-sector partners that unrestricted funds will continue flowing into the till for the next half-decade.
Given the paucity of state appropriations and the surfeit of tuition hikes over the past three years, along with Harreld’s contemporaneous commitment to turn UI into an engine of economic development, we can clearly see where the money for any for-profit ventures is coming from. Because the UI books are a veritable black box, however, we have no visibility into how much money has already accrued or been disbursed, but we do have some visibility into the administrative mechanism by which funds will be distributed. Because the ability to dole out money confers considerable power on both the initiator and recipient, following the flow of money gives us additional information about who on the UI campus stands to profit most from this deeply cynical diverting of tuition revenue.
Ironically, this opportunity for insight comes to us from Harreld’s ‘new’ budget model, which is not actually new in any conceptual sense, but simply new to the University of Iowa. From a presentation by UI CFO and Treasurer Terry Johnson, to the UI Faculty Senate, on 02/14/17:
Mr. Johnson began his presentation by showing a graphic illustrating the trending of university budget models. Two of the most common types of models are the incremental budgeting model and the Responsibility Center Management model. The UI has traditionally been closer to the incremental budgeting model, which is at one end of the budgeting model spectrum. This means that when new revenue comes in during a given year, due to factors such as larger enrollment or tuition increases, the central administration identifies the new revenue and then determines how that revenue will be distributed across the university. At the other end of the spectrum is Responsibility Centered Management (RCM). In this model, all revenues are recorded within collegiate budgets. Colleges’ direct expenses are recorded this way (as in incremental budgeting), but there are processes to allocate central overhead costs relating to students, finance and operations, the President’s office, etc. to the collegiate budgets. Universities at either end of the spectrum appear to be moving toward the center, toward a hybrid approach. The incremental approach lacks incentives to create new revenues or control costs. Universities using the RCM approach, however, have become more siloed and university-wide strategic thinking is difficult. A hybrid model incentivizes revenue growth and cost containment, while also providing funding for strategic initiatives.
While banal in implementation, Harreld and his supporters hail this new-ish budget model as a transformational change at UI, thus validating the wisdom of his scandalous hire. Apparently, only a visionary from the private sector could have made such a bold move, even as similar changes have taken place on campuses across the country — the vast majority of which are still presided over by timid academics. As with the UI Strategic Plan, however, which Harreld also rigged to his administrative benefit, it is only by digging into the details of the new budget model that we see its real appeal for Harreld, for his minders, and for those on the UI campus who also hope to use other people’s money to make themselves rich.
While Harreld and the regents can certainly impose a great deal of brute-force change by administrative fiat, motivating the UI community to willingly accept change is infinitely preferable to provoking opposition. For that reason, in pushing the new budget model Harreld and his acolytes have consistently championed the advantages of self-determination for the individual budget units on campus, which will indeed have more autonomy over how money is allocated and spent. To be sure, however, there are still strings attached, and in a previous post we exposed the fact that Harreld still retains final say over any spending. (Specifically, Harreld rigged four ‘pillars’ or ‘filters’ upon which the ‘new’ budget model is ostensibly premised. In Harreld’s sole determination, if spending does not conform to those priorities, he can simply reject proposals he does not like.)
From Harreld’s point of view there are several important advantages to distributing the budget-allocation process across the UI campus. First, many of the decisions which need to be made are of no consequence to Harreld and his executive team. Not only will they profit by pushing that workload onto others, but they get a goodwill bonus for embracing shared governance. Second, all of that new budgetary authority also serves as a distraction, so the campus is less likely to look at what Harreld and central administration are doing with their resources. Despite giving up some authority, not only will central administration get a significant cut of all tuition and any new, unrestricted appropriations, but even after funds are distributed to the rest of the campus, Harreld can then bill the academic units for providing services which are deemed to be “university-wide expenses”.
Innovation For All
Given the requisite lack of integrity, it is a trivial matter to fleece students and families for startup capital, because they are completely powerless to resist. Other than enrolling at a non-regent college or university — of which none are comparable even to Northern Iowa or Iowa State, let alone to the University of Iowa — students are hostage to the policies of the political hacks at the board. And those crony hacks can raise tuition with impunity.
Whereas most of the administrators, faculty and staff at the three regent schools are probably in favor of more funding by any means available, however, it would be quite another proposition to divert some of the resulting revenue into a massive slush fund, which would then be used to fund risky entrepreneurial ventures. Not only are there a lot of campus constituencies who would fight for those precious resources, some of those constituencies would have access to the bottom-line budget numbers, meaning it would be impossible to conceal the amount of money in play. Once word got out about how much the president’s office was skimming — to the inevitable detriment of colleges, departments, and other budgetary units on campus — there would be open administrative warfare about that mountain of cash.
Having rigged a clever administrative solution to avoid that problem, it is almost tempting to say that Harreld has earned his obscenely inflated salary, except for the damning fact that his solution is in pursuit of a nefarious end. Central to the long con that Harreld has put together is a newly proposed and board-approved innovation center, which, perversely, will be housed in the original Art Building on the UI campus. From Tom Snee, writing for Iowa Now, on 08/30/18:
“Once restored to its original grandeur, the Art Building will be home to the next evolution of the Iowa Idea and continue the heritage of 170 years of research and discovery at the university,” says McGuire. “The Iowa Idea will expand beyond the arts to encompass engineering, health care, the liberal arts, law, business, entrepreneurship, and other disciplines on campus.”
So who is paying for the innovation center? Well, here we encounter another rhetorical scam at UI, which is insinuating that ongoing operations will be funded entirely by private donations, when that’s obviously not the case. Only the conversion of the Art Building will be covered by private funds:
All costs will be paid for with private donations, and the building is expected to be ready for use by the spring semester of 2021.
So who will eat the cost of ongoing operations? Well, as it turns out, that would be — everyone! From the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, on 09/09/18:
“The historic Art Building would serve as a much-needed collaborative environment replete with modern tools to support new idea development,” according to Board of Regents documents. “The innovation center would be anchored by the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center and would include active participation by all 11 colleges.”
Even the term “active participation” makes it sound like everyone will be using the innovation center to make money, but that’s not actually what that terminology means. To understand why all eleven UI colleges will be “actively participat[ing]” in the new innovation center, we have to dig into the minutiae of the new budget model, and specifically the allocation process. From the UI Faculty Senate meeting minutes on 04/24/18 [p. 2]:
Expenses for colleges occur in two categories: direct collegiate expenses (general fund allocations spent by the colleges) and allocated expenses (university-wide expenses that fall into numerous categories, such as academic advising, admissions, career center, etc.; these central service unit expenses are allocated to each college proportionally based on formulas).
Broadly speaking, each college on the UI campus will now be able to keep a certain percentage of self-generated revenue, including tuition revenue, but from those funds must contribute to “university-wide expenses that fall into numerous categories”. And of course one of those expenses will be the new innovation center, which is what “active participation by all 11 colleges” actually means. Instead of charging a fee only for services rendered, the innovation center will bill each college for its ongoing funding — which the intentionally deceptive new budget model describes as an “allocat[ion]”.
As to how the innovation center will be funded “proportionally based on formulas”, we do not know the particulars. We can, however, get a rough idea of the massive amount of money that will be flowing to and through central administration — even under the new, decentralized budget model — and that will make clear just how easy it will be for Harreld and his campus underlings to divert tens of millions of dollars each year to entrepreneurial ventures. From p. 3 of the same Faculty Senate meeting minutes:
Turning to key components of the budget allocation model, Interim Provost Curry explained that colleges that generate additional net tuition (tuition minus student financial aid), keep 70% of the increase and revenue share centrally the remaining 30%.
Here we not only see that the university as a whole profits from charging students and families more money for the same degrees, but Harreld and central administration get a 30% cut of the take from every college that generates a tuition surplus. And of course one good way to generate a tuition surplus is to raise the price of tuition, which Harreld and the board have done four times in just under two years, and will soon perpetrate for the fifth time in three years. However, proving it is harder to pull a fast one on informed faculty than it is on on hostage students and families, on p. 4 we find this razor-sharp question from a member of the Faculty Senate:
Professor Balakrishnan then asked, what mechanism [do colleges] have to control shared expenses?
Although there is plenty of chatter about how any source of revenue will be divided, and Harreld and his supporters talk endlessly about the benefits of the new decentralized budget model, nowhere is there any cap on “services that the college shares with others”. Because each college is obligated to balance its own budget, Harreld can actually increase costs to all of the colleges — and thus revenue to central administration — simply by billing more for any shared central service.
Interim Provost Curry responded that this is where shared decision-making and the central service advisory committees have roles. The six central advisory committees relate to the areas of student life, the Provost’s Office, research, information technology services, facilities, and central administration. Each advisory committee is comprised of two deans, two collegiate administrators, and two representatives from shared governance. There are also ex-officio members who are experts in the areas being reviewed. The committees analyze expenses and review requests for budget increases, thus providing a mechanism to ensure that costs are under control while necessary services are provided.
As regular readers know, Harreld recently made it clear that he does not believe shared governance entitles the faculty or staff to “shared decision making”. In fact, here is the great man himself, from an interview with the Daily Iowan on 10/15/18, intentionally parroting the same hot garbage that got the university sanctioned by the AAUP for two years, for abuses during the 2015 UI presidential search:
Then, I would remind all of my colleagues on campus that I passionately believe in shared governance. Shared governance does not mean shared decision-making. It’s something different. So they have an input.
All shared governance means to Harreld is that others get an opportunity to say what they think before he does whatever he wanted to do anyway. For that reason, the “shared decision-making” process that Curry outlined is not so much a check on Harreld’s power as it is a series of executive defenses which will inevitably render protests mute. The central advisory committees will be stocked with loyal bureaucrats who will derail any objections, while the Provost’s Office will soon be corrupted by the hire of a new provost, whom Harreld alone will select. (One of the things the new provost will have to do to get the job is swear fealty to Harreld.)
If we stand back and look at what Harreld has wrought, we can clearly see that he actually has two different ways to raise money for entrepreneurial ventures which will never be accounted for publicly. First, he can simply raise tuition, which — by incredible coincidence — the board has been eager to do since the moment it jammed Harreld into office. Second, he can increase the shared cost of the innovation center as a campus-wide service.
As to the state’s complicity, again there is no downside for elected officials. Without passing a single law, Iowa’s politicians can take tens of millions of dollars each year from student and family bank accounts and devote that money to economic development for the state — and all it takes is a little ‘tuition laundering’ by crony appointees at the Iowa Board of Regents.
As to any possible pushback, on the tuition front we have already established that most of administrators, faculty and staff at UI could not care less how badly the regents bleed the students, but there could be some resistance to increasing the compulsory fee for supporting the innovation center. Here, however, we see the importance of the campus-wide greed that Harreld has fostered over the past three years — ignoring his own awareness of the difficulty of turning academic IP into profits, and instead selling the promise of inevitable entrepreneurial success. (If you have read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, J. Bruce Harreld is playing the part of Milo Minderbinder, constantly reminding everyone that they have ‘a share’ of prospective profits, but also that he needs things from them in order to be successful. And one of the things he needs is a new innovation center, which will be funded by every college on campus.)
The good news for Harreld is that compared to securing private funding from sharks in the venture-capital world, this is an easy lift. Simply having an innovation center on tap, largely funded by others, will satisfy the lusty dreams of most academics, who will never exploit any intellectual property or bring a product to market. What is critical, however, is that everyone believes they do stand to profit — either passively, through other people’s ideas, or actively, by exploiting their own — and we can see that importance by looking at a similar UI funding scam that is not fairing well.
In an effort to increase the number of UI students studying abroad, the UI Council of Deans created a working group which subsequently came up with a unique funding plan. In order to raise funds to send some students abroad, all students would be charged a mandatory study-abroad fee. While that may indeed sound like a scam, the learned administrators had a ready reply:
[International Programs Dean] Thomas said the fee is unlike any other, because all revenues generated are guaranteed to go back to students.
“For example, you’ve got a technology fee, you’ve got a rec fee — yes, they definitely benefit students, but it goes to infrastructure and personnel in some cases,” he said. “This fee would not go to those things; it would go back to students 100 percent.”
Setting aside the fact that this rationale implies that all other fees on the UI campus are scams in themselves, it is not clear why the deans involved in this proposal thought this was a particularly compelling justification. If you are taking money from every student, and that money benefits only a few students , it doesn’t really stand to reason that the students who are being screwed will be happy for the students who are studying abroad. In fact, a few months later the UI Student Government expressed opposition:
The University of Iowa Student Government has opposed a proposed fee that would be implemented by UI Study Abroad. The fee would mean an extra $15 per semester for each student, regardless whether the students study abroad or not.
By analogy to Harreld’s new innovation center, the problem here is that the vast majority of students who paid the study-abroad fee would have no reasonable expectation of any future benefit. It is not even the case that studying abroad is determined by lottery, but even if it was, some students, including undergrads with children or with other care responsibilities, would not be able to participate even if they were selected. (There isn’t even the potential of receiving a random gift from those students who did study abroad — say, a snazzy t-shirt, or a cool pair of sandals in appropriate size.)
In this debacle we can see why it is so important for Harreld to convince everyone not only that the new innovation center will make scads of money, but that everyone will necessarily profit from that revenue — and all for the low, low price of collectively funding that program. If it ever got out, say, that most of the colleges on campus were paying for prospective services that they would never use, or that one or two colleges would see the lion’s share of the support from the innovation center, that would inevitably provoke some objections. As with the study abroad program, people would wonder why everyone was paying for a service that only a few were using, and why the university was not simply billing on a fee-for-service basis. Of course if that were the case, then the innovation center — like the study abroad program — would never find itself sitting on a massive pile of cash, which it could then pass out to a chosen few.
Innovation For a Few
Assuming for the moment that turning a profit really is the primary objective of the new innovation center, it stands to reason that Harreld and the leadership of the center would want to focus resources on inventions, businesses and intellectual property that had the greatest viability in the marketplace. How such determinations are made would of course be the result of yet another byzantine and ceremonial shared-governance process, which would ultimately devolve to yet another hand-picked gatekeeper advancing Harreld’s crony agenda — but for the moment let’s set all that aside and simply take Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency at face value.
Here are the eleven colleges at UI that will be compelled to “actively participate” in the funding of the new innovation center:
* College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
* Tippie College of Business
* College of Dentistry
* College of Education
* College of Engineering
* College of Law
* Carver College of Medicine
* College of Nursing
* College of Pharmacy
* College of Public Health
* Graduate College
Even if you don’t know a lot about higher education, intellectual property or monetizing inventions, it should be clear that there will be academic subjects, departments and even entire colleges which are more likely or less likely to yield knowledge which can be leveraged in the marketplace. It is possible for anyone to come up with a new product or process that is useful, and that invention may also make money depending on the cost of development. Because nothing is ever a sure thing, however, entrepreneurs strive to minimize their risks and maximize the potential for success, and one of the factors they consider is the size of the potential market and the scale of any potential profit. For example, a ground-breaking invention which solves a critical problem for five people will almost always be passed over for a culturally corrosive product which appeals to the masses.
From the point of view of Harreld and his minders, the concern is not whether there will be individuals from every college who want to use the new innovation center — because that legitimizes the campus-wide fee — but which subjects, departments and colleges are most likely to make money. Not only is that were the innovation center will ‘invest’ most of the money that the university strip-mines from students and families, but as it turns out the answer to that question is already known — and has been for a long time. Here is Dan Reed, the former UI VP for Research and Economic Development, talking about profit-making in a report by the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, on 06/04/17:
The state also could help universities escalate innovation, collaboration and thus economic development by encouraging more early stage risk capital and investment, Reed said.
Much of the intellectual property, devices and drugs emerging from the UI and ISU relate to biomedicine, pharmaceuticals, bio-agriculture and engineering — often federally regulated areas with trial and approval mandates that keep products from hitting the market for years, even decades.
“When the time to payoff could be measured in a decade, that takes some patience because your capital can be illiquid for many, many years,” Reed said. “So increasing that pool of risk capital in the state is probably one of the single biggest things that would accelerate companies in Iowa and keep them in the state.”
Shortly after that report Reed was forced out so Harreld could cleave his position in twain, thus shifting the economic development piece to the newly created position of chief innovation officer. What Reed said, however, backs up what we said in Part 1, which is that monetizing knowledge is a slog, and takes a commitment which may be as long as a decade or more. That in turn means the new innovation center will not be turning a profit any time soon, unless it gets — or takes — credit for IP already in the pipeline.
With regard to this post, what obviously stands out is that much if not most of the potential profit at Iowa is and will be centered around “biomedicine, pharmaceuticals, bio-agriculture and engineering” — and UI does not do much in the field of bio-agriculture. (Iowa State is Iowa’s land-grant university, and is dominated by agriculture.) From our slate of eleven UI colleges, then, we can significantly shorten that list to those colleges which will almost certainly make the most use of the new innovation center, precisely because those colleges stand to produce the most profit:
Officially the innovation center will always be open to other colleges, thus justifying the “allocation” of a formula-based support fee. Out of simple pragmatism, however, the entrepreneurial pipeline on the UI campus will inevitably favor those three colleges, and the College of Medicine easily stands head and shoulders above the other two. Not only are the sprawling University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics on the cutting edge of medicine, but as noted earlier that academic-industrial healthcare complex comprises fully half of the university’s $4B annual budget.
That in turn may explain why the man that Harreld hired as the new chief innovation officer — who will oversee all of the entrepreneurial activity on campus — is not only a former UI basketball player, but has a professional background in startups with a decidedly medical bent. From the Press-Citizen’s Aimee Breaux, on 11/21/18:
He said he wanted to move back to his home state and the position felt like a natural fit — he said the vast majority of UI intellectual property comes from the healthcare side of the university, but the university didn’t seem to have mentors, like him, who had a background in the healthcare industry.
“That was a no brainer for someone like me coming back and trying to get involved,” he said.
The bulk of [Jon] Darsee’s career has been spent in the health care industry, both in the U.S. and in Europe. He helped grow the company behind another heart monitor, LifeWatch, in the Netherlands and Switzerland during the early 2000s before going on to consult for international healthcare companies.
How much influence will the healthcare-focused Darsee have on entrepreneurial initiatives at UI? From the Iowa Now press release announcing Darsee’s permanent appointment, on 11/08/18:
[Darsee]…will lead Innovation and Economic Development at Iowa, which includes UI Ventures, Protostudios, the UI Research Park, the Office of Corporate Engagement, and MADE. Darsee reports to the vice president for external relations and will focus on strengthening the UI’s role in enhancing the state’s economy.
“Economic development is a natural outgrowth of research but requires different tools and skills,” says UI President J. Bruce Harreld. “This realignment will allow us to better utilize the expansive technology and innovation capabilities that have been built up in recent years to move the university’s research from ideas to impact.”
Whether Darsee will directly manage the new innovation center or not, it should be clear that he will direct the focus of entrepreneurial operations across the UI campus. Given his healthcare background, and the dominance of healthcare at the University of Iowa, and the profit potential in that market, it will not be surprising if healthcare startups get the lion’s share of attention and resources. That in turn dovetails with the fact that the three co-conspirators who imposed Harreld on the school were all heavily involved with or invested in UIHC, either literally, figuratively or both.
Bruce Rastetter, of course, was not only the president of the Board of Regents and an entrepreneurial evangelist himself, but on his watch the board approved the new children’s hospital at UIHC — which eventually opened behind schedule, and more than $90M over its original $270M budget. Jean Robillard was UI’s VP for Medical Affairs when Rastetter appointed him to chair the rigged 2015 presidential search committee, on which Rastetter also served. Robillard was also appointed by Rastetter to serve as the interim president of the university during the crucial final months of the search, then appointed himself dean of the College of Medicine shortly after Harreld took office. Finally, Jerre Stead — who was either appointed to the search committee by Rastetter, or who told Rastetter to appoint him — is not only Harreld’s long-time mentor and pal, but a major donor to UIHC. Which is in turn why Rastetter, Robillard and Harreld granted Stead the naming rights to the new children’s hospital one month after Harreld took office.
In the context of this post, in fact, one particular event during the corrupt 2015 presidential search stands out among the other dirty tricks, precisely because it gives us a window into who Harreld really works for on the UI campus. While we did not know about this event until after Harreld’s fraudulent appointment, it is part and parcel of the preferential treatment Harreld was shown throughout the rigged selection process. Specifically, on 07/08/15, as the presidential search was entering the stretch run, J. Bruce Harreld was invited by Robillard to give a talk not to the greater campus, or even to the business college — which would have been appropriate given Harreld’s MBA and business background — but at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
Robillard, who also is vice president of medical affairs for UIHC and was head of the search committee, invited Harreld to campus to speak to a group of about 40 mostly UIHC administrators and physicians to share his perspective on transformational change.
During that July 8 visit, for which Harreld was not paid or reimbursed, Robillard invited the former IBM executive to lunch, along with Rastetter and search committee members Christina Bohannan and Sarah Gardial, both of whom are UI faculty members.
Gardial, dean of the UI Henry B. Tippie College of Business, said she assumed Harreld was a presidential prospect, even though neither she nor Bohannan had seen his name on any official candidate list. The application deadline was July 31.
“There was no other reason for me to be there,” Gardial said. “It was an opportunity to not just see a potential candidate, but to see him in action. I thought it was an interesting opportunity.”
Harreld’s wife, Mary, also requested to come to campus and attended that July visit, according to UI officials. She did not participate in the lunch, but she toured the new Hancher building. She was the only candidate spouse to visit the campus.
As Laura Belin noted at the time, the official explanation for Harreld’s visit to UI shifted repeatedly, even as Robillard insisted that Harreld had not been brought in as a paid consultant, nor had he been brought in as a prospective candidate for the open presidency. Instead, Harreld traveled to Iowa City and back from Colorado, with his wife, on his own dime, to talk to 40 administrative heavyweights at UIHC, then lunched with Robillard, Rastetter and two key members of the search committee, for no reason whatsoever. (And more than three years later, that is still the official explanation.)
As it turns out, however, on the eve of taking office Harreld admitted that he participated in an even earlier meeting with Robillard, Rastetter, and then UI chief of staff Peter Matthes, which was arranged by Jerre Stead, who was also slated to attend but who backed out at the last minute. So why, after that prior secret meeting, did Robillard invite Harreld to give a presentation at UIHC? The obvious answer is that Harreld was auditioning with the one campus constituency that had the power — through Robillard — to put Harreld in the president’s office. He didn’t need to talk to anyone at the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, but he did need to convince the healthcare leadership on campus that he was the right man for the job, and clearly he did just that.
Now, three years later, Harreld has hired his own hand-picked toad to oversee “innovation” at UI, who not only appeared out of nowhere — just like J. Bruce — but who happens to have a healthcare background. (Note that when Darsee’s job was first conceptualized, the title was actually “chief entrepreneurial officer” — which was apparently a bit too ‘on the nose’.)
As for funding the innovation center, while we do not know the formula by which every college will be charged for “active participation”, we do know that relative to the other colleges, the College of Medicine is quite small. Here are the 2018 enrollment figures for all eleven colleges, showing undergrads, grads, and total:
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences: 16,356 + 1,914 = 18,270
Tippie College of Business: 3,148 + 408 = 3,556
College of Dentistry: 331 + 77 = 408
College of Education: 450 + 559 = 1,009
College of Engineering: 2,183 + 269 = 2,452
College of Law: 422 + 23 = 455
Carver College of Medicine: 447 + 339 = 786
College of Nursing: 631 + 241 = 872
College of Pharmacy: 425 + 65 = 490
College of Public Health: 103 + 294 = 397
Graduate College: 0 + 478 = 478
[Not included: approximately 1,750 students, combined, in the School of Management and in University College.]
Many of the faculty physicians at the College of Medicine also work at UIHC in a patient-care role, but in terms of academics that college is a marginal player at best. And yet, when it comes to political power on campus, the College of Medicine, along with the other healthcare-oriented colleges, actually has the greatest representation on the UI Faculty Senate, despite the fact that enrollment in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is several times greater than all other colleges combined.
Of the 80 members of the Faculty Senate, a whopping 28 are from the College of Medicine alone, 3 are from Dentistry, 2 are ‘medicine non-technical’, 3 are from Nursing, 2 are from Pharmacy, and 3 are from Public Health –or 41 total from the healthcare disciplines. By contrast, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which is by far the largest college on campus, has only 20 members, despite having twenty-three times the number of students as the College of Medicine. By sheer enrollment alone, the number of CLAS faculty, staff and students who might take advantage of the innovation center would also seem to be orders of magnitude greater, yet the entrepreneurial pipeline at UI is clearly being built up around the College of Medicine. Again, given the specifics of the funding formula(s), it is not at all hard to imagine that many if not most of the other colleges at UI will end up subsidizing entrepreneurial ventures for what is a relatively small campus constituency.
It is also interesting — and telling — that despite the massive budget footprint of UIHC, it is not listed as an “active participant” or compulsory contributor to the new innovation center. It will reap considerable benefits, but at no cost.
From the How to the Why
Merely by entertaining the idea of making gobs of money we are mimicking Harreld’s big lie from Part 1 of this post. In reality, even if UI focuses on healthcare startups and inventions, and prioritizes only those ventures which are most likely to produce a profit, there will still be far more misses than hits, and it is entirely possible that more money will be spent trying to generate those hits than is earned out over time.
Again, here is Dan Reed, former UI VP for Research and Economic Development, who was already focused on the most profitable intellectual property at the school before he was driven out:
“When the time to payoff could be measured in a decade, that takes some patience because your capital can be illiquid for many, many years,” Reed said.
To Harreld’s lie that profitability is easy, and only requires a commitment of sufficient resources, we showed in Part 2 of this post that ‘Innovation for All’ at the university is also a lie. While focusing on healthcare ventures makes practical sense because most academic departments do not embody disciplines which are likely to generate a sizeable return on any entrepreneurial investment, Harreld is insisting that every college pay for a service that one college will inevitably dominate. Instead, as with the study-abroad program, the new innovation center should provide a service for a fee — not stockpile cash to be doled out to a few.
So why is all of this being done? Why is Harreld building out entrepreneurial infrastructure at UI, including the brand-new position of chief innovation officer, which will cost the school a quarter million dollars a year, and a new innovation center, which will cost millions more to operate? We will answer those questions and more in Part 3.
In attempting to expose the massive grift behind J. Bruce Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency at the University of Iowa, we face several obstacles beyond the fact that the people involved are willing if not eager to lie to the press, to the people of Iowa and to the UI community. Chief among those additional impediments is the complexity and scale of the scam, which makes it hard to see what is actually happening. In a garden-variety grift a con artist attempts to take money from a mark, thus profiting directly, but in Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency the scam is indirect.
Further confusing the issue, even though Harreld and the Iowa Board of Regents routinely lie by commission and omission, lying is not against the law. Unlike someone hustling Three-Card Monte on the street or running a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme out of a Wall Street office, nothing that Harreld and the board have done has yet been proven illegal. (Even the rigged, $300K, 2015 presidential search — which the board authorized to cover for their fraudulent, done-deal appointment of Harreld — was apparently not against the law, because the board has the statutory right to conduct searches as it sees fit. If the regents want to blow state money in pursuit of a blatant abuse of power, they literally have the legal right to do so.)
The good news is that we will continue to make headway if we simply keep following the money, as we did in the first two parts of this multi-part post. In Part 1 we noted that Harreld, like a true grifter, was overselling claims of future entrepreneurial success in order to foster greed on campus. The purpose of that greed is to convince the UI community to support Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency, even as Harreld and others on the UI campus already know that any profits will likely be modest. Yes, a fluke hit could generate a vault of cash, but it is far more likely that most of Harreld’s entrepreneurial ventures will fail, with only a few providing enough revenue to produce a positive return on Iowa’s overall investment.
In Part 2 we showed that although the entire campus will be compelled to fund the operation of the new innovation center, most of the profitable intellectual property (IP) will originate from the healthcare campus, and particularly the academic-industrial complex defined by overlap between the College of Medicine and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. In fact, from Harreld’s fraudulent hire, to his recent appointment of a chief innovation officer with a background in healthcare startups, the entire entrepreneurial pipeline at UI — including critical academic offices — is or soon will be dominated by people whose focus and allegiance is not to the university as an educational institution, but as a healthcare enterprise.
To limit the number of variables in play, in Part 3 of this post we will take a closer look at what is happening on the UI campus, then in Part 4 we will pull back and look at the big picture from the point of view of the Board of Regents and the state. For that same reason, in this part we will also assume that there is no influx of new money for Harreld to play with, even though we know that’s not the case. That advantage in doing so is that we gain visibility into why Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency is more than worthwhile to his minders, even if UI never makes any money from IP.
The Entrepreneur as Grifter
In Part 1 we noted that people have been starting new businesses since time began. Technically, the difference between a businessperson and an entrepreneur is the degree of risk they embrace, with entrepreneurs assuming more risk in pursuit of greater returns. Today everyone likes to think of themselves as an entrepreneur because it’s sexier, but many people who claim to be an entrepreneurs are unwilling to embrace risk.
There are indeed bold and gutsy innovators in the marketplace, and none of them — not a damn one — would be caught dead sucking on the government teat in order to limit their risk exposure. Real entrepreneurs tend to hate regulation and regulators, and prefer relying on themselves. Unfortunately, right behind them are hordes of pseudo-entrepreneurs who are more interested in selling the idea of profits than earning profits. And that includes outright hypocrites who flee the private sector to take a safe government job with a cushy salary — like Harreld over the past three years — while still espousing the superiority and profitability of the marketplace.
If you can make it in private industry you do not take a government job. And no, taking a taxpayer funded job at UI is not ‘giving back’ to the state or the school. It’s taking taxpayer money to do whatever job you’ve been given, likely by corrupt cronies who expect administrative loyalty in return.
For those oxymoronic entrepreneurs who are not self-starters — as Harreld apparently never was — you can also see why they might be attracted to, if not infuriated by, the massive governmental money flows in even a relatively low-GDP state like Iowa. Why should patriotic pseudo-entrepreneurs have to slug it out in the marketplace, including raising venture capital from sophisticated and cautious investors? Much easier would be convincing a bunch of daft, easily led, or openly corrupt government officials to turn their operations over to a parasite or washout from the business world — on the well-worn premise that market forces and private-sector know-how will inevitably lead to improved service and greater efficiencies, thus decreasing costs.
To be fair, in some instances there is a genuine profit-making objective, as was the case with Medicaid privatization in Iowa. Instead of all that government money being wasted on providing healthcare for Iowans, the state’s former governor and Lt. Governor (now new governor) decided to use their executive powers to turn Medicaid services over to private, for-profit corporations. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the entrepreneurs running those skimming operations are now making their own lives easier, even as services in the state suffer and patients continue to die.
From the Register’s Kevin Hardy and Jason Clayworth, on 02/11/19:
Iowa’s newest Medicaid company will move into one of the priciest commercial office spaces in the Des Moines metro area — a move critics worry will siphon the financial resources needed for the care of the state’s disabled and poor.
When asked about the company’s new offices on Tuesday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she was focused on improving care and ensuring the managed care system is sustainable.
“I’m not going to get caught up in the other details,” she said.
Clearly you can see the appeal. Instead of government officials spending money on actual services, private sector entrepreneurs can ingratiate themselves with conscienceless elected officials, then use a fire hose of money to life the fat-cat life. Unfortunately — at least from the point of view of the money junkies — not all government services can be privatized.
For example, years ago George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, but ultimately failed because people realized that Wall Street and financial advisors would take half of the population to the cleaners, thus leaving the federal government to provide necessary services to people who had even less to their name. (You can imagine the level of arousal that the financial markets felt at the mere idea of getting their hands on that massive and compulsory money flow, but fortunately there were not enough corrupt politicians to see that orgiastic pillaging fantasy through to fruition.)
For those government services which cannot be converted into future failed private-sector ventures or outright scams, entrepreneurs still make the same pitch, however, and the same daft, easily led or openly corrupt government officials are all too happy to buy into that same hackneyed spiel. Increased efficiencies! Profit-making ventures! A sexy new budget model — even though that ‘new’ budget model was first implemented at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974!
Not surprisingly, the massive amount of money that flows to and through public research universities is an increasing target of parasitic entrepreneurs. Not legitimate entrepreneurs, because they are looking for the kind of profits you can only find in the marketplace, but pseudo-entrepreneurs, who are willing to do what they are told in exchange for a government paycheck. Yet none of that explains why someone would want an entrepreneurial type in those jobs in the first place.
Whatever plans the pirates in the private sector have for squeezing money out of the higher-ed turnip industry, no one thinks colleges and universities are going to make money on par with the tech sector, or the energy sector, or any other for-profit marketplace. It can happen by pure chance, but the idea that all research universities can turn a profit by pursuing entrepreneurial ventures is objectively false. (Again, if anyone had figured out how to do this reliably, everyone would be doing it.)
So what’s the attraction? Why did Harreld’s co-conspirators pluck him out of a dumpster behind the Harvard School of Business, let alone offer him $4M over five years, if no one expects him to recoup that money many times over? (More to the point, between their faith in Harreld and his faith in himself, why isn’t he using his business genius to make billions of dollars in the private sector? Why didn’t BP or Volkswagen beg him to put his cutting-edge ideas about organizational change to use for them?)
In reality, even if his minders knew in advance that every venture Harreld initiated would lose money, they would still have stolen the UI presidency for him — and that would clearly not be the case in the profit-driven private sector. If you can’t make money in the business world you have to do something else — like, say, preside over a university — so even though Harreld himself is profiting handsomely, he wasn’t actually hired to make money. As to why the former president of the board of regents, former UI VP for Medical Affairs, and an Iowa megadonor did conspire to lever Harreld into office, we got a clue in Part 2 of this post.
Money Is Power
Imagine if someone told you they would give you a billion dollars, but only on the condition that you give all of that money away. At first you might be disappointed that you would not get any money for yourself…but then the greed gears would start turning in your head What if you gave that billion to your spouse, or to your parents or kids? What if you gave it to a stranger, on the condition that they give back 90%? (Who are we kidding. That would be 95% minimum, because anyone would be happy making $50M to park $1B for a few days.)
A similar circumstance informs the plot of the 1902 novel Brewster’s Millions, which, over the years, has been turned into thirteen different films worldwide, including the 1985 version starring Richard Pryor. In the original version of that story, however, and in the Pryor version, the protagonist has to choose between a million dollars up front, versus a much greater fortune if they comply with the stipulation that a large sum of money must first be given away. That in turn precipitates additional conditions to preclude tomfoolery, but there is also a surprising and consistent twist. It turns out that it’s actually quite hard to give away a lot of money without incurring some consequent benefit along the way.
Even if you are entirely selfless, and simply hand a million dollars to a stranger, that stranger will probably feel some loyalty to you, or want to return the favor in some way. And of course the same holds in a professional setting if you do someone a financial favor — like, say, help them find money for their research. You might not pocket a wad of cash yourself, but sooner or later you would probably benefit. In fact, even if your motives weren’t pure, it would be hard to rig a set of conditions which precluded you from using your money-granting powers to the advantage of your friends, which would in turn advantage you — perhaps indirectly, perhaps later, and perhaps in a corrupt or criminal way.
This is precisely why decision makers in the public sector are usually obliged to follow guidelines that prelude favoritism. Your state governor may only make a low six-figure salary, but because they control billions in state funding they can also direct that money to business or political cronies, family or friends. And of course if they’re corrupt, they may get or even demand a kickback — meaning an actual cash payment in exchange for having directed money to a particular company or individual. (This is why government contracts are usually put up for competitive bid, and why any situation in which that is not the case is inherently suspect.)
While Harreld is clearly getting paid, and massaging his considerable ego along the way by pretending to be a university president, his co-conspirators did not rig his appointment to drive profits at the University of Iowa. Instead, Harreld was appointed to spend money the way his overlords see fit. The fact that he has been talking about profiting from entrepreneurial ventures is not because that’s how he expects to profit, or even how his minders expect UI to profit, but because that’s how weasels like Harreld get people in the public sector to give him the power and authority to direct the flow of funds as he sees fit.
What is happening at the University of Iowa was never about making money. It was always about taking control of the massive amount of cash that flows to and through that institution every year, and redirecting that money as much as possible to the advantage of Harreld’s masters. Again, the University of Iowa has a $4B budget, half of which relates to UI Healthcare and UIHC. Due to mismanagement and cost overruns, however, as well as price and profitability pressures in the healthcare sector, the medical campus has endured serious blows over the past few years, meaning they are looking for additional sources of revenue. And as we saw in Part 2 of this post, Harreld is working like a dog to make sure more and more money is diverted to the UI College of Medicine and UIHC, even if every penny of that money is ultimately flushed down the drain.
But again the question is why? Why would Harreld — the purported business visionary — and his backers on the board, and in the donor class, want Harreld to steer precious revenue toward what will, in all likelihood, be a money-losing proposition overall? Well, as it turns out there are three different answers to that question, two of which we will dig into in this post, and the third of which we will use as a springboard to Part 4.
Building Out Crony Infrastructure
Were you to visit even a small liberal arts college, you would be forgiven for assuming that the college existed to further the education of the students on campus. The truth is that any institution of higher education exists to pay the salaries of the people who work there, while incidentally funding the profits of local businesses that provide attendant services like food, alcohol and housing. Education is simply a product, and the students who pay for an education are merely the means to an economic end — and are quite often treated as such. (Need more revenue? Raise tuition. If the students don’t have the cash, send them down the street to the local money lender, while pocketing a handling or referral fee in the process.)
Even assuming the most altruistic of motives, it is not wrong for a sleepy liberal arts college to look out for itself or the surrounding community, because the college and community must persist while the students come and go. At a purely practical level, having good relationships with local suppliers and service providers is beneficial to all, and all that usually takes is paying the bills on time. Unfortunately, there is often more to such relationships than pure practicality, and not everyone at a small liberal arts college is concerned with efficiencies — or even with financial stability.
If we add ego, vanity and vice — whether from administrators, faculty, or staff, let alone powerful alums and donors — the complexity of maintaining a stable operation is substantially increased. Fortunately, most of the resulting issues can still be resolved by throwing money at those problems, provided you’re in a position to direct the flow of funds. If you have discretionary authority or sufficient influence, you can direct that money be spent on everything from a snazzy donor plaque to a long-term service contract, which may not personally profit you in any direct or obvious way.
Now scale up all of that complexity — and ego, vanity and vice — to a major public research university with an annual academic budget of $2B, and you can see the potential for substantial abuse. Even if we assume the budget remains flat forever, and every entrepreneurial venture on campus goes down in flames, the sheer amount of money flowing to, and more importantly through, such a university, is bound to have influence. And that’s before we install a corrupt, crony president for that purpose.
From the outside looking in at UI, it may seem as if nothing much could change if the budget remains flat, but total revenue is not the critical factor. Much more important to anyone with a vested interest is where money is going, and who is getting how much. $2B is a staggering amount of funding, but even if you only shift $5M — which is 0.0025% of the total — you are going to make some people ecstatic, and others very unhappy.
Were you to shift those funds solely for the benefit of the university’s educational and research missions, that would be one thing, but you could also shift money around to make or break someone’s career. Speaking of which, and as noted in multiple prior posts, J. Bruce Harreld not only drove out the old VP for Research and Economic Development, in order to cleave that position in two, but his new chief innovation officer — former UI basketball player Jon Darsee — will make $250K per year, which is money that won’t be put to any academic use. (In his search for efficiencies, Harreld is now paying two people to do what was one job, at twice the salary of the former employee who handled both roles.)
Whether Harreld was following orders to hire Darsee, or came up with that idea himself, we don’t know. As to whether he has used his position to move money around for political reasons, however, we do know that to a certainty. All we have to do to confirm Harreld’s mendacity is look at his determination to destroy the UI Labor Center, including multiple administrative abuses committed along the way. Although he has apparently been rebuffed, Harreld insisted that UI would not put any Gen-Ed funds into that center’s $500K budget because the center had nothing to do with student instruction, even as he was creating a new $250K job for Jon Darsee, which has nothing to do with student instruction.
To the Darsee hire we can also add any positions that will be required to staff the new innovation center, and it’s not hard to imagine that total cost pushing past $500K per year. What we don’t know is how many other crony hires are already taking place, how many crony deals are already being cut on the sly, and how many resources are already being shifted to the innovation center and UIHC — particularly under the guise of providing common support services from central administration. Once those new money flows are established, and new hires are made, it will also be difficult to curtail them, even if their purpose was suspect from the beginning — which is why it pays to have a crony at the top of the org chart.
As noted in the example about the small liberal arts college, opportunities for cronyism and corruption also do not stop at the edge of campus — and that’s all the more true for a major public research university with a regional and at times global reach. Even as damning details of the rigged 2015 presidential search were still being disclosed, it was shocking how open the local business community was in their expectation that they would profit simply because the new illegitimate president was a former businessman. From the Press-Citizen’s Jeff Charis-Carlson, on 11/20/15 — or a little less that three weeks after Harreld took office:
More than 100 community and business leaders gathered Friday morning for the opportunity to offer support to the new president of the University of Iowa and to apologize for the negative reaction he has received on campus.
Keep in mind — the “negative reaction” that Harreld received was directly related to the fact that the Iowa Board of Regents ran a corrupt search in order to jam him into office, ahead of three eminently qualified academic candidates. It was a remorseless betrayal, yet Harreld’s immediate response was to tell a lie himself, to cover for the conspirators who greased his hire. In fact, only a few weeks before the gathering in question, as Harreld was taking office, he was compelled to admit — however feebly — to having lied during both his candidate forum and immediately following his appointment. And yet to that august assembly of business leaders weeks later, Harreld was the victim.
This sudden and implicit loyalty was particularly remarkable given that most of the people in attendance knew nothing about Harreld except that he hailed from a business background, but that’s all they needed to know. As long as he was one of them, they not only supported him, they were weeping into their shawls on his behalf — along with one of his earliest acolytes in central administration:
UI interim Senior Vice President Rod Lehnertz, who replaced Harreld as speaker at the event, said the apology wasn’t necessary because the new president doesn’t hold a grudge.
“He’s been places where it has not been easy to change culture, and he made big shifts in a forward direction,” said Lehnertz, referring to Harreld’s work at IBM, Boston Chicken and Kraft Foods.
Lehertz described the continuing opposition to Harreld as coming from a vocal minority on campus. The vast majority of the 1,700 faculty members on campus, he said, are not joining the protests against the new president.
“And when you go 5 feet off our campus, the support we have received from you and from around the state … has been remarkable,” Lehnertz told the group. “… We ask everyone to keep their chin up as ours is up.”
That a high-ranking UI administrator signaled support for Harreld by pointing to acceptance off campus was bad enough, but as regular readers know Boston Chicken (later Boston Market) was essentially a vast pump-and-dump scheme, which imploded soon after Harreld left the company. But apparently that’s how these newfangled non-traditional university presidents roll. Everything is transactional, and his brothers and sisters in the local business community had no expectation that he would be anything other than a liar and a cheat.
Money As Honey
In any organization there will be turnover in personnel, and that puts a premium on recruitment. If you’re a mom-and-pop diner, not only can you probably get away with a ‘help wanted’ sign in a window, you can probably get away with all kinds of employment abuses, including discrimination against protected classes. At a public research university, however, not only is the hiring process much more formalized and rigorous, but as Harreld’s hire proved — or Darsee’s hire, or any of a number of other hires over the past few years — you have to go to significant lengths to plausibly hire the cronies you want, as opposed to having a fair and open search.
Assuming an alternate universe in which central administration at UI is not corrupt to its gills, and continuing our premise that the budget for the school remains flat, while every entrepreneurial venture loses money, one pertinent question would be how the University of Iowa intends to secure new hires in the competitive higher-ed marketplace. And of course the answer — once again — involves throwing lots of money at the problem. Because money is in short supply in our scenario, however, it will have to be shifted according to administrative priorities, including which departments you’re recruiting for, which departments you’re not recruiting for as much, and which departments you’re actively trying to starve and kill.
As detailed in Part 2, we already know that Harreld was hired by — and is aggressively shifting resources and priorities to — supporters of the healthcare campus, and in particular the UI College of Medicine. Apart from the crony underpinnings of that covert resource reallocation, however, there is actually some justification for doing so. Unfortunately, that justification has its roots in the incompetence of administrators like Jean Robillard, who was not only the UI VP for Medical Affairs when Harreld was hired, but also the chair of the search committee, the interim president during the transition, and the self-appointed dean of the medical college only a few months after Harreld took office.
Each year the Iowa Board of Regents files what is called a ‘faculty resignation report’, which details how many faculty resigned from each regent institution. The next report covering the previous academic year will probably be released at the next regent meetings — April 18-19, on the UI campus — but in last year’s report we can clearly see a disturbing trend. Covering 2006 to 2017, the badly formatted graph on p. 1 shows a significant bump in resignations from ‘clinical faculty’ in the three most recent years. (Because the UI campus is the only regent university with a medical complex, the board recently started breaking out faculty resignations on that basis. The top chart on that page shows academic resignations from all three university campuses, while the bottom chart shows clinical resignations, the vast majority of which occurred at UI.)
After bouncing between the mid-teens and low-thirties from 2006 to 2014, clinical resignations spiked to thirty-eight in 2015, forty-nine in 2016 (Harreld’s first year) and forty-two in 2017. The official line from the board and university is that clinical faculty tend to come and go more often than academic faculty overall, but even if that’s the case — and historically it is not — there has clearly been a significant increase in resignations over the past three years. Whatever the cause, those bodies must be replaced not only to continue instruction at the College of Medicine, but also to provide profitable patient care at UIHC.
So — how to replenish those depleted ranks, let alone attract the ‘world-class’ faculty Harreld always talks about whenever he wants to raise tuition? While medical faculty command a hefty price, their salary is the floor of what you have to cough up to employ them. To get the best of the best to sign on the dotted line, you also have to agree to support their research, which may or may not be funded by sources approved by your institution. If a clinician has a lucrative federal grant, that’s awesome because it will probably be a net-plus to bring that money to UI. On the other hand, if a clinician is funded by a private-sector corporation or industry group, that’s an even bigger net-plus, as long as you can minimize or paper over the inevitable conflicts of interest.
The first problem — simply hiring anyone — is a straight cost for UI. Offer a competitive salary, plus whatever bump you have to include to entice them to live in the middle of nowhere, and at the very least you’ll get a look. If you really want them to bite, however, nothing succeeds like letting a prospective member of the healthcare faculty know you are standing by with millions of dollars in institutional and financial support. Cutting-edge lab space, plenty of qualified staff, lots of human guinea pigs, free labor from students under the guise of internships — and oh, did we mention our new innovation center, which is collectively funded by the entire university, and could make you rich, rich, rich…? Throw in a great parking space and any other perks you can swing, and you just might buy yourself a ‘name’ hire, further increasing your faculty and institutional cachet.
The second problem — hiring someone with close ties to industry — might give pause to an academic institution with even minimal integrity, but fortunately the Iowa Board of Regents vaporized such concerns when it hired J. Bruce Harreld. Having screamed from the rooftops that he wants to make money, and having spent three years preparing to ‘partner’ with private industry, the door is now wide open at UI for corporate sponsorship of public-sector research, which also routinely leads to negative publicity and reputational damage. But in the meantime everyone will get paid.
Loading up on star faculty and industry research would also serve as honey for private-sector, for-profit healthcare providers, who might be willing or even eager to partner with a public-sector medical complex. That in turn may be why, back in the fall of 2017, that J. Bruce Harreld authorized UIHC to publicly announce that it was open to such partnerships. From the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller on 09/03/17:
The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is deliberating whether to partner with a larger regional system, and it’s paying a consultant more than $150,000 to model financial scenarios for each option.
Dixon Hughes Goodman, which offers health care advisory services from its Atlanta office, is assessing a downside, upside and middle case for each scenario — to partner or to remain as the state’s only academic medial center.
UIHC spokesman Tom Moore declined to elaborate on what regional collaboration or partnership could look like for UI Health Care. Nor has a specific partner been cited.
“It is incumbent on every hospital and health system in the country to evaluate new opportunities to improve care and reduce cost,” Moore said. “We have no definitive plans to share at this time. (UIHC) is committed to exploring any way we can further improve care for Iowans.”
As to improving patient care, that’s only a priority insofar as UIHC does not want to be known for botched surgeries and MRSA outbreaks. With the board’s enthusiastic support over the past two decades, UIHC built itself out into the surrounding communities, prioritizing market share and profits over service. As a consequence, a little over a year after Harreld’s fraudulent appointment that market grab led to the following praise from two former presidents of the board, following the announcement that Jean Robillard would be stepping down from his leadership position, at some indeterminate date in the future.
From the Press-Citizen’s Jeff Charis-Carlson, on 09/30/16:
Robillard, 72, was praised Friday by past and present leaders of the Iowa Board of Regents for his successful reorganization and expansion of UI Health Care during the past nine years.
“Jean is emblematic of what you hope for in a leader,” said Bruce Rastetter, president of the regents. “He has a vision for — and is able to think strategically about — what the hospital could become, not just what it was. … And we always felt that when he told us something, you could count on it.”
UI Hospitals and Clinics recently reported a record $1.46 billion in revenue for the 2016 fiscal year, with a net income of $105.2 million — an amount nearly three times higher than the net operating income reported a decade ago. University officials calculate the total budget for UI Health Care — including the medical college, physicians group and research — at closer to $1.9 billion.
Michael Gartner, who was president of the regents in 2007 when Robillard was named vice president for medical affairs, described Robillard’s announcement as “a huge loss.”
“He’s brilliant … as a leader, as a strategist and as a person who can bring things together and make it work,” he said.
After that laudatory article appeared, and before Robillard stepped aside more than a year later, not only did profits fall off precipitously at UIHC, but expensive and mismanaged clinics were largely sitting idle. To that we can also add massive cost overruns and delays at the children’s hospital, leading to years of contentious lawsuits which will probably cost the university another $30M at least. But other than that — good job!
Grifting at Scale
In the first three parts of this extended post, we clearly see the enormous influence that Harreld can have at the University of Iowa, and that would be true even if the budget were flat and all of his entrepreneurial ventures blew up in his face. At the level of mere rhetoric, that fact that UI has a huckster for a president — who constantly talks about profiting from IP and starting new businesses — has already turned a percentage of the UI community into salivating and supplicating dogs, eager to foster a community of innovation that will, in the end, profit a very few. From the point of view of Harreld’s backers, of course, nothing could be better because that’s why they stole the UI presidency in the first place. Whether Harreld ever drives any additional profits from IP, he is already diverting and spending revenue on their crony priorities by the tens of millions of dollars.
Along with marshaling a narrowly focused entrepreneurial healthcare insurgency, and devoting resources to profit-oriented healthcare hires, there is a third way that Harreld can profit his minders, but to comprehend that angle we have to pull back from UI and take a broader look from the perspective of the Board of Regents. In doing so we will confront an issue which was prominent a year or two ago, but suddenly disappeared from Harreld’s revolving list of grievances. Why Harreld may have decided to stop talking about that issue — even as it remains important not only to UI, but even more so to Iowa State — will be the focus of Part 4.
In Part 3 of this multi-part post we posited that even if the University of Iowa budget stayed flat, and all of the entrepreneurial ventures initiated by illegitimate president J. Bruce Harreld failed, he and his cronies would still derive benefits while hosing tens of millions of dollars down the drain. Not only would Harreld have a profound impact on campus simply by shifting resources and revenue to favor the aims of his minders, but by building out the entrepreneurial pipeline at UI he would also make that annual loss of revenue profitable for a salaried chosen few. To the taxpayers and students funding those losses there would be no return on that investment, but the people burning through their cash would make out like virtual bandits.
Because the individuals who conspired to jam Harreld into office were largely concerned with the healthcare campus, Harreld first rigged the UI Strategic Plan and ‘new’ UI budget model to favor those constituents, then hired a healthcare ringer to control innovation campuswide. As in the past, most attempts to exploit IP at UI will involve healthcare licenses, inventions and new businesses, but now the entire campus will have to support those narrowly focused aims, while substantially increasing the amount of money devoted to those ventures. By shifting more revenue and resources to healthcare research, including particularly for-profit research, Harreld is also making it easier to entice new healthcare faculty to the UI campus — at the expense of the other colleges — and may even be paving the way for a future public-private partnership at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
To the twin benefits of increased healthcare research expenditures, and attracting new healthcare faculty with the promise of increased research support — even if there is never a positive return on those investments — we can add a third crony benefit, but here we need to pull back and look at the Board of Regents more broadly. In the state of Iowa there are three public universities, each of which dwarfs every other institution of higher learning in the state. Along with Iowa there is Iowa State University (ISU), which is the largest of the three schools by enrollment, and the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), which is the smaller of the three by almost every metric.
In the higher-ed industry, UNI is known as a ‘comprehensive’ or ‘regional comprehensive’ university. While the definition of a comprehensive school varies, the general consensus is that such institutions are focused more on academics than research, and more on education as a means to a career than on the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. To those points, many comprehensive universities trace their origins back to what used to be called teachers’ colleges, and UNI is one such institution. (Even today, Northern Iowa still trains the vast majority of Iowa’s K-12 teachers.)
The other two regent universities — Iowa and Iowa State — note only pursue cutting-edge research across a wide range of disciplines, but that emphasis puts them in rare company. In the United States there are various classifications of four-year colleges and universities, and one widely used standard is the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. In that system, both UI and ISU are classified as “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity” — which, in the snobby world of academia, is seen as the ‘highest’ ranking on the Carnegie scale. Importantly, however, the Carnegie system is not concerned with ranking institutions relative to each other, but only with classification. (Carnegie page for UI here; ISU here.)
While there are only 130 or so R1 research universities in the U.S., there is an even rarer association which is conferred by membership in an entirely different organization. While most people assume that particular association also represents a research classification, in fact it is rank-determined — much as U.S. News & World Report ranks colleges and universities. While U.S. News releases its rankings and methodology, however, this exclusive research fraternity does not publicize its rankings, nor the methodology behind them. Instead, it uses that information behind the scenes to coerce universities to perform more research, under the implicit and perpetual threat of expulsion if they fall short of the organization’s metrics. (In the Carnegie system your classification can change, but you cannot be expelled.)
The ranking organization in question is the Association of American Universities, commonly known as the AAU — which is not to be confused with the Amateur Athletic Union, also commonly known as the AAU. As to the mission of the research-oriented AAU, we get that from the Who We Are page on the AAU website:
Founded in 1900, the Association of American Universities is composed of America’s leading research universities. AAU’s 62 research universities transform lives through education, research, and innovation.
Our member universities earn the majority of competitively awarded federal funding for research that improves public health, seeks to address national challenges, and contributes significantly to our economic strength, while educating and training tomorrow’s visionary leaders and innovators.
AAU member universities collectively help shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation; promote best practices in undergraduate and graduate education, and strengthen the contributions of leading research universities to American society.
While its long pedigree and noble academic mission lend instant credibility to the AAU, and its focus on healthcare is particularly relevant to the University of Iowa, the most important fact you need to know about the AAU is that it only has 62 members, making it twice as exclusive as the Carnegie R1 research classification. Despite the data-driven research that is performed by AAU members, however, and the murky data-driven metrics by which good standing is contingent, the only benefit that colleges and universities gain by belonging to that organization is the thrill of snobbish exclusivity. Either you belong, or you’re on the outside looking in.
Speaking of which, in 2011, for the first time, the AAU actually expelled one of its members — the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UN-L) — for failing to maintain the metrics by which the AAU polices its members. We will come back to that expulsion shortly, but here it is important to focus on the fact that the value of AAU membership is entirely premised on prestige. From Tamar Lewin writing for the New York Times, on 05/02/11:
Although membership in the association — which now will have 61 members, including most Ivy League institutions and many of the top state schools, like Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina — brings no specific benefits, many campuses see it as a proud indicator of their status.
“Some believe it helps attract faculty,” said Barry Toiv, a spokesman for the group, “and the presidents of member universities appreciate the opportunity to meet twice a year with others facing the same set of issues, and work together on policy and funding issues.”
As to how the expulsion of UN-L came about, we get that from Doug Lederman and Libby A. Nelson, also on 05/02/11writing for Inside Higher Ed:
A year ago, the Association of American Universities quietly revised the criteria it uses to decide which research institutions deserve a place in the highly selective group. The impact of those changes is now being felt — like a punch in the gut — by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Syracuse University, which are leaving the association.
The group’s members have voted to drop Nebraska against its will, marking the first time that the association has formally dumped one of its own. Syracuse, by contrast, after trying to persuade AAU members that the New York university’s strengths continue to place it among the nation’s best, is in “discussions about withdrawing” from the association, Chancellor Nancy Cantor confirmed Sunday.
Officials at both institutions complain that the metrics the group uses to assess its members define the contributions of high-quality research universities too narrowly, focusing excessively on biomedical research and the volume of federally supported research. To Nebraska officials, that means undervaluing the university’s land-grant mission, and in the eyes of administrators at Syracuse, giving inadequate weight to interdisciplinary and urban-focused research to which few federal funds flow.
Again, note the AAU focus on “biomedical research”, which clearly benefits the University of Iowa, but also the degree to which the AAU undervalues land-grant universities — another subject we will return to momentarily. While the brand-conscious AAU is anything but a secret society, and its members flaunt that association at every opportunity, the AAU is notoriously secretive about it’s ranking methodology.
In 2014, the University of Missouri — another land-grant school — was also under the gun following the UN-L expulsion. In several articles in the Columbia Daily Tribune, written by Ashley Jost, we gain rare visibility into the inner workings of that very public but super-secretive organization. From 07/27/14:
When the University of Missouri named the new medical school dean a week or so ago, my editor suggested I add a line or two about where the new dean’s home institution, Tulane University in New Orleans, stands within the Association of American Universities.
“I’m really sorry, but there is no such thing as a ranking within the AAU,” a spokesperson for Tulane told me.
It is perhaps understandable that individual schools might not want their AAU rankings known, or even that the AAU might prefer to keep its rankings secret. To deny that the AAU ranks schools, however, is a bald lie, and speaks to the coercive nature of the relationship. If you can’t talk openly about something you’re doing, let alone a purportedly objective, data-driven process — and national security is not involved — that’s a big red flag, and doubly so in academia. Yet that silence is precisely what the AAU seems to demand from its members, even as the AAU makes each school painfully aware of its standing within that organization:
“To the public, you’re either in or you’re out,” [Hank Foley] said. “Internally, you know exactly where you stand.”
Foley said he and other MU administrators “know exactly where we’re ranked, and we’re not where we should be.” Administrators at other schools know to, even if they choose to keep it quiet.
From 07/29/14, also by Jost:
Barry Toiv, AAU vice president for public affairs, said that any ranking list of institutions isn’t public. He said the ‘ranking’, as some administrators call it, is defined by a list of eight membership indicators, each of which is weighted differently.
Chief among those indicators are federal research expenditures. The list also includes faculty honors and citations.
With faculty being so key in where a university would rank because so many indicators depend on them, why not be open and deliberate about where your university stands, [MU Chancellor R. Bowen] said Friday.
If you are not familiar with the higher-ed industry, the AAU may seem like either a boorish lampoon of collegiate snobbery, or a brutish cartoon of collegiate mendacity. What you should not do is underestimate the degree to which people inside that industry genuinely believe that membership in the AAU bestows superior standing. That there are no tangible benefits to belonging to the AAU, yet inclusion is considered a mark of distinction, gives a frightening glimpse into the emotional fragility of higher-ed administrators and faculty in general. Indeed, the mere thought of being expelled precipitates what I call ‘AAU panic’, while the desire to be welcomed into the fold can drive administrators mad with desire. (On that latter point there is no greater example than Mike Crow at Arizona State, who not only wrote an entire book about why ASU should be included in the AAU, but also proposed — by proxy — an entirely new AAU ranking system which would have vaulted ASU to the forefront.)
Were the AAU concerned only with vestiges of academic snobbery — including but not limited to the size of an institution’s endowment, or the number of celebrated alums — none of this ranking secrecy would matter. Because the AAU is specifically concerned with research, however, and particularly healthcare research, someone has to provide all of the money to pay for the research which keeps all of those panicky AAU members in good standing. Particularly at public schools, that funding has historically come from the states, but across America states no longer seem interested in funding what is, literally, a meaningless designation. So guess who will be paying the academic freight for AAU membership going forward?
Shortly after J. Bruce Harreld was fraudulently appointed to the presidency at the University of Iowa, not only did he begin pushing for steep increases in tuition, but he linked the need for more revenue to Iowa’s standing in the AAU. In fact, while Harreld was unceasing in his demand for increasing the cost of an education at UI, he was equally sparing of any offensive against the state’s politicians, and paid only minimal and grudging lip service to the need for increased state appropriations. From an article on the Iowa Now website, on 04/18/16 — six months after Harreld took office — detailing the ‘new’ budget model and resource allocation process:
Improving Quality Indicators
* Increased attention to key AAU/Research indicators (i.e., academy memberships, citations/awards, federal and non-federal research grants)
* New and increased faculty/interdisciplinary collaborations
* Accenting the balance necessary between “an AAU aim” and success in our core values of teaching and well-rounded student success
* Development and use of key performance indicators (for teaching, research, students)
Of the four bullet points, two are expressly concerned with improving the university’s AAU standing. The “AAU/Research indicators” in the first bullet point refer to the “eight [AAU] membership indicators” mentioned earlier — meaning the ‘new’ budget model at UI assumes it is worth paying for continued AAU membership. As to how much the university should spend, we see that referenced in the inscrutable third bullet point, which proposes “accenting the balance” between appeasing the AAU and teaching students.
Tellingly, the third bullet point is not concerned with research broadly, which is indeed part of the UI mission, or even about making new discoveries, but specifically about funding “an AAU aim”, versus funding education. So what does “accenting the balance” mean? Apparently, it means shifting resources toward “key AAU/Research indicators”, and away from “our core values of teaching and well-rounded student success”.
As for including the word “necessary” in the third bullet point, AAU membership is not necessary in order for a research university to conduct research. Despite being excommunicated, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln not only still exists, it still conducts research and still educates students. What it no longer has to do, however, is throw money — in the tens of millions of dollars — at metrics which please the AAU compliance police.
One month after that post on the Iowa Now website, and for reasons that have never been explained, the Board of Regents refused to extend the contract of University of Northern Iowa by president Bill Ruud, leading to the appointment of the UNI provost as interim president. A month after that, in the summer of 2016, the regents approved a massive tuition hike at all three state universities — on a pretext, no less — thus generating a massive revenue surge at each school from students bank accounts. While that money was clearly beneficial in pursuing “an AAU aim” at UI, however, it was even more welcome at Iowa State University, which at that time was under the leadership of president Steven Leath.
Having just signed a five-year extension after his initial three year deal, Leath was not only the elder statesman of the regent university presidents, but had the enthusiastic support of former regent president Bruce Rastetter, who engineered Harreld’s sham Hire at UI. In fact, Rastetter was such a fan that he not only helped Leath and his wife buy an acreage in central Iowa — by fronting the couple $1M for the purchase price, which they could not afford on their own — but with Rastetter’s blessing Leath conducted himself like an academic feudal lord. Until a funny thing happened….
As detailed in the press and in these virtual pages, toward the end of 2016 it was revealed that Leath had repeatedly violated school policy, board policy and state law while using Iowa State’s two airplanes — one of which he effectively purchased for himself through the ISU Foundation — for personal travel. While multiple state agencies banded together to erase that crime spree over a four-month span, in the end the damage to Leath’s reputation was so great that he resigned in order to take a higher-paying job as the president of Auburn. Having just signed a five-year extension, however, his unexpected departure not only left a vacancy at Iowa State, it left a gaping void in the messaging operation at the Iowa Board of Regents.
While the Leath saga was playing out, at the end of 2016 the regents hired Mark Nook as the permanent president at UNI, not only filling that vacancy, but proving they could conduct an honest presidential search if motivated to do so. Then, in early March of 2017, an old friend — Mary Sue Coleman — dropped by the UI campus to participate in a public forum with J. Bruce Harreld. Not only was Coleman herself a former UI president, but she was and still is the president of the AAU.
Appearing under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as an ambassador of the Lincoln Project, Coleman joined Harreld in a public forum on March 9th. Three days earlier, on 03/06/17, Harreld had used his upcoming chat with Coleman as an opportunity to lobby the citizens of the state for more funding at UI. That lobbying did not take place at the statehouse, however, but instead took the form of a column in the state’s largest paper, thus priming the sympathy pump for tuition hikes to come. From Harreld’s column:
The UI has developed a strategic plan that will align our current and new resources to provide better outcomes for Iowans in the areas of student success, research and economic development, and outreach and engagement.
Each dollar invested, whether through taxes or tuition, will allow the UI to continue its strong tradition.
At the forum with Coleman, however, Harreld dispensed with any pretense of lobbying for additional state funding, and instead expressed the exceedingly short-lived view that the state was already providing enough money. To Harreld’s entrepreneurial way of thinking, all the university needed to do was go into business for itself — while also implicitly rocking students and families for the startup capital necessary to fund all of his sexy new ventures. From the Press Citizen’s Jeff Charis-Carlson, on 03/10/17:
Harreld said UI would benefit most from more stability — if not more actual dollars — being added to the process by which the state allocates funding annually for public higher education.
“I’m not so sure from our state we need more money as much as predictability,” Harreld said Thursday.
He also said public universities need to move beyond a past culture of dependency — in which they were always turning to the state with their hands outstretched — and begin more aggressively seeking new options for revenue.
“Let’s go earn out research grants. Let’s go build new businesses. Let’s go create new programs and new courses,” Harreld said. “We know how to do that; we just need to get on with it.”
Harreld’s comments on state funding were challenged by Coleman, who now serves as president of the Association of American Universities.
“I agree with you, absolutely: Being able to be more entrepreneurial is very important,” Coleman said. “But I think this state has an obligation — a firm obligation — to provide some base level of support. … It is what makes the state a place that people want to be. And so I worry about saying, ‘You can walk away from that.’ Because those resources are golden because they are unrestricted funds.”
Ten days later news broke that Leath would be leaving Iowa State. The regents covered that unexpected vacancy on an interim basis not by tapping the ISU provost, as they had at UNI, but by bringing the retired president of the University of Northern Iowa — who was also a former long-time administrator at ISU — out of mothballs. Again, the timing was problematic because it meant that J. Bruce Harreld — who was hired with no experience in academic administration, and had been on the job for all of eighteen months — was suddenly the elder statesman among the regent university presidents. Given that the board was about to make a concerted push for more tuition at all three state schools, including hosting a Tuition Task Force in the summer of 2017, institutional credibility was suddenly in short supply.
The announcement that Leath was leaving came on 03/20/17, and Leath was gone a month and a half later on May 8th. Also on May 8th, J. Bruce Harreld was once again talking about the AAU, only this time he produced documentation of Iowa’s declining AAU ranking during an interview with the Daily Iowan:
Here are just one set of rankings. This is the AAU and how they look at us. I would say in 2010, which is way up here, we were in the 50th percentile in roughly all of these metrics. This fall, when they sent me the data, we had fallen to the 25th percentile.
And there was this:
Last week I was in Washington D.C. for two days for a meeting with the AAU.
Two days later, on 05/10/17, interim ISU president Ben Allen was also quoted about the AAU, and he specifically tied membership to increases in tuition:
In Monday’s meeting, Allen also called for the regents to consider “a fundamentally different approach with respect to tuition.”
“We must create a structure that more appropriately aligns tuition with the costs of providing an AAU-caliber institution,” he said.
Allen’s linkage between tuition and the funding of AAU membership is explicit, yet the AAU is only peripherally concerned with education, and does not police educational excellence. While the AAU does include “undergraduate education” among its lesser Phase II Indicators, the AAU is primarily concerned with research, and particularly research expenditures. In that context, funding an “AAU-caliber institution” certainly does cost more, yet confers only ancillary benefits on those few students who intersect with an AAU school’s research. At the same time, all students would be asked to subsidize the considerable cost of that research to appease the AAU. To sell that scam, administrators like Allen and Harreld asserted — without any supporting data — that AAU branding on a degree was worth a price premium in the marketplace.
After another round of tuition hikes in the summer of 2017 — this time premised on state cuts triggered by the collapse of the state budget — the regents’ Tuition Task Force met in August of 2017, and featured presentations from all three regent university presidents. While UNI offered a sharp but nuanced series of hikes over five years, both Iowa and Iowa State lobbied for flat 7% annual hikes for the next half decade. Not surprisingly, not only was the AAU mentioned by both Harreld and Allen, but both presidents put on a hard sell, attempting to tie research — including applied or commercial research — to student success, thus legitimizing the plundering of student and family bank accounts.
From Allen’s ISU presentation on 08/09/17 (pdf here):
And we are also a member of the Association of American Universities — an organization of 62 leading research universities. Of those schools, only eighteen, including Iowa State, are also land-grants. Our AAU status is indicative of our reputation as a nationally recognized research-intensive university, with an emphasis on faculty excellence and quality graduate and professional programs. This designation increases the value of an Iowa State degree for our students — both undergraduate and graduate — by enabling us to attract higher-quality faculty engaged in cutting-edge research.
From Harreld’s UI presentation on 08/14/17 (pdf here):
Membership in the AAU is the gold standard in the world for top research universities like the University of Iowa. All of our peers are members of this group, and with only 62 members in the world we take great pride in being a member of this institution, and have been since 1909. Unfortunately, over the past ten years, the University of Iowa has fallen from roughly the middle of the pack when benchmarked against this group, to now, the lower twenty-fifth percentile.
While Harreld once again explicitly referenced a drop in Iowa’s AAU ranking, thus fomenting AAU panic in the UI community, here it is important to highlight a critical difference between UI and ISU. Whatever caused the relative drop in Iowa’s AAU metrics, and whatever happens in the future, the University of Iowa will never, ever, ever be kicked out of the AAU. In that context, Harreld’s fearmongering was only that — a scare tactic designed to justify massive multi-year tuition hikes, which would subsidize AAU research expenditures on the backs of students and families.
The reason UI will never be kicked out of the AAU is because of the academic-industrial linkage between the UI College of Medicine and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Not only is the AAU primarily concerned with “biomedical research”, but the AAU’s metrics also favor schools that have an associated healthcare complex — and punish those that don’t. From the NYT report on the 2011 expulsion of UN-Lincoln:
The university, the state’s flagship, had several factors working against it. Its medical school is under a separate administrative structure, so the research dollars it brings in are not counted by the association. And as a land-grant institution, Nebraska has about a quarter of its faculty involved in agriculture and extension work, and most financing for agricultural research is noncompetitive and so does not count heavily in the group’s ranking.
From the Inside Higher Ed article mentioned earlier, also from 2011:
The AAU’s ranking criteria consider five major factors: research expenditures normalized by number of faculty, National Academy members, the National Research Council faculty quality indicators, some faculty honors and scholarly citations.
Nebraska is at a disadvantage for at least two reasons in the AAU rankings. The University of Nebraska system’s medical school is not affiliated with the flagship Lincoln campus, meaning that federal grants for health research are not counted among the overall research expenditures. The university also is heavily focused on agricultural research, but the AAU does not give Agriculture Department grants as much weight.
The link in the quote above is now dead, but on the current AAU Membership Policy page we do find a list of eight “AAU Membership Indicators”, broken into two ranked groups. Those indicators are of course the basis for the AAU’s secretive rankings, and because the University of Iowa has a massive healthcare complex and conducts ample associated research, Iowa will never fall out of those rankings. At Iowa State, however, there is reason to be concerned that the AAU could, some day, refuse to bestow what the former president of UN-Lincoln called AAU’s “gold star” — thus sending the administrators, faculty and staff into protracted academic despair.
Unfortunately, not only does Iowa State not have a medical college or associated healthcare complex — not even at another location — but like UN-L it is also a land-grant university, and heavily focused on agricultural research. Those are in fact the three main justifications that were used to expel UN-L from the AAU, and all three apply equally or more so to Iowa State. The only way to counter those considerable deficits would be to spend a lot of money improving ISU’s membership indicators — including particularly those listed under Phase I — but the state was clearly in no position to provide that funding, and would not have even if it were solvent.
Instead, the regents made it clear that Iowa and Iowa State would raise tuition each year for five straight years, and specifically linked those tuition hikes to standing in the AAU. The question was not whether there would be five years of compulsory hikes, but how steep the increases would be. While the threat of a compounded 37% increase over five years — on top of 18% over the prior two years — may have been a negotiating ploy, the underlying dynamic was clear. The regents wanted new money to shore up ISU’s standing with the AAU, and they were determined to take that money from the bank accounts of undergraduate students and their families.
As to why Harreld was fomenting panic when UI is not at risk of expulsion, if nothing else he is an opportunist. While the board now intends to allow UNI to charge a lower base rate for tuition, ISU and UI will remain in lockstep to prevent those much larger schools from competing with each other on price. (For example, because both campuses have engineering and business colleges, variations in price would inevitably skew enrollment demand to the cheaper option.) By parroting Allen’s rationale, not only did Harreld provide a coherent narrative for the regents, but he ensured a massive windfall for UI that he can then use to fund his entrepreneurial insurgency. And because much of that administrative infrastructure and research will be healthcare-related, it will also inevitably improve Iowa’s AAU rank.
It is also worth noting that to whatever degree the University of Nebraska at Lincoln was on the metric fence — along with Syracuse, which voluntarily withdrew in 2011 — the fact that the AAU finally expelled a school for the first time in its 111-year history clearly served the coercive aims of that organization. From the <a href="http://07/27/14 article in the Columbia Daily Tribune:
The stress – which possibly caused the openness about MU’s ranking, though I’m just guessing – for some AAU schools about their performance came after the University of Nebraska at Lincoln was given the proverbial boot from the association in 2011.
That an organization which confers no tangible benefits on its members can still compel this level of dread seems ludicrous on its face, but the world of academia is often more concerned about keeping up appearances than it is about data and reason. If you are on the faculty or staff at an AAU university, then you are part of the in-crowd, which is why the mere idea of exile from that prestigious organization is enough to bring a research university to the brink of emotional collapse. That in turn is considered sufficient justification for soaking the students to keep the AAU happy — even if the consequent tuition increases force students to take on more debt, or make it impossible for the most vulnerable students to attend UI or ISU at all.
Given that the threat of AAU banishment can be used to motivate policy decisions which are antithetical to the economic welfare of students — to say nothing of then diverting that new revenue to research or economic development, instead of improving education with those additional dollars — it is not surprising that Harreld and his administrative minions have used that same fear to motivate compliance with other aspects of his agenda. In fact, precisely because the majority of the faculty are so susceptible to concerns about status, AAU fearmongering has not been constrained to the executives in central administration at UI, but pervades the academic core of the institution. In early 2017, for example, a group of four deans — all of them loyal supporters and enablers of Harreld’s entrepreneurial agenda — were named to the Phase I committee of the 2020 Task Force. That select group was then charged with drawing up a battle plan for the academic reorganization of the entire campus, ostensibly at the independent direction of the provost’s office.
When the Phase I report foreshadowed the breakup of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) — by far the largest college on campus, and the literal and figurative heart of the university — the AAU was again front and center in the deans’ efforts to motivate the campus to support that demolition. From the Phase I report [p. 2: bold text is original]:
PRINCIPLES:
The overall principle for any academic structure change of University of Iowa is to enhance the excellence and distinction of the institution. First and foremost, the UI needs to remain a robust AAU institution.
Here the appeal to prestige and snobbery could not be more overt, and again the AAU is invoked as the arbiter of academic status. If you are in the AAU then you embody “excellence and distinction”, and if you’re not, you don’t. Note also the clever use of the word “remain”, which insinuates that Iowa’s AAU status may already be under threat, thus motivating acceptance of and compliance with the conclusions of the report. (You can read more about the 2020 Task Force here.)
Fortunately, the 2020 Task Force seems to have faltered during Phase II, and any overt breakup of CLAS has apparently been tabled. There is more than one way to skin an academic cat, however — or in this case, to weaken CLAS, thus compelling it to cede resources and influence to other colleges, including particularly those on the healthcare campus. For example, despite knowing more than a year in advance that the CLAS dean would be leaving, Harreld and interim provost Sue Curry — who, prior to being anointed by Harreld, was dean of the UI College of Public Health — held that position open for almost two full years, before finally filling that critical vacancy.
To no one’s surprise, Harreld — through Curry — hired an entrepreneurially minded academic administrator, thus aiding Harreld’s campus-wide insurgency. Here, however, it is also important to note the new CLAS dean’s prior employer. Despite all of the four-year institutions of higher learning in the U.S., Harreld and Curry found their new CLAS dean at — wait for it — the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which is the only AAU member institution that was ever forcibly expelled. (And yes, if you’re wondering, Iowa’s new CLAS dean was on staff when UN-L was cut loose.)
For the foreseeable future there will be no individual on the UI campus who will be more susceptible to AAU panic than the incoming CLAS dean, making it that much easier for Harreld and the other deans to cripple CLAS from the inside. Even though there is literally zero chance that the University of Iowa will ever be kicked out of the AAU, fear is not a rational process. As embarrassing as it is — and it is not half as embarrassing at it should be — all it takes to turn an individual with multiple advanced degrees into a whimpering sap is threatening their sense of prestige. But I digress….
To bring this increasingly discursive post back to its original intent, note that while the University of Iowa must expend a massive amount of money to placate the AAU ranking minders, those expenditures may produce nothing of value in return. As with Harreld’s expansion of the entrepreneurial infrastructure on campus, and his intent to use that infrastructure and other resources to attract new healthcare faculty, membership in the glorious AAU can be maintained largely by hosing a massive amount of money down the research drain every year, whether that research pans out or not. Because the state would balk at that kind of subsidy, however — and clearly has — the regents are using their power to set tuition to take the necessary funds from students, on the pretext that an AAU degree is worth whatever larceny the board decides to perpetrate.
Bringing the whole sordid AAU saga full circle, note also that on 11/08/18 — in advance of the regent meetings the following week — the University of Iowa announced that it would be giving AAU President Mary Sue Coleman an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. One week later, not only did the board approve that request, but it formally unveiled its plan to increase tuition by a minimum of five percent each year for the next five years. As for the students, they were given the right to pay through the nose to help anxious academic administrators sleep through the night.
It is not an accident that Harreld’s incitement of AAU panic spiked when both UI and ISU were pressing for mandatory tuition hikes. Now that the Board of Regents has approved five years of minimum five-percent hikes, including inflation protection — regardless of any contemporaneous increase in state appropriations — it is also not an accident that Harreld is no longer invoking the AAU as a specter of impending doom. Once again, the linkage between increases in tuition and AAU standing could not be more complete, and that leads to yet another conversation about Harreld’s hypocrisy. We will entertain that subject in Part 5, which will be the final part of this multi-part post.
In Part 3 and Part 4 of this multi-part post we assumed that revenue at the University of Iowa would stay flat, and that all of J. Bruce Harreld’s entrepreneurial ventures would also fail to generate any revenue. In reality, of course, neither of those assumptions will be the case. At minimum we already know — because of past and future tuition hikes — that revenue at UI has increased substantially since Harreld took office in 2015, and that overall revenue will continue to increase throughout the remainder of his tenure.
Having secured tens of millions in new unrestricted tuition dollars each year, we can also see that all three prongs of Harreld’s entrepreneurial insurgency are directly abetted by that new money. Not only can Harreld use that new revenue to build out the entrepreneurial infrastructure at UI, he can throw more money at the healthcare campus, including enticing new hires with research dollars — which will in turn improve Iowa’s standing with the AAU. Most importantly, however, Harreld now has the ability to divert millions of dollars in new tuition revenue to entrepreneurial ventures, some of which will inevitably produce revenue, if not an actual profit. That return on investment, however feeble, can then be touted as an economic development success story, even if Harreld’s overall returns represent a financial loss. (If you make $50M, but that return cost $100M, then you just threw away $50M.)
While Harreld is clearly scamming students and families at UI, not only is he wholly supported in doing so by the Iowa Board of Regents, but he has the implicit backing of the Iowa legislature as well, on a bipartisan basis. To that point, consider the following passage from the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, on 03/12/19 — meaning less than three weeks ago — in her report about the confirmation hearings for three members of the Iowa Board of Regents. The topic under discussion was the difference between state funding for Iowa’s community colleges and public universities, and clearly the quoted senator — who has also been the chair and ranking member of the education committee — was well-versed in the dual educational and research missions of Iowa’s regent universities.
It was Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, who noted the research aspect of the public universities as part of the reason they receive more state support — which still has been eroding in recent years, with tens of millions cut in just the last few legislative sessions.
“I would suggest that the comparison that has been suggested is a little bit misleading,” Quirmbach said. “If you take the total appropriation and you divide by the number of students, implicitly what you’re doing is assuming that all those dollars are going to educate those students. And that’s simply not true — especially at Iowa and Iowa State.”
Both those universities are members of the Association of American Universities, comprised of 62 distinguished research schools mostly in the United States.
“At Iowa and Iowa State, what you’re also buying is a research capacity,” Quirmbach said, reporting the thousands of jobs and millions in funding generated by research. “Let’s make sure we are comparing apples to apples.”
There is no question that the research component of the academic missions at Iowa and Iowa State substantially increases costs at those schools. Instead of simply providing an education, research universities — and especially R1 research universities, let alone those in the hallowed AAU — spend a massive amount of money fulfilling their exploratory and investigative obligations. And yet, while Quirmbach clearly understands that distinction, not once over the past three and a half years have I heard him or any other legislator talk openly about how they themselves are shifting more and more of that cost onto students. (Then again, that’s perhaps not surprising in Quirmbach’s case, given that he is also an associate professor at Iowa State.)
As noted in multiple prior posts, it is difficult to expose many of the financial shell games at the regent universities precisely because the books are not available for examination. In this case, however, we do have conclusive proof that any new ventures or expenditures at UI over the past few years have come from tuition revenue. And because UI and ISU are essentially funded in lockstep, we can assume that same dynamic holds at Iowa State as well, although the specific dollar amounts will vary.
Here is the official UI pie chart for FY2016 Gen-Ed Revenues — meaning the money that the University of Iowa took in and had available to spend during the first year of Harreld’s tenure:
As you can (kind’a) see, $230.9M comes from state appropriations, $432.6M comes from tuition and fees, and the total — along with $41.6M in savings and other income — is $705.1M.
Now here is the official UI pie chart for FY2019 Gen-Ed Revenues — meaning the current fiscal and academic year, which ends June 30th:
Here we have $214.7M in state appropriations (down $16.2M from FY2016), $482.8M in tuition and fees (up $50.2M), and $47.5M in savings and other income (up $5.9M), for a Gen-Ed total of $745M — or an overall increase of $39.9M from FY2016. Even after two straight years of state funding cuts in FY2017 and FY2018, not only is Harreld making out like the bandit he is, but that $16.2M decrease in state funding makes clear that whatever he is spending money on, most of that revenue comes from increases in tuition.
Following five tuition hikes over three years, almost all of the resulting new revenue — $34M of the $39.9M gain between FY2016 and FY2019 — comes from students and families. And of course that same proportional disparity holds true for Iowa State, because all of the state universities moved in tuition lockstep until this year. Except…in the case of Iowa State, that school has thousands of additional undergraduate students compared to UI, meaning its haul from tuition and fee increases will be even greater — giving that school tens of millions in additional revenue, with which it can placate the Association of American Universities.
While everyone seems to be using “generational disinvestment” as an overwrought term to describe decreased state funding at Iowa’s state universities over the past few years, there have indeed been several cuts to the state’s standing appropriations at UI and ISU. At the same time, however, it is clear that tuition revenue has exploded completely out of proportion to those cuts. For every $1 the state cut from UI since Harreld was hired, the regents have increased tuition between $2.5 and $2.8, without once acknowledging that fact. Instead of simply replacing lost funds, the regents are using “generational disinvestment” as an excuse to profit from students and families, but that extra money isn’t going to educate those students. Instead, it’s being diverted to research and economic development, which are state objectives.
If that wasn’t bad enough, this silent scam mirrors the justification that Harreld used while trying to kill off UI Labor Center for the better part of a year. From a press release on the Iowa Now site, on 07/10/18:
After back-to-back state budget cuts by the Iowa Legislature, the University of Iowa will close several centers and furlough more than 30 individuals whose position is not directly tied to student instruction. The president and provost made the decision after receiving recommendations from the vice presidents and deans. UI administrators evaluated the budget line by line to determine which activities could be trimmed without significantly harming the university’s academic mission or student success.
“We’re disappointed to be in this position because these centers and employees provide valuable outreach and service to Iowans,” says UI President J. Bruce Harreld. “But we can no longer ask our students to support activities previously supported by the state just a generation ago.”
Harreld’s hypocrisy here is beyond rank. While he was adamant in refusing to support the Labor Center with Gen-Ed funds, at the same time Harreld was building out the entrepreneurial infrastructure at UI, and increasing spending on economic development — none of which is “directly tied to student instruction”. And of course the impetus for gambling all of that money on for-profit ventures ultimately comes from the state, which wants to use UI’s research capacity to generate revenue. Yet clearly the state is unwilling to financially support those “activities”.
The same circumstance that Harreld used to justify terminating the UI Labor Center is driving his entrepreneurial insurgency, yet not once has Harreld or anyone else questioned those expenditures on that basis. Even after the Labor Center was given a recent reprieve, Harreld has not changed his hypocritical tune. From three weeks ago, in his latest interview with the Daily Iowan, on 03/12/19:
blockquote>We [tried to cut] them because I thought it was totally inappropriate, in a world where two-thirds of the funding is coming out of students and their families, to actually be funding a number of these centers that weren’t student-centered in their missions and activities, out of the general education fund. It was really a funding mechanism, so if they could find another way fund, we’d be more than willing to go back to the regents, and we did, and the regents reinstated.
In early 2017, when Harreld was shooting his mouth off at the Lincoln Project forum with Mary Sue Coleman, and telling everyone that UI didn’t need more money from the state, it just needed to “build new businesses”, the one thing he left out was where the capital for those new businesses would come from. Because Harreld is one of the few people who gets to look at the UI books, he probably figured he didn’t have to fess up that he would be taking that money from students and families, but one look at the pie charts above makes clear that there is no new money coming from the state for such ventures. The claim of “generational disinvestment” is a scam in itself, but over Harreld’s relatively short presidential tenure, the state has indeed cut funding — while at the same time greatly increasing the money it is taking from student and family bank accounts.
In the governor’s proposed FY2020 budget there are several line items which speak directly to economic development at the Iowa Board of Regents. On p. 681 there is a standing $2M appropriation for Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth at UI, but that only provides ongoing support for the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, which will also now control the new innovation center. On p. 684 there is also a $3M appropriation to the regents for an innovation fund, so perhaps some of that money will be made available to Harreld at UI.
Other than that $5M total, however, I have not found any state money specifically tied to innovation and entrepreneurial ventures. From Harreld’s presentations over the past year and a half, however, we also know that he intends to blow $155M-$165M while implementing the new research-intensive UI Strategic Plan. So where will all of that money come from — of which $127M will be dedicated to research over the next five years? And of course the answer is that the bulk of that money will come from the Gen-Ed Fund, even though most of it will not be used for “student instruction” or “student-centered…missions and activities”.
Harreld’s determination to compel the entire UI campus to support UIHC and healthcare research echoes the focus that Iowa State places not on agriculture and farming for the betterment of the state and its citizens, but on Big Agriculture for the betterment of profit-making corporations. However bad things are under Harreld, however, they are exponentially worse at Iowa State, which has been thoroughly corrupted as an academic institution. What was a citizen-focused university that was founded in 1858, and became the first land-grant university in the nation in 1862, is now almost entirely devoted to advantaging agricultural businesses.
And it’s not just me saying that. From Art Cullen at the Storm Lake Times, on 02/06/19, writing about the abdication of responsibility that ISU administrators demonstrated toward the Leopold Center on the Iowa State campus:
[Dr. Dennis] Keeney said that corporate agriculture has been gunning against the Leopold Center since it was created through the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987, which levied fees on the fertilizer industry to fund the program. The Des Moines Water Works lawsuit against Buena Vista, Sac and Calhoun counties over nitrate pollution of the Raccoon River was the fuse that led an explosion to preserve the agri-chemical industry’s hold over Iowa government and, specifically, Iowa State.
“You control the science and you control agriculture,” Keeney said.
The nightmare scenario at Iowa is not merely that Harreld is rigging the research pipeline to favor the healthcare campus, but that he is laying the groundwork for privatizing UIHC. In early September of 2017 — literally two years to the day after Harreld’s fraudulent appointment — UIHC actually announced that it was open to privatization offers from corporate healthcare providers. In the intervening year and a half there has been no news about a possible partnership, but UIHC did hire a new CEO who sees “growth” and “partnerships and collaboration as the path forward”.
Given the pervasive corruption in Iowa government, it is entirely possible that UIHC is already slated to be sold or merged with a private provider. In fact, the state made such a transaction easier over the past three years by clearing obstacles that might stand in the way. Not only has UIHC been struggling financially — meaning a private suitor could take the hospital over at a discount — but the regents added to those concerns by blowing the $270M budget for the new children’s hospital by $100M. With multiple judgments pending from that debacle, another $30M in cash may yet go out the door at UI, which may in turn be one of the reasons Harreld and the board raised tuition as much as they have. To that we can also add wiping out public-sector bargaining two years ago, thus eliminating pushback from the union members who provide the bulk of patient care.
Admittedly, one big problem with sorting this all out is that it’s almost impossible to differentiate between acts of malevolence and incompetence. For example, despite all of the brain power at UI — including central administration, and specifically the UI College of Medicine — the latest healthcare rankings by U.S. News & World Report were a disaster. From the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, on 03/12/19:
The University of Iowa’s national standing is continuing to slip, now at the graduate level, according to new U.S. News & World Report rankings published Tuesday.
The UI Carver College of Medicine, in primary care, ranked No. 26, down from No. 21 last year; the College of Medicine, in research, ranked No. 38, down from No. 32….
Given the faculty exodus at the College of Medicine over the past few years, that drop-off is perhaps not surprising, nor is the desire by self-interested holdouts to have Harreld send more resources their way. That the discretionary resources he has at his disposal come not from the state but from students is more than hypocrisy, however, it’s fraud — or would be if the Board of Regents were subject to truth-in-advertising laws. As the pie charts above make clear, the state his simply stopped funding aspects of the University of Iowa that it still expects to profit from, and it is now using the regents themselves to generate the requisite funding.
The Secret of Harreld’s Success
To whatever degree the state is abdicating its responsibility to fund Iowa’s public universities — including, particularly, the significant research costs at the two AAU schools — there is no shortage of new revenue for Harreld to play with, almost all of which has been pilfered from student and family bank accounts. That new revenue, in turn, will not only be used to support traditional academic research, but will be used to conduct applied or commercial research for the express purpose of turning a profit. As to Harreld’s chances of success, from the outside looking in it is a veritable certainty that entrepreneurial ventures at the University of Iowa will prove to be wildly successful, precisely because UI and the Board of Regents have no obligation to publicly report the overall financial results.
No matter what happens behind the scenes, and how much money is lost, there will be endless reports of new ventures being launched, new rounds of funding being secured, new patents being filed and new licenses offered — even if none of that makes a dime for the school. Indeed, the University of Iowa could hose $100M down the drain in a single year, on a string of failed for-profit ventures, and there would still be endless positive propaganda from the UI Office of Strategic Communication. If nine ventures failed and one brought in even a marginal amount of revenue, we would never hear anything about the nine failed ventures, while that modest success would be hyped to the hilt — even if the venture lost money overall, when all costs were accounted for.
As is the case in the tech industry, academia has become adept at reporting all sorts of fancy metrics which imply financial success, but do not actually count as financial success. For example, everyone loves talking about raising seed money or generating cash through a new round of funding, but another word for those terms is debt — meaning money owed. This is of course the whole point of strip-mining student and family bank accounts for research funding, because there is no debt to be repaid. Once UI and ISU take in excess money as a fee for providing an education, they don’t have to pay that money back to anyone if the research pans out.
As to how this will all play out over the remainder of Harreld’s tenure — whether he leaves in a year and a half or signs an extension — at some point, and perhaps soon, the University of Iowa will announce that it has generated twenty or thirty million dollars in revenue from IP, if not more. While that will sound impressive on its face, in Part 1 of this extended post we noted that in the past ten years, the high mark for revenue generation across all three state universities was $50M. Because UNI conducts very little research, that means UI is probably already bringing in twenty or thirty million in revenue from IP, before any of Harreld’s plans are implemented.
As regular readers know, however, one of Harreld’s personality quirks is that he likes to take credit for other people’s work, so nothing will stop him from claiming any return on investment that was already in the pipeline — including ventures which predate his fraudulent hire. And of course if that’s the case, it’s also worth wondering how many new ventures at Iowa would have been successful under the old regime, which Harreld blew up in order to hire Jon Darsee as the new chief innovation officer. (Yet another six-figure government job for someone who claims to know how to make money in the private sector, but who apparently no longer wants to go to the actual trouble of making money in the private sector.)
To all of that uncertainty we can also add uncertainty about how much it cost to generate any new profits. Unfortunately, neither Harreld nor the regents will ever be forthcoming about net profits, when they are perfectly within their legal rights to hype gross profits without accounting for all of the money that was used to generate that return. (If UI invests $5M to make $50M, that’s a $45M profit. If UI invests $100M to make $50M, that’s a $50M loss, even though the amount of generated revenue stays the same.)
In truth, by ramping up the university’s efforts to generate revenue from IP, Harreld is making it harder for Iowa to produce a positive return. Whatever the annual average profit has been over the past decade, that amount was generated by a lean process that is now being built out, bulked up and subsidized with revenue — capital — from tuition and fees. As a result, all of those new costs go in the debit column, meaning more money will now have to be generated to break even.
Despite the lack of transparency about profit and loss, however, we don’t have to speculate about future returns to grasp the magnitude of the grift that is already being perpetrated. The whole premise of the tuition hikes over the past three years, and of the variable hikes that have been proposed over the next five years, is that the state has not been meeting its funding obligations. Whether that is true or not in any grandiose sense, everyone agrees that there has been “generational disinvestment” by the state, which is why the regents have been ‘forced’ to raise tuition.
What everyone seems to be ignoring — in part because the Board of Regents suppresses information about the revenue it derives from tuition and fees — is that whatever dreams Harreld and the regents have about driving profits from IP, from new state-owned businesses, or from public-private partnerships, the University of Iowa has already exceeded those expectations from tuition hikes over the past three years. No matter what happens on the IP front, as the pie charts above make clear, UI is already generating an extra $50M on an annual basis compared to FY2016, and there are no costs associated with that windfall. All the board had to do was call for a few voice votes and voila: $50M in new, unrestricted revenue, with more to come each of the next five years.
That’s the grift. While everyone fixates on what the state is and is not providing via appropriations, the state itself is looting tens of millions of dollars on that very pretext — far outstripping even the rosiest predictions about what UI might make from IP over any similar time frame. Going into the IP business is a long, costly, risk-laden process that often has a limited window for success, while raising the price of tuition takes thirty seconds and produces perpetual profit on an annual basis.
The very fact that Harreld is being paid to tell everyone that he will make massive amounts of money for the state is a tell in this regard, because that’s exactly what con artists do. They get your greed juices flowing, and that in turn clouds your judgement. What should be self-evident is pushed aside by financial lust, and the next thing you know you’re shelling money out instead of taking money in, on the promise that a massive return on investment is just around the corner.
The question with any fortune teller — and that includes business gurus — is not whether they have a gift, but why they would sell you that gift instead of using it themselves. If someone really can see into the future — whether through palm reading, tarot cards or gazing into a crystal-ball — why would they sell you that gift at forty bucks a crack, when they could take advantage of that gift to improve their own lot in life?
The same question holds for Harreld. He will personally profit by $4M over five years while playing university president, but that’s chump change compared to the amount of money he is intimating he can make — if only he has the “resources” to do so. Notwithstanding the obvious appeal of mountains of venture capital stockpiled from compulsory tuition hikes, why isn’t Harreld out there in the private sector, making all of that money for himself? Why isn’t he founding his own businesses — apart from the fact that J. Bruce Harreld has never actually been the CEO of anything?
If your answer is that perhaps Harreld wants to give back to a state he never lived in, or to a school he never attended, that doesn’t answer the question. If Harreld wants to give money to a university, why doesn’t he go make millions in the market and give that money to UI — or to Purdue or Harvard, which he actually attended? Why is he taking a state salary to perform his magic, when he could profit from that magic himself?
What Harreld is perpetrating at Iowa is the same crony corruption that reduced Iowa State to a shadow of its former self. The massive grift driving the entire process comes from the state, and specifically the Board of Regents, which has turned students into cash cows not only to subsidize entrepreneurial ventures, but as a means of profit-making in itself. While Harreld blathers on about starting new businesses, the tuition hikes that he has demanded and pushed through have already generated over $100M, and that’s after accounting for all state cuts.
Lying With Impunity
Because everyone involved in this grift is either a self-interested shyster or political crony, we will never get any direct admission that tuition hikes at UI are paying for J. Bruce Harreld’s healthcare-focused entrepreneurial insurgency, for economic development more broadly, or for a hundred other projects and initiatives that have nothing to do with education or student instruction. In the two pie charts above we can clearly see that almost all of the new revenue at UI over the past three years comes from tuition and fees, but the regents are so calculating in perpetrating this grift that there is no single published report which details exactly how much revenue the regents enterprise takes in each year. We can find endless reports on academic minutia at each school, but if we simply want to know how much revenue the regent universities took in — individually and collectively — there are no charts or graphs.
This is of course a premeditated omission. When the state cuts funding, or merely falls short of a regental appropriations request, the board aggressively publicizes that ‘loss’ as an aggregated total among the three state schools, thus making the amount as large as possible. With tuition revenue, however, not only does the board never produce aggregated totals, but it quite often references only that revenue which will be generated from increases in base tuition, thus omitting the millions in additional revenue generated from differential tuition and fees.
As is the case at the University of Iowa, the ability of the Board of Regents to conceal its financial ledger facilitates endless rhetorical shell games about funding, with the board cherry picking whichever revenue sources legitimize its objectives. If the board throws a hundred million dollars down a hole, as it did with the cost overruns at the new UIHC children’s hospital, it will emphatically state that no taxpayer money was lost — even though all of that money will be paid by the state one way or the other. Likewise, as Harreld demonstrated with his bitter attempt to destroy the UI Labor Center, if the board wants to deny funding to a program it will declare that tuition revenue from students and families is sacred, even as tens of millions of dollars is diverted to appease the vengeful AAU.
One assumption many people may make is that any real abuses of power — or actual crimes — will be detected by the auditors on each campus, or by the board’s own internal audit authority. Unfortunately, as we learned during the ‘planegate’ debacle in late 2016 and early 2017, that is not only not the case, but the board’s final audit in that instance covered up serial violations of university policy, regent policy, and state law. As detailed by Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland on 12/15/16, the regents internal audit was not only insufficient, it was shot full of holes. (Ditchwalk post on that audit here.)
Compounding that problem — as recently detailed by Belin on 10/25/18 — the state auditor not only refused to look into the abuses and crimes that were perpetrated by then-president Steven Leath, but the omission of any serious inquiry was part of a coordinated effort across state government to cover up those crony violations, which would have led to criminal charges against anyone else. Meaning not only is the Board of Regents corrupt, but that corruption is sanctioned at the highest levels of state government — or at least it was until the beginning of this year.
On Election Day this past November, former Iowa Assistant Attorney General Rob Sand defeated incumbent State Auditor Mary Mosiman, and on 01/02/19 he was sworn in. A little over one month later, the state announced that it would pay $4.1M to victims of sexual abuse by the former director of the Iowa Finance Authority (IFA), who was also an old drinking buddy and close personal friend of the current governor. As with the revenue shell games at the Board of Regents, the new IFA director — who was recently appointed to that position by the same governor — took pains to make clear that Iowa’s taxpayers would not be footing the bill.
In prior years, under Mosiman, that statement would have gone unchallenged. Now however, Sand immediately pointed out that it did not matter what the source of revenue was for the settlement, because by its very nature that money was a state asset. From Jason Clayworth at the Des Moines Register, on 02/06/19:
“The payment is coming from a reserve fund comprised of interest earned on investments over time,” Debi Durham, the head of the Iowa Department of Economic Development who is now also the Finance Authority director, said in a statement. “It will not be funded by a program or taxpayer dollars.”
It isn’t clear which financial account the state plans to use to pay the settlements or how the state determined that taxpayers won’t be affected.
“It doesn’t make any difference to the people of Iowa,” Iowa Auditor Rob Sand said Wednesday. “Every penny of that is still taxpayer money.”
Whether you have read any of the posts on this site about the Harreld hire, or have read press reports about Iowa government over the past decade, the directness of that statement may seem almost bracing. But of course Sand is right. It does not matter whether state money comes from taxpayers or not — just as it does not matter whether revenue at a regent university comes from state appropriations or tuition. If it’s state money, it’s state money.
Ten days later, Sands’ statement compelled Durham to revise her prior explanation. From Ben Oldach at WHO-TV, on 02/15/19:
In an Iowa Finance Authority meeting on Feb. 6, interim Director Debi Durham said no taxpayer money would be used to pay back the state’s general fund for the $4.1 million used to settle sexual harassment claims against the IFA’s former director Dave Jamison. Now, she is clarifying those remarks.
Durham sat down with lawmakers in a joint meeting on Thursday. She explained that while the fund used for the payout doesn’t contain general fund money, it does impact the IFA’s ability to work on future projects.
Rep. Skyler Wheeler attended the meeting and said while he recognizes the need to pay the two women who made claims against Jamison, it is tough to see that money come out of a fund that could help Iowans with affordable housing, one of the IFA’s main functions.
State Auditor Rob Sand says he is glad Durham made the clarification.
“My original concern was that she had the words in her first statement ‘not taxpayer money.’ That’s simply not true. The fact she was willing to clarify that says to me, alright, we’re all set and everyone’s on the same page about what’s going on,” said Sand.
To say that there has been a sea change in the State Auditor’s office would still be gross understatement. For the first time in a decade, not only is that office not held by a political crony affiliated with the dominant political party in the state, but the new auditor has a law enforcement and prosecution background. While the state auditor cannot charge anyone with a crime, by statue the auditor is also the only person who can look at the books of any government agency, including the Iowa Board of Regents.
Like the IFA, it does not matter where the board gets its revenue or assets. Although some of the board’s funds are restricted by the legislature, or by donors, every last penny — including any revenue from tuition and fees — is state money. To the extent that the board can lie with impunity because it does not have to reveal its finances, no one at the Board of Regents is going to tell the State Auditor that he does not have the authority to make sure their numbers add up. If the State Auditor calls with a question, someone at the Board of Regent is going to answer that question, or the State Auditor is going to answer that question himself.
And as it happens, there are a number of questions worth asking.
Over the past three and a half years the fraudulently appointed president of the University of Iowa, J. Bruce Harreld, has given a number of extensive sit-down interviews to the student-run Daily Iowan. Because Harreld does not talk to the UI community, let alone the public at large, unless compelled to do so by his official duties — and even then, tends to speak indirectly, through ghost-written press releases — these regular interviews often provide the only insight we have into Harreld’s thoughts on a given topic. Which is not to imply that Harreld is necessarily honest when he responds to questions from the Daily Iowan.
Over the first two and a half years of his presidency, Harreld’s responses tended to feature equal parts obliviousness and bluster. That’s not surprising given that Harreld hailed from the corporate world, and had zero experience in academic administration when he was hired. Still, as a result of his ongoing, on-the-job apprenticeship, about a year ago it did seem as if Harreld was finally getting his sea legs, at least in terms of plausibly portraying a university president. Based on his most recent interview with the Daily Iowan, however, I now have to qualify that reassessment.
In terms of sounding like he knows what he is talking about, I do think Harreld has improved, provided there is no tension in the issue being discussed. When Harreld can sit back and pontificate at a remove, at times he seems almost reasonable, and that’s particularly true when he casts himself in the role of the benevolent president — as he routinely does when referencing minority populations on the Iowa campus. (That in itself is revealing, however, because Harreld’s unceasing demand for perpetual tuition hikes has inevitably hit those same populations the hardest.)
If there is any hint of conflict, however — or worse, any threat to his ego — Harreld reverts to the petty, bratty, vindictive man who railed against opponents of his sham appointment in 2015. Between implying that anyone who opposed his hire was mentally ill, and asserting that he was entitled to a clean slate despite personally abetting that fraud on multiple occasions, Harreld demonstrated that he his, by his very nature, a divider. In the intervening years not only has Harreld been consistent in that tendency, but at times he actually seems to enjoy using the powers of his office to punitive ends.
In Harreld’s most recent DI interview we get more than one reminder that he was and is temperamentally unfit to be the president of any institution of higher learning, let alone a major public research university. In the margins he is better at faking it, but on substance, after three and a half years, Harreld has simply failed to grow into the position. To this failure to launch we can add the demonstrable fact that their is no lie too big or too small that Harreld will not tell in pursuit of his administrative agenda, which he once again ably demonstrated in his most recent interview with the DI.
Ironically, there is a silver lining to that tendency because Harreld tends to forget which lie he told last, and thus routinely contradicts himself. Couple that compound failing with his constant need to take credit while avoiding responsibility at every turn, and on more than one occasion Harreld’s eagerness to be seen as a master strategist has instead revealed prior deceit. Case in point, here is part of Harreld’s response to the first question in the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview:
The Daily Iowan: It’s been two years since the departure of former Provost Barry Butler, but the UI has hired a new provost. What do you want campus to know about Montserrat Fuentes?
Bruce Harreld: … I’d have to go back and look, but [the provost search] started something like 10 months ago, knowing it would take the better part of a year. But we purposefully put an interim in place … I was new, we were working on a number of issues, the most important being how we actually allocate resources across campus, and we talked about the collegiate economic analysis. That took an enormous amount of energy — of deans, department heads, across the entire campus. … So we’re going through that, and we decided as a team when Barry Butler left to become president at Embry-Riddle, that rather than go through a search process for probably 10 months at that point in time and then let whoever that is join the community, that maybe we needed to finish this piece of work and get it stabilized, and then bring a new provost in place. So we picked among our midst [interim Provost] Sue Curry, who has been at a station in life where she wasn’t looking to be a long-term provost, and she could fill the role. She knew all the players, they had enormous respect for her, and we could move through these important sets of issues and get the stability on those, then introduce someone into the community. So we did that on purpose, and I feel really comfortable with it.
As detailed in multiple prior posts, this is not how events unfolded regarding the provost search. The announcement that UI Provost P. Barry Butler was leaving came on 02/15/17. It was first posted to the Iowa Now website, and precipitated widespread reporting in the local press.
A little over ten days later, on 02/27/17, the UI community learned that Harreld had appointed Curry to the interim role. Nowhere in that official announcement, however, was any notice given that Curry would serve an entire year before the search for Butler’s replacement would even be contemplated. In fact, in a report by the Press-Citizen’s Jeff Charis Carlson, also on 02/27/17, Harreld and the university actively avoided any comment about when the provost search would get underway:
“Dr. Curry has demonstrated strong leadership in the College of Public Health, developing new programs focusing on core values of equity and justice, which are also core values of our institution,” UI President Bruce Harreld said in a news release. “I am pleased she is willing to take on this important role as we review our academic organizational structure and begin to implement our strategic plan.”
UI officials had no additional information to share Monday regarding a timeline for the search for a permanent replacement for Butler, who begins his new job March 13.
Almost six months after Curry assumed her interim duties, not only was there no search underway for a permanent provost, but even the UI Faculty Senate had not been advised of Harreld’s “team” decision to put off that search. From the 09/12/17 meeting minutes of the UI Faculty Senate:
Professor Glass asked when a search for a new provost would get underway. President Snyder indicated that the timeline for this search has not been decided yet.
As we eventually learned, Harreld and Curry delayed the hiring of a permanent provost because they wanted to use the provost’s office to rig the dismantling of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, via the 2020 Task Force. That’s what Harreld meant when he said — in the press release announcing Curry’s interim appointment — that the university was reviewing its “academic organizational structure”.
While Butler initiated that process before he left, it was almost certainly put in motion after he knew that he would be leaving, which calls into question his motivation for initiating the review in the first place. In any event, the nascent 2020 Task Force was quickly affirmed by Curry, who added her own updated charge to the Phase I committee. Curry then turned around and invoked that ongoing review as justification for delaying the hire of a new CLAS dean — at least until late October, when her silence and obstruction came to a head. In the 10/24/17 meeting minutes of the UI Faculty Senate we see the critical role that Curry played in delaying the search for a new CLAS dean:
Interim Provost Curry commented that undoubtedly the group would ask when the search for a new CLAS dean would begin and why a search wasn’t underway yet. She noted that she had received very little notice before stepping into the interim provost role. There had also been very little notice that the current CLAS dean would not continue beyond the initial five-year appointment. She had assumed that her interim appointment would only last about twelve months. Since CLAS is a large college, she thought that a permanent provost should choose the CLAS dean.
Despite Harreld’s claim that delaying the hire of a new provost had been a “team” decision in early 2017, Curry herself seems to have been out of the loop. In saying she “assumed that her interim appointment would only last about twelve months”, Curry acknowledged that she expected the year-long provost search to parallel her interim appointment. But that is exactly the opposite of what Harreld is now claiming.
Whenever Curry was apprised of Harreld’s “team” decision to delay the provost search, she also failed to pass that information along to the UI community until she was called on the carpet by members of the Faculty Senate. Whether Curry was telling the truth about her own expectations or not — meaning whether Harreld lied to her, or she was in on the con from the get-go — her characterization of the notice given by the outgoing CLAS dean was also objectively false. Not only did the dean of CLAS announce over a year in advance that he would step down in the summer of 2018, but that announcement occurred at the same time that Butler announced he would be leaving, and before Curry was appointed by Harreld. As with the provost search, Curry fell silent for six months about the search for a new CLAS dean until she had to answer to the Faculty Senate, and at no time did she volunteer any information.
In the end, Curry would not initiate the search for a CLAS dean, and Harreld would not initiate the search for a permanent provost, for an entire year. From the 03/06/18 meeting minutes of the UI Faculty Council — meaning over one year after P. Barry Butler announced that he was leaving the University of Iowa:
President Snyder indicated that a search for a new provost has been announced.
The provost search committee was announced on 04/23/18 — almost thirteen months after Curry’s interim appointment — and as predicted by both Harreld and Curry, it would take eleven more months to hire Montserrat Fuentes as the new UI provost. Fuentes will begin her tenure on June 28th of this year, which is almost two and a half years after Butler announced that he was leaving.
Had Curry delayed the search for a CLAS dean until a permanent provost was in place, that would have resulted in a three-year lag between Curry’s interim appointment and the appointment of a permanent CLAS dean. (For the first of those three years, CLAS would have been headed by a lame-duck dean, and for the next two by an interim dean appointed by Curry and Harreld.) Due to the intervention of the Faculty Senate, however, and pushback from the greater CLAS faculty, the delay was limited to two years, yet at no time did either Harreld or Curry refer to what Harreld now claims was a “team” plan all along. Instead, not only did Harreld have Curry take the lead in concealing his administrative scam, but even when she was taking heat he remained silent.
Continuing with Harreld’s most-recent Interview, note his immediate response to the next question from the DI staff:
DI: During the UI’s two years without a permanent provost, the 2020 initiative was around. Since the report had just been released last time we sat down, what was your reaction to that? There weren’t any sweeping proposals and no colleges were broken up as some thought would result from that.
Harreld: I didn’t initiate it.
Read the question again and you will see that no one asked Harreld who initiated the 2020 Task Force, or even insinuated that he was responsible. And yet, in true Harreld fashion, his overriding concern was to make sure that he didn’t take the blame — and that’s true whether he was actually telling the truth or not. In fact, here the DI reporters were referring back to an interview they had with Harreld on 12/12/18, and specifically to this exchange:
DI: “It’s been awhile since we’ve asked about the 2020 initiative, but last we heard, the release of the Phase 2 report had been delayed until later this fall after it was initially supposed to be released in the spring. But it’s almost the end of the semester, so should we expect to see something about that initiative soon?”
Harreld: I think that was released yesterday [Dec. 6]. I’d say there’s a lot in there, there were a lot of issues, so we wanted to work on those issues with a large number of people, I think several hundred people have been involved in the process, and so we wanted to make sure we went through all that.
We also wanted to actually work the issue as we were thinking about a couple of new deans and get some of their thinking through the search process into that, so it was announced [Dec. 6], and it’s out there now. You’ll read it, and we’ll talk about it next time.
DI: Have you read it?
Harreld: No, I have not.
In response to that piercing question, a bit later there was also this from back in December:
I think one of the things that’s come through it that’s pretty loud and clear is we’ve got a wonderful performing-arts part of our university, stretching from writing to art to theater to music, and the list goes on, and [the] question is how do we continue to put a spotlight on that and showcase it, and I think that’s who we are in a lot of ways. So, we’ve got to make sure we keep that heritage and reinvest in it.
Again, I haven’t read it, but I bet it does a wonderful job of articulating that. …
You can find the Phase I report for the 2020 Task Force here. There is no mention of the performing arts in that document. You can find the final Phase II report here. The is also no mention of the performing arts in that document, which is largely devoted to promoting big ideas on campus, and grousing about the lack of same.
Returning to the most recent DI interview, here now is more of Harreld’s response to the question about the 2020 Task Force:
… I think the more important questions, and I think a lot of the discussion really did focus on [CLAS] and its size … I think there are national jewels in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the performing arts at this campus is really critical to our culture, our past, and our future.
Question: Do we have an appropriate spotlight enough? Are they getting sufficient resources in [liberal arts] and [liberal-arts] decisions? Are they getting all the support they need to perform on a national and international basis?
While the Phase I report touched ominously on the size of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and intimated that an axe would swing in Phase II, that threat provoked a response which seems to have stalled the 2020 Task Force. As just noted, however, nowhere in the final report is there any specific mention of the performing arts, and yet for the second interview in a row — and the first after Harreld purportedly read the final report — once again Harreld is selling that very specific and provably false narrative. (This is J. Bruce Harreld in a nutshell: dispensing with facts and inventing whatever reality meets his current needs.)
Continuing with Harreld’s response to the same question, we do get a bit of actual news:
Same for the humanities, same for the sciences. I think in the sciences we need to be a little bit more thoughtful about some of the sciences that we’re teaching in the medical college. Or in some of the medical colleges, some of the same subjects rub up against the subjects being taught in the sciences in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. I think we could do a better job of harmonizing some of those, if you will, and making sure they’re appropriately — where there’s a difference, there’s an appropriate difference and not just a struggle between two different competing programs called biology.
It is always important to pay attention when Harreld switches from generalities to specifics. While he is a huge fan of the performing arts (generality), and of the humanities (generality), and of the sciences (generality), he draws a very specific bead on science classes which are conducted by both CLAS and the “medical colleges”. In fact, when he initially professes discontent with those classes he implies that the courses in the medical colleges should be curtailed, but then he backs up and equivocates.
I don’t know what Harreld is angling for, but the impetus for Harreld’s sham hire came from the “medical colleges” at UI. If Harreld is trying to change the science classes on campus, he is not doing that to advantage CLAS. Maybe the med colleges want to cut overhead and spend that money elsewhere, but in any event Harreld does not float ideas for no reason, and he does not usually come up with ideas like this on his own.
Continuing with the next question — again, notice Harreld’s immediate response:
DI: In December, you’d said you’d be happy to go back to the regents and ask to reinstate the Labor Center, if the UI could find the right sort of funding arrangement. Just last week, you did that.
Harreld: There were several centers, I actually thought. We didn’t do any centers because of the title or what they were doing.
Having learned a great deal about ‘consciousness of guilt’ over the past year, I can only marvel at the degree to which straightforward questions from the Daily Iowan prompt immediate denials from Harreld. While there were indeed other centers and institutes involved, once again, the question that was asked was not about the criteria for closing those programs, but about one program in particular. In truth, not only was it immediately clear that Harreld targeted the UI Labor Center for closure, but among all of the other programs on the termination list, only the Labor Center decision prompted protests and pushback across the state.
That’s why the DI was asking about the Labor Center. That’s also why Harreld tried to immediately re-frame the conversation, as if it was simply one program among many. Continuing with Harreld’s reply:
We did them because I thought it was totally inappropriate, in a world where two-thirds of the funding is coming out of students and their families, to actually be funding a number of these centers that weren’t student-centered in their missions and activities, out of the general education fund. It was really a funding mechanism, so if they could find another way fund, we’d be more than willing to go back to the regents, and we did, and the regents reinstated.
As detailed in multiple prior posts, Harreld is spending money hand over fist on “activities” which are not “student-centered”, and most of that money will come from student bank accounts. That includes $127M for research that Harreld has ascribed to the UI Strategic Plan, without any supporting justification. (The dollar values attributed to various parts of that plan are made up, and do not actually exist in the plan itself.)
Continuing with Harreld’s reply — and here comes the petty vindictive brat:
I think now the question becomes, and again I have some degree of frustration because it took us a long time to get to the real work that needed to be done, which is the source of funding, and I would say we lost [–] I don’t know, I’d have to go back and look at the calendar, but we probably lost several months that could have been focused on the budget where the sources are funding, maybe writing research grants. I actually said this several times, I’d be glad to go with you on trips to talk to people who are interested in the research around unions and labor education and all the rest. Let’s go into that world and let’s help them support us. It took us several months to get focused on that.
As detailed in multiple prior posts, Harreld sucker-punched the UI Labor Center in July of 2018, after putting out information in April of that year which implied the program would not be at risk. As such, Harreld himself wasted three months that the Labor Center could have used to raise money. Harreld then decreed that if the Labor Center was not fully self-funding by the end of the coming academic year, it would be summarily closed.
Because Harreld is a petty, bratty, vindictive man, however, he omits all of that in his reply to the Daily Iowan, while castigating the very people he persecuted. And then he really piles on:
So now my concern is there now going to be a moment? They have a plan, it’s great. In five years, they’ve got specific responsibilities. They’ve laid out that if they don’t meet their fiscal targets, what their actions will be, and I’m completely comfortable with all that. Next question is, like people say to me, you can say one thing but are you doing it, are they going to execute it? We’ll see. Often we get into these moments of euphoria and forget the next steps may be even harder than the first step, we’ve got to do what we said we would do.
So let’s review. After intentionally screwing the Labor Center out of three months’ notice, which the program could have used to raise money, Harreld put that program on a very short clock. Harreld then told anyone who would listen that he could solve that problem himself, in less than a year, if only the fools at the Labor Center would listen to his eminence. Now that the Labor Center has five years to achieve the same goal, however, Harreld is suddenly deeply concerned that the Labor Center will fail to follow through, because apparently the people who work there are all giddy idiots.
(This is what you get when a small cabal of crony co-conspirators hires a miserable human being to run a $4B public research university.)
I am confident that no one at the UI Labor Center is having a “moment of euphoria” — which, in keeping with Harreld’s bullying instincts, is yet another allusion to mental imbalance. All the Labor Center managed to do, despite administrative opposition from Harreld on every front, was give themselves more time to transition to self-funding. That Harreld’s weather vane has now swung about, and he is floating the possibility that the Labor Center may fall short of its goals, merely underscores the degree to which Harreld expects people to beg him for help before he does his job. (There is nothing keeping Harreld from cultivating support for the Labor Center on his own.)
The next question from the Daily Iowan concerned a social media campaign which was initiated by the university, but co-opted by students who felt overlooked by assumptions implicit in the school’s marketing message. You can read more about that here,, but in that context:
DI: Students took to social media last week to share their stories of being discriminated against or mistreated on campus with the #DoesUIowaLoveMe. What has your response been to hearing their stories and how will the university take action?
Harreld: It was an unusual week last week; I think we all learned a lot. I’m glad that it came out. Last week, we had a group of almost 50 faculty, staff, students going back through everything that was on social media and saying piece by piece by piece, “What do we need to do about this?” They then met again to review what’s happened after a few days, and we’ve now parsed the work out. I think [UI Vice President for Student Life] Melissa [Shivers] put a note out in the last 24 hours or at least it’s going out, to the community saying here’s what we’ve done, here’s what you can expect. It was a usual week in that it was a call to action, and I would say we’ve answered the call.
[Editor’s note: Shivers sent an email last week to student organizers of #DoesUIowaLoveMe about how the UI is proceeding with next steps in responding to the concerns brought to light from the movement.]
Finally, here we have the caliber of reply that any university president should be able to give. It may have taken three and a half years, but apart from the on-brand need to congratulate himself at the end this is a solid explanation of the university’s response, and leaves the reader feeling that something is being done. Unfortunately, because Harreld is Harreld, he kept talking….
The frustration for me is that when I read all the social comments, I knew a lot of the people on Facebook who were making the comments. Six weeks ago, [University Counseling Service Director] Barry Schreier and a group of students are in my conference room, there probably 15 to 20 of us in the room, working on student counseling and what the issues are, what the problems are, what we can do about it. There were legitimate concerns in that meeting, but the intensity wasn’t nearly the intensity that I saw on social media.
Setting aside Harreld’s wounded incredulity for the moment, here it is important to note that when Harreld first took office, he actively delayed desperately needed hires in the university counseling service. Despite ranting about hiring world-class faculty, and about keeping up with Iowa’s self-selected peer institutions, Harreld was fine with Iowa lagging woefully behind the other universities in the fourteen-member Big Ten — even as doing so negatively affected the well-being of students on campus.
As to Harreld’s reaction to the difference between online comments and conversations in meetings with students, there are two obvious concerns. First, while Harreld is up there in age — in his late sixties, if I recall — you might imagine he would have had some exposure to the tendency of social media to generate more heat than light. That is not to say that students were not raising valid concerns — they clearly were — but social media is often as much about performance and provocation as it is about communication, if not more so. Yet Harreld, who presides over a campus with 32K media-savvy undergraduates, does not seem to know that.
Second, and more importantly, Harreld is making the conversation about him, when the students were clearly trying to make the conversation about them, after the UI marketing department tried to use them to make the conversation about the university. And if you think that’s unfair, consider where Harreld went next:
So I’m sitting here saying what is it about us that we can’t talk face-to-face when we’re in a meeting, why can’t we raise that? I just picked on counseling, there were other issues. There were comments made on social media by people I know, some students of mine said they were unfunding the cultural houses. That isn’t true.
As far as I know, Harreld is correct — no one is unfunding the cultural houses at UI. As alluded to earlier, however, one of the benevolent gifts that Harreld bestowed on the minority students at UI was increased funding for the cultural houses. So what we have here is not so much a university president who is concerned about the students, but a university president who is concerned that the students are screwing him out of credit.
Continuing with Harreld’s reply:
I’m glad we got to the issues, I’m glad we’re dealing with them. I really applaud and thank all the students that participated in it.
But I’m also sitting back on another level thinking what just happened here? Because I think we should hold ourselves to higher standards. I think we should have a process where we can talk about issues, and problems, and our concerns legitimately, then take action legitimately and not have to wait for the steam to get to such a level that it blows up.
As noted in prior posts, this is Harreld’s greatest fear — that student unrest will suddenly explode and sweep him from power, as indeed happened to the former president of the Missouri System only weeks after Harreld took office. In that instance race was not only the precipitating factor, but the Missouri president also hailed from the private sector, and even had a mini version of the Harvard MBA that graces Harreld’s resume. So you can imagine that glimpsing that kind of fermenting online volatility may have given his lordship a scare.
As to Harreld’s belief that everyone should sit down and talk openly about issues and concerns, what Harreld really means is that he wants to know what everyone is thinking, so he knows the right lies to tell. Despite having paid rapt attention to Harreld over the past three-plus years, I have lost track of the number of times he promised to listen to the UI community, then did whatever he wanted to do anyway. (Had he run roughshod over the campus that would have been better than letting people know he routinely plays them for suckers.)
From the fake presidential search that led to his hire — which included the regents asking for, then disregarding, feedback about Harreld’s candidacy — to summarily killing off the 150-year-old Alumni Association, to his determination to destroy the Labor Center on a pretext, J. Bruce Harreld is the living embodiment of insincerity. And that’s before we get to the time he tried to steal $4.2M from UI students and families, by reneging on scholarships that Iowa was legally obligated to pay. Over three and a half years there has been no end to the duplicity, yet Harreld clearly feels like the aggrieved party.
At which point he once again returns to the cultural houses:
So I don’t know what to do with this. Is this our society today? If so, I think I’m pretty frustrated with it, but that’s OK, these are opportunities. We’re not perfect, we never said we were perfect. We’ll never be perfect, but the way we improve is by raising these issues. By not inflating these issues by saying we’re going to close things when we’re not going to close things, so we all need to hold ourselves to a higher standards, and I think we need to remind ourselves that humans need to communicate face-to-face at times.
One notable difference between all of the human beings on the University of Iowa campus is that J. Bruce Harreld is being paid $800K per year ($200K deferred), while the vast majority of students are having money stripped from their bank accounts by Harreld and the regents. In that context, it is beyond insulting that Harreld accused everyone of failing him, when it is literally his job to lead by example in resolving such problems. All of which leads to this — from Mr. Higher Standards and Face-to-Face Communication:
DI: Since that hashtag came about, have you had interaction with the group that organized #DoesUIowaLoveMe?
Harreld: I personally haven’t, but Melissa has been in a number of those, she has followed up with them, she’s asked them to come together, she met with them. I think she would say that they were very constructive sessions in both ways. I mean I think that things were said, I think that things have been responded to, I think that more of that’s necessary. But why do we have to get there? We can meet all sorts of different ways; maybe there needs to be a more normal way to meet.
Having been caught flat-footed by the follow-up, which revealed that Harreld couldn’t be bothered to meet face to face with anyone, he granted himself psychic access to the mind of Melissa Shivers, the UI VP for Student Life. Having thus preserved his dignity, Harreld then went meta on the core problem with education itself:
I also think there’s another issue, but one of the frustrating things is for some of us, students come and go, that’s why we’re here, so let’s understand. Hopefully, they enter, and they grow, and then graduate and get on with their lives. I fully understand that. On the other hand, as they come in, they don’t quite know how we do things. There’s a process of education of how we do things. In some cases of a public institution, we have to remind ourselves of the First Amendment and the right to do certain things, even if we don’t like them, it’s still the American way. So we go through those types of educations, and then people for good leave us and graduate, and then we have to do it all over again.
From the moment Harreld took office, it was clear that the obligation to actually provide an education in exchange for the right to fleece students would be an impediment to his grand designs. To be fair, however, there are plenty of people who feel that way on any university campus, and that’s particularly true at research institutions, where many employees have no educational role. From managers and administrators who push paper, to professional research staff, to cranky faculty burnouts who buy their way out of most of their teaching load, there are plenty of employees at UI who would be happier if the campus was not littered with young students who had a lot to learn — literally and figuratively.
The key difference between all of those people and J. Bruce Harreld, however, is that those people know they should never put those sentiments on the record, because education is not only the core mission of any university — whether involved in research or not — but students increasingly pay the bulk of the salaries for those disgruntled ingrates. That Harreld is gouging the students for more and more money is galling enough, but that he feels put upon by the need to “do it all over again” with the next crop of students is obscene.
I think part of the issue that I’ve found myself in, I’m not so sure we’re doing a good enough job one year, to the next year, to the next year, with a new groups of leaders, bringing them up to speed as to what we’re doing. I think also where we’re doing a good enough job of that, we’re probably not also doing a good enough job listening to what these new leaders are saying: “Well yeah, I know we do it that way, but we’d like to change that.” We kind of get into a “No, that’s how we do things,” and we need to listen that and take it all in more constructively as a challenge that we can improve. There’s a lot in this, there’s a lot of food for thought, and there’s like a theme semester in what happened last week, and I think it would be really, really, really useful dialogue for us. But then the next issue is we have to do it again next year, it’s who we are. …
Once again Harreld comes close to salvaging a little dignity, but because he is not a real university president he can’t get there. From the point of view of businessman Harreld, or Purdue-engineer Harreld, and Harvard-MBA Harreld, the very nature of education short-circuits his need to see organizations as systems and processes. Because there will always be more students who do not understand themselves or the world, in the end Harreld has to throw up his hands and admits that educating students is just something he will have to endure….
For Part 2 of J. Bruce Harreld and the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview, click here.
This is Part 2 of J. Bruce Harreld and the 03/12/19 Daily Iowan Interview. For Part 1 click here.
The next question from the DI dealt with an issue that has gained national prominence, largely because the Trump administration and right-wing legal groups are using free speech as a means of expanding religious rights. This constitutional tug of war is particularly relevant to the University of Iowa, which has not only been targeted with lawsuits by outside plaintiffs, but now faces a new campus free-speech law in Iowa, which was recently signed by the governor. (That law was almost certainly passed to tee up additional litigation.)
Having been down this road with Harreld before — including his 05/03/16 DI interview, in which Harreld dismissed concerns about hate speech by saying “sometimes hate speech for one person is love speech for somebody else” — here we go again….
DI: How do you balance the First Amendment conflict as an administrator with students expressing in this movement issues with certain speech that they view as hateful?
Harreld: The courts give us some, and I’m not an attorney, but the courts give us some pretty interesting definitions of this. Yes, on a daily basis people say things to me that I find offensive, personally, but they don’t necessarily seem threatening to me.
It is entirely possible that J. Bruce Harreld is a super-sensitive guy, and that every day people do say things to him that he finds offensive. It is objectively impossible, however, that on a daily basis people say things to Harreld which are actually offensive. Again, the man is the president of a $4B public research university, who pulls down $800K per year ($200K deferred), while living rent-free in a state-owned mansion. Yet to hear him tell it, he is constantly bombarded with insults.
Who are these people who are insulting Harreld, and what are they saying? Are they saying things like, “Hey — Bro Bruce! Why did you try to steal $4.2M from students and families in early 2017, by reneging on scholarships that UI was legally required to pay?” Because while I’m sure Harreld would not enjoy hearing that, that’s not an insult — that’s a fact.
A related concern would be the admission, albeit unintentional, that Harreld believes his popularity has tanked over the past few years. From a rare local-media interview with KWWL-TV, on 05/17/16:
More than 6 months into his job as University of Iowa president, we’re getting a sense of what Bruce Harreld’s vision is for the future.
KWWL sat down for a 1-on-1 interview with Harreld, the first time we’ve been able to talk to him extensively about the job since he was hired.
His office says he’s been working hard to build relationships on campus and restore trust.
“I think I can count on one hand the people who don’t like me, don’t want to be around me,” said President Harreld.
In just under three years Harreld has gone from having five or fewer people on campus who “don’t like me”, to being personally insulted on a daily basis. Then again — and here we are assuming this is not just one person ragging on him every single day — that may mean the UI community is taking notice of all the damage he is doing, which would obviously be a sign of improving health for the institution. But enough jocularity….
J. Bruce Harreld is a white male, who, shortly before he was fraudulently hired at UI, owned at least four multi-million-dollar homes. Whatever believes he is enduring at the University of Iowa, or in American culture at large — let alone on a daily basis — no one has ever called him the n-word unless he also has a history of dressing in blackface. In fact, given Harreld’s race, gender and wealth, he has probably never been subjected to any of the common derogatory terms that are commonly used to intimidate and discriminate against far too many members of the UI community on a daily basis. But again, in Harreld’s world he’s always the victim.
That’s who Harreld is, and no matter how long he remains in the president’s office at the University of Iowa, he will never break free of the gravitational pull of his own ego. If he could, he would have skipped his own claims of victimhood and led with this:
The court has a pretty high standard, and I understand when someone stands on the Pentacrest and protests about a particular issue that you or I don’t share, then it’s like whoa, there’s an attack of our personal values. The American way is to learn and listen, or not engage and move on. It isn’t a threat, it’s not an active threat, it’s not hate speech, violence inciting — those are pretty high standards.
I think we sometimes want to reinterpret hate and violent speech in things we just don’t like, and that usually isn’t the case. I think it’s important to understand that the students who want to talk about a particular issue that others don’t want to listen to and find offensive and not to their values are allowing that to take place on campus. It’s also protecting the values of those on the other side of that issue when they want to speak out and need support. So you shouldn’t equate the university allowing these various groups to say what they’d like to say, hopefully in a constructive way, as our supporting one or the other. That’s your issue as a citizen to decide where you want to be on these.
It’s always sketchy when rich old white men tells others how to interpret threats, because rich old white men don’t usually have many foes to contend with. Instead, they live the kind of entitled existence that convinces them they can, with impunity, steal the presidency of a major public research university — and they’re right. If four minority students pilfered a vending machine on campus, they would end up expelled, with a criminal record. Because Harreld abetted three other rich white guys in stealing the job he now holds, he gets $800K per year ($200K deferred), and his minders get someone who always takes their calls and does what he is told.
Having said that, there is some reasonable thinking in the quote above, and it’s to the detriment of the university that Harreld can’t go there more often, fulfilling his obligations as a leader and healer. Unfortunately, when you’re a rich old white guy, you tend to draw from rich-old-white-guy experiences….
There’s a wonderful park in London, my daughter’s going to King’s College, and every once in a while on Sunday we’ll go to this place. I’m trying to remember this park, it’s one of the parks they have a forum and a box and people can stand on the box and express whatever they’d like to express for so many minutes. It’s a speakers corner, I think they call it; it’s a similar expression of this, that’s democracy, that’s our system. We fight a lot to protect that. I understand that it’s frustrating, but I also remind myself, and remind all our students, don’t go, don’t engage, why are you there? Maybe you want to listen to it and learn from it because there’s something that you find fascinating or maybe something that’s opening your eyes, that’s fine, that’s the process. On the other hand, if you say I really don’t support this idea at all, make the crowd smaller.
To refresh your memory, here is the question Harreld was originally asked:
In his extended reply, Harreld deftly accomplishes the following:
* Patiently explains to students that when they think they’re encountering hate speech, they’re probably overreacting.
* Invokes the relatable imagery of strolling around a “wonderful park in London”.
* Reminds all of the UI students that he’s sending one of his kids to school in Europe, in part on money he’s making at UI, which in part comes from the remorseless tuition hikes that he has imposed since he took office.
* And finally — as if that wasn’t enough — Harreld manages to tell a story about a “speaker’s corner”, which is the exact opposite of the new law that was being debated in Iowa at the time, and was recently passed.
From a Gazette staff editorial on 03/29/19:
The law reads in part, “[I]t is not the proper role of an institution of higher education to shield individuals from speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which may include ideas and opinions the individual finds unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive.”
Under the new law, public colleges cannot designate “free-speech zones” or otherwise restrict free expression to particular areas of campus.
Free-speech zones may sound like a pro-First Amendment project, but they are quite the opposite. College administrators have used the zones to relegate student activists to specific locations on campus, effectively cutting off free assembly in other areas.
What the Gazette applauds at a theoretical level was pushed through by right-wing judicial activists, so campus trolls can disseminate hate speech throughout institutions of higher learning, instead of being limited to a “speaker’s corner” — as in Harreld’s nostalgic, heartwarming recollection. As for Harreld’s advice about whether to engage or not, that is the eternal question of human society. Should you ignore hate speech, or confront it? Should you counter trolls — online, or in real life — or deny them that exchange?
There is no all-purpose answer, but there often is a point at which people do have to show up in opposition. That’s the lesson of the Civil War, of World War II, of the Civil Rights movement and many other critical moments in American history. There are times when you just can’t sit back and assume that cultural craziness will run its course, yet once again Harreld can’t get there. Instead, as a self-interested, old, white and very wealthy male administrator, the advice that Harreld offers to the campus make his own life easier.
Continuing with the next interview question:
DI: Amid all of that happening last week, the Understanding Your Whiteness workshop was rescheduled. Some people were worried about what its cancellation meant for our ability on campus to have open discussions about race and difficult subjects. What are your thoughts on those concerns?
Harreld: I agree. I’ve been part of that kind of training since the 1980s. Every organization I’ve been in has gone through some kind of training about difficult questions in the work environment, and behaviors, and comments, sensitivity. Often, I often speak my mind and get in trouble, because I realize what I say and how I’m saying it can be interpreted by someone else and in totally a different way than what I intended it. I’ve learned that that’s my problem, not you as a listener. I need to be sensitive to your views. That’s what these types of programs help us on that, help us become comfortable with that. I think that’s very important, and then I think we titled it provocatively. I think it had everyone thinking, ‘What is this?’ It’s a whiteness, it’s a privilege, we’re going to voice that into everyone’s face, but it’s actually diversity training. We’ve been doing it for 20 to 30 years through this organization.
I think it’s important work to do. I don’t think it’s any different from what goes on in state legislatures, business organizations, military, most athletics teams go through things like that as a part of the team-building process. We decided for whatever reason we were going to cancel it, and now we rescheduled it. I don’t know why we canceled it. It could have been good reasons for it. It was because we were worried about the heat we were taking; that’s unfortunate, because we should not. This is right, this is important. I’m glad we’re rescheduling it. We’re going to do the same thing on sexual assault. Some people don’t like how we’re trying to support victims in our environment — are those people going to get us to stop these training sessions? Of course not. It’s the right thing to do.
In the entire interview this is the one question that Harreld seems to resonates with, precisely because he’s been through similar programs in the private sector. He’s also right about the provocative workshop title, which almost certainly contributed to the program being rescheduled amid the larger conversation about campus free speech. Again, this kind of response should be almost effortless, but instead it’s the exception.
DI: President Trump recently hinted that he would sign an executive order barring colleges from receiving federal aid if they don’t protect all students’ First Amendment rights. What is your response to that?
Harreld: It’s kind of ironic on [a] day where we support the right to talk about a wall, two days or three days later, this is going through the system. Look, I’ve learned not to comment on intentions. I’d like to see the details when and if it gets signed, but I think it would be very unfortunate. But, hey, even profess and understand the legality of that probably runs up against other issues. When it’s actually active, we’ll take a look at it and see what happens. My guess is that, it depends on how it’s drafted, but it could spend a bit of time in court. We’ve seen the same thing on other executive orders here, particularly around DACA and other types of things, border control. Let’s not have a serious conversation on the possibilities and could’ves or maybe it’ll happen. Let’s focus our energy on what it is right now.
As Harreld notes, Trump’s habit of signing meaningless executive orders is firmly established. That and the fact that there was no plan attached makes clear that nothing will change in the immediate future. (That the Iowa governor and legislature pushed through their own campus free-speech bill, however, has more immediate ramifications, though that had not transpired at the time of Harreld’s interview.)
The next question from the DI, and a follow-up, concerned a story that will pick up steam at some point (ha), and probably sooner rather than later. In early February, the University of Iowa announced that it would explore a public-private partnership (P3) with an energy company, which might last as long as half a century. That idea was modeled on a similar deal that was put together at Ohio State, which was largely sold as a windfall for the school, while ignoring the steep back-end costs.
[As this post was being written, the university announced that its aggressive timeline for discussing, approving and implementing the P3 power-plant project would be delayed. There were no specifics, but one explanation is that Harreld wants to grind out the rest of the semester, then push ahead over the summer, when there are fewer people on campus who might object. To that end, on Thursday notice was published that the university would meet its begrudging obligations under shared governance by holding several listening sessions just prior to finals. Unfortunately, in October Harreld said that “shared governance does not mean shared decision-making“, so these listening sessions are nothing more than ass covering.]
In the proposed public-private partnership, an energy company would run the UI power plant, and in return the school would receive a large up-front cash payment, which would then be used to fund an endowment. And if you’re thinking right now that a deal like that makes no sense, you’re right — but that is how the deal is being pitched. From the UI press release announcing the possible partnership, on 02/08/19:
Under a P3, the UI will maintain ownership of its utility system while entering into a professional services agreement with a third party. This agreement will provide the UI with an upfront payment that the university will place into an endowment.
If the university signs a “professional services agreement” with an energy company, to run the UI power plant, then the university will pay for that service — meaning money will flow from UI to that company. As to how why the energy company would provide UI with “an upfront payment that the university will place into an endowment”, that’s an entirely separate part of the deal which involves borrowing a massive amount of money, then paying it back with interest over time. That may indeed be advantageous to the lender because it allows them to take a tax break the university can’t profit from, but the bottom line is that the university will simply be borrowing money at a cost. And yet nowhere in the initial press release, or in subsequent reporting by the press, do Harreld and his administrative minions acknowledge that fact.
From the Daily Iowan’s Marissa Payne, on 02/08/19:
The UI will pay the vendor the cost of utilities and an amount “commensurate with the ongoing care, maintenance and operation of the UI utility system, increased annually to account for standard inflation,” according to the UI partnership website.
The vendor would provide an upfront lump-sum payment that would be invested in the UI’s endowment, the proceeds of which would be allocated to areas that support the UI’s 2016-21 strategic plan and its teaching, research, and scholarship mission. The UI plans to use its budget model — which was rolled out at the beginning of the current budget year — to determine how to allocate resources earned from the endowment.
“The partner would obtain a long-term, steady source of income while leveraging the existing tax codes to obtain enhanced benefits the university cannot obtain as a nonprofit organization,” UI media-relations Director Anne Bassett said in an email to The Daily Iowan.
From the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, also on 02/08/19:
In theory, a new utilities partnership would allow the UI to keep ownership of its system while entering a 50-year deal with a company to operate it.
The agreement would benefit the company in that the utility would control the energy used across campus and collect UI payments for it.
It would benefit the UI in that the contract would require a hefty upfront payment. Although officials are leaving open the prospective value of that, they say the lump sum would be placed into an endowment, with annual proceeds invested into the “core missions” of the UI — teaching, research and scholarship.
As you can see, the unmistakable impression is that in exchange for allowing a private-sector partner to run the Iowa power plant, the company will give the university a massive pile of cash. But of course that’s not how business works. If you want someone to do a job for you — like run your power plant — you have to pay them. And if you want someone to give you a bunch of money up front, you have to pay them back.
With all that in mind then, let’s check in with UI president J. Bruce Harreld — who has a Harvard MBA, and can squeeze money out of any turnip — and see if he can shed some light on this confusing proposal:
DI: The UI announced last month that it’s exploring a public/private partnership for its utility system. Can you walk us through what went through considering this idea and your overall feelings on the possibility?
Harreld: Well, this could take hours. Let me see if I can do this as quickly as possible.
To punchline here is that Harreld’s response runs another 1,099 words, and almost all of it is garbage. For example, here is Harreld once again misstating the UI Strategic Plan, because it benefits him to do so:
The strategic plan says we need to do this in student success, but out of the frustrations last week of things we need to get done to support students better are in that side of the strategic plan, that one pillar.
Then we still have work to do, big work to do, in terms of research on this campus, which is why a lot of our faculty are here — and by the way, it connects to student success, because we try to engage a lot of students, even undergraduates, in the research mission of the university.
Then we have economic development. Those are the three pillars for our strategic plan.
No. As regular readers are aware, Harreld constantly lies about both the core components of the UI Strategic Plan and the core components of the university’s mission. Where the press release announcing a possible P3 deal correctly cites the core missions of the school as “teaching, research, and scholarship”, Harreld routinely replaces scholarship with ‘economic development’ or ‘innovation’ — including in presentations to the Board of Regents. Likewise, the three core components of the UI Strategic Plan are Student Success, Research & Discovery, and Engagement, the latter of which does include a peripheral economic development component, but only because Harreld rigged it to include that extra-curricular focus.
Continuing with Harreld’s deceptive reply:
We have been studying what other universities around the United States and the world have been doing around these public/private partnerships. At the end of the day, it has an awful lot to do with an entity like ourselves that does not pay taxes, and as a result of that, if we let a third party come in and operate part of our facilities, a residence hall or utilities, some institutions have done it around parking, even sports complexes, and that entity is a private entity that does pay taxes, and it may well be that the construction of the transaction is structured in a way that it might help them shelter some of their taxes. That’s what this is, and in that process, it could free up hundreds of millions of dollars that could pour into the university. Which we would then put into an endowment and the returns on that endowment every year would fill that $14 million to $20 million gap.
There are so many things wrong with this that I won’t detail them all here, but no company is giving the University of Iowa a nine-figure payout for a tax break, while also running the entire power plant, including taking on the associated labor costs. Speaking of which, the following assertion — which has also been uttered by Rod Lehnertz, UI SVP for Finance and Operations — is yet another lie:
We cannot do this sort of transaction by not recognizing that we have well over 100 employees in this area, and around utilities, that have done a fantastic job, and we need to make sure that they’re taken care of. We’re not doing this to save money and actually reduce the workforce, so we need to make sure they have viable careers, either with the new entity or the university.
In any business there is no quicker way to improve the bottom line than kicking people off the payroll, because you don’t just save on salary, you save on benefits — and the benefits at the UI are excellent. When Harreld and Lehnertz insist they are “not doing this to save money and actually reduce the workforce”, it is self-evident that cutting employees loose will save money and actually reduce the workforce. (We will never get those two chiselers to admit to their motives, but the inevitable outcome of their proposal is the exact outcome they deny they are trying to achieve.)
Harreld’s reply continues like that, paragraph after paragraph, and if you read the whole thing it’s clear that instead of quickly explaining the P3 deal, Harreld is trying to overwhelm the DI reporters with his reply. To their credit, not only did they respond with a sharp follow-up, but that question prompted Harreld to fall back on the cartoon explanation outlined above.
DI: With a partnership like that, it kind of is like an investment, of course, so what’s the university’s investment in that partnership, what do we have to put into it initially?
Harreld: We already have, we’ve giving them the right to operate a pretty well-honed machine in the utility.
The fact that this idiotic statement came out of Harreld’s mouth says as much about how little regard he has for the reporters at the Daily Iowan as it does about his instinct to deceive. There is no energy company in the world that is going to run the UI power plant in exchange for the privilege of doing so, but Harreld knows that — which is why he quickly followed up with more words, which still understated the cost to UI:
We’ve giving them a payment over the next 35 to 50 years, however long the contract is. We’re giving them a very high credit for the organization that will make annual payments to them. That’s what they get out of it, as well as a contract that is depreciable from the IRS perspective, and that gives them that tax shelter.
Harreld keeps rambling like that for another two paragraphs, throwing everything at the wall in the hope that something will stick. Then he runs face first into the wall:
We will still own the plant. We’re not leasing the plant, we’re not selling the plant, so we’ll still own it, we need to make sure they maintain it in a first-class way. Sometime in the future, it will revert back to our ownership.
My theory here is that Harreld became punch-drunk listening to himself, so it was probably a good thing that the interview was almost over. Or it would have been, had the Daily Iowan not asked the most devastating question that Harreld has been asked in his three and a half years in office. In fact, when I first read the question I winced, because of how effective it was at ripping off Harreld’s mask.
DI: Do you think students on campus, or how many percentage wise, how many students on campus do you think could either name the president of the University of Iowa or recognize you?
Harreld: There’s a piece of me that wants to say honestly probably not very many, I don’t know what that is. Then there’s a piece of me that wants to say not enough. I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it.
It’s kind of funny because I try not to be very aloof, I try to walk around a lot on campus. I see people making eye contact and saying hi, so I’d love to say it’s 84 percent, but my guess is it’s more something like 21 percent or maybe even lower, I don’t know. It’ll be a humbling number I’m sure.
Harreld was hired with no experience in academic administration or in the public sector. He was fraudulently appointed to be a crony fixer — a tool — who would put the priorities of his minders above all. They could have hired him as a consultant but instead they installed him at the top of the org chart, because not a damn one of them cared about how J. Bruce Harreld would disadvantage the UI community over the next five years.
Well here we are, three and a half years into Harreld’s tenure, and by his own admission very few students know who he is. When the school needs leadership Harreld instead pushes out a press release, lies to the UI community in interviews, or simply goes AWOL — perhaps to London, or to one of his few remaining multi-million-dollar homes.
As for actually engaging with the students, here is a social media photo-op of dedicated university president J. Bruce Harreld passing out snacks in early 2019. Now here is the same president Harreld, passing out the same snacks — in the exact same room — in early 2018. And Harreld wonders why students got upset when the marketing department decided to use them as props in a social media campaign. (Then again, what are students really for, anyway?)
I don’t know who thought of asking Harreld the final question in the DI interview, but it was an inspired decision precisely because it prompted a moment of self-reflection. Harreld’s failings as president of the University of Iowa are manifest, but for a moment he was aware of them as well. Unfortunately, based on the past three and a half years, the only guarantee is that he won’t be humbled for long.
Updated 04/15/19: Funny stuff: https://dailyiowan.com/2019/04/15/student-thoughts-ui-president-bruce-harreld/
The Iowa Board of Regents and the AAU says:
[…] Across the regents enterprise, however, that’s only half the cost, and conceivably less, because Iowa State is also a member of the AAU. For arcane reasons related to the AAU membership indicators, ISU is also at significantly greater risk of expulsion, and may have to contribute significantly greater revenues than UI to improve their own membership benchmarks. And of course the majority of all of that new spending will come from tuition revenue paid by ISU students and families. (For a deep dive into UI, ISU and the AAU, see this post.) […]
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Total USDA - Subsidies
Hays County, Texas
Pick another state U.S. Total Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District Of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Pick a county Texas State Total Anderson County, Texas Andrews County, Texas Angelina County, Texas Aransas County, Texas Archer County, Texas Armstrong County, Texas Atascosa County, Texas Austin County, Texas Bailey County, Texas Bandera County, Texas Bastrop County, Texas Baylor County, Texas Bee County, Texas Bell County, Texas Bexar County, Texas Blanco County, Texas Borden County, Texas Bosque County, Texas Bowie County, Texas Brazoria County, Texas Brazos County, Texas Brewster County, Texas Briscoe County, Texas Brooks County, Texas Brown County, Texas Burleson County, Texas Burnet County, Texas Caldwell County, Texas Calhoun County, Texas Callahan County, Texas Cameron County, Texas Camp County, Texas Carson County, Texas Cass County, Texas Castro County, Texas Chambers County, Texas Cherokee County, Texas Childress County, Texas Clay County, Texas Cochran County, Texas Coke County, Texas Coleman County, Texas Collin County, Texas Collingsworth County, Texas Colorado County, Texas Comal County, Texas Comanche County, Texas Concho County, Texas Cooke County, Texas Coryell County, Texas Cottle County, Texas Crane County, Texas Crockett County, Texas Crosby County, Texas Culberson County, Texas Dallam County, Texas Dallas County, Texas Dawson County, Texas Deaf Smith County, Texas Delta County, Texas Denton County, Texas DeWitt County, Texas Dickens County, Texas Dimmit County, Texas Donley County, Texas Duval County, Texas Eastland County, Texas Ector County, Texas Edwards County, Texas Ellis County, Texas El Paso County, Texas Erath County, Texas Falls County, Texas Fannin County, Texas Fayette County, Texas Fisher County, Texas Floyd County, Texas Foard County, Texas Fort Bend County, Texas Franklin County, Texas Freestone County, Texas Frio County, Texas Gaines County, Texas Galveston County, Texas Garza County, Texas Gillespie County, Texas Glasscock County, Texas Goliad County, Texas Gonzales County, Texas Gray County, Texas Grayson County, Texas Gregg County, Texas Grimes County, Texas Guadalupe County, Texas Hale County, Texas Hall County, Texas Hamilton County, Texas Hansford County, Texas Hardeman County, Texas Hardin County, Texas Harris County, Texas Harrison County, Texas Hartley County, Texas Haskell County, Texas Hays County, Texas Hemphill County, Texas Henderson County, Texas Hidalgo County, Texas Hill County, Texas Hockley County, Texas Hood County, Texas Hopkins County, Texas Houston County, Texas Howard County, Texas Hudspeth County, Texas Hunt County, Texas Hutchinson County, Texas Irion County, Texas Jack County, Texas Jackson County, Texas Jasper County, Texas Jeff Davis County, Texas Jefferson County, Texas Jim Hogg County, Texas Jim Wells County, Texas Johnson County, Texas Jones County, Texas Karnes County, Texas Kaufman County, Texas Kendall County, Texas Kenedy County, Texas Kent County, Texas Kerr County, Texas Kimble County, Texas King County, Texas Kinney County, Texas Kleberg County, Texas Knox County, Texas Lamar County, Texas Lamb County, Texas Lampasas County, Texas La Salle County, Texas Lavaca County, Texas Lee County, Texas Leon County, Texas Liberty County, Texas Limestone County, Texas Lipscomb County, Texas Live Oak County, Texas Llano County, Texas Loving County, Texas Lubbock County, Texas Lynn County, Texas McCulloch County, Texas McLennan County, Texas McMullen County, Texas Madison County, Texas Marion County, Texas Martin County, Texas Mason County, Texas Matagorda County, Texas Maverick County, Texas Medina County, Texas Menard County, Texas Midland County, Texas Milam County, Texas Mills County, Texas Mitchell County, Texas Montague County, Texas Montgomery County, Texas Moore County, Texas Morris County, Texas Motley County, Texas Nacogdoches County, Texas Navarro County, Texas Newton County, Texas Nolan County, Texas Nueces County, Texas Ochiltree County, Texas Oldham County, Texas Orange County, Texas Palo Pinto County, Texas Panola County, Texas Parker County, Texas Parmer County, Texas Pecos County, Texas Polk County, Texas Potter County, Texas Presidio County, Texas Rains County, Texas Randall County, Texas Reagan County, Texas Real County, Texas Red River County, Texas Reeves County, Texas Refugio County, Texas Roberts County, Texas Robertson County, Texas Rockwall County, Texas Runnels County, Texas Rusk County, Texas Sabine County, Texas San Augustine County, Texas San Jacinto County, Texas San Patricio County, Texas San Saba County, Texas Schleicher County, Texas Scurry County, Texas Shackelford County, Texas Shelby County, Texas Sherman County, Texas Smith County, Texas Somervell County, Texas Starr County, Texas Stephens County, Texas Sterling County, Texas Stonewall County, Texas Sutton County, Texas Swisher County, Texas Tarrant County, Texas Taylor County, Texas Terrell County, Texas Terry County, Texas Throckmorton County, Texas Titus County, Texas Tom Green County, Texas Travis County, Texas Trinity County, Texas Tyler County, Texas Upshur County, Texas Upton County, Texas Uvalde County, Texas Val Verde County, Texas Van Zandt County, Texas Victoria County, Texas Walker County, Texas Waller County, Texas Ward County, Texas Washington County, Texas Webb County, Texas Wharton County, Texas Wheeler County, Texas Wichita County, Texas Wilbarger County, Texas Willacy County, Texas Williamson County, Texas Wilson County, Texas Winkler County, Texas Wise County, Texas Wood County, Texas Yoakum County, Texas Young County, Texas Zapata County, Texas Zavala County, Texas Texas NRCS
Pick a district 1st District of Texas (Rep. Louis Gohmert) 2nd District of Texas (Rep. Ted Poe) 3rd District of Texas (Rep. Sam Johnson) 4th District of Texas (Rep. John Ratcliffe) 5th District of Texas (Rep. Jeb Hensarling) 6th District of Texas (Rep. Joe Barton) 7th District of Texas (Rep. John Culberson) 8th District of Texas (Rep. Kevin Brady) 9th District of Texas (Rep. Al Green) 10th District of Texas (Rep. Michael McCaul) 11th District of Texas (Rep. Michael Conaway) 12th District of Texas (Rep. Kay Granger) 13th District of Texas (Rep. Mac Thornberry) 14th District of Texas (Rep. Randy Weber) 15th District of Texas (Rep. Vicente Gonzalez) 16th District of Texas (Rep. Beto O'Rourke) 17th District of Texas (Rep. Bill Flores) 18th District of Texas (Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee) 19th District of Texas (Rep. Jodey Arrington) 20th District of Texas (Rep. Joaquin Castro) 21st District of Texas (Rep. Lamar Smith) 22nd District of Texas (Rep. Pete Olson) 23rd District of Texas (Rep. Will Hurd) 24th District of Texas (Rep. Kenny Marchant) 25th District of Texas (Rep. Roger Williams) 26th District of Texas (Rep. Michael Burgess) 27th District of Texas (Rep. Blake Farenthold) 28th District of Texas (Rep. Henry Cuellar) 29th District of Texas (Rep. Gene Green) 30th District of Texas (Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson) 31st District of Texas (Rep. John Carter) 32nd District of Texas (Rep. Pete Sessions) 33rd District of Texas (Rep. Marc Veasey) 34th District of Texas (Rep. Filemon Vela) 35th District of Texas (Rep. LLoyd Doggett) 36th District of Texas (Rep. Brian Babin)
USDA subsidies in Hays County, Texas totaled $14.8 million from 1995-2017.
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#46 – “Statistical Disparities between Races Prove Discrimination”
Walter E. Williams
Culture Cliches
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government. See the index of the published chapters here.
(Editor’s Note: Walter Williams is a prominent commentator and economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. This essay was originally published in November 2012 under the title, “Diversity, Ignorance and Stupidity” in The Freeman, the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education.)
George Orwell admonished, “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” That’s what I want to do—talk about the obvious.
Law professors, courts, and social scientists have long held that gross statistical disparities between races are evidence of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Behind this vision is the notion that but for discrimination, we’d be distributed proportionately by race across socioeconomic characteristics such as income, education, occupations, and other outcomes.
There is no evidence from anywhere on earth or any time in human history which demonstrates that but for discrimination there would be proportional representation and absence of gross statistical disparities by race, sex, nationality, or any other human characteristic. Nonetheless, much of our thinking, laws, litigation, and public policy are based on proportionality being the norm. Let us acknowledge a few gross disparities and decide whether they represent what lawyers and judges call a “pattern and practice of discrimination,” while at the same time thinking about what corrective action might be taken.
Jews are not even 1 percent of the world’s population and only 3 percent of the U.S. population, but they are 20 percent of the world’s Nobel Prize winners and 39 percent of American Nobel winners. That’s a gross statistical disparity. Is the Nobel committee discriminating in favor of Jews, or are Jews engaging in an educational conspiracy against the rest of us? By the way, during Germany’s Weimar Republic, Jews were only 1 percent of the German population, but they were 10 percent of the country’s doctors and dentists, 17 percent of its lawyers, and a large percentage of its scientific community. Jews won 27 percent of Nobel Prizes won by Germans.
The National Basketball Association in 2011 had nearly 80 percent black and 17 percent white players. But if that disparity is disconcerting, Asians are only 1 percent. Compounding this racial disparity, the highest-paid NBA players are black, and blacks have won Most Valuable Player 45 of the 57 times it has been awarded. Such a gross disparity works in reverse in the National Hockey League, where less than 3 percent of the players are black. Blacks are 66 percent of NFL and AFL professional football players. Among the 34 percent of other players, there’s not a single Japanese player. But not to worry, according to the Japan Times Online(Jan. 17, 2012), “Dallas Cowboys scout Larry Dixon believes that as the world is getting smaller through globalization, there will one day be a Japanese player in the National Football League—though he can’t guarantee when.”
While black professional baseball players have fallen from 18 percent two decades ago to 8.8 percent today, there are gross disparities in achievement. Four out of the six highest career home-run totals were accumulated by black players, and each of the eight players who stole more than 100 bases in a season was black. Blacks who trace their ancestry to West Africa, including black Americans, hold more than 95 percent of the top times in sprinting.
How does one explain these gross sports disparities? Do they warrant the attention of the courts?
There are some other disparities that might bother the diversity people. For example, Asians routinely get the highest scores on the math portion of the SAT, while blacks get the lowest.
Then there are deadly racial/ethnic disparities. Vietnamese American women have an incidence rate of cervical cancer that is five times higher than that of Caucasian women. The rates of liver cancer among Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese populations are two to eleven times higher than that among Caucasians. Tay-Sachs disease is rare among populations other than Ashkenazi Jews (of European descent) and the Cajun population of southern Louisiana. The Pima Indians of Arizona have the highest known diabetes rates in the world. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as it is among white men.
Then there’s the issue of segregation. The New York Times “Room for Debate” section on May 21, 2012, led with, “Jim Crow is dead, segregation lives on. Is it time to bring back busing?” The Civil Rights Project of Harvard University in January 2003 declared that schools are racially segregated and becoming more so, adding, “Civil rights goals have not been accomplished. The country has been going backward toward greater segregation in all parts of the country for more than a decade.” Six years later, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA reported that “schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades.”
Let’s look at segregation. Casual observation of ice hockey games suggests that blacks’ attendance is by no means proportional to their numbers in the general population. A similar observation can be made about black attendance at operas, dressage performances, and wine tastings. The population statistics of South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Wyoming, and Vermont show that not even one percent of their populations are black. On the other hand, in states such as Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, blacks are overrepresented in terms of their percentage in the general population.
Blacks are a bit over 50 percent of the Washington, D.C., population. Reagan National Airport serves the Washington, D.C., area. Like other airports, it has water fountains. At no time has the writer observed anything close to blacks being 50 percent of water fountain users. It is a wild guess, but I speculate that on any day, not more than 10 or 15 percent of the people at water fountains are black. Would anyone suggest that Reagan National Airport water fountains are racially segregated? Would we declare South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Wyoming, and Vermont racially segregated? Are ice hockey games, operas, dressage performances, and wine tastings racially segregated? Moreover, would anyone propose busing blacks to South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana, and Wyoming and whites from those states to Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to achieve racial balance? What corrective action might be taken to achieve racial integration at ice hockey games, operas, dressage performances, and wine tastings?
A little reflection shows that people give the term “racial segregation” one meaning for water fountains, operas, and ice hockey games, and an entirely different meaning for schools. The sensible test to determine whether Reagan National Airport water fountains are segregated is to see whether a black is free to drink at any fountain. If the answer is affirmative, the fountains are not racially segregated even if no blacks drink at the fountains. The identical test should also be used for schools. Namely, if a black student lives within a particular school district, is he free to attend a particular school? If so, the school is not segregated, even if not a single black attends. When an activity is not racially mixed today, a better term is “racially homogeneous,” which does not mean segregated in the historic usage of the term.
I hope that the people who say schools are segregated won’t make the same claim about water fountains, states, operas, and ice hockey games.
There is no evidence from anywhere on earth or any time in human history which demonstrates that but for discrimination there would be proportional representation and absence of gross statistical disparities by race, sex, nationality, or any other human characteristic.
Casual observation of ice hockey games suggests that blacks’ attendance is by no means proportional to their numbers in the general population but that’s not evidence of “discrimination.”
For further information, see:
“Discrimination and Liberty” by Walter E. Williams: http://tinyurl.com/mk7eu27
“The Economics and Politics of Discrimination” by George C. Leef: http://tinyurl.com/pkcu249
“Capitalism: Discrimination’s Implacable Enemy” by John Hood: http://tinyurl.com/m37vmju
“A Chance to End Racism in America” by Wendy McElroy: http://tinyurl.com/m5fq2yv
“Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?” by D. W. MacKenzie: http://tinyurl.com/pfsuhtm
“Lending Discrimination: The Unending Search” by Robert Batemarco: http://tinyurl.com/kb58n3w
If you wish to republish this article, please write [email protected].
Walter Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics since 1980. He is the author of more than 150 publications that have appeared in scholarly journals. Learn more about him here.
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Free Shipping on orders over $100 | Easy Returns & Exchanges
JOURNAL +-
In Her Words
Inside Everviolet
Everviolet Chats
The Power of Breast Friends
Being diagnosed with breast cancer is like being hit by a freight train, and those three words, “You have cancer,” stir up an overwhelming magnitude of emotions, anxieties and questions. We are forced to face our fears and embark on an exhausting journey filled with countless doctor appointments, procedures and imaging, often resulting in stretches where we question our resiliency and ability to make it through treatment. These are the moments where we are left no choice but to dig deep and find our strength, but cancer is not something we should navigate alone. Despite the isolation we may feel, it’s critical to not separate ourselves and call upon those who are nearest and dearest to us – our friends.
Some friends may not know what to say or how to be of support in the face of crisis. Maybe some might even be triggered by their own anxieties, causing them to recede into the background. But other friends unexpectedly rise to the surface or seem to appear out of nowhere. It’s times like these when our true friends shine. Whether they are people we meet along the journey or those we knew prior, these confidants become our lifeline – taking us to appointments, researching doctors and cutting-edge treatments, returning our tears and worries with hugs and words of support, and most importantly, propping us up when we feel lost. These are the people we cherish beyond measure, our breast friends.1
In anticipation of Galentine’s Day, we are celebrating the power of friendship by highlighting two touching stories of companionship. The first is the story of Julian and Michele, childhood friends whose relationship shined like a beacon when Julian was diagnosed with breast cancer at the young age of 25. Best friends for 17 years, they talked on the phone at least eight times a day, watched TV together and always made a point to spend quality time together. And when Jillian’s life was suddenly uprooted by breast cancer, Michele never left Julian’s side. Through chemotherapy, hair loss, radiation and countless other challenges, cancer became not a test of their friendship, but an affirmation of it. Michele showed up in any way Julian needed and in turn, learned what it's like to truly be of support to someone facing illness. In her words, “It is important not to treat them like they are a victim of cancer, because they aren’t. Be their shoulder to cry on, but don’t forget to laugh and enjoy life together. It is key to keep a sense of normalcy during a time that is anything but normal. Tragedy always seems to bring people closer together, but for us, it was really just being the friend that we both knew we always were to each other.” Her endless support helped nurture Julian’s strength to fight cancer and shaped her perception of an illness she had no control over.2
The second story addresses what it’s like when the act of connecting with close friends feels painful or awkward in the face of a diagnosis. In these cases, when something so significant has changed, it can feel impossible to behave or engage the way we did before. Sad as this may sound, this situation can also provide an opportunity to develop new connections with others going through similar or parallel experiences. Such was the case for Dana Stewart who was diagnosed with breast cancer at 32 and suffered from extreme feelings of isolation. For her, that loneliness abated only when she discovered the Young Survival Coalition (YSC), a national non-profit offering support and resources for breast cancer women diagnosed before the age of 35. Most women in their 30's don’t know what it’s like to face mortality, have fertility threatened or be blindsided by an illness that threatens to highjack all of our life plans. For Dana, even though she had support from close friends and family, it wasn’t until she met other women from the YSC that she finally felt hope and the freedom to share openly about her deepest concerns and struggles. It was an intimate support that raised her morale, helped her fight and provided many breast friends who remain in her life today.3
Wherever our support network comes from, having besties doesn’t just make us feel better, it actually strengthens our immune system and reduces our risk of cancer. According to a large study published in the Journal of Oncology that examined social ties and survival after breast cancer diagnosis, socially isolated women have a lower chance of survival following a breast cancer diagnosis, likely due to a lack of or reduced contact with friends and relatives. In some cases, close friends proved to be even more beneficial to health than a spouse or religious community.4
Whether we're a patient, survivor or someone who has never experienced illness, we all thrive on the love and intimacy that comes from deep connection and sharing. Our psyches and hearts expand when in the presence of unwavering love, free from judgment and pity. So this Galentine’s Day, join us in taking time to acknowledge the people who fill our lives with love. A simple text, card or phone call is all it takes to remind someone of our gratitude, and sometimes, it makes all the difference in the world.
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than alone in the light.”— Helen Keller
Everviolet for every woman.
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F5 Networks Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2008 Results
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced revenue of $171.3 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, up 3 percent from $165.6 million in the prior quarter and 18 percent from $145.6 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. For fiscal year 2008, revenue was $650.2 million, up 24 percent from $525.7 million in fiscal 2007.
GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $19.7 million ($0.24 per diluted share) compared to $19.1 million ($0.23 per diluted share) in the third quarter of 2008 and $12.9 million ($0.15 per diluted share) in the fourth quarter a year ago. GAAP net income for the year was $74.3 million ($0.89 per diluted share) versus $77.0 million ($0.90 per diluted share) in fiscal year 2007.
Excluding the impact of stock-based compensation and a non-recurring loss on facility exit and sublease, non-GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $33.4 million ($0.41 per diluted share), compared to $30.2 million ($0.37 per diluted share) in the prior quarter and $34.1 million ($0.40 per diluted share) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 (which also excluded in-process research and development expenses related to the company's acquisition of Acopia Networks, Inc. in September 2007). For fiscal year 2008, non-GAAP net income was $121.3 million ($1.45 per diluted share) versus $122.9 million ($1.44 per diluted share) in fiscal year 2007.
A reconciliation of GAAP net income to non-GAAP net income is included on the attached Consolidated Statements of Operations.
Noting that the fourth quarter of 2008 marked F5's 23rd consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth, president and chief executive officer John McAdam said he was generally pleased with the results in the context of a difficult global economy.
"Although fourth quarter revenue was slightly below our expectations and guidance, robust demand for our new entry-level products outstripped our ability to fill all the orders we received during the quarter and resulted in a significant year-end backlog of orders for those products. Despite lower than expected revenue, our non-GAAP operating margin continued to improve, and earnings exceeded our targets on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis," McAdam said.
During the fourth quarter, F5 also continued to strengthen its balance sheet. Deferred revenue, principally from service maintenance contracts, was $145 million at year end. Cash flow from operations was $59 million in the fourth quarter and $194 million for the year. During fiscal 2008, the company repurchased $200 million of F5 common stock and ended the year with $451 million in cash and investments.
For first quarter of fiscal 2009, ending December 31st, the company has set a revenue target of $172 million to $174 million and a GAAP earnings target of $0.26 to $0.27 per diluted share. Excluding stock-based compensation expense, the company's non-GAAP earnings target is $0.41 to $0.42 per diluted share. A reconciliation of the company's expected GAAP and non-GAAP earnings is provided in the following table:
Three months ended December 31, 2008
Reconciliation of Expected Non-GAAP First Quarter Earnings Low High
Net income $21.2 $22.0
Stock-based compensation expense, net of tax 11.9 11.9
Pro forma net income excluding stock-based compensation expense $33.1 $33.9
Net income per share - diluted $0.26 $0.27
Pro forma net income per share - diluted $0.41 $0.42
Share Repurchase Program
The company also announced today that its board of directors approved the repurchase of up to an additional $200 million of the company's outstanding common stock.
Acquisitions for the share repurchase program will be made from time to time in private transactions or open market purchases as permitted by securities laws and other legal requirements. The program does not require the purchase of any minimum number of shares and may be suspended, modified or discontinued at any time without prior notice.
Analyst/Investor Meeting
F5 will hold a meeting for analysts and investors at the company's corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington, from 8:00 a.m. to noon Pacific Time on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.
For more information contact Darlene Henderson (206.272.6170) or email 2008analystmeeting@f5.com.
The meeting will also be webcast live and an archived version will be available through Friday, November 28. The link for the live webcast and the archived version is http://www.f5.com/about/investor-relations/events-calendar.html.
F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking. F5 provides solutions that make applications secure, fast, and available for everyone. By adding intelligence and manageability into the network to offload applications and optimize the data storage layer, F5 extends the power of intelligent networking to all levels of application delivery. F5's extensible architecture optimizes applications, delivers application reliability, and protects the application and network. Enterprise organizations, service providers and Web 2.0 content providers worldwide trust F5 to keep their applications running. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington with offices worldwide. For more information, go to www.f5.com.
Statements in this press release concerning the continuing strength of F5's business, sequential growth, the target revenue and earnings range, share amount and share price assumptions, demand for application delivery networking and storage virtualization products and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions and other factors that, if they do not fully materialize or prove correct, could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: customer acceptance of our new traffic management, security, application delivery, WAN optimization and storage virtualization offerings; the timely development, introduction and acceptance of additional new products and features by F5 or its competitors; competitive pricing pressures; increased sales discounts; uncertain global economic conditions which may result in reduced customer demand for our products and services and changes in customer payment patterns; F5's ability to sustain, develop and effectively utilize distribution relationships; F5's ability to attract, train and retain qualified product development, marketing, sales, professional services and customer support personnel; F5's ability to expand in international markets; the unpredictability of F5's sales cycle; the share repurchase program; future prices of F5's common stock; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available as of the date hereof and qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. F5 assumes no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements.
GAAP to non-GAAP Reconciliation
F5's management evaluates and makes operating decisions using various operating measures. These measures are generally based on the revenues of its products, services operations and certain costs of those operations, such as cost of revenues, research and development, sales and marketing and general and administrative expenses. One such measure is net income excluding stock-based compensation, which is a non-GAAP financial measure under Section 101 of Regulation G under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. This measure consists of GAAP net income excluding, as applicable, stock-based compensation. Net income excluding stock-based compensation (non-GAAP) is adjusted by the amount of additional taxes or tax benefit that the company would accrue if it used non-GAAP results instead of GAAP results to calculate the company's tax liability. Stock-based compensation is a non-cash expense that F5 has accounted for since July 1, 2005 in accordance with the fair value recognition provisions of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123(R), "Share-Based Payment." In addition, in-process research and development ("IPR&D") expenses and a loss on facility exit and sublease have been excluded from GAAP net income for the purpose of measuring non-GAAP earnings and earnings per share in the fourth fiscal quarters of 2007 and 2008, respectively. IPR&D is a non-recurring, non-cash expense which reflects the amount allocated to IPR&D that the company acquired in connection with its acquisition of Acopia Networks, Inc. in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2007. The loss on facility exit and sublease is a non-recurring loss related to the closure of F5's office in Bellevue, Washington and the subleasing of a portion of the office space in the 333 Elliott West building in Seattle, Washington in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2008.
Management believes that net income excluding stock-based compensation, in-process research and development and non-recurring one-time losses such as those related to the facility exit and sublease (non-GAAP) provides useful supplemental information to management and investors regarding the performance of the company's business operations and facilitates comparisons to the company's historical operating results. Although F5's management finds this non-GAAP measure to be useful in evaluating the performance of the business, management's reliance on this measure is limited because items excluded from such measures could have a material effect on F5's earnings and earnings per share calculated in accordance with GAAP. Therefore, F5's management will use its non-GAAP earnings and earnings per share measures, in conjunction with GAAP earnings and earnings per share measures, to address these limitations when evaluating the performance of the company's business. Investors should consider these non-GAAP measures in addition to, and not as a substitute for, financial performance measures in accordance with GAAP.
F5 believes that presenting its non-GAAP measure of earnings and earnings per share provides investors with an additional tool for evaluating the performance of the company's business, which management uses in its own evaluation of the company's performance. Investors are encouraged to look at GAAP results as the best measure of financial performance. For example, stock-based compensation is an obligation of the Company that should be considered and each line item is important to financial performance generally. However, while the GAAP results are more complete, the company provides investors this supplemental measure since, with reconciliation to GAAP, it may provide additional insight into its operational performance and financial results.
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Independent record label
Find sources: "Independent record label" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (March 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding of major record labels. Many artists begin their careers on independent labels.[1]
Independent record labels are small companies that produce and distribute records.[2] They are not affiliated with or funded by the three major records labels. According to SoundScan and the Recording Industry Association of America, indie labels produce and distribute about 66% of music titles, but only account for 20% of sales.
The distinction between major and independent labels is not always clear. The traditional definition of a major label is a label that owns its distribution channel. Some independent labels, particularly those with successful artists, sign dual-release agreements with major labels. They may also rely on international licensing deals, distribution agreements, and other arrangements with major labels. Major labels sometimes fully or partially acquire independent labels.
Other nominally independent labels are started and sometimes run by artists on major labels, but are still fully or partially owned by the major label. These labels are frequently referred to as vanity labels or boutique labels, and are intended to appease established artists or allow them to discover and promote newer artists.
According to the Association of Independent Music, "A 'major' is defined in AIM's constitution as a multinational company which (together with the companies in its group) has more than 5% of the world market(s) for the sale of records or music videos. The majors are (currently) Sony, Warner and the Universal Music Group (which as of 2012 incorporates EMI)... If a major owns 50% or more of the total shares in your company, you would (usually) be owned or controlled by that major."
Independent labels have historically anticipated developments in popular music, beginning with the post-war period in the United States.[3] Disputes with major labels led to a proliferation of smaller labels specializing in country, jazz, and blues. Sun Records played an important part in the development of rock 'n' roll and country music, working with artists such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Charlie Rich.[3] These independent labels usually aimed their releases at a small but loyal audience. They relied less on mass sales and were able to provide artists much more opportunity for experimentation and artistic freedom.
In the United Kingdom during the 1950s and 1960s, the major labels EMI, Philips, and Decca had so much power that smaller labels struggled to establish themselves. Several British producers launched independent labels, including Joe Meek (Triumph Records), Andrew Oldham (Immediate Records), and Larry Page (Page One Records).[3] Chrysalis Records, launched by Chris Wright and Terry Ellis, was perhaps the most successful independent label from that era. Several established artists started their own independent labels, including The Beatles' Apple Records, The Rolling Stones' Rolling Stones Records, and Elton John' The Rocket Record Company. These labels tended to fail commercially or be acquired by the major labels.[3][4]
In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, the American music business changed as people began to more quickly learn the industry. Several companies set up their own recording studios, and the number of label owners began to increase. Many of these owners realized that whichever label first publishes a song is legally entitled to receive compensation for every record sold. Following the original pioneers of the music industry, many new labels were launched over the following decades by people with industry experience. During the 1980s and 1990s, many rap labels were started by artists looking for new talent. Madonna is one example of an established artist who helped launch the career of newer artists with her Maverick label.
A&M Records is widely believed to have been the most successful independent label in history due to its 37-year run and catalog of commercially successful and critically acclaimed records. Founded in 1962 by trumpeter Herb Alpert (A) and record promoter Jerry Moss (M), A&M was initially the label and distributor for Alpert's own Tijuana Brass recordings, but the label quickly began signing other artists. Over its 37-year run, A&M sold records from such artists as Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66, Claudine Longet, The Carpenters, Phil Ochs, Carole King (A&M distributed her label, Ode Records), Joe Cocker, Free, Cat Stevens, Procol Harum, Humble Pie, Peter Frampton, The Police and Sting (as a solo artist), Styx, Bryan Adams, Amy Grant, Suzanne Vega and Sheryl Crow. A&M was also the initial distributor of Windham Hill Records and George Harrison's Dark Horse Records. Alpert and Moss sold A&M Records to Polygram in 1989 with the caveat that Alpert and Moss would continue to manage the label.[5] Polygram was bought by Universal Music Group in 1998, and A&M folded the following year.
The punk rock movement was another turning point for independent labels, the movement's do-it-yourself ethos creating an even greater proliferation of independent labels.[3] In the United States, independent labels such as Beserkley found success with artists such as The Modern Lovers. Many of the United Kingdom labels ended up signing distribution deals with major labels to remain viable, but others retained their independence, such as Industrial Records, Factory Records, Warp, Ninja Tune, Wax On, and BlancoMusic. Another factor that came to define independent labels was the method of distribution, which had to be independent of the major labels for records to be included in the UK Indie Chart. The UK Indie Chart was first compiled in 1980.[6] The chart was unrelated to a specific genre, and the chart featured a diverse range of music, from punk to reggae, MOR, and mainstream pop, including songs by artists like Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan on the PWL label.
The late 1970s had seen the establishment of independent distribution companies such as Pinnacle and Spartan, providing independent labels an effective means of distribution without involving the major labels. Distribution was further improved with the establishment of 'The Cartel', an association of companies such as Rough Trade Records, Backs Records, and Red Rhino, which helped to take releases from small labels and get them into record shops nationwide.[6] The UK Indie Chart became a major source of exposure for artists on independent labels, with the top ten singles regularly aired on the national television show The Chart Show. By the late 1980s, the major labels had identified an opportunity to establish new artists using the indie chart, and began setting up subsidiary labels that were financed by the major labels but distributed independently. This allowed the major labels to effectively push the indie labels out of the market, and the independent chart became less significant in the early 1990s. The term "alternative" was increasingly used to describe artists, and "indie'" was more often used to describe a broad range of guitar-based rock and pop.
The Offspring's 1994 album, Smash, is the best-selling independent record of all time. The album was certified six times platinum in the United States and sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.[7] Norman Schreiber wrote a 1986 book called The Scouting Party Index of Independent Record Labels that covers a list of over 200 independent record labels, their artists, and examples of their work.[8]
List of record labels
Open-source record label
^ "Indie record labels". Musicians.about.com. Retrieved 12 January 2016.
^ Pavlik, John V. Converging Media: A new Introduction to Mass Communication. ISBN 9780190271510.
^ a b c d e Rogan, Johnny (1992). "Introduction" in The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music. Guinness Publishing.
^ Gillett, Charlies. "Independent record labels and producers". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
^ Solomons, Mark (1998) "'UniGram': The Euro Outlook: A&M U.K. Restructured", Billboard – The International Newsweekly of Music, Video, and Home Entertainment.
^ a b Lazell, Barry (1997). "Indie Hits 1980–1989", Cherry Red Books. ISBN 0-9517206-9-4
^ "The Offspring - Smash (album review 3)". SputnikMusic. Retrieved 12 January 2016.
^ “Nonprint”. “Nonprint”. American Libraries 17.6 (1986): 495–496. Web.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Independent_record_label&oldid=898994631"
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (/ˈhɔːθɔːrn/; né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer.
Hawthorne in the 1860s
Nathaniel Hathorne
(1804-07-04)July 4, 1804
Salem, Massachusetts, US
May 19, 1864(1864-05-19) (aged 59)
Plymouth, New Hampshire, US
Twice-Told Tales (1837–1842)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Sophia Peabody (m. 1842)
Una Hawthorne
Julian Hawthorne
Mary Alphonsa
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. He entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824,[1] and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work.[2] He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States.
Portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood, 1841 (Peabody Essex Museum)
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts; his birthplace is preserved and open to the public.[3] William Hathorne was the author's great-great-great-grandfather. He was a Puritan and was the first of the family to emigrate from England, settling in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem. There he became an important member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many political positions, including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his harsh sentencing.[4] William's son and the author's great-great-grandfather John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne probably added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, in an effort to dissociate himself from his notorious forebears.[5] Hawthorne's father Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever in Suriname;[6] he had been a member of the East India Marine Society.[7] After his death, his widow moved with young Nathaniel and two daughters to live with relatives named the Mannings in Salem,[8] where they lived for 10 years. Young Hawthorne was hit on the leg while playing "bat and ball" on November 10, 1813,[9] and he became lame and bedridden for a year, though several physicians could find nothing wrong with him.[10]
Nathaniel Hawthorne's childhood home in Raymond, ME
In the summer of 1816, the family lived as boarders with farmers[11] before moving to a home recently built specifically for them by Hawthorne's uncles Richard and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake.[12] Years later, Hawthorne looked back at his time in Maine fondly: "Those were delightful days, for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it primeval woods."[13] In 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters.[14] He distributed seven issues of The Spectator to his family in August and September 1820 for the sake of having fun. The homemade newspaper was written by hand and included essays, poems, and news featuring the young author's adolescent humor.[15]
Hawthorne's uncle Robert Manning insisted that the boy attend college, despite Hawthorne's protests.[16] With the financial support of his uncle, Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin College in 1821, partly because of family connections in the area, and also because of its relatively inexpensive tuition rate.[17] Hawthorne met future president Franklin Pierce on the way to Bowdoin, at the stage stop in Portland, and the two became fast friends.[16] Once at the school, he also met future poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge.[18] He graduated with the class of 1825, and later described his college experience to Richard Henry Stoddard:
I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.[19]
Early careerEdit
Boston Custom House, Custom House Street, where Hawthorne worked ca.1839–40[20]
In 1836, Hawthorne served as the editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. At the time, he boarded with poet Thomas Green Fessenden on Hancock Street in Beacon Hill in Boston.[21] He was offered an appointment as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House at a salary of $1,500 a year, which he accepted on January 17, 1839.[22] During his time there, he rented a room from George Stillman Hillard, business partner of Charles Sumner.[23] Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his "owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living."[24] He contributed short stories to various magazines and annuals, including "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil", though none drew major attention to him. Horatio Bridge offered to cover the risk of collecting these stories in the spring of 1837 into the volume Twice-Told Tales, which made Hawthorne known locally.[25]
Marriage and familyEdit
Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809–1871)
While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne wagered a bottle of Madeira wine with his friend Jonathan Cilley that Cilley would get married before Hawthorne did.[26] By 1836, he had won the bet, but he did not remain a bachelor for life. He had public flirtations with Mary Silsbee and Elizabeth Peabody,[27] then he began pursuing Peabody's sister, illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. He joined the transcendentalist Utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841, not because he agreed with the experiment but because it helped him save money to marry Sophia.[28] He paid a $1,000 deposit and was put in charge of shoveling the hill of manure referred to as "the Gold Mine".[29] He left later that year, though his Brook Farm adventure became an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance.[30] Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston.[31] The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts,[32] where they lived for three years. His neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson invited him into his social circle, but Hawthorne was almost pathologically shy and stayed silent at gatherings.[33] At the Old Manse, Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.[34]
Una, Julian, and Rose ca. 1862
Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. Throughout her early life, she had frequent migraines and underwent several experimental medical treatments.[35] She was mostly bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long and happy marriage. He referred to her as his "Dove" and wrote that she "is, in the strictest sense, my sole companion; and I need no other—there is no vacancy in my mind, any more than in my heart ... Thank God that I suffice for her boundless heart!"[36] Sophia greatly admired her husband's work. She wrote in one of her journals:
I am always so dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the ... jewels of beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous wealth of thoughts.[37]
Poet Ellery Channing came to the Old Manse for help on the first anniversary of the Hawthornes' marriage. A local teenager named Martha Hunt had drowned herself in the river and Hawthorne's boat Pond Lily was needed to find her body. Hawthorne helped recover the corpse, which he described as "a spectacle of such perfect horror ... She was the very image of death-agony".[38] The incident later inspired a scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance.
The Hawthornes had three children. Their first was daughter Una, born March 3, 1844; her name was a reference to The Faerie Queene, to the displeasure of family members.[39] Hawthorne wrote to a friend, "I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child ... There is no escaping it any longer. I have business on earth now, and must look about me for the means of doing it."[40] In October 1845, the Hawthornes moved to Salem.[41] In 1846, their son Julian was born. Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa on June 22, 1846: "A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew."[42] Daughter Rose was born in May 1851, and Hawthorne called her his "autumnal flower".[43]
Middle yearsEdit
Daguerrotype of Hawthorne, Whipple & Black, 1848
In April 1846, Hawthorne was officially appointed the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly and Inspector of the Revenue for the Port of Salem at an annual salary of $1,200.[44] He had difficulty writing during this period, as he admitted to Longfellow:
I am trying to resume my pen ... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.[45]
This employment, like his earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, was vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. Hawthorne was a Democrat and lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the presidential election of 1848. He wrote a letter of protest to the Boston Daily Advertiser which was attacked by the Whigs and supported by the Democrats, making Hawthorne's dismissal a much-talked about event in New England.[46] He was deeply affected by the death of his mother in late July, calling it "the darkest hour I ever lived".[47] He was appointed the corresponding secretary of the Salem Lyceum in 1848. Guests who came to speak that season included Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Agassiz, and Theodore Parker.[48]
Hawthorne returned to writing and published The Scarlet Letter in mid-March 1850,[49] including a preface that refers to his three-year tenure in the Custom House and makes several allusions to local politicians—who did not appreciate their treatment.[50] It was one of the first mass-produced books in America, selling 2,500 volumes within ten days and earning Hawthorne $1,500 over 14 years.[51] The book was pirated by booksellers in London[citation needed] and became a best-seller in the United States;[52] it initiated his most lucrative period as a writer.[51] Hawthorne's friend Edwin Percy Whipple objected to the novel's "morbid intensity" and its dense psychological details, writing that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them",[53] though 20th-century writer D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter.[54]
Hawthorne and his family moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts, at the end of March 1850.[55] He became friends with Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend.[56] Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection was printed in The Literary World on August 17 and August 24 entitled "Hawthorne and His Mosses".[57] Melville wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black".[58] He was composing his novel Moby-Dick at the time,[58] and dedicated the work in 1851 to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne."[59]
Hawthorne's time in the Berkshires was very productive.[60] While there, he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which poet and critic James Russell Lowell said was better than The Scarlet Letter and called "the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made."[61] He also wrote The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written in the first person.[30] He also published A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys in 1851, a collection of short stories retelling myths which he had been thinking about writing since 1846.[62] Nevertheless, poet Ellery Channing reported that Hawthorne "has suffered much living in this place".[63] The family enjoyed the scenery of the Berkshires, although Hawthorne did not enjoy the winters in their small house. They left on November 21, 1851.[60] Hawthorne noted, "I am sick to death of Berkshire ... I have felt languid and dispirited, during almost my whole residence."[64]
The Wayside and EuropeEdit
External video
Booknotes interview with Brenda Wineapple on Hawthorne: A Life, January 4, 2004, C-SPAN
In May 1852, the Hawthornes returned to Concord where they lived until July 1853.[41] In February, they bought The Hillside, a home previously inhabited by Amos Bronson Alcott and his family, and renamed it The Wayside.[65] Their neighbors in Concord included Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.[66] That year, Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin Pierce, the campaign biography of his friend which depicted him as "a man of peaceful pursuits".[67] Horace Mann said, "If he makes out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote."[67] In the biography, Hawthorne depicts Pierce as a statesman and soldier who had accomplished no great feats because of his need to make "little noise" and so "withdrew into the background".[68] He also left out Pierce's drinking habits, despite rumors of his alcoholism,[69] and emphasized Pierce's belief that slavery could not "be remedied by human contrivances" but would, over time, "vanish like a dream".[70] With Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was rewarded in 1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool shortly after the publication of Tanglewood Tales.[71] The role was considered the most lucrative foreign service position at the time, described by Hawthorne's wife as "second in dignity to the Embassy in London".[72] His appointment ended in 1857 at the close of the Pierce administration, and the Hawthorne family toured France and Italy. During his time in Italy, the previously clean-shaven Hawthorne grew a bushy mustache.[73]
The family returned to The Wayside in 1860,[74] and that year saw the publication of The Marble Faun, his first new book in seven years.[75] Hawthorne admitted that he had aged considerably, referring to himself as "wrinkled with time and trouble".[76]
Later years and deathEdit
Grave of Nathaniel Hawthorne
At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with William D. Ticknor to Washington, D.C., where he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862.
Failing health prevented him from completing several more romance novels. Hawthorne was suffering from pain in his stomach and insisted on a recuperative trip with his friend Franklin Pierce, though his neighbor Bronson Alcott was concerned that Hawthorne was too ill.[77] While on a tour of the White Mountains, he died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Pierce sent a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody asking her to inform Mrs. Hawthorne in person. Mrs. Hawthorne was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral arrangements herself.[78] Hawthorne's son Julian was a freshman at Harvard College, and he learned of his father's death the next day; coincidentally, he was initiated into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity on the same day by being blindfolded and placed in a coffin.[79] Longfellow wrote a tribute poem to Hawthorne published in 1866 called "The Bells of Lynn".[80] Hawthorne was buried on what is now known as "Authors' Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.[81] Pallbearers included Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., James Thomas Fields, and Edwin Percy Whipple.[82] Emerson wrote of the funeral: "I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered—in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could no longer be endured, & he died of it."[83]
His wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England. However, in June 2006, they were reinterred in plots adjacent to Hawthorne.[84]
WritingsEdit
Statue of Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts
Hawthorne had a particularly close relationship with his publishers William Ticknor and James Thomas Fields.[85] Hawthorne once told Fields, "I care more for your good opinion than for that of a host of critics."[86] In fact, it was Fields who convinced Hawthorne to turn The Scarlet Letter into a novel rather than a short story.[87] Ticknor handled many of Hawthorne's personal matters, including the purchase of cigars, overseeing financial accounts, and even purchasing clothes.[88] Ticknor died with Hawthorne at his side in Philadelphia in 1864; according to a friend, Hawthorne was left "apparently dazed".[89]
Literary style and themesEdit
Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism,[90] cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity.[91] Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England,[92] combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism.[93] His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.[94] His later writings also reflect his negative view of the Transcendentalism movement.[95]
Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales, however, he noted, "I do not think much of them," and he expected little response from the public.[96] His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience.[97] In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture".[98] The picture, Daniel Hoffman found, was one of "the primitive energies of fecundity and creation."[99]
Critics have applied feminist perspectives and historicist approaches to Hawthorne's depictions of women. Feminist scholars are interested particularly in Hester Prynne: they recognize that while she herself could not be the "destined prophetess" of the future, the "angel and apostle of the coming revelation" must nevertheless "be a woman." [100] Camille Paglia saw Hester as mystical, "a wandering goddess still bearing the mark of her Asiatic origins ... moving serenely in the magic circle of her sexual nature".[101] Lauren Berlant termed Hester "the citizen as woman [personifying] love as a quality of the body that contains the purest light of nature," her resulting "traitorous political theory" a "Female Symbolic" literalization of futile Puritan metaphors.[102] Historicists view Hester as a protofeminist and avatar of the self-reliance and responsibility that led to women's suffrage and reproductive emancipation. Anthony Splendora found her literary genealogy among other archetypally fallen but redeemed women, both historic and mythic. As examples, he offers Psyche of ancient legend; Heloise of twelfth-century France's tragedy involving world-renowned philosopher Peter Abelard; Anne Hutchinson (America's first heretic, circa 1636), and Hawthorne family friend Margaret Fuller.[103] In Hester's first appearance, Hawthorne likens her, "infant at her bosom", to Mary, Mother of Jesus, "the image of Divine Maternity". In her study of Victorian literature, in which such "galvanic outcasts" as Hester feature prominently, Nina Auerbach went so far as to name Hester's fall and subsequent redemption, "the novel's one unequivocally religious activity".[104] Regarding Hester as a deity figure, Meredith A. Powers found in Hester's characterization "the earliest in American fiction that the archetypal Goddess appears quite graphically," like a Goddess "not the wife of traditional marriage, permanently subject to a male overlord"; Powers noted "her syncretism, her flexibility, her inherent ability to alter and so avoid the defeat of secondary status in a goal-oriented civilization".[105]
Aside from Hester Prynne, the model women of Hawthorne's other novels—from Ellen Langton of Fanshawe to Zenobia and Priscilla of The Blithedale Romance, Hilda and Miriam of The Marble Faun and Phoebe and Hepzibah of The House of the Seven Gables—are more fully realized than his male characters, who merely orbit them.[106] This observation is equally true of his short-stories, in which central females serve as allegorical figures: Rappaccini's beautiful but life-altering, garden-bound, daughter; almost-perfect Georgiana of "The Birthmark"; the sinned-against (abandoned) Ester of "Ethan Brand"; and goodwife Faith Brown, linchpin of Young Goodman Brown's very belief in God. "My Faith is gone!" Brown exclaims in despair upon seeing his wife at the Witches' Sabbath.[citation needed]. Perhaps the most sweeping statement of Hawthorne's impetus comes from Mark Van Doren: "Somewhere, if not in the New England of his time, Hawthorne unearthed the image of a goddess supreme in beauty and power."[107]
Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, the Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A show of wax-figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.[108]
CriticismEdit
Edgar Allan Poe wrote important reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Poe's assessment was partly informed by his contempt of allegory and moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism, though he admitted,
The style of Mr. Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes ... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.[109]
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man."[110] Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it."[111] Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he admired the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales.[112] Evert Augustus Duyckinck said of Hawthorne, "Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind."[113]
Contemporary response to Hawthorne's work praised his sentimentality and moral purity while more modern evaluations focus on the dark psychological complexity.[114] Beginning in the 1950s, critics have focused on symbolism and didacticism.[115]
The critic Harold Bloom has opined that only Henry James and William Faulkner challenge Hawthorne's position as the greatest American novelist, although he admits that he favors James as the greatest American novelist.[116][117] Bloom sees Hawthorne's greatest works to be principally The Scarlet Letter, followed by The Marble Faun and certain short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", "Young Goodman Brown", "Wakefield", and "Feathertop".[117]
The Midas myth, from A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. Illustration by Walter Crane for the 1893 edition.
The "definitive edition" of Hawthorne's works[118] is The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by William Charvat and others, published by The Ohio State University Press in twenty-three volumes between 1962 and 1997.[119] Tales and Sketches (1982) was the second volume to be published in the Library of America, Collected Novels (1983) the tenth.[120]
NovelsEdit
Fanshawe (published anonymously, 1828)[121]
The Blithedale Romance (1852)
The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni (1860) (as Transformation: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, UK publication, same year)
The Dolliver Romance (1863) (unfinished)
Septimius Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (unfinished, published in the Atlantic Monthly, 1872)
Doctor Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance (unfinished, with preface and notes by Julian Hawthorne, 1882)
Short story collectionsEdit
Twice-Told Tales (1837)
Grandfather's Chair (1840)
Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851)
The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852)
Tanglewood Tales (1853)
The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces (1876)
The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains (1889)
Selected short storiesEdit
"The Hollow of the Three Hills" (1830)
"Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832)
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832)
"The Minister's Black Veil" (1832)
"Young Goodman Brown" (1835)
"The Gray Champion" (1835)
"The White Old Maid" (1835)
"Wakefield" (1835)
"The Ambitious Guest" (1835)
"The Man of Adamant" (1837)
"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (1837)
"The Great Carbuncle" (1837)
"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (1837)
"A Virtuoso's Collection" (May 1842)
"The Birth-Mark" (March 1843)
"The Celestial Railroad" (1843)
"Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent" (1843)
"Earth's Holocaust" (1844)
"Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844)
"P.'s Correspondence" (1845)
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1846)
"Fire Worship" (1846)
"Ethan Brand" (1850)
"The Great Stone Face" (1850)
"Feathertop" (1852)
NonfictionEdit
Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny (written 1851, published 1904)
Our Old Home (1863)
Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks (1871)
Children's literature portal
Young America movement
^ Who Belongs To Phi Beta Kappa Archived January 3, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed Oct 4, 2009
^ Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1828). Fanshawe. Boston: Marsh & Capen.
^ Haas, Irvin. Historic Homes of American Authors. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, 1991: 118. ISBN 0-89133-180-8.
^ Miller, 20–21
^ McFarland, 18
^ Wineapple, 20–21
^ Edward B. Hungerford (1933). "Hawthorne Gossips about Salem". New England Quarterly. 6. JSTOR 359552.
^ Miller, 47
^ Mellow, 18
^ a b Edwards, Herbert. "Nathaniel Hawthorne in Maine", Downeast Magazine, 1962
^ Cheever, 99
^ George Edwin Jepson. "Hawthorne in the Boston Custom House". The Bookman. August 1904.
^ Miller, 169
^ Mellow, 169
^ Letter to Longfellow, June 4, 1837.
^ McFarland, 22–23
^ Manning Hawthorne, "Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin", The New England Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1940): 246–279.
^ Cheever, 102
^ a b McFarland, 149
^ Wineapple, 160
^ Schreiner, 123
^ Miller, 246–247
^ January 14, 1851, Journal of Sophia Hawthorne. Berg Collection NY Public Library.
^ Schreiner, 116–117
^ a b Reynolds, 10
^ a b Mellow, 335
^ a b Wright, John Hardy. Hawthorne's Haunts in New England. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2008: 93. ISBN 978-1-59629-425-7
^ Mellow, 368–369
^ McFarland, 129–130
^ McFarland, 182
^ a b Miller, 381
^ Matthews, Jack (August 15, 2010). "Nathaniel Hawthorne's Untold Tale". The Chronicle Review. Retrieved August 17, 2010.
^ Wagenknecht, Edward. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Portrait of an American Humanist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966: 9.
^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 20433-20434). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^ Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press, 1996: 448. ISBN 0-670-86675-X.
^ Mishra, Raja and Sally Heaney. "Hawthornes to be reunited", The Boston Globe. June 1, 2006. Accessed July 4, 2008
^ Madison, 9
^ Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America: 1790–1850. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (first published 1959): 56. ISBN 0-87023-801-9
^ Madison, 15
^ Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988: 524. ISBN 0-674-06565-4
^ Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nathaniel Hawthorne", Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2006: 140. ISBN 0-8160-5626-9.
^ Bell, Michael Davitt. Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980: 173. ISBN 0-691-06136-X
^ Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007: 633. ISBN 978-0-19-507894-7.
^ Crews, 28–29
^ Galens, David, ed. Literary Movements for Students, Vol. 1. Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2002: 319. ISBN 0-7876-6517-7
^ Porte, 95
^ Hoffman, 356
^ The Scarlet Letter Ch XXIV "Conclusion"
^ Paglia, Sexual Personae, 581, 583
^ Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, 94, 148, 175
^ Splendora, "Psyche and Hester", 2, 5, 18
^ Auerbach, Woman and the Demon, 150, 166
^ Powers, The Heroine in Western Literature, 144
^ Splendora, "Psyche and Hester", 12
^ Van Doren 19
^ True Crime: An American Anthology, Library of America website, accessed Jan 30, 2018
^ Nelson, Randy F. (editor). The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 150. ISBN 0-86576-008-X.
^ Woodwell, Roland H. John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography. Haverhill, Massachusetts: Trustees of the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead, 1985: 293.
^ Person, Leland S. "Bibliographical Essay: Hawthorne and History", collected in A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oxford University Press, 2001: 187. ISBN 0-19-512414-6.
^ Crews, 4
^ Nathaniel Hawthorne by Harold Bloom (2000) p. 9
^ a b Nathaniel Hawthorne by Harold Bloom p. xii
^ Rita K. Gollin, Hawthorne, Nathaniel, American National Biography Online Feb. 2000
^ Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1962). The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 9780814200599.
^ Library of America Series
^ Publication info on books from Editor's Note to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Page by Page Books, accessed June 11, 2007.
Auerbach, Nina, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1982)
Berlant, Lauren. The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1991)
Cheever, Susan. American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. Detroit: Thorndike Press, 2006. Large print edition. ISBN 0-7862-9521-X.
Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; reprinted 1989. ISBN 0-520-06817-3.
Hoffman, Daniel G. Form and Fable in American Fiction. University of Virginia Press 1994.
Madison, Charles A. Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1974.
McFarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. New York: Grove Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8021-1776-7.
Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980. ISBN 0-395-27602-0.
Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. ISBN 0-87745-332-2.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New York: Vintage 1991)
Porte, Joel. The Romance in America: Studies in Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and James. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.
Powers, Meredith A. The Heroine in Western Literature: The Archetype and Her Reemergence in Modern Prose (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland 1991)
Reynolds, Larry J. "Hawthorne's Labors in Concord". The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edited by Richard H. Millington. Cambridge, UK, New York, US, and Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 052180745X
Schreiner, Samuel A., Jr. The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the Friendship that Freed the American Mind. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006. ISBN 0-471-64663-6.
Splendora, Anthony. "Psyche and Hester, or Apotheosis and Epitome: Natural Grace, La Sagesse Naturale", The Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2014), pp. 1–34 http://rupkatha.com/v5n3.php.
Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Critical Biography. 1949; New York: Vintage 1957.
Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne: A Life. Random House: New York, 2003. ISBN 0-8129-7291-0.
Bell, Michael Davitt. Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Forster, Sophia. "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Emergence of American Literary Realism." Studies in the Novel 48.1 (2016): 43–64. online
Greven, David. Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature: Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville (2015).
Hallock, Thomas. "'A'is for Acronym: Teaching Hawthorne in a Performance-Based World." ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 62#1 (2016): 116–121.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Nathaniel Hawthorne
About Hawthorne
The Hawthorne in Salem website
C. E. Frazer Clark collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne at the University of South Carolina Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Herman Melville's appreciation, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1851)
Henry James's book-length study, Hawthorne (1879)
Second copy at Project Gutenberg
Hawthorne Family Papers, ca. 1825–1929, housed in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries
"Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne" from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History
Hawthorne: Science, Progress, and Human Nature, series of essays on Hawthorne stories at The New Atlantis.
Passages from the American Note-Books, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Sophia Hawthorne, 1868, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883 (volume IX of the 13-volume Riverside Edition of the Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne).
Joint diary of Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne at The Morgan Library & Museum
Hawthorne Community Association and boyhood home in Raymond, Maine
The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts
The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts
The Phillips Library of The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts owns several well-known Hawthorne related manuscript collections.
Works by Nathaniel Hawthorne at Project Gutenberg
Works by Nathaniel Hawthorne at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by or about Nathaniel Hawthorne at Internet Archive
Works by Nathaniel Hawthorne at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Legends of the Province House and Other Twice Told Tales, text and images
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nathaniel_Hawthorne&oldid=905466055"
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US qualifies Uruguay as a safe country to invest but warns about union power
UK, Ecuador agree Assange not to be extradited where he could be executed
Tabaré looks forward to bilateral meeting with Bolsonaro at Mercosur summit
Cuban economy again on the downturn; austerity measures to continue into 2019
Tuesday, November 6th 2018 - 08:58 UTC
Full article 2 comments
The Trump administration is tightening sanctions on Cuba that have been in place for more than a half a century
Economy and Planning Minister Alejandro Gil said the lower GDP growth forecast was due to “less than expected revenues from tourism, sugar and mining nickel
Communist-run Cuba’s economic growth will come in at around 1% this year, compared with the 2% previously forecast, due to a fall in exports and tourism revenue, state-run media reported over the weekend. The Caribbean island’s gross domestic product grew 1.8% last year and 0.5% in 2016.
Economy and Planning Minister Alejandro Gil Fernandez reportedly told a council of ministers meeting that the lowered GDP growth forecast for this year was due to “less than expected revenues from activities such as tourism, the harvest (sugar) and mining (nickel),” three key revenue sources for Cuba.
Gil said austerity measures, which began in 2016, would continue into 2019. They include cuts in energy and fuel to state companies and reduced imports of consumer goods and inputs for the economy.
Cuba’s economy is notoriously inefficient and dependent on foreign revenues. The government also spends a large amount of its revenue on the country’s free healthcare system, education and other services.
The Trump administration is also tightening sanctions on Cuba that have been in place for more than a half a century and which were loosened a bit under former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Some economists have estimated that Cuba’s import dependence is as much as 17 cents for every dollar of product produced.
Cuba’s GDP dropped 35% in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, which supported the country financially during the Cold War.
The rise of Hugo Chavez and his Venezuelan socialist revolution led to a partial revival of the Cuban economy as Venezuelan oil was sold to Havana at favorable terms and Cuba sent doctors and other goods to its ally. But the trade relationship has deteriorated due to Venezuela’s economic crisis and declining oil exports.
Cuba’s export revenues have declined every year since 2014, even as debt payments mounted, offset somewhat by increased revenues from telecommunications and remittances, though those earnings are treated as state secrets.
Combined exports and imports fell around 25% from 2013 through 2017, with imports dropping to US$ 11.3 billion from US$ 15.6 billion during that period, according to the government. In August, the government slapped a hold on already approved “non-essential” imports.
Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who currently teaches at the Universidad Javeriana Cali in Colombia, said the country was piling up budget deficits to keep the economy growing. Cuba’s budget deficit reached 8 billion pesos last year, nearly 9% of its GDP, Vidal said.
Categories: Economy, Politics, Latin America, United States.
Tags: Alejandro Gil Fernandez, austerity measures, Barack Obama, Cuba, Cuba tourism, Cuban Economy, Cuban exports, Donald Trump, downturn, United States, USA.
Disclaimer & comment rules
Teri, communism and you are failures.
Nov 06th, 2018 - 12:21 pm +1
Chicureo
But wait, aren't the Cuban people happily enjoying the prosperity of the glorious Marxist-Socialist paradise?
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Tiziano Vecellio (Titian)
Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) Diana and Actaeon
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Frick Collection (New York, United States)
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(Redirected from 1,000,000,000 (number))
See also: Orders of magnitude (numbers) and Long and short scales
Natural number
List of numbers — Integers
← 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109
One billion (short scale)
One thousand million, or one milliard (long scale)
One billionth (short scale)
29 · 59
Greek numeral
M ι {\displaystyle {\stackrel {\iota }{\mathrm {M} }}}
Roman numeral
Quinary
Senary
Duodecimal
23AA9385412
3B9ACA0016
Vigesimal
FCA000020
GJDGXS36
Mathematics portal
1,000,000,000 (one billion, short scale; one thousand million or milliard, yard,[1] long scale) is the natural number following 999,999,999 and preceding 1,000,000,001. One billion can also be written as b or bn.[2][3]
In scientific notation, it is written as 1 × 109. The metric prefix giga indicates 1,000,000,000 times the base unit. Its symbol is G.
One billion years may be called eon/aeon in astronomy or geology.
Previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is no longer common, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades.[4]
The term milliard can also be used to refer to 1,000,000,000; whereas "milliard" is rarely used in English,[5] variations on this name often appear in other languages.
In the South Asian numbering system, it is known as 100 crore or 1 arab.
Visualization of powers of ten from one to 1 billion
1 Sense of scale
1.2 Distance
1.3 Area
1.4 Volume
1.5 Weight
1.6 Products
1.7 Nature
2 Selected 10-digit numbers (1,000,000,001–9,999,999,999)
2.1 1,000,000,001 to 1,999,999,999
Sense of scale[edit]
The facts below give a sense of how large 1,000,000,000 (109) is in the context of time according to current scientific evidence:
Time[edit]
109 seconds (1 gigasecond) is approximately 31.7 years
About 109 minutes ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing and Christianity was emerging. (109 minutes is roughly 1,901 years.)
About 109 hours ago, modern human beings and their ancestors were living in the Stone Age (more precisely, the Middle Paleolithic). (109 hours is roughly 114,080 years.)
About 109 days ago, Australopithecus, an ape-like creature related to an ancestor of modern humans, roamed the African savannas. (109 days is roughly 2.738 million years.)
About 109 months ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth during the late Cretaceous. (109 months is roughly 83.3 million years.)
About 109 years—a gigaannus—ago, the first multicellular eukaryotes appeared on Earth.
About 109 decades ago, galaxies began to appear in the early Universe which was then 3.799 billion years old. (109 decades is exactly 10 billion years.)
It takes approximately 95 years to count from one to one billion in a single sitting.[6]
The universe is thought to be about 13.8 × 109 years old.[7]
Distance[edit]
109 inches is 15,783 miles (25,400 km), more than halfway around the world and thus sufficient to reach any point on the globe from any other point.
109 metres (called a gigametre) is almost three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
109 kilometres (called a terameter) is over six times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
Area[edit]
A billion square inches would be a square about one half mile on a side.
A piece of finely woven bed sheet cloth that contained a billion holes would measure about 500 square feet (46 m2), large enough to cover a moderate sized apartment.
Volume[edit]
There are a billion cubic millimetres in a cubic metre and there are a billion cubic metres in a cubic kilometre.
A billion grains of table salt or granulated sugar would occupy a volume of about 2.5 cubic feet (0.071 m3).
A billion cubic inches would be a volume comparable to a large commercial building slightly larger than a typical supermarket.
Weight[edit]
Any object that weighs one billion kilograms (2.2×109 lb) would weigh about as much as 5,525 empty Boeing 747-400s.
A cube of iron that weighs one billion pounds (450,000,000 kg) would be 1,521 feet 4 inches (0.28813 mi; 463.70 m) on each side.
Products[edit]
As of July 2016, Apple has sold one billion iPhones.[8] This makes the iPhone one of the most successful product lines in history, surpassing the PlayStation and the Rubik's Cube.
As of July 2016, Facebook has 1.71 billion users.[9]
Nature[edit]
A small mountain, slightly larger than Stone Mountain in Georgia, United States, would weigh (have a mass of) a billion tons.
There are billions of worker ants in the largest ant colony in the world,[10] which covers almost 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of the Mediterranean coast.
In 1804, the world population was one billion.
Count[edit]
A is a cube; B consists of 1000 cubes the size of cube A, C consists of 1000 cubes the size of cube B; and D consists of 1000 cubes the size of cube C. Thus there are 1 million A-sized cubes in C; and 1,000,000,000 A-sized cubes in D.
Selected 10-digit numbers (1,000,000,001–9,999,999,999)[edit]
1,000,000,001 to 1,999,999,999[edit]
1,000,000,007 – smallest prime number with 10 digits.[11]
1,000,014,129 – smallest ten-digit square.
1,023,456,789 – smallest pandigital number in base 10.
1,026,753,849 – smallest pandigital square that includes 0.
1,073,676,287 – 15th Carol number.[12]
1,073,741,824 – 230
1,073,807,359 – 14th Kynea number.[13]
1,111,111,111 – repunit, also a special number relating to the passing of Unix time.
1,129,760,415 – 23rd Motzkin number.[14]
1,134,903,170 – 45th Fibonacci number.
1,232,922,769 – Centered hexagonal number.
1,234,567,890 – pandigital number with the digits in order.
1,311,738,121 – 25th Pell number.[15]
1,382,958,545 – 15th Bell number.[16]
1,406,818,759 – 30th Wedderburn–Etherington number.[17]
1,631,432,881 – Triangular square number.
1,673,196,525 – Lowest common multiple of the odd integers from 1 to 25
1,787,109,376 – 1-automorphic number[18]
1,882,341,361 – The smallest prime whose reversal is both square (403912) and triangular (triangular of 57121).
2,038,074,743 – 100,000,000th prime number
2,147,483,647 – 8th Mersenne prime and the largest signed 32-bit integer.
2,214,502,422 – 6th primary pseudoperfect number.[19]
2,971,215,073 – 11th Fibonacci prime (47th Fibonacci number).
3,192,727,797 – 24th Motzkin number.[14]
3,323,236,238 – 31st Wedderburn–Etherington number.[17]
3,405,691,582 – hexadecimal CAFEBABE; used as a placeholder in programming.
3,405,697,037 – hexadecimal CAFED00D; used as a placeholder in programming.
3,735,928,559 – hexadecimal DEADBEEF; used as a placeholder in programming.
4,294,967,291 – Largest prime 32-bit unsigned integer.
4,294,967,295 – Maximum 32-bit unsigned integer (FFFFFFFF16), perfect totient number, product of the five prime Fermat numbers F 0 {\displaystyle F_{0}} through F 4 {\displaystyle F_{4}} .
4,294,967,297 – F 5 {\displaystyle F_{5}} , the first composite Fermat number.
5,354,228,880 – superior highly composite number, smallest number divisible by all the numbers 1 through 24
5,784,634,181 – 13th alternating factorial.[20]
6,210,001,000 – only self-descriptive number in base 10.
6,227,020,800 – 13!
6,983,776,800 – 15th colossally abundant number,[21] 15th superior highly composite number[22]
7,862,958,391 – 32nd Wedderburn–Etherington number.[17]
8,589,869,056 – 6th perfect number.[23]
9,814,072,356 – largest square pandigital number, largest pandigital pure power.
9,876,543,210 – largest number without redundant digits.
9,999,999,967 – greatest prime number with ten digits.[24]
^ "Yard". Investopedia. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ "figures". The Economist Style Guide (11th ed.). The Economist. 2015.
^ "6.5 Abbreviating 'million' and 'billion'". English Style Guide: A handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission (PDF) (8th ed.). European Commission. 3 November 2017. p. 32.
^ "How many is a billion?". OxfordDictionaries.com. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ "billion,thousand million,milliard". Google Ngram Viewer. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ "How Much is a Billion?". Math Forum. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ "Cosmic Detectives". European Space Agency. 2 April 2013.
^ Panken, Eli (27 July 2016). "Apple Announces It Has Sold One Billion iPhones". NBCNews.com. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ Seethamaram, Deep (27 July 2016). "Facebook Posts Strong Profit and Revenue Growth". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ Burke, Jeremy (16 June 2015). "How the World Became A Giant Ant Colony". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A003617 (Smallest n-digit prime)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ a b Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A093112 (a(n) = (2^n-1)^2 - 2)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ a b Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A093069 (a(n) = (2^n + 1)^2 -)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ a b c Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A001006 (Motzkin numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ a b c Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A000129 (Pell numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A000110 (Bell or exponential numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ a b c Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A001190 (Wedderburn-Etherington numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ a b Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A003226 (Automorphic numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation. Retrieved 2019-04-06.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A054377 (Primary pseudoperfect numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A005165 (Alternating factorials)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A004490 (Colossally abundant numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A002201 (Superior highly composite numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ Sloane, N. J. A. (ed.). "Sequence A000396 (Perfect numbers)". The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. OEIS Foundation.
^ "Greatest prime number with 10 digits". Wolfram Alpha. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
Large numbers
Examples in
numerical order
Ten thousand
Hundred thousand
Ten million
Hundred million
Quadrillion
Quintillion
Sextillion
Septillion
Octillion
Nonillion
Decillion
Googol
Googolplex
Skewes's number
Googolduplex
Moser's number
Graham's number
SSCG(3)
Rayo's number
Knuth's up-arrow notation
Conway chained arrow notation
Steinhaus–Moser notation
Hyperoperation
Tetration
Pentation
Ackermann function
Bowers's operators
Grzegorczyk hierarchy
Extended real number line
Gigantic prime
Indefinite and fictitious numbers
Infinitesimal
Largest known prime number
List of numbers
Long and short scales
Number names
Orders of magnitude
Power of two
Sagan Unit
Titanic prime
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Anglo-Powhatan Wars
Find sources: "Anglo-Powhatan Wars" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Part of the American Indian Wars
Matthaeus Merian's 1628 woodcut depicting the Powhatan Indians' massacre of Jamestown and outlying Virginia settlements on March 22, 1622, based on Theodore de Bry's earlier depictions but with a large degree of conjecture
Virginia Colony
Treaty of Middle Plantation
Virginia Colony Powhatan Confederacy
George Percy Wowinchopunk
The Anglo–Powhatan Wars were three wars fought between English settlers of the Virginia Colony, and Algonquin of the Powhatan Confederacy in the early seventeenth century. The First War started in 1610, and ended in a peace settlement in 1614.[1] Another war between the two powers lasted from 1622 to 1626. The third war lasted from 1644 until 1646, and ended when Opechancanough was captured and killed. That war resulted in a boundary being defined between the Indians and English lands that could only be crossed for official business with a special pass. This situation would last until 1677 and the Treaty of Middle Plantation, which established Indian reservations following Bacon's Rebellion.
1 Early conflict
2 First Anglo-Powhatan War
3 The Peace of Pocahontas
4 Second Anglo-Powhatan War
5 Palisade
6 Third Anglo-Powhatan War
6.1 Treaty of 1646
7 Result of the Wars
Early conflict[edit]
Complications with natives typically resulted at most of the settlements the English tried to establish from the beginning. The failed Roanoke colony marked the first contact between English settlers and Algonquian coastal tribes in North Carolina. "As early as 1585 an elder by the name of Richard Hakluyt bluntly stated the English Position for the new colony: The ends of they voyage [to America] are these: 1.to plant Christian religion 2.to Trafficke 3.to conquer".[2]
The first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, Virginia (May 1607), was within the territory of the powerful yet still expanding chiefdom of Wahunsunacawh (known to the English as Chief Powhatan).[3] The Jamestown location was less than successful, because the conditions of this swampy area were far less than desirable, including: polluted water, significant amount of insects that carried disease, and soon, the lack of food supply. Jamestown, and the other colonies to be established in the "New World" were dependent on natives for a successful settlement.
Captain John Smith, a colonial leader, imagined that someday the Virginia Indians would be doing all the work for the English,[2] but Powhatan envisioned something different: he wanted Smith and the colonists to forsake the swamp and instead live in one of his satellite towns called Capahosick where they would make metal tools for him in exchange for full provision.[4] However, Smith underestimated the power of the Virginia Indians and what they were capable of, as they knew the land much better than the English. In December 1607, only seven months after building the fort on Jamestown Island, Smith, while reconnoitering the countryside near Orapax, one of Powhatan's capitals, was captured by a communal hunting party led by Opechancanough. Smith much later in life claimed that during his captivity, Pocahontas had dramatically saved him from Powhatan's clubs, but historians differ as to whether or not this was propaganda, or an actual native ritual. Smith's capture represented just an example of the diplomatic strategies employed by Wahunsunacawh to make the English cooperate with and contribute to his expanding control in this region.[2] Smith was released in time for New Year's 1608, when he promised to move the colony to Capahosick. Smith had convinced the grand chief that he was the son of Captain Newport, and that Newport was their head weroance (tribal chief).
Relations between the two peoples began deteriorating again in late 1608, when the starving colonists began to strong-arm some supplies of corn from the natives, who had likewise had a bad harvest. Smith's contacts with rival tribes around the Chesapeake Bay in the summer, and Captain Christopher Newport's military expedition to the Monacan country that fall, had not helped matters.
By spring 1609, the local Paspahegh tribe had resumed raiding the English fort at Jamestown. However, their weroance, Wowinchopunk, declared an uneasy truce after he was captured and escaped, and as a result some colonists were even allowed to board in Indian towns.
Then Smith, who had become president of the colony the preceding fall, antagonized the Powhatan further in summer 1609, by attempting to establish new forts in their territory. First he sent a party with Captain John Martin to settle in Nansemond territory. When they could not purchase the island with their temple, Martin ransacked it and the burial platforms of their weroances, and occupied it by force, which was not well received. Later he abandoned the position after 17 of his men, disobeying orders, were wiped out while trying to buy corn at the Kecoughtan village (now Hampton, Virginia). Smith also sent 120 men with Francis West to build a fort far upriver, at the falls of the James, right above the main town of the Powhatan proper (and the present site of Richmond, Virginia); Smith purchased the site from Wahunsunacawh's son, Parahunt, but this ended up faring no better.
Smith was then injured in an accidental gunpowder explosion, deposed as president, and sailed to England on October 4, 1609, and the colony began to starve. Soon afterward, the settlers succeeded in establishing a second fortification, Fort Algernon at Old Point Comfort, right beside the Kecoughtan village.
In November, the Powhatan ambushed and killed Captain John Ratcliffe, who had gone to Orapax to buy corn. Francis West sailed to the Patawomecks, a fringe group among Powhatan's subjects, for corn, but beheaded two of them, then absconded directly to England.
Unable to trade with the natives, the English began to starve to death, to the point that when Sir Thomas Gates arrived in late May 1610, he decided to evacuate Jamestown. However, on their second day of sailing, they met Lord de la Warr (Francis West's older brother) coming into the Bay with the remnant of his fleet, which had left England one year earlier, but been scattered in a hurricane. They therefore returned to the fort under de la Warr's command.
The nobleman, Lord de la Warr, proved far harsher and more belligerent toward the Indians than any of his predecessors, and his solution was simply to engage in wars of conquest against them, first sending Gates to drive off the Kecoughtan from their village on July 9, then giving Chief Powhatan the ultimatum of either returning all English subjects and property, or facing war. Powhatan responded by insisting that the English either stay in their fort, or leave Virginia. Enraged, De la Warr had the hand of a Paspahegh captive cut off and sent him to the paramount chief with another ultimatum: Return all English subjects and property, or the neighboring villages would be burned. This time, Powhatan did not even respond.
First Anglo-Powhatan War[edit]
The First Anglo–Powhatan War, between the Powhatan and the English colonists, lasted from 1610 to 1614.[5]
On August 9, 1610, tired of waiting for a response from Powhatan, De la Warr sent George Percy with 70 men to attack the Paspahegh capital, burning the houses and cutting down their cornfields. They killed 65 to 75, and captured one of Wowinchopunk's wives and her children. Returning downstream, the English threw the children overboard, and shot out "their Braynes in the water". The queen was put to the sword in Jamestown. The Paspahegh never recovered from this attack, and abandoned their town. Another small force sent with Samuel Argall against the Warraskoyaks found that they had already fled, but he destroyed their abandoned village and cornfields as well.
Following these attacks, and the offense of killing royal women and children, both sides now found themselves at war. That fall, a party of Englishmen was ambushed at Appomattoc; soon afterward Lord de la Warr managed to establish a company of men at the falls of the James, who stayed there all winter.
In February 1611, Wowinchopunk was killed in a skirmish near Jamestown, which his followers revenged a few days later by enticing some colonists out of the fort and killing them.
In May 1611, a new governor, Sir Thomas Dale, arrived and soon began looking for places to establish new settlements; he was repulsed by the Nansemonds, but successfully took an island in the James from the Arrohattocs, which became the palisaded 'cittie' of Henricus, despite raids there led by the renegade warrior Nemattanew, or as they dubbed him, 'Jack of the Feather'.
Around the time of Christmas 1611, Dale and his men seized the Appomattoc town at the mouth of their river, and quickly palisaded off the neck of land, renaming it 'New Bermudas'.
The aged chief Powhatan made no major response to this English expansion, and he seems to have been losing effective control to his younger brother Opechancanough during this time, while the English consolidated their new footholds. In December 1612, Argall concluded peace with the Patawomeck; while there in April 1613, he managed to capture the great chief Powhatan's own daughter, Pocahontas, delivered into his hands by Japazaws, brother of the Patawomeck weroance. This caused an immediate ceasefire from the Powhatan raids on the English, as they held her ransom for peace. In the meantime, English settlers had begun to expand to south of the rivers, building houses at City Point in what is now Hopewell, Virginia.
In early 1609, Jamestown Island had been the only territory under English control. By the end of this period, the Powhatan had lost much of their riverfront property along the James to the English conquest; the Kicoughtan and Paspehegh subtribes had been effectively destroyed, and the settlers had made major inroads among the lands of the Weyanoke, Appomattoc, Arrohattoc, and Powhatan proper. Two James River tribes, the Arrohattoc and Quiockohannock are not heard from again after this, possibly indicating that they had been dispersed or merged with the other chiefdoms.[6]
The Peace of Pocahontas[edit]
Peace negotiations stalled over return of captured hostages and arms for nearly a year; finally in March 1614, Dale went with Pocahontas (Matoaka) and a large force to find Powhatan himself. Getting a shower of arrows at present-day West Point, they went ashore and sacked the town; finding Powhatan at his new capital Matchcot. They finally concluded a peace that was sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas to the colonist John Rolfe. This was the first known inter-racial union in Virginia, and helped usher in a brief period of better relations between the Indians and the newcomers. A separate peace was concluded the same year with the autonomous Chickahominy tribe which even made them honorary "Englishmen," thus subjects of King James I.
Following the 1614 marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas, relative peace and good relations reigned for several years. This time has been called the "golden age of Powhatan-English relations, in English eyes."[7] It has also been called the peace of Pocahontas.[8][9]
In 1616, when Governor Dale had gone to England along with Pocahontas, the Chickahominy refused to pay their corn tribute to the new governor (George Yeardley), rejected their alliance with the English, and instead finally became a part of Chief Powhatan's Confederacy.
Following Chief Powhatan's death in 1618, his younger brother Opechancanough assumed full power, being their middle brother Opitchapam the new mamanatowick, and Nemattanew continued to be a prominent figure alongside him.
Second Anglo-Powhatan War[edit]
Opechancanough maintained a friendly face to the colony, and finally even met with an English minister to give the appearance of his imminent conversion to Christianity. Then on Friday, March 22, 1622, his subjects, planted among the settlements, struck without warning, in what is now known as the Indian Massacre of 1622.[10] A third of the colony were wiped out that day; were it not for last minute warnings by Christianized natives, a higher toll would have been certain.[11]
Powhatan military doctrine did not call for an immediate follow-up blow, but rather to wait and see what would happen after inflicting such a blow, in hopes that the settlement would simply abandon their homeland and move on elsewhere. However, English military doctrine did not call for reacting this way. For the next ten years, they marched out nearly every summer and made assaults on Powhatan settlements. The Accomac and Patawomeck allied with the English, providing them corn, while the English went to plunder villages and cornfields of the Chickahominy, Nansemond, Warraskoyack, Weyanoke and Pamunkey in 1622. In 1623 Opechancanough sued for peace. The colonists thus arranged to meet the natives for a peace agreement, but poisoned their wine, then fell upon them shooting them and killing many in revenge for the massacre. They then attacked the Chickahominy, the Powhatan proper, the Appomattoc, Nansemond and Weyanoke.
In 1624 both sides were ready for a major battle; the Powhatans, Opitchapam leading their force, assembled 800 bowmen, arrayed against only 60 Englishmen, who attempted to destroy the Powhatans' cornfields. When the Englishmen finally succeeded in destroying the cornfields, the bowmen gave up the fight and retreated.
A shortage of gunpowder in the colony delayed the colonists from going on marches in 1625 and 1626. The natives seem not to have been aware of this shortage, and were themselves desperately trying to regroup. However, summer 1627 brought renewed assaults against the Chickahominy, Appamattoc, Powhatan proper, Warraskoyak, Weyanoke and Nansemond.
A 'peace' was declared in 1628, but it was more like a temporary ceasefire; hostilities resumed in March 1629 and continued until a final peace was made on September 30, 1632.[citation needed] The English began to expand their settlements on the Eastern Shore and both sides of the James, as well as on the south of the York, and in 1633, they palisaded off the peninsula between the York and James at about Williamsburg. By 1640 they began claiming land north of the York as well, and in 1642, Opechancanough leased some land on the Piankatank to English settlers for the price of 50 bushels of corn a year.[citation needed]
Palisade[edit]
By 1634, a palisade (stockade) was completed across the Virginia Peninsula, which was about 6 miles (9.7 km) wide at that point between Queen's Creek which fed into the York River and Archer's Hope Creek, (since renamed College Creek) which fed into the James River. The new palisade provided some security from attacks by the Virginia Indians for colonists farming and fishing lower on the Peninsula from that point.
Anchored at its center by Middle Plantation on land patented by Dr. Potts, the palisade is partially described in the following extract from a letter written in 1634, from Jamestown, by Captain Thomas Yonge:
a strong palisade ... upon a straight between both rivers and ... a sufficient force of men to defence of the same, whereby all the lower part of Virginia have a range for their cattle, near forty miles in length and in most places twelve miles (19 km) broad. The pallisades is very near six miles (9.7 km) long, bounded in by two large Creeks. ... in this manner to take also in all the ground between those two Rivers, and so utterly excluded the Indians from thence; which work is conceived to be of extraordinary benefit to the country ...
Third Anglo-Powhatan War[edit]
After twelve years of peace following the Indian Wars of 1622-1632, another Anglo–Powhatan War began on April 18, 1644,[12] as a last effort by the remnants of the Powhatan Confederacy, still under Opechancanough, to dislodge the English settlers of the Virginia Colony.[10] Around 400 colonists were killed,[13] but that number represented a relatively low percent of the overall population, as opposed to the earlier massacre (the 1622 attack had wiped out a third; that of 1644 barely a tenth). However, Opechancanough, still preferring to use Powhatan tactics, did not make any major follow-up to this attack.
This was followed by a last effort by the settlers to decimate the Powhatan. In July, they marched against the Pamunkey, Chickahominy, and Powhatan proper; and south of the James, against the Appomattoc, Weyanoke, Warraskoyak, and Nansemond, as well as two Carolina tribes, the Chowanoke and Secotan.
In February 1645, the colony ordered the construction of three frontier forts: Fort Charles at the falls of the James, Fort James on the Chickahominy, and Fort Royal at the falls of the York. In August, Governor William Berkeley stormed Opechancanough's stronghold and captured him. All captured males in the village over age 11 were deported to Tangier Island.[14] Opechancanough, around 92 years old, was taken to Jamestown where he was shot in the back by a guard.[10] Opechancanough's death resulted in the disintegration of the Powhatan Confederacy into its component tribes, whom the colonists continued to attack. In March 1646, the colony decided to build a fourth frontier fort, Fort Henry, at the falls of the Appomattox, where the modern city of Petersburg is located.
Treaty of 1646[edit]
Red line shows boundary between the Virginia Colony and Tributary Indian tribes, as established by the Treaty of 1646. Red dot shows Jamestown, capital of Virginia Colony.
In the peace treaty of October 1646, the new weroance, Necotowance, and the subtribes formerly in the Confederacy, each became tributaries to the King of England. At the same time, a racial frontier was delineated between Indian and English settlements, with members of each group forbidden to cross to the other side except by special pass obtained at one of the newly erected border forts. The extent of the Virginia colony open to patent by English colonists was defined as: All the land between the Blackwater and York rivers, and up to the navigable point of each of the major rivers - which were connected by a straight line running directly from modern Franklin on the Blackwater, northwesterly to the Appomattoc village beside Fort Henry, and continuing in the same direction to the Monocan village above the falls of the James, where Fort Charles was built, then turning sharp right, to Fort Royal on the York (Pamunkey) river. Necotowance thus ceded the English vast tracts of still-uncolonized land, much of it between the James and Blackwater. English settlements on the peninsula north of the York and below the Poropotank were also allowed, as they had already been there since 1640.
Result of the Wars[edit]
The war's end ushered in 30 years of relative peace between the colonists and the Powhatan, shattered only by the attacks of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. This resulted in the Treaty of Middle Plantation signed by Cockacoeske, Powhatan's matrilineal successor. The treaty set up reservations for each tribe, and allowed them hunting rights outside their reservations. It established that all the Indian rulers were equal, with the provision that the "Queen of Pomunky" was now owed the ancient subjection of several scattered groups of Indians.[15]
Under her next two successors, lands within the original Pamunkey reservation, which was coterminous with King William County, Virginia, would be sold to the English, resulting in the relatively small Pamunkey and Mattaponi reservations of the present.
List of conflicts in the United States
History of Virginia
^ "First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614)". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
^ a b c Puglisi, Michael J. (1991). "Capt. John Smith, Pocahontas and a Clash of Cultures: A Case for the Ethnohistorical Perspective". The History Teacher. 25 (1): 97–103. JSTOR 494612.
^ Glenn, Keith (1944). "Captain John Smith and the Indians". Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 52 (4): 228–248. JSTOR 4245316.
^ Helen Rountree, Pocahontas's People, p. 38.
^ Rountree 1990, p. 55n; she notes that while historians such as Fausz place the beginning in 1609, her 'emphasis on diplomatic relations' would rather date the outbreak of the full-fledged war to 1610.
^ Rountree, p. 80 n.
^ Rountree, p.61
^ Historic Jamestowne National Park Service
^ [Pocahontas http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlresources/units/byrnes-famous/poca.html] Tammy Rodeback
^ a b c Spencer C. Tucker; James R. Arnold; Roberta Wiener (30 September 2011). The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-1-85109-697-8. Retrieved 30 March 2013.
^ Rice, James Douglas. "Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 30 Nov. 2015. Web. 12 Oct. 2018.
^ William Waller Hening, editor, The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature in the year 1619, 13 vols. (Richmond: Samuel Pleasants, Junior, 1809), vol. 1, page 290, "Act IV," 17 February 1644/5, "THAT the eighteenth day of April be yearly celebrated by thanksgivings for our deliverance from the hands of the Salvages.", digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org : 2 April 2019).
^ Joseph Frank, editor, “News from Virginny, 1644,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 65, no. 1, 1957, pp. 84–87, citing the Mercurius Civicus, No. 104 for the week of May 15-22, 1645, London; JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4246282 : accessed 14 April 2019.
^ A Study of Virginia Indians
^ 1677 treaty text Archived 2010-11-20 at the Wayback Machine
Grenier, John (2005). The First Way of War, American War Making of the Frontier, 1607-1814. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 24–25. ISBN 0521845661.
Rajtar, Steve (1999). Indian War Sites. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 0786407107.
Rountree, Helen (1990). Pocahontas's People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806122803.
Colonial conflicts involving the English/British Empire
Virginia (1609–46)
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Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anglo-Powhatan_Wars&oldid=892514842"
17th-century conflicts
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Lynda Bird Johnson Robb
Johnson Robb at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2018
First Lady of Virginia
In role
January 16, 1982 – January 18, 1986
Chuck Robb
Edwina P. Dalton
Jeannie Baliles
Second Lady of Virginia
John N. Dalton
Lynda Bird Johnson
(1944-03-19) March 19, 1944 (age 75)
Charles Robb (m. 1967)
University of Texas, Austin (BA)
Lynda Bird Johnson Robb (born March 19, 1944) is an American chairwoman who served as chairwoman of the Board of Reading is Fundamental, the nation's largest children's literacy organization, as well as chairwoman of the President's Advisory Committee for Women. She is also a magazine editor who served as First Lady of Virginia from 1982 to 1986, before that as Second Lady of Virginia from 1978 to 1982. She is the elder of the two daughters of former United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson and former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. She became the oldest living child of a U.S. President following the death of John Eisenhower on December 21, 2013.
Johnson and Chuck Robb's wedding at the White House, December 9, 1967
When Lynda Bird Johnson was born, her mother, Lady Bird, had suffered three miscarriages, and her doctor spoke pessimistically of her chances of having more children, so her father, Lyndon suggested that she be named for both her parents. Thus, the name "Lynda Bird."[1] She is the older of former President Lyndon B. Johnson's two daughters.[2]
Johnson was engaged to Bernard Rosenbach before she met the actor George Hamilton, who himself had been engaged to Susan Kohner. In 1966, Johnson and Hamilton began dating.[3][4] Because of an increase in Secret Service protection of Presidential relatives resulting from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Hamilton–Johnson couple were one of the first to be protected by Secret Service agents.
Johnson later married U.S. Marine Corps Captain Charles S. Robb in the East Room of the White House in 1967 in a service celebrated by the Right Reverend Gerald Nicholas McAllister. Her husband served with distinction in Vietnam. Charles Robb later became Lieutenant Governor of Virginia (1978–82), making her Second Lady of Virginia. Later, Robb became Governor of Virginia (1982–86), making her First Lady of Virginia. He also served two terms as U.S. Senator from Virginia.
On May 9, 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Robb to chair the President's Advisory Committee for Women. The committee of thirty worked to carry out Carter's mandate to promote equality for women in the cultural, social, economic, and political life of the United States.[5]
Robb served as Chairwoman of the Board of Reading is Fundamental (1996–2001), the nation's largest children's literacy organization. She continues to serve the organization as Chairwoman Emerita. She was a contributing editor to Ladies Home Journal magazine (1969–81). She serves on the Board of Directors of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Robb was educated at the National Cathedral School for Girls, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and was a member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. She holds an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Washington and Lee University and Norwich University and has been honored with a plethora of civic awards for her public service.
She has three, in her words, "almost perfect"[6] daughters, Lucinda Desha Robb (b. 1968), Catherine Lewis Robb (b. 1970) and Jennifer Wickliffe Robb (b. 1978).
In 2004, Robb attended the State funeral of former President Ronald Reagan, on behalf of her mother, Lady Bird Johnson, who was unable to attend because of poor health. She again represented her mother at the State funeral of former President Gerald Ford, who died December 26, 2006.
She also attended the funerals of Billy Graham, John McCain and George H W Bush
^ Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography at 103 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1980).
^ "First Daughters: Then and Now".
^ Source, The Reliable (13 February 2012). "Lynda Johnson Robb and George Hamilton: When a president's daughter dated a movie star".
^ "Hollywood Flashback: George Hamilton Once Took LBJ's Daughter to the Oscars".
^ Peters, Gerhard and John T. Woolley. "Jimmy Carter: "President's Advisory Committee for Women Appointment of Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Four Members". The American Presidency Project. Retrieved 10 December 2013.
^ Bunin, Patricia (1996-04-11). "An Azalea Queen of Long Ago, Lynda Robb, Enjoys Memories". The Virginian-Pilot. p. 5. Retrieved 2006-04-09.
37th Vice President of the United States (1961–1963)
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← John F. Kennedy
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WorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 4224833
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lynda_Bird_Johnson_Robb&oldid=884514702"
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Country (sports)
Lake Sherwood, California, U.S.
September 8, 2002 (last match)
August 25, 2003 (official)
Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peter Fischer (1980–1989)
Joe Brandi (1989–1991)
Tim Gullikson (1992–1995)
Vitas Gerulaitis (1994 Rome)
Paul Annacone (1995–2001)
Tom Gullikson (2001–2002)
José Higueras (2002)[1]
Paul Annacone (2002)
US$43,280,489
5th all-time leader in earnings
Int. Tennis HoF
2007 (member page)
Career record
762–222 (77.4%)
Career titles
No. 1 (April 12, 1993)
Grand Slam Singles results
W (1994, 1997)
W (1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000)
W (1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2002)
Tour Finals
Grand Slam Cup
3R (1992)
No. 27 (February 12, 1990)
Grand Slam Doubles results
1R (1988, 1989, 1990)
Pete Sampras (born August 12, 1971 as Petros Sampras) is an American former professional tennis player. A right-handed player with a single-handed backhand, his precise and powerful serve earned him the nickname "Pistol Pete". His professional career began in 1988 and ended at the 2002 US Open, which he won, defeating rival Andre Agassi in the final.
Sampras held the all-time record of seven Wimbledon Men's Singles titles with William Renshaw until 2017 when Roger Federer won his 8th title. Sampras also won five US Open titles, a joint Open-era record shared by Roger Federer and Jimmy Connors, and two Australian Open titles. His 14 Grand Slam titles were a record, surpassed when Federer won his 15th Grand Slam title at the 2009 Wimbledon Championships and later also by Rafael Nadal at the 2017 French Open and Novak Djokovic at the 2019 Australian Open. Sampras won 64 singles titles. He first reached world No. 1 in 1993, and held that position for a total of 286 weeks (second behind Federer 310 weeks as No. 1 player), including a record six consecutive year-end No. 1 rankings from 1993 to 1998. In 2007, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
2 Professional career
2.1 1988: Turning professional
2.2 1989: First Grand Slam match wins
2.3 1990: First major title at the U.S. Open
2.4 1991: Year-end Championship title
2.5 1992: First Masters title
2.6 1993: Wimbledon and US Open titles, world No. 1
2.7 1994: Australian Open and Wimbledon title
2.9 1996: US Open title and only Wimbledon loss in an 8-year period
2.10 1997: Australian Open and Wimbledon titles
2.11 1998: Wimbledon title
2.12 1999: Wimbledon Year-end titles
2.13 2000: 13 majors and return to No. 1
2.14 2001: No singles title and drop in ranking
2.15 2002: 14th major and retirement
2.16 Career summary
3 Post-retirement activity
4 Rivalries
4.1 Sampras vs. Agassi
4.2 Sampras vs. Rafter
5 Playing style
5.1 Equipment
7 Career statistics
7.1 Grand Slam performance timeline
9 Records and achievements
9.1 Records
9.2 Professional awards
9.3 Other achievements
10 Other awards
Sampras was born in Washington, D.C., the third child of Soterios "Sammy" and Georgia (née Vroustouris) Sampras. His mother emigrated from Sparta, Greece, and his father was born in the United States to a Greek father, Costas "Gus" Sampras and a Jewish mother, Sarah Steinberg.[2][3][4] He attended regular services of the Greek Orthodox Church on Sundays.[5] [6]At the age of 3, he discovered a tennis racket in the basement of his home and spent hours hitting balls against the wall.
In 1978, the Sampras family moved to Palos Verdes, California, and the warmer climate there allowed the seven-year-old Sampras to play tennis throughout more of the year. From early on, his great idol was Rod Laver, and at the age of 11, Sampras met and played tennis with the legend.[7] The Sampras family joined the Jack Kramer Club, and it was here that Sampras's talent became apparent. As a teenager, Sampras trained with tennis coach Robert Lansdorp. The forehand he learned from Lansdorp was the same forehand he used throughout his career. The key was an emphasis on driving through the ball and not hitting extreme topspin. [8] He was spotted by Dr. Peter Fischer, a pediatrician and tennis enthusiast, who coached Sampras until 1989.[7][9] Fischer was responsible for converting Sampras's double-handed backhand to single-hand with the goal of being better prepared to win Wimbledon.[10][11]
Professional career[edit]
1988: Turning professional[edit]
Sampras turned professional in 1988, at the age of 16, and finished the year ranked world No. 97 after starting the year at No. 893.[12] His first professional match was a loss to Sammy Giammalva, Jr. at the February Ebel U.S. Pro Indoor in Philadelphia. However, just one week later, at the Lipton International Players Championships in Miami, Sampras defeated two top-40 players, before losing to No. 18 Emilio Sánchez. Sampras did not defeat another top-40 player for almost six months, at which point he defeated No. 39 Michiel Schapers at a US Open warm-up tournament in Rye Brook, New York. In his first Grand Slam singles match, Sampras lost to No. 69 Jaime Yzaga of Peru in the first round of the US Open. Sampras did not advance past the quarterfinals in his next three tournaments, although he did record wins over No. 79 Jim Courier in their first career match-up, along with defeating No. 8 Tim Mayotte.[13]
1989: First Grand Slam match wins[edit]
The following year, Sampras slightly improved his ranking to a year-ending No. 81.[14] He lost in the first round of the 1989 Australian Open to Christian Saceanu and, at that year's French Open, won a Grand Slam singles match for the first time in his career; in the second round he lost to eventual champion and fellow American teenager Michael Chang in their first career match-up. A few weeks later, Sampras lost in the first round of Wimbledon to Todd Woodbridge. At the US Open, Sampras defeated defending champion and fifth-seeded Mats Wilander in the second round before losing to No. 13 Jay Berger in the fourth round. To end the year, Sampras lost in the first round in four consecutive tournaments.[15]
1990: First major title at the U.S. Open[edit]
He lost to Wilander in the quarterfinals of the tournament in Sydney. At the Australian Open, Sampras upset twelfth-ranked Mayotte in the first round before losing to thirteenth-ranked Yannick Noah in the fourth round in four sets. His first professional singles title came in February at the Ebel U.S. Pro Indoor in Philadelphia, where he defeated sixth-ranked Andre Agassi, eighth-ranked Mayotte, and eighteenth-ranked Andrés Gómez in the final. This title elevated his ranking into the top 20 for the first time. Sampras finished 1990 at No. 5, having started the year ranked No. 61 just prior to the start of the Australian Open.[16]
Sampras did not play in the 1990 French Open and again lost in the first round of Wimbledon, this time to Christo van Rensburg. Sampras played seven consecutive weeks during the North American summer hard-court season. He defeated John McEnroe in the quarterfinals of the Canadian Open, but then lost to Chang in the semifinals. He also reached the semifinals of the tournament in Los Angeles, where he lost to No. 2 Stefan Edberg. He did not advance past the quarterfinals in his next three tournaments, losing to Chang, Richey Reneberg, and Goran Ivanišević.
In September, Sampras captured his first Grand Slam title, at the US Open. Along the way, he defeated sixth-ranked Thomas Muster in the fourth round and third-ranked Ivan Lendl in a five-set quarterfinal, breaking Lendl's streak of eight consecutive US Open finals. He then defeated 20th-ranked McEnroe in a four-set semifinal to set up a final with fourth-ranked Agassi. Sampras beat Agassi in straight sets to become the US Open's youngest-ever male singles champion at the age of 19 years and 28 days.[17] He played five more tournaments and won the Grand Slam Cup to complete his year.[18]
1991: Year-end Championship title[edit]
Sampras in 1992
In 1991, Sampras captured the first of his five career titles at the year-end Tennis Masters Cup. Upon entering the US Open as the defending champion that year, he caused controversy when, after losing in the quarterfinals to Jim Courier, Sampras said that he was not disappointed and felt relieved that the pressure to defend his title was no longer on him. This led to widespread criticism, which included disparaging remarks from Courier and Jimmy Connors.[19]
1992: First Masters title[edit]
In 1992, Sampras reached the quarterfinals of the French Open for the first of three consecutive years, made it to the Wimbledon semifinals, and was the runner-up at the US Open to Stefan Edberg. Sampras later stated that his loss in the US Open final that year was a "wake-up call" and that he needed to figure out how to become the world No. 1.[20] He also played doubles with John McEnroe on the US team that won the Davis Cup, duplicating the feat in 1995.
1992 was also the year when Sampras made his only competitive appearance at the Olympics. The event was played on clay, his worst surface. Nonetheless, Sampras advanced to the third round before giving up a two-set lead and losing to Andrei Cherkasov of Russia.
1993: Wimbledon and US Open titles, world No. 1[edit]
Sampras reached the semifinals of the Australian Open in early 1993, losing again to Stefan Edberg and matching the previous year's quarterfinal performance at the French Open. In April 1993, Sampras attained the No. 1 ranking for the first time. His rise to the top of the rankings was controversial because he had not recently won any Grand Slam titles,[21] but he justified his ranking three months later by claiming his first of seven Wimbledon titles, beating former world No. 1 and fellow American Jim Courier in the final. This was followed by his second US Open title. He finished the year as the clear No. 1 and set a new ATP Tour record that year by becoming the first player to serve more than 1,000 aces in a season.
1994: Australian Open and Wimbledon title[edit]
Sampras won the first of two Australian Open titles in 1994, defeating American Todd Martin in the final, and then defended his Wimbledon later that year.
In 1995, Sampras battled with co-patriot Andre Agassi for the world No. 1 ranking. Sampras experienced one of the most emotional matches of his career, when he played Courier in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.[22] Sampras' longtime coach and close friend, Tim Gullikson, had mysteriously collapsed during the tournament and was forced to return to the United States. Gullikson was later diagnosed with brain cancer, to which he succumbed the following year. Saddened by Gullikson's illness, Sampras began visibly weeping during the match when a spectator shouted to win it for Gullikson, but managed to defeat Courier. Sampras went on to lose the final to Andre Agassi in four sets. Paul Annacone took over as Sampras' full-time coach after Gullikson's illness made it impossible for him to continue coaching.[23]
Sampras defeated Agassi in the final at Indian Wells, and then won his third straight Wimbledon title over Boris Becker. Sampras lost in the final of the Canadian Masters to Agassi, and then beat Agassi in the final of the US Open.[23]
1996: US Open title and only Wimbledon loss in an 8-year period[edit]
In the year's first major, the Australian Open, the top-seeded Sampras lost to the unseeded Mark Philippoussis 6-4, 7-6(11–9), 7-6(7–3) in the tournament's third round. Sampras had what would end up being his best run ever at that year's French Open, losing in a semifinal match to the eventual winner, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, 7-6(7–4), 6-0, 6-2.
In the eight Wimbledons inclusive between 1993 and 2000, 1996 was the only year that Sampras would fail to win the championship at Wimbledon. Sampras lost in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon to the eventual winner, Richard Krajicek, the tournament's 17th-seed. The match lasted three long sets, with Krajicek winning 7-5, 7-6(7–3), 6-4.
In the quarterfinals of the US Open, Sampras vomited on the court at 1–1 in the final set tiebreak (due to dehydration) while facing Àlex Corretja; nonetheless, Sampras would win that match. Sampras advanced to the finals where he defeated No. 2 Michael Chang to defend his US Open title.
Sampras finished off the year by claiming the season-ending ATP Tour World Championship.
1997: Australian Open and Wimbledon titles[edit]
Sampras won his second Australian Open title in January, defeating Carlos Moyá in the final.[24] In July, he won Wimbledon for the fourth time, defeating Cédric Pioline in the final.[25] Sampras also won singles titles in San Jose, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Munich, and Paris, and the ATP Tour World Championships in Hanover, Germany. He became the only player to win both the Grand Slam Cup and the ATP Tour World Championships in the same year.
He had a 10–1 win–loss record against top-10 opponents and was undefeated in eight singles finals. He held the No. 1 ranking for the entire year and joined Jimmy Connors (1974–1978) as the only male players to hold the year-end No. 1 ranking for five consecutive years. His prize money earnings of US$6,498,211 for the year was a career high.
1998: Wimbledon title[edit]
In 1998, Sampras's No. 1 ranking was challenged by Chilean player Marcelo Ríos. Sampras failed to defend his Australian Open title, losing in the quarterfinals to Karol Kučera,[26] and won Wimbledon only after a hard-fought five-set victory over Goran Ivanišević.
Sampras lost in the final of the Cincinnati Masters to Patrick Rafter after a controversial line call. Sampras faced Rafter again in the semifinals of the US Open, losing in five sets after leading the match two sets to one, and Rafter went on to win his second consecutive US Open title. Sampras lost another semifinal at the Tennis Masters Cup to eventual champion Àlex Corretja. Nevertheless, Sampras finished the year as the top-ranked player for the sixth year in a row.
1999: Wimbledon Year-end titles[edit]
The year started with a withdrawal from the Australian Open and Sampras failed to win a title during the early part of the season. However, he then went on a 24-match winning streak, including the Stella Artois Championships, Wimbledon (equaling Roy Emerson's record of 12 Grand Slam singles titles), Los Angeles, and Cincinnati (a rematch of last year's final with Patrick Rafter). Sampras' victory over Andre Agassi in the Wimbledon final is often cited as one of the greatest performances in a Wimbledon final,[27] (despite this, he lost his no. 1 ranking to Agassi the following day, when ATP Tour rankings were updated). That run ended when he was forced to retire from the RCA Championships and the US Open because of a herniated disc in his back.
Sampras' ranking was hurt through a combination of withdrawing from the Australian and US Opens, tournaments in which he had strong performances during the previous year, and the resurgence of longtime rival Agassi, putting an end to Sampras' six consecutive years of finishing as world No. 1. Agassi took over the top ranking and held it for the rest of the season, but Sampras recovered and managed to beat him in the season-ending Tennis Masters Cup for the fifth and final time, enabling Sampras to remain third in the rankings.
2000: 13 majors and return to No. 1[edit]
Sampras reached the semifinals of the Australian Open in early 2000, falling to the eventual champion Agassi in a five-set match. He won the Ericsson Open for the third time in March. After getting knocked out in the first round at the French Open, he won his seventh and final title at Wimbledon, battling through tendinitis in his right shin and a painful back injury in the process equalling the then all time gentleman's singles title record of William Renshaw. This was his monumental 13th Grand Slam singles title, breaking the all-time record of Roy Emerson that had stood for over 30 years.
In the 2000 US Open, Sampras overcame Richard Krajicek in four sets at the quarterfinals (including a comeback from 2-6 down in a tiebreaker) but lost the final to Marat Safin.[28] Sampras' run to the final briefly returned him to the No. 1 ranking, but Gustavo Kuerten ended the year atop the rankings.[29] This would be the last time Sampras was ranked No. 1, extending his ATP record career total to 286 weeks; the record was surpassed by Roger Federer in 2012.
2001: No singles title and drop in ranking[edit]
Sampras' 31-match Wimbledon win streak ended in a five set loss to Roger Federer, aged 19, in the fourth round; this was the only time the two tennis legends ever played an official professional match. At the US Open, Sampras reached the final but lost in straight sets to Lleyton Hewitt.[30] Overall, this season was the first in 12 years that Sampras did not win a single title, and he finished the year ranked No. 10, also his lowest since 1989.
2002: 14th major and retirement[edit]
In 2002, Sampras suffered an early exit from Wimbledon, losing in the second round to No. 145 fast-court specialist George Bastl of Switzerland. After that loss, Sampras asked his former coach Paul Annacone to return and coach through the US Open.[31] Sampras had a relatively poor summer leading up to the US Open, losing at Cincinnati to No. 70-ranked Wayne Arthurs in the second round, and then being eliminated at the opening round at Long Island by No. 85. Paul-Henri Mathieu.
At the US Open, Sampras was seeded 17th. Greg Rusedski, whom Sampras had defeated in a long five-set third round match at the US Open, said that Sampras was "a step and a half slower" and predicted that Sampras would lose his next match. Sampras, however, then defeated two young stars, Tommy Haas in the fourth round and Andy Roddick in the quarterfinals. He then defeated Sjeng Schalken in the semifinals to reach his third straight US Open final, and eighth US Open final overall, tying Ivan Lendl's all-time record. This time, he faced Agassi, whom he had met in his very first Grand Slam final 12 years earlier. After a four-set battle between the two veterans, Sampras claimed a then-record 14th Grand Slam singles title and matched Jimmy Connors' record of five US Open singles championships.[32]
Sampras did not compete in any tour events in the following 12 months, but he did not officially announce his retirement until August 2003, just prior to the US Open.[33] He chose not to defend his title there, but his retirement announcement was timed so that he could say farewell at a special ceremony organized for him at the Open.[33] At the time of his retirement, many regarded Sampras as the greatest player of all time.[34][35]
Career summary[edit]
Sampras won 64 top-level singles titles (including 14 Grand Slam titles, 11 Super 9/ATP Masters Series/ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles and five Tennis Masters Cup titles) and two doubles titles. He was ranked the world No. 1 for a total of 286 weeks (the second most of all-time after Roger Federer's 310 weeks) and was year-end No. 1 for an ATP record six consecutive years from 1993 through 1998.
Sampras was known for his natural attacking serve-and-volley game, all-round game, and strong competitive instinct. Sampras's best surface was undoubtedly the fast-playing grass courts,[36] Sampras won seven Wimbledon Gentleman's Singles titles (1993–95, 1997–2000), broken only by a loss in the 1996 quarterfinals to eventual winner Richard Krajicek. Sampras's seven Wimbledon Gentleman's Singles titles, tied with William Renshaw, has only been surpassed by Roger Federer who won a record eighth Gentleman's Singles title in 2017.[37] Sampras is lauded by many tennis analysts as one of the greatest male grass-court players of all time.[27] Sampras also shares the record of five US Open titles in the Open Era with Jimmy Connors and Federer. He won back-to-back US Open titles in 1995 and 1996, despite vomiting on the court at 1–1 in the final set tiebreak due to dehydration in the 1996 quarterfinals against Àlex Corretja. Combined with his two Australian Open titles, this gave Sampras a total of fourteen majors won on grass and hard courts.
Sampras's only real weakness was on clay courts, where the slow surface tempered his natural attacking serve-and-volley game. His best performance at the French Open came in 1996, when he lost a semifinal match to the eventual winner, Yevgeny Kafelnikov. Despite his limited success at Roland Garros, Sampras did win some significant matches on clay. He won a 1992 clay court tournament in Kitzbühel, defeating Alberto Mancini in the final. He won the prestigious Italian Open in 1994, defeating Boris Becker in the final, and two singles matches in the 1995 Davis Cup final against Russians Andrei Chesnokov and Yevgeny Kafelnikov in Moscow. Sampras also won a 1998 clay court tournament in Atlanta, defeating Jason Stoltenberg in the final.
Post-retirement activity[edit]
Pete Sampras at Champions Cup Boston, in 2007
On April 6, 2006, three and a half years after his retirement, Sampras resurfaced and played his first exhibition match in River Oaks, Houston, Texas, against 23-year-old Robby Ginepri. Ginepri won the match in two sets. Sampras later announced that he would be playing in World Team Tennis events.
2007 saw Sampras announcing that he would play in a few events on the Outback Champions Series, a group of tournaments for former ATP players who have met certain criteria during their careers.[38] Sampras won his first two events on tour, defeating Todd Martin in both finals (one of which included Sampras's first trip to his ancestral homeland, Greece).[39] Many observers noted that despite his lengthy layoff from competitive tournaments, Sampras still possessed many of the previous skills he had displayed while on the ATP tour, with commentator John McEnroe going as far as to say that Sampras would be worthy of a top five seeding at Wimbledon were he to enter the tournament.[40]
On November 20, 2007, Sampras lost the first of three exhibition matches in Asia against Roger Federer in Seoul, Korea.[41] Two days later in Kuala Lumpur, Sampras again lost to Federer in two tiebreaks. However, Sampras was able to win the last match of the series, winning in two sets on fast carpet.[42]
On February 18, 2008, in an exhibition match during the SAP Open, Sampras defeated another active player, former No. 2 Tommy Haas. Sampras dispatched the German in 43 minutes.[43]
On March 10, 2008, Sampras played another exhibition match against No. 1 Roger Federer at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Sampras once again lost the match in three tight sets.[44]
In 2009 Sampras won two Outback Champions Series titles. He defeated McEnroe in the final of the Champions Cup Boston in February and Patrick Rafter in the final of The Del Mar Development Champions Cup in March.[45]
Sampras was present at the 2009 Wimbledon final between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer to witness Federer eclipse his mark of 14 major titles and become the most successful man in Grand Slam history. Sampras's record of 14 majors had lasted for seven years.
The following year along with Federer, Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal, he played an exhibition doubles match at Indian Wells to raise money for the people of Haiti who had been affected by the earthquake.
In November 2010 Sampras reported that many of his trophies and memorabilia had been stolen from a West Los Angeles public storage facility.[46] The loss included the trophy from his first Australian Open victory,[47] two Davis Cups, an Olympic ring and six trophies for finishing top in the year-end rankings.[48] Most of the stolen items have since been recovered and returned.[49]
On November 17, 2011, Sampras played and lost an exhibition match against Milos Raonic. Sampras’ serve approached 200 km/h throughout the night.[50]
Rivalries[edit]
Sampras vs. Agassi[edit]
Main article: Agassi–Sampras rivalry
The rivalry has been called the greatest of the generation of players competing in the 90's, as they were the most successful players of that decade, and had a contrasting playing style, with both Sampras and Agassi being respectively considered the greatest server and the greatest serve returner of their eras. Sampras won 20 of the 34 matches he played against Agassi.[51]
The 1990 US Open was their first meeting in a Grand Slam tournament final. Agassi was favored because he was ranked No. 4, compared to the No. 12 ranking of Sampras and because Agassi had defeated Sampras in their only previously completed match. However, Agassi lost the final to Sampras in straight sets.
Their next meeting in a Grand Slam was at the 1992 French Open, where they met in the quarterfinals. Although Sampras was higher ranked, Agassi prevailed in straight sets. Their next Grand Slam meeting was at the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 1993, where Agassi was the defending champion and Sampras was the newly minted No. 1. Sampras prevailed in five sets, and went on to win his first Wimbledon championship.
With both Sampras and Agassi participating, the U.S. won the Davis Cup in 1995. Notable Sampras-Agassi matches of 1995 included the finals of the Australian Open, the Newsweek Champions Cup, the Lipton International Players Championships, the Canadian Open, and the US Open, with Sampras winning the Newsweek Champions Cup and the US Open.
The next time Sampras and Agassi met in a Grand Slam final was at Wimbledon in 1999, where Sampras won in straight sets. For both, it was considered a career rejuvenation, as Sampras had suffered a string of disappointments in the last year while Agassi was regaining his status as a top-ranked player after winning the French Open. Sampras forfeited the No. 1 ranking to Agassi when injury forced Sampras to withdraw from that year's US Open, which Agassi went on to win. They faced each other twice in the season-ending ATP Tour World Championships, with Sampras losing the round-robin match, but winning the final.
They played each other only once in 2000. The top-ranked Agassi defeated No. 3 Sampras in the semifinals of the Australian Open in five sets.
In arguably their most memorable match, Sampras defeated Agassi in the 2001 US Open quarterfinals 6–7, 7–6, 7–6, 7–6. There were no breaks of serve during the entire match. Reruns of the match are frequently featured on television, especially during US Open rain delays.
The final of the 2002 US Open was their first meeting in a US Open final since 1995. The match was also notable because they had defeated several up-and-coming players en route to the final. Sampras had defeated No. 3 Tommy Haas in the fourth round and future No. 1 Andy Roddick in the quarterfinals, while Agassi had defeated No. 1 and defending champion Lleyton Hewitt in the semifinals. Sampras defeated Agassi in four sets. This was the final ATP tour singles match of Sampras's career.[52]
In August 2010, Sampras played an exhibition game with Andre Agassi at the indoor arena Coliseo Cubierto El Campin in Bogotá, Colombia.
Sampras vs. Rafter[edit]
Sampras won 12 of the 16 matches he played against Patrick Rafter, including eight of their first nine, and their final four meetings.[53]
In 1997, Rafter won the US Open, a tournament that many expected Sampras to win, having won in 1995 and 1996. The win catapulted Rafter to the year-end no. 2 rankings behind Sampras. Seven-time Grand Slam champion John McEnroe believed Rafter to be a "one-slam wonder", since it was only his second career ATP title.[54] Up to that point, Sampras was 5-1 against Rafter, and defeated Rafter three times in fall 1997 to solidify his No. 1 ATP ranking.[55] "We're not the best of mates," Rafter said of Sampras after 1997 Davis Cup semifinals, "I wouldn't go out for a beer with him, put it that way. I don't know what the story is. There's a bit of feeling."[56]
In 1998, Rafter came back from a set down to defeat Sampras in the Cincinnati Masters final, a title that Sampras needed to win in order get the maximum ranking points to stay No. 1 ahead of Marcelo Ríos. During that match, Rafter's serve was called out, but the umpire overruled the call to give Rafter the ace and the Cincinnati title. Sampras was displeased, and stood at the baseline for several seconds, making the victorious Rafter wait at the net, and then refused to shake the umpire's hand.[55] Sampras, at the time winner of 11 Grand Slams, when asked about the difference between himself and Rafter, said "Ten grand slams", that a controversial line-call cost him the match, and that a player had to come back and win another Grand Slam title in order to be considered great.[57][58] Rafter went on to win the Canadian Masters as well, earning the third seed at the 1998 US Open.
The two met in the semifinals of the 1998 US Open, where Sampras was slowed in the third set by a leg injury and called for a trainer, and Rafter broke Sampras twice in the deciding fifth set.[55] Sampras's loss denied him the chance to match two records—Jimmy Connors' mark of five U.S. Open titles and Roy Emerson's record of 12 Grand Slam singles titles. Sampras cited a leg injury as the reason Rafter won, an attitude that upset the Australian: "He really does say some funny things at the wrong time", said Rafter, "We are out there busting our guts and he doesn't show a lot of respect at the end of the day. He tries to play down the reason why he lost, giving no respect to the other player, and that is what really upsets me about him and the reason I try to piss him off as much as I can."[59] Following Rafter's successful defense of his 1997 U.S. Open title by defeating Mark Philippoussis in the 1998 final, when asked about Sampras' earlier comments about having to win another Grand Slam in order to be considered great, Rafter replied: "Maybe you can ask him that question, if he thinks that now. For me, I won another Slam, and it hasn't sunk in yet. It's very, very exciting for me, especially to repeat it".[57] For his part, Sampras said about Rafter, "When I see him holding the US Open trophy, it pisses me off."[60] Rafter responded by calling Sampras a “cry baby” and saying that it would be better for tennis if someone besides the American were No. 1.[55] Some had suggested at the time that the Sampras-Rafter feud was inflamed by the media since Sampras' traditional rival Andre Agassi was still in the midst of a comeback from injury.
Sampras, whose struggles from 1998 continued over to early 1999, lost a third consecutive time against Rafter at the World Team Cup, in straight sets, just before the French Open. By the summer of 1999 having rebuilt his confidence, en route to compiling a 24-match winning streak of four titles including Wimbledon, Sampras prevailed against Rafter in the Cincinnati Masters final, a rematch of the previous year's final, and the two were friendly in the trophy ceremony.[55] Later that summer, Sampras withdrew from the U.S. Open due to an injured back, while Rafter retired in the first round as a result of a torn rotor cuff.[61]
The next Sampras-Rafter match was the 2000 Wimbledon final, after Rafter overcame Agassi in the semifinals, a four-set final which included a 26-minute rain delay. Both players had flown in their parents for the Wimbledon final, the first time in years they would see their sons play.[56] Sampras lost the first-set tiebreaker, and trailed in the second-set tiebreaker 1-4 before taking 5 consecutive points to win that set, then won the third and fourth sets for the Championship, with just 10 minutes of daylight left. That victory gave Sampras his 13th Grand Slam title, breaking the record of 12 by Roy Emerson for the most Grand Slam titles. After the match ended, Sampras called Rafter “all class, on and off the court”, while Rafter said he was lucky to overcome early season injuries to make the final.[55][62][63]
Sampras and Rafter met in the fourth round of the 2001 US Open, with Sampras winning.[64]
Playing style[edit]
Sampras was an all-court player who would often serve and volley. Possessing an all-around skill, in the early years of his career, when not serving, his strategy was to be offensive from the baseline, put opponents in a defensive position, and finish points at the net. In his later years, he became even more offensive and would either employ a chip-and-charge strategy or try to hit an offensive shot on the return and follow his return to the net.[65]
He had an accurate and powerful first serve, one of the best of all time.[66] He had great disguise on both his first and second serves, and his second serve was nearly as powerful as his first. He was known for producing aces on critical points, even with his second serves.[67][68]
Sampras was able to hit winners from both his forehand and backhand from all over the court. He was able to catch attacks wide to his forehand using his speed and hitting a forehand shot on the run. When successfully executed, he won many points outright or put opponents immediately on the defensive, due to the considerable pace and flat nature of the shot. This style did not help him on clay courts, according to some critics.[69]
Equipment[edit]
Sampras used one racket type, the Wilson Pro Staff Original,[70] for his entire professional career—a racket first introduced in 1983. He played with Babolat natural gut, with all his rackets re-strung before each match (used or not) at 75 lbs tension (more or less, depending on conditions). His rackets had weight added to bring them close to 400 g, but the frame proper was a production model manufactured at a Wilson factory on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. The handles were custom-built.[71]
Post-retirement, Sampras has used a slightly modified Pro Staff Tour 90 and, from 2008, a new version of the original Pro Staff, produced with in-between head size of 88 square inches and heavier weight at 349 grams unstrung.[72]
Since mid-2010,[73] Sampras has been spotted at multiple exhibitions playing with a Babolat Pure Storm Tour, along with Babolat's popular RPM Blast strings.[74]
"I need a little more pop...I need it if I'm going to play some tennis," he said after playing Gael Monfils in an exhibition at the SAP Open.[75]
During a good part of 2011, Sampras used a racquet that was painted all black, with Tourna Grip and Tourna Damper.
In the late 1980s, Sampras signed a three-year endorsement contract with Sergio Tacchini. It was extended to five years before Sampras signed with Nike in 1994.[76] He wore Nike apparel and Nike Air Oscillate footwear on court.[77]
Pete's father and mother are from Greece and his paternal grandmother is Jewish. He is related to Lauren Trainor. Sampras's older sister, Stella Sampras Webster, is the women's tennis head coach at UCLA,[78] and his younger sister, Marion, is a teacher in Los Angeles. His older brother, Gus, has been tournament director at the Scottsdale ATP event. In 2007 he became president of the firm managing Pete's business activities.[79]
On September 30, 2000, Sampras married American actress and former Miss Teen USA Bridgette Wilson.[80] On November 21, 2002, their son, Christian Charles Sampras, was born.[81] On July 29, 2005, the couple had their second son, Ryan Nikolaos Sampras.[82] They reside in Lake Sherwood, California.[83]
Sampras has β-thalassemia minor, a genetic trait that sometimes causes mild anemia.[84]
A book titled Facing Sampras: Symposium of a Champion was published in December 2017.
Politically, Sampras is a Republican. He supported John McCain in 2008.[85][86][86]
Career statistics[edit]
Main article: Pete Sampras career statistics
Grand Slam performance timeline[edit]
Australian Open 1R 4R A A SF W F 3R W QF A SF 4R 4R 2 / 11 45–9 83.33%
French Open 2R A 2R QF QF QF 1R SF 3R 2R 2R 1R 2R 1R 0 / 13 24–13 64.86%
Wimbledon 1R 1R 2R SF W W W QF W W W W 4R 2R 7 / 14 63–7 90%
US Open 1R 4R W QF F W 4R W W 4R SF A F F W 5 / 14 71–9 88.75%
Win–Loss
Due to his achievements, Sampras is regarded by many as one of the greatest tennis players in the history of the sport.[87][88]
Records and achievements[edit]
Records[edit]
These records were attained in Open Era of tennis.
Records in bold indicate peer-less achievements.
Time span
Selected Grand Slam tournament records
Players matched
1995 Wimbledon —
2000 US Open 8 consecutive finals appearances won[a] Stands alone
1992 US Open —
2002 US Open 11 consecutive years reaching 1+ final Ivan Lendl
2002 Wimbledon 90% (63–7) grass court match winning percentage Stands alone
2002 US Open Won a Grand Slam in teens, twenties and thirties Rafael Nadal
Ken Rosewall
Grand Slam tournaments
Records at each Grand Slam tournament
US Open 1990–2002 5 titles overall[89] Jimmy Connors
1990–2002 8 finals overall[90] Ivan Lendl
1988–2002 88.75% (71–9) match winning percentage Stands alone
1990 Youngest US Open champion[91]
Other selected records
1993–1998 6 years finished at Year–End No. 1[91][92][93] Stands alone
1990, 1997 2 Grand Slam Cup titles Stands alone
1997–1998 4 U.S. Pro Indoor titles Rod Laver
Jimmy Connors
Professional awards[edit]
ATP Player of the Year: 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998.[94]
ITF World Champion: 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998.[95]
Other achievements[edit]
Sampras (1997–2000) won four consecutive Wimbledon singles titles, second only to Borg and Federer (who have five consecutive titles each).
During the Open Era, only Borg (1978–81 French Open and 1976–80 Wimbledon), Sampras (1997–2000 Wimbledon), Federer (2003–07 Wimbledon and 2004–08 US Open), and Rafael Nadal (2005–08 French Open and 2010–2014 French Open) have won at least one Grand Slam tournament four consecutive times.
Ken Rosewall, Sampras and Rafael Nadal are the only men to have won Grand Slam singles titles as a teenager, in their 20s, and in their 30s.
Sampras won 40 of the 42 singles matches he played on Wimbledon's Centre Court and 63 of the 70 singles matches he played at the All England Club.
Sampras is the only player to win all seven Wimbledon finals he played. In terms of most finals won at a single Grand Slam tournament without losing any, he is second to Nadal in the Open Era (who won all twelve of his French Open finals), and tied with Novak Djokovic (who won all seven of his Australian Open finals).
Other awards[edit]
Summary of professional awards.[96]
U.S. Olympic Committee "Sportsman of the Year" in 1997. He was the first tennis player to receive this award.[97]
GQ Magazine's Individual Athlete Award for Man of the Year in 2000.
Selected the No. 1 player (of 25 players) in the past 25 years by a panel of 100 current and past players, journalists, and tournament directors to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ATP in 1997.
Voted 48th athlete of Top 50 Greatest North American Athletes of ESPN's SportsCentury (also youngest on list).
In 2005, TENNIS Magazine named Sampras the greatest tennis player for the period 1965 through 2005, from its list, "The 40 Greatest Players of the TENNIS Era".
Tennis portal
List of Grand Slam men's singles champions
All-time tennis records – men's singles
Open Era tennis records – men's singles
^ This record was achieved in non-consecutive Majors. The record for most consecutive Grand Slam finals won is 4, achieved by Rod Laver in 1969 (the same year he achieved the Grand Slam) and Novak Djokovic in 2015—16.
^ Dillman, Lisa (July 16, 2002). "Sampras Lets Higueras Go". Los Angeles Times.
^ http://articles.latimes.com/1990-09-20/news/vw-1091_1_pete-sampras/2
^ "Sampras visits ancestral home for first time". MSNBC. Associated Press. May 15, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ Higdon, David (October 2, 1996). "Questions from the Net: Your Top Ten Questions to Pete Sampras". Tennisserver.com. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ Srinivasan, Archana (2007). Biographies of Bio-Sporting Legends. Sura Books. p. 80. ISBN 81-7478-644-9.
^ https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2007/jul/01/tennis.features
^ a b "The King of Swing. Pete Sampras". Petesampras.com. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
^ https://www.tennisplayer.net/public/famouscoach/robert_lansdorp/lansdorp_and_champions_mind/lansdorp_and_champions_mind.html
^ Spadea, Vince; Dan Markowitz (2006). Break Point: The Secret Diary of a Pro Tennis Player. ECW Press. pp. 36, 125. ISBN 1-55022-729-7.
^ Shifrin, Joshua (2005). 101 Incredible Moments in Tennis: The Good, the Bad and the Infamous. Virtualbookworm.com Publishers. p. 229. ISBN 1-58939-820-3.
^ Robson, Douglas (June 24, 2008). "One-handed backhand now a rarity in post-Henin era". USA Today. Retrieved June 5, 2010.
^ "Pete Sampras' Rankings History for 1988". Official ATP World Tour website. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
^ "1988 Player Activity for Pete Sampras". ATP World Tour. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
^ Srinivasan, 2007, Bio-Sporting Legends, p. 83.
^ Schwartz, Larry. "Sampras competes against best – ever". ESPN. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ "Upon Hall of Fame Induction, Sampras Says a Loss Spurred Wins". The New York Times. Associated Press. July 15, 2007. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ Sampras, Pete; Peter Bodo (2008). A Champion's Mind: Lessons from a Life in Tennis. Crown Publishing Group. p. 92. ISBN 0-307-38329-6.
^ Bud Collins (January 26, 1995). "Old friends battle it out to the death". Archived from the original on August 8, 2009. Retrieved June 27, 2009.
^ a b Jennifer Frey (September 11, 1995). "With Dedication, Sampras Aces Third U.S. Open". Washington Post.
^ White, Derrick (January 27, 1997). "Tennis: Sampras barely breaks sweat". The Independent. London: Independent Print Limited. Retrieved May 9, 2012.
^ Roberts, John (July 7, 1997). "Tennis: Wimbledon '97 – Sparkling Sampras reigns supreme". The Independent. London: Independent Print Limited. Retrieved May 9, 2012.
^ "Sport: Tennis – Pistol Pete fired from Open". BBC Sport. British Broadcasting Corporation. January 27, 1998. Retrieved May 8, 2012.
^ a b https://www.theguardian.com/wimbledon/Story/0,,206142,00.html
^ Selena Roberts (September 7, 2000). "U.S. Open; Sampras Awakes To Stop Krajicek". The New York Times.
^ "Aussie disarms Sampras serve, rolls to U.S. Open". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
^ "U.S. Open – The day Pete Sampras' fire returned – ESPN". Espn.go.com. September 6, 2012. Retrieved August 3, 2014.
^ "Sampras wins first title in more than two years". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
^ a b Jim Litke (2003). "Sampras: '100 Percent Retired'". CBS News. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
^ Raymond Lee (September 14, 2007). "Greatest Player Of All Time: A Statistical Analysis". Tennis Week. Archived from the original on June 28, 2009. Retrieved June 27, 2009.
^ "40 Greatest Players of the Tennis Era". Tennis magazine. Archived from the original on August 14, 2009. Retrieved February 14, 2007.
^ based on total wins per surface.
^ https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/roll_of_honour/gentlemenssingles.html
^ Ulmann, Howard (February 7, 2007). "Sampras 'to see how it goes' in Champions Series return". USA Today. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ "Pete Sampras beats Todd Martin to win Athens seniors event". Associated Press. May 20, 2007. Archived from the original on December 10, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ "Senior tour a crowd-pleasing idea". The Gazette. May 15, 2007. Archived from the original on February 14, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ "Federer beats Sampras in first of three exhibitions". Associated Press. November 20, 2007. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ "Third time the charm as Sampras wins in straight sets". ESPN. November 24, 2007. Retrieved December 5, 2010.
^ "Sampras shows no mercy in beating Haas in exhibition". Associated Press. February 19, 2008. Archived from the original on December 8, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
^ "Clash of the Tennis Titans". The Tennis Channel. 2008. Archived from the original on February 18, 2008. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
^ "2009 EVENTS". Archived from the original on February 17, 2009.
^ "Pete Sampras' tennis trophies stolen". ESPN. December 8, 2010. Retrieved December 9, 2010.
^ "Pete Sampras tennis trophies stolen from storage depot". BBC News. December 8, 2010. Retrieved December 9, 2010.
^ Dwyre, Bill (December 7, 2010). "One of tennis' ultimate winners, Pete Sampras, suffers a major loss". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 9, 2010.
^ "Sampras' stolen trophies turn up at hospital – News | FOX Sports on MSN". Msn.foxsports.com. March 22, 2011. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ faceofftennis (November 22, 2011). "Big-serving Canuck Raonic downs the great Sampras « The Face-Off presented by SAP". Samprasvsraonic.com. Archived from the original on April 26, 2012. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ "Sampras-Agassi Head-to-Head Matches". ATP Official website. Retrieved November 28, 2008.
^ Muir, Allan. "Breaking news, real-time scores and daily analysis from Sports Illustrated – SI.com". Sportsillustrated.cnn.com. Retrieved August 3, 2014.
^ "Sampras-Rafter Career Head-To-Head". Atpworldtour.com. Archived from the original on July 7, 2012. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ Holden, Kit (August 28, 1998). "Tennis: Rafter learns the mind game". The Independent. London. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ a b c d e f [2]
^ a b Lisa Dillman (July 9, 2000). "There's a Little Tension in Sampras, Rafter Rackets". Los Angeles Times.
^ a b Dillman, Lisa (September 14, 1998). "Rafter Grandly Slams U.S. Open Criticism". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ Dillman, Lisa (July 9, 2000). "There's a Little Tension in Sampras, Rafter Rackets". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ Holden, Kit (August 28, 1999). "Sampras slight raises stakes for 'Pat-trick'". The Independent. London. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
^ http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/09/sports/sp-50252
^ "Sampras sets record with win against Rafter". CNN.
^ "2000 Wimbledon final: Pete Sampras defeats Pat Rafter". Tennis Buzz. July 4, 2010.
^ "Fired-up Sampras takes it to Rafter, faces Agassi next". CNN.
^ Tech, Tribal. "Pete Sampras' Game Underated [sic]". Bleacher Report. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
^ "Had you written off Pistol Pete?". BBC Sport. August 19, 2002. Retrieved June 5, 2010.
^ "Pete Sampras's serving style". Retrieved July 7, 2008.
^ "Second Serve Style and Speed". Retrieved July 7, 2008.
^ "Pete Sampras and the French Open". Top Spin. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
^ "What they're wearing (and hitting with) at the U.S. Open". SportsBusiness Journal. August 28, 2000. Retrieved September 9, 2014.
^ "Q & A with Nate Ferguson, Sampras' personal stringer". Tennis Warehouse. August 1999. Archived from the original on March 29, 2008. Retrieved June 27, 2009.
^ "Wilson K Factor KPro Staff 88 Racquet Review". Tennis Warehouse. Retrieved June 26, 2009.
^ "Eyewitness report". Tennis Warehouse. May 2010. Retrieved February 8, 2011.
^ "Pro Shop Q&A Tennis Magazine". Tennis.com. September 3, 2010. Retrieved February 8, 2011.
^ "Associated Press article". CBS 5 San Francisco. February 7, 2011. Retrieved February 8, 2011.
^ Thomas, Louisa (October 20, 2011). "The Strange Career of Sergio Tacchini". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved September 10, 2014.
^ Schonberger, Nick (August 12, 2011). "How Tinker Hatfield Got Pete Sampras In The Nike Air Oscillate". Complex. Retrieved September 9, 2014.
^ Behniwal, Ajaybir (May 2, 2007). "Women's tennis nets good draw through recent wins". The Daily Bruin. ASUCLA Student Media. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved May 20, 2007.
^ "Tennis Legend Pete Sampras Forms New Company – Pure Sports Management" (PDF). Press Release. March 29, 2007. Retrieved August 24, 2007.
^ "Actress Brigette is Sampras love match". CNN. Associated Press. October 2, 2000. Archived from the original on May 26, 2006. Retrieved May 20, 2007.
^ "Sampras Adds New Title: Father". The New York Times. November 26, 2002. Retrieved May 20, 2007.
^ "Review 2005: Celebrity births, marriages and deaths". Manchester Evening News. December 12, 2005. Retrieved May 20, 2007.
^ "Pete Sampras' House in Lake Sherwood". Home-designing.com. March 21, 2010. Retrieved August 3, 2014.
^ "Clay soils Pete's record". BBC Sport. May 23, 2002. Retrieved February 22, 2008.
^ https://www.express.co.uk/sport/tennis/163024/Sampras-and-Agassi-show-rivalry-at-charity-match
^ a b http://www.samprasfanz.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?id=1094693706
^ Tennis magazine ranked Sampras the best player of the period 1965–2005.
^ "Pete Sampras - Top 10 Men's Tennis Players of All Time". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on September 18, 2010. Retrieved June 10, 2017.
^ "US Open Most Championship Titles Record Book" (PDF). US Open. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 13, 2011. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
^ "US Open Singles Record Book" (PDF). US Open. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 6, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
^ a b Buddell, James (August 26, 2011). "DEUCE – Pete Sampras – The Making Of A Champion". ATP World Tour. Retrieved February 4, 2012.
^ Macpherson, Paul (January 12, 2010). "Roger's Records To Stand Test Of Time". ATP World Tour. Retrieved June 20, 2012.
^ "Pete Sampras touts Roger Federer". ESPN.com. ESPN Internet Ventures. Associated Press. February 5, 2008. Retrieved February 5, 2008.
^ "ATP Bio:Pete Sampras". Retrieved June 26, 2009.
^ Pete Sampras at the International Tennis Federation
^ "Bio:Pete Sampras". Gabby Awards. Archived from the original on April 12, 2009. Retrieved June 26, 2009.
^ "Pete Sampras Left Behind A Legacy Few Players Can Ever Match". Archived from the original on May 3, 2009. Retrieved June 27, 2009.
Collins, Bud; H. A. Branham (1996). Sampras: A Legend in the Works. Chicago: Bonus Books. ISBN 1-56625-062-5.
Pete Sampras and Peter Bodo (2009). Pete Sampras: The Autobiography – A Champion's Mind. London: Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-84513-469-3.
Facing Sampras: Symposium of a Champion (to be published in early 2018)
Wimbledon Classic Match: Federer vs Sampras (2001) Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date: October 31, 2006, Run Time: 233 minutes, ASIN: B000ICLR98.
Legends of Wimbledon – Pete Sampras (2006) Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date: October 31, 2006, Run Time: 60 minutes, ASIN: B000ICLR84.
The Netjets Showdown: Pete Sampras vs. Roger Federer (2008) Arts Alliance Amer, DVD Release Date: April 22, 2008, Run Time: 180 minutes, ASIN: B0013PVGN6.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pete Sampras.
Pete Sampras at the Association of Tennis Professionals
Pete Sampras at the International Tennis Federation
Pete Sampras at the Davis Cup
Pete Sampras at the International Tennis Hall of Fame
Text, Audio, Video of Sampras' International Tennis Hall of Fame Induction Speech
Pete Sampras (achievement succession)
Sporting positions
Jim Courier
Thomas Muster
Marcelo Ríos
Yevgeny Kafelnikov
Patrick Rafter
Andre Agassi World No. 1
April 12, 1993 – August 22, 1993
September 13, 1993 – April 9, 1995
November 6, 1995 – January 28, 1996
February 19, 1996 – March 10, 1996
April 15, 1996 – March 29, 1998
April 27, 1998 – August 9, 1998
March 29, 1999 – May 2, 1999
August 2, 1999 – September 12, 1999
September 11, 2000 – November 19, 2000 Succeeded by
Marat Safin
Michael Chang ATP Most Improved Player
Jim Courier ATP Player of the Year
Jim Courier ITF World Champion
Michael Johnson USOC Sportsman of the Year
Jonny Moseley
Ivan Lendl ATP Prize money leader
Björn Borg Most career Grand Slam singles titles (Open Era)
July 4, 1999 – July 5, 2009 Succeeded by
Roy Emerson Most career Grand Slam singles titles
Ivan Lendl Most weeks at World No. 1
September 11, 2000 – July 16, 2012 Succeeded by
Pete Sampras in the Grand Slam Tournaments
Men's tennis players who won two or more Grand Slam singles titles in one calendar year
Four wins
Three wins
1933: Jack Crawford (AC&FC&WI)
1934: Fred Perry (AC&WI&US)
1955: Tony Trabert (FO&WI&US)
1956: Lew Hoad (AO&FO&WI)
1958: Ashley Cooper (AC&WI&US)
1964: Roy Emerson (AC&WI&US)
1974: Jimmy Connors (AO&WI&US)
1988: Mats Wilander (AO&FO&US)
2004: Roger Federer (AO&WI&US)
2010: Rafael Nadal (FO&WI&US)
2011: Novak Djokovic (AO&WI&US)
Two wins
1903: Laurence Doherty (WI&US)
1920: Bill Tilden (WI&US)
1925: René Lacoste (FC&WI)
1927: René Lacoste (FC&US)
1928: Henri Cochet (FC&US)
1932: Ellsworth Vines (WI&US)
1935: Fred Perry (FC&WI)
1936: Fred Perry (WI&US)
1937: Don Budge (WI&US)
1939: Bobby Riggs (WI&US)
1947: Jack Kramer (WI&US)
1950: Budge Patty (FC&WI)
1951: Dick Savitt (AC&WI))
1952: Frank Sedgman (WI&US)
1953: Ken Rosewall (AC&FO)
1959: Alex Olmedo (AC&WI)
1960: Neale Fraser (WI&US)
1961: Roy Emerson (AC&US)
1963: Roy Emerson (AC&FC)
1965: Roy Emerson (AC&WI)
1967: John Newcombe (WI&US)
1973: John Newcombe (AO&US)
1977: Guillermo Vilas (FO&US)
1978: Björn Borg (FO&WI)
1981: John McEnroe (WI&US)
1982: Jimmy Connors (WI&US)
1986: Ivan Lendl (FO&US)
1989: Boris Becker (WI&US)
1992: Jim Courier (AO&FO)
1993: Pete Sampras (WI&US)
1994: Pete Sampras (AO&WI)
1999: Andre Agassi (FO&US)
2005: Roger Federer (WI&US)
2008: Rafael Nadal (FO&WI)
2009: Roger Federer (FO&WI)
2013: Rafael Nadal (FO&US)
2016: Novak Djokovic (AO&FO)
2017: Roger Federer (AO&WI)
2018: Novak Djokovic (WI&US)
2019: Novak Djokovic (AO&WI)
AC=Australasian/Australian Championships, AO=Australian Open, FC=French Championships, FO=French Open, WI=Wimbledon, US=U.S. National Championships/US Open
Australian Open men's singles champions
Pre Open Era
(1905) Rodney Heath
(1906) Anthony Wilding
(1907) Horace Rice
(1908) Fred Alexander
(1911) Norman Brookes
(1912) James Parke
(1913) Ernie Parker
(1914) Arthur O'Hara Wood
(1915) Gordon Lowe
(1916–1918) No competition (due to World War I)
(1919) Algernon Kingscote
(1920) Pat O'Hara Wood
(1921) Rhys Gemmell
(1922) James Anderson
(1926) John Hawkes
(1927) Gerald Patterson
(1928) Jean Borotra
(1929) John Colin Gregory
(1930) Edgar Moon
(1931) Jack Crawford
(1934) Fred Perry
(1936) Adrian Quist
(1937) Vivian McGrath
(1938) Don Budge
(1939) John Bromwich
(1941–1945) No competition (due to World War II)
(1947) Dinny Pails
(1949) Frank Sedgman
(1951) Dick Savitt
(1952) Ken McGregor
(1953) Ken Rosewall
(1954) Mervyn Rose
(1956) Lew Hoad
(1957) Ashley Cooper
(1959) Alex Olmedo
(1960) Rod Laver
(1961) Roy Emerson
(1968) William Bowrey
Open Era
(1970) Arthur Ashe
(1973) John Newcombe
(1974) Jimmy Connors
(1976) Mark Edmondson
(1977 (Jan)) Roscoe Tanner
(1977 (Dec)) Vitas Gerulaitis
(1978) Guillermo Vilas
(1980) Brian Teacher
(1981) Johan Kriek
(1983) Mats Wilander
(1985) Stefan Edberg
(1986) Not Held
(1989) Ivan Lendl
(1991) Boris Becker
(1992) Jim Courier
(1994) Pete Sampras
(1995) Andre Agassi
(1998) Petr Korda
(1999) Yevgeny Kafelnikov
(2002) Thomas Johansson
(2004) Roger Federer
(2005) Marat Safin
(2008) Novak Djokovic
(2009) Rafael Nadal
(2014) Stanislas Wawrinka
Wimbledon men's singles champions
(1877) Spencer Gore
(1878) Frank Hadow
(1879) John Hartley
(1881) William Renshaw
(1887) Herbert Lawford
(1888) Ernest Renshaw
(1890) Willoughby Hamilton
(1891) Wilfred Baddeley
(1893) Joshua Pim
(1896) Harold Mahony
(1897) Reginald Doherty
(1901) Arthur Gore
(1902) Laurence Doherty
(1915–18) No competition (due to World War I)
(1920) Bill Tilden
(1923) Bill Johnston
(1925) René Lacoste
(1927) Henri Cochet
(1931) Sidney Wood
(1932) Ellsworth Vines
(1939) Bobby Riggs
(1940–45) No competition (due to World War II)
(1946) Yvon Petra
(1947) Jack Kramer
(1948) Bob Falkenburg
(1949) Ted Schroeder
(1950) Budge Patty
(1953) Vic Seixas
(1954) Jaroslav Drobný
(1955) Tony Trabert
(1960) Neale Fraser
(1963) Chuck McKinley
(1966) Manuel Santana
(1972) Stan Smith
(1973) Jan Kodeš
(1976) Björn Borg
(1981) John McEnroe
(1987) Pat Cash
(1991) Michael Stich
(1996) Richard Krajicek
(2001) Goran Ivanišević
(2002) Lleyton Hewitt
(2013) Andy Murray
US Open men's singles champions
(1881) Richard Sears
(1888) Henry Slocum
(1890) Oliver Campbell
(1893) Robert Wrenn
(1895) Frederick Hovey
(1898) Malcolm Whitman
(1901) William Larned
(1904) Holcombe Ward
(1905) Beals Wright
(1906) William Clothier
(1912) Maurice E. McLoughlin
(1914) R. Norris Williams
(1917) Robert Lindley Murray
(1930) John Doeg
(1935) Wilmer Allison
(1940) Don McNeill
(1943) Joseph Hunt
(1944) Frank Parker
(1948) Pancho Gonzales
(1950) Arthur Larsen
(1957) Mal Anderson
(1963) Rafael Osuna
(1966) Fred Stolle
(1972) Ilie Năstase
(1975) Manuel Orantes
(1997) Pat Rafter
(2003) Andy Roddick
(2009) Juan Martín del Potro
(2014) Marin Čilić
(2016) Stan Wawrinka
Pete Sampras career statistics
Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) world No. 1 singles players
Ilie Năstase (1973/1974 – 40 w)
John Newcombe (1974 – 8 w)
Jimmy Connors (1974/1983 – 268 w)
Björn Borg (1977/1981 – 109 w)
John McEnroe (1980/1985 – 170 w)
Ivan Lendl (1983/1990 – 270 w)
Mats Wilander (1988/1989 – 20 w)
Stefan Edberg (1990/1992 – 72 w)
Boris Becker (1991 – 12 w)
Jim Courier (1992/1993 – 58 w)
Pete Sampras (1993/2000 – 286 w)
Andre Agassi (1995/2003 – 101 w)
Thomas Muster (1996 – 6 w)
Marcelo Ríos (1998 – 6 w)
Carlos Moyá (1999 – 2 w)
Yevgeny Kafelnikov (1999 – 6 w)
Pat Rafter (1999 – 1 w)
Marat Safin (2000/2001 – 9 w)
Gustavo Kuerten (2000/2001 – 43 w)
Lleyton Hewitt (2001/2003 – 80 w)
Juan Carlos Ferrero (2003 – 8 w)
Andy Roddick (2003/2004 – 13 w)
Roger Federer (2004/2018 – 310 w)
Rafael Nadal (2008/2018 – 196 w)
Novak Djokovic (2011/2019 – 260 w)
Andy Murray (2016/2017 – 41 w)
ATP singles rankings incepted on August 23, 1973
(year first held/year last held – number of weeks (w))
current No. 1 in bold, as of week of July 15, 2019[update]
Year-end championships winners singles
(1998) Alex Corretja
(2000) Gustavo Kuerten
(2005) David Nalbandian
(2009) Nikolay Davydenko
(2017) Grigor Dimitrov
(2018) Alexander Zverev
ATP Tour Masters 1000 – singles champions
Indian Wells Masters
1992: Michael Chang
1998: Marcelo Ríos
1999: Mark Philippoussis
2000: Àlex Corretja
2002: Lleyton Hewitt
2004: Roger Federer
2007: Rafael Nadal
2008: Novak Djokovic
2010: Ivan Ljubičić
2018: Juan Martín del Potro
2019: Dominic Thiem
Miami Open
1997: Thomas Muster
1999: Richard Krajicek
2004: Andy Roddick
2008: Nikolay Davydenko
2009: Andy Murray
2018: John Isner
Monte-Carlo Masters
1990: Andrei Chesnokov
1991: Sergi Bruguera
1994: Andriy Medvedev
1998: Carlos Moyá
1999: Gustavo Kuerten
2000: Cédric Pioline
2002: Juan Carlos Ferrero
2004: Guillermo Coria
2014: Stan Wawrinka
2019: Fabio Fognini
German Open / Madrid Open
1990: Juan Aguilera
1991: Karel Nováček
1993: Michael Stich
1996: Roberto Carretero
1998: Albert Costa
2001: Albert Portas
2006: Tommy Robredo
2018: Alexander Zverev
Italian Open
1991: Emilio Sánchez
2000: Magnus Norman
2003: Félix Mantilla
1993: Mikael Pernfors
1996: Wayne Ferreira
1997: Chris Woodruff
1998: Patrick Rafter
1999: Thomas Johansson
2000: Marat Safin
2001: Andrei Pavel
2002: Guillermo Cañas
2014: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Cincinnati Masters
1991: Guy Forget
1998: Pat Rafter
2000: Thomas Enqvist
2016: Marin Čilić
2017: Grigor Dimitrov
Stockholm Open / Eurocard Open /
Madrid Open / Shanghai Masters
1992: Goran Ivanišević
2001: Tommy Haas
2007: David Nalbandian
Paris Masters
1998: Greg Rusedski
2001: Sébastien Grosjean
2003: Tim Henman
2005: Tomáš Berdych
2010: Robin Söderling
2012: David Ferrer
2017: Jack Sock
2018: Karen Khachanov
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pete_Sampras&oldid=906568289"
American male tennis players
American people of Greek descent
American people of Greek-Jewish descent
Australian Open (tennis) champions
California Republicans
Grand Slam (tennis) champions in men's singles
International Tennis Hall of Fame inductees
Olympic tennis players of the United States
People from Potomac, Maryland
Sportspeople from Los Angeles County, California
Sportspeople from Maryland
Tennis people from California
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Pages using infobox tennis biography with tennishofid
Articles containing potentially dated statements from July 2019
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For the U.S. diplomat, see E. Spencer Pratt.
Pratt in January 2009
Spencer William Pratt
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
The Princes of Malibu
I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!
Heidi Montag (m. 2008)
Stephanie Pratt (sister)
Spencer William Pratt (born August 14, 1983) is an American television personality. In 2007, he began dating Heidi Montag, a primary cast member of the reality television series The Hills. Subsequently, he came to prominence after being cast in the series. Their relationship ultimately ended Montag's friendship with fellow cast member Lauren Conrad. The ensuing feud among the three became the central focus of the series, and was carried through each subsequent season.
The couple, collectively nicknamed "Speidi", married in April 2009. Later that year, they made controversial appearances on the second season of the American version of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! In 2013, he and Montag competed as a single entity on the eleventh series of the British version of Celebrity Big Brother, and returned to compete as a single entity on the nineteenth series in 2017. Pratt formerly appeared on Wife Swap and The Spyson Hour, a weekly segment on the reality TV podcast Rob Has a Podcast.
2 Reality television career
2.1 2005: The Princes of Malibu
2.2 2007–2010: The Hills
2.3 2013–2014: Celebrity Big Brother UK
2.4 2015: Marriage Boot Camp and Partnership with Rob Has a Podcast
2.5 2017: Return to Celebrity Big Brother UK
2.6 2018: Snapchatter of the Year
2.7 2019: The Hills: New Beginnings
Pratt was born August 14, 1983 in Los Angeles, California.[1] He is the elder sibling of Stephanie, also a television personality.
Reality television career[edit]
2005: The Princes of Malibu[edit]
Pratt first appeared on television in 2005 in the short-lived reality series The Princes of Malibu. As creator and executive producer of the series, Pratt acted in the role of "manager/publicist/agent/stylist" for series' star Brody Jenner.[2]
2007–2010: The Hills[edit]
In 2006, MTV developed the reality television series The Hills as the spin-off of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. It originally chronicled the lives of Lauren Conrad, who appeared on its predecessor, her housemate Heidi Montag, and friends Audrina Patridge and Whitney Port.[3] In 2007, Pratt began dating and later moved into an apartment with Montag, which led to the deterioration of her friendship with Conrad.[4][5] During the third season, Conrad ended her friendship with Montag after she suspected that Pratt was responsible for rumors of a sex tape involving her and her former boyfriend Jason Wahler; the ensuing feud between the three carried through each subsequent season.[6] After Conrad established companionships with Jenner and Frankie Delgado, he severed ties with both men.[7]—
In August, Montag entered the music industry and began recording her debut studio album. Later that month, the song "Body Language" was leaked on the internet, and featured a rapped verse from Pratt.[8] He later directed the music video for Montag's first promotional single "Higher".[9]
Later that year, Montag and Pratt appeared on the second season of the American version of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in support of the "Feed the Children" foundation.[10] They quit after Montag was hospitalized with a gastric ulcer[11] and later created controversy after alleging that they were subject to torture during production.[12] After leaving the series, Montag and Pratt became notorious for their antics and antagonistic roles, notably during an interview with Al Roker of Today,[13] and were described as "everything that's wrong with America".[14] In May 2010, Pratt and Montag made their final appearance on The Hills halfway through the sixth and final season.[15][unreliable source?] In 2009, Spencer and Heidi appeared at the How I Met Your Mother episode "Benefits" as themselves.
In July, Montag filed for divorce from Pratt, citing irreconcilable differences in the petition.[16] However, they called it off in September after confessing that the action was intended to boost Montag's ailing career.[17] In November, they renewed their vows in Carpinteria, California.[18] Pratt was arrested and jailed in Costa Rica on September 11, 2010, while attempting to board an aircraft with hunting weapons. He was subsequently released and banned from re-entering the country.[19]
Pratt's work on The Hills earned him the title of "Greatest Reality TV Villain" on Yahoo!'s fan-voted poll in 2015. Other nominees for this award included Juan Pablo Galavis, Omarosa Manigault, Will Kirby, and Russell Hantz.[20]
2013–2014: Celebrity Big Brother UK[edit]
In January 2013, Montag and Pratt (as a single entity) competed as housemates on the eleventh series of the British version of Celebrity Big Brother,[21] where they notably developed a minor feud with singer and television personality Rylan Clark.[22] They were named the runners-up, losing to Clark.[23] On February 18, Channel 5 aired a one-off television special discussing Montag and Pratt's rise to prominence, titled Speidi: Scandal, Secrets & Surgery!.[24]
TV Guide included him in its 2013 list of "The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time."[25]
The couple appeared in the E! Documentary special After Shock: Heidi & Spencer.[26]
2015: Marriage Boot Camp and Partnership with Rob Has a Podcast[edit]
Pratt and Montag were houseguests on We TV's Marriage Boot Camp, as they worked out their differences about having children. While there, the couple met and became friends with Survivor winner Tyson Apostol and his girlfriend Rachel Foulger. When Marriage Boot Camp aired on television, Pratt and Apostol began hosting The Spyson Hour, a weekly podcast to recap the show, alongside Rob Cesternino of Rob Has a Podcast. After the season finished airing, Pratt, Apostol, and Cesternino continued The Spyson Hour, discussing Pratt's reality TV history and zany current events. Pratt left the show in October 2015.
2017: Return to Celebrity Big Brother UK[edit]
In 2017 Pratt re-entered the Celebrity Big Brother with his wife. On day 18 the couple were eternally nominated by James Cosmo, which they did not have a good reaction to. They were saved in an eight-person eviction on day 22 however, they were evicted on day 25 against Kim Woodburn, Jessica Cunningham, Bianca Gascoigne and Jedward. Pratt and Montag were reunited with their rival, Rylan Clark-Neal, on Big Brother's Bit on the Side that night.
2018: Snapchatter of the Year[edit]
Pratt developed a widespread fanbase on Snapchat by posting stories showing his family, daily life and his passion for hummingbirds! His popularity led to him being nominated in January 2018 for Snapchatter of the Year at the 10th Annual Shorty Awards, eventually winning the category.[27]
2019: The Hills: New Beginnings[edit]
At the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards, MTV announced a reboot of The Hills entitled The Hills: New Beginnings, slated to premiere in 2019. Pratt was announced as part of the cast of the new series.[28][29][30]
In December 2013, Pratt completed his undergraduate degree in political science at the University of Southern California after ten years. Pratt had left his studies to pursue television projects and re-enrolled in 2011.[31]
During the fourth season of The Hills, Montag and Pratt eloped in Mexico on November 20, 2008.[32][33] A wedding ceremony was held on April 25, 2009, in Pasadena, California.[33][33][34] Their son Gunner Stone was born on October 1, 2017.[35]
^ "Spencer Pratt Biography". TVGuide.com. Archived from the original on September 14, 2015.
^ Amsden, David. "Master of His Own Celebrity: Brody Jenner knows just who to screw to sit pretty on the B-list". Men.style.com. Archived from the original on 2009-02-04.
^ Virginia Heffernan (May 31, 2006). "'The Hills,' a Follow-Up to 'Laguna Beach,' Makes Its Premiere on MTV". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
^ "The Hills (Season 2) Ep. 208: Enough Is Enough". MTV. Viacom. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
^ "The Hills (Season 2) Ep. 212: Goodbye For Now". MTV. Viacom. Retrieved April 21, 2013.
^ "The Hills (Season 3) Ep. 301: You Know What You Did". MTV. Viacom. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
^ "The Hills (Season 3) Ep. 305: Rolling With The Enemy". MTV. Viacom. September 3, 2007. Retrieved May 16, 2013.
^ Aaron Parsley (August 16, 2007). "Heidi Montag 'Upset' Over Leaked Song". People. Time Inc. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Dagostino, Mark (February 18, 2008). "Spencer on Heidi's Album: 'Madonna, Eat Your Heart Out'". People. Time Inc. Retrieved July 5, 2013.
^ "Charity Speaks Out About Speidi Possibly Quitting Reality Show". Radar Online. American Media, Inc. June 2, 2009. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Jocelyn Vena (June 7, 2009). "'Hills' Star Heidi Montag Hospitalized". MTV News. Viacom. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Holmes, Linda (June 9, 2009). "Spencer, Heidi jeopardize their fragile 'fame'". MSNBC. NBCUniversal. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Mike Celizic (June 16, 2009). "Al Roker weighs in on Speidi 'attack'". MSNBC. NBCUniversal. Archived from the original on September 6, 2014. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ "NBC executive not happy with Heidi, Spencer". MSNBC. NBCUniversal. June 4, 2009. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Kelly Maddern (May 28, 2010). "Heidi and Spencer's Downward Spiral, Before Our Very Eyes". Yahoo! Voices. Yahoo!. Archived from the original on December 15, 2013. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ "Heidi Montag Files For Divorce From Spencer Pratt". MTV News. Viacom. July 30, 2010. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ "Couple faked divorce for TV deal". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. November 5, 2010. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Joyce Chen (November 16, 2010). "Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt renew wedding vows in private ceremony, celebrate themselves". Daily News. Daily News, L.P. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ "Spencer Pratt arrested for firearm possession: Former reality star tweets 'Costa Rican jail smells like children's tears'". MSNBC.com. 2010-09-14. I'm not allowed in the country anymore -- but that's because of the chicken incident.
^ Yahoo TV Staff (June 3, 2015). "Greatest Reality TV Personalities of All Time: Villains". Yahoo TV. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
^ "Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt Death Threats: 'Celebrity Big Brother' Stars Receive Nothing But Hatred". The Huffington Post. AOL. January 23, 2013. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Rachael Wheeler (January 22, 2013). "Speidi's emotional apology to Rylan Clark ends the Celebrity Big Brother feud: "We didn't mean to clap"". Daily Mirror. Trinity Mirror. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ "Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt Open Up About 'Celebrity Big Brother,' Death Threats And 'Feigned' Villainy". The Huffington Post. AOL. January 29, 2013. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ "Speidi: Scandal, Secrets & Surgery!". Channel 5. Northern & Shell. February 18, 2013. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Bretts, Bruce; Roush, Matt; (March 25, 2013). "Baddies to the Bone: The 60 nastiest villains of all time". TV Guide. pp. 14 - 15.
^ Johnson, Zach (November 19, 2013). "Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt Starring in One-Hour E! Special, After Shock: Heidi & Spencer". E! News. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
^ "Spencer Pratt Snapchatter of the Year".
^ Corriston, Michele. "MTV Announces The Hills Reboot at the 2018 VMAs". People. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
^ Ramos, Dino-Ray. "'The Hills' Is Heading Back To MTV With 'New Beginnings'". Deadline. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
^ Nyren, Erin. "MTV Reboots 'The Hills' With Original Cast Members". Variety. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
^ McGrady, Rachel (December 5, 2013). "Spencer Pratt Finishes College After 10 Years: "I Was Busy Being Fabulous!"". Us Weekly. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
^ "The Hills (Season 4) Ep. 419: Mr. And Mrs. Pratt". MTV (Viacom). Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ a b c "Heidi Pratt: I Can't Wait to Renew My Vows With Spencer!". Us Weekly. November 20, 2009. Retrieved October 2, 2017. Spencer and Heidi Pratt have officially been married for an entire year! ... Their second wedding, held April 25 in Pasadena, Calif., was filmed for the fifth season of The Hills.
^ Jocelyn Vena (April 25, 2009). "'Hills' Stars Heidi Montag And Spencer Pratt Get Married". MTV News. Viacom. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
^ Hautman, Nicholas; Lupo, Marc (October 1, 2017). "Exclusive: Heidi Montag Gives Birth, Welcomes First Child With Spencer Pratt: Details!". Us Weekly. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
Spencer Pratt on IMDb
Promotional singles
"More Is More"
Holly Montag
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Pratt&oldid=895226731"
American socialites
Crossroads School alumni
Participants in American reality television series
People from Los Angeles
The Hills (TV series)
Articles lacking reliable references from October 2015
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IEA: Biofuels can provide up to 27% of world transportation fuel by 2050
Biofuels can provide up to 27% of world transportation fuel by 2050, IEA report says - IEA ‘roadmap’ shows how biofuel production can be expanded in a sustainable way, and identifies needed technologies and policy actions
A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that the widespread deployment of biofuels can play an important role in reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector and enhancing energy security, when produced sustainably.
With the transportation sector growing considerably, and demand for transport fuels rising globally, the IEA assesses biofuels – liquid and gaseous fuels derived from biomass (organic material derived from plants and animals) – as one of the key technologies to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce dependency on liquid transport fuels. The report shows how global biofuel consumption can increase in a sustainable way – one in which production of biofuels brings significant life cycle environmental benefits and does not compromise food security – from 55 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) today to 750 Mtoe in 2050; this would mean that the global share of biofuel in total transport fuel would grow from 2% today to 27% in 2050.
“While vehicle efficiency will be the most important and most cost-efficient way to reduce transport-emissions, biofuels will still be needed to provide low-carbon fuel alternatives for planes, marine vessels and other heavy transport modes, and will eventually provide one fifth (2.1 gigatonnes of CO2) of emission reductions in the transport sector,” Bo Diczfalusy, the IEA’s Director of Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology, said at the launch of the report today in Washington.
The IEA prepared the Technology Roadmap Biofuels for Transport in consultation with representatives of government, industry, academia and non-governmental organizations. The roadmap provides an overview of the current status of different conventional and advanced biofuel technologies and the latest research on sustainability issues related to biofuel production. It also charts a course for expanding the production and use of biofuels to 2050, in a sustainable way.
This report is the latest in the IEA's series of technology roadmaps, which aim to guide governments and industry on the actions and milestones needed to achieve the potential for a full range of clean energy technologies.
Efficient technologies needed
Biofuels can provide transport fuel with substantially lower CO2 emissions than conventional gasoline or diesel when comparing the entire “life cycle” of production – that is, from the field to the vehicle. But there are caveats: it is important to reduce the use of fossil energy during cultivation, transport and conversion of biomass to biofuel. It is also important to avoid direct or indirect land-use changes, such as converting forests to grow biofuel feedstocks, which release large amounts CO2 and could offset the CO2 reduction potential of biofuels.
Most conventional biofuels (produced mainly from starch, sugar and oilseed crops) must therefore be improved in terms of conversion- and land-use efficiency to achieve considerable greenhouse-gas reductions. In addition, advanced biofuel technologies currently at the demonstration stage (produced mainly from lignocellulosic biomass such as wood and straw), need to be commercially deployed within the next ten years and will provide the major share of biofuels in 2050.
“Further support for advanced biofuel research, development and demonstration is still needed to improve conversion efficiencies and reduce costs. In addition, investments in commercial-scale production units will be a key to enable advanced biofuels to reach full market maturity,” said Mr. Diczfalusy at the launch in Washington. “Government action is needed to provide a stable, long-term policy framework for biofuels that allows for sustained investments in biofuel expansion. Specific support measures that address the high investment risk currently associated with pre-commercial advanced biofuel technologies will be vital to trigger industry investments in first commercial plants.”
With these substantial investments in place, most biofuel technologies could get close to cost-competitiveness with fossil fuels, or even be produced at lower costs in the longer term. In total, the report assesses the expenditure on biofuels required to meet the roadmap targets between USD 11 trillion to USD 13 trillion over the next 40 years, depending on the actual production costs. “This figure may seem large, but in fact even in the worst case biofuels would only increase the total costs of transport fuels by around 1% over the next 40 years, and could in fact lead to cost reductions over the same period.”
Sustainability is key
“With world population growing by more than 30% to 9 billion people in 2050, and food demand increasing approximately 70% according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, competition of biofuel production for land with food, fodder, as well as fiber production needs to be carefully addressed to avoid negative impacts from biofuel expansion on food security,” said Mr. Diczfalusy.
There is a great potential for using low-risk sources that require limited land expansion, and should not compete with food production, to provide feedstock for the expanding biofuel industry. The report says the use of residues and high-yielding energy crops as feedstocks, and the efficient use of biomass, for instance through integrating biofuel and bio-material production (so-called biorefineries), will be vital to reduce land competition. In addition, sustainability certification of biofuels, following internationally agreed sustainability criteria, will be an important step towards ensuring that biofuel production and use have a positive environmental, social and economic impact.
Around 3 billion tonnes of biomass per year will be needed in 2050 to produce the amount of biofuels envisioned in the IEA roadmap. The report assesses that 1 billion tonnes of biomass residues and wastes would be needed, and this would need to be supplemented by production from around 100 million hectares of land - around 2% of total agricultural land. This would be a three-fold increase compared with today, but the yield of biofuels could increase by a factor of 10 through the use of wastes and residues and through the use of more productive crops and processes.
The report stresses that governments should adopt mandatory sustainability standards for biofuels, and ensure they are internationally aligned, to avoid acting as barriers to trade. Since many points of criticism on biofuels’ sustainability are in fact issues concerning the whole agricultural sector, the report concludes that biofuel policies should be aligned with those in agriculture, forestry and rural development. An overall sustainable land-use management strategy for all agricultural and forestry land will be the only way to avoid land-use changes with negative impacts on the environment and CO2 emissions, and to support the wide range of demands in different sectors.
International collaboration is vital
The report stresses that reducing tariffs and other trade barriers will be important to expanding the trade in biomass and biofuels to reach the levels necessary to meet emerging demand in different regions of the world. International co-operation will also be needed to further develop analyses of sustainable land and biomass potentials, and obtain detailed regional data on suitable feedstocks for biofuel production. To ensure developing countries can successfully adopt sustainable biofuel production, international collaboration on capacity building and technology transfer will be necessary, the report stresses. Developing countries interested in introducing biofuels can profit from the experience of other regions, including lessons learned and best practices for biofuel production, as well as the government policies that can help ensure that required investments are beneficial for local economies
Κατηγοριοποίηση... ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΕΙΣ , ΒΙΟΚΑΥΣΙΜΑ , ΔΙΕΘΝΗ » Email Post »
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the ones who stay
July 30, 2014 January 20, 2017 erin monét cooper Leave a comment
Abuela Aminta looks out of her front door in El Amate.
July 26, 2014 @ 10a
OK, so I know I said I’d post something the day after my previous post. That ain’t happen. Here’s what I’ve promised on the other side of today.
In both El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, family is a force so integral to identity and survival that what the family wants and needs is essential to an individual’s wants and needs.
Everyone takes care of everyone else. Everyone.
When we stayed with Kevin’s Abuela Aminta in El Amate, his tía Estella and prima Glenda cared for his grandmother. One of them was in the house on any given day, sweeping, mopping, cooking, washing clothes, shopping for food, shooing the dogs, chickens and cats away from something or out of something, watching novelas, the news, rearranging, ding something. Another family member took care of her cows, making sure they grazed in the mornings and received water before returning to the pen in the evening.
In everything and everyone, there is such love in the act of caring among people.
Kevin and his soon-to-be-cousin Kevin play in the living room/bedroom at Abuela Aminta’s house. The amaca took some getting used to, but once I took a shower and prayed for God to help me with the mosquitoes, I slept like a baby.
El Amate is a small town, so in the nature of small towns, a lot more intimacy exists among people. In El Amate, people are closely related by blood or by marriage and neighbors operate like family members, often stopping by to sit and say hello or, in the case of Abuela’s neighbor across the street, dance.
Every Sunday, the men and boys play a fútbol game against another team from another city or village in El Salvador. Though Kevin had not been in El Amate since Christmas, he stepped onto the cancha as if just last week he had played a game there, knowing who was on his team and who was not during a scrimmage game. The practices and games gathered themselves into an easy regimen. Wednesdays through Fridays are practice days in the afternoons when work is finished. Sunday afternoon is game day.
When I spoke with Kevin’s uncle in Texas, who has not visited El Amate in at least five years, he said it was hard for him to be home because it makes him face his mother’s mortality, and perhaps his own.
“I don’t like seeing her old like that,” he said. “Every time I go home, she’s older.”
“If he comes home it will be a miracle,” Abuela Aminta shouted from her side of the room.
We laughed, but her honesty presents the crux of the divide. She has changed. So has he. Change is as natural as time itself. But while he works in Texas and sends money home, his family in El Amate stays on this side missing him.
Money is never a substitute for family — but it can help families obtain a higher quality of life: a nicer house, a car, or two, land purchases, electronics.
On their Uncle Freddy’s sandia farm, Kevin’s cousin Nain prepares a bundle of sandia for a worker to carry down the hill. She’s small, but she can carry as many as four to six sandia at one time. Uncle Freddy stands on the left waiting for Nain to finish tightening the knot on the net.
In El Amate, I hung out on a sandía (watermelon) farm for about an hour in the sweltering heat where several children and adults from El Amate were working for the better part of a day carrying watermelon up and down an incredibly steep hill. They were paid 10 cents for each watermelon they carried to the bottom. The highest paid worker that day — a man who could carry 11 watermelon at a time — made USD 7 dollars. And while that much money could feed a family, it does not compare to the daily wage that same man could make an average of $14.64 doing a hour’s worth of labor in the U.S. on a construction site or a little less than $10 an hour as a dishwasher reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And though the cost of living is higher in the U.S., money is often saved and sent home to finance the life you want to have when you return to the town and family left behind.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 2013 El Salvador received $3.5 billion in remissions — financial assets sent from people in one country to people in another — from people, usually family members, living and working in the U.S.
According to the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative, El Salvador exported about $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods (t-shirts, coffee and sugar being the top products) to the U.S. in 2013. If I’m reading the numbers correctly, that means remissions dollars actually topped the goods value that El Salvador exported to the U.S. by more than $1 billion!
But back to El Amate, where there are several people who move back and forth between borders with and without papers. But whether a person is documented or not, money is always a factor.
It took money to get across and takes money to return to the family left behind, the same family who whose dreams are an immigrant’s own.
← what compels the journey?
leave or die. →
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© 2019 Gamer Escape: Gaming News, Reviews, Wikis, and Podcasts. All Rights Reserved.
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Castro Takes Over Cuba
In 1959, Fidel Castro led his revolution into Havana and declared himself “Maximum Leader” of Cuba. The previous dictator, Batista fled the country. Mass trials and executions followed.
Although Castro had propagandized his revolution as wanting to restore constitutional procedures, this was false. He actually pursued a radical Marxist policy. He became vehemently anti-American and nationalized all US businesses in Cuba. As early as 1960 Castro made a trade agreement with the Soviet Union which infuriated the US and in 1961 America severed all diplomatic ties with the island nation.
01/01/09 marks the 50th anniversary of the Castro Revolution and although Fidel is no longer in control he is still alive and his brother Raul is President. The Cuban exile community in the United States feels that nothing has changed…..there’s still a Castro in charge!
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz died on 11/25/2016
Pop History 50s
Families of the Fifties
Burma Shave
1960's Pop History
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Filo Mining drills 130 metres of 1.25% copper and 40 metres of 1.50 g/t gold at Filo del Sol
VANCOUVER, May 31, 2018 /CNW/ - Filo Mining Corp (TSX-V, Nasdaq First North: FIL) ("Filo Mining", "Filo", or the "Company") is pleased to announce the final assay results from the recently completed 2017/18 drill program at the Filo del Sol project in San Juan Province, Argentina and Region III, Chile. A total of 9,411 metres was drilled during the program, which was completed at the end of March, 2018. In total, 31 reverse circulation holes and 9 diamond drill holes were completed. Assay results for the 9 diamond drill holes are presented here. Results of the reverse circulation holes are contained in previous news releases dated April 27 and May 16, 2018.
Highlights of Field Program:
Infill drilling is expected to convert a portion of the inferred oxide mineral resource to indicated
Step out drilling has extended mineralization beyond the current resource limits and it still remains open for expansion
Over 4.5 tonnes of material was collected for metallurgical, geotechnical and environmental testing in support of the Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") currently underway
Geotechnical drilling has been completed
A full table of the drill hole intersections, collar information and a plan map showing the locations of the drill holes are included within this release.
Highlights from this second batch of drill holes include:
• FSDH016:
4m @ 0.22% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au, 1,001.0 g/t Ag
• FSDH017A:
88m @ 0.95% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au, 43.4 g/t Ag
40m @ 0.02% Cu, 1.50 g/t Au, 3.0 g/t Ag
141m @ 0.98% Cu, 0.30 g/t Au, 56.7 g/t Ag
130m @ 1.25% Cu, 0.28 g/t Au, 1.5 g/t A
• Including
72m @ 1.02% Cu, 0.26 g/t Au, 108.5 g/t Ag
Commenting on today's results, Adam Lundin, CEO of Filo Mining stated, ""We are very pleased with the final drill results revealed from our 2017/18 field program at Filo del Sol. The results released today along with the first two sets of program results released in April and May of this year, respectively validate the Company's confidence in moving forward to complete an updated mineral resource estimate, and its in-progress efforts to release a Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") in early 2019."
Filo del Sol is a large high-sulphidation epithermal copper-gold-silver deposit. The upper portion of the deposit is oxidized and includes from top to bottom, a gold oxide zone, a copper-gold oxide zone and a silver-rich zone. The oxide portion of the deposit is underlain by copper-gold sulphide mineralization. The drill holes reported here tested all of the oxide zones.
One of the main goals of the 2017/18 drill program was to convert a part of the inferred oxide mineral resource to the indicated category. Diamond drilling was used in order to collect coarse sample material for column leach metallurgical testwork, as well as for resource infill. The mineral resource remains open laterally and to depth. The holes in this release span a distance of 730 metres from FSDH021 in the south to FSDH022 in the north.
The Filo gold oxide zone was intersected by the upper part of FSDH017A (58m @ 1.09 g/t gold) and FSDH020 (122m @ 0.67 g/t Au) 140 metres to the north.
Drill holes FSDH021 and FSDH023 intersected the southern high-grade copper zone within the indicated mineral resource, confirming the size and tenor of this zone and providing material for metallurgical testwork. Hole FSDH017A intersected the northern high-grade copper zone, 400 metres northwest of FSDH021 and hole FSDH022 intersected a shallower high-grade zone 400 metres north of FSDH017A. The intersection in FSDH022 included a very high-grade section of 8 metres that returned 12.8% Cu. This zone remains open to the north. Hole FSDH019 was abandoned just above the copper zone.
Four of the holes intersected the silver zone, including another broad zone of near-surface mineralization starting at 30 metres down the hole in FSDH016 (62m @ 103.1 g/t silver). The silver zone intersections included some very high silver values (4m @ 1,001.0 g/t Ag in FSDH016; 6m @ 798.7 g/t Ag in FSDH021 and 4m @ 1,498.0 g/t Ag in FSDH023) as is typical within this zone. The silver zone intersections in holes FSDH021 and 023 are within the indicated mineral resource while those in FSDH016 and 017A are within the inferred mineral resource.
The results of the 2017/18 drilling will be incorporated into an updated mineral resource estimate to support the PFS which is currently underway. The PFS follows the completion of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") of the project, the results of which were released by the Company on November 28, 2017. The PEA incorporated open-pit mining and heap leach processing of only the oxide portions of the deposit. The results of the PEA demonstrate a robust project with strong economics, highlighted by an estimated after-tax NPV of US$ 705 million using a discount rate of 8% and an IRR of 23%, with an average estimated annual life of mine production of approximately 50,000 tonnes of copper, 115,000 ounces of gold, and over 5 million ounces of silver.
Diamond drill holes completed during the 2017/2018 program will contribute data for the mineral resource update and will also provide samples for metallurgical testwork forming an important part of the PFS. Metallurgical sample material was also collected from surface trenches during the field program. The PFS metallurgical testwork program is being carried out at SGS Minerals lab in Lakefield, Ontario and commenced in early April, 2018. Ongoing environmental and social programs continue in support of the PFS and to lay the groundwork for future environmental assessments and project permitting.
HOLE-ID
To (m)
Cu %
Au g/t
Ag g/t
FSDH016
and Addition
incl
FSDH017A
and incl
Infill and
Mineralized zones within the Filo del Sol deposit are flat-lying, and drilled widths are interpreted to be greater than 95% of true widths.
The field program was carried out under the supervision of Bob Carmichael, B.A.Sc., P.Eng., who is the Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Carmichael is Vice President, Exploration for the Company and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release.
The Quality Control/Quality Assurance (QA/QC) program for the Filo del Sol Project is under the management of Diego Charchaflie MSc., P.Geo (BC), a Qualified Person pursuant to NI 43-101.
Samples were collected at the drill site by Company personnel with splitting carried out at the Company's field camp near the drill sites. Individual samples represent final splits from 2 metre intervals down the hole. Samples were delivered to the ALS preparation laboratory in Copiapo, Chile where samples were crushed and split and a 500g split was pulverized to 85% passing 200 mesh. The prepared samples were sent to the ALS assay laboratory in Lima, Peru. ALS is an accredited laboratory which is independent of the Company. Gold analyses were by fire assay fusion with AAS finish on a 30g sample. Copper and silver were analysed by atomic absorption following a 4 acid digestion. Samples were also analyzed for a suite of 36 elements with ICP-ES and a sequential copper leach analysis was completed on each sample. Copper and gold standards as well as blanks and duplicates (field, preparation and analysis) were randomly inserted into the sampling sequence for Quality Control. On average, 9% of the submitted samples are Quality Control samples.
The PEA study results in this press release are only intended to provide an initial, high-level summary of the project. The PEA is preliminary in nature and includes the use of inferred mineral resources, which are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves and there is no certainty that PEA results will be realized. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.
The Filo del Sol Project, the Mineral Resource estimate, and the PEA are described in a Technical Report titled "Independent Technical Report for a Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Filo del Sol Project, Region III, Chile and San Juan Province, Argentina" dated December 18, 2017, with an effective date of November 6, 2017 (the "Technical Report"), which was prepared for Filo Mining by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc ("SRK"). The Technical Report is available for review under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at www.filo-mining.com.
This information is information that Filo Mining Corp. is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. This information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out below, on May 31, 2018 at 1:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Certain statements made and information contained herein in the press release constitutes "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking information"), concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Filo Mining Corp. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is based on information available to the Company as of the date of this press release. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update this forward-looking information. Generally, any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance, (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "projects" , "estimates", "budgets", "scheduled", "forecasts", "assumes", "intends", "strategy", "goals", "objectives", "potential", "possible", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events, conditions or results "will", "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will be taken", "will occur" or "will be achieved" or the negative connotations thereof and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.
All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: risks and uncertainties relating to, among other things, the inherent uncertainties regarding mineral resource estimates, cost estimates, changes in commodity prices, currency fluctuation, financing, unanticipated resource grades, infrastructure, results of exploration activities, cost overruns, availability of financing, materials and equipment, timeliness of government approvals, taxation, political risk and related economic risk and unanticipated environmental impact on operations, as well as other risks and uncertainties more fully described under "Risk and Uncertainties" section of the Company's most recent MD&A and in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form under the heading "Risk Factors", and elsewhere, which are available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com and on the Company's website. These risks and uncertainties may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information.
The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information included in this press release are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking information should not be unduly relied upon. This forward-looking information speaks as of the date of this press release. Forward-looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements regarding the Company's expectations with respect to conversion of inferred mineral resources to indicated mineral resources, timing of an updated mineral resource estimate to support a PFS, the assumptions used in the mineral resource estimates for the Filo del Sol project; expected timing with respect to completion of a PFS, expectations with regard to potential for adding to mineral resources through exploration; estimations of commodity prices, mineral resources, and costs.
Statements relating to "mineral resources" are deemed to be forward looking information, as they involve the implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions that the mineral resources described can be profitably produced in the future.
Forward-looking information is based on certain assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable, including that the current price of and demand for commodities will be sustained or will improve, the supply of commodities will remain stable, that the general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner, that financing will be available if and when needed on reasonable terms and that the Company will not experience any material labour dispute, accident, or failure of plant or equipment. These factors are not, and should not be construed as being, exhaustive. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that would cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. All forward-looking information contained in this document is qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information due to the inherent uncertainty thereof.
View previous May 18th, 2018 Filo Mining Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders to be Held June 14, 2018
View next June 14th, 2018 Filo Mining Announces Election of Directors and Annual Meeting Results
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Church/State Watchdog to Todd Starnes: Don’t Call Us an “Atheist” Org (Or Else) June 26, 2018 Hemant Mehta
Church/State Watchdog to Todd Starnes: Don’t Call Us an “Atheist” Org (Or Else)
Over the weekend, Pastor Robert Jeffress held a “Freedom Sunday” event at his First Baptist Dallas church. It was a sermon dedicated to the sheer awesomeness of our country… in the midst of a humanitarian crisis in which children have been forcibly separated from their parents while held in government-sanctioned cages. (Jeffress didn’t talk about that.)
The big controversy involved Jeffress’ use of seals representing the five Armed Forces in an ad promoting the event. It suggested an endorsement of his event by the military, which is prohibited by law.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s Mikey Weinstein sent a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Jeffress himself demanding they remove those seals from the promotional video and the event itself. The Pentagon eventually got involved — and Jeffress finally caved.
But here’s another twist to this story. We know about the Pentagon’s letter to Jeffress because it was reported by FOX News’ Todd Starnes, and this is what Starnes said in his article:
The Pentagon has directed one of the nation’s largest churches to remove insignia representing the branches of the military from an upcoming freedom celebration after an atheist group complained.
That’s a lie. MRFF is not an atheist group in any sense of the word. They represent atheists, sure, but they also represent Christians, Jews, and other members of the military who want to push back against endorsements of Christianity by their superiors. In many of Weinstein’s letters to military leaders, he cites the religious affiliations of the people who reached out to him, and it’s not unusual to hear that the majority of them are believers.
In fact, according to MRFF “96% of its current and retired armed forces clients are Christian as are about 80% of the Foundation staffers.”
So for Starnes to call them an “atheist” group isn’t just untrue. In the view of Weinstein, it’s unfair because they represent so many more people than that.
That’s why an attorney for MRFF, Randal Mathis, has now sent a letter to Starnes demanding he stop describing MRFF this way under threat of a lawsuit.
… Given that this has occurred a number of times I would like to ask a favor. Would you please have someone in the Fox News legal department, preferably an attorney who knows something about the law of libel and slander, call me so that I can have a conversation with them about what in the world it is going to take to impress upon you the need to stop doing this.
The whole point of a lawyer writing letters such as the ones I have written to you is to avoid litigation. I regret that I do not seem to be making much progress in avoiding that. You might bear in mind, and your own lawyer can of course advise you about it, that your insurance coverage for defamation may not apply to something that is intentionally done and repeated over a period of time.
Damn. They’re going Avenatti on Starnes. Break out the popcorn. Starnes is finally being called out on (one of) his (many) lies — and if he doesn’t stop lying, he could be sued. I’d like to think he’ll finally learn his lesson, but I doubt it.
Adding Insult to Injury, Migrant Kids Have to Recite the Pledge of Allegiance
June 26, 2018 The GOP's Sloppy Tax Bill Has Finally Hit Churches... and Leaders Are Furious
"You are a pro-plaguer. If it would be according to you, we still would have ..."
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Space Lasers
The U.S. Wants to Put Ballistic Missile Defense Systems in Space
The military wants to be able to track, and potentially take down missiles from orbit.
Victor TangermannJanuary 19th 2019
/ Off World
/ Ballistic Missile
/ Missile
/ Missile Defense
/Ballistic Missile
/Missile
/Missile Defense
Missiles in Space
The U.S. recently released a report that outlines how it will develop new technology to defend itself from missile attacks, and expand its existing missile defend shield. Chief among the ideas outlined by the report are ways the U.S. could defend itself from missiles — but from space.
The so-called Missile Defense Review was officially released in its unclassified form by the Pentagon earlier this week. The accompanying event was attended by President Donald Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence, and a number of high-ranking U.S. military officials.
A particularly high-brow idea highlighted in the report: space-based sensors, and anti-missile weapons that could track missiles mid-flight, and intercept (read: destroy) them from orbit.
Space-Based Sensors
We’ve known about these plans for a while now. The development of space-based anti-missile systems was mentioned in this year’s defense spending bill that was agreed upon by U.S. lawmakers back in July.
The plan is to come up with a preliminary working prototype of such a sensor by the early 2020s.
“We see space as an area that’s very important as far as advanced, next-level capabilities that will help us stay ahead of the threat,” said Pentagon technology head Mike Griffin at the event, as quoted by Defense News. “A space-based layer of sensors is something we are looking at to help give early warning, tracking and discrimination of missiles when they are launched.”
Space-based interceptors however — a system of high velocity projectiles or even lasers that can take out ballistic missiles while in orbit — will have to go through a six-month testing phase before the military decides to invest in the technology, according to Defense News.
Other ideas outlined in the Missile Defense Review include using the F-35 fighter jet to shoot down missiles while airborne, and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could do the same — but with lasers.
READ MORE: Here’s All You Need To Know About The New Missile Defense Review That Was Just Released [The Drive]
More on missile defense systems: Watch a Missile Smash a Dummy Nuclear Warhead Out of the Sky
FromQuarkstoQuasars
Astronomy Picture of the Day: 01/21/14 – M94
Blue Stragglers: The Blood Suckers of the Universe
The Strong Nuclear Force
Volcanoes: Understanding an Awesome Force
Astronomy Photo of the Day: 1/20/2014 – Winter in Yosemite National Park
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The Last of Us Part II PlayStation Experience 2016 Panel December 3, 2016
It was first announced just a few hours ago and now everyone has questions about the latest game from Naughty Dog, The Last of Us Part II. So sit down and enjoy this forty minute panel with game director Neil Druckman and the actors behind the game’s iconic characters, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson.
The Last of Us Part II is coming exclusively to the PS4.
Resident Evil 7 Demo Patched for PSVR December 3, 2016
The Resident Evil 7 demo that has been quietly occupying your PlayStation 4’s hard drive has just gotten a lot better. The Resident Evil 7 Beginning Hour demo has just received a 1.5GB update, adding new features to the game including native support for the PSVR headset.
If you don’t have the Resident Evil 7 demo on your PS4 you can still download the latest version from the PlayStation Network for free.
Resident Evil 7 is coming in 2017 to PS4.
Let’s Play A King’s Tale Final Fantasy XV December 3, 2016
Posted by Maniac in Let's Play, Site Videos.
Earlier this week, Square Enix released the highly anticipated game Final Fantasy XV. Anyone who preordered the game from GameStop received the downloadable title A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV. It served as a standalone prequel of sorts to the main game, and is heavily inspired by 2D beat-em-ups like Final Fight and Streets of Rage.
If you were unable to get this game here’s our full Let’s Play of the game in two parts. All gameplay is provided with full video commentary.
Final Fantasy XV is out now on Xbox One and PS4.
PaRappa the Rapper Coming to PS4 December 3, 2016
Sony has officially announced that the iconic PS1 title PaRappa the Rapper is being ported to the PlayStation 4 with updated graphics. In fact PS4 Pro owners will be happy to know the game will be playable in native 4K on that platform.
PaRappa the Rapper on PS4 is getting a free demo released on PlayStation Network later today!
The Last of Us Part II Announced December 3, 2016
The Last of Us stands as one of the highest rated games on the PS3 and developer Naughty Dog has held back any news on a potential sequel, saying there was only a 50-50 chance it would happen. Fans of the game have waited with nervous anticipation for quite some time, but today I’m proud to announce that wait is over.
Joel and Ellie are back.
The Last of Us Part II is coming exclusive to PS4.
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Is It Okay to Eat Ground Flax Meal With Diverticulosis?
The Health Benefits of Cold-Milled Flaxseed
What Is Calotren?
How to Feed a Horse Psyllium for Sand Colic
Flaxseed & Flaxseed Oil for Hot Flashes
Ground Flaxseed Health Benefits
By Norma Chew
Ground flaxseed is made by grinding the tiny-nutritious flaxseed of the Linum usitatissimum plant; which is rich in fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, omega-3 fatty acids and low in carbohydrates. Ground flaxseed is easier for the body to digest. Most importantly, ground flaxseed provides a variety of health benefits; promoting good health and well-being. As with any supplement, ground flaxseed should be taken with the advice and supervision of your health care practitioner.
Ground flaxseed, taken as a dietary supplement, may help to lower LDL or bad cholesterol levels. Flaxseed dietary supplements have a remarkable effect on lowering the cholesterol levels in patients with high cholesterol. Ground flaxseed may help to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke in patients with high cholesterol levels.
Ground flaxseed may help to ease menopausal symptoms, which may include irregular menstruation, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, mood swings, low sexual drive and vaginal dryness. Menopausal women who take 40g of flaxseed supplement experience the same effects as treatments with hormone replacement therapy would have produced. In addition flaxseed also strengthens bone, reduces the risk of osteoporosis and the potential for bone fracture from falling; conditions common during the aging process.
Ground flaxseed is a high fiber supplement that helps digestion, relieves constipation and cleanses the colon. Flaxseed contains both soluble and insoluble fibers that becomes mucilaginous and add bulk to the colon when wet. This stimulates the colon, increases the peristaltic or wavelike contraction of the colon and easily moves waste products and toxins out of the body in to the stool.
Effects on Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer stands behind lung cancer as the second leading cause of cancer death in American men. Flaxseed contains a group of chemicals called lignans that mimic the action of the natural hormone, estrogen. Lignans may protect and help the body fight against cancer. Researchers are diligently investigating the effect of lignans and their potential to prevent prostate cancer. According to the UMMC, researchers have found that in one study, 25 men with prostate cancer were compared to 25 men without the condition. The study revealed that men who consumed a low-fat, flaxseed-supplemented diet, for one month showed a slower tumor growth than in those who did not eat the diet.
Mayo Clinic: Does ground Flaxseed have more health benefits than whole flaxseed?
University of Maryland Medical Center: Flaxseed
The American Cancer Society: Prostate Cancer
Norma Chew is a retired registered nurse who has been a freelance writer since 1978. Chew's articles have appeared in the "Journal of the Association of Operating Room Nurses" (AORN), "Point of View Magazine" and "Today's OR Nurse." Chew has a master's degree in health care administration from Nova Southeastern University.
Side Effects of Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice
How Much Should I Be Sleeping in the First Trimester of Pregnancy?
How Many Calories in 1/2 Cup Ground Flaxseed?
The Best Snacks for Chemo Patients
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Hannah Blog
Hannah's Musings on Stuff and Such
Alyne Harris
Hannah’s Marsh
Puddy’s Ponds
Historical Stuff
James’ Tokens
JRH Posies
S.L.E.A.T.
Bait and Switch in the Land of Community Development
Draft LTEs, a compendium
The Brunswick News is rather more selective than the New York Times. The paper prominently features a request for letters but doesn’t publish them on but a couple of days a week out of the six. So, I’ll post them here.
Addendum: The Brunswick News has revised its letters policy and has been publishing many more, including mine. (06-18-16)
Two back-to-back presentations by a Dr. Wickersham and Sheriff Jump to the Glynn County Commission on Tuesday made that pretty clear.
Wickersham’s Health Needs Assessment brought forward as evidence that half our children live in single-parent homes, an almost certain predicate for poverty conditions, a hundred and fifty of them a year suffer serious abuse or neglect and, while car crashes and fatalities are decreasing, injuries are way more than in the rest of the country.
Glynn also has some of the worst air, an inordinate number of prescriptions for controlled substances (1.29 for each of our 81,000 residents), and double the violent crime rate in the rest of the state (800 per 100,000 people). Not to mention 155 registered sex offenders having to be tracked. So, the Sheriff has reason to ask for nine more detention personnel to staff his new jail, a facility that’s three times as large as the present one. And who’s to argue with the assertion that 173 violent incidents a year (one every two days) have to be contained, or that the prisoners aren’t entitled to the services of a doctor, a dentist, a psychiatrist and 24 hour nursing that, because of the community’s sense of penury, they can’t get outside.
Half the population not being seen by a doctor in two years and Medicaid dollars being refused are not going to negate the effect of 14 hazardous waste sites and 1.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals being spewed. There are reasons Glynn people are unhealthy and dying off prematurely.
We should probably reconsider the whole concept of privacy when it comes to a fragile terrain like the Sea Island Spit. Privacy, in general, is a social right in that some other party has to respect it for it to be realized. But, in the context of real estate that’s purchased using a public utility — i.e. our common currency — and/or transformed into a man-made asset, there’s nothing private at all.
Private dealings are based on verbal commitments and handshakes. Once contracts are signed and dollars change hands, in a sense, it’s just like being issued a marriage certificate. A private relationship gets transformed into a public one.
Yes, there are some philanderers and real estate developers who would have us believe that their disregard for proprieties are none of our business.
But, whatever goes into the public record is ipso facto a public matter. And that includes the five hundred septic tanks polluting the dunes of Sea Island.
I totally agree with your letter writer, Van Box, that we should purchase what we wish to control, which is why I am going to make a presentation to the Glynn County Commission this coming Thursday to get the ball rolling on making application for a grant from the $900 million of oil lease dollars set aside by the President for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, to be doled out by the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of acquiring the marshes between St. Simons and Sea Island that we don’t already own. Since Glynn County hasn’t been the recipient of such a grant since 1990, it’s way past time.
The creeks (Village, Black Banks and Postell) are, of course, already waters of the state. In addition, the 8 acres that comprise the Ft. Frederica Monument annex on bloody marsh is owned by our federal government and two oak hammocks off Village Creek are the property of the State of Georgia. While it is unlikely that we could get a grant for the full $6 million + at which the majority of the parcels in question are appraised, the appraisals themselves need to be reviewed. Which is why I will also make a presentation to the Glynn County Board of Assessors to ask them to look into how these appraisals are arrived at. For instance, the $425,000 appraisal of the Ft. Frederica annex can’t possibly be market-based and should, probably, be appraised like the conservation lands of the Saint Simons Trust at $0. On the other hand, the 1300+ acres acquired by Sea Island Acquisitions north of the causeway are certainly worth more than the $600 (sic) appraisal. Not to mention that their $5.87 tax bill isn’t even worth sending out. I and, I’m sure, any number of other people would be more than happy to pay them the appraised value and donate the marshland to the County to be conserved and preserved for passive recreation and the sustainable harvesting of fish, oysters and crabs.
The land on the Spit, which is what Mr. Box was addressing, is likely going to be for sale, but at a significantly inflated price, more akin to the lots on the north end of the island, which people bought for between $3 and $4 million, but are now appraised and taxed at far lower values. One lot, without a residence, for example, was purchased for $4,200,000 and is now appraised at $480,000 and pays a whopping $15,500 for no services. Another undeveloped lot, with a dock, was purchased for $3,335,000 and is assessed at $536,520 to pay in $13,114 annually in tax. Another $4,800,000 dollar lot, also with a dock, is assessed at $644,520 and contributes $15,753 to our governmental coffers. Not a bad deal for the County.
One might ask how these inflated land prices were arrived at. In the early ’80s, inflation resulted from the flipping of lots and was a major cause of the S&L crisis. Then too the financial institutions that were suckered into lending for purchases at such “market prices” eventually ended up belly up.
If you like, I can make a packet of the information I intend to present to the Board of Assessors available to your reporter. I have written it all out, so it won’t take too long and tax their patience. The first run through is bound to leave them non-plussed. Mr.Glisson, our relatively new Tax Assessor seems intrigued by the prospect of having something other than disgruntled millionaires to deal with.
Obviously, this is too long to be published and only provided for your information.
Was the Sea Island Company/Corporation responsible when the local banker was induced to make bad loans?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-14/synovus-sea-island-settlement-bars-board-loan-approvals.html
Was it responsible to declare bankruptcy in 2010? Was it responsible to move all the employees off the island and make them park somewhere else? Is it responsible to retain ownership of the shore so SIA can dump more boulders and pretend that’ll hold the ocean back?
Is it responsible to locate a lift station at an elevation of one foot? Is it responsible to strip all the natural vegetation to build a golf course nobody but the elite can use? Is it responsible to keep increasing the size of the cesspool in the dunes instead of installing an adequate sewer and laterals?
Is it responsible to pay a mere $5.87 property tax on 1353 acres of marsh?
Is it responsible to rely on public sewage treatment for the hotel and pretend the system is their own? Is it responsible to utilize the marshes as a shooting range? Is it responsible to misrepresent the fragility of the land and ignore that ever since Tropical Storm Beryl raged ashore in 2012 the terrain has been permanently affected?
No, that’s not how responsible people behave. Dedication is not enough; it’s what people do that counts.
The Glynn County Commission is a sorry spectacle. On the one hand, when citizens address them with valid complaints about their dereliction in failing to enforce local ordinances or bring forward helpful suggestions, they sit like bumps on a log. Rather than taking the opportunity to refer citizens’ concerns to the appropriate administrative agent, Commissioners use the public comment period to make it clear that they don’t care to hear what the community expects from them.
On the other hand, the Commissioners’ interactions with citizens, whom they have invited to volunteer for service on various boards and committees and then reject for frivolous reasons, are downright embarrassing. No wonder there aren’t more applicants. No wonder committee recommendations are few and far between. Their only value to the Commission, it seems, is as an opportunity to show favoritism or disdain for some faction or clique.
Indecision is not amusing and sixty minute meetings are not efficient when they embarrass us. They’re a waste of time. And time, unlike money, is definitely in limited supply.
In part, it’s our own fault. Voting is not enough, but, since this is the season, it’s a start. Time to vote out the bumps on the log and bring in some new blood.
West Virginia’s reputation as the source of coal and its legendary miners has recently morphed into the story of mountain top removal to get at the stuff, while unemployed coal miners watch their mountains and rivers and valleys being destroyed. One has to wonder if that’s what Sea Island Acquisitions is proposing, on a smaller scale, for our beloved Sea Island.
No doubt there are some coal extractors who argue that the mountains are gradually eroding into the sea, so why not hurry it along. The loggers and bulldozer operators in the dunes may well arrive with a similar attitude. Indeed, harnessing the power to wreck the landscape in a short period of time might even provide them with a “high.” But, that’s no excuse.
Even if it took the Creator but a day to make, wrecking the landscape is the Devil’s work.
Every month this year, residents and visitors to the Golden Isles have been advised not to even wade in the ocean. Sharks, although there are many of them, are not to blame. No, the culprits are nearly invisible bacteria (bugs) that can sicken or even kill if they get in your gut or under the skin. Every month, without exception, Georgia’s departments of health and natural resources have issued advisories and press releases which, apparently, the press doesn’t heed. Perhaps it’s because it’s no longer news.
Would it help if the beaches were actually closed? God forbid! That might interfere with the tourist industry.
One gets the sense that the testing and advising is little more than an exercise in law-suit prevention. Not even an effort to determine where this human-centric pollution is coming from so it can be stopped. On the other hand, with five hundred septic tanks on Sea Island pumping out leachate, it’s no wonder chlorinated pools are sprouting like mushrooms. Who says pollution and economic development can’t go hand in hand?
http://www.coastalgadnr.org/nn/beach.glynn.2014.advisoris
Today’s paper is commendable for highlighting the start of the electoral season and reminding citizens that they can vote early, before they forget or are distracted by the hoopla over golf and football. However, I’d point out that, although it’s referred to as a “right,” voting in general, not just in elections, is an obligation — one of the bundle of obligations of citizenship. That’s something some of our elected officials need to be reminded of when they sit on their hands or merely rubber stamp staff recommendations. The other obligations of citizenship?
serving on juries
drafting legislation
providing material support
running for public office
enforcing the laws
Fortunately, we can take turns and we can even afford not to carry them out at all. But, that’s only true because some of our citizens are really conscientious.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers did not “make” Georgia’s coastal plain a wetland, as some of our politicos seem to think. Just as surely as He made little green apples, God made the wetlands. And then he made Adam out of the mud. Why the same folk, who credit the Creator with whatever they like, blame someone else for what they don’t, is a puzzlement.
In any case, the problem with the coastal wetlands, which are not obliterated by being drained, isn’t so much that they are wet, but that the composition of the soils is such that they corrode concrete and steel and never hold still. It’s not just the dynamic dunes that are characterized by shifting sands.
That said, the Corps’ emphasis on navigation is perhaps misplaced, as is the region’s fascination with transportation. If we want visitors to tarry and refresh themselves, it’s counter-productive to construct more speedways through the marshes and woodlands of Chatham, Liberty, Bryan, Camden, McIntosh and Glynn.
About forty years ago, a Commissioner in Alachua County, Florida, figured, if one just looked at the raw numbers, the area could easily hold millions and millions of people because, having a land area of over eight hundred square miles, Alachua County is much larger than the island of Manhattan, whose twenty-two square miles, almost one and a half times larger than the size of St. Simons Island (16.6 square miles), are currently home to over one and a half million people (considerably fewer than way back then), .
Of course, what was impracticable in North Florida forty years ago, would be just as impracticable on the Georgia Coast now, if anyone had any idea about what was being planned. The truth is nobody knows, because the Glynn County Commission, for one, has been approving developments right and left without giving any thought to what the area needs or our infrastructure can support.
Why? Presumably because the fees are keeping county coffers filled. But now that the citizenry is up in arms about shoddy projects sprouting like mushrooms after a rain (and not just on the islands), they’re scratching their heads for a response. The logical solution would seem to be to declare a moratorium on any new residential development approvals, at least until we know how many are already in the pipeline. That 40% of our residential units are mostly unoccupied should also be a consideration since that 40% does not include transient accommodations.
Your points on property and casualty insurance are well taken. There are
some relationships where a zero-sum situation exists. That is, as one
side increases, the other goes down. And the relationship between
property and casualty insurance companies and local governments is a
good example. When local government services and regulations preventing
shoddy construction practices and building in hazardous locations are
effectively applied — i.e. the quality of government goes up–then the
need for fire, flood and other hazard insurance is less. Which means the
dollars insurance companies can exact for their “services” get less. Our
agents of insurance have a vested interest in agents of government being
inefficient.
Logically speaking, the opposite would seem to be true. After all, if
houses don’t catch fire or sink into the swamp or get swept into the
creek, insurers keep all their premiums as profits. But, the fact is,
they do that anyway, since there is never any intention to pay out but a
pittance. Because, like their cohorts in the health insurance business,
which have traditionally excluded sick people (people with pre-existing
conditions) from service, property and casualty insurers don’t write
policies in distressed neighborhoods that have historically been
deprived of high quality public services, or even any. Which is not to
say distressed areas don’t have a purpose. Insurers, along with their
cohorts in the financial brotherhood, can point to them as examples of
what happens when insurance coverage isn’t kept up.
A few decades ago financial disinvestment was referred to as red-lining
and associated primarily with minority communities and banks. But, the
impetus was always more mercenary than ethnic in that the object was to
drive resident owners out of prime locations, snap up the real estate on
the cheap and hold up communities for redevelopment bucks. Alan
Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, called it
“liberating assets for the market” and it’s still going on. Elders can’t
sell and youngsters can’t buy a modest stake because insurers won’t
insure and bankers won’t lend below a certain level. In Rochester, New
York, it was seventy five thousand dollars.
Wonder what it is in Brunswick, where the household income is just
$29,000, compared to almost $31,000 in Rochester.
Unfortunately, the struggle for equality has not turned out as we
imagined. Who knew that 99% could be given the shaft and equally
deprived? The financial gurus knew. That’s who.
Dear Mr. Leavy,
Other than Former Commissioner Gunn, none of your respondents on St. Simons’ future have any environmental awareness. The line about “century oaks” is an excuse for cutting down old trees and letting nurseries and landscape contractors sell new. If the concern were real, everyone would be attentive to the fact that the oaks at the corner of Riverview and Frederica are large, but relatively young and cutting their roots to plant gas tanks underground is certain to kill them off.
Also, if the conern about traffic were real, then Glynn County would not be rejecting the $600,000 a year the folks in Washington are offering for public transportation. Cap Fendig and even the SIA PROPCO, LLC, know that buses and trolleys are much more efficient for moving people relatively short distances. They also know that, if people are relatively healthy and live long enough, there’s a social benefit to getting them out from behind the steering wheel, encouraging walking and leaving the driving to someone else. Contrary to Provenzano’s notion, concrete bikeways along side the roadways for automotive vehicles are not a proper traffic solution. All over the country, it has been proven that vehicles need to share the road and pedestrians need to have the right of way. Moreover, if people are to be neighborly and have a connected feeling, then, instead of being separated by walls and fences, residential areas need to be connected with pedestrian facilities, like the garden gate between The Meadows and Kelvin Oaks.
Segregation is alive and thriving on St. Simons Island, and on the mainland. It disguises itself as “security” and the promotion of private property rights.
Private property, btw, has been a deception from the start. Some people were guaranteed the right to own property, including other people (slaves, wives, children) in exchange for having everyone’s human rights denied at will. People are being deceived. Read one of those condominium association tomes of deed restrictions and then argue that people aren’t signing their most basic rights away. For example, though the association rules at the Reserve at Demere prohibit the units being used for time sharing, they’re being advertised all over Europe as vacation rentals “by owner” to as many as seven “tourists” at a time. Then too, in addition to the new Beach Club condos having only one resident owner, 24 of the Cloister Cottages are owned by Exclusive Resorts SI1 LLC, which welcomes anyone with a large enough wad of money to vacation for a few days or weeks, as if dollars are going to guarantee they’re not crooks. So much for security!!
Finally, because the first Exclusive Resorts listing (Buffer Cloister Cottages) reminds me, there seems to be a gross misunderstanding in the Coastal community about the functional importance of vegetative buffer zones where impervious surfaces are banned. Buffers aren’t about vistas or visual segregation. Buffers are about what happens on the ground in a largely watery environment. Their purpose is to prevent chemical pollutants from industrial, commercial and transport activities from reaching our fresh and salt water bodies and poisoning the biota that normally live in them. Erosion is to be prevented and sediment is to be retained on land because soil particles serve as carriers for chemical pollutants and toxins when storm water carries them off. So, for example, while the butchery of the high marsh vegetation by the county along Highway 17 LOOKS bad, appearance is the least of our problems. Our problem is that our watery environment is being poisoned from above and below ground and our optics-dependent public servants seem totally unaware. People are supposed to be their main concern, but people are being sickened as we speak and “world class health care” is not something we should need.
We, of the Sidney Lanier Environmental Action Team, hope to pass out a short survey at the February 17th meeting of the IPC. Perhaps we’ll be able to generate a more balanced and environment-centered response. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the Coastal Illustrated effort, which I missed in my paper, probably because I routinely discard all the inserts at the start. My bad.
Monica Smith, aka Hannah
Now, here’s a new wrinkle. I sent a letter to the Times Union the other day. Today I got a request to submit a letter — ON ONE OF TWO SUGGESTED TOPICS!!!! They now thing letters to the editor can be ordered???!!!
I sent back this one:
Let’s get one thing straight. Currency is a public utility. So, any transaction which involves that currency is therefor not private. Moreover, because currency is a public utility, the agency that issues it — i.e. the federal government — is entitled to determine and define how it is to be used and under what conditions it needs to be returned. Settling those accounts is what we are obligated to do by April 15th. Think of it as sort of a spring cleaning — like taking all those bottles and cans to the recycling center. Why should hoarders be praised? Because, having been issued as electronic bits, it doesn’t take up much space?
Hoarding currency might not be as detrimental as it once was, but that doesn’t make it admirable. If you don’t need to spend the dollars, send them back.
To cultivate or culture is coercive. That’s true whether we are talking about, horticulture, viniculture, agriculture or abbreviate it as in “cult.” In each case, the cultivar is constrained to follow some course or behave in some manner contrary to its nature. So, I am somewhat nonplussed that people, who have labored on Sea Island for many years, are being “honored” (in a four page supplement to today’s Brunswick News) for their submission to “our culture.” One wonders if being honored as “part of this special club” is supposed to be a substitute for adequate material rewards (good pay, health care, secure retirement).
One might also wonder about the touting of “successful words.” Scott Steilen, the new President of the corporation, claims “one of the fundamental keys to sustained success is having a great team,” apparently forgetting that the recent decade was marred by a rescue out of bankruptcy by a group of absentee owners from Wall Street, who dubbed themselves “Sea Island Acquisitions,” and then morphed more recently into SIA PROPCO II, LLC. So much for consistency.
Are we, the “families, friends, neighbors and fellow community members” being reminded that, like the children whom every politician claims to value and protect when education programs are cut, the “loyalty, passion, grace and service” of Sea Island team members might well be for naught, if we don’t reciprocate the Limited Liability Company’s “appreciation.”
Perhaps I’m just jaded by their habit of paving the wetlands for parking and driving snack food trucks in the dunes.
Monica Smith
The Saint Simons Land Trust, an eleemosynary enterprise par excellence, is looking for more trusting members, according to a half page color ad in today’s paper. That the associated picture is of the creek bank and marsh they have scoured away to replace with bags of oyster shells is not mentioned.
Combo-Cannons-Point-2-1024×441
Neither does the ad make mention of the fact that perhaps their stewardship so far has been somewhat profligate. While the thirteen million spent to acquire 600+ acres forest lands on Cannon’s Point might seem excessive, no doubt, the Trust having paid almost half a million for less than a half acre of creek bank in the middle of the Glynn Haven neighborhood in 2006 set a sort of precedent that has to be maintained.
On the other hand, that the acre donated by Glynn County for the restoration of the Harrington Graded School and its conversion into a museum is now worth over two hundred thousand sounds like a good deal. Too bad it doesn’t look like one. Progress on the building is going at a snail’s pace and the site itself is a scandal, littered with shards of glass, boards with rusty nails, a mosquito-breeding roll off that hasn’t been emptied in months and rickety scaffolding that wasn’t safe when it was actually in use. As it stands, it’s not even possible to organize a neighborhood work session for the park. If the ostentatious sign is to be believed, the project is two years behind schedule.
“The work is not yet done,” according to the ad. You can say that again. The work is not done. But the Trust wants more members to send money, for preservation. Maybe that’s the problem. If preserving the decrepit is what the St. Simons Land Trust is about, maybe we should rethink our investment in this eleemosynary enterprise. While it has shrunk our tax roll by about twenty-one million dollars, the public hasn’t seen a lot of bang for its bucks.
Water and sewer utilities are an issue in Coastal Georgia, as most everywhere else. Here they seem intimately connected with ground water and surface water pollution that, unlike elsewhere, can still be corrected before it gets too bad.
So, I’ve been in contact with local agencies to get the lay of the land and will index the documentation as “the squeaky wheel II” as a separate page on the blog.
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2014 11:17 AM
To: Swiger, Cliff
Subject: St. Simons Island WPCW
Dear Mr. Swiger,
Again, thanks for forwarding the St Simons Island, Water Pollution Control Permit, which, of course, already signals with its name that “control” rather than prevention is the name of the game. Just want to get that prejudice up front.
After reading through that document, as well as the January operations and testing report, I do have some questions.
1) While it is good that the report indicates 99% of suspended solids are being removed, instead of the required 85%, I have a hard time imagining that the raw sewage is being sampled coming into the plant to determine that removal rate. Also, since that standard presumably applies to all Public Wastewater Plants, leaving 15% solids behind seems excessive.
The requirement is a minimum of 85% TSS removal. If a facility begins to approach the 85% minimum then Georgia EPD will investigate potential causes such as infiltration and inflow. The calculation is indeed a mathematical comparison of influent samples and effluent samples. The 85% minimum removal is a federal regulation found in Title 40, Part 133 of the Code of Federal Regulations, and is incorporated by reference into the Georgia Rules for Water Quality Control. This is a technology-based regulation required for all municipal treatment plants and is a minimum level of treatment for point sources based on currently available treatment technologies. The BOD and TSS effluent limits for St. Simons Island WPCP are “water quality-based” limits and provide a much more restrictive limitation than the percent removal requirement.
2) Does the “influent” being reported on represent the receiving body of water (the creek) into which the effluent of the plant flows? If so, then does the background condition of the receiving water define how much additional contamination can be allowed?
The influent being reported is not the discharge into a receiving stream. It is the wastewater entering the water pollution control plant. The quality of the receiving stream generally dictates the effluent loading permitted by the water pollution control plant.
3) Is there a sludge management plan beyond the number of times and the quantities being picked up? Where is the sludge being brought? Is there a grease separator in place? What happens to the inorganics? Are they skimmed and trucked to a landfill?
The St. Simons Island WPCP does not land apply the sludge generated at the plant. Sludge from the facility is disposed in a landfill, and the quantity of sludge is monitored and reported. Grease can accumulate in the aerators and clarifiers of wastewater treatment plants but is controlled by mechanical (skimming) removal and disposed in a landfill. Inorganics commonly referred to as “grit” settle out at the inlet of the treatment process. The grit is routinely removed from the collection area and disposed in a landfill.
4) Is that the norm that only a fifty percent kill rate of the critters on which the water is tested has to be reported? Also, the things being tested for seem rather skimpy. Copper seems to be the only heavy metal. What about periodic testing for pharamaceuticals going through the system?
In reference to Part 1.A.5. of the permit, the data that must be reported is the concentration of the effluent that is lethal to 50% of the test organisms for an acute toxicity test. That concentration is determined in the laboratory and is used to determine whether the effluent is toxic. Saint Simons Island is required to test for chemical constituents for which the State has established Water Quality Standards (Chapter 391-3-6-.03) once a year. The chemical constituent testing is commonly known as Priority Pollutant Scans. The results of priority pollutant scans are evaluated by EPD to determine if there is reasonable potential to cause or contribute to a water quality standard violation. Whenever, EPD determines that there is concern of causing or contributing to a water quality standard violation, the permittee will be required to conduct additional testing for the parameter of concern. In the case of Saint Simons Island, copper was found at levels of concern and in accordance with EPD’s Reasonable Potential Procedures, EPD required additional monitoring for copper. The copper monitoring conducted by Saint Simmons Island has been evaluated by EPD and there is no reasonable potential for copper to cause or contribute to a water quality standard violation. EPD will continue to evaluate priority pollutant scans submitted by the permittee to determine if there is reasonable potential for any constituent to cause or contribute to a water quality standards violation.
In addition to monitoring for chemical constituents for which the State has established Water Quality Standards, Saint Simons Island is required to conduct annual chronic Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) tests. WET Test are helpful in determining if there is toxicity being caused by the discharge. Even if the priority pollutant scans did not raise concerns, a WET Test can identify problems with the treatment plant discharge. Based on the results of the WET test submitted by Saint Simons Island, chronic toxicity is not predicted.
There is a potential for pharmaceutical drug residues to be present in treated municipal wastewater. US EPA has conducted research on this matter and “preliminary study results suggest that risks posed to healthy adult humans (and animals with similar physiology) by water-borne pharmaceutical residues is very low”. For more information, please visit the following website: http://www.epa.gov/eerd/research/pharmaceuticals.html
5) I’m not sure that analytical methods being “sufficiently sensitive” is much of a standard.
Sufficiently sensitive means that the procedures and instruments must be capable of detecting and measuring at or below the parameter limit.
6) On page eight there is reference to a watershed protection plan. Where can I get a current copy of that?
The Watershed Protection Branch should be contacted at 404-675-6232 regarding copies of the Watershed Protection Plan. The Coastal District does not maintain a copy of the Plan. As a matter of enforcement we do address any non-reporting violations.
7) There is mention of several industrial contributors. How many are there? Do they have pre-treatment plans ? Are there any non-compliance reports? Will the March 1 deadline for filling the pre-treatment reports be met?
There are no industrial pretreatment facilities which discharge to the St. Simons Island WPCP. A Pretreatment Annual Report is required to be submitted to EPD each March.
8) The provision that notice of bi-pass has to be given ten days in advance suggests that this is a rather routine occurence. What plans are there to build in redundancy so that bi-pass can be avoided entirely?
There have not been any bypasses reported to EPD for the St. Simons Island WPCP. When equipment must be shutdown for maintenance and repairs, the facility has duplicate equipment to prevent the need for a bypass.
9) On page eleven it reads that alternative power can be used IF available. Is such a plant not required to have back-up power that won’t fail? Doesn’t the EPA and FEMA require that.
The St. Simons Island WPCP has an emergency backup generator.
10) Speaking of FEMA, the latest data set suggests that half of Glynn County critical plant lies in the flood plain. Does that include the St. Simons Sewage plant? If so, wouldn’t it make sense to plan for elevated improvements on site so the inflow can be easily rerouted? The county supposedly has a $30 million surplus set aside. http://www.csc.noaa.gov/snapshots/
The Coastal District office in Brunswick plays no role in the development of F.E.M.A. flood zone mapping. If St. Simons Island WPCP desires to make elevated improvements, the Division will need to review and approve those plans. There are no EPD regulations that require modification of sewage treatment plants to meet FEMA flood plain maps.
11) Is Sea Island one of the industrial users. Do they have a complete collection and treatment system or do they send their separately metered flow to the POTW? If the latter, how much do they contribute in terms of flow and dollars? Is there a special rate for industrial users? If Sea Island does its own treatment, is there a different kind of permitting regimen?
Wastewater from Sea Island is treated at the St. Simons Island WPCP, but it is not classified as an industrial pretreatment facility. The Brunswick Glynn County Joint Water and Sewer Commission (BGCJWSC) should be able to provide you with any rate structures applied to Sea Island.
12) How does the January flow (when there was no rain and little infiltration) compare to the flows in summer when the island is full and it is the rainy season?
Flows can increase in periods of heavy precipitation (due to inflow and infiltration) and during tourist season. The St. Simons Island WPCP has maintained compliance with flow limitations specified in the permit.
The 2010 census indicated that only 60% of island residences are occupied. That means up to 40% may be paying for the utilities, but not using up plant capacity. So, if all those houses were either occupied by current owners or sold to people who want to move in, then the flow to the plant could be expected to increase by about 50%. Never mind all the lots that have been platted but not yet hooked in to the plant. Ideally, any subdivision would be conditioned on the current availability of utilities. Developers may have to pay for the piping, but the plant has to be adequate to accept the flow. Just repeating in each report that the data from 2006 are being relied on is not adequate.
Finally, where can I find a map of the distribution systems for St. Simons and Sea Island? Lanier Island doesn’t interest me at the moment.
EPD does not maintain maps of the distribution system. The BGCJWS Commission could possibly assist you with this request.
Thanks for your attention to this and excuse the dumb questions. Unlike a good lawyer, I do ask questions to which I don’t know the answers.
Good morning, members of the Facilities Committee of the BGJWSC
A couple of weeks ago, after reading your Master Plan for the water and sewer utilities, as well as the latest report on the operations at the Dunbar Creek Pollution Control Plant on St. Simons Island, I sent about 12 questions to the Coastal District office of the Environmental Protection Division. I say “about” because, as you will see from the hand-out, some of the questions had several parts. Given how informative the responses from Davil Lyle and Cliff Swiger were, I thought I’d just pass them around and make a few comments, mostly about what isn’t there.
The response to question 6 is still hanging fire because nobody at the EPD number given seems to know what a Watershed Protection Plan is. Which probably accounts for why the District office doesn’t have a copy. Perhaps such a plan, which seems necessary to address the obvious degradation of our streams and coastal water, was just an aspiration, a twinkle in some politician’s eye. I will keep looking.
From the answer to question 7 we can conclude that, since Sea Island is not an industrial user, it must be a commercial client. How the fees are calculated is not quite clear from you rate chart, so I’d ask the Commission for an elaboration, perhaps even a discussion of how a transition to full centralized sewer service for Sea Island will be paid for and accomplished. Your most recent performance audit again suggests that eventually regulations will make it necessary to fully integrate the Sea Island community when it comes to disposing of sewage appropriately.
Number 10 seems to tell us two things, or perhaps three. One is that the Environmental Protection Division is almost entirely dependent on information it derives from the permitting procedure. No permit, no info. This is unfortunate because not only do permits have to be issued (they’re not optional), but if there’s no independent input from other sources, the criteria for improving the results (a healthy environment for man and beast) can’t be adjusted. The second is that co-ordination with other agencies, whose activities the EPD obviously doesn’t permit, is, ipso facto, missing. That EPD might second guess FEMA-suggested efforts to get public utilities out of the flood plain, or at least impervious to flood water intrusion, is a bit startling, especially since rain water flowing into the manholes and infiltrating the sewer collection lines has been identified as a problem since 2006. That relatively clean rain water flowing into the system makes it easier to have a clean effluent is not a positive, if it means that the plant lacks the capacity to treat sewerage from areas that haven’t yet been connected (St. Clair, e.g. would seem to account for 172 units). The Master Plan referenced 50 septic tanks on St. Simons, but that’s probably low, as was the assessment of 400 septic tanks on Sea Island in 2006 or 2008, if the records of the Environmental Health section of the Department of Health are to be believed. That the EPD does not issue permits for septic tanks probably accounts for why they have no records and no idea whether periodic spikes of contamination in the coastal waters are related to the maintenance and proliferation of on-site septic systems. Sand dunes provide good (quick) drainage, and little time for the digestion of contaminants.
It seems that Sea Island is classified as a private water utility as well as a private sewer collection facility, although it pumps and meters the effluent it sends to the Dunbar Creek plant. The average flow of 11,000 gallons per day, which has been reported, suggests, if 300 gpd per Resident Equivalent Unit (REU) is accurate, that about 350 REUs are being served by the force main, which has been installed down the spine of the island. Since, I’m assuming, potable water is being distributed from on-island wells by the Sea Island Corporation, water consumption can’t be used as a base for sewerage charges. So, what I’d ask of this Committee, or the whole Commission, is an explanation of how rates are set for such a large commercial user and, more important, what provision is being made for providing full service to the residents of Sea Island. Because, if the current system fails, the public sector has an obligation to step in. If it’s an unfunded obligation, then that’s potentially detrimental to the rest of the community. Never mind that we all suffer when our natural environment is abused.
I’m not sure that our various planning and zoning bodies understand that their determinations represent commitments which not only have monetary value to land owners and developers, but also represent a commitment by the community to provide necessary services. Water and air and, for that matter, soils that are free of contaminants and toxins aren’t options and “buyer beware” does not apply. When permits are issued, they are based on the assumption that the activity being permitted is good and proper and appropriate. Turning sand dunes into cesspools is not.
In the interim, I have determined that the Commission’s data systems are managed by Glynn County’s Department of Community Development, which helpfully generated a map of known water and sewer distribution and collection lines on Sea Island. There are lots of fire hydrants, water distribution lines to virtually all houses and, as I said, a force main for collecting sewerage running down the spine from the Ocean Forest development on the north end. However, there’s only one manhole that’s been identified, in the area of the hotels and the designation of many lift stations has to be suspect. Because, for example, the one that’s shown on the lot, whose address is 801 Ocean Blvd, would seem to be co-located with a three million dollar mansion at an elevation of ONE foot.
Now, it may be that the data are all wrong, but it seems to me that, as the provider of a necessary public service, BGJWSC has an interest in having an accurate picture of the environment in which it operates. The Sea Island companies may prefer to keep their business private and let the public incur the risks of their mismanagement, but enough is enough. If they want to access public facilities, they have to be inspected. I notice they have no objection to having their trash collected, having the fire engines and EMS respond, but when it comes to planning for the future, they are stand-offish. It’s not doing anyone a favor to let them get away with that.
We’ve got the technology and we’ve got the manpower and the Commission has extra funds, so let’s start collecting all the data of what’s underground before any more facilities are planned. The auditors say the recession has given us time because population growth hasn’t been as rapid as expected. But, we should have been using that time to do what was already recommended over five years ago. Oh, and when you contract with consultants, don’t let them get away with saying they could find no information.
Letter to the editor — not yet published
Private Property Rights
Presentation to Glynn County Commission
A few weeks ago, when the President’s latest budget was announced, it was noted that he recommended the transfer of some nine hundred million dollars, collected from off-shore drilling fees, into the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program of grants that has been administered by the Department of the Interior since the 1960s. Governmental subdivision, the only entities qualified to receive such grants, were invited to submit proposals.
Since Glynn County, which had received 16 such grants in the past, but none since 1990, seems about due, it occurred to me this would be a good time to put together a proposal to acquire much of the marshland between St. Simons, East Beach and Sea Island. So, I have identified an area, extending roughly from the East Beach Causeway to North Harrington Road for possible acquisition for conservation, preservation and passive public recreation, including sustainable fishing, oystering and crabbing. While the 3000+ acres, in 23 parcels, are valued at about $6.6 million by our property appraiser, they are not likely to be funded at that full amount. Besides which the process by which these values are set seems rather arbitrary and capricious and, frankly, incomprehensible to the layman. Which is why I have asked our Board of Assessors to review the process and perhaps develop more realistic values.
For example, the eight and a half Fort Frederica Bloody marsh acres are appraised at almost half a million dollars, even though the National Monument is never going to be sold. On the other hand, Sea Island Acquisitions owns over thirteen hundred and fifty acres supposedly worth six hundred dollars. I’d be embarrassed to submit a request based on that kind of information to a federal agency.
It might be suggested that we should rely on the Corps of Engineers and the GADNR to wield their restrictions and specifications to protect the wildlife and vegetation of the marshes, not to mention the quality of the waters. However, the ministrations of these agencies have not been particularly efficacious, in part because they are in the permitting business and if they don’t issue permits for docks and dikes and bulwarks and boardwalks, they have nothing to do. So, they set their demands at whatever level they can extort and the people for whom money is no object get their way and the natural inhabitants get short shrift.
So, what I’m asking is that you refer this proposal, admittedly only roughly outlined, to the Parks and Recreation Committee for their review and assessment as to whether it would be worth while for Glynn County to apply for a grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to bring the marshes on the east side of Saint Simons into the public domain.
Commissioner Provenzano,
The letter-writer has it exactly right. One of the “advantages” of planned development ordinances for the community is supposed to be that planning ahead obviates the need for constant vigilance, even as developers are able to phase their enterprises as financial and market conditions demand. A planned development ordinance is not supposed to be a blanket permission subject to constant amendment and “tweaking.” Amending an ordinance is supposed to be complex. Delegating it to the IPC is inappropriate.
Moreover, while many citizens are naturally concerned about appearances, increased traffic and the arrival of more strangers in their neighborhood, the county’s regulations should be mainly concerned with impacts on the physical, rather than psychological environment. So, for example, landscape buffers and reserved areas serve environmental interests, such as storm-water retention and treatment, air drainage, protection from solar rays, etc. We need to keep in mind that storm-water, because it washes the various car deposited toxins from roadways and parking lots, is more polluted than the effluent from a well-functioning waste water treatment plant.
It is my impression that landscape requirement for parking lots are fairly minimal in our ordinances and storm water is direct into the marshes and creeks as expeditiously as possible. What developers should be required to provide is compensatory detention areas for any impervious surfaces they install (roofs, parking lots, driveways).
The power to regulate, if it is not to be arbitrary, needs to be based on measurable criteria that affect health and safety of people and the natural environment that sustains them.
I realize the temptation to do nothing is strong. However, that’s not why public servants are elected. If the Community Development staff is not providing good information, that needs to be addressed. Although I will be gone for about three months, when I return in August, I will try to interact with our administrator and some of the department heads. The County Commission, unlike the JWSC on which you also serve, comes across as little more than seven bumps on a log. Administrators prefer that because it gives them autonomy, but the citizens are not well served either by bumps on a log, or rubber stamps.
SpitLTE41814.jpg
Commission should not put spit decision on others
So, Scott Steilen wants his choice. Unfortunately, property ownership is a lot like citizenship, a bundle of obligations. It may be called “private property,” but entry into the agora makes it public. In this instance, the public interest is not served by plopping down yet more McMansions, whose footprint on seven-plus pristine acres would be far in excess and house fewer people than another condo building served by already existing utilities.
While some people are quite content to have the leisure class secrete themselves in their gilded cages, it’s not a kindness to them. Nor is it generous of the chair of the Island Planning Commission to leave it to the potential buyers to beware.
Finally, the Glynn County Commission should be ashamed to be looking for vetoes from the Coast Guard and the Department of Natural Resources. Their mission is in the national and state interest. We count on the county to serve the people and the environment that sustains us.
Variations on a theme:
Dick Yarbrough started it:
YARBROUGH: Sea Island Company defends proposed 7.2 acre development
By Dick Yarbrough – Special to The Telegraph
I wrote recently about the concerns of environmental groups over a proposal by the owners of Sea Island to develop 7.2 acres on the south end of the island. They say that the land is too fragile for the proposed development.
Those opposed were savvy enough to alert me to their concerns and I was interested enough to weigh in on the issue. As is my policy, I was preparing to contact Sea Island Acquisition LLC, the consortium that bought Sea Island out of bankruptcy in 2010, and get their side of the story.
Before I could pick up the phone, Sea Island Acquisition LCC was running full-page newspaper ads around the state refuting my opinions and making troublesome implications about my credibility.
Their response inspired opponents to run full-page ads of their own, rebutting the company and defending me and my credibility. The net result was to make the issue higher profile and more controversial than Sea Island would like it to be. Some overpaid lawyer probably thought the company was justified in its response. A first-year public relations student would have told them their strategy was dumb as a rock.
Still, I trudged down to the coast to hear from Scott Steilen, SIA’s president, and get his side of the story. The fact that while I was there I managed to scarf down copious amounts of corn-fried shrimp at the exquisite little Georgia Sea Grill on St. Simons Island was a total coincidence.
Give Steilen style points for not trying to justify his (and it was his) over-the-top reaction to my column. I got the feeling that given another opportunity, he might have done things differently.
With that matter behind us, we talked at length about the proposed construction — to be called Cloister Reserve — on the south end of Sea Island. Steilen is emphatic that the eight lots are not on a “spit” as claimed by opponents but on a “peninsula.” There is a difference in the two that would take me too long to explain and would likely give you eye-glaze if I tried, but it is an important distinction to Sea Island.
Steilen says the eight proposed parcels on the peninsula are over a mile from the southern end of Sea Island (the “tip”) and more than 20 feet above the mean sea level.
Even though the property is zoned for higher-density hotel rooms or condominiums, Sea Island says they will limit the “buildable footprint” to just 3.5 acres. The homes will be set back from the ocean and will not impact the beach habitat of sea turtles and birds.
I asked about the fact that Cloister Reserve owners would not be eligible for federal flood insurance. Steilen states that homeowners, not taxpayers, would bear the risk in case of flooding and that the current Cloister Ocean Residences are also not eligible for federally-subsidized flood insurance.
One of the major concerns of environmentalists is erosion. They say Glynn County tax parcel maps show the spit’s shoreline has lost 200 feet over the past four decades and that studies by noted coastal geologist Dr. Chester Jackson, of Georgia Southern, indicate the area has lost 100 feet of shoreline in just the past 10 years. Steilen disputes those numbers and calls them “misleading.”
He says the rate of shoreline recession depends on a great number of factors and that it is the southernmost tip — a mile from the proposed development — that is “most dynamic” and that available information does not support the contention that the Cloister Reserve site is eroding at a long-term rate of 10 feet a year. He claims that construction activities will not cause the island to erode.
Steilen is most animated when talking about his company’s commitment to Sea Island. He bristles at the charge of “damaging the Sea Island brand,” citing a dedicated staff of employees who he applauds for having been through tough financial times with the company and never wavering in their commitment to building and enhancing Sea Island’s reputation, which he says is at the top of many industry rankings.
With that and a tour of the area, we were done. However, I suspect the issue is far from done with the opponents of the project. As for me, I have given both sides their say and I am moving on to other topics, such as the upcoming political races and our unappreciated public schoolteachers and how one is likely to impact the other. Stay tuned.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb.
Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2014/06/03/3129516/yarbrough-sea-island-company-defends.html#storylink=cpy
I followed up:
Mr. Yarbrough:
The thing about half-truths is that they are worse than lies because they aim to mislead and are hard to refute. It is true that one of the sand dunes on which a McMansion is proposed to be plopped is at an elevation of 20′ above sea level. But, the road to get to it and the sewer lines in the ground are going to level that down, sort of like mountain top removal does to the landscape in West Virginia.
Never mind that the last thing we need is eight more McMansions with transient residents. The county and state likely relish the prospects of collecting more property taxes, but, as an abuttor, I don’t want the detritus from their inevitable demise ending up in my marsh.
Then, when the piece got published in The Brunswick News, Holland followed up:
Subject: Dear Editor
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2014 21:20:42 -0400
This is in response to the “Sea Island Project Two-sided” article by Richard Yarbrough in today’s Brunswick News. Mr. Scott Steilen told Yarbrough the proposed parcels are over a mile from the tip of Sea Island and more than 20 feet above the mean sea level. That part is far from the truth because there is only one small spot on the site that is 20 feet above sea level and the bulldozer building Dune Lane will take care of that 20 feet down to (?). Mr. Steilen disputes Dr. Jackson’s comment about the spit losing about a hundred feet in ten years due to erosion.
Mr. Editor, I am only a layman and Mr. Steilen has no idea what he is talking about when disputing Dr. Chester Jackson. I have attached some Google Earth Images that Mr. Steilen should take a look at if he has more education than I. The graphics that I have drawn on these images should make them self explanatory even to Mr. Steilen and they (images) clearly indicate that Dr. Jackson is correct. When anyone talks to a reporter about this site they should know the facts before they open their mouth.
James Holland
Dear Mrs. Vick,
On 7/15/14 10:21 AM, you wrote:
> Ms. Smith,
> Thank you for your interest in protecting Georgia’s environment.
Don’t you think it is rather presumptuous for an employee of the state to be thanking a citizen/voter/taxpayer for taking an interest in how well we are being served? If it’s not presumptuous, it’s unquestionably condescending.
> My response to Mr. Holland was brief because we had already discussed the issues at length.
Having dealt with various levels of governmental bureaucracy for over forty years, I am quite aware that, although bureaucrats specialize in making and keeping records, they are significantly less keen on having those records inspected. So, a rather common response to open records requirements has been to just not make written records, often under the aegis of “paper work reduction” initiatives ostensibly to save trees. From the citizens’ perspective, the absence of written records makes it very difficult to hold public officials to account. Ditto for property owners whose assets and livelihood might be negatively affected by the state’s failure to prevent pollution, contamination and/or the destruction of biota in the name of “public works.”
> If you would like to come in or call, I would be happy to explain the details of this site with you.
So, while I’m not looking for an explanation, I am interested in reviewing the files on the Spur 25 extension, including the funding source, and hope that can be arranged in due time.
P.S. In the interest of completeness, I will be forwarding a hard copy of our exchange by snail mail.
> From: Monica Smith
> Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2014 8:39 AM
> To: Vick, Alice
> Subject: Vick response to JR Holland re: Spur 25 extension
> Dear Mrs. Vick,
> Your latest communication (see infra) with Mr. Holland regarding the DOT project on the Spur 25 extension is not satisfactory.
> While a rock filter dam is undoubtedly an approved method of preventing erosion in some instances, restricting or reversing a natural water course is not an approved activity. So, what we seem to have here is an approved mechanism being misused. We might compare it to our legal tender, the dollar, being used to bribe a public official. Reversing water courses and bribing public officials are both inappropriate behaviors, a misuse of approved tools.
> Furthermore, when the miscreant body is a state (Georgia in this case)on , passing enforcement responsibilities to the United States Army Corps of Engineers is beyond cynical. It is well known that our federal agencies have only one viable enforcement tool, the purse. That is, when the rules aren’t followed, funds are withheld. And, of course, if there are no funds flowing to the states to begin with, that mechanism doesn’t work. Which, one is led to conclude, has been the Republican majority’s intent in rationing dollars to the states.
> On the other hand, if states don’t follow their own rules on their own, the validity of the rules themselves is called into question. This tends to support the conservative prejudice that the rules aren’t well-grounded to begin with. Which is why I suggest that, as the program manager of environmental protection, your response to Mr. Holland’s complaint is beyond cynical. After all, the object of environmental protection is to sustain the health of our natural systems, not to give petty bureaucrats another venue for exacting compliance from the citizenry.
> Finally, I totally agree with Justice Anthony Kennedy that the people are the ultimate enforcers of the law, not just at the ballot box but by fostering public awareness of how our public servants perform. We are grateful that citizen Holland keeps us informed.
> Sincerely,
> Monica Smith
> **********************************************
> From: Alice.Vick@dnr.state.ga.us
> To: jamesrholland
> CC: Bruce.Foisy@dnr.state.ga.us
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 15:41:33 -0400
> Subject: RE: Spur 25 & The Georgia Water Quality Control Act (GWQCA)
> Good Afternoon James,
> Part IV C of the Infrastructure Construction Permit requires the amendment of E&S plans should the original plan prove ineffective in controlling sediment. The Rock Filter Dam is approved for use on Page 6-117 of the 5th addition of the Green Book and on page 6-175 of the 6th Green Book addition.
> Please contact the USACE with questions regarding compliance with their permit issued under the Federal Clean Water Act Section 404.
> Alice Vick
> Program Manager
> EPD Coastal District Office
> 400 Commerce Center Drive
> Brunswick, Georgia 31523
To the Glynn County Commission:
The Glynn County Water Resources Protection Ordinance, which went into effect in August of 2006, asserts:
Glynn County establishes this set of water quality and quantity policies applicable to all surface waters to provide reasonable guidance for the regulation of stormwater runoff for the purpose of protecting local water resources from degradation. It is determined that the regulation of stormwater runoff discharges from land development projects and other construction activities in order to control and minimize increases in stormwater runoff rates and volumes, soil erosion, stream channel erosion, and nonpoint source pollution associated with stormwater runoff is in the public interest and will prevent threats to public health and safety.
Among other things, the ordinance recognizes that Glynn County is the Local Issuing Authority, whose certification as such was recently announced at the MPO meeting by your County Engineer. In other words, the Glynn County Commission is responsible for seeing that all permits, including those from other agencies, are effectively enforced. And, indeed, only the County has the effective means (revoking business licenses, ordering stop work orders, requiring construction bonds, seeking court injunctions, declaring a public nuisance, etc.) to insure that commercial enterprise complies with rules and regulations, whether they are the minimum (county) or set a higher standard (EPD). The principle which applies (home rule) has been cited to me by a number of other state agency representatives: both the Environmental Protection Division of the Department of Natural Resources and the Division of Surface Mining, as well as agents of the Georgia Department of Transportation. Since the latter rely almost entirely on private contractors to carry out projects, the GaDOT lack of enforcement mechanisms has proved most vexing.
Which is why I have requested to address the County Commission with an historical presentation, pictorial evidence of lax enforcement going back, co-incidentally to 2006. Your Clerk had me informed that she does not consider the matter germane to your duties. I disagree. However, if an objective historical presentation is not wanted, I can address the Board of Commissioners about current threats to public health and safety resulting from the county’s failure to effectively enforce its ordinances. I could even throw into the mix homeowners having to abandon their new houses because they were built in wetland soils unsuitable for septic tanks and concrete in-the-ground foundations, the continued high coliform counts in our creeks and rivers, with the result that the Department of Natural Resources discourages swimming in all our surface waters, even the beaches because of the persistent failure to prevent nonpoint source pollution, not to mention permitting the discharge of stormwater from one property (the Reserve at Demere) onto another’s (St. Simons by the Sea) and expecting the recipient of this nuisance to deal with it via a law suit.
I will attempt to consult with your Administrator later in the day to brief him on my concerns. Mr. Ours chaired the meeting at which the County’s re-certification as an LIA was proudly announced.
P.S. I entitled my slideshow, “Killing the Golden Goose” because, of course, the ruination of our natural coastal Georgia environment by careless development, much like mountain top removal in West Virginia, destroys the very landscapes the people in the rest of the country are being invited to visit and view for a refreshing change.
Since this was written in December, I have received no response. It seems our public servants are schooled to be deaf and dumb.
Mr. Alan Ours, Glynn County Administrator
W. Harold Pate Building
1725 Reynolds Street
Dear Mr. Ours:
This is to inform you that in recommending the development of the 15 acre parcel on Hamilton Road on St. Simons Island into a 125+/- multifamily residential community to the Island Planning Commission, the Glynn County planning staff was either negligent or grossly deficient. Having visited the site, I can only conclude that either,
1) the planning staff failed to conduct a site visit and accepted the owner’s (Gascoigne LLC, a Florida corporation) and the owner’s surveyor’s representations at face value
2) the planning staff, after visiting the site, chose to misrepresent conditions to the Island Planning commission as to the appropriateness of the site for development of any kind.
Had they provided an accurate description, the staff would have noted, among other things, that
a. the fifteen acres are currently operating under a surface mining permit from the Department of Natural Resources, which does not, however, allow for the dumping of soils, stumps and building debris that is going on
b. the contours presented by the surveyor/engineering consultant are obviously in error in that they do not accurately portray either the two pits that have been dug, or the 12′-15′ mounds of dirt that have been trucked in from elsewhere to elevate the terrain
c. the pits left as a result of the mining operation are being mechanically dewatered and the effluent is being discharged into a ditch along Sea Island Road, a ditch which, in turn, drains into the salt marsh at the gateway round-about.
d. the site is being used as a repository for hazardous wastes in ad hoc storage containers
e. the site is serving as a repository for broken down equipment, as well as operational Sea Island Company vehicles
f. excavated soils are being routinely delivered from off-site in vehicles that are not properly covered with mesh and whose tires are depositing dirt on public streets
g. in addition to sand, clay and soil, the excavata contain plastic pipe and other building materials suggesting off-site demolition debris is being trucked in
h. the stagnant water in the borrow pits is a source of mosquitoes, as are the multitudinous plastic containers littering the site.
In other words, the planning staff failed to inform that what is being approved for residential development is an unpermitted landfill and dump site where who knows what hazardous materials have been deposited and leaked over a considerable number of years. While the property is locally known as the “nursery site” because of its historical use to grow and propagate various flowering plants, bushes and trees to beautify Sea Island properties, worse management practices (WMPs) cannot be imagined and the property looks to have been a pollution source for some time.
Had the staff been conscientious, they would have made a referral to codes enforcement, the Department of Natural Resources, the Environmental Protection Division, the Fire Department and whoever is in charge of dealing with hazardous waste in order to set up a remediation plan before any development for residential uses can occur.
Please consider this a notice that much work needs to be done before the threats to public health and safety presented by this site are abated.
Sidney Lanier Environmental Advocacy Team
Summary minutes of January 31st meeting.
Present were Lisa Norton, Mimi Waite, James Holland and Hannah Smith. After some dithering and additions, the agenda was adopted and the team proceeded to discuss a statement of purpose for the organization being proposed.
“To promote awareness and accountability of ecological concerns in Glynn and McIntosh Counties and provide an environmental movement of activism for addressing such issues” – was agreed to.
Since the organizational alternatives seem to be either a traditional 501.c.3 not for profit corporation or a Limited Liability Corporation, whose disreputable associations are off-putting, it was agreed we should explore the former and solicit the assistance of one June Sortwell, with whom Mimi is in regular contact.
It was also suggested and agreed to that we should seek to establish a steering committee of seven (7) persons to advise and support a board of directors. Our recruitment of additional members should focus on identifying persons to serve in those roles.
Current issues, as usual, took up most of the 3.5 hours we met.
A. The IPC meeting on the proposed gas station for the corner of Frederica and Riverview needs constant attention. A visibility in three locations is planned for the 16th. SP2906, a petition by Lucas Properties is also a concern because access by emergency and service vehicles (including trash pickup) is already not adequate. After some discussion, it was agreed to prepare a survey to pass out to the attendees at St. William’s church, as well as offer them a petition for a moratorium on development to sign at the door. The survey should solicit opinions on quality of life issues such as the tree canopy, the preservation of the marshes, pedestrian circulation and protecting the public interest, including the negative effects of industrial and military incursions into the ocean waters with submarine sonar and oil exploration technologies.
B. The Coastal Resources Division will review the Beach Club desire for a variance from Shore Protection Act provisions on February 27 at 9:30 AM. Many citizens should attend, but not be expected to speak.
C.James called our attention to the fact that the SIA had sought a letter of permission to drive heavy equipment on the beach to install yet another tent. Comments raising objections need to be received by February 10 – even though seeking public comment after the LOP has been issued is another example of ass-backwardsness.
D.Brailsford Plantation, which is infringing on the Longview and King Marsh neighborhoods, is being addressed by attorney Maria Coughenour.
E.The proposed Stables roundabout and the expansion of the illegal Sea Island parking lot in the wetland north of the Sea Island Road needs to be closely monitored. Roundabouts are the most recent fad among traffic engineers, whose mission is always to keep the cars moving.
F. Mariner’s Landing was merely identified as a problem, as well as a potential vector for spurring Garden and Cassina Club involvement in island decision-making.
G. Letters to Senator Ligon and Representative Atwood are to be written to laud their support for a ban on Aquifer Surfacewater Recharge (ASR) and to elicit support for the establishment of protective marsh buffers.
H. The decimation of vegetation along State Route 17 north of Brunswick is an issue James will continue to research and address. Ditto for the Reserve at Demere, where development is on-going despite final plats not having been approved. More evidence that the Glynn County development ordinances are in need of revision.
I. On February 6, 2015 the DNR Board of Directors will hold their spring meeting on St. Simons Island at 9:00 AM at the A.W. Jones Heritage Center next to the Lighthouse. Citizens are encouraged to attend and become familiar with the Governor’s appointees.
We discussed recruiting new members, but not membership fees. Among individuals who might/ought to be invited to join this organization with an evolving name are:
Maria Coughenour
Mary Katherine Boyd
Carl Pennington
Dick Wiederhorn
Bonnie Haron
Miriam Lancaster
Becky Gilger
Doug Gilleland
Steven Ryner
Joan Wilson, former member of the ICP
The next meeting was scheduled for February 14, at 2:00 PM in good time to make last minute preparations for the meeting on February 17th . 6:00 PM –Regardless of County video coverage, Hannah plans to record the event, as she did the Incorporation Presentation.
As mentioned above, the name of this organization is still evolving. As a consequence of Puddy Smith’s input, we are now considering highlighting appreciation for the marshes of Glynn by appending Sidney Lanier, whose birthday happens to be today and should be commemorated next year, to our name.
So, we might well be the Sidney Lanier Environmental Advocacy Team or SLEAT, or “So Let’s EAT” instead of just “EAT”
Our motto can still be “Making the Environment Good to Eat” which co-incidentally leaves no other living creatures out. Though, it does call into question the practice of feeding poison to organisms we don’t like.
Some many months ago, Paul Andrews, the Glynn County Engineer, assured me that his office has access to much more detailed construction records when it comes to evaluating the adequacy of storm water management and drainage structures than are available to the folks in the Geographic Information System (GIS), who put together a map of all such structures in Glynn County at my request–a level of detail that cannot be displayed on a single map. Other than the reference to his office, Mr. Andrews did not specify where these documents are kept. Community Development does not have them.
So, about a week ago, I had occasion to call the Department of Public Works to inquire where these documents could be physically inspected. The person on the phone, whose name I did not recognize and did not get, wrote down the question and promised to get me an answer. Next thing, many hours later, an email from Ben Pierce arrived, telling me he had heard I’d made an inquiry and should let him help. So, I sent him my question–i.e. where can I find the construction plans for drainage facilities, specifically those installed west of the Post Office lot on St. Simons. Ben Pierce eventually responded that he does not have access to such documents and I would have to contact Mr. Andrews.
This prompted me to send the following communication to Mr. Ours, the County Administrator:
This is incredible. The Division Manager of Roads and Drainage does not have access to all County archives? The person I first talked to on the phone gave no hint that there would be any problem getting the information I was looking for and now I’m getting a run-around.
Since Mr. Andrews no longer answers communications from me, I hope you’ll be able to straighten this out. I cannot believe Glynn County has thrown all construction plans for public infrastructure out.
Mr. Ours responded promptly that he would check it out. That was on Tuesday, February 17.
I heard nothing. Although I saw Mr. Ours at the County Commission Planning Session on Thursday morning, I did not ask him what he had learned. Instead, Thursday evening, since Mr. Austin, the Director of Public Works, was sitting in the audience of the County Commission meeting, I responded to his query about my well being that I was still waiting for a response from someone about the location of storm water facility construction documents. Mr. Austin allowed as he’d heard I had posed a query. I said, yes, Ben Pierce had offered to help, but couldn’t because he does not know where the records are kept. To which Mr. Austin replied that in his previous place of employment they were kept in the Engineering Department, but he was unsure about Glynn County. But, he did pull out his smart phone, on which he perused the communication I’d had with Mr. Pierce and then allowed as how Mr. Andrews had said he’d take care of it and give me a call. So, I had to tell Mr. Austin that I’d had no call or email from Mr. Andrews and Mr. Austin indicated he’d remind him.
Apparently, that worked because first thing this morning I got a call from Mr. Andrews wanting to know what I was looking for. I tried to convey to him that the drainage facilities behind the Post Office and running along what is now Kings Marsh Way are representative because the water and sewer people obviously know where their lines are, since they’ve been neatly cutting up the roadway to access them, AND because I’d run across the deed in which the easements to the county for utilities are mentioned. To which Mr. Andrews responded that the County has not been maintaining the facilities (which is true all over the county) and that he doubted the county has a legal easement, which he assumed would have been in conjunction with the building of the hotel (formerly Days Inn, now Sea Palms Condos). So, I mentioned that I’d seen it in a deed referencing an easement from Skiff Landing to Riverview Road.
After that, Mr. Andrews sort of explained about having an archivist; the hard copies not being available to the public; the effort to digitize everything (to which I object because electrons are unreliable) AND his ability to secure the documents and let me have a look some time next week. We will see. I’m not holding my breath. The last time I asked for the drainage plans for the Reserve at Demere, Mr. Andrews produced the drainage study that had been put together for phase I and II and, in addition to being inadequate for that, didn’t address and hadn’t been updated for phase III — a deficit that, unlike some others, was not mentioned in the departmental comments to the planning division. The plan reviewer did note that they were missing. (One is left with the impression that departmental review comments are an exercise in CYA). The failure to pay close attention to comments from the water and sewer utility is not unique.
A letter to Spud Woodward and Mark Williams at the Georgia DNR
This is to inform you that the Coastal Resources Division habit of doling out Letters of Permission for the commercial exploitation of our shores, beaches and dunes is getting downright tedious. While the public is already precluded from gaining easy access to our beaches by the unwise gating of the Sea Island community and the abandonment of public rights of way to an irresponsible corporate enterprise are bad enough, giving the Beach Club or SIA PROPCO II, LLC vehicular access for non-emergency commercial/recreational purposes is contrary to the public welfare and violative of the Shore Protection Act.
As regards the Westin Hotel request to deliver equipment to the beach on a daily basis because carrying chairs and tables is tedious and/or considered hard labor, that’s just plain ridiculous and Brad Gane ought to be ashamed to have accepted that as a rationale for introducing polluting vehicles onto the shore. If people want to interact with automotive vehicles on the beach, they visit Daytona. The visitors to the Golden Isles come because they expect to find them unspoiled. That these expectations are not satisfied but unbeknownst to them when it comes to the waters, which are often polluted by unacceptable levels of e-coli bacteria, is not an excuse for letting the sand beach be polluted, as well.
For that matter, that the waters are often unfit even for recreation should be more widely publicized, as should the fact that the classification of our coastal waters as “recreational” means that the fish and crustaceans aren’t fit to be consumed on a daily basis. In the interest of not repeating myself, let me refer you to a couple of articles:
An open letter to Georgia Representative Alex Atwood
LCP White-Wash
It is clear that the Department of Natural Resources and the Coastal Resources Division, including the Division of Ecology Services, have not satisfied the intent of the Shore Protection Act if consuming the resources kills.
Consider yourselves informed.
61 Maxwell Avenue
St. Simons Island, Ga.
Dear Mr. Hainley, (the Director of Community Development in Glynn County)
I’d very much appreciate answers to the following:
1. The number of soil disturbance permits issued by Glynn County
during the last fiscal year.
2. The total amount of the fees paid in conjunction with those
permits. Does the County keep the entire fee or does it have to be
shared with the state?
3) Does the revenue cover the cost of the inspections associated with
the soil disturbances?
4) What are the penalties for soil disturbance undertaken before a
permit is sought?
5) Which soil disturbances, besides gardening, are exempt from the
permit requirements?
6) Are the exemptions based on quantifiable measures (area, depth)
relative to the soil or are some disruptive agencies exempt?
7) Is there a privileged class that’s not required to comply with the
law? If so, why?
8) Are exemptions granted by state statute? If so, could you specify
the relevant statute?
9) Are best management practices a condition of soil disturbance
permit compliance?
10) Does the County conduct random inspections as part of the
enforcement process?
11) Have any violators of the soil disturbance ordinance provisions been
referred to the County Attorney for prosecution during the last fiscal year?
12) Were there court-imposed sanctions?
Mr. Chris Novack, PE
and Facilities Maintenance
Georgia Ports Authority
Re: Moffatt and Nichol annual inspection reports for two GPA facilities in Brunswick for 2013&2014
Dear Mr. Novack:
Having read through four annual inspection reports by the consultants who initially prepared the SWP3 for the Mayor’s Point Terminal and the Colonel Island Terminal, let me just make a couple of general comments to begin with:
Reading similar verbiage to describe the venues in subsequent years and noticing that, despite the repetitions, even typographical errors have not been corrected from one year to the next, is not reassuring. I don’t get the sense that these consultants are particularly attentive.
Mid to late December is not a good time of year in Georgia to assess storm water treatment, nor does a once a year sample of effluent tell us much about quality.
Quarterly visual inspections of effluent tell us nothing about heavy metal and chemical contamination. From which I conclude that the inspection regimen is inadequate.
While establishing a benchmark for future inspections is a good idea, in practice the consultants seem to have focused on different areas of the facilities in subsequent years and there is no evidence in the reports of follow-up, with the exception of calling for the collection of wash down waters in containers (which I shall come back to later).
The statement, much favored by the consultants, “inspection . . . confirmed existing vulnerabilities that are typical in all marine environments” makes no sense. If contaminants leak into the river, that’s not because the river and ocean are nearby. That’s because people are being either careless or lazy. Never mind that the spill locations identified on Appendix A for the MPT are about as far away from the water’s edge as can be.
Appendix B for the MPT review describes an area that drains across grass into Flint River, which is in North Carolina. This raises the question whether this report is even germane to this location. Moreover, addressing that contamination has most likely occurred in ground adjacent to wash pad, is not going to mitigate a pump failure. Failed pumps need to be replaced and replacements should be kept on hand. To mitigate is to lessen; it does not prevent nor correct.
I’ll ignore the fixation on cat litter, however, the concern with overgrowth suggests the consultants are persuaded that storm water needs to be drained away as expeditiously as possible, whereas I would argue that storm water needs to be detained, retained, infiltrated and percolated through soil so that the heavy metal and mineral contaminants can be captured for treatment by organisms in the soil, rather than being sent into our waterways. My impression of the consultants’ prejudice seems confirmed in the 2014 MPT inspection when they write Consider installing cub (sic) and slope drain to carry water directly to river.
Turning now to the 2013 CIT report, my impression above is affirmed. However, this sentence is a puzzlement:
Remove stormwater promptly to allow for maximum containment and to prevent contaminant collected in sump from entering drainage system.
Doesn’t a containment sump automatically drain into a special tank for treatment?
9. That 10 out of 11 items were not acceptable in 2013 is concerning; that none of them were revisited in 2014, is more so.
10. There is no disputing this finding, though the writing is careless.
Trash, dust and other materials accumulate on the pavement, which is carried to the fence line and/or the outfalls by wind and stormwater. Regular sweeping of the pavement and trash pickup along the fence line needs to be set up to reduce the trash and contaminants entering into the receiving waters.
However, I would suggest that the object should be prevention, not reduction, and the method of proper disposal of the sweepings should be identified. (I understand the parking lots are swept, so the new cars won’t be scratched by dust and grit).
11. This, from the 2014 CIT, I do dispute:
Wash down area with secondary containment. Oils and other hydrocarbon deposits from washing vehicles and other equipment. Wash water and storm water that collects in containment is being pumped onto adjacent pervious area. Possible contamination of soils and groundwater.
If this is perceived as a problem, then it explains the emphasis on sending storm water as quickly as possible to the river. Which, to my way of thinking, is contrary to the objective of preventing the contamination of our water bodies.
12. If I were confident that the referenced Spill Prevention, Control & Countermeasures Plan were more on point than the plans to which these inspections respond, I’d ask to see that, but it doesn’t seem worth the bother for now.
When the GPA seeks to expand and add more impervious surfaces, at both the Mayor’s Point and Colonel’s Island facilities, I think it will be in order to plan for some acreage to be set aside for detention, retention, infiltration and percolation. Erosion is natural. It is how our islands are built. What we need to prevent is the introduction of heavy metals and man-made toxins into our water bodies.
Finally, the Golden Isles communities need to be concerned about the fact that much of the waterfront that is owned and managed by our Georgia Ports Authority is not being properly regulated and inspected for compliance with environmental and structural safety standards.
I am assuming that as the LOGISTEC facilities are proposed to be rebuilt, they will be properly reviewed and permitted by the City of Brunswick and the Divisions of the EPD. If not, please let me know, and let me know whom to contact to see that higher standards are set and met in future.
In case you missed it, LOGISTEC has not had a stellar first quarter. From their quarterly report:
During the first quarter of 2015, consolidated revenue totalled $60.4 million, a decrease of $2.4 million or 3.8% from the equivalent period of the previous year. The marine services segment’s revenue grew by $2.4 million or 5.2% to $48.1 million for the first quarter of 2015, whereas the environmental services segment’s revenue amounted to $12.3 million, down by $4.7 million or 27.8% from the first quarter of 2014. The revenue growth in the marine services segment came from an increase in bulk cargo volumes, while the revenue decrease in the environmental services segment is explained by lower woven-hose manufacturing volumes. The first quarter of 2015 closed with a consolidated profit attributable to owners of the Company of $2.5 million, compared with $4.3 million for the first quarter of 2014.
The GPA might want to review its leases and insist on a substantial bond to insure that the rebuilding goes forward as planned.
Also, updated information on the date and location for the next monthly meeting of the Board would be helpful. Whom should I contact about getting an agenda?
If you would prefer a hard copy of this email, please let me know.
Thanks again for spending time explaining things. I’m hoping that together we can have things work even better and more profitably for our beloved Golden Isles.
This is apparently in response to a letter in the local paper by one James Davies that didn’t get published, so a copy stayed in the files.
What exactly was the point of James Davies’ lament about the impossibility of owning property in a democracy? Does he want us to prove him wrong, get rid of democracy or rsign ourselves to living a fantasy?
Davies is wrong, of course. Owning property goes particularly well with democracy, but it’s also possible in a monarchy, empire or tyranny. In fact, owning property has become the norm in just about any kind of human society, regardless of what political or economic system happens to be in place. There’s hardly any property on the face of the earth that some-one or some group doesn’t claim to own. The deepest parts of the oceans and protions of the polar zones may be exceptions, but probably not for long.
But Davies is right, if you accept his definition of ownership as being the equivalent of total control. There’s nothing that humans control totally, except themselves, and that’s a rare exception. Democracy has nothing to do with it. Though, we like to think that in a democracy people exercise a little more self-control than in some other political systems.
Owning property is a convenient fiction, invented by humans to bring some order into how the resources we need to sustain our existence are used. Ownership is an assignment of exclusive use to members of our own species. It is not recognized nor honored by any other, and often ignored by our own. How often is recorded in our crime statistics.
Actually, if the Bible is to be believed, it was God who invented owning property when He told Adam and Eve, in effect, “those trees and everything else are yours, but this tree is mine. Eat its fruit and die!” So, Eve, with a little encouragement, committed the first petty theft and Adam received stolen property. In the beginning, the crime rate stood at 100%.
But I digress. Eve missed the point. Satan implied that God was merely being selfish in holding that one tree back. Actually, what God did was make a bargain, which Adam and Eve were free to refuse. He promised that they and all their descendants would enjoy sustenance and live forever if they reserved that one tree for His exclusive use. It was a bargain to free them from the laws of predation.
Predators lead a precarious existence: the likelihood of extinction increases with every increase in the population. When their source of food is exhausted, predators die. Setting aside the fruit of one tree, or a portion of any other food source, for that matter, guarantees a self-replenishing supply. It makes sense. If we take less than we want and leave something for the future, the future is assured. Call it resource husbandry, responsibility, or ownership. It’s a bargain that still seems too good to refuse.
God, being good, gave Adam and Eve another chance, and though Cain, the predator killed Abel, who practiced husbandry, the human species has managed to survive on a delicate balance between responsibility and controlled predation. Our predatory instincts have been redirected, either against members of our own species or to the extermination of all organisms that might prove harmful or of no human use. We been so successful in increasing the human population, that perhaps the predatory descendants of Cain provide a useful check.
We seem to have controlled the predatory isntinct just enough to escape extinction, and, we tell ourselves that predation is good, as long as it isn’t selfish. As if self-awareness and self-repservation were inherently evil. What is evil is wanton destruction, or, as Davies might put it, absolute control to dispose.
Satan lied. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge did not make humans more god-like. It introduced us to the concept of evil. Having failed to comply with the terms of the bargain, humans are left with the freedom of choice.
The choice, it seems clear, is between wanton destruction and responsible participation in the ongoing process of creation. But, which is which?
I have a hard time deciding whether to squash that roach before I throw it out the door. Or not. One thing is certain; I don’t own the roach ; it’s not my property and I am not responsible for its fate ….. Or am I?
Just a little wierd.
To the editor of the Brunswick News
Right, in the original U.S. Constitution, property rights trumped natural human rights. Had to — otherwise owning people couldn’t have been considered legal. The supremacy of property rights is the echo of our tradition of slavery. Indeed, that tradition persists to this day in the legal status of children as the property of their parents.
Which is why it is very difficult to rescue the children when they are being abused. Just as is happening with the Spit. After all, doesn’t all of nature exist to be subservient to man? Isn’t that what makes him exceptional, that he’s got the power of life and death over all the other creatures on earth?
This seems to have been composed some time in the early eighties when I was still using a mechanical typewriter — economic development was the partner of urban renewal. Which, as we now know, had ulterior motives.
What does economic development mean? This isn’t a question about expectations or results, but definitions. What kind of activity is economic and what constitutes development?
In its broadest sense economic activity is what people do to manage the resources necessary to sustain life. Because humans, unlike frogs for example, are not self-sufficient, managing resources–their allocation and distribution–is essential.
Humans can choose to allocate and distribute resources in a variety of ways. Some are dependent on social organizatio; others are not. Sharing, barter, sale and even theft all involve resource allocation, though not all are classified as economic activities.
Economic activity has come to be rather strictly defined as production that is intended for trade or exchange, not for one’s own use. And, as the use of money as a medium of exchange has increased, economic analysis has focused almost entirely on those activities which can be calculated in monetary terms.
To develop is to undergo change in one of two ways. Development is either a process whereby something that wasn’t is brought into existence, or it involves a modification or transformation of something into something else.
When barter gives way to monetary exchange, that constitutes economic development. Women earning wages is an economic development, as is the change from familial self-sufficiency to trading in the marketplace. By definition a self-sufficient family farm is not an economic entity and managing a household is not an economic actitivy. Economic development can not be measured by the amount of resources available to sustain a particular population, but by the amount of trade and exchange.
However, that economic development is beneficial seems obvious. More people are living longer, so they must be living better. Trade and exchange in the marketplace is more efficient than trudging from house to house and the use of money makes it possible to overcome not only the limitations of place, but time as well. Resources not needed here and now can, in effect, be saved for future use by exchanging them for money. And the invention of credit has made it possible to use today what we don’t expect to need in the future.
But is that what is generally understood by those who promote and support economic development? Do they anticipate that the use of money as a medium of exchange will increase to affect an ever-incresing range of human activities, or do they merely look for the wages of paid labor to rise? Do they intend to increase production for exchange and trade, or do they anticipate an increase in the resources available for individual use? Do they expect economic development to increase self-sufficiency or expand the pool of people who depend on earning wages to survive?
Calls for economic development in Gainesville are usually associated with a perceived need to create jobs. Does that mean that more homemakers and asoorted volunteers deserve to earn wages for their work, or does it respond to a concern about people who aren’t doing anything and are considered unemployed? Is there an awareness that these people represent a potential pool of cheap labor which depresses the wages of those who are already being paid, or does it represent a commitment to making the entire population dependent on a wage?
The latter represents an economic development which has serious implications for the survival of free enterprise, while the former can be accomplished through economic growth. Since we already have an economy in which most production is for trade and exchange, any development might well be negative. What we should be concerned with is how to make our economy grow.
What must we do to promote economic growth? Gainesville is generally described as having a service economy, which some people seem reluctant to promote. This reluctance is based, in part, on the perception that the production of services is less desirable than the production of goods. A service economy is thought to be less stable because the taste for services seems to fluctuate more than the need for goods. But the disctinction between goods and services is largely artificial. A bushel of wheat is clearly a good, but what we really pay for is the time, energy and expertise expended by the farmer in its production. The alternative would be to plant and harvest our own, or gather a substitute. The farmer’s investment of time, energy and expertise is essentially no different from that of the nurse whose service is more direct. The only difference is that what the farmer produces is easier to measure and calculate than the value of a nurse’s care. Besides, agricultural production has a much longer history as an economic activity.
The distinction between goods and services is convenient from an economist’s point of view, but it tends to obscure that the components of production are the same in either case. Time and energy are essential, whether production is for trade or individual use; expertise is what produces a surplus for trade and exchange.
Initially, expertise is the result of simple repetition. But time, energy and expertise form a peculiar equation. As expertise increases, the amount of energy and time needed to produce the same amount decreases. If time and energy are held constant, expertise increases production. Expertise is what drives economic activity. Moreover, while time and energy are essentially limited, expertise has the potential of increasing almost indefinitely. Trading goods in the marketplace fosters the exchange of ideas as well, leading to an accumulation of knowledge by which expertise is enhanced.
But, while the production of services has only recently developed into an economic activity, the development of expertise, i.e. education, as an economic activity is hardly recognized. Because expertise produces a reduction in the expenditure of energy and time, its value is even more difficult to calculate. And then, the introduction of money into any transaction tends to meet resistance.
That is what Gainesville is up against. Almost from its beginning Gainesville was a marketplace for goods because of its strategic location. The exchange of ideas followed quite naturally and was formalized by the establishment of the University. But its function as a marketplace was never fully realized. Various goods-producing enterprises, from cotton to citrus, phosphate and naval stores, were tried and, having exhausted the resource base, failed. The exchange of goods and ideas in the marketplace was looked upon as little more than a hedge against total collapse. Even now, economic development is touted in terms of producing tangible goods and the future of Gainesville as a marketplace is generally ignored.
Part of the reason, no doubt, can be found in the fact that the function of a marketplace is to provide service. Though it works much like a factory, whose success depends on the rate and volume of flow and, in the long run, the quality of what is processed through, this similarity has perhaps not been recognized. Nor has it been recognized that, while size is important, an increase in size to accommodate storage of inventories that can’t be sold, is an indication that economic activity is being stalled. Of course, both a factory and a market can be converted into a warehousing enterprise, though such economic development usually signals economic decline.
Perhaps that explains why Gainesville has enjoyed little economic growth. Ignorance of its role as a marketplace has led to an emphasis on physical growth while the rate at which both goods and ideas are exchanged has slowed. Our students take to long to acquire expertise, and too many remain after the process is supposedly complete. And the commercialsector, which purports to trade in goods, behaves more like a purveyor to a cpative population, which it presumes not to have any alternatives.
The University of Florida, to its credit, has begun to reject the warehouse mentality. No longer will it concentrate on getting bigger; now the emphasis is on quality and efficiency. But already there’s a perception that this threatens economic development.
Indeed, in Florida economic development generally involves warehousing. South Florida has developed to store the elderly and North Florida seems dedicated to housing criminals. Since neither population is economically active, producing nothing for exchange or trade, it’s not surprising that Florida as a whole has experienced little economic growth.
Gainesville has an opportunity to be different, to expand its role as a marketplace of goods and ideas, rather than considering education as nothing more than the warehousing of the young. Gainesville is still at the cross-road. We can focus our energies on producing expertise to create economic growth, or we can fall in behind the rest of the state to develop warehousing alternatives as the young population shrinks.
Warehousing has lot of growth potential. The elderly population is growing and there’s a lot of waste material that has to be stored. That sort of development might be stable but it doesn’t generate economic growth. Expertise is the key to the future. Why would we choose to throw it away?
This entry was posted in another perspective, Autobiography on April 10, 2018 by hannah.
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Abuse is the echo, remnant of slavery
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20 Years Ago Sanders went shopping in Canada for cheaper drugs
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Cost/benefit
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Notes from the Household
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How Storytelling Was Renewed and Refashioned by Graphic Novels
by IAPWE / Monday, 20 May 2019 / Published in Writing & Editing Resources
The engaging words and images mix of graphic novels (long-form narratives in the style of comic books) has enabled creative storytellers to craft compelling stories. Academic and critical respect has followed for what was once identified as an inferior reading genre.
The internet age and the reduced free time people have today have boosted the popularity of this more visual and effective method of storytelling for young and adult readers alike.
Popularized in the ’70s, graphic novels have expanded the boundaries of comic book writing. The boldness that comes naturally to this more accessible medium has encouraged writers to be revolutionizers. Graphic novel series are highly conducive to the digital format that young and adult time-challenged readers prefer.
However, the process involved in creating the novel is harder and slower for authors. It’s also less immersive than prose because of the drawing and design work that’s required.
A Powerful Tool for Creative Minds
Graphic novel writers have accepted the advantages of using this medium to boldly engage readers. Writers have used its freedom and accessibility to address important themes, tell personal stories, and take on taboos.
The range of themes in this storytelling medium is no less restricted than traditional literature. The variety of themes is illustrated in the adolescent pains addressed in “Ghost World,” the politics of “V for Vendetta,” the personal stories of immigrants in “Persepolis” and “The Best We Could Do,” and Nazi occupation as told by “Maus.” Popular graphic novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, led to film, TV, and theater adaptations, and raised the graphic art of comic book storytelling.
These visual stories pack a punch that is powerful and effective in a way that word-centric texts cannot be. As a result, educators have used graphic novels as teaching materials. In fact, the Vietnamese author of “The Best We Could Do,” Thi Bui, was a teacher before she became a novelist. The format is also conducive to narration that alternates in time and space (the fourth dimension artfully utilized by Alan Moore) and the present and the past as reflected in Bui’s novel.
Energizing Literature with Originality
Chris Ware’s “Building Stories” is being compared to “Ulysses” by James Joyce. His earlier book, “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth” won a literary award competing with traditional novels and was praised for its “originality and energy.” Claire Armitstead, chairperson of the judges who awarded the First Book Award to Ware’s book, described what the best graphic novels have accomplished. She said they challenge “us to think again about what literature is and where it is going at the start of the 21st century.”
Serials and Serialized Fiction—No Longer Fringe Niches of the Publishing Industry
A Quick Guide for Writers on Creating a Business Plan
How Flash Fiction Took Over the Internet
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Short-term Complications, Utah, 2000-2012 and U.S., 2000-2011
Long-term Complications, Utah, 2000-2012 and U.S., 2000-2011
Uncontrolled, Utah, 2000-2012 and U.S., 2000-2011
Lower Extremity Amputations, Utah, 2000-2012 and U.S., 2000-2011
Short-term Complications by Patient County of Residence, Utah, 2012
Long-term Complications by Patient County of Residence, Utah, 2012
Uncontrolled by Patient County of Residence, Utah, 2012
Lower Extremity Amputation by Patient County of Residence, Utah, 2012
Important Facts for Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions: Diabetes Hospitalization Among Adults
Ambulatory care sensitive (ACS) conditions refer to those conditions for which hospitalizations could have been avoided, or conditions that could have been less serious, if they had been treated early and appropriately. Good outpatient management dramatically reduces the risk of hospitalization. For diabetes, an ACS condition refers to uncontrolled diabetes (type 1 and type 2), diabetes short-term and long-term complications, and amputations of lower extremities due to diabetes among adults aged 18 years and older. As of November 2004, the IBIS diabetes information is based on four diabetes indicators (PQI 1, PQI 3, PQI 14, PQI 16) developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Prevention Quality Indicators. National Healthcare Quality and Research provided the values for the national rate based on the National Inpatient Sample.
Number of hospitalizations among persons aged 18 years and older with diabetes complications as the principal or secondary diagnosis code. Maternal, newborn, and transfer cases are excluded.
Number of Utah residents aged 18 years and older.
The four Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Prevention Quality Indicators for diabetes use both principal and secondary ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes for hospitalization, include all adults (aged 18 years and older), but exclude cases that may result in over counting of diabetes cases. Specifically maternal, newborn, and transfer cases are excluded from uncontrolled diabetes, diabetes long-term complications, and diabetes short-term complications. Diabetes lower extremity amputation also excludes trauma cases. The Utah diabetes rate is risk-adjusted by age and gender so that comparison with the national rate is more meaningful. 95% confidence intervals are the criterion for statistical significance, that is, they indicate whether differences are real or due to "noise" in the data.
Ambulatory care sensitive (ACS) conditions are conditions for which effective outpatient care can prevent hospitalizations. Diabetes is a disease for which regular physician visits can help to control blood sugar (glucose), fats (lipids), and blood pressure; screen for diabetes-related eye, foot, and kidney problems; and provide early treatment and patient education in self-management. Physician visits and early treatment can prevent otherwise avoidable hospitalizations and serious illness and injuries to patients. Diabetes complications include loss of consciousness, heart disease, stroke, circulation, kidney and nerve damage, impotence, blindness, amputation of extremities, and death.
Similar to HP2020 Objective D-4: Reduce the rate of lower extremity amputations in persons with diagnosed diabetes.
From 2000 through 2012, the annual risk-adjusted rate of Utah residents aged 18 years and older hospitalized for diabetes with short-term complications has generally increased. However, in years 2004 and 2009, short-term rate decreases were reported. Only the decrease in 2009 was considered statistically significant, in comparison to the preceding year. On the contrary, the risk-adjusted rate has generally decreased from 2000 to 2012 for diabetes with long-term complications, uncontrolled diabetes, and amputation of lower extremities.
Based on four adult diabetes indicators (short-term complications, long-term complications, lower extremity amputations, and uncontrolled), the annual risk-adjusted rate for Utah residents aged 18 years and older hospitalized for diabetes from 2000 through 2011 (the most recent available national data), the was significantly lower than the national annual rate, which was obtained from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality/Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (AHRQ/HCUP). Utah rates for 2000 through 2012 are significantly lower than the annual national rates most years (except 2002 and 2003 for short-term complications), based on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality/Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.
The Utah Diabetes Prevention and Control Program has been merged into the Healthy Living through Environment, Policy, and Improved Clinical Care (EPICC) Program. The EPICC Program places a high priority on diabetes self-management education and is working to increase the number of adults who have ever received it. However, EPICC funding no longer supports state-certification of Diabetes Self-Management Education Program and staff is assisting all state-certified programs obtain recognition from the American Diabetes Association or certification through the American Association of Diabetes Educators.
Glycemic control (average preprandial glucose for diabetics: 90-130 mg/dl, average normal: <110 mg/dl) results in significant reductions in the incidence and rate of progression of retinopathy, albuminuria, and clinical neuropathy. A1c tests show a diabetic's average glycemia over the preceding 2-3 months. A1c tests should be performed at least twice per year in patients who are meeting treatment goals and at least quarterly in patients who are not meeting glycemic goals. Diet and exercise have been shown to help diabetics with glycemic control. Diabetics have increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Lowering risks, such as hypertension (diastolic >=90 mmHG or systolic >=140 mmHG) are especially important for diabetics. (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/25/1/213.full)
A1c levels less than 7% indicate good glucose control. The Healthy Living through Environment, Policy, and Improved Clinical Care (EPICC) Program and the Office of Health Care Statistics collect HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) information on frequency of A1c exams for members of health plans throughout the state. The EPICC Program also conducts chart reviews to obtain A1c levels for a sample of health plan members. See http://health.utah.gov/diabetes/
Office of Health Care Statistics, Center for Health Data and Informatics, Utah Department of Health, Salt Lake City, UT 84114-4004, Telephone: 801-538-7048, Website: http://stats.health.utah.gov/, Email: HEALTHCARESTAT@utah.gov
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Shay Mitchell Reveals She Suffered a Miscarriage
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for A+E
Shay Mitchell suffered a miscarriage in 2018.
The actress made the shocking reveal on her Instagram Story while reflecting ahead of New Year's Eve. Mitchell, 31, posted a sonogram photo with a broken heart emoji, along with a message about her "hardships."
"Although it was an amazing year it didn't come without hardships," Mitchell said. "We all have to deal with various struggles and challenges in life. And sometimes it's easier to only showcase the good times on social media, which is what leads many people to criticize it for lack of authenticity."
She continued, "Having so many people follow me on Instagram and read my posts is both incredibly humbling and hugely uplifting. The support and affection that so many of you show me lifts me up during even my darkest days, one of which happened last year after I miscarried and lost the child of my hopes and dreams."
Mitchell urged fans to remember that life is a "journey" we're all on together. She asked that everyone "remind ourselves that we seldom really know or understand the struggles and hardships that other people are going through."
"So, for 2019, let's all try to be a little more compassionate, empathetic, patient and thoughtful with each other," she finished. "This sounds like a great resolution to me. I hope that you agree. Happy New Year everyone!"
Mitchell was rumored to be in a relationship with NBA star Blake Griffin in May. She shut down those reports, however, and is thought to be dating Matte Babel. Her beau is a Canadian TV host.
Source: Shay Mitchell Reveals She Suffered a Miscarriage
Filed Under: Shay Mitchell
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1970 in baseball
The following are the baseball events of the year 1970 throughout the world.
List of years in baseball
Science +...
League Championship Series NBC World Series NBC
East Baltimore Orioles 3
West Minnesota Twins 0
AL Baltimore Orioles 4
NL Cincinnati Reds 1
East Pittsburgh Pirates 0
West Cincinnati Reds 3
World Series: Baltimore Orioles over Cincinnati Reds (4-1); Brooks Robinson, MVP
All-Star Game, July 14 at Riverfront Stadium: National League, 5-4 (12 innings); Carl Yastrzemski, MVP
Other champions
College World Series: USC
Japan Series: Yomiuri Giants over Lotte Orions (4-1)
Big League World Series: Lincolnwood, Illinois
Little League World Series: American, Wayne, New Jersey
Senior League World Series: West Tampa, Florida
Winter Leagues
1970 Caribbean Series: Navegantes del Magallanes
Dominican Republic League: Tigres del Licey
Mexican Pacific League: Tomateros de Culiacán
Puerto Rican League: Leones de Ponce
Venezuelan League: Navegantes del Magallanes
Earle Combs
Ford Frick
Jesse Haines
Boog Powell (AL) Baltimore Orioles
Johnny Bench (NL) Cincinnati Reds
Jim Perry (AL) Minnesota Twins
Bob Gibson (NL) St. Louis Cardinals
Thurman Munson (AL) New York Yankees
Carl Morton (NL) Montreal Expos
Jim Spencer (1B) (AL)
Davey Johnson (2B) (AL)
Brooks Robinson (3B) (AL)
Luis Aparicio (SS) (AL)
Paul Blair (OF) (AL)
Mickey Stanley (OF) (AL)
Ken Berry (OF) (AL)
Ray Fosse (C) (AL)
Jim Kaat (P) (AL)
AVG Alex Johnson CAL .329 Rico Carty ATL .366
HR Frank Howard WSH 44 Johnny Bench CIN 45
RBI Frank Howard WSH 126 Johnny Bench CIN 148
Wins Mike Cuellar BAL,
Dave McNally BAL
& Jim Perry MIN 24 Bob Gibson STL &
Gaylord Perry SF 23
ERA Diego Seguí OAK 2.56 Tom Seaver NYM 2.82
Ks Sam McDowell CLE 304 Tom Seaver NYM 283
Major league baseball final standings
American League final standings
1. Baltimore Orioles 108 54 .667 --
2. New York Yankees 93 69 .574 15
3. Boston Red Sox 87 75 .537 21
4. Detroit Tigers 79 83 .488 29
5. Cleveland Indians 76 86 .469 32
6. Washington Senators 70 92 .432 38
1. Minnesota Twins 98 64 .605 --
2. Oakland Athletics 89 73 .549 9
3. California Angels 86 76 .531 12
4. Kansas City Royals 65 97 .401 33
5. Milwaukee Brewers 65 97 .401 33
6. Chicago White Sox 56 106 .346 42
National League final standings
1. Pittsburgh Pirates 89 73 .549 --
2. Chicago Cubs 84 78 .519 5
3. New York Mets 83 79 .512 6
4. St. Louis Cardinals 76 86 .469 13
5. Philadelphia Phillies 73 88 .453 15.5
6. Montreal Expos 73 89 .451 16
1. Cincinnati Reds 102 60 .630 --
2. Los Angeles Dodgers 87 74 .540 14.5
3. San Francisco Giants 86 76 .531 16
4. Houston Astros 79 83 .488 23
5. Atlanta Braves 76 86 .469 26
6. San Diego Padres 63 99 .389 39
January 16 – Curt Flood, Gold Glove outfielder of the St. Louis Cardinals, files a civil lawsuit challenging Major League Baseball's reserve clause, a suit that will have historic implications. Flood refused to report to the Philadelphia Phillies after he was traded by the Cardinals three months ago, contending the baseball rule violates federal antitrust laws.
January 17 – The Sporting News names Willie Mays as Player of the Decade for the 1960s.
January 20 – Lou Boudreau is elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers' Association of America on 232 of 300 ballots. Ralph Kiner finishes second with 167, 58 votes short.
February 1 – The Hall of Fame Special Committee on Veterans selects former commissioner Ford Frick and former players Earle Combs and Jesse Haines for enshrinement.
February 19 – Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announces the suspension of Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain, effective April 1, for McLain's alleged involvement in a bookmaking operation. The suspension is indefinite, but will later be set at three months.
April 1 – The Milwaukee Brewers organization, headed by Bud Selig, purchases the Seattle Pilots franchise for $10,800,000. Although negotiations were conducted over a period of months, it was not until March 31 when a federal bankruptcy referee declared the Pilots bankrupt. Brewers tickets go on sale the next day. Team equipment is shipped to Milwaukee County Stadium, where the Pilots insignia is ripped off of the uniforms, since there is no time for new uniforms to be made.
April 7 :
Major league baseball returns to Wisconsin after a 4-year absence as the Brewers play their first game in Milwaukee, losing to the California Angels 12–0 before a crowd of 37,237.
Pitcher Dave McNally strikes out 13 in nine innings as the Baltimore Orioles rip the Indians, 8-2, in Opening Day at Cleveland Stadium. The attack is led by Paul Blair, who drives in a pair of runs and scores three times. McNally holds the Indians to two runs on four hits and three walks to get the win. Rookie Roy Foster belts a two-run home run for the only offense for Cleveland.
In Minnesota, left-fielder Brant Alyea leads the Twins over the Chicago White Sox, 12-0. His 4-for-4 day includes two homers and seven RBI, the latter setting a major league Opening Day record.
April 11 – At Comiskey Park, Danny Walton hits the first two home runs in Milwaukee Brewers history, both two-run shots coming against White Sox starter Billy Wynne. The Brewers win for the first time, 8-4.
April 18 - Nolan Ryan gave up only one hit in the first inning as he set a then New York Mets record by striking up 15 batters in a 7-0 Mets victory over the Philadelphia Phillies at Shea Stadium.
April 22 – The New York Mets' Tom Seaver strikes out 19 San Diego Padres, including the last 10 in succession, in winning 2-1 for the Mets. Mike Corkins takes the loss. In this century, no one had ever struck out 10 in a row, a major league record. Counting the 10 whiffs, the Pads have struck out 29 times in two games, a National League record that will be topped in 1998 when the Houston Astros miss 31 times in two days. Jerry Grote adds one foul fly catch to his 19 putouts via K's.
May 10 – Hoyt Wilhelm makes his 1,000th pitching appearance; the first pitcher in history to do so.
May 12 – At Chicago's Wrigley Field, Ernie Banks becomes the 8th member of the 500 home run club, connecting off Atlanta Braves pitcher Pat Jarvis during a 4–3, 11-inning Chicago Cubs win over the Braves. It his also his 1,600th career run batted in. Ex-Cub Frank Secory is umpiring this game, as he was one of the umpires in the 1953 game in which Banks hit his first career home run. Banks' teammate Billy Williams also homer in the 9th inning to tie the game, while Ron Santo's RBI single in the 11th wins it. Atlanta's Rico Carty, meanwhile, has three singles and has hit in 30 consecutive games.
May 17 – In the second game of a double header, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves collected his 3,000 career hit with an infield single as well as his 517th home run off of pitcher Wayne Granger, during a 7–6, 15-inning loss to the Cincinnati Reds, becoming the founding member of the 3000-500 Club. Through the years, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez would join the select club.
June 5 – Bert Blyleven makes his major league debut with the Minnesota Twins, and gives up a lead-off home run to Washington Senators outfielder Lee Maye. Blyleven holds on for a 2–1 victory, the first of a 287 wins career that will propel his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
June 12 – In the first game of a double header at San Diego Stadium, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates no-hits the San Diego Padres 2–0. Years later, Ellis would claim that he was under the influence of LSD during the entire game.
June 8 – Both Major League Baseball players and management agreed to end their labor dispute by settling on a new standard contract. Among the compromises that benefited the players was a raise in the minimum league salary from $10,000 to $12,000 per season.
June 17 – At Candlestick Park, Ernie Banks and Willie Mays become the first members of the 500 home run club to each hit a home run in the same game. In the eighth inning of the Chicago Cubs' game against the San Francisco Giants, Banks hits his 504th career home run, a three-run shot off Giant reliever Mike Davison. Mays then hits his 615th career home run off the Cubs' Ken Holtzman in the bottom half of the same inning. The Cubs defeat the Giants, 6-1.
June 21 – The Detroit Tigers' César Gutiérrez gets seven hits in seven at bats in 12 innings against the Cleveland Indians, setting an American League mark and tying a major league record for most hits in one game.[1]
June 24 :
In a 7-2 loss to the Cleveland Indians in the first game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, New York Yankees pitcher Steve Hamilton gets Indians batter Tony Horton to foul out on a pitch known as the "Folly Floater".
The Cincinnati Reds defeat the San Francisco Giants, 5-4 in the final game that the Reds will play at Crosley Field.
June 26 – Frank Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles hits grand slams in consecutive innings, the fourth and fifth, in a 12-2 victory over the Washington Senators at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. The same runners are on base both times: Dave McNally on third, Don Buford on second and Paul Blair on first.
June 28 – The Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Chicago Cubs in both games of a doubleheader, 3-2 and 4-1, in the last two games played at Forbes Field.
June 30 – Riverfront Stadium opens with the Cincinnati Reds losing to the Atlanta Braves, 8-2.
July 2 :
Against the New York Yankees at Tiger Stadium, Joe Niekro of the Detroit Tigers has a no-hitter broken up with one out in the ninth on a Horace Clarke single, the only hit Niekro will allow in a 5-0 Tiger victory. This is the third no-hit bid Clarke has broken up in the ninth inning in less than a month; he had foiled bids by Jim Rooker on June 4 and by Sonny Siebert (who had already pitched a no-hitter in 1966) on June 19.
John Bateman of the Montreal Expos set a team record with seven runs batted in to pace the Expos to a 13–10 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. Bateman started his feat with a grand slam in the Expos' six-run first inning.
July 3 – Clyde Wright of the California Angels has a doubly memorable day. In a ceremony before the Angels' game against the Oakland Athletics at Anaheim Stadium, the former star pitcher at Carson-Newman College (with whom he won an NAIA Baseball World Series title in 1965) is inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame. He then no-hits the Athletics 4-0, the first no-hitter in the stadium's history.
July 8 – San Francisco Giants third baseman Jim Ray Hart tied a modern Major League record with six runs batted in during one inning with all coming in the fifth. As a result, Hart slammed a three-run home run and three-run triple in the frame, and eventually completed his feat by hitting for the cycle en route to a 13–0 victory over the Atlanta Braves.
July 14 – At Riverfront Stadium, the National League wins its eighth straight All-Star Game, a thrilling 12-inning 5–4 victory. Pete Rose crashes into Cleveland Indians catcher Ray Fosse to score the controversial winning run on Jim Hickman's single. Fosse, who never had the ball, hurts his right shoulder and is taken to the hospital. The game is scoreless until the 6th inning, with the NL limited to three hits in the first eight innings. In the 9th, the NL tees off on Catfish Hunter, driving in three runs to tie. Dick Dietz hits a leadoff home run in the inning. Claude Osteen pitches the 10th for the win, and Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox captures the MVP trophy for the American League. This All-Star Game voting was finally returned to the fans as punch-card ballots debuted in major league ballparks across the nation, being the first time since 1958 that the exhibition's squads were not entirely selected by managers, coaches and players.
July 16 – Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium was opened to the public, but the Cincinnati Reds spoiled the party as they beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4–3, before a crowd of 48,846. The first hit at Three Rivers Stadium was a single by Pittsburgh's Richie Hebner. The first home run at the new ballpark was hit by Cincinnati's Tony Pérez.
July 18 – Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants records his 3,000th career hit.
July 20 – At Dodger Stadium, Bill Singer of the Los Angeles Dodgers no-hits the Philadelphia Phillies, 5–0. Singer's catcher, Jeff Torborg, had caught Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965, and will later catch the first of Nolan Ryan's seven no-hitters, in 1973.
July 26 – Johnny Bench of the Cincinnati Reds hit three straight home runs off St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Steve Carlton. On the same day, Orlando Cepeda, of the Atlanta Braves, also connected three consecutive homers in an 8–3 victory over the Chicago Cubs.
August 1 – At Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates hits three doubles and two home runs in the Pirates' 20-10 win over the Atlanta Braves. He becomes the third player in modern-day Major League history to collect five extra-base hits in one game, Lou Boudreau and Joe Adcock having done so in 1946 and 1954 respectively. Amazingly, this game was nationally broadcast, and the trivia question early in the game was to name the two players who had gotten five extra-base hits in a game. Bob Robertson also collects five hits for the Pirates, including a home run; not until Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones in 2010 will two Pirates collect five hits each in the same game.
August 11 – Philadelphia's Jim Bunning beats the Houston Astros 6-5 to become the first pitcher to win 100 games in both leagues since Cy Young.
September 3 – Billy Williams of the Chicago Cubs asks to be kept out of the lineup, snapping his National League record of 1,117 consecutive games played. His record was broken in 1983 by Steve Garvey.
September 16 – Minnesota Twins pitcher Bert Blyleven strikes out the first six California Angels batters of the game, and ties a major league record. Blyleven will finish the game with ten strikeouts, but take the 5-1 loss.
September 21 – At Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, Vida Blue of the Oakland Athletics no-hits the Minnesota Twins 6-0, the only baserunner coming on Harmon Killebrew's second-inning walk. The no-hitter caps a season that witnesses four no-hitters, all pitched in California-based Major League stadiums; Candlestick Park is the only one of the five not to have a no-hitter pitched in it. It is also the second time in three seasons an Athletic pitcher has no-hit the Twins, who were on the losing end of Catfish Hunter's perfect game in 1968.
October 1 :
Vic Davalillo of the St. Louis Cardinals breaks the National League single-season pinch hitting record and ties the Major League record with his 24th pinch hit of the year.[2][3]
The Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Montreal Expos 2-1 in 10 innings in the final game at Shibe Park (Connie Mack Stadium). The occasion was marred by people literally dismantling the stadium while the game was still in progress. A special post-game ceremony — including a helicopter delivery to Veterans Stadium of home plate — was cancelled.[4]
October 15 – For the third time in the 1970 World Series, the Baltimore Orioles overcome a 3–0 deficit to bury the Cincinnati Reds 9–3, and win the World Championship four games to one. Frank Robinson and Merv Rettenmund each homer and drive in two runs. Third baseman Brooks Robinson, the "human vacuum cleaner", easily wins the Series MVP award.
November 21 - New York Mets outfielder Tommie Agee became the first non-pitcher to win a Gold Glove in both leagues. The New York flycatcher also won the honor with the Chicago White Sox during his 1966 rookie of the year season.
November 25 – New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson receives 23 of 24 first-place votes and is named American League Rookie of the Year. Munson batted .302 with six home runs and 53 RBI during the regular season. Cleveland Indians outfielder Roy Foster (.268, 23, 60) is also named on a first place ballot.
November 27 – Pitcher Carl Morton, who posted an 18-11 record with 154 strikeouts and a 3.60 ERA for the last-place Montréal Expos, receives the National League Rookie of the Year Award. Morton beats out Cincinnati Reds outfielder Bernie Carbo, who hit .310 with 21 home runs and 63 RBI.
December 1 – The Boston Red Sox trade second baseman Mike Andrews and shortstop Luis Alvarado to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for future Hall of Fame shortstop Luis Aparicio.
January 1 – Gary Wilson
January 2 – Royce Clayton
January 5 – Brian Runge
January 6 – Dan Naulty
January 9 – T. J. Mathews
January 12 – Nigel Wilson
January 14 – Steve Cooke
January 16 – Ron Villone
January 18 – Mike Bertotti
January 19 – Rick Krivda
January 19 – Ricky Pickett
January 20 – Marvin Benard
January 21 – Jeff McCurry
January 23 – Alan Embree
January 23 – Sherman Obando
January 23 – Mark Wohlers
January 26 – Dan Carlson
January 27 – Jessie Hollins
January 31 – Joel Bennett
January 31 – Chris Pritchett
February 1 – Edwin Hurtado
February 1 – Joe Vitko
February 4 – John Frascatore
February 5 – Chris Brock
February 6 – Mark Hutton
February 9 – John Burke
February 10 – Alberto Castillo
February 10 – Bobby J. Jones
February 13 – Kevin Stocker
February 14 – Takashi Saito
February 14 – Kelly Stinnett
February 18 – Tyler Green
March 4 – John Dettmer
March 4 – Dave Stevens
March 6 – Scott Stahoviak
March 11 – Pedro Castellano
March 13 – Jorge Fábregas
March 14 – Brent Gates
March 16 – Curt Schmidt
March 20 – Will Brunson
March 21 – Rick DeHart
March 24 – Wilson Álvarez
March 27 – Derek Aucoin
April 1 – Matt Herges
April 2 – Dennis Hocking
April 2 – Jon Lieber
April 5 – Ryan Karp
April 6 – Tim Belk
April 10 – Rob Butler
April 10 – Al Reyes
April 11 – Sean Bergman
April 11 – Joe Vitiello
April 13 – Ricardo Rincón
April 14 – Steve Avery
April 18 – Rico Brogna
April 18 – Steve Dunn
April 25 – Sean Mulligan
April 27 – Mike Neill
April 28 – Bill Hurst
April 29 – J. R. Phillips
May 2 – Joe Crawford
May 5 – Juan Acevedo
May 7 – Brook Fordyce
May 7 – Mark Smith
May 14 – Larry Sutton
May 15 – Scott Watkins
May 16 – Jim Mecir
May 18 – Scott Baker
May 21 – Bryce Florie
May 21 – Tom Martin
May 23 – Ricky Gutiérrez
May 25 – Joey Eischen
May 25 – Luis Ortiz
May 30 – John Courtright
May 31 – Dilson Torres
June 2 – Reid Cornelius
June 2 – Mike Kelly
June 5 – Gene Schall
June 11 – Bill Selby
June 12 – Damon Buford
June 20 – Mike Grace
June 23 – Juan Castillo
June 25 – Aaron Sele
June 27 – Jim Edmonds
June 27 – Ricardo Jordan
June 28 – Kevin Polcovich
June 30 – Mark Grudzielanek
July 5 – Doug Bochtler
July 11 – Billy Ashley
July 14 – Mark Brandenburg
July 14 – Tim Davis
July 15 – Joey Long
July 16 – William Van Landingham
July 25 – Garey Ingram
July 29 – Todd Dunn
July 29 – Steve Wojciechowski
July 31 – Mike Figga
August 4 – Dax Jones
August 7 – Rich Croushore
August 7 – Bruce Dreckman
August 7 – Greg Pirkl
August 7 – Marc Pisciotta
August 9 – Pat Mahomes
August 13 – Eddie Gaillard
August 15 – Tony Rodríguez
August 16 – Quinton McCracken
August 18 – Bobby Higginson
August 19 – Jeff Tam
August 21 – Craig Counsell
August 24 – B. J. Waszgis
August 25 – Duff Brumley
August 25 – Doug Glanville
August 27 – Jim Thome
September 2 – Sean Lawrence
September 3 – Dave Berg
September 3 – Chad Fox
September 3 – Craig Wilson
September 4 – Luis López
September 5 – Mike Potts
September 9 – Joey Hamilton
September 9 – Dan Miceli
September 12 – Tito Navarro
September 15 – José Zapata
September 16 – Bronswell Patrick
September 16 – Paul Shuey
September 18 – Ozzie Timmons
September 20 – Chris Snopek
September 22 – Mike Matheny
September 24 – Paul Spoljaric
September 25 – Ray Holbert
September 26 – Matt Murray
September 28 – Brian Banks
September 28 – Mike DeJean
September 29 – Gary Haught
September 29 – Joe Hudson
October 1 – Massimo Ciaramella
October 2 – Eddie Guardado
October 3 – Roger Bailey
October 3 – Manny Martínez
October 6 – Darren Oliver
October 7 – Tim Unroe
October 8 – David Doster
October 8 – Sandy Martínez
October 8 – Olmedo Sáenz
October 9 – Mike Robertson
October 12 – Tanyon Sturtze
October 13 – Kennie Steenstra
October 16 – Scott Davison
October 17 – John Mabry
October 18 – Doug Mirabelli
October 21 – Marc Wilkins
October 22 – Anthony Chavez
October 25 – Curtis King
October 25 – Terrell Lowery
October 27 – Pedro Swann
October 29 – Kerwin Moore
October 31 – Steve Trachsel
November 2 – Marcus Moore
November 5 – Glenn Dishman
November 5 – Javy López
November 6 – Chris Petersen
November 9 – Chad Ogea
November 11 – Jeff Ware
November 13 – Vic Darensbourg
November 16 – Héctor Fajardo
November 18 – Allen Watson
November 19 – Jeff Berblinger
November 19 – J. J. Thobe
November 23 – Glenn Murray
November 24 – Jason Jacome
November 29 – Steve Rodriguez
December 1 – Kirk Rueter
December 3 – Paul Byrd
December 5 – Andy Stewart
December 9 – Tony Tarasco
December 12 – Mike Buddie
December 15 – Robert Ellis
December 15 – Rick Helling
December 17 – Mike Cather
December 18 – Mike Gulan
December 19 – Tom Wilson
December 21 – John Hope
December 25 – Steve Montgomery
December 30 – Ben Blomdahl
December 30 – Bart Evans
December 30 – Chad Fairchild
January 4 – Brad Springer, 65, pitcher who played from 1925 to 1926 for the St. Louis Browns and the Cincinnati Reds.
January 7 – Jumbo Elliott, 69, pitcher for the St. Louis Browns, Brooklyn Robins, Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves between 1923 and 1934, who led the National League with 19 wins in 1931.
January 9 – Ray Collins, 82, pitcher for the Boston Red Sox from 1909 to 1915, who later coached at University of Vermont.
January 10 – Harvey Freeman, 78, pitcher for the 1921 Philadelphia Athletics.
January 12 – Doc Bass, 72, utility man who played for the 1918 Boston Braves.
January 12 – Andy Bruckmiller, 88, pitcher for the 1908 Detroit Tigers.
January 14 – Johnny Murphy, 61, general manager of the New York Mets, formerly a relief pitcher for the New York Yankees who held the career saves record from 1946 to 1962.
January 15 – Bill Leard, 84, second baseman for the 1917 Brooklyn Robins.
January 17 – Alex Mustaikis, 60, pitcher for the 1940 Boston Red Sox.
January 18 – Jack Richardson, 77, pitcher who played from 1915 to 1916 with the Philadelphia Athletics.
January 21 – Casper Asbjornson, 60, catcher who played from 1928 to 1932 for the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds.
January 21 – Harry Shriver, 73, pitcher for the 1921-22 Brooklyn Robins.
January 23 – Bill Conroy, 71, infielder for the 1923 Washington Senators.
January 24 – Hal McKain, 63, pitcher who played for the Cleveland Indians Chicago White Sox in parts of five seasons spanning 1927–1932.
January 25 – Harvey Grubb, 79, third baseman for the 1912 Cleveland Naps.
January 26 – Jim Haislip, 78, pitcher for the 1913 Philadelphia Phillies.
January 28 – Orie Arntzen, 60, pitcher for the 1943 Philadelphia Athletics.
January 29 – Miguel Fuentes, 23, Puerto Rican pitcher for the Seattle Pilots during the 1969 season, who was murdered in a bar fight in his home town of Loíza.
February 5 – Rudy York, 56, first baseman and seven-time All-Star who had six 100-RBI seasons for the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox, while hitting a record 18 homers in one month as a rookie, and two grand slams in a 1946 game.
February 6 – Dick Mauney, 50, pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1945 to 1947
February 8 – John Churry
February 13 – Paul Edmondson, 27, pitcher for the Chicago White Sox who died in a car crash the day after his birthday.
February 16 – Dick Conger
February 21 – Tom Carey, 63, infielder for the St. Louis Browns and Boston Red Sox between 1935 and 1946, later a coach with the Red Sox.
February 21 – Joe Shaute, 70, pitcher who won 99 games from 1922 to 1934 for the Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Robins/Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds.
February 26 – Bill Bankston
March 3 – Bill McAllester
March 6 – Bob Adams
March 11 – Bill Kerksieck
March 14 – Jim Levey
March 18 – John Misse
March 18 – Frosty Thomas, 88, pitcher for the 1905 Detroit Tigers, who also collected 85 wins with the Minneapolis Millers of the Western League from 1902–1907.
March 20 – Jack Flater, 86, pitcher for the 1908 Philadelphia Athletics.
April 2 – Dave Hoskins
April 2 – Carl Ray
April 7 – Ollie Voigt
April 8 – Lee Handley, 57, an infielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates during eight seasons, who also played with the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies.
April 11 – Joe Heving, 69, a pitcher for the Giants, White Sox, Indians, Red Sox and Braves between 1930 and 1945, who led American League pitchers with 63 appearances in 1944, despite being the only grandfather playing in the majors.
April 11 – Sailor Stroud, 84, pitcher who posted a 5-7 record with a 3.25 ERA and three shutouts for the Detroit Tigers (1915) and New York Giants (1916).
April 12 – Red Shannon, 73, backup infielder who played from 1917 to 1921 with the Braves, Athletics, Red Sox, Senators and Cubs.
April 14 – Ed Crowley
April 14 – John Donaldson, 78, star pitcher in the Negro Leagues, mainly with the All Nations team and Kansas City Monarchs.
April 15 – Ripper Collins, 66, All-Star first baseman who led NL in homers in 1934, then batted .367 in World Series.
April 16 – Mal Eason, 91, pitcher for the Chicago Orphans, Boston Beaneaters, Detroit Tigers and Brooklyn Superbas in the early 20th century.
April 17 – Dick Brown, 35, part-time catcher who hit 62 home runs with 223 RBI in 636 games for the Indians, White Sox, Tigers and Orioles.
April 18 – Tony York, 57, infielder for the 1944 Chicago Cubs, and one of many major leaguers who only played during World War II.
April 20 – Jake Mooty
April 25 – Gene Steinbrenner
April 26 – Yats Wuestling, 66, backup shortstop who played from 1929 to 1930 for the Tigers and Yankees.
April 30 – Chick Gagnon
April 30 – Dan Jessee
May 2 – Art Delaney
May 9 – Ducky Yount
May 10 – Rufus Meadows
May 13 – Urbane Pickering, 70, backup infielder who hit .257 with 11 home runs and 92 RBI for the Boston Red Sox in the 1921 and 1922 seasons.
May 13 – Johnny Stuart
May 15 – Ed Gerner
May 16 – Dutch Ruether, 76, pitcher who won opener of 1919 World Series for the Cincinnati Reds, later a scout for the New York Giants.
May 19 – Ray Schalk, 77, Hall of Fame catcher for the Chicago White Sox who was noted for his defensive brilliance, setting records for career games, putouts and double plays at the position.
May 21 – Jack Farmer
May 21 – Les Fusselman
May 24 – Bill Lamar, 73, outfielder for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Brooklyn Robins and Philadelphia Athletics (1917–1927), who collected a .310 average including a .356 in 1925.
May 31 – Zip Zabel, 79, Chicago Cubs pitcher who set a major league record for the most innings pitched in relief (18 1⁄3) during the 1915 season.
May 30 – Howie Gregory
June 1 – George Watkins, 69, outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1930s, who owns the major league season-record for a rookie with a .373 batting average (1930).
June 3 – Jakie May, 74, relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs in 14 seasons spanning 1917–1932, who posted a 72-95 record with a 3.88 ERA and 19 saves in 1562 innings of work.
June 14 – Webbo Clarke, 42, Panamanian pitcher who played for the 1955 Washington Senators.
June 23 – Ross Reynolds, 82, pitcher who posted a 5-4 record and a 2.62 ERA for the 1914–1915 Detroit Tigers.
July 1 – Herb Hall, 77, pitcher for the 1918 Detroit Tigers.
July 7 – Harry Wolter, 85, outfielder and pitcher who played for the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, New York Highlanders/Yankees and Chicago Cubs.
July 8 – Jimmy Grant, 51, third baseman who played from 1942 through 1944 for the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians.
July 15 – Emilio Palmero, 75, Cuban pitcher who spent over 17 years in baseball, including stints with the New York Giants, St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators and Boston Braves during five seasons spanning 1915–1928.
July 16 – Peahead Walker, 71, who had a distinguished minor league career as player and manager, and later became a prolific football coach with several collegiate squads as well as the CFL's Montreal Alouettes.
July 24 – Harvey Green, 55, pitcher who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1935 season.
July 25 – Herb Hunter, 74, utility IF/OF for the New York Giants, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals between 1916 and 1921.
July 27 – Whitey Platt, 49, backup outfielder for the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Browns in five seasons between 1942 and 1949, who was a member of the 1938 United States national team in the inaugural Amateur World Series played in England, and also served with the US Navy in the Pacific Theatre of World War II.
July 29 – Charley Moore, 85, infielder for the 1912 Chicago Cubs.
August 2 – Mike Cvengros, 69, pitcher who played with the New York Giants, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs in a span of six seasons from 1922 to 1929.
August 11 – Paul Gillespie, 49, fine defensive catcher for the Cubs in the early 1940s, who hit home runs both in his first and last major league at-bats.
August 15 – Ray Bates, 80, third baseman for the Cleveland Naps (1913) and Philadelphia Athletics (1917).
August 16 – Kurt Krieger, 43, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1949–1951, who is recognised as the first Austrian-born player to appear in a Major League game.
August 23 – Doc Gautreau, 69, second baseman who played from 1925 to 1o 1928 for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Braves.
August 23 – Red Smith, 78, backup catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1917 and 1918 seasons.
August 25 – Leo Moon, 81, pitcher for the 1932 Cleveland Indians.
August 26 – Eddie Rommel, 72, pitcher who won 171 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, and later worked 22 years as an American League umpire.
August 31 – Heinie Odom, 69, third baseman for the 1925 New York Yankees.
September 1 – Ben Spencer
September 2 – Herbert Hill
September 7 – Gene Ford
September 13 – Leon Riley
September 14 – Sam Lanford
September 14 – Jimmie Long
September 16 – Ray Shook
September 17 – Ed Corey
September 19 – Dave Danforth, pitcher who posted a 71-66 record with a 3.89 ERA from 1911–1925 for the Philadelphia Athletics, Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Browns.
September 20 – Oliver Hill
September 20 – Fred Lamlein
September 21 – Biggs Wehde
September 30 – Lou Novikoff, 54, outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs in the early 1940s.
September 30 – Hank Patterson, 63, catcher for the 1932 Boston Red Sox.
October 2 – George Mohart
October 5 – Reuben Ewing
October 9 – Cy Fried
October 10 – Lefty Leifield, 87, pitcher who averaged 17 wins for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1906 to 1911, including a career-high 20 wins in 1907.
October 13 – Fred Mitchell, 92, Hall of Fame manager who won the 1918 National League pennant with the Chicago Cubs, and also was coach at Harvard University for 30 years.
October 22 – Cal Dorsett
October 22 – Billy Sianis, 70[?], Chicago Tavern owner who took his pet goat to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers, who was later ejected from Wrigley Field, thus putting an alleged curse in Cubs history.
October 23 – Sherry Robertson, 51, Canadian outfielder/infielder from 1940-52 for the Washington Senators and Philadelphia Athletics, who later became an MLB executive.
October 24 – Andy Oyler
October 26 – Willie Underhill
October 28 – Wedo Martini
October 30 – Jimmy Welsh
October 31 – Johnny Lucas, 67, outfielder for the Boston Red Sox from 1931 to 1932.
November 2 – Bobby LaMotte
November 3 – Red Kellett
November 5 – Dave Robertson, 89, outfielder from 1912-22 for the New York Giants, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates, who led twice the National League in home runs (1916–1917).
November 5 – Charlie Root, 71, pitcher who won a club-record 201 games for the Chicago Cubs, best known as the pitcher that surrendered Babe Ruth's supposed "called shot" in the 1932 World Series.
November 5 – Freddy Spurgeon
November 7 – Johnny Hudson
November 7 – Paul McCullough
November 8 – Ed Murray
November 9 – Howard Maple
November 24 – Spencer Adams
November 24 – Ivy Andrews, 63, pitcher for three American League teams from 1931–1938 and a member of the New York Yankees 1932 World Champions, who later became the first pitching coach for the Double-A Birmingham Barons.
November 28 – Orlie Weaver
December 5 – Joe Wyatt
December 10 – Marshall Renfroe
December 10 – Johnny Mostil, 74, center fielder for the Chicago White Sox whose promising career was derailed by a 1927 suicide attempt.
December 12 – Doug Taitt, 68, right fielder for the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies from 1938 to 1932, who later became a successfully hitter and manager in the Minor Leagues.
December 13 – George Baumgardner
December 13 – Chick Gandil, 83, first baseman and the reported ringleader among the eight players who threw the 1919 World Series.
December 14 – Herman Hill
December 14 – Walt Tragesser
December 16 – Jim Winford, 61, pitcher who played from 1932 to 1938 for the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers.
December 17 – Jim Park
December 19 – Charlie Wilson
December 19 – Nap Rucker
December 21 – Chubby Dean
December 25 – Red Juelich
December 26 – Jack Stansbury
December 28 – Doc Ozmer
^ June 21, 1970 Tigers-Indians box score at Baseball Reference
^ Baseball Digest, March 1995, Vol. 54, No. 3, ISSN 0005-609X
^ October 1, 1970, box score at Baseball Cube
^ See Philadelphia Evening Bulletin photograph of ransacking in progress, courtesy of Temple University Libraries. http://digital.library.temple.edu/u?/p15037coll3,282 Accessed 12/22/09
1969–70 Cuban National Series
Henequeneros, of Matanzas won the ninth Cuban National Series, edging Mineros over the 66 game schedule. Industriales had its worst finish to date, ending up fourth of 12 teams.
1970 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 1970 followed the system of annual elections in place since 1968.
The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from recent major league players and
elected Lou Boudreau.
The Veterans Committee met in closed sessions to consider executives, managers, umpires, and earlier major league players.
It selected three people: Earle Combs, Ford Frick, and Jesse Haines.
1970 Big League World Series
The 1970 Big League World Series took place from August 17–22 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States. Lincolnwood, Illinois defeated San Fernando/Simi Valley, California twice in the championship game. This was the first BLWS held in Fort Lauderdale.
This year marked the first appearance for the European, and Latin American regions.
After nine years of absence, the thirteenth edition of the Caribbean Series (Serie del Caribe) was revived in 1970 without the representing baseball clubs of Cuba and Panama. It was held in Caracas, Venezuela from February 5 to February 10 at Estadio Universitario, featuring the original members of the first stage. Puerto Rico was represented by the Leones de Ponce, while the host Navegantes del Magallanes represented Venezuela. The Dominican Republic debuted in the Series and was represented by the Tigres del Licey to complete a three-team tournament. The format consisted of 12 games, with each team facing the other competitors three times. Because the series was so small, each team had to face each other in one night.
1970 Little League World Series
The 1970 Little League World Series took place between August 25 and August 29 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The American Little League of Wayne, New Jersey, defeated the Campbell Little League of Campbell, California, in the championship game of the 24th Little League World Series.
1970 Major League Baseball season
The 1970 Major League Baseball season. The Seattle Pilots relocated to Milwaukee and became the Brewers, thus returning Major League Baseball to Wisconsin for the first time since the relocation of the Milwaukee Braves to Atlanta following the 1965 season.
1970 Senior League World Series
The 1970 Senior League World Series took place from August 17–23 in Gary, Indiana, United States. West Tampa, Florida defeated Throggs Neck, New York in the championship game.
This year featured the debut of the Caribbean region.
The Black Mist Scandal (Japanese baseball)
In Japan, the Black Mist Scandal (黒い霧事件, kuroi kiri jiken) refers to a series of game fixing scandals in the Nippon Professional Baseball league between 1969 and 1971. The fallout from these scandals resulted in several star players receiving long suspensions, salary cuts, or being banned from professional play entirely; the resulting abandonment of baseball by many fans in Japan also led to the sale of such illustrious teams as the Nishitetsu Lions and Toei Flyers (now the Seibu Lions and Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters).
The term "black mist" was a reference to a political scandal that had enveloped the Eisaku Satō administration in 1966–1967; "bribery was said to envelop politics like a black mist."
1970 MLB season by team
Major League Baseball seasons
Pre-modern era
NL monopoly
Modern era
Deadball era
Liveball era
First expansion
Birth of division play
Wildcard begins
Wildcard expansion
Major League Baseball schedule
History of baseball
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Tag: Science
Boys will probably be boys.
I am obliged to go against the current cozy consensus, to say something different to the accepted viewpoint and, in the process, lay myself open for criticism. I am going to say something that is shocking, probably heretical, and in the current climate may lead to my being ostracized. I am going to say that there are differences between women and men, between boys and girls, which are not socially created but relate to our biology. There are innate differences in a some of our behaviours, our drives and our instincts which arose after millennia of evolution as a species. There, I have said it, let the heavens open. This is simply a fact, although unusually for one of my opinions, a fact with which most of science agrees.
Why have I found myself spouting heresies today ? Well, it all has to do with a racing car driver. I can confess that I actually felt rather sorry for Lewis Hamilton today. Why do I feel sorry for the handsome, wealthy, skilled and famous car racing star ? I felt sorry for him as he was forced to make an apology for a piece of playfulness with his nephew which revealed he did not toe the party line. In a piece of family banter, in a jovial mock-angry voice he said that “boys don’t wear princess dresses” while teasing his nephew, who seemed to be enjoying the attention from his famous uncle. Cue synthetic shock and horror from the social media watchmen who called out his “horrific” “transphobia“. After a short period of sustained attack, Lewis Hamilton came back with the required abject grovelling apology. However, it seems that this may not have been an adequate Mea Culpa as he is now being criticised for inadequate sincerity in his shame. The intolerance of the social media clerisy is quite remarkable, they will not tolerate any views which deviate from the current accepted norms, no alternative views will be brooked.
Now I think Lewis Hamilton was wrong, of the things which might be social constructs I am pretty certain that styles of clothing is amongst them. In different cultures, and across different times, that which is suitable for girls and boys to wear has varied; style sense is not inherited (Although I can’t think of a culture promoting princess apparel to its boys). But it does not matter that he is wrong. He expressed his opinion and he has hurt no-one. He should be free to do this without the fear of mock outrage. Further, it is the family’s role to rear children and to instil values and attitudes in them – nobody else has that right. I disagree with many religions but believe that religious parents have the right to instruct their children as they wish. I disagree with my conservative voting neighbours but do not feel that I have any right to stop them passing their opinions onto their children. Indeed, as long as they are not harming their children, I want families to instruct their offspring as it is them who teach the young how to be good, how to be moral, how to be a good man or a good woman. Sometimes their views on morality and goodness will not concur with mine, but these differences are the grit in the oyster of our culture which generates discussion and change. Tolerating these differences is one of the hallmarks of a civilised and open society. Watching people publicly shamed for unfashionable opinions is reminiscent of the stocks or the show trials and should cause free thinking people to be concerned.
The rights of the individual are closely allied to the family unit. The family unit allows us to act and exist outside of the state and the state has, for a long time, had an ambivalent view of the family : positive in that it cares for the young and the sick, negative as it may instil ideas of which it disapproves. It is still largely within the family that we develop our moral compass although the state’s roles in education and healthcare have reduced this somewhat. Capitalism sees less need for the nuclear or extended family, from the market’s viewpoint the more people producing and the more people consuming the better. Traditional families are perhaps inefficient in market terms in the developed west, the family model works best as a unit of production rather than as a unit of consumption. Socialist thinking has been more generally hostile to the family, it recognised that the family is a place of education and instruction which is not under state control and therefore potentially problematic. In 1920 Alexandra Kollontai wrote the set text on family organisation under communism. She wrote :-
The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the “new person”. The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other amenities where the child will spend the greater part of the day under the supervision of qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in which the child can grow up a conscious communist who recognises the need for solidarity, comradeship, mutual help and loyalty to the collective.
and promised that :-
She need have no anxiety about her children. The workers’ state will assume responsibility for them
The woman who takes up the struggle for the liberation of the working class must learn to understand that there is no more room for the old proprietary attitude which says: “These are my children, I owe them all my maternal solicitude and affection; those are your children, they are no concern of mine and I don’t care if they go hungry and cold – I have no time for other children.” The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.
Unfortunately it seems that this attack on the family where different opinions might flower continues. If we allow this censorious and intolerant development our future abilities to recognise and defeat authoritarianism will be sorely damaged. Policing the family has always been a priority for authoritarian regimes, recall the importance given to the Hitlerjugend and the Komsomol in Germany and the Soviet Union, and remember that these were very early developments of fascist societies. A society which will not allow dodgy joke between family members is treading a dangerous path.
By henacynflinin Free Speech, Libertarianism, Socialism December 28, 2017 December 28, 2017 1,077 Words3 Comments
I used to be clumsy but I’m dyspraxic now.
via Daily Prompt: Clumsy
One of the trends of recent years has been the increasing medicalisation of our lives. Issues that previously were thought of as aspects of our personality or experience are viewed the rough the lens of health care. This trend has a long and venerable heritage. When Hippocrates wrote “On the Sacred Illness” and proposed fits, due to epilepsy, were due to phlegm from the brain rather then a punishment form the Gods, this was a major scientific advance.In the middle ages the recognition of some forms of mental illness as diseases rather then proof of demonic possession save some unfortunates from the rack and the stake. Shifting behaviours due to disease into the medical arena has been, without doubt, beneficial.
As our scientific knowledge increased more and more conditions were recognised for what they were. Times when people might have been thought to be lazy and slothful (when they had anaemia, renal failure, and so on) are gone and it is recognised that these people in fact suffered from disease or illness. They are taken out of the social realm and placed in the medical realm and thus excused from normal social responsibilities – we do not expect the lame or blind to work the same as others, we accept that those with schizophrenia may at times behaviour oddly or even rudely. This reduction of our responsibilities is beneficial as we are not then punished for behaviours not under our control.
However, this has not always been a change for good. In the nineteenth centuary a medical disorder of drapetomania was proposed by the American physician Samuel A. Cartwright. The essence of this condition was the desire to escape captivity and servitude; the ‘treatment’ was regular whipping to deter slaves from running away. More recently the KGB in the USSR worked with doctors, using the diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia” to incarcerate many dissents in mental hospitals. They used the diagnostic label to undermine the behaviours of political dissenters by making them symptoms of medical disorders there was no need to pay any heed to them – disagreement became madness.
It is with this in mind that recent changes concern me. There has been a tendency to identify difference as disorder. The socially awkward man with a liking for habit and routine becomes a man with Asberger’s Syndrome, the clumsy child becomes a patient with ‘dyspraxia’, the shy become ‘socially phobic’, the sad and disappointed become people with ‘minor depressive disorders’, and so on. There is a preoccupation with illness and an acceptance that it is almost universal we all have some disorder !
But this is a dangerous path. Placing people in the role of being ‘unwell’ has a number of risks. These might be outweighed by advantages as mentioned above, such as excusing us from our normal social responsibilities, or giving an explanation of our behaviour, or offering some form of treatment to improve our lot. But recent expansions of the ‘sick role’ seem to offer none of these. Someone who is clumsy knows no more about the origins of their clumsiness after the label of ‘dyspraxic disorder’ has been applied, they knew that their brain was less good than the average in motor tasks and dexterity already. We know no more about the socially awkward obsessive after we have labelled him as having Asberger’s syndrome, we have gained no new insights about him.
None of these, and many other disorders, have, at present, any treatments available for them. The steps one might take to mitigate against their signs and “symptoms” are common sense. Importantly, the steps which might help are not known only to medical professionals they are things we can all work out. Thinking that these disorders are some form of illness or disease limits the sources of help people may receive. People may undervalue the advice of the non-professional and miss possibly useful assistance form their friends, family or themselves.
The exclusion from social responsibility is a double edged sword. While people may feel some relief following being labelled as having some disorder and may benefit that others expect less of them – “I have X disorder, you can’t expect me to do Y” – what if the person want to be able to “do Y” ? The urge to overcome differences, that are seen as a disadvantage, might be suppressed. The socially phobic might not press themselves to gradually expand their repertoire of social activities and thus lead a smaller, less rewarding life than they may have been able to do otherwise.
Worse that curtailing the individual’s attempts to improve their lot is the danger that, now in the arena of healthcare, physicians will try and improve them. Already millions of unnecessary and ineffective prescriptions for medication are given to the mildly depressed or socially anxious (as well as many other dubious ‘disorders’). Each time such a pill is swallowed someone takes a risk of harm without the prospect of any benefit. It is true to say that some people die as a consequence of saying “I have disorder X” as opposed to accepting “this is the way I am”
Society as whole also looses out by this trend. Every time a deviation from the norm is categorised as a disorder we reduce what we consider the range of normal human life. We restrict the range of what is acceptable. While, in our present humane and liberal democracies, this may not be too risky there is no guarantee that this will always be the case.
Illness, ill-health and disorder are the exception we should fight to make sure that they remain so.
Written in response to the daily prompt : Clumsy
By henacynflinin Random Thoughts October 13, 2016 January 18, 2017 962 Words3 Comments
Can we be too careful ?
via Daily Prompt: Careful
I imagine that everyone hopes that they are careful. They believe that they assess risks and take steps to avoid or minimise them. They castigate themselves when they make errors and chide themselves, an others, when they are careless. It is held that there is a duty as we grow up to be careful, childhood is the time when we can be carefree. But can we be too careful ?
I think we all can remember times when our caution made us miss an opportunity, when in hindsight we regretted our hesitation. Certainly we can all recall the old adage “faint heart never won fair lady” and many of us have friends or acquaintances troubled by timid, over-cautious natures who lives are stunted by the problems of excessive care and anxiety. In the world of science, however, a preferred adage might be “better safe than sorry” where the stakes are higher than winning the hand of the damsel. But is is possible that excessive caution and being too careful can be troublesome here also ?
In the scientific world this might be the case with the “Precautionary Principle“. This was brought in as Principle 15 in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It might be well defined as follows :-
‘When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.’
Similar descriptions of the principle have been placed in regulations such as the World Charter for Nature and E.U.’s Treaty of Maastrich. A basic tenet of the this principle is that the ‘duty of care’ or ‘onus of proof’ is on those who those who propose change. Further, we are advised to err on the side of caution, even when there is no scientific evidence of harm.
While appreciation of risk and assessment of risk are a basic, and advisable, scientific task this principle can cause problems. Were the instruction ” assess and avoid risk” this would be entirely reasonable and right. But avoid risk, even is there is no evidence of risk , is a much more troublesome statement.
Obviously when change is proposed there may well be risks, but after these have been dealt with, it will always be possible to imagine or fear further risks for which there is no scientific basis. People feared train travel would be so fast that it would be damaging to the human body, people feared radio waves would affect the human mind. It would not have been possible to show at the time that these things would not occur. Presently we see the precautionary principle pulled out to protect us from all sorts of risks ; GM crops, Fracking, mobile phone masts, vaccination – “Just because they don’t know it doesn’t do any harm, doesn’t mean it wont.” they cry.
But here lies the inherent anti-scientific nature of this principle. It is not possible to prove the existence of something which doesn’t exist. If someone states that there are spirits form past lives in the ether. I can not prove that they are there. I can say that we have never seen them, I can also say that there is no known mechanism for them to be there. This is what science can do. With regard to harm scientists can say ‘we have never seen it’ and there is ‘no known mechanism’ for it to occur. This would be inadequate for the precautionary principle which would suggest caution and hesitation even though there is no scientific basis for this.
All life entails risks. Scientific progress is no different. Each step forward we take carries some risk. However, looking back at our development we live happier, healthier and longer lives now as a consequence of taking these risks and the progress of science. We would have missed major steps if we had been so risk averse. Had we fully comprehended the risks of aspirin we would never have started using it. For every risk we take we must also consider the risk we take by not moving forward. Had Jenner not taken the risks of injecting his fellow countrymen with cowpox, then smallpox would still blight our lives and would have caused millions of deaths. Those deaths would be the cost of not taking the risk.
Similarly, this year, two million children will die from nutritional deficiency, entirely needlessly ,because we will not allow the use of “Golden Rice”. We allow them to die because of our fear of the possible ‘risks’ . This is nearing a “crime against humanity” say over one third of all living science Nobel Laureates in their recent letter. I don’t think they are being excessive in their complaint.
Two million children dead while we follow the precautionary principle. Yes, it is possible to be too careful.
By henacynflinin Random Thoughts October 9, 2016 January 18, 2017 837 WordsLeave a comment
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Education is Related to Greater Ideological Prejudice
Everyone knows that education makes people more tolerant, right? Well, yes, if you focus on the traditional targets of intolerance that are generally studied in the social sciences, such as members of ethnic, racial, or religious outgroups. A college education seems to make people more cosmopolitan and less prejudiced. But what if you look at tolerance of ideological outgroups? New research by P.J. Henry and Jaime Napier finds that the education effect reverses. College graduates on both sides of the political spectrum are less tolerant of their political opponents than are people who have less education. In this post I summarize that article and draw out its implications for the current debate about free speech and the intellectual climate on college campuses.
Full Reference: Henry, P.J. & Napier, J.L. (2017). Education is related to greater ideological prejudice. Public Opinion Quarterly, 81, 930-942.
Abstract: Decades of research have shown that education reduces individuals’ prejudices toward people who belong to different groups, but this research has focused predominantly on prejudice toward ethnic/racial groups, immigrant groups, and general nonconformists. However, it is not clear whether education reduces other prejudices against groups along different dimensions, including ideological identification. An analysis of American National Election Studies data from 1964 to 2012 shows that education is related to decreases in interethnic/interracial prejudice, but also to increases in ideological (liberal vs. conservative) prejudice. This finding could not be explained simply by the greater polarization of the American electorate in the past twenty years. The results require rethinking how and why education is associated with reduced prejudice for certain groups but not others.
Although increased education has long been associated with more tolerant attitudes towards historically underrepresented and disadvantaged groups (e.g., racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, religious minorities, sexual minorities) there is good reason to suspect that increased education will produce greater ideological prejudice, and thus less tolerant attitudes towards one’s political opponents. Henry and Napier (2017) briefly review literature on the positive relationship between increased education and political sophistication (see e.g., Highton, 2009; Jacoby, 1988; Sidanius, Levin, van Laar, & Sears, 2008), before turning to the literature linking political sophistication with ideological bias (seen e.g., Bartels, 2008; Taber & Lodge, 2006; Zaller, 2004).
Henry and Napier (2017, p. 932) then explain how increased education may increase ideological prejudice. First, they note that political orientation is closely linked to one’s basic morals and values (see e.g., Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009):
… one consequence of education may be to better understand how morals and values connect to political ideologies. Left- versus right-wing political philosophies, by their very description, stand in contrast to each other and aim for different societal ideals; moreover, liberals and conservatives are not marginalized minority groups but rather large groups that pose plausible symbolic threats to their political counterparts. Because the value threat that the outgroup represents may be more obvious with increased education, and because such symbolic threats are intertwined with evaluations and emotions (Sears, 1993), the more educated may therefore express stronger negative prejudices towards their ideological opponents than the less educated.
Education level was, therefore, hypothesized to have a positive association with ideological prejudice. Henry and Napier (2017) tested this hypothesis by using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES). Since the ANES has collected data in every American election cycle since 1948, Henry and Napier were able to test their hypothesis in multiple decades and additionally predicted that the link between education level and ideological prejudice was not a new phenomenon.
Data was obtained from the ANES. The questions relevant to Henry and Napier’s (2017) data analysis were included in all samples collected from 1972 to 2012. An individual’s political ideology was determined from the ANES 7-item self-assessment of ideology (“extremely liberal,” “liberal,” “slightly liberal,” “moderate, middle-of-the-road,” “slightly conservative,” conservative,” and “extremely conservative”). Education was categorized into one of four levels (“less than high school,” “high school”, “some college,” and “college graduate”). The “college graduate” level was a combination of the 4-year college graduate and graduate/advanced degree categories in the ANES.
Group feeling thermometers that ranged from 0 (very cold and unfavorable) to 100 (very favorable and warm) provided the variables to assess ideological prejudice. A difference score between feelings towards liberals and feelings towards conservatives was created (i.e., feeling thermometer rating for liberals minus feeling thermometer rating for conservatives). Finally, a number of covariates were also included in the analysis: respondent sex (female or male), age, household income [1], and census region.
A preliminary analysis revealed that Henry and Napier’s (2017) findings replicated previous work documenting that more education is associated with a more liberal self-identification, however, and again consistent with prior research (see e.g., Sullivan, Pierson, & Marcus, 1982), this effect was not particularly strong. When demographic variables were controlled for, college graduates were more liberal than others, but there was little association between education and ideology among non-college graduates.
The focal hypothesis was tested with a multilevel model with a random intercept predicting the favorability of liberals over conservatives, as measured by the difference score created from the differences in the feeling thermometer responses. Results revealed that, as predicted increases in education for both liberals and conservatives were associated with increased prejudice. Analyses of the simple effects showed that each increase in education corresponded to more prejudice for both liberals and conservatives. In other words, liberals who did not complete high school were less ideologically prejudiced than those who did; liberals with a high school diploma only were less prejudiced that those with some college experience; and liberals with some college experience were less ideologically prejudiced than those who completed college. This pattern was also evident among conservatives.
Henry and Napier (2017, p. 936-937) further investigated if the association between education and ideological prejudice may have emerged as a result of the sharp rise in polarization between liberals and conservatives in the United States in recent years (see e.g., Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012; Napier & Luguri, 2016; Pew Research Center, 2017):
Results showed a small but significant main effect of year (b = .16, SE = .04, p < .001) that was qualified by an interaction with ideology (b = -.07, SE = .02, p < .001). Analyses of the simple slopes showed that ingroup favoritism increased among liberals over time (b = .26, SE = .05, p < .001), but not among conservatives (b = .05, SE = .05, p = .285). As can be seen in figure 1, despite the main effect of time for liberals, the relationship between education and ideological prejudice was very stable over time for both liberals and conservatives.
Thus, although ideological prejudice has increased over time among liberals, the pattern of association between education and ideological prejudice has remained fairly stable among liberals and conservatives.
Henry and Napier (2017) demonstrated clear and consistent support for their hypothesis – that greater levels of education are associated with greater levels of ideological prejudice – in their analysis of ANES data obtained from 1972 to 2012. Perhaps most importantly (Henry & Napier, 2017, p. 937, emphasis added):
… in contrast to interethnic bias, which is negatively related to education, ideological prejudice is stronger among those with high (vs. low) levels of education. These results call into question the notion that education promotes tolerance towards those who are different.
To explain this contrary finding, Henry and Napier (2017) offer multiple possibilities for future research:
Education promotes the creation of more crystalized ideological belief systems (e.g., Jacoby, 1988) that are more closely linked to moral values. Political opponents who endorse different, and, possibly, opposing values may, therefore, pose more of a symbolic threat to those with more education.
The social status of the groups being judged (liberals and conservatives) differs from the vast majority of research on the association between education and prejudice, in that neither group is marginalized. There is now good reason to suspect similar relationships between education and prejudice may exist between groups that are elective, that are defined by values and ideas, and do not have obvious status differentials.
The current study could not test whether greater ideological prejudice, as measured by a feeling thermometer, produces more discriminatory behavior towards political opponents.
Thus, the results suggest that the long-held conclusion “…that education endows a type of tolerance toward different others is bounded by dimensions of difference” (p. 940) may require a reassessment. There are clear links between more education and tolerant attitudes for some people and groups, but there is now evidence that more education can also exacerbate intolerant attitudes towards some people and groups.
Why These Findings are Important
These findings may be the first that document a link between higher levels of education and greater prejudice. Such findings are consistent with the suggestion that the ideological conflict in the United States is particularly bitter at the more elite levels of society (see Gelman, 2008). Additionally, some recent analyses on support for free speech among college students and college graduates have emphasized the positive association between higher levels of education and greater political tolerance. These analyses have also argued that liberals are more politically tolerant than conservatives (see here and here). Other analyses have argued that current college students are not as supportive of free speech as college graduates (see here for some evidence that this is not so for those who were 18-24 years old in 2016; see here for some evidence that is not so for current college students) and that liberals and conservatives and largely equally intolerant of each other (see e.g., Brandt, 2017; Gibson, 2006; Sullivan et al., 1982). The findings of Henry and Napier (2017) lend more support to the latter analyses, compared to the former.
Income group was not recorded in the 2002 ANES, so Henry and Napier (2017) set each 2002 respondent’s income to the grand mean. Patterns of results and significance levels did not differ based on the inclusion or exclusion of the 2002 respondents from the analysis.
Welcome to Heterodox Academy
Jon Haidt
Non-Discrimination Statements at the Institution Level & What to Do About It
Debra Mashek
Hiring in Higher Ed: Do Job Ads Signal a Desire for Viewpoint Diversity?
Intellectual Humility and Openness to the Opposing View
Why I’m Leaving the Academy in Order to Help Save it
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New Year's Balls at Alliance, 1903
On New Year's Eve in 1903 Alliance was the scene of two well-attended holiday balls. The Alliance Semi-Weekly Times of January 1, 1904, called the first, held in honor of Bernard Phelan in the Alliance opera house, a "social event of unexcelled brilliancy." Described as a "floral ball," the event featured female guests attired in costumes representing different varieties of flowers.
The Times depicted the floral ball decorations with elaborate care: "Festoons of roses, chrysanthemums and poppies were intermingled with specially arranged strings of electric lights, the color scheme of the decorations being in white, red and green. These hung in graceful folds about the walls, across the front of the gallery, above the stage, and at the center of the ceiling were looped more profusely, while from the center of a large ball of white chrysanthemums one monster red electric light glowed. . . . Moore's orchestra occupied a specially constructed circular stage in one corner surrounded by potted palms which were also placed advantageously about the room.
"Under the gallery the stationary seats had been removed, and here tables adorned with handsome china and silverware, snowy linen with embroidered flowers, candlesticks, etc., awaited. Red, green and purple were among the decorations. Sandwiches, salad, pickles, olives, coffee, cakes, and ice cream made up the menu most daintily served."
The second ball, sponsored by "Hardstruggle lodge, No. 642, made memorable the last fleeting hours of the old year and watched the birth of the new at Zbinden-Miller hall with a blaze of lights amid mirth and expressions of good will." The Times did not slight this second dance and commented of lodge members: "That the boys were anything but novices at decorating was evident when the big hall was inspected. The red, white and green of the order was in evidence everywhere. . . . The word, 'Welcome,' appeared across the entire west end of the hall. Punch was served with a lavish hand . . . The floor was in excellent condition, and the dance program contained twenty-four numbers, so that it was 2:30 when the last strains of 'Home Sweet Home' marked the close of this mammoth social event."
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Love Letters, 1909
The tender expressions of young love typically exchanged on Valentine's Day have not always been encouraged. The Omaha Daily News on November 21, 1909, announced a postal lid on such missives:
"No more will Omaha's fair young damsels, who have not yet reached their majority, be able to correspond with their erstwhile sweethearts through the medium of the general delivery department of the postoffice, if Postmaster Thomas or his assistants can help it. The postmaster says it is an evil that has been growing in Omaha for several years and he has made up his mind to put a stop to it.
"He says a large number of the applicants for mail at the general delivery window daily are young girls who cannot be more than 17 or 18 years old and are probably forbidden to receive letters at home. Mr. Thomas says he has no inclination to stand in the way of legitimate love affairs, but he doesn't want to be a party to any elopements, or to mix in any trouble brought on by an irate father or mother. . . . The method of procedure from now on will be to closely scrutinize every member of the fair sex who may have the appearance of being under the age limit and if the situation warrants it, she will be questioned or refused her mail unless identified by an older member of the family.
"'Only the other day a young girl who didn't look to be more than 16, came into my office with tears streaming down her cheeks, asking that I deliver to her a letter, she having been refused at the window,' said the postmaster. 'In this case it was a registered letter coming from a friend and she had been required to furnish some identification. She is employed by a reputable firm in the Bee building and had gone to them for advice after she had been turned down at the window. They counseled her to come to me. . . .[F]inally after a heart-to-heart talk and some pretty strong advice I gave her the letter, but I made her promise that she would never be the recipient of another letter under such circumstances."
Postmaster Thomas concluded, "It was a lesson to her and we want to teach a few more of them along similar lines."
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Why was sugar cultivation more profitable in the Caribbean/Brazil than West Africa?
The Atlantic slave trade involved the large-scale deportation of West African slaves to sugar plantations on the other side of the Atlantic.
Why was it more profitable to do that, rather than to grow sugar in West Africa?
West Africa has about the right latitude and rainfall for sugar production.
slavery africa agriculture atlantic-slave-trade brazil
edited Apr 4 at 7:51
Rodrigo de Azevedo
ColinColin
Reference : Triangular Trade – J... Nov 28 '17 at 17:22
Maybe because West Africa was not colonized and America already was..? – Greg Nov 29 '17 at 0:29
In short, Brazil and Caribbean Isles were easy to colonize and suited to the culture of the sugar cane.
This related question will provide most of the explanation why Africa was harder to colonize, and less welcoming to Europeans.
Moreover, it is far easier to control slaves outside of Africa. They can't hide in the local population.
Also, sugar became more common and sugar beets were discovered and used. West Africa was mainly colonized by France, which was the first world productor of sugar beets. So the mainland had little interest in promoting it.
Lars Bosteen
xroroxxrorox
More suited to the culture of sugar cane than West Africa? – Colin Nov 27 '17 at 14:39
may have meant to say 'cultivation' – Jeutnarg Nov 27 '17 at 16:29
@ColinZwanziger Some answers have pointed the interests of Islands in sugar cane cultivation, so I won't repeat that. The main reason sugar cane wasn't done in Africa, is because the Europeans owned land proper to this cultivation in America. So it is far more logical to plant on your suitable lands than to invade heavily populated countries abroad. It would have cost far more money, and it may not have been feasible. Invading a country by sea is incredibly hard. European powers only got a real military supremacy in the 18th century. – xrorox Nov 28 '17 at 10:53
@ColinZwanziger At that point, gunfire and cannons became reliable and powerful enough. Before that point in history, black power weapons were mainly used because it was cheaper than training archers. Don't forget that up to mid 19th century, many battles were won by melee fight. It was a French speciality. Some british armies were defeated by Zulus in the 19th century. That proves that invading Africa, was not a country ride. – xrorox Nov 28 '17 at 10:59
Many Native Americans had died of Old World disease, Africans did not
When the Europeans showed up in the New World, they brought disease that killed a large portion of the local people (60%? 80%? 90%? ). This meant, from the European standpoint, that in the 1500's and 1600's, New World land was available for the taking.
West Africa, on the other hand, had a high population density. Europeans were militarily not strong enough in the 1700's even to take and control African land; it would have been too expensive to defeat the Africans in war to take the land, and the Europeans would have had difficulty in holding the land as well. It just wasn't feasible to steal African land.
Why didn't the Africans grow sugar and export it to Europe? Cash crops and subsistence farming are a different enterprise; with its higher population, subsistence farming was widespread in Africa, so once again, there was not enough land available to do cash cropping.
Edit: Mayo aptly points out that Europeans had issues with Tropical Africans diseases, especially Malaria. This is an excellent point, although yellow fever killed plenty of Europeans in the New World.
axsvl77axsvl77
Not to mention that Africa had malaria. Quinine wasn't isolated until the 1820s and mass distribution of Quinine didn't start until the 1850s. – Mayo Nov 27 '17 at 17:35
The cultivation of sugar was more profitable on islands. The plantations in the "Caribbean" were on islands. Until the mid-16th century at least, production from "Brazil," largely came from Santa Catarina Island (or coastal strips on the mainland with the properties discussed below). On the other hand, "West Africa" had relatively few islands except for e.g. the Canary Islands, and seaports on the "continent" were not generally convenient to the best growing lands. There are several reasons why this is important:
First, sugar is heavy relative to its value. It is hard and costly to transport, especially by land. The location of plantations on islands (or very near the coast) meant that transport distances overland to a a seacoast were relatively small. Second, and related, sugar needed to be "milled" before moving, and importing these mills was much easier on an island. Third, it was much harder for slaves to escape from an island than from a mainland. This was doubly true if they looked "different" from free people, as was the case in the New World, than would have been the case in and around Africa. Finally, it is much easier to defend an island against hostile "natives" than it would be to defend a plantation located on say, the West African mainland.
As two commenters pointed out, it's true that sugar in Brazil was also produced on coastal strips rather than islands, but the real issue was easy "access to the sea," which the west African sugar-growing areas often did not have. There was a "Gold Coast" and an Ivory Coast" but no "Sugar Coast."
Tom AuTom Au
"And production from "Brazil," largely came from Santa Catarina Island" - Santa Catarina Island was certainly not an important place in the cultivation of sugar cane. The main production of sugar cane came from "Pernambuco" (which at the time included modern Alagoas) and Bahia. And it came from the mainland, not from islands. – Luís Henrique Nov 27 '17 at 18:53
@LuísHenrique: According to the Wikipedia link, "By 1540, there were 800 cane sugar mills in Santa Catarina Island and there were another 2,000 on the north coast of Brazil, Demarara, and Surinam." I revised my comment to restrict it to the mid 16th century. I also included a parenthetical "(or coastal strips on the mainland with the properties discussed below)." – Tom Au Nov 27 '17 at 18:58
From histclo.com/act/work/slave/am/cou/bra/sabs-boom.html: One report suggests that Santa Catalina Island had some 800 operating sugar cane mills (1540). [...] The Brazilian Nordeste became the core of the colony's economy and society. There were also plantations on Santa Catarina Island in the south which was originally founded by the Spanish. The modern states of Pernambuco, Paraiba, Bahia, and Sergipe became the center of Brazil’s sugarcane industry. – Luís Henrique Nov 27 '17 at 19:30
1540 is a very early date; the effective colonisation of the country started about 1530. Then maybe Santa Catarina (though 800 mills is an exaggeration; I don't think there were as many mills in Brazil as a whole up to the 18th century) had some importance in the trade; but it was soon dislodged by the mainland exploits in the Northeast (and mainland they were; islands such as Fernando de Noronha or Itamaracá weren't the main producers), – Luís Henrique Nov 27 '17 at 19:39
Islands are key because slaves can't easily escape from an island. Cultivating sugar cane was basically a death sentence. Much harder to implement on a mainland. – TheMathemagician Dec 1 '17 at 12:56
Each of the current answers is excellent, but is only a partial answer. Another piece of the answer that I'm surprised hasn't already been mentioned is the Atlantic triangle slave trade: "Molasses to rum to slaves."
While it is certainly true that the Carribean is well-suited for the cultivation of sugar and that it lends itself to slave-based plantations, due to the difficulty of slaves escaping and fading into the local population, every product needs a market, or there's no profit to be made.
In the "molasses to rum to slaves" triangle, the market for Carribean sugar was in the Americas (specifically, New England); it was less expensive to ship it to New England from the Carribean.
Additionally, there was demand in Africa for goods from New England, specifically rum (produced from Carribean molasses) and textiles. Without each of these legs in place, there would have been less profit in the others.
A strictly African model of sugar production may well have been profitable. However, with the addition of these two additional legs it became obscenely profitable.
@guenthmonstr made an excellent point in the comments that I wanted to address, but was unable to do within the character limit of the comment field, so I'm updating my answer to address it.
The comment was:
Triangle slave trade is a result, not a cause. A triangle need only develop where there are 3 geographically dispersed factors of production. In this case: plantation friendly land, slave labor, and manufacturing. If plantation friendly land had been available in Africa, then Africa might have simply exported molasses or rum to Europe or New England in exchange for manufactured goods.
I agree with everything you say, with the following qualifications:
You state that the "triangle slave trade is a result, not a cause." You are correct that this trade triangle was the result of the relative location of the three products. But the OP's question was about why sugar plantations in the West Indies were more profitable than those in Africa, and it is a contributing factor to that profitability.
The profitability of a trade triangle is as much about the location of the products relative to one another as the products themselves. If either the product or location is wrong, there's little or no profit. In this case, both were ideal to maximize profit. Again, it's a result of the location, but a contributing factor to profits.
You are absolutely correct that a system of African sugar plantations might well have been profitable, and that the African demand for textiles and other goods might have been satisfied from Europe. However, by this point in history, the British Empire was dominating production of textiles, and the colonies in New England were dominating that production, due to their close proximity to the raw materials. Transshipment of these products through Europe would have added to their cost, impacting the overall profitability of the trade. Trade would still have been profitable, but probably not as profitable.
Historically, when it can be made to work, a triangle trade always has a greater profit than two-way trade, due to the fact that the initial investment at any point is multiplied not once, but multiple times before returning its yield to the investor.
Doug R.Doug R.
Triangle slave trade is a result, not a cause. A triangle need only develop where there are 3 geographically dispersed factors of production. In this case: plantation friendly land, slave labor, and manufacturing. If plantation friendly land had been available in Africa, then Africa might h ave simply exported molasses or rum to Europe or New England in exchange for manufactured goods. – guenthmonstr Nov 28 '17 at 21:20
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged slavery africa agriculture atlantic-slave-trade brazil or ask your own question.
Why was Africa colonized last of the continents in the Age of Discovery?
Was the European slave market in the East during the colonial era similar to the transatlantic slave market? If not (less brutal, etc), why?
Advanced sub-saharan civilizations prior to cross-atlantic slave trade?
What changed to make British Enclosures more profitable than tenanted subplots?
Were slave plantations economically superior or inferior to plantations with paid labor?
Why was agriculture more conducive to slavery in U.S. South than the North?
What is the number of slaves imported from Africa to the Americas by non-British countries?
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Glass-Steagall Red Herring
Repost of Tom Woods article about a topic that has been discussed in length by Lyndon LaRouche…
‘Repeal’ of Glass-Steagall Irrelevant to Financial Crisis
Although we’ve heard a great deal about how “deregulation” caused the financial crisis, specific cases of repealed legislation that would have prevented it are few and far between. The one some progressives seem to have settled on is the “repeal” of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated commercial from investment banking. The “repeal” involved only one provision of the Act, the one preventing the same holding company from controlling both a commercial bank and an investment bank.
I’ll try to write more on this when I have time (for now, I’ll note that I cover the subject in Rollback, my book from earlier this year). When we recall that stand-alone institutions, both commercial and investment, also failed during the crisis, and that all of them acquired mortgage-backed securities (which they had always been allowed to do, by the way), the Glass-Steagall “repeal” looks more and more like a red herring that appeals to people whose belief system requires them to find some way a Fed-fueled bubble could have been stopped had the right regulatory structure been in place.
(The problem with those who point to Glass-Steagall is not that they’re radical. It’s that they’re not nearly radical enough. They think the system as is, shot through with moral hazard at every level, and presided over by a market-defying central bank, is of its nature stable and without fault; we just need a few regulations.)
Because Glass-Steagall was passed during the Depression, it is assumed that it was addressing a pressing need of the time. In fact, the lack of government-enforced division between commercial and investment banking had precisely zero to do with bank problems during the Great Depression. The 9,000 bank failures during the early 1930s had far more to do with the damage done by government regulation — namely, the unit-banking laws that made it difficult for banks to diversify their portfolios (by limiting them to a single office and making branching illegal) — than with a lack of regulation. These were small banks, not the behemoths for which Glass-Steagall would have been relevant. Canada had none of these stifling regulations, and had zero bank failures. (Incidentally, Canada also avoided all the post-Civil War bank panics that struck the U.S., even though Canada did not have a central bank until 1934 — yet again, reality refuses to conform to the where-would-we-be-without-our-wise-overlords comic-book version of events.)
The Glass-Steagall-did-it crowd is the same crowd that likes to claim Canada avoided the worst of the U.S. crisis because it was so much better regulated. But they can’t have it both ways — Canada did not have a Glass-Steagall law! (For the real story on what happened in Canada, click here.)
For a little more on this, see Bill Woolsey. Again, I’ll try to revisit this soon.
Article source: http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/repeal-of-glass-steagall-had-nothing-to-do-with-the-crisis/
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