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What does Archie tell us about mixed-race Britain? | The new royal baby is part of the UKs fastest growing ethnic group. The arrival of the new royal baby reminds us that not only are mixed-race people the UKs fastest-growing ethnic group; it also underlines that what it means to be mixed race is changing. Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor will join the ranks of those second-generation mixed-race people who challenge our very perceptions of ethnicity and black identity. In fact, the changing face of mixed-race Britain is something we barely notice even as we are looking directly at it. Perhaps that is the point. Back in the early 2000s we were vaguely aware that young celebrities, such as the late reality TV star Jade Goody or footballer Ryan Giggs, had a black grandparent. But they rarely discussed it or talked of how they perceived themselves. Most of us watch the actor Stephen Graham, or cheer footballers Ross Barkley and Kieran Trippier without registering their ethnicity. Before you congratulate yourself by saying, I dont think about race. It doesnt matter to me, it is not that simple: maybe it matters to them. Their connection to a black identity, and whether others recognise it, might be something they feel is important. Our current view of mixed-race Britain, particularly in the context of the black (African/Caribbean) community, has become so familiar that it is now almost a cliche. I know it because I have lived it. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, with a Jamaican mother and white English father, being mixed-race was not always easy, but it was relatively simple. White was an exclusive club to which someone like me did not belong. I was more likely to hear half-caste on the school playground than nigger, and occasionally it was other black people, as well as white people, who made me feel like an outsider. But there seemed little doubt that society viewed me as black. I also learned I was black through positive experiences and a sense of belonging. In my mothers family, as with most Caribbeans, we go from dark skin and tight afro-hair to lighter skin and soft curls, with every variation in between. Whatever black was, I knew it was broad enough to include someone like me. I embraced it. It was not only how the world saw me, but how I wanted to be seen. But alongside that first-generation experience of being black and mixed race, there is a new story that we have barely begun to discuss. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chelsea footballer Ross Barkley has a Nigerian grandfather and could have played for Nigeria but chose to represent England. Photograph: John Sibley/Action Images via Reuters Thousands of young people across the country are now grappling with those questions every day and their numbers are growing. The random shuffle of genes means that some will experience life in the same way as their mixed-race parent. Others will not, their African heritage revealed perhaps by their dark eyes or the curve of their nose, visible only to those who are looking. Of course, black people in the UK have a long history of integrating and intermarrying into wider society. Furthermore, mixed-race people span all ethnic groups, not just those with black and white parents. But it is important to recognise that this phenomenon has a particular new significance to black Britain, for two key reasons. First, interracial relationships and the growing mixed-race population is something the British black community is experiencing in exceptionally higher numbers compared with other groups. According to the 2011 census, members of the black community are among the most likely to choose a white partner close to 50% for black Caribbeans. (In contrast, those with heritage from the Indian subcontinent generally have a rate of interracial relationships that is much lower.) This likelihood also increases with each new generation: the chances of people of mixed black/white heritage having a white partner, are about 80%. The demographic implications of this for the future of black Caribbeans in Britain are obvious. Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper, a research associate at the Department of Geography, Kings College London, who is himself mixed-race, puts it succinctly: In the absence of significant new immigration, British Caribbean people, as we know them, are going to become largely absorbed into the wider white British community within a few generations. For the most part, their great-great-grandchildren are going to look very different from them. Trying to understand this phenomenon by drawing on the US black experience does not help, because this high rate of black interracial marriage is a very British phenomenon. African Americans in the US are among the least likely to have a partner outside their own ethnic group. Second, although the integration of black people into a majority white community has happened before, it was in more brutal times. The idea of a one drop rule, which meant that even those with distant African roots were unpure and would be treated as black, now seems farcical. Similarly, the days when many mixed-race people tried to pass for white and lived in fear of their dark secret being discovered feels ugly and archaic. That history provides little precedent for todays young people, who are unlikely to hide their heritage or define themselves based solely on race. If they are inclined to discuss the complexity of their heritage at all, it will be on their terms. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The actor Stephen Grahams mixed-race heritage he had Jamaican and Swedish grandparents has played a strong part in his life. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian In this regard, the Liverpudlian actor Stephen Graham may be a trailblazer. It is beautifully ironic that the mixed-race grandson of a black Jamaican immigrant rose to fame playing a white, racist, skinhead in Shane Meadowss 2007 film, This is England. Graham talks comfortably about his pride in his grandfathers heritage and how it has shaped his identity. He also describes how he has challenged white racism when those around him thought they were safe to express unpleasant views about black people in front of him. The nuances and complexity of how someone such as Graham sees his black heritage in 21st-century Britain may now seem exceptional. They may soon be commonplace. A new understanding of what it is to be mixed-race in the UK means listening to voices that have often been missing. We frequently hear white liberals discussing interracial relationships in effusive terms, as if such relationships are, of themselves, the living embodiment of a happily integrated society. But it is worth remembering they do so in the context of less than 5% of white people being in interracial relationships. We rarely hear from the black perspective. Even for those who feel overwhelmingly positive, a growing current of existential concern exists. For some black people, the increasing dominance of interracial relationships can feel like a devaluing of relationships between two black people. A black perspective in these discussions is so important. The country has been fascinated by how it might feel to have the Queens great-grandson recognised for his African-American heritage. Few have stopped to think about how the Duchess of Sussex, or her mother, Doria Ragland, would feel if he were not. Perhaps the least discussed aspect of second-generation mixed-race Britons is how it feels to be their mixed-race parent. In 2015, Miri Song and Caitlin ONeill Gutierrez of the University of Kent, published a groundbreaking paper entitled Keeping the story alive: Is ethnic and racial dilution inevitable for multiracial people and their children?. It focused on 64 parents, most of whom were first-generation mixed-race people with a white partner, and discussed how they felt about the ethnic identity of their children. The findings were not what I expected. Four key themes emerged in the study: the loss in their children of cultural knowledge connected to their parents ancestry; the embodiment of white-appearing children and the effect of physical markers of minority heritage not being present in their children; a notion of reduced racial fractions; and concerns, among partially black participants in particular, about whitening and the loss of politicised racial consciousness. I think what really bothers me is I don't want my children to forget that race matters. It affects people's life chances. 'James', a mixed-race father When I first read this, I was stunned. The participants seemed to be echoing some of the most unpleasant views I had heard as a child. It reminded me of being told by bigots that my parents had polluted my white heritage and diluted my black heritage. But, as I continued reading, it became clear that those concerns were coming from a very different perspective than the racism I heard in my youth. The Kent University study is not a thesis against interracial relationships far from it. It highlighted, perhaps for the first time, mixed-race people sharing feelings about their own children and identity that they also acknowledge sound irrational, unwelcome and self-contradictory. One mixed-race participant, Abike, reflected on her own son and his white partner, saying: Im aware in the awful sort of way, almost like some horrible eugenicist, their children will be just kind of completely white. Which is kind of odd, I sort of think and I dont know if he ever thinks about that so it will be kind of weird. Even more interestingly, James, in his early 40s, paradoxically feared that his children would adopt the very views that many of us actively encourage in our children that race is irrelevant: I think what really bothers me is I dont want them to forget that race matters. That race affects peoples life chances. I want them to help me and to help the world make it different. These are not the words of white racists or black supremacists, but mixed-race people who have a white parent, a white partner and children who interface with the world as if they are white. However unexpected such sentiments seem, there is real honesty and intimacy in how they were conveyed in that study. Most importantly, whatever concerns parents may have about their childrens sense of identity, it will be for that next generation to work it out for themselves. What troubles their parents may not worry them at all. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The cast of Kwame Kwei-Armahs series of monologues Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, shown on BBC Four in February. Photograph: Carlton Dixon/BBC My parents brought me up to believe that racial integration including interracial marriage is not only a good thing but is the natural progression of a healthy society. I still believe that. They also taught me that race is largely a social construct that limits us, and we should strive to see it as irrelevant. But the Kent study and the new generation of mixed-race Britons may force us to question that. It reveals that many first-generation mixed-race parents do not want their children entirely to ignore or transcend race, not least because they see race as part of their cultural heritage. It is as much something to be valued as something to be outgrown. We have always imagined that children discarding a sense of racial identity would be liberating for them. But the Kent study surprisingly suggests it can also result in a sense of loss. Even more bewilderingly, those two contradictory feelings will often exist side by side. The artistic director of the Young Vic, Kwame Kwei-Armah, believes the story of second-generation mixed-race Britons to be one of the most interesting cultural narratives yet to be told. A few months ago, he produced a series of short dramas, Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, for BBC Four. Each of the eight episodes is a beautiful account of life in the UK for successive generations of people with Caribbean heritage. The most arresting is the final episode, featuring the story of Michaela, the teenage great-granddaughter of Eunice who had arrived on the Windrush in 1948. Michaelas monologue explains how, despite her white appearance, she had always considered herself black, and how she had struggled to express that identity when others did not see it. Kwei-Armah explains that after considering a number of actors, they settled on rising star Olivia-Mai Barrett. Her performance was incredible. he says. I was amazed at how she brought such insight and empathy to the part. It was only a few days after the screening that Barrett introduced him to her mixed-race father and black grandfather. He had not even realised that Michaelas story was her story too. Matthew Ryder QC is a barrister based at Matrix Chambers. He was deputy mayor of London, leading on social integration | https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/12/what-does-archie-tell-us-about-mixed-race-britain |
How Did Chickpea Flour, A Staple Of Indian Cuisine, Become A Health Food Sensation? | Enlarge this image toggle caption Pinkybird/Getty Images Pinkybird/Getty Images There's a specific section of my family's fridge that is reserved for the large, seemingly bottomless tub of chickpea flour or as we and lots of other Indians who also rely on it call it, besan that my parents keep on hand. We're not gluten-free, nor do we do a lot of baking. Yet chickpea flour shows up everywhere in our food. It's the nutty coating for my mom's green beans spiced with earthy ajwain, the key ingredient in her creamy, tangy, yogurt-based soup, kadhi, and the base for our favorite variety of laddoos, sweet, fudge-like balls flavored with ghee, sugar and nuts. Across the many regional cuisines in India, chickpea flour is a common denominator: Gujaratis turn it into pudla, thin, savory crepes laced with turmeric and chilies. In Karnataka and Maharashtra, it can be found in jhunka, a spicy porridge. And in Andhra Pradesh, it is the thickener in Senagapindi Kura, an onion-heavy stew. For the country's large vegetarian population, where eggs are often considered non-vegetarian, chickpea flour mixed with water serves as a convincing omelet replacement. Indians along with the Nepalese, Pakistanis, Italians, the French, and many others have been cooking with chickpea flour for centuries. Americans, on the other hand, only seem to have woken up to the ingredient in the last decade or so. And they've woken up in a big way. It's hard to trace the exact origin of chickpea flour's sudden popularity in the U.S. Anna Stockwell, the senior food editor of the publications Epicurious and Bon Apptit, said she first started seeing chickpea flour around 2009 on gluten-free blogs. Stockwell is gluten-free herself, and was excited to find a recipe for savory chickpea pancakes. She didn't know much about chickpea flour's culinary heritage, but she was immediately excited. "Its binding power was magic," she recalls. "All you have to do is combine chickpea flour and water, and suddenly you can make flatbread, or fritters or vegetable pancakes." Still, Stockwell saw it as a niche ingredient something only gluten-free consumers cared about. She wasn't even allowed to call for it in Epicurious recipes. Slowly but surely, that started to change. In 2010, one of the more popular recipes from Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi's bestselling cookbook, was a chickpea flour pancake, or socca, as it's known in France, layered with tomatoes and onions. In 2015, food and fitness writer Camilla Saulsbury wrote the popular book The Chickpea Flour Cookbook. That was followed a year later by Chickpea Flour Does It All, by blogger Lindsey Love. Lani Halliday, the founder of Brutus Bakeshop, a gluten-free Brooklyn bakery, says she noticed a huge uptick in the number of chickpea flour-based, gluten-free sweets available about a decade ago. For baked goods, chickpea flour worked uniquely well, "as it can hold air bubbles and hold moisture," she says. Plus, "it was cheap, it was accessible, and it was versatile." Halliday launched her bakery in 2015. One of her bestselling items among both gluten-free and non-gluten-free customers was a chocolate cupcake made with chickpea flour. Stockwell believes the mainstreaming of chickpea flour is directly linked to one company in particular Banza. The company started producing its chickpea flour-based pasta in 2014, and by 2017, it was in 8,000-plus grocery stores and had raised $8 million in funding. It didn't exclusively market itself as a gluten-free product. Instead, it was branded as health food. And it was one of the first alternative pastas that had a smooth, al dente texture, just like the real thing. "I had friends who had never heard of chickpea flour, but now they eat Banza," Stockwell says. "It's not because they are trying to eat gluten-free but because it's a delicious and higher-protein pasta. It's a substitute for empty carbs." This year, Epicurious was finally allowed to publish recipes with chickpea flour. Dennis Vaughn, the CEO of Bob's Red Mill, says that in the past five years, chickpea flour has become a clear bestseller among the company's sundry flour options. "My grocery store doesn't even carry red meat," Stockwell says, "but they carry Bob's Red Mill" chickpea flour. In many ways, it has been weird to watch this ingredient that has always felt so quotidian to me become so ubiquitous so quickly in the U.S. This is certainly not the first Indian ingredient or dish this has happened to. Consider turmeric, chai, or khichdi, which have all been claimed by the wellness community and food bloggers as their own, often times without giving due credit to Indian cuisine. It baffles me that the vast majority of people I talk to are shocked to hear that chickpea flour has long been a common ingredient in my family's cooking. On the other hand, it was important to me when I was writing my new cookbook, Indian-ish, that people could find the ingredients for the dishes in their average grocery store. Because chickpea flour is now so common, I could include recipes like those addictive chickpea flour green beans, and the silky, soupy kadhi. I'm not against chickpea flour entering the mainstream. But I wish that more of the stories I read about it, or the recipes I saw that featured it, didn't frame it as a brand-new discovery, and completely ignore its heritage. No one culture can "own" an ingredient I'm literally writing this with a box of Banza chickpea pasta in my kitchen cabinet but let's not treat food like it exists in a vacuum. There's context for that chickpea flour flatbread you're making for dinner. Don't take it for granted. Priya Krishna is a food writer who contributes to The New York Times, Bon Apptit, and others. She also serves as one of the hosts of Bon Apptit's video series, From the Test Kitchen. She is the author of the cookbook Indian-ish: Recipes And Antics From A Modern American Family. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @PKgourmet | https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/12/721419633/how-did-chickpea-flour-a-staple-of-indian-cuisine-become-a-health-food-sensation?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=storiesfromnpr |
Who looks out for landlords? | In the April 25 story Las Vegas affordable housing shortage at crisis level, advocates say, LaLo Montoya, of Make the Road Nevada, is quoted saying: Its really inhumane, the level of liberties that our landlords have to kick out a family when they miss paying the rent. I have been a caring landlord in three states since 1980. Usually, when I gave a tenant more time to pay rent, they just lived in my house for free and could never come up with the rent. They had gotten bottle service at a club for their birthday, bought a fancy truck or had a great Christmas with the rent money. If a law passes making it impossible to evict tenants who dont pay rent on time, I am selling all of my rent houses. This is not the solution to a very real problem in Nevada. | https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/may/12/who-looks-out-for-landlords/ |
How much effect does breathing dirty air have on our health? | Getty Images Health secretary Matt Hancock has ordered a review into the impact on our health of breathing dirty air. Calling air pollution a "slow and deadly poison", the government minister also wants better predictions to be made about the future number of people that could become ill due to poor air quality by 2035, the Guardian reported. "Our health is shaped by the environment we live in and dirty air is the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK," Mr Hancock said. "We cannot underestimate the very real impact that dirty air - this slow and deadly poison - is having on our lives, our health and our NHS." In January, the government made promises about how it was going to tackle the issue of air pollution. Called the Clean Air Strategy, the programme included new rules for farms, open fires and wood-burning stoves, in the hope of halving the number of people breathing in harmful particles by 2025. "Our recent clean air strategy sets out some bold steps on cleaning up our air, but it is also vital that we have accurate long-term data on the potential health impacts of pollution," said Mr Hancock. The idea is that this information can then be used to take steps, wherever possible, to prevent people from becoming ill in the first place. TfL/Mike Garnett It was recently announced that the world's first hydrogen double decker buses will be arriving in London next year in a bid to bring down air pollution levels in the capital The review will also form part of the NHS's plan to go more green. In 2017, 3.5% of all of the road travel in England - that's around 9.5 billion miles travelled - was related to patients, visitors, staff and suppliers to the NHS. The idea is to try to reduce the number of people carrying out travel for NHS reasons in order to contribute to reducing air pollution levels. Let us know in the comments below. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48244676 |
How will Brexit affect European elections around the EU? | Not directly. Brexit barely features as an electoral issue in the rest of the bloc: as usual, voters will be swayed more by domestic politics and personal perceptions of the EUs value. But it has influenced the debate indirectly. Most European mainstream parties have become more explicitly pro-EU and hardly any of the nationalist parties calling for referendums on EU membership in 2016 are still doing so now, demanding instead an EU remodelled as a Europe of nations. Polls show the EUs popularity is at a 30-year high. Yes. The 751-seat European parliament matters because along with the council of ministers government members from all 28 countries MEPs approve, amend or reject EU laws. They must also approve the new European Commission. The traditionally dominant centre-right (EPP) and centre-left (S&D) parliamentary groups are forecast to lose significant numbers of seats and the majority they have held for 40 years. The liberals (ALDE) and Greens should be stronger, and the right-wing, EU-critical populists in Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pens new European Alliance of People and Nations much stronger. Majorities will be harder to form and less stable; nation-first parties seeking less Europe and more power for member states will have a greater influence on policy. At a time of many challenges for the EU climate change, migration pressures, looming trade wars, eurozone reform, regional security, defiance of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland this could be a complicating factor. Yes. The European parliament has to sign off on the Brexit withdrawal agreement (assuming it is ever passed in Westminster). That could be problematic if the current stable majority, which has generally backed the European Commissions Brexit approach, is disrupted by a large contingent of populist, EU-critical MEPs. The new parliament will also have a considerable say in the make-up of the new commission, which will eventually negotiate the EUs future relationship with the UK. Finally, MEPs will have to agree the future relationship itself. In all of these areas a more divided, polarised and unstable European parliament with potentially conflicting demands could create significant problems for Britain. Even if they will be giving up their seats after Brexit, British MEPs could have a sizable impact on the new parliament over its five-year life. They could find themselves playing a critical role in selecting the new commission, which will be in place long after Britain has (in principle, at least) left the bloc. They will also be joining European parliamentary groups, which could determine how many policymaking posts, such as committee chairs, those groups have, how much speaking time they get and what their level of funding is. It is also possible, of course, that British MEPs will be called on to vote on legislation that could affect the UKs future relationship with the EU. | https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/12/how-will-brexit-affect-european-elections-around-the-eu |
Do sit-stand desks make office workers healthier, happier and trimmer? | Sit-stand desks used to be considered a novelty. But with numerous headlines reporting the health risks of too much sitting and statistics suggesting that most office workers spend eight to 10 hours a day in a chair, sit-stand desks have quickly become standard office equipment. Designed to allow tasks to be performed from a standing or sitting position, the marketing pitch for a sit-stand desk claims that it burns more calories (it takes more energy to stand vs. sit), leads to better work habits, improves blood circulation and shores up posture better than a traditional desk. Yet before experts could fully weigh in on whether standing behind a desk was any better for health than sitting behind a desk, thousands of office workers traded in their traditional desk for a sit-stand version. At the same time that sales of sit-stand desks were booming, studies devoted to measuring the impact of replacing hours spent sitting with hours spent standing were starting to yield results. Wading through 549 of the most relevant publications, a multidisciplinary team of American researchers recently reviewed the role of sit-stand desks in the following areas: mental and physical health, work performance, discomfort, behaviour and posture. The field was narrowed to 53 studies performed either in the workplace (21), laboratory (25) or in the field (7). The good news is that for the most part, individuals who work at a sit-stand desk stand more between 30 minutes and three hours than those who use a traditional desk. The not-so-good news is that the promised health benefits of standing vs. sitting are likely overstated. The majority of studies noted no significant changes in blood pressure, cholesterol levels or other markers related to cardiovascular health among the sit-stand desk users. The only exceptions were a few studies using obese subjects, who realized small improvements in energy expenditure and glucose levels. As for whether standing had a positive effect on fatigue, some study subjects reported feeling less tired at work, while others noted the opposite. There were also reports of swollen feet, a malaise common among people whose jobs require them to be on their feet all day. Studies determined that moving from one stationary position to another didnt make much of a dent in the number of calories burned, a reminder that more than a change in office furniture is needed for weight loss or to boost daily activity levels. Some people found they were more productive while standing and others found it easier to work while sitting. Also inconclusive was whether standing or sitting improved mood while at work. The only clear positive gleaned from standing is the claim by study subjects that after 12 weeks, low back pain had eased both at work at during other daily activities. All of this data reminds us that nothing replaces good old-fashioned exercise when it comes to improving health, burning calories and boosting mood and productivity at work. Its also a reminder that you need to get out from behind your desk if you want to shake off the sedentary effects of office work. In general, prolonged static postures, including both sitting and standing, are associated with poor health and increased injury risk and discomfort, said the researchers. Not necessarily. But if you want to reap any physiological benefits from sit-stand desks, its likely that you need to use the raising and lowering feature on the desk to change your position often during the day. And while theres no clear evidence as to how often you need to transition from one posture to the next, more movement is better than less, so set the timer on your phone or vow to change positions every time you change tasks. The bottom line is that strategies like taking the stairs over the elevator, choosing to walk down the hall to meet with your colleagues instead of sending an email and going for a walk or a workout at lunch has more impact on your health than switching from sitting to standing while at work. Break up time spent in front of a screen with time spent on the move. A sedentary lifestyle is worth changing at work and at home. So for every minute less you sit, make sure you replace it with a minute spent on the move not just a minute spent standing. | https://montrealgazette.com/health/diet-fitness/do-sit-stand-desks-make-office-workers-healthier-happier-and-trimmer |
What Is the Most Overrated Invention? | Lee Jackson, author, Palaces of Pleasure The internet. Robert P. Crease, author, The Workshop and the World IQ tests: widely administered, morally pernicious. Finn Brunton, author, Digital Cash With perhaps the most hype for the least consequence of any media technology so far, virtual realitythe Smell-O-Vision of the 1990skeeps going from icon of the future to relic of the past without a present in-between. Graham Roumieu Clive Thompson, author, Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World For generations, weve regarded the automobile as a symbol of personal freedom and autonomy. It has certainly propelled a ton of economic activity, but it also generates monstrous amounts of CO2 and environmentally ruinous sprawl. The sooner we detach our personal identity from cars and car ownership, the better. Dorian Lynskey, author, The Ministry of Truth Virtual assistants epitomize the tech industrys unfortunate habit of building dystopia by accident and the publics eager complicity. Most of us trade privacy for convenience, but my laziness goes only so fartheres no task Id rather delegate to a data-harvesting digital spy instead of doing myself. Alexa is not your friend. | https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/q-what-is-the-most-overrated-invention/588079/?utm_source=feed |
Whos Doug Ford trying to please? | Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based freelance writer. Doug Ford loves the three-word slogan. Following on For the People and Open for Business, he has made it his priority to Get Ontario Moving. No fan of nuance, Premier Ford paints a dire picture of the provinces mobility crisis: He describes Ontarians as paralyzed, highways clogged, subways packed and people left stranded. But thankfully, in his words, relief is on the way. Mr. Fords Getting Ontario Moving Act, tabled in the Ontario legislature on May 2, is a many-splendoured thing. Its proposals range from uploading Torontos new subway projects to the province to allowing for high-styled handlebars on motorcycles to improving traffic flow on our highways. To this end, Ontarios Transportation Minister Jeff Yurek has announced a two-year pilot project to test higher speed limits (110 kilometres an hour) on four stretches of Ontarios 400-series highways as an exploratory step toward raising limits province-wide. Story continues below advertisement It has come to Mr. Yureks attention that Ontarios current highway speed limit of 100 km/hr resulted from an adjustment down from 70 mph or 112 km/hr made in the 1970s to conserve fuel during the OPEC energy crisis. That we are living through a climate crisis whose consequences will render the 1970s spike in fuel prices a mere footnote in the history books, doesnt register with the Ford government. Making his announcement at a carpool lot near London, Ont., Mr. Yurek dismissed the environmental implications of increased speed limits a vehicle uses 20 per cent more fuel at 120 km/h than at 100 km/hr, according to Natural Resources Canada as irrelevant in an age of fuel-efficient and electric cars. It was a curious endorsement from a Minister whose governments first act was to scrap Ontarios cap and trade program and with it, the rebate on electric and hydrogen vehicles before cancelling the provinces Drive Clean vehicle emissions-testing program. The attitude seems to be: dont support environmental behaviour but praise it, as needed, when it happens to happen. A 10 km/hr increase on a few stretches of highway wont impress the pedal-to-the-metal contingent. Nor is it likely to ease commutes or cross-border transport, as the Minister hopes, overlooking two important facts: that Ontarios worst commuter congestion occurs around the Greater Toront oArea, where no pilot is planned and where standstill drivers can only dream of three-digit speeds, and that since 2008, all commercial vehicles in this province are by law equipped with speed-limiting systems set at a maximum of 105 km/h. On the question of safety, the Minister responded to the undeniable fact that higher speeds raise the risk of fatalities speed caused 83 of the 483 fatalities on Ontarios highways in 2016, according to Ministry statistics by emphasizing that the proposed increase is a minor one. Were not going to become the Autobahn, Mr. Yurek said. No, we are certainly not. But if the province is considering boosting highway speeds, a look to the land of the Autobahn wouldnt hurt. Advocates for higher highways speeds often point to Germany as evidence that speed and safety are compatible: after all, fewer people die on German roads (4.1 per 100,000 in 2016 according to the WHO) where vast stretches of the Autobahn have only an advisory limit of 130 km/h - than on Canadian ones (5.8 per 100,000). But having had the dubious pleasure of getting a drivers license in both Ontario and Germany, I would argue that the differences in driving culture between the two places run deep. Ontarios certification felt like a beach holiday compared with the north-face ascent that is the German drivers test. From my first encounter with a German driving instructor who wouldnt allow me behind the wheel because I was wearing sandals to the written test, which probed my knowledge of everything from brake booster mechanics to reaction times under varying conditions to the practical test, which I nearly failed for not doing a shoulder check for cyclists at every right turn, it was a qualitatively different experience. As was driving on German highways, where unlike in Ontario, drivers pass each other willy-nilly passing a car on the right is a traffic offence that carries a fine of 100 ($150) and one demerit point. Story continues below advertisement The main takeaway from the land of the Autobahn is not speed, but driver education, enforcement and environmental performance. Owing to increasingly ambitious emissions standards for its vehicles and a growing number of municipalities that limit or ban higher-emitting ones, auto-loving Germany produces 40 per cent less carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion per capita than Canada, according to World Bank figures from 2014. It would be nice to dismiss this pilot project as a minor thing - a symbolic concession to Ontarios frustrated drivers - that wont kill anyone. But not even that is true. Traffic flow is a problem on Ontario highways, but a 10km/h raise in speed limits isnt going to fix it. The move is nothing more than a distraction from a much bigger problem: The transportation sector is the main contributor of greenhouse gases in this province. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-whos-doug-ford-trying-to-please/ |
Did the Diamondbacks use Zack Godley as an 'opener' on Sunday? | Right-hander Zack Godley wasn't exactly an opener on Sunday, but he wasn't not an opener, either. So was Godley. Making his first start since losing his rotation spot, Godley got the nod for Sunday's series finale against the Atlanta Braves. Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said it was "by design" that Godley was only going to face the Braves one time through the batting order, but Godley said he was not aware of that plan. I got out here a little bit quick yesterday because of the fireworks and (Lovullo) called me on my way home, (he said), Hey, youve got the ball tomorrow. And that was the way I took it, and the way I went into the game. Diamondbacks' Zack Godley (52) pitches against the Braves during the first inning at Chase Field in Phoenix, Ariz. on May 12, 2019. (Photo: Patrick Breen/The Republic) Godley threw 39 pitches in two innings and struck out two hitters. He allowed one run on four hits before handing the ball to right-hander Jon Duplantier, who threw the next three innings. "We wanted to go that route and we utilized the best of Zack and the best of Jon," Lovullo said. "I thought both guys did a pretty good job." Still, Godley said he would not have prepared any differently had he known he was only going one time through the Atlanta order. Godley seemed to utilize his two-seamer and cutter more than previous outings, which, in addition to his sweeping curveball, made an effective three-pitch arsenal. "There's been a lot of improvements, and that's not easy to do," Lovullo said. "Zack deserves a lot of credit for a lot of the things that he's gone through to get to this point." Godley added, I felt awesome, the body felt good. I threw pitches where I wanted to. It is unclear whether Godley will continue with the Diamondbacks as a starter or opener since the club has an off day on Thursday. The Diamondbacks could skip the rotation spot entirely. Get crucial breaking sports news alerts to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Sports Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Lovullo announced after Sunday's game that Duplantier was sent down to Triple-A Reno. Duplantier pitched three innings and gave up three runs on four hits. "Overall, it's a learning experience. Failure, in however you want to judge it, doesn't necessarily bother me too much." Duplantier said. Duplantier has begun to wear out a path between Phoenix and Reno with the Diamondbacks having had recent needs for fresh arms. Lovullo seemed to suggest Duplantier needs to get stretched out as a starter, but said the needs of the big club often clash with player development. "One of the things I said to him just now there's no silver lining when you send somebody down, it's very frustrating to them but I said to him, 'You're going to get to go down there and throw a handful of pitches, you're going to continue to building on the 50 or so pitches,' " Lovullo said. "That's going to be important to him." The Diamondbacks did not announce a corresponding move for Duplantier. That will likely be announced Monday. Greinke's pinch-hit Zack Greinke came in as a pinch-hitter for Godley in the second inning and singled up the middle, the only hit in the inning for the Diamondbacks. In his career as a pinch-hitter (six at-bats), Greinke is 2-for-4 with a walk and a sacrifice bunt. Lovullo said earlier in the Braves series that Greinke could conceivably pinch-hit early in a game if the right situation arose. Greinke was likely aware he could be tabbed as a pinch-hitter early on Sunday as Godley was only slated to pitch for a short time. Greinke is hitting .318 with a 1.121 OPS in 22 at-bats this season. The veteran right-hander is a former Silver Slugger award winner, but seems to have reached new heights at the plate early on in the 2019 campaign. Short hop Right-hander Taijuan Walker, recovering from Tommy John surgery last April, threw a 23-pitch bullpen session on Sunday. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/mlb/diamondbacks/2019/05/12/did-arizona-diamondbacks-use-zack-godley-opener-sunday/1183778001/ |
Should I tell my son my ex could be a pedophile? | Adapted from a recent online discussion. Dear Carolyn: My son is getting married soon to a lovely woman. Since they are in their mid-30s they have told me they would like to start a family right away. My ex is bipolar, which my children know. However, they are not aware that he is a sex addict. I happen to know he makes obscene phone calls. He acts very flirty around teenage girls. Likes to wrestle, tickle and pick them up. While I do not know for a fact that he engages in child pornography, I believe he has that potential. Ex Tell your son what you know, whatever you know, now, just facts, because he deserves this knowledge, whether he has a little girl, a little boy, or no children at all. Tell your other children, too. You clearly mean well, but you are protecting the wrong entity here. Re: What do I tell: As a former child-sex-crimes prosecutor, I would like to address a common misperception, which seems to be shared by Ex, that pedophiles only target young girls. In fact, child sexual predators target boys as well, depending on their personal preferences. So the advice that she should share what she knows with her children regardless of whether her future grandchildren are boys or girls is spot on. Read more: Also, I dont know what level of detailed information she has regarding her suspicions that her ex may be collecting child pornography which is a state and federal crime but if she does have information, I would encourage her to contact her local FBI office to report what she knows. Anonymous Carolyn: I have been sitting on this for 25 years. It will just crush my son to find this out. I am afraid he will tell his father why he doesnt want him alone with a child, and then I will be in hot water with everybody. Ex again You didnt heat the water, he did. Do what you must. Please. If you dont feel strong enough to take important actions to protect the people you love and possibly society, then please talk to a therapist as soon as possible. Keeping it to yourself is not a defensible option. Re: Ex: I am afraid he will tell his father why he doesnt want him alone with a child and then I will be in hot water with everybody. Thats exactly the sort of manipulative fear that child sex abusers are counting on, in order to continue their abuse unchecked. Anonymous 2 Re: What do I tell: Ex can report suspected child pornography use to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at report.cybertip.org. Anonymous 3 Thank you all for the valuable contributions. Email Carolyn at [email protected], follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com. Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2019/05/13/pedophile-divorce-family-children/1162976001/ | https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2019/05/13/pedophile-divorce-family-children/1162976001/ |
Are denim speedos the new togs trend? | Summer is still months away but you can get ahead of the pack by investing in this season's swimwear trend - denim speedos. US brand Shinesty are selling an array of blue jean-themed togs, and promises that their "jeado dong sarongs" will be "smooth on your gear." For the man in your life who insists on wearing jeans to every occasion. Photo / Shinesty. "It is like eating a bag of chips in church. Everyone looks over at you with disgust, but deep down they want some too," reads the product description. "These should be paired with caterpillar-style moustaches for optimal results." Advertisement Introducing the denim "dong sarong". Photo / Shinesty. The fetching pieces are available in three distinct denim-themed hues: the classic Daytona Dong Sarong, the jet black Houston Hog Holster and the tastefully-dubbed Assid Washers. Retailing at NZ$60, they stock sizes S through to XXL - though the staff have advised that they fit "tight". | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12230510 |
Is Trump Yet Another U.S. President Provoking a War? | The United States has a long history of provoking, instigating, or launching wars based on dubious, flimsy, or manufactured threats. In 1986, the Reagan Administration plotted to use U.S. military maneuvers off Libyas coast to provoke Muammar Qaddafi into a showdown. The planning for Operation Prairie Fire, which deployed three aircraft carriers and thirty other warships, was months in the making. Before the Navys arrival, U.S. warplanes conducted missions skirting Libyan shore and air defensespoking them in the ribs to keep them on edge, a U.S. military source told the Los Angeles Times that year. One official involved in the mission explained, It was provocation, if you want to use that word. While everything we did was perfectly legitimate, we were not going to pass up the opportunity to strike. Qaddafi took the bait. Libya fired at least six surface-to-air missiles at U.S. planes. Citing the aggressive and unlawful nature of Colonel Qaddafis regime, the U.S. responded by opening fire at a Libyan patrol boat. The ship is dead in the water, burning, and appears to be sinking. There are no official survivors, the White House reported. In the course of two days, the U.S. destroyed two more naval vessels and a missile site in Sirte, Qaddafis home town. It also put Libya on general notice. We now consider all approaching Libyan forces to have hostile intent, the White House said. The most egregious case was the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003, which was based on bad intelligence that Baghdad had active weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. The repercussions are still playing out sixteen years (and more than four thousand American deaths) later. The beginning of the Vietnam War was authorized by two now disputed incidents involving U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In response, Congress authorized President Johnson, in 1964, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. The war dragged on for a decade, claiming the lives of fifty-seven thousand Americans and as many as a million Vietnamese fighters and civilians. The pattern goes back even further. In 1898, the Spanish-American War was triggered by an explosion on the U.S.S. Maine, an American battleship docked in Havana Harbor. The Administration of President William McKinley blamed a Spanish mine or torpedo. Almost eight decades later, in 1976, the American admiral Hyman Rickover concluded that the battleship was destroyed by the spontaneous combustion of coal in a bunker next to ammunition. In 1846, President James Polk justified the Mexican-American War by claiming that Mexico had invaded U.S. territory, at a time when the border was not yet settled. Mexico claimed that the border was the Nueces River; the United States claimed it was the Rio Grande, about a hundred miles away. One of the few voices that challenged Polks casus belli was Abraham Lincoln, then serving in Congress. Around fifteen hundred Americans died of battle injuries, and another ten thousand from illness. Today, the question in Washingtonand surely in Tehran, toois whether President Trump is making moves that will provoke, instigate, or inadvertently drag the United States into a war with Iran. Trumps threats began twelve days after he took office, in 2017, when his national-security adviser at the time, Michael Flynn, declared, in the White House press room, As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice. Flynn, a former three-star general, was fired several weeks later and subsequently indicted for lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russia. The Administrations campaign against Iran, though, has steadily escalated, particularly in the past two weeks. On May 5th, a Sunday, the White House issued an unusual communiqufrom the national-security adviser, John Bolton, not the Pentagonannouncing that a battleship-carrier strike group, led by the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, and a bomber task force, including B-52s, were deploying off Irans coast. The Lincoln was headed to the Middle East anyway, but its deployment was fast-tracked, U.S. officials told me. Bolton claimed that the Islamic Republic was engaged in a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, but did not provide specifics. The Administrations goal, he said, was to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. Bolton, who was a key player behind the U.S. war in Iraq, advocated bombing Iran before he joined the Trump White House. Five days later, on May 10th, the Pentagon announced a second display of force: the U.S.S. Arlington and a battery of Patriot missile systems would join the Abraham Lincoln. The Arlington carries U.S. Marines and an array of aircraft, landing craft, and weapons systems to support amphibious assault, special-operations teams, and expeditionary warfare. A Patriot battery defends against ballistic missiles and aircraft. Both are meant to respond to indications of heightened Iranian readiness to conduct offensive operations against U.S. forces and our interests, the Pentagon said. The Trump Administration is concerned that Iran, or its proxies, could strike U.S. assets in the Middle East, including in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Syria. The Iranians have demonstrated the willingness and ability to attack our people, our interests, and our friends and allies in the confusing, complex zone just short of armed conflict, General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, said last week, at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in Washington. Iran does, indeed, have a growing array of surrogates across the region. Lebanons Hezbollahinspired, armed, and trained by Iranis now the most powerful militia outside state control in the entire Middle East. In Syria, Tehran has mobilized Shiite allies from four countriesLebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistanto supplement its own forces helping President Bashar al-Assad reassert control over his fractured nation. Tehran has reportedly shipped short-range missiles to allies by boat through the Persian Gulf and deployed kits in Syria that convert imprecise rockets into missiles with greater range, accuracy, and impact. The Islamic Republic supports several Shiite militias in Iraq under the umbrella of the countrys Popular Mobilization Forces, which emerged in 2014, with Iraqi government approval, to fight ISIS. The caliphate has fallen, but the P.M.F. remains a powerful and divisive militia in Iraq. Despite the Trump Administrations aggressive stance, there have been no major incidents in the Persian Gulf for almost two years, after a spate of provocative acts by Iranthirty-six in 2016 and fourteen in 2017against U.S. warships, a Pentagon official told me. The last one was on August 14, 2017, when an Iranian drone approached the U.S.S. Nimitz as an F/A-18 was trying to land on the aircraft carrier. The drone, which was flying at night, did not have its lights on; repeated radio calls to its controlling station went unanswered. The Nimitz was in international waters, beyond the twelve-mile limit any nation can claim. We havent seen an unsafe interaction since then, Captain Bill Urban, the spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told me. It has been a long time, considering how many incidents we had in 2016 and 2017. The U.S. still has regular interactions with Iranian ships. Its not unusual to have several attack craft come out and approach our ships and take pictures. But now they routinely stop at a safe distance or approach in manner that is not escalatory, he said. We continue to remain vigilant. The U.S. military deployments are the latest steps in the Administrations maximum pressure campaign. The U.S. designated Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization last month and has imposed a steady stream of sanctions on Irans economy, the most recent of which were imposed last week and covered industrial metals produced in Iran. The Administration has vowed to keep increasing pressure until Iran changes its behavioron its weapons-development programs, human-rights violations, support for militant movements, and intervention in other Middle East countries. So far, Tehran has not changed course. Frustration is building up in Washington, as maximum pressure has produced minimum strategic results, and the clock is ticking, Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, told me. Some in Washington and the region would welcome, or try to provoke, a confrontation in an effort to achieve what sanctions have failed at so farcutting Iran down to size. Vaez outlined two scenarios: Iran digs in, prompting a frustrated White House to double down yet again on measures that alienate key allies and risk regional escalation, or Iran calculates that it has little left to lose and decides to escalate further in the nuclear realm or in the region. Iran has made aggressive moves of its own. Last month, Tehran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the worlds traded oil passes, if the Administration blocks it from exporting its own oil. Last week, President Hassan Rouhani announced that Tehran would no longer comply with two smaller provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal: exporting excess uranium and also heavy water from its nuclear program. (It might not be able to export the stockpiles anyway, since the U.S. recently vowed to sanction any country that buys either.) Trump withdrew from the agreement a year ago, but Iran continued to comply, according to inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Rouhani also issued an ultimatum to the deals other five signatories, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia: either help Iran sell its oil and circumvent U.S. sanctions restrictions within sixty days or Tehran would increase its enrichment of uranium, a fuel that can be used for both peaceful nuclear energy and building the worlds deadliest weapon. Rouhanis announcement basically put the world on notice that Tehran would not keep to the agreements limits if it failed to receive its promised benefits. We felt that the nuclear deal needs a surgery, and the painkiller pills of the last year have been ineffective, Rouhani said, in a televised address. This surgery is for saving the deal, not destroying it. The sense of foreboding is tangible, the threats from both sides are no longer rhetorical. Before the nuclear-deal negotiations began, in 2013, Washington was consumed with hyped talk of the United States or its allies bombing Iran. If the nuclear deal formally dies, talk of military confrontation may again fill both capitalseven if neither country wants it. Make no mistake, were not seeking a fight with the Iranian regime, McKenzie, the Centcom commander, said last week. But we do have a military force thats designed to be agile, adaptive, and prepared to respond to a variety of contingencies in the Middle East and around the world. The problem, as U.S. history proves, is that the momentum of confrontation is harder to reverse with each escalatory step. | https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-trump-yet-another-us-president-provoking-a-war |
Can We Live Longer but Stay Younger? | Aging, like bankruptcy in Hemingways description, happens two ways, slowly and then all at once. The slow way is the familiar one: decades pass with little sense of internal change, middle age arrives with only a slight slowing downa name lost, a lumbar ache, a sprinkling of white hairs and eye wrinkles. The fast way happens as a series of lurches: eyes occlude, hearing dwindles, a hand trembles where it hadnt, a hip breaksthe usually hale and hearty doctors murmur in the yearly checkup, There are some signs here that concern me. To get a sense of what it would be like to have the slow process become the fast process, you can go to the AgeLab, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, and put on agnes (for Age Gain Now Empathy System). agnes, or the sudden aging suit, as Joseph Coughlin, the founder and director of the AgeLab describes it, includes yellow glasses, which convey a sense of the yellowing of the ocular lens that comes with age; a boxers neck harness, which mimics the diminished mobility of the cervical spine; bands around the elbows, wrists, and knees to simulate stiffness; boots with foam padding to produce a loss of tactile feedback; and special gloves to reduce tactile acuity while adding resistance to finger movements. Slowly pulling on the aging suit and then standing upit looks a bit like one of the spacesuits that the Russian cosmonauts woreyoure at first conscious merely of a little extra weight, a little loss of feeling, a small encumbrance or two at the extremities. Soon, though, its actively infuriating. The suit bends you. It slows you. You come to realize what makes it a powerful instrument of emotional empathy: every small task becomes effortful. Reach up to the top shelf and pick up that mug, Coughlin orders, and doing so requires more attention than you expected. You reach for the mug instead of just getting it. Your emotional cast, as focussed task piles on focussed task, becomes one of annoyance; you acquire the same set-mouthed, unhappy, watchful look you see on certain elderly people on the subway. The concentration that each act requires disrupts the flow of life, which you suddenly become aware is the happiness of life, the ceaseless flow of simple action and responses, choices all made simultaneously and mostly without effort. Happiness is absorption, and absorption is the opposite of willful attention. (Never: Whats wrong with me?) The suit makes us aware not so much of the physical difficulties of old age, which can be manageable, but of the mental state disconcertingly associated with itthe price of age being perpetual aggravation. The theme and action and motive of King Lear suddenly become perfectly clear. You become enraged at your youngest daughters reticence because you have had to struggle to unroll the map of your kingdom. The AgeLab is designed to alleviate this progression. It exists to encourage and incubate new technologies and products and services for an ever-larger market of aging people. (Every eight seconds, a baby boomer turns seventy-three, Coughlin observes.) Coughlin, who is in his late fifties, is the image of an old-fashioned American engineer-entrepreneur; he is bald in the old-fashioned, tonsured, Thurber-husband way, wears a bow tie and heavy red-framed glasses, and, walking a visitor through the lab, suggests a cross between Mr. Peabody and Q, from the Bond films, showing you the latest gadgets. His talk is crisply aphoristic and irrigated with an easy flow of statistics: each proposition has its instantly associated number. Where science is ambiguous, politics begins, he says. In the designation of some states, an older driver is fifty, in some eightywe dont even know what an older driver is. That ambiguity is an itch I wanted to scratch. Over the past century, weve created the greatest gift in the history of humanitythirty extra years of lifeand we dont know what to do with it! Now that were living longer, how do we plan for what were going to do? Having picked the mug up, the suit wearer finds that setting the mug down gently on a nearby table is also a bit of a challenge. So is following Coughlin from room to room as he narrates all that the AgeLab has learned. Heres a useful model for you, he says. From zero to twenty-one is about eight thousand days. From twenty-one to midlife crisis is eight thousand days. From mid-forties to sixty-fiveeight thousand days. Nowadays, if you make it to sixty-five you have a fifty-per-cent chance youll make it to eighty-five. Another eight thousand days! Thats no longer a trip to Disney and wait for the grandchildren to visit and die of the virus you get on a cruise. Were talking about rethinking, redefining one-third of adult life! Why dont we take that one-third and create new stories, new rituals, new mythologies for people as they age? The agnes suit is one of many instruments and appliancesor cool toys, as they are more technically knownthat can be found in the AgeLabs glass-walled halls and cubicled corridors, ready to entertain visiting writers, and to instruct visiting entrepreneurs. There is the driving simulator, specially fitted to track the drivers eye movements as they flit back and forth from the dashboard to the horizon. (With its new technologies, like navigation systems, the automotive industry is asking people to change fifty years of driving habits in ten minutes without instruction, Coughlin says.) There is Paro, a robotic baby seal, from Japan, which bleats and moves its head, and is designed to act as a comfort to aging people, particularly Alzheimers patients struggling with the sundown moment at days end, when confusion and restlessness become acute. (Its a seal, rather than a dog or a cat, because people have great experiences with dogs and cats, and even Alzheimers patients can spot the eerie non-resemblance, Coughlin says. Having no experience of seals, we accept Paro as he is.) There are mobile robotic nurses made for elderly care, and broad red upholstered chairs made for elderly rears. There are large research displays showing photographs of drivers, their faces embedded with sensors, and the varieties of Glance Classification that can, when analyzed, lead to Crash Avoidance. (The ratio between confident decisions and correct confident decisions can be a story of life or death on the highway, Coughlin explains.) And there are displays of word clouds associated with aging, showing the significant difference between the terms with which women imagine their post-career lives (Freedom, Time, Family) and those which men use (Retirement, Relax, Hobbies). The work of the AgeLab is shaped by a paradox. Having been established to engineer and promote new products and services specially designed for the expanding market of the aged, the AgeLab swiftly discovered that engineering and promoting new products and services specially designed for the expanding market of the aged is a good way of going out of business. Old people will not buy anything that reminds them that they are old. They are a market that cannot be marketed to. In effect, to accept help in getting out of the suit is to accept that were in the suit for life. We would rather suffer because were old than accept that were old and suffer less. This paradox is, well, old. Heinz, back in the nineteen-fifties, tried marketing a line of Senior Foods that was, essentially, baby food for old people. It not only failed spectacularly but, as Coughlin puts it, poisoned an entire category. The most perverse of these failures is perhaps that of the PERS, or personal-emergency-response system, a category of devicebest known for the hysterically toned television ad in which an elderly woman calls out, Ive fallen and I cant get up!designed as a neck pendant that summons emergency services when pressed. It is simple and effective. The problem is that no one wants one, Coughlin says. The entire penetration in the U.S. of the sixty-five-plus market is less than four per cent. And a German study showed that, when subscribers fell and remained on the floor for longer than five minutes, they failed to use their devices to summon help eighty-three per cent of the time. In other words, many older people would sooner thrash on the floor in distress than press a buttonone that may summon assistance but whose real impact is to admit, I am old. We buy products not just to do jobs but for what they say about us, Coughlin summarizes. Beige or light-blue bracelets or pendants say Old Man Walking. Dont let this beautiful weather fool you into thinking everythings fine. The AgeLab has rediscovered the eternal truth that identity matters to us far more than utility. The most effective way of comforting the aged, the researchers there find, is through a kind of comical convergence of products designed by and supposedly for impatient millennials, which secretly better suit the needs of irascible boomers. The best hearing aids look the most like earbuds. The most effective PERS device is an iPhone or an Apple Watch app. Such unexpected convergences have happened in the past. Retirement villages came to be centered on golf courses, Coughlin maintains, not because oldsters necessarily like golf but because they like using golf carts. Its the carts that supply greater mobility in and around the village. The golf comes with them. This process of exaptation has now accelerated. TaskRabbit and Uber and Rent the Runwayservices that provide immediate help for specific problemsare especially valuable for an aging population. The dominant paradigm is that older people dont want new technology, Coughlin says. But take the microwave oven! It couldnt have been better designed for people who live by themselves. Its a perfect example of what I call transcendent designnot made for older people, but ideal for them. Were doing a lot of work in the on-demand economy, which was made for millennials but is working better for boomers. Meals are deliveredthese are amazing, assisted-living services that can come to anyones house. Older women in particular are saved from microdeficiencies in their diet. So, while the millennials want them for convenience, the boomers want them for care for their parents, or themselves. Coughlin hates what he calls the narrative, according to which new tech appeals to newer people: Startup money goes to youngsters because thats what startup entrepreneurs are supposed to look like, and the products are designed for kids because thats what startup products are meant to look like. In his viewdetailed in his book The Longevity Economythe narrative, more than any rational calculation of profit, accounts for the technological gap. Theres no reason for this enormous prejudice in favor of youthfulness in Silicon Valley and the tech industry, he says. He also hates the misallocation of resources based on mere myths. We have a belief that we send out our elderly to institutions. The fact of the matter is that less than ten per cent of the elderly go into nursing homes or assisted living. The senior-housing industry is building inventory meant for seniors, but eighty-seven per cent of retirement-age people want to stay in the same home where they have the three Ms: marriage, mortgage, and memories. The problem is that they cant. Not when the model is a two-story house with a bedroom and the bathroom upstairs. Little tasks become sources of high friction. Its not that you cant climb the ladder to change the light bulb. But for the first time you are going to have someone yelling at you, Youre going to fall and break your neck! Thats the problem of aging we have to tackle, not building more old peoples homes or senior villages. Its the failure of industry and engineering to address the actual problems of agingthe problems summed up by the aggravations of the agnes suitthat makes Coughlin impatient with scientific speculations about extending life. Weve already extended life! What we need is not to put off death a little longer but to write a new narrative of aging as it could be. Aging has no point; it is the infuriating absence of a point. Having reproduced ourselves externally, we fall down on replicating ourselves internally. The processes of cellular replication that allow us to be boats rebuilt even as they cross the ocean cease acting efficiently, because they have no evolutionary reward for acting efficiently. They are like code monkeys in a failing tech business: they can mess up everything, absent-mindedly forget to code for the color of our hair or the elasticity of our skin, and no penalty is exacted for the failure. Weve already made all the kids we are going to make. That, at least, is the classic explanation of why we age, proposed by the British Nobel laureate Peter Medawar, in the nineteen-fifties. Once we have passed reproductive age, the genes can get sloppy about copying, allowing mutations to accumulate, because natural selection no longer cares. And so things fall apart. The second law of thermodynamics gets us all in the end. The car or the Cuisinart works for a decade, breaks down, and cant be fixed; rust never sleeps, and we do. And yet some trees go on for centuries, collecting rings, growing older without really aging. Some speciesthough those are often hard-to-track creatures, like Arctic sharksmay live for centuries. Even if aging at some speed is ultimately inevitable, what happens when we age is far from self-evident. It may be that the real trick is not how much we age but how much we dont. Human beings are outliers: we live much longer than other creatures of our size, defying the general truth that smaller animals live shorter lives than bigger ones. (Not that we should take too much pride in our defiance; another great defier is the naked mole rat, the worlds ugliest animal, which often lives for absurdly long periods and scarcely seems to age at all, although one might ask how anyone but another naked mole rat could tell.) Those extra thirty years of life, though won by advances in medicine and public health, are winnable because, given a little chance, we just go on. The big question of human aging then becomes not why we fall apart but why nature lets us hold together for so long. One evolutionary rationale is that there is something essential to human groups, with the slowly unfolding infancy of their young, in keeping the old folks around even when they cant make more young folks. Old folks are repositories of extended cultural memory: it would seem to be advantageous to have a few senior citizens around who know what to do, so to speak, when winter comes. Evolutionary biologists tend to doubt whether nature cares about the fitness of groups, rather than the fitness of individuals, but the model of kin selectionwhich gives weight to the fact that helping my relatives helps preserve my genessuggests that there might be evolutionary advantages in having grandmothers around to take care of kids and remember where the fish go every twenty years. (Then again, people who do have grandparents around to remind them what theyre doing wrong would probably suspect that killing off the oldsters early might actually make for more success, or at least more serenity.) People might not have a death sentence in their genes. And so elsewhere in Cambridge, notably in certain genetic labs at Harvard, the chairs and seals and exaptated services of the AgeLab are regarded as mere Band-Aids on the problem to be solved. Here, there are whispers of undying yeast, tales of eternally young mice, rumors of rejuvenated dogs, and scientists who stubbornly insist that age is an illness to be treated like any other. Where fifty years ago it was taken for granted that the problem of age was a problem of the inevitable running down of everything, entropy working its worst, now many researchers are inclined to think that the problem is epigenetic: its a problem in reading the informationthe genetic codein the cells. To use a metaphor of the Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, the information in each cell is digital and perfectly stored; its the readout, the active expression of the information, thats effectively analogue, and subject to occlusion by the equivalent of dirt and scratches on the plastic surface of a CD. Clear those off, he says, and the younger you, still intact in the information layer, jumps outjust as the younger Beatles jump out from a restored and remastered CD. (It would not be the first time in the history of science that the way we think about a phenomenon has been affected by the kinds of man-made models were acquainted with. When a telephone switchboard was our most impressive knowledge-bearing mechanism, people thought that the brain was like one; when Xerox copies, growing less legible as generation passed to generation, were familiar to everyone, the image of a cell ceasing to replicate itself effectively in that manner was self-evident.) We dont have to micromanage the repair, the Harvard molecular biologist George Church observes: If we think epigenetically, we can see that we can make the cells industriously do the repair themselves. Already a legendary figure for devising genomic-sequencing techniquesit must help that hes a scientific eminence who has the aura of one, with a grand Darwinian beard and a slow-spoken orotundityChurch gained further attention for his experiments in trying to resurrect extinct species, particularly the woolly mammoth. (One of his standard jokes is that the fifth floor of his lab is off limits to visitors, because that is where the mammoths and the Neanderthals live.) He is also among a group of engineer-entrepreneurs who are trying not to make better products for aging people but to make fewer aging people to sell products to. Perhaps aging is not a condition to be managed but a mistake to be fixed. Sinclair, for one, has successfully extended the life of yeast, and says that he is moving on to human trials. He is an evangelist for the advantages of what he calls hormesisthe practice of inducing metabolic stress by short intense exercise or intermittent fasting.Every day, try to be hungry and out of breath is his neatly epigenetic epigram. Anti-aging research, in its translational, or applied, form, seems to be proceeding along two main fronts: through small molecules, meaning mostly dietary supplements that are intended to rev up the right proteins; and, perhaps more dramatically, through genetic engineering. Typically, genetic engineering involves adding or otherwise manipulating genes in a population of animals, often mice, perhaps by rejiggering a mouses genome in embryo and then using it to breed a genetically altered strain. In mice studies, genetic modifications that cause the rodents to make greater amounts of a single protein, sirtuin 6, have resulted in longer life spans (although some scientists think that the intervention merely helped male mice to live as long as female mice). Church and Noah Davidsohn, a former postdoc in his lab, have engaged in a secretive but much talked-about venture to make old dogs new. They have conducted gene therapy on beagles with the Tufts veterinary school, and are currently advertising for Cavalier King Charles spaniels, which are highly prone to an incurable age-related heart condition, mitral-valve disease; almost all of them develop it by the age of ten. Using a genetically modified virus, Church and Davidsohns team will insert a piece of DNA into a dogs liver cells and get them to produce a protein meant to stop the heart disease from progressing. But the team has larger ambitions. It has been identifying other targets for gene-based interventions, studying a database of aging-related genes: genes that are overexpressed or underexpressedthat make too much or too little of a particular proteinas we grow old. In the CD replay of life, these are the notes that get muffled or amplified, and Davidsohn and Church want to restore them to their proper volume. Many problems cling to this work, not least that there are surprisingly few bio-markers of increased longevity. Ideally, wed find something that could be measured in a blood test, say, and was reliably correlated with someones life span. Church is optimistic about the genetic-engineering approach. We know it can work, he says, because weve already had success reprogramming embryonic stem cells: you can take a really old cell and turn that back into a young cell. Were doing it now. Most of the work was done in mice, where weve extended the life of mice by a factor of two. It isnt seen as impressive, because its mice, but now were working on dogs. There are about nine different pathways that weve identified for cell rejuvenation, one of which eliminates senescent cellsmoldering cells that have stopped dividing and tend to spark inflammation, serving as a perpetual irritant to their neighbors. Were already in clinical trials with dogs, Church says. If all goes well, we should have that accomplished within two years, and be overlapping that with human clinical trials within the next five years. My guess is that dog trials will go well. Based on the mouse trials, were hoping that the effects are general and independent of specieswere using the same gene therapy in mice and dogs and humans. Church is aware that the Food and Drug Administration, among other regulatory bodies, may not be crazy about weird new therapies that address what we customarily take to be a natural process. Our emphasis is on reversal rather than longevity, in part because its easier to get permission from the F.D.A. for reversal of diseases than for prolongation of life, he says. Longevity isnt our aimwere just aiming at the reversal of age-related diseases. Noah Davidsohn enthusiastically seconds this: We want to make people live better, not necessarily longer, though obviously longer is part of better. But Church makes it plain that these are adjoining concerns. How old can people grow? he says. Well, if our approach is truly effective, there is no upper limit. But our goal isnt eternal life. The goal is youthful wellness rather than an extended long period of age-related decline. You know, one of the striking things is that many super-centenarianspeople who live productively past a hundred yearslive a youthful life, and then they die very quickly. Theyre here, living well, and then theyre not. Its not a bad picture. There are many skeptics among scientists who wonder how much, or how soon, this kind of work will really affect aging. Church gets shares for serving on the advisory board of Elysium Health, which markets an anti-aging supplement called Basis, and though the literature is careful to say that, rather than endorsing a specific product, this network of scientists, clinicians and health professionals advises the Elysium team on product identification and development, how one distinguishes between advising on the product and endorsing the product seems to many a bit mystical. Others may recall the enthusiasm, in the early twentieth century, for implanting monkey glands in people, a procedure that was held out as a scientific solution to the problem of aging. (W. B. Yeats had a related procedure.) The fountain of youth is always splashing away somewhere. Behind the optimistic promise of heading off aging in spaniels and, soon, in their owners lies a sadder reality: that even foundational research cannot always cure a fundamental problem. Despite what had seemed to be groundbreaking discoveries in the basic genetics and pathology of dementia, no cure or even promising treatment for senility, as it once was called, is in sight. Increasing numbers of people enter old age not merely reduced but ravaged by Alzheimers or another form of dementia, now epidemic in the richer countries that have greater life expectancies. Old Lears primary fear is not of age but of madness, which he imagines precisely as dementia: as the loss of mental control, of memory, and of cognition, seeing his fate mirrored in that of Poor Tom, the ranting homeless man impersonated by Edgar. To pass from the Harvard rejuvenators to the laboratory of Patrick Hof, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in Manhattan, is to sober up a little. Here, there is talk not of imminent innovation but of discouragingly minute work proceeding on many slow-moving fronts over decades. Where the Harvard crowd see quick fixes in the near future, Hof, an expert on the neuronal underpinnings of aging and Alzheimers, sees the exposure of ever more confounding complexity. His tenth-floor office is filled with reproductions of Blake illuminations and Whistler portraits, while photographs of his children cycle on the screen saver behind him, blended with images of whales and dolphins, a particular interest of his. His nearby lab is an open space with small chapels off it, in which researcherspostdocs, junior faculty, skilled techniciansstudy the youthful and aged brains of many kinds of animals, with what looks like every kind of microscope: smaller viewing ones, mid-sized high-resolution ones, and a single massive electron-scanning microscope that lets his researchers see neural structure down to a dendrites tiny terminal spines. My career started at the beginning of digital microscopy, Hof says. He is white-haired, with the soft accent of his native Switzerland. Now we can collect terabytes of datawe can collect entire networks of neurons within a single animal brain. We do tissue staining, taking a piece of brain or an entire brainslicing them into very thin sections, which we incubate with an antibody that labels a specific population of neurons, and we collect that. Or we can load neurons with a fluorescent dyeinject it, using a very thin glass pipette that runs right into the neuronso then we have a fluorescent neuron! Hofs laboratory is full of brains. In a large common lab outside the microscopy rooms, there are shelves holding rows of what look like hinged, dark-wooden cigar boxes. These are all brains, Hof says casually. He takes a box down and opens it; inside, theres a slide with what looks like a small profile of a brain on it. Thats a human brain. Its a section, sliced like bread. It looks small, because it was incubated in a chemical processwe started with the entire hemisphere and then incubated it in an alcoholic treatment, and it shrinks by two-thirds. Then you stain it, and there you go. The brain sections are kept indefinitely, Hof explains, and loaned out, like library books, from lab to lab. Hof, who has taken to studying the brains of whales and dolphins, likes to bring visitors to an open, chilled brain room, a sort of rare-book collection of brains, to see a few beautiful instances. The brain room is a revelation. Here they are: human brains, monkey brains, dolphin brainsthe space between brain and mind never seems so large as it does when you actually see the material of mind, curved and segmented, as ugly as an intestine, floating in a fixing solution. The room even contains a sperm-whale brainthe largest brain known to the planet, Hof says. (It looks beautifully broad, with nobly large-spaced convolutions.) Finding the brains of senile cetaceans is hard, he says. The ones that beach are young adults, and the seniors tend to die quietly at sea. Hof hopes that insight might be found in studying neurodegeneration in the cetaceans more expansive, differently structured cortexes. The study of Alzheimers became Hofs special preoccupation because of its insidious destruction of normal minds and normal character. You cant tell any difference, even under extreme magnification, between an aging non-demented brain and a younger human one, he says. You have to have really fine levels of resolution to see any loss in neural organization just through aging without illness. But, holding an Alzheimers brain in your hand, you can see the atrophy. Three decades ago, Hof explains, research in Alzheimers linked two key proteins with the terrible dissolution of selves: beta-amyloid, which formed plaques between neurons; and tau, which formed tangled fibrils within neurons. The relative importance of the two was disputed, but many scientists concluded that those plaques and fibrils clog the brain as coffee grounds clog a drain. It seemed likely that there would be therapeutic benefits if they could be cleared away. Now, we know that these are really downstream effects, Hof says. Whats happening upstream to cause them is much, much more complicated. With the causes uncleardebate continues over which anomalies are better seen as culprits or as bystandersand the cure evidently far away, Hof can only enumerate the co-morbidities for Alzheimers, the conditions that correlate most strongly with its onset. They are the old-fashioned sins: obesity, a lack of exercise, bad dietand the diabetes that these can produce. For all the cascades of research into longevity, the new science often seems to distill into old wisdom: be fit, stay thin, and you will look and feel younger longer. The disease is diverse and heterogeneous enough that treatment and prevention will have to move on several fronts, Hof says. Every elder is unique, and will have had life experiences and habits that are unique. So were going to have to look at that aspect, in ways that prevent or treat, to a degree, the development of something worse. Then we need to have a better understanding of the causative factors. There are leads that point to a number of interesting markers. There are proteins that play cellular roles that effect a cascade of reaction inside the cells, but it becomes very difficult to target specifically without altering other functions. None of it is easy. | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/can-we-live-longer-but-stay-younger |
Are yoga and mindfulness in schools religious? | (The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Candy Gunther Brown, Indiana University (THE CONVERSATION) The number of U.S. children age 4 to 17 practicing yoga rose from 2.3% to 8.4% or from 1.3 million to 4.9 million between 2007 and 2017, federal data show. The number of children meditating rose to 3.1 million during the same period. The rise is due in part to more yoga and mindfulness programs being established in Americas schools. A 2015 study found three dozen different yoga organizations offering yoga programs in 940 K-12 schools. Yoga and mindfulness could become the fourth R of public education. But up for debate is whether the R in this case stands for relaxation or religion. As a professor of religious studies, I have served as an expert witness in four public-school yoga and meditation legal challenges. I testified that school yoga and meditation programs fit legal criteria of religion. In one case, the court agreed that yoga may be religious in some contexts, but ultimately concluded that the school districts yoga classes were devoid of any religious, mystical, or spiritual trappings. In two other cases in which I testified, yoga and meditation based charter schools were found to violate a state law prohibiting public schools from providing any religious instruction. My research and experience leads me to believe that there are problems with how yoga is being implemented in schools. My goal is not to ban yoga or mindfulness from school settings. But I believe there are legal and ethical reasons to work toward greater transparency and voluntary participation in yoga. A question of religion Although many Americans believe that yoga and mindfulness arent religious, not everyone accepts that the practices are completely secular. My new book, Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? examines these issues. The book argues that integrating yoga and mindfulness into public schools could violate laws against government establishment of religion. The Yoga Alliance, an organization that purports to be the the largest nonprofit association representing the yoga community, argued in 2014 that DC yoga studios should be exempt from sales tax because the purpose of yoga is spiritual rather than fitness. However, when parents sued a California school district in 2013 alleging that its yoga program violates the prohibition against the state establishment of religion, the Yoga Alliance rebutted that yoga is exercise and not religious. Thus, the Yoga Alliance seems to take the position that yoga is spiritual but not religious. Courts have not, however, made this distinction. In some legal cases the courts have concluded that yoga and meditation are religious practices. A 1988 Arkansas case known as Powell v. Perry, for instance, concluded that yoga is a method of practicing Hinduism. The 1995 Self-Realization Fellowship Church v. Ananda Church of Self Realization case classified the Hindu-Yoga spiritual tradition as a religious tradition. The 1979 Malnak v. Yogi case defined Transcendental Meditation as a religion and therefore ruled that an elective high school Transcendental Meditation class was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that public schools may not endorse religious practices such as prayer and Bible reading, even if kids are allowed to opt out. The Court ruled that practicing religion in the classroom is coercive because of mandatory attendance, teacher authority and peer pressure. Mindfulness likewise does double duty. It sounds like merely paying attention. However, promoters of mindfulness, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, say they use it as an umbrella term as a skillful way to introduce Buddhist meditation into the mainstream. In a Buddhist Geeks podcast, Trudy Goodman, founder of Insight LA and a mindfulness teacher, speaks of mindfulness as stealth Buddhism, noting that secularly framed classes arent that different from our Buddhist classes. They just use a different vocabulary. Founder of Yoga Ed. Tara Guber has admitted to making semantic changes to get her program into a school district where some parents and school board members objected to it, arguing that it was teaching religion. Guber spoke of how yoga can shift consciousness and alter beliefs. Some research shows that yoga and mindfulness have spiritualeffects even when they are presented secularly. One study found that over 62 percent of students in secular yoga changed their primary reason for practicing. Most initiate yoga practice for exercise and stress relief, but for many, spirituality becomes their primary reason for maintaining practice, the study states. I propose that respect for cultural and religious diversity can best be achieved through an opt-in model of informed consent. That is to say, it may be constitutional for yoga and mindfulness to be available on school grounds, but students should be able to choose to get into the programs, not as I point out in various cases in my book be forced to take extra steps just to get out. Students and their parents must be given enough information about offered programs including risks, benefits, alternatives, and potential effects to make an informed choice about whether to participate. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/are-yoga-and-mindfulness-in-schools-religious-115620. | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Are-yoga-and-mindfulness-in-schools-religious-13840323.php |
Is it safe to buy gas at Circle K after card skimmer scare? | CLOSE Your credit card number could be stored with thousands of others on a small strip of wires that can be installed in seconds. Rebekah L. Sanders, The Republic | azcentral.com Circle K was a favorite target for Arizona credit-card thieves last year, leading some drivers to stop using the chain altogether. But new data shows Circle K gas pumps are safer after the fuel giant installed measures that were standard at other companies to prevent illegal card skimmers. The company took additional steps to protect customers after The Arizona Republic revealed nearly 80 percent of card skimmers discovered at Arizona gas stations in 2018 were at Circle K locations, alarming law-enforcement officials and drivers alike. "I am glad you have taken notice of the work being done by our Circle K team in Arizona to reduce the number of skimmers," Circle K North America Global Communications Director Lisa Koenig said via email. "Over the last several months, the Arizona team has increased further its commitment to protecting customers' data security." Changes include orange stickers on gas pumps that break if a criminal tries to open a panel to install a skimmer and more frequent inspections by employees. Circle K installed security seals on its gas pumps after The Arizona Republic revealed the chain was a favorite target for credit-card skimmers. (Photo: Rebekah L. Sanders/The Republic) Koenig described Circle K's efforts as increased "investment, training and maintenance" at gas stations, and closer coordination with the Arizona Attorney General's Office and the state Weights and Measures Services Division. Recent data shows the number of skimmers found at Arizona Circle K locations has dropped by more than half. From June to mid-November, when the Republic published its findings, 67 skimmers were found at Circle K stations in Arizona. Over the same length of time during the months after the story came out, 30 skimmers were found, according to reports by the Arizona Weights and Measures Services Division. Last year, the Arizona Attorney General's Office said the company needed to do more to combat skimmers. "Circle K is not very cooperative when it comes to working with law enforcement on this problem," criminal investigator Don Carroll said at the time, "and it seems as if they are refusing to take basic measures to better protect consumers." But after Circle K took action and skimmers decreased, Attorney General Mark Brnovich praised the company for preventing crime. "By taking basic security precautions, gas station operators can play an important part in protecting their customers' personal information from thieves," Brnovich said in a written statement on Friday. "I'm not sure we would have seen such a quick response and turnaround without The Republic's coverage on this important consumer issue." Skimming devices are small strips of wires that criminals can place inside the electronic guts of a fuel pump within seconds. Hidden behind the pump panels, the skimmers are invisible to the public. Skimming devices record customers' debit and credit card numbers, which fraudsters can retrieve via Bluetooth transmission and print on new cards to rack up fraudulent charges. An example of a skimming device that criminals install inside an Arizona fuel pump to steal customers' card numbers. (Photo: Arizona Division of Weights and Measures) The scam costs Arizona consumers, banks and credit-card companies at least $9 million a year, but probably more, based on rough state estimates. In the worst cases, a criminal can wipe out someone's bank account using a stolen debit number. A 13-person Cuban crime ring was busted in Phoenix last month for stealing card numbers and buying hundreds of gallons of fuel to sell on the black market, according to court records. In Colorado, a criminal syndicate spent $2.5 million per week using card numbers stolen from gas pumps, police said. Participants evaded gas-station safety measures by replacing broken security seals on pumps, officials said. Skimming is a coordinated and sophisticated crime, Arizona Attorney General's Office spokesman Ryan Anderson said. NEWSLETTERS Get the Business Morning News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The latest local and national business headlines, delivered in the morning. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Business Morning News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters "It's not some one-off dope fiend or petty criminal looking to make a quick buck," he said. Gas customers still being targeted Even as Circle K's efforts pay off, card skimmers continue to proliferate in Arizona. The number of devices found nearly quadrupled at gas-station locations other than Circle K in the first months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018. Thirty-five skimmers were reported from January through April at non-Circle K locations, compared to 10 during the same months the previous year, state records showed. Many of the locations were small, independent stations, which might mean they had fewer resources or policies to protect customers. Men installing a credit card skimmer at a gas pump in 2017 were caught in the act by a security camera, according to Longboat Key Police Department in Florida. (Photo: Courtesy of Longboat Key Police Department) Customers can help by reporting to gas-station employees and police when a gas pump looks suspicious or when you suspect your credit or debit card was compromised at a specific location so that investigators have more leads, Anderson said. People can also report concerns to the Arizona Weights and Measures Services Division. "It's important if an individual is a victim that they not just report it to their credit-card company, but they report it to the gas station or report it to law enforcement," Anderson said. Circle K said its focus on security will remain. "We fully understand the seriousness of secure credit card transactions to our millions of visitors and will continue to work proactively to make our customers' lives a little easier every day," Circle K Vice President of Operations Grand Canyon Tim Tourek said in a written statement. How to protect yourself from card skimmers Pay cash inside. If you must pay at the pump, use a credit card. Even better use a low-limit card reserved for fuel purchases. If you must pay at the pump, use a credit card. Even better use a low-limit card reserved for fuel purchases. If you must use a debit card, run it as credit to prevent having to enter your PIN. Some skimmers have the ability to capture PIN numbers, which could allow a criminal to withdraw funds from your bank account. to prevent having to enter your PIN. Some skimmers have the ability to capture PIN numbers, which could allow a criminal to withdraw funds from your bank account. Use dispensers with chip-card readers , which are safer. , which are safer. Wiggle the card reader slot before inserting your card. If any part of the card reader comes loose, move to a different pump. You can do this at ATMs too. before inserting your card. If any part of the card reader comes loose, move to a different pump. You can do this at ATMs too. Be suspicious of loose or damaged equipment , a slightly open gas pump door or pry marks, which can be signs of forced entry. , a slightly open gas pump door or pry marks, which can be signs of forced entry. Move on if a security seal on a pump is broken or looks different from tags at other pumps. or looks different from tags at other pumps. Use dispensers that are in well-lit areas in view of store employees. Avoid pumps close to the street or far from employees. Avoid pumps close to the street or far from employees. Watch out for large vehicles that park in front of fuel dispensers for long periods. Criminals have been known to use large vehicles to block the view of the dispenser from site employees while they install a skimming device. Criminals have been known to use large vehicles to block the view of the dispenser from site employees while they install a skimming device. Ask site employees about security measures. Keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements. If you see unfamiliar charges, contact the bank and call your police department's non-emergency number. If you see unfamiliar charges, contact the bank and call your police department's non-emergency number. Check the Arizona Attorney General's website for a map of locations where card skimmers have been found. for a map of locations where card skimmers have been found. Trust your instincts. If something does not seem right, pay inside, use a different dispenser or go to a different gas station. If something does not seem right, pay inside, use a different dispenser or go to a different gas station. Report your concerns to station employees, your police department's non-emergency number and the Arizona Division of Weights and Measures. The Arizona Republic/azcentral.com and Call For Action can investigate. We're #HeretoHelpAZ. Since the partnership began in 2019, Call for Action has saved consumers more than $80,000. Fill out this online form, text HereToHelpAZ to 51555, or call 602-444-2255 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday through Friday to talk to a Call for Action volunteer. Volunteer with Call For Action To become a Call For Action volunteer, email [email protected] or call 602-444-2255 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. Consumer reporter Rebekah L. Sanders investigates issues of fraud and abuse involving businesses, health-care entities and government agencies. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter at @RebekahLSanders. Support local journalism.Subscribe to azcentral.com today. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2019/05/13/circle-k-makes-changes-protect-gas-customers-after-card-skimmer-scare/1135505001/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2019/05/13/circle-k-makes-changes-protect-gas-customers-after-card-skimmer-scare/1135505001/ |
Could lockers replace the airplane galley and improve service? | (CNN) Forget New York or Dubai . Some of the world's most expensive and crowded real estate is inside a commercial aircraft. The claustrophobia of being on a plane can be hard to manage when there are so many pain points along the way: You're hungry but there's no meal service on this flight. You're cold but can't flag down a flight attendant to bring you a blanket. You need to use the bathroom but there's a long line. Bernadette Berger, associate creative director at the Seattle-based agency Teague, had an idea to solve some of those problems -- by transforming a traditionally overlooked part of the cabin. "Galleys are one of the most constrained and complex places for us to design," she tells CNN Travel "It's not only the kitchen, it's the office, welcoming entryway, it's the sleeping quarters, the branding space, the work space... all of that, all at once, in one tiny place. "It's a huge point of tension for passengers and their experience and with the crew trying to provide service as fast as possible." TEAGUE Inspired by Amazon package pickup lockers and Japanese vending machines, Berger began to envision a redesigned galley where on-board lockers could hold everything from earbuds to meals. Bots on a plane The first objective was separating the area where food is stored and the area where food is warmed and readied to serve. This can be treacherous for flight attendants, some of whom have been burned by hot packaging or fallen over while trying to reach something stored high in the galley. Splitting up the process also frees up valuable galley space. As Berger explains in her brief , "The storing and warming of food will be automated with robotic systems. The condensed packaging of ready-made food can be sorted and stored all in the lower lobe. Once a meal is ordered by a passenger, robotic arms can locate and transport the meal to the prep area for warming. The robotic arms will then transport the warmed meal to the elevator and the waiting flight attendant." CNN's Richard Quest boards the airplane as he takes viewers along on Singapore Airlines' grueling but convenient 19-hour flight from Changi Airport to Newark, New Jersey. Lockers full of items for purchase will already be on board, and customers can order and pay via an app on their phones. From there, travelers will get a QR code that they can scan to open the locker and pull out the item inside. Sure, but it's all still very hypothetical -- Berger's design isn't even a prototype yet. Still, it calls attention to one of the most challenging spaces on a plane. While much fuss is made about the size of airplane seats and leg room for passengers, galleys are often ignored by travelers. Berger's concept was designed by request for Aircraft Interiors International, an industry publication, and shows that there are ways to optimize planes for efficiency having to squeeze people into tinier seats or charge them to print a boarding pass. But it's critical to note that Berger's proposal doesn't mean flight attendants will all be made obsolete. In fact, it's quite the opposite: Automating a major component of the job will free them up to do more meaningful tasks. Berger and her team have worked with several flight attendants to talk about what would best help juggle many tasks at 40,000 feet. "I think we have demanded that flight attendants be responsible for more and more, with less and less support," she says. "If we can reduce their load ... they can focus on the hand delivery and talking with and helping passengers." She adds: "It's our job to not only be the advocate for the passenger but for the flight attendant." A mall in the sky Beyond the expected in-flight offerings like snacks and pillows, Berger thinks the lockers have the capability to majorly change the way people consume on board. She notes that airports are filled with luxury stores to tempt the traveler into buying one last souvenir and pricey restaurants that take advantage of opportunity cost. The inside of metal tube in the sky, where you can't just get up and walk somewhere else to compare prices. In addition to expanding the kind of products available to claim on board -- she suggests kids' toys and games as one possibility, plus duty-free items like alcohol and perfume -- Berger hopes to connect all aspects of travel seamlessly off the plane and on. For example, travelers could not just ask for a kosher or vegetarian meal when booking their ticket -- instead, they could order from a favorite local restaurant or select a meal from a service like UberEats, to be delivered to the plane ahead of take-off. | https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/airplane-galley-lockers/index.html |
Should she tell her son, who plans to have children soon, that his father may be a pedophile? | Dear Carolyn Adapted from a recent online discussion. DEAR CAROLYN: My son is getting married soon to a lovely woman. Since they are in their mid-30s they have told me they would like to start a family right away. My ex is bipolar, which my children know. However, they are not aware that he is a sex addict. I happen to know he makes obscene phone calls. He acts very flirty around teenage girls. Likes to wrestle, tickle and pick them up. While I do not know for a fact that he engages in child pornography, I believe he has that potential. Ex DEAR EX: Tell your son what you know, whatever you know, now, just facts, because he deserves this knowledge, whether he has a little girl, a little boy, or no children at all. Tell your other children, too. You clearly mean well, but you are protecting the wrong entity here. Re: What do I tell: As a former child-sex-crimes prosecutor, I would like to address a common misperception, which seems to be shared by Ex, that pedophiles only target young girls. In fact, child sexual predators target boys as well, depending on their personal preferences. So the advice that she should share what she knows with her children regardless of whether her future grandchildren are boys or girls is spot on. Also, I dont know what level of detailed information she has regarding her suspicions that her ex may be collecting child pornography which is a state and federal crime but if she does have information, I would encourage her to contact her local FBI office to report what she knows. Anonymous Carolyn: I have been sitting on this for 25 years. It will just crush my son to find this out. I am afraid he will tell his father why he doesnt want him alone with a child, and then I will be in hot water with everybody. Ex again DEAR EX AGAIN: You didnt heat the water, he did. Do what you must. Please. If you dont feel strong enough to take important actions to protect the people you love and possibly society, then please talk to a therapist as soon as possible. Keeping it to yourself is not a defensible option. Re: Ex: I am afraid he will tell his father why he doesnt want him alone with a child and then I will be in hot water with everybody. Thats exactly the sort of manipulative fear that child sex abusers are counting on, in order to continue their abuse unchecked. Anonymous 2 Re: What do I tell: Ex can report suspected child pornography use to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at report.cybertip.org. Anonymous 3 DEAR ANONYMOUS 3: Thank you all for the valuable contributions. | https://www.seattletimes.com/life/should-she-tell-her-son-who-plans-to-have-children-soon-that-his-father-may-be-a-pedophile/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all |
Are financial advisors prepared for cyber attacks? | Two years ago, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conducted a cybersecurity simulation that mimicked a real attack. The test included the participation of more than 50 financial firms, as well as government regulators and SIFMA itself. Now, the industry trade group is preparing for the latest iteration of its test dubbed Quantum Dawn this fall. PN_Photo | Getty Images "We create the spooky scenario," said Tom Price, managing director of operations, technology and business continuity at SIFMA. "It's data destruction. It's fake news coming from the newswires. It's bad data in the processors." The participants include more than 1,000 individuals across different areas of financial services, including wealth management, in a range of roles including CEO, CFO, chief security officers, crisis management and others. Having those answers is key for financial advisors and the firms they work in, as regulators turned up the pressure on them to have these plans in place. The SEC has released cybersecurity guidance for the registered investment advisers it oversees. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which regulates broker-dealers, has also issued its own guidance that includes information for small firms with 150 or less registered representatives. The message: No firm is too small to have cybersecurity protections in place. "The financial services industry is essential to the economy We have to be right all the time," Price said. "The bad guys only have to be right once." Risk to firms For the average financial advisor and their firm, even what may seem like a small oversight can turn into a big snafu. Brian Edelman, CEO of FCI, a cybersecurity company, said he saw that first hand when one financial services company hired a shredding company to get rid of private documents. But trouble struck when the documents were stolen and the clients' stolen information turned up on the dark web. The theft is an opportunity for financial advisors and their firms, according to Edelman. "Incident response, done the right way, builds loyalty with clients," Edelman said. Having specific plans in place ahead of time can help minimize the impact an unfortunate event has on your business. Sign Up for Our Newsletter Your Wealth Weekly advice on managing your money SIGN UP NOW Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about about our products and services. By signing up for newsletters, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. | https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/are-financial-advisors-prepared-for-cyber-attacks.html |
How will Labours heartlands greet its Brexit tightrope act? | Jude Kirton-Darling was looking forward to spending a bit of time with her toddler Natan this spring. Although the north-east Labour MEP remained disappointed about the EU referendum result, she thought it would be nice to be a full-time mum for a while. But Theresa Mays failure to get a deal through parliament means Kirton-Darling finds herself on the stump again instead of going to playgroup. If you had told me three years ago, I wouldnt have believed you, she said. As MEPs we see the Brexit process very, very closely from both sides and I have never seen such incompetent negotiations. Back in 2014, when she was first elected to the European parliament, Labour took two of the three seats available in the north-east, winning 221,988 votes. Ukip got the third, with 177,660. The Conservatives missed out, getting 107,733 votes in the region. Nationally, Ukip sent the most MEPs to Europe (24), followed by Labour (20), the Tories (19), Greens (three) and Lib Dems (one), with gains for regional parties in the devolved nations. Five years on, the landscape has changed entirely for Labour. It has a new leader in Jeremy Corbyn, it has lost two general elections and found itself in the awkward position of trying to please a set of core voters who want diametrically opposite things. Balancing on this tightrope is particularly fraught in areas once classed as Labour heartlands that voted strongly to leave, such as Sunderland and Stoke-on-Trent, represented by MPs who believe Brexit will leave their constituents worse off. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sunderland voted 61.3% to leave the EU. The Labour MEP Jude Kirton-Darling was not expecting to be on the stump again this year. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian Writing in the Guardian last week, Bridget Phillipson, the Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South since 2010, went against official Labour policy which advocates a general election over a second referendum and said another vote on Europe was the only way forward. It is unforgivable to mislead the working people who our party was founded to represent, she wrote. I will not tell my constituents that leaving the EU will make them more prosperous, more equal or more free. Sunderland, which has been represented exclusively by Labour MPs for 55 years, voted by 61.3% to leave the EU. Polling from Hope Not Hate and Best for Britain last November suggested two out of Sunderlands three constituencies would now very narrowly back remain, but that was before Nigel Farage put the cat among the pigeons and announced his return to frontline politics. A ComRes poll on 9 May suggested it would be a two-horse race nationally between Labour and Farages Brexit party, with a projected 27% and 26% vote share respectively, followed by the Conservatives on 14%, the Lib Dems on 11%, Change UK on 8% and Ukip with 3%. In the local elections this month, Ukip took its first three Sunderland council seats from Labour. One was in Redhill, a deprived ward north of the city centre where almost half of households have at least one person with a limiting long-term illness, and where and a two-bed former council house costs less than 50,000. Getting his dinner at the chip shop on the Witherwack estate, George Tighe, 58, said he would be voting for Farage. What everybody voted for was they wanted less immigration. No. We voted not to stop it but control it, to stop people coming willy-nilly We just want our traditions back. In the last census, in 2011, 98% of Redhill residents said they were born in Britain, but Tighe said he was worried the area would become like London or Birmingham, full of foreign people. The next customer, Brian Heskett, a retired gravedigger, said hed be sticking with Labour. I voted to stay in Europe, mostly so that we could continue transporting goods across the border, he said. Labour keeps people in work. In Stoke, which voted 69% to leave, there was little to offer hope to Labour. Huddled under an awning across from the citys library, friends Prasad Gini, 43, and Dave Pegg, 61, were in agreement: the European elections would be another opportunity to signal to national politicians that they felt betrayed on Brexit. Both leavers and traditional Labour voters, they said they would be voting for the Brexit party. Britain needs to paddle its own canoe and thats why so many people voted for Brexit, said Pegg, a former security guard and taxi driver. Yet it looks like its not going to be delivered. So, like in the local elections, Labour will do badly again because they have been involved in this betrayal. Like Farage has been saying, this country is going to be in one hell of a mess if we dont leave, so this is our chance to give some power to the people who will make Brexit happen. Gini nodded. Politics is all about fiddling the system. They havent done what they said they would on Brexit but we need to leave so people will vote for other parties so that it happens. In March, Labour launched its local election campaign in Stoke, having lost the council to a Tory-City Independents coalition in 2015. But the manoeuvre backfired and the party ended up losing five seats, with the Tories gaining eight. The Stoke North MP, Ruth Smeeth, described it as devastating, saying the party had suffered as a result of the impasse over Brexit. Privately, Labour knows it will struggle even to repeat the result of the last European elections in the West Midlands, when Labour and the Tories came out with two MEPs apiece and Ukip three. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matthew McNamee and Luke Harrison in Witherwack will probably vote Labour but Harrison would back the Greens if they had more of a chance. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian Doreen Tomkinson, 78, said many people had spoiled their ballot papers at the local elections, crossing out names of party candidates and scribbling in the word Brexit. There is a lot of anger about the mess that we are in. Most people I know just want the government to stick to leaving the EU so, yes, many will vote for the Brexit party, she said. Back in the north-east, Kirton-Darling said that after knocking on thousands of doors her strong guess was that the majority of Labour voters in the region voted to remain in 2016 and more would do so in a second referendum. Whether they will turn out for her on 23 May is not clear, but she wants to steer them away from Brexit, talking about workers rights rather than the withdrawal agreement: This isnt a referendum. What happens with Brexit will be decided in Westminster by our MPs. Waiting for a bus in Witherwack, Matthew McNamee, 24, and Luke Harrison, 20, said they would probably vote Labour, though Harrison said hed plump for the Greens if they had a better chance in the region. In the local elections the Green party won its first ever Sunderland seat, ousting Labour in Washington South, but it would need a miracle (and about 150,000 more votes than last time) to send an MEP from the north-east to Brussels. | https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/13/how-will-labours-heartlands-greet-its-brexit-tightrope-act |
Is Sen. Martha McSally doing enough to curb sexual assault in the military? | Opinion: Critics say the Arizona senator should press for larger reforms, not work within the traditional chain of command. U.S. Sen. Martha McSally speaks to the press before a town hall with commanders and a meet with junior airmen at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale on March 21, 2019. (Photo: Cheryl Evans/The Republic) Ignore the haters, Sen. Martha McSally. You just keep being you. McSally has been criticized for the changes shes backing to curb sexual assault in the military. Some say she isnt pressing for big enough reforms, particularly since she was raped by a superior while in the Air Force. McSallys testimony took a lot of people by surprise. She was a trailblazer the first female pilot to fly in combat who opened a lot of doors for women in the military. Yet, as the Arizona Republican revealed during an emotional congressional hearing in March, she didnt initially report the assault. And when she did, she said it felt like the system was raping me all over again. McSally is hardly alone. The Pentagon estimates about 20,500 service men and women experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2018 a sharp increase from 2016, the last time the anonymous survey was conducted. Sexual assault whether in the military or in communities across our country is abhorrent and intolerable. The numbers released today confirm that that the time is now to impart lasting change within the military and that it is more urgent than ever. https://t.co/aVlVHaJ4TE Martha McSally (@SenMcSallyAZ) May 2, 2019 But only about 30 percent of victims reported sexual assault to their superiors. Too many of our nations finest still arent coming forward for fear that it will ruin their career, or because they dont think their superiors will take their case seriously. McSally wants change to come from within McSally asked military brass to study ideas to improve investigations and bolster accountability, but she insisted the task force not shake up the current command structure, which leaves ultimate authority of deciding how to handle allegations to commanders. McSally has resisted a major shakeup because she wants commanders to drive this change. The task force recommended additional training for commanders and more resources to better collect evidence. It also suggested making sexual harassment a crime in the military code a step above the civil violation that civilian courts treat it as. CLOSE U.S. Sen. Martha McSally addresses media at Luke A.F.B about her goal to eliminate sexual assault and sexual harassment in the U. S. Armed Forces. Arizona Republic McSally did not return a request for comment. But she has said she intends to introduce legislation soon that would codify parts of the report and offer additional ideas to help victims, and ensure investigations are not just timely but more thorough. The need for timely investigations was repeated loud and clear when she visited Arizona military bases to gather their feedback, McSally's staff noted in a press release. Small but meaningful may be our best hope But critics say that keeping commanders involved dissuades too many service members from reporting an assault. They would rather an independent prosecutor handle serious criminal cases without commanders involvement, as proposed by Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. (The bill would still give commanders full discretion over whether to prosecute serious but uniquely military crimes.) Ill admit: I like Gillibrands approach better, in theory. But McSally is right that lasting change can only come from within. Until everyone from officer to commander believes that sexual assault and harassment is unacceptable, even the best independent system will fail its victims. (Also note that we civilians do a lousy job of reporting and convicting these crimes.) McSally is an incrementalist, stemming back to her tenure in the U.S. House. She has always been about whats most feasible and what has realistic support to pass. NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Its unfair to insinuate that because McSally has experienced sexual assault in the military firsthand, she is somehow betraying what happened to her by working within the system, instead of blowing it up. This isnt a new issue. Many have tried to root out the scourge over the years. And many have failed. If McSally can make some small but meaningful progress by working with the military, not against it, she deserves our thanks and praise. Reach Allhands at [email protected]. On Twitter: @joannaallhands. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands/2019/05/13/martha-mcsally-doing-plenty-curb-sexual-assault-military/1167725001/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands/2019/05/13/martha-mcsally-doing-plenty-curb-sexual-assault-military/1167725001/ |
What should we do about email? | Their messages were short, specific, and direct. No one apologized for anything. This was an email chain without any paragraphs, with only one exclamation mark, following the terminal Thanks (! ), and without any emotions. My husband, who works in the relatively stiff realm of finance, recently forwarded me an email chain between himself and some colleagues. Its not often you get to wander into a magical reality so completely different than your own, and even less often that the experience comes in the form of an email you originally mistook for something sent directly, intentionally, to you. As a person in a creative field dominated by women and as an overshare-y, feelings-y person, who communicates with and on a probably too-high frequency my emails, are a meadow of adjectives and exclamations, with bowers of all-caps, and the occasional emoji topiary. While its not true that women do things like this and men do things like this, the vastly different socialization that men and women are subjected to, and the vastly different perceptions and expectations that follow, mean that women tend to email with friendly, nurturing, conciliatory tones while men are mostly free to write Good. Thanks. Reading my husbands work emails, I was reminded of participating in a 2017 experiment conducted by Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopoulos, who had announced on Twitter that she was going to send boss-style emails: short; quick; definitive. When she responded to my email with a one-word response, I got a contact high. In March, Victoria Turk wrote in Broadly that while women are constantly being told that theyre emailing wrong, with all of our qualifying statements with I think and I feel and so-called permission words like just, the real issue is that women are being punished for doing what were expected to do, and the superstructure of that expectation isnt being dismantled, or even addressed. Turk writes that the email problem is only a problem because we associate professionalism with men. Email is, like female pop stars and viral tweets, disproportionately looked to as an indication of where we are as a culture. Everyone uses email, for whatever cant be texted and DMed, and everyone seems to hate it. The historical organizational effort toward inbox zero has changed as people accrue hundreds or thousands of unread emails . Now, the thing is inbox infinity, just letting it all happen, with no intention of reading whats there. Meanwhile, inboxes keep filling up, as we continue emailing each other, all the time, and every day, without doing whatever it would take to solve or manage the problem. And, it might be unsolvable: offices with Slack still use email; many workplaces encourage people to talk, IRL, about whatever, but an email confirms the details ; the discouraging fact that email is actually, honestly, a near-perfect tool, if only for work, when its used the right way. To this end, Ive done two things: taken email off my smartphone, so Im only doing email on my laptop (reserving my desktop computer for work, which I have to remind myself, email is not), and stopped sending follow-up emails, especially after reading what Wharton professor and author Adam Grant wrote in the New York Times, You would never snub a colleague trying to strike up a conversation. Yet when you ignore a personal email, thats exactly what youve done: digital snubbery. Allowing for the instances when email is genuinely missed (Ive left some essential emails in Drafts; my own email newsletter sometimes goes to my spam), and when a return email is genuinely important, I just stopped making someone elses inbox my problem. What is clear, about email, is that it can be, and has to be, whatever we need. Until theres another solution, Ill be emailing not like a man or a woman or a boss, or for any purpose other than, just, me. Kate Carraway is a Toronto-based writer and a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @KateCarraway | https://www.thestar.com/life/relationships/advice/2019/05/13/what-should-we-do-about-email.html |
Will bad blood bubble when Warriors and Blazers meet? | The Golden State Warriors and the Portland TrailBlazers, who will meet Tuesday in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, have played only once in 2019 and that was in February. Were about to find out, because the last time these teams met February 23 in Portland things got heated. The teams split their four games this season, but that was before the Blazers lost Jusuf Nurkic, their 7-foot, 280-pound center, to a season-ending injury (broken leg, March 25). Nurkic averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds in the four games against the Warriors. Against the odds, the Blazers kept winning. Enes Kanter helped to fill the hole left by Nurkic, averaging 13 points and eight rebounds. Interesting to note that Kanter was acquired by the Blazers on Feb. 23, the day they last played the Warriors. Here is what has happened up to now: Nov. 23, at Oakland: Warriors 125, Trail Blazers 97 The Warriors ended a four-game losing streak, their longest in almost five years, and they did it without Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, both of whom were injured. Kevin Durant had 32 points and Klay Thompson had 31. Dec. 27, at Oakland: Trail Blazers 110, Warriors 109, OT rel Damon Lillard hit a 3-pointer with 6.3 seconds left in overtime. Kevin Durant had a triple-double (26-11-10) and a chance to win it, but his 13-foot jumper hit the front of the rim. It was the second straight home loss for the Warriors, coming on the heels of a 26-point Christmas Day beatdown from the Lakers. Dec. 29, at Portland: Warriors 115, Trail Blazers 105 Klay Thompson punctuated the end of a long shooting slump by literally talking to his right hand after making a three-pointer. Thompson finished with 32 points. Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry both had 25 to offset Damian Lillards 40. The Warriors played the second half without Andre Igoudala, who was ejected for throwing a ball deep, deep, deep into the stands. Who cares. The outlook is bright for both teams. Kiszla: Nuggets Game 7 loss exposes flaws to address: 1. Get 3-point shooter; 2. Find legit star to replace Paul Millsap. Kawhi Leonard hits bouncer at buzzer, Raptors beat 76ers in Game 7 WATCH: Raptors Kawhi Leonards bouncing, buzzer-beating, Game 7-winning shot over the 76ers Feb. 13, at Portland: Trail Blazers 129, Warriors 107 Tempers flared in this game. Klay Thompson beefed with Zach Collins. Draymond Green settled the score later with a flagrant foul on Collins and that ultimately led to Steve Kerrs ejection. Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry each had 32 points. Damian Lillard had 29 to lead eight Portland players in double figures. | https://www.denverpost.com/2019/05/13/warriors-blazers-western-conference-finals/ |
Who is Grace Wales Bonner, Meghans trench dress designer? | The Meghan Markle effect, the Markle Sparkle, whatever you want to call it, when Meghan Markle wears something, people pay attention (and the item almost inevitably sells out immediately). Wales Bonner by U.K.-based designer Grace Wales Bonner, the brand new mom Meghan Markle wore to introduce her and Prince Harrys newborn son, Archie, to the world. Heres everything we know about the designer of Meghans white belted baby-reveal dress. Grace Wales Bonner is a British designer born in London, England. According to a 2016 profile in The Gentlewoman, Bonner has Jamaican and English heritage. Article Continued Below Wales Bonner launched her eponymous line in 2014 after graduating from the esteemed Central Saint Martins school of fashion design as a menswear line focused on crisp tailoring. She eventually transitioned to womenswear. Aside from the fact that Wales Bonner has a new royal fan in Meghan Markle, shes most certainly one to watch in the world of fashion. In 2015, Wales Bonner was awarded Emerging Menswear Designer at the British Fashion Awards. The following year, she received the LVMH Young Designer Prize. And earlier this year, Wales Bonner was invited by Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri to collaborate with the storied brand on reinterpreting their iconic New Look silhouette for the Resort 2020 collection just prior to winning the British Fashion Council/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund. So she is currently a medium (soon-to-be-very-big) deal. No, it would appear the chic white trench-coat dress is the first Wales Bonner design that the new mom has worn, at least in public. They sure have. Wales Bonner has been quietly collecting A-list fans over the past several years, with celebrity cool kids like Grown-ish actor Luka Sabbat and Jaden Smith wearing her designs. We regret to inform you that is correct. On the bright side, a trench-inspired dress feels like a somewhat classic piece that will no doubt be popping up in more stores than ever because of the above-mentioned Markle effect. Wales Bonner is available on luxury fashion e-tailers like Ssense, Matchesfashion.com, Net-A-Porter, Barneys and Browns, among others. Jennifer Berry is the digital editor of The Kit, based in Toronto. She writes about fashion and culture. Reach her on email at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @heyjennberry Read more about: | https://www.thestar.com/life/fashion_style/2019/05/13/who-is-grace-wales-bonner-meghans-trench-dress-designer.html |
What makes dealer financing so popular with Canadian car buyers? | Open this photo in gallery About two-thirds of Canadians applied for financing at the dealership when they purchased their last new or used vehicle, according to analytic software organization FICO. SeventyFour/iStockPhoto / Getty Images When it comes to buying a car, Canadians cant get enough of the zero-per-cent loan, no-down-payment and cashback options offered by their car dealers. About two-thirds of Canadians applied for financing at the dealership when they purchased their last new or used vehicle, according to analytic software organization FICO, compared with a 49 per cent average overall by 2,000 consumers in nine countries surveyed earlier this year. The numbers show an amazing level of trust, with 58 per cent of Canadians planning on using dealership financing for their next purchase and 70 per cent considering only one lender before making a decision, the highest level among the nine countries. Story continues below advertisement The convenience of one-stop shopping and the expectation of promotions and discounts drive the trend, experts say, adding theres nothing wrong with it provided consumers are aware of their options and choose the one that best fits their situation. Consumers are very shrewd, said Denis Ducharme, president of the Motor Dealers Association of Alberta. They do a lot of shopping and if theres too big of a difference, it could cost you a deal, so it has to be set up as an option that a consumer might want. Financing has become an important component of the dealership sales process, like winter tire packages and extended warranties, both for its ability to attract buyers and more directly from fees earned through agreements with banks and other lenders, Ducharme said. Consumers can choose from manufacturers incentives such as low-interest or zero-interest loans, sign deals to access credit from major banks or choose to take cashbacks for cash sales. Leasing works in much the same way, with the consumer essentially buying the vehicle for a specific period and then either returning it or deciding to pay for the rest of the life of the car, he said. On the other hand, car buyers who decide to get a loan through their bank have the advantage of dealing with the same organization that issued their mortgage and credit cards and might be managing their retirement funds, said Brad Robertson, a senior financial planner with CIBC Investor Services. Story continues below advertisement What I would tell a client is to look at all the options and see how they relate to their overall financial plan, he said. He suggests borrowers get a loan pre-approval to make sure they have a realistic view of what they can afford before going shopping. Interest rates and monthly payment levels are important and the bank will help the customer decide on whether to go with a variable rate or lock in if rates are rising, Robertson added. A potentially disturbing trend is toward longer financing and lease terms, said Robert Karwel, a senior manager with J.D. Powers Power Information Network, which analyzes vehicle transaction data from 3,000 vehicle franchises in Canada. About half of all new vehicle financings in 2018 were for 84 months or longer and about 35 per cent of leases were for 60-month terms, he said. Both of these financial instruments, the 84- or 96-month loan or the 60-month lease contract, are designed to do one thing, he said. Story continues below advertisement Its to get your payment to a manageable level. Because in Canada, the price of the car is largely irrelevant, its the monthly payment that makes or breaks the deal. Karwel said zero or near-zero per cent interest, especially if the term is stretched to seven or eight years, allows the customer to afford the payments on an SUV or pickup that might otherwise be out of his or her price range. The danger comes when the buyer decides or is forced to replace the vehicle before the loan term ends, which could result in owing more than its worth and thus having to take on more debt. The average financing in Canada is for about 108 per cent of the sticker price, he said, to cover taxes, freight and other fees. Dealers can help arrange an even larger amount to help pay off whats left from a previous loan. With the average new vehicle price at a record $34,000, Karwel said his best advice for buyers is to make their down payment as big as possible. And keep the car until the loan is paid off. The FICO survey points to an opportunity for banks and other lenders to imitate sales practices employed by dealerships to make their products more attractive to customers through bundling, incentives and convenience, said Kevin Deveau, vice-president of FICO Canada. Story continues below advertisement I think the advantage the dealers have is they have you captive, he said. Youre in their showroom and they have some pretty attractive offers when it comes down to leasing and rates and monthly payments. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/household-finances/article-what-makes-dealer-financing-so-popular-with-canadian-car-buyers/ |
Are any of the Coalition's claims of new Labor taxes actually true? | The Liberal party is claiming this election that Labor intends to slug Australians with a swag of tax grabs. It identifies eight policies that it claims are big new taxes. Guardian Australia asked two experts which of these policies could actually be considered a new tax. Coalition claim: retiree tax Labor policy: Retirees, except pensioners, who pay no income tax will no longer receive a cash refund for fully franked dividends from their shares. No. The independent economist Stephen Koukoulas says theres no extra tax paid by anyone under the policy. Coalition claim: housing tax Labor policy: An end to negative gearing the ability to claim a tax deduction from a loss-making investment property for existing properties. The policy is grandfathered so existing investors are not impacted. No. This policy does not hike taxes, it closes loopholes, says Koukoulas. It is taking away a tax break, not imposing a new tax. Coalition claim: higher income tax Labor policy: Support the Coalitions Low and Middle Income Tax Offset, with a larger rebate for some income earners. Reverse the Coalitions policy to have those on $45,000 and $200,000 pay the same 30% marginal tax rate by 2024. Reintroduce a 47% marginal tax rate, up from 45%, on those earning more than $180,000. Debatable. Koukoulas believes the reintroduction of the higher marginal tax rate is actually a new tax. But the Grattan Institutes Danielle Wood views it an increase on existing taxes, not a new tax. Coalition claim: investment tax Labor policy: Wind back the capital tax gains concession from 50% to 25% for assets purchased after 1 January 2020. No. Koukoulas says: (Removing) tax concessions is not a new tax. Coalition claim: family business tax Labor policy: A standard minimum 30% tax rate on discretionary/family trust distributions, which are used by small businesses but also, according to Labor, by wealthy Australians and those looking to minimise their tax. Yes. As Labors own website puts it, the policy will introduce a new 30% standard minimum rate of tax for discretionary trust distributions. Koukoulas argues this could be considered a new tax, while Wood agrees on balance. Coalition claim: superannuation tax Labor policy: Changes to the treatment of superannuation contributions, including going further than the Coalitions reduction of the threshold on concessional contributions from $250,000 to $200,000. These contributions would be taxed at the normal 30% rather than 15%. No. In Woods view, this is another increase on existing taxes, rather than a new tax. Koukoulas agrees, saying that while these policies will have an effect on government revenue, changes to concessions are not strictly a new tax. Coalition claim: electricity tax Labor policy: By 2030, a target of 50% renewable energy and a 45% reduction on emissions on 2005 levels. No. Koukoulas says policies that aim to encourage polluters to change their power usage are a price signal, not a tax. A regulatory change can impact on prices but it is not a new tax. Coalition claim: car tax Labor policy: A target of 50% of new car sales being electric vehicles by 2030. No. The tax rate on cars, electric, internal combustion or hydrogen, will be unchanged by the policy, says Koukoulas, because no one buying a new car over the next decade, of any power source, will pay a different rate of tax. | https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/14/are-any-of-the-coalitions-claims-of-new-labor-taxes-actually-true |
What's next for 76ers? Is coach Brett Brown out? Will Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris stay? | CLOSE SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt details the big decisions facing the 76ers this offseason after their heartbreaking Game 7 loss. USA TODAY TORONTO The Process is dead. Long live the process. Asked where The Process is at this stage of his career, Philadelphia 76ers All-Star center Joel Embiid dejected from losing to Toronto, 92-90 in Game 7 on Sunday said, I dont give a damn about The Process. Quite the admission from Embiid, who came to embody the Sixers divisive rebuild set forth by former general manager Sam Hinkie. Regardless whether Embiid uttered his comment in the disappointment of defeat or if thats how he really feels, the Sixers have reached a critical moment in this era. Kawhi's historic buzzer-beater: Inside shot that lifted Raptors into East finals General manager Elton Brand has proven himself in his first season in the job following the Bryan Colangelo Twitter disgrace that resulted in Colangelo losing his job. Joel Embiid (21) and the Philadelphia 76ers face a critical offseason after getting knocked out of the NBA Playoffs. (Photo: Dan Hamilton, USA TODAY Sports) Brand acquired Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris in trades during the season, but the work gets more difficult, starting with what happens to Coach Brett Brown. The New York Times reported that it will be difficult for Brown to save his job if the Sixers didnt advance to the conference finals. Ownership is on record saying the Sixers have the talent to beat anyone in the East, and Brand told reporters in April the goal was to get deeper in the playoffs than last season, which was a second-round exit, the same as this season. Basing his future on an incredible buzzer-beater by Kawhi Leonard in a Game 7 seems short-sighted. Brown had his playoff starting five Embiid, Ben Simmons, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris and J.J. Redick for 10 regular-season games. He had to coach three iterations of 2018-19 Sixers: the team he had at a training camp, the team he had after the Sixers traded for Butler in November and the team he had when the Sixers acquired Harris from the Los Angeles Clippers in February. A case can be made for bringing Brown back. But if the Sixers dont think he is the coach to get them to the next level, thats their prerogative. But it shouldnt be based on the outcome of a single Game 7 result on the road. If Philadelphia makes a coaching change, Brand better have his replacement ready to go like Toronto president Masai Ujiri replaced Dwane Casey with Nick Nurse following last seasons playoff exit. If not, this has the potential to backfire. The Sixers need to resolve that then focus on their roster. Jimmy Butler likely will become a free agent and Tobias Harris will be a free agent. Giving up what they did in trades to get those two indicates they are willing spend to keep both. #Sixers center @JoelEmbiid on @JimmyButler and @tobias31 possibly re-signing with the team in free agency: "I want them here. Theyve done such a great job, and the best thing about them is they're great guys on and off the court. #NBA Keith Pompey (@PompeyOnSixers) May 13, 2019 A third starter, J.J. Redick, is also a free agent along with Mike Scott, Amir Johnson, Greg Monroe and Boban Marjanovic. Because Philadelphia has several young players on team friendly contracts, the Sixers have money to spend in free agency. In the draft, the Sixers have one first-round pick and three second-round picks. While the draft is important, its far less so compared to the coaching situation and free agency. It's a process, that's for sure, and it's in Elton Brand's hands. | https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/columnist/jeff-zillgitt/2019/05/13/sixers-offseason-questions-brett-brown-jimmy-butler-tobias-harris-elton-brand/1188930001/ |
How Does Donald Trump Keep Getting Away With It? | Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Every day, President Donald Trump or his minions say something stupid, wrong, or demonstrably false. Most days, these people threaten to take illegal actions. Some days, they make good on their lawless threats. 1 Ad Policy And yet, they are still in power. Trump, his family, and his sycophants get help from the Russians (whether willfully or not) to influence our elections; obstruct justice; engage in corrupt practices; violate constitutional principles; intimidate witnesses; ignore Congress; and lie as if Falsehood was their native tongue. And yet they seem to get away with all of it. 2 Nobody stops them. Yes, the Republican Party has shown itself to be a collection of craven hypocrites, so utterly debased from wallowing around in Trumps filth that they cant even remember what decency smells like. But if youve been paying attention, Republicans have always been like this. Just ask Merrick Garland. Our system shouldnt be so weak that the perverse noise makings of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham can scuttle the very concept of the rule of law. 3 No, Trump gets away with it not just because the Republican Party and its white-supremacist base wills it so. Trump gets away with it because the legal system insists on treating him as a normal president of the United States. 4 Presidents arent normal, of course. Their office is imbued with awesome powers. This president uses those powers in illegal, corrupt ways. Weve had presidents whove tested the limits of executive authority before, but this guy acts like the limits are fake news. Addressing the abnormal use of incredible powers with normal processes is like trying to sop up a flood with a mop. 5 The clearest casualty of this oxymoronic thinking was Robert Mueller. When confronted with clear evidence that President Trump used every tool in his arsenal to try to obstruct justice, Mueller decided that the normal thing to do was: to not charge or recommend charges against the president, and instead submit his report to Trumps handpicked guard dog masquerading as an attorney general. These people are criminalshow many times do we have to be shocked by their willingness to take lawless action?6 Its not just Mueller, or former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, or current FBI director Christopher Wray who hide behind the book instead of using the book to inflict some blunt-force justice upon this administration. Judges and justices have also insisted that Trump be treated as a normal (yet still presidential) litigant and apply normal standards to his outrageous behavior. 7 Current Issue View our current issue Dont get me wrong: Most courts have ultimately been resistant to the idiotic legal claims Trump throws at them. His administration has been unsuccessful in court on a historic scale. His attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was stopped cold. Judges have desperately tried to end his child-separation policy. Despite Trump and McConnells relentless efforts to stack the courts with Trump-friendly judges, the courts have held up pretty well so far. 8 But, man, are they slow. Trump attacks the rule of law at Twitter speed; courts rebuff him on a preindustrial timescale. Its like trying to swat a maniacal wasp with a musket ball. 9 The nature of the legal process itself helps Trump delay reckonings even when he has no case. The law is the ultimate example of both sidesism; it prides itself in putting even dumb and ridiculous arguments on equal footing with factual and rational analysis. Its not enough to know something to be true; the law makes you prove it. It gives the other side every opportunity to argue their fanciful points. Its the proverbial worst system, except for all the others. 10 In the same way a cancer takes advantage of the cells own reproductive machinery to infect the system, Trump is using the courts respect for the rule of law to destroy the rule of law. No. No. No. Trump should lose all of these legal battles, but our court system will let him take all the time he needs to make his facially stupid arguments. And then let him appeal in search of other judges who owe their position to his benevolence. 12 When the Supreme Court eventually gets around to ruling Congress is still a thing (assuming that Chief Justice John Roberts isnt fully comfortable with American monarchy), some institutionalist will crow, The system worked! Trump, meanwhile, will have committed more crimes by then. Hes running a chop shop where he reaps the profits from your car before you even realize it was stolen. 13 It doesnt have to be this way. Justice doesnt move swiftly, but it can when it perceives a unique threat to justice itself. For instance, the Richard Nixon administration sued to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 14, 1971. The Supreme Court lifted the injunction on June 30. Thats justice moving at tachyon speed. The subpoena came down in April. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to hand them over by the end of July. Nixon resigned and continued to fight for his tapes as a private citizen, where he was afforded all of the delay a normal citizen is entitled to. See, if we treat Trump like a normal criminal president, we can hold him accountable. 14 There are signs that some judges get that Trump is a unique threat. The Trump Organization has sued to prevent its accounting firm, Mazars USA, from complying with a congressional subpoena for some of Trumps financial information. In an aggressive order, Judge Amit Mehta has decided to hear the case in an expedited fashion and make a ruling on the substance of the Trump Organizations claim instead of first allowing it to engage in a lot of procedural delay. 15 More from Mystal Robert Mueller Obstructed His Own Investigation As Much as Donald Trump Elie Mystal The Time Has Come for Democrats to Impeach Brett Kavanaugh Elie Mystal A Louisiana Court Is Trying to Silence Black Lives Matters DeRay Mckesson Elie Mystal Every judge should be acting like this. Every Trump case should be on a fast track. Hell win some and hell lose some, but the sheer volume of unprecedented actions from this administration demands a unique response from the courts. 16 But we know that law enforcement and the courts generally wont treat Trump as unique, and I fear that we, the people of the United States, are the ultimate problem. As I said to my wife on election night 2016: If I make it through four years of this mother[jumper] without getting arrested, I didnt try hard enough. Well, its been three, and here I still sit behind this useless keyboard, without being so much as fingerprinted. 18 Everybody wants to see the un-redacted Mueller report, but nobody is outside of Bill Barrs house right now demanding that he release it. Chief Justice John Roberts could be sitting right next to you as you read this, and most of you wouldnt notice him, and those that do wouldnt scream, I cant believe you voted for the Muslim ban, you accomplice to bigotry! right in his face. Because we let him. | https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-threat-to-democracy/ |
Will China pull the trigger and dump U.S. Treasuries? | A Chinese newspaper with ties to Beijing suggests China is studying whether to sell down its holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds. Market analysts think China is unlikely to make a move that would harm its own cash reserves, though they don't dismiss the threat entirely Dumping Treasuries would likely raise borrowing costs for U.S. consumers and businesses, but it would also hurt the value of China's own Treasury assets, which top $1 trillion. A deepening trade war between the U.S. and China is reviving questions about what other steps Beijing could take beyond hiking tariffs on American agricultural, electronic and other goods. One option, according to a Chinese newspaper with close ties to the Chinese government: Dump U.S. Treasuries. Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-affiliated Global Times, purportedly said in a tweet Monday that Chinese scholars are discussing how such a measure could be implemented without harming the Chinese economy. In theory, that would push Treasury prices lower and send yields higher. U.S. interest rates would rise, increasing costs for American consumers on things like mortgages and auto loans and for businesses seeking to raise capital. Yet while there have long been concerns that China could one day unload part of its more than $1 trillion in U.S. government bonds, which comes to about 5 percent of total outstanding U.S. debt, experts say such a policy is unlikely -- at least in the short term. Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, called the concerns overblown, saying that China dumping U.S. bonds "would be as detrimental to them as anybody else," he said. That's because in pushing down the price of Treasuries, China would be hurting the value of its own U.S. bond holdings. China retaliates against Trump trade tariffs Should China -- which flip-flops with Japan as the second-largest holder of U.S. debt -- start dumping Treasuries, it also would destabilize the global stock market, said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities Corp. Other Treasury holders would likely follow suit as U.S. debt prices slid. Like the Federal Reserve, China has already lessened its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, and could take a longer-term approach to continuing to do so, trimming down over a five-year time frame, for instance, said Hogan. But if China opted to dump its U.S. Treasury holdings, say between now and the end of the year, then the market likely "collapses a bit," Hogan said. In short, self-interest alone would likely deter China from making such a dramatic move, Hogan told CBS MoneyWatch. "When they start to sell U.S. Treasuries in the open marketplace, they are going to hold a lot more than they can sell before they knock prices down, and they don't want to hurt their cash reserves." It would be "a bold and aggressive one" by China, yet it would be akin to the Beijing government punching itself in the face, Hogan added. The price of 10-year Treasuries rose Monday, pushing the yield down 2.40% from 2.45%, as investors sought safer assets. By contrast, U.S. and global stocks were pummeled, with the S&P 500 and Dow each falling more than 2 percent on the day and the Nasdaq sliding more than 3 percent. China dumping U.S. debt "would probably roil and upset equity markets globally, and ironically increase demand for save-haven assets," said Dan Heckman, national investment consultant at U.S. Wealth Management. That's because such a move would "point to a growing concerns that the trade war is escalating, which is not healthy for global growth ad business activity." J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, said the report that China may be looking to dump Treasuries could simply be part of the negotiations tactics as Beijing and Washington continue to jockey over trade. Another market analyst concurred, but said any signals from Beijing should be taken seriously. "I believe this is a classic 'throw the spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks' ploy," said Kim Catechis, head of global emerging markets at Martin Currie. And, while Catechis is not convinced that Beijing intends to sell its stock of Treasuries, he does believe the threat will "resonate and stir up the White House." The Trump administration should not view the possible scenario as an empty threat given that China, as an authoritarian state, is less beholden to domestic politics than the U.S., Catechis said. Still, Heckman said if China did decide to start selling U.S. Treasuries, it would need to reallocate that money somewhere else, and the options are near zero. "Germany or Japan are the next safe havens, and if they go into those bond markets, they are looking at negative returns, depending on where they invest in the yield curve." | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-china-tariff-what-would-happen-is-china-dumps-u-s-treasuries/ |
Who loses out in the US-China trade war? | Image copyright EPA Image caption US President Donald Trump with China's top trade official, Vice Premier Liu He The US-China trade war has escalated in recent days, with both countries announcing new tariffs on each other's goods. US President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that China will pay these taxes, even though his economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, on Sunday admitted that US firms pay the tariffs on any goods brought in from China. US importers, not Chinese firms, pay the tariffs in the form of a taxes to the US government, confirms Christophe Bondy, a lawyer at Cooley LLP. Mr Bondy, who was senior counsel to the Canadian government during the Canada-EU free trade agreement negotiations, says it is likely that these additional costs are then simply passed on to US consumers in the form of higher prices. "They [the tariffs] have a strongly disruptive effect on supply chains," he said. China remains America's top trading partner, with exports rising 7% last year. However, trade flows to the US slipped 9% in the first quarter of 2019, suggesting the trade war is starting to bite. Despite this, Dr Meredith Crowley, a trade expert at the University of Cambridge, says there is no evidence that Chinese firms have cut their prices in a bid to keep US firms buying. "Some exporters of highly substitutable goods have just dropped out of the market as US firms have started importing from elsewhere. Their margins are too thin and tariffs are clearly hurting them. "I suspect those selling highly differentiated goods have not reduced their prices, possibly because US importers rely on them too much." According to two academic studies published in March, American businesses and consumers paid almost the entire cost of US trade tariffs imposed on imports from China and elsewhere last year. Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Princeton University and Columbia University calculated that duties imposed on a wide range of imports, from steel to washing machines, cost US firms and consumers $3bn (2.3bn) a month in additional tax costs. It also identified a further $1.4bn in losses linked to depressed demand. The second paper, penned by among others, Pinelopi Goldberg, the World Bank's chief economist, also found that consumers and US companies were paying most of the costs of the tariffs. According to its analysis, after taking into account the retaliation by other countries, the biggest victims of Trump's trade wars were farmers and blue-collar workers in areas that supported Trump in the 2016 election. Mr Trump has said US firms that import from China should look elsewhere - perhaps to Vietnam - or better still buy their goods from American manufacturers. But Mr Bondy says it is not so simple. "It takes a long time for productivity and value chains to be reoriented and that all comes at a cost. "Take the steel tariffs the US imposed last year - it is not like all of a sudden there are hundreds of new factories being built in the US." China is also a manufacturing powerhouse, dwarfing its nearest rivals, which makes it hard to replace it in global supply chains. There is little evidence to suggest they have, say both Dr Crowley and Mr Bondy. In 2009, President Obama placed a steep tariff of 35% on Chinese tyres, citing a surge in imports that was costing US jobs. However, research from the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 2012 found the cost to American consumers from higher tyre prices was around $1.1bn in 2011. Although about 1,200 manufacturing jobs were saved, it said, the additional money US consumers spent reduced their spending on other retail goods, "indirectly lowering employment in the retail industry". "Adding further to the loss column, China retaliated by imposing antidumping duties on US exports of chicken parts, costing that industry around $1bn in sales," it said. The one example usually given to defend tariffs is US President Ronald Reagan's decision to impose steep duties on Japanese motorcycles in 1983. The move is credited as saving struggling US bike-maker Harley Davidson from a surge of foreign competition. But some have argued it was the company's own efforts - including modernising its factories and building better engines - that really drove its turnaround. Dr Crowley says the duties may draw China back to the negotiating table, but she does not expect them to offer radical compromises. "Yes they are having more of a growth slowdown, and they export more to the US than vice versa, so they will suffer more from a trade war. "But they are not really interested in changing their laws, and even if they did, do they really have the legal culture to enforce it?" Mr Bondy thinks Mr Trump's tariffs threats are more about whipping up his voter base and making headlines. "Tariffs are easier to understand than the painstaking work of negotiating common sets of rules on things like the behaviour of state-owned entities, protection of intellectual property, fair access to markets and baseline protections for workers and the environment." | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48256535 |
How should sellers handle a multiple-offer situation? | 1 / 4 Back to Gallery A: When sellers receive multiple offers in todays market, they should feel very fortunate and lucky, as it does not always happen. It generally means that they have priced their home well or have a very special property that many people want. If it is considered a hot house, agents normally have been in touch with the listing agent prior to presentation, and know that they have to come in with their best offer. Traditionally that means a bid over the ask price and no contingencies (only if sellers have provided extensive disclosures) In my experience one offer is often stellar and goes way over the others, but not all the time. You can get a few grouped together and then you have to decide how to handle that. Everyone knows it is a multiple offer situation and one can presume that buyers have put their best offer forward. I would encourage the sellers to simply accept the best one, unless there are 2 that are almost identical. I do not like multiple counters, but occasionally they are the only good response. In that case I would come back with a definitive counter to both buyers and not just say, come back with your highest and best because then buyers feel they are bidding against themselves. Anian Pettit Tunney, the Grubb Co., 510-928-7447, [email protected]. A: Theres no one correct answer as to how sellers should handle multiple offer situations, just as there is no one answer to how sellers should respond to a single offer. Under both scenarios, the solutions may be different depending on the goals we are trying to achieve. (Or is it all three?) The difference; however, is that when dealing with multiple offers, theres the opportunity to cherry pick the best of each, thus we might respond to the most favorable terms by upping the price, or conversely, respond to the highest price by improving the terms. While nine out of 10 offers may want a quick, clean close, the tenth may actually need time in the home to finish the school year. Certainly, there are more options to consider and far more interest to leverage when dealing with multiple offers. Still, my favorite multiple-offer scenario is one where a single offer stands out from the pack, making the sellers decision crystal clear and removing the desire to work one buyer off the other. My least favorite: Please write your final and best. (That provides no direction.) Thus when writing in competition, the goal should be to write definitively in order to avoid multiple counters; no one nudges out second place by a hair when there are several interested parties. In short, if its the house youll regret losing, write to win. Julie Gardner, Compass, 510-326-0840, [email protected]. A: Pop the bubbly. But first, you should review all offers side-by-side with your agent so they are easy to compare. Keep in mind that the best offer is a combination of high price and favorable terms. One offer may not have all the best parts, but it is possible to construct an ideal Franken-offer" from the best parts of the offers that were received, and make a counter-offer back to interested buyers with those terms. This allows you to get your best price along with the other terms that are most important to your individual needs, be it a fast closing, a long rent-back, or a lack of contingencies. When the keys do change hands, your agent should be the one giving the toast. Cheers. Linnette Edwards, Abio Properties, 925-580-8801, [email protected]; Cameron Platt, Abio Properties, 510-708-4137, [email protected]. | https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/How-should-sellers-handle-a-multiple-offer-13842248.php |
Why do movie characters always answer the phone if it rings during a make-out scene? | At the beginning of the 1996 movie "The Rock," Nicolas Cage's character takes a well-deserved break from his adventures as an FBI agent to share an intimate moment with his girlfriend - but then his cordless phone starts to ring. "Just don't answer - it's OK," she says. "It's the office, baby, I have to." In movies and TV, it's a rule: When the phone rings while two people are in a romantic embrace, someone will pick up. Natasha Lyonne's character does it in the last episode of the recent Netflix series "Russian Doll." Don Cheadle's does it in 2004's "Crash." Famously, Laura Linney's character does it in 2003's "Love, Actually" when she finally brings home her office crush, then gets a call from her institutionalized brother, which for some reason dooms that budding relationship. It happens in "Seinfeld." It happens in "Sex and the City." It happens in Netflix's "You." Advertisement There are thousands of similar entertainment tropes, and many are eye-roll-worthy cliches, but this one has always felt particularly egregious. I'm angry at the characters not just for leaving passion on the table, but for not acting like real people. Entertainment insists such a phone call plays out one way, when in reality I imagine most of them just go to voice mail. When I mentioned this frustration to Robert McKee, the screenwriting guru who wrote the guidebook "Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting," he pointed out that we don't really want our fiction to exactly mimic reality. Even in literature, he posits, like in the realism of George Eliot or Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," the depictions of "real" suffering are primarily metaphors for the meaninglessness of life. "It's really pointless and antithetical to the nature of art to be literally, factually accurate in some kind of photographic way - nobody wants that," he says. "We don't go to the movies for literalness. We go to the movies for an elevated intensification of what it means to be a human being." These scenes can be potent contrasts, showing that ecstasy can be dashed by the trivial or the tragic at any moment, that our highs can quickly become lows or middles. The call is sometimes a pull from pleasure to peril: for a dangerous mission away from that very partner, for instance, just like in "The Rock" and 1995's "Apollo 13" when Kevin Bacon's astronaut steps out of a shower with his wife to take the call that sends him into space. Answering one of these phone calls could be a black mark on a person's character. Larry David does it on his television series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and faces the consequences from his wife. An entry on the tropes-cataloguing website TV Tropes, entitled "Coitus Uninterruptus," is mainly about villains who show their cruelty by continuing their lovemaking even after picking up the phone. David Thomson, a film critic and author of "Sleeping With Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire," says these examples, all from the past several decades, go hand in hand with one trend over that time: "For a long time, people took sex very, very seriously. . . . Then we begin to see that sex is more comic." In the first half of the 20th century, premarital sex was less accepted, and while movie romances showed no lovemaking on-screen, they treated it as a "remote ideal." "It's something you can't have, but I'll show you something in a way that you'll dream about it," he says. Since the 1960s, the idea of "profound eternal companionship associated with sexual rapture" has been deflated - by the sexual revolution, the rise in divorce, more explicit sex scenes and the spread of pornography. Thus, the phone interruptions, which are "departures from the dream and the ideal." No matter how bleak our view of romance has become, movies have to be credible. And I can't imagine many calls in those situations are worth answering. I tried to find real people who actually would do this. A call on Facebook brought the responses: "No" and "No" and "nope nope nope." And yet, in a Dear Prudence column in Slate in which a woman recalls that once, during an intimate moment, her boyfriend took a call from his mom, Prudence advises that it is "not a reason to flee" the relationship, but that he shouldn't do it again. Reddit threads have many similar stories. Even if the landline examples from movies mentioned earlier seem unrealistic, smartphones have helped real life catch up with fiction. Tammy Nelson, a sex therapist in New Haven, Conn., confirms that notifications often interrupt affectionate evenings, and "it's always a point of contention." "One client just told me he picks up the phone because he's afraid it's another woman" - his mistress - and that his wife might see the message before he does. "Another told me he picks it up because he is always on call with his job and he can't help it, it's automatic." Marty Klein, a sex therapist in Palo Alto, California, says that about half of his patients have been interrupted or distracted during sexual activity by devices of some kind - and half of those instances haven't resumed because of a broken mood or other reason. "If you're a cardiac surgeon or the secretary of State, you get to answer your phone in the middle of sex," he says. "Other than that, I don't get it." Part of the problem, he says, is that most people are anxious during sexual situations. "Turning your attention away from what you're anxious about to something that's familiar is very comforting." On Facebook, I did find a couple of people who admitted to it. Jason Kessler, a 38-year-old screenwriter in Los Angeles, says "being able to pick up the phone is a sign of your closeness" with your partner. He points out that in "Love, Actually," it's not Linney's character who is at fault, but the guy who dashed off as she took the call from her brother. "At the very least, if suddenly the sexual vibe is killed, you don't leave, you have some tea and ask some questions." Sarah Fisch, 47, a freelance writer in San Antonio, Texas, says one time she did it in college, and after she answered the phone, "he tried to keep kissing me - that happens in a lot of movies. I remember thinking, god this is a movie, so I was aware of the trope even then." Another time, she was making out in a taxi but had lost her keys and she was getting a call that would help her back into her apartment. But she recalls another more vivid example: After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when people in New York were "acting with abandon," she found herself making out in a bathroom on the Lower East Side. Her mom called - she answered it, and the guy walked away in frustration. Her mom implored her to move back to Texas, and she burst into tears. Another girl walked into the bathroom, overheard her and did the same. "It went from some sort of wild hookup situation to me and this girl from Michigan holding hands and crying." The incident, as McKee might put it, is an "elevated intensification of what it means to be a human being." Now that's a movie scene I'd actually want to see. | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12230791 |
Are EXO's Chanyeol and Sehun Forming a Brand New Subunit? | The reports have been flying fast and furious about EXO's upcoming subunit debut, which their parent company, SM Entertainment, hinted at earlier this year. Some reports have pegged the debut to take place sometime in the second half of this year, while others are speculating that a full group EXO comeback would be announced first. Whatever the case, the two K-pop stars were spotted recently in Los Angeles, with South Korean news outlet Newsen reporting, "On May 9, EXO members Sehun and Chanyeol departed for Los Angeles, California via Incheon International Airport to shoot a music video for the EXO sub-unit album." | https://www.eonline.com/ap/news/1041194/are-exo-s-chanyeol-and-sehun-forming-a-brand-new-subunit |
Whats the problem with Yucca Mountain? | Members of a congressional tour make their way through the south portal of Yucca Mountain near Mercury on Saturday, July 14, 2018. Chase Stevens Las Vegas Review-Journal @csstevensphoto Regarding Yucca Mountain: Nuclear material has been shipped safely on U.S. highways and railways for more than 70 years. A single seismic event of 5.6 on the Richter scale in the area 26 years ago doesnt make earthquakes an issue. Radioactive particles are already in the areas groundwater from past underground tests. The last major volcanic activity in Nevada was 72,000 years ago. There are no valid reasons Nevada should oppose nuclear material storage at Yucca Mountain. | https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/letters/whats-the-problem-with-yucca-mountain-1662757/ |
How many times did Hannah B. say 'Roll Tide' on the premiere of 'The Bachelorette'? | This is a photo of Nick Saban, who is mentioned in this story. This sports producer (not pictured) wasn't sure what else to use for a "Bachelorette" photo presence. (Photo: Marvin Gentry/USA TODAY Sports) Let's get this out of the way: Dating is a sport. So that would probably make The Bachelorette akin to the Olympics. Or something like that. Just go with it. The latest season started Monday night, headlined by Hannah Brown, a Southern belle from Alabama. One contestant summed it up pretty early: This is gonna be a fierce competition for sure. It's quite the bracket, and it brings a lot of the same cliches that sports do. They're all taking it one day at a time. They're not thinking about the competition, they're just focused on themselves. And some of them already know about Hannah from watching film (read: the last season) to prepare. When Hannah B. gave the Roll Tide toast, I think a little bit of me was like I already love her, one contestant said. In all, an unofficial study by The Republic counted 11 total Roll Tides! shouted by Hannah and the contestants. It probably could have been higher, if (*spoiler*) the night wasn't sullied by Hannah learning out that one contestant already had a girlfriend. You hate to see that happen. Anyway, there were also multiple cutaways of signs in her hometown that said Roll Tide! And one contestant wove Roll Tide! into a song. Twice. Damn, that was sexy, Hannah told the cameras, as surely anyone would while being serenaded at a party by a dude whom no one asked to play the guitar. so is box guy still single katherine fitzgerald (@kfitz134) May 14, 2019 An additional contestant did a somewhat serviceable rap, which included the line Im tryna win the game like my name is Nick Saban. We'll see how that works out for him. But please don't think the sports references were limited to just Alabama football. The crowd of eligible bachelors included a professional surfer, a professional golfer and an international pro basketball player. There was also a man who showed up on roller skates. Another said he fumbled the introduction. I heard theres a lot of people here tonight, maybe a few bogeys. But I want to be your hole-in-one, said Garrett, the golfer and the first contestant to come out of the limo. The montage at the beginning showed her on a date on the court at TD Garden, home of the Celtics, a preview of what is to come later in the season. The Republic is unaware of Hannah having any ties to Boston sports teams, so to willingly don a Boston jersey otherwise must mean true love. It will be a long season of wins and losses, perhaps culminating in a ring and a new title. But the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat isn't only for Hannah. An early commercial during the broadcast advertised an upcoming casting call in Chandler. Start training now, y'all. And roll tide. Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 480-356-6407. Follow her on Twitter @kfitz134. Get crucial breaking sports news alerts to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Sports Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/2019/05/13/bachelorette-premiere-how-many-times-roll-tide-said/1195684001/ |
Can coming home give Canes an edge? | Hurricanes Justin Williams: Shame on us for not being able to instill our game Carolina Hurricanes captain Justin Williams says the Canes need to win Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Bruins on May 14, 2019, put some pressure on the Bruins and see how they respond. Up Next SHARE COPY LINK Carolina Hurricanes captain Justin Williams says the Canes need to win Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Bruins on May 14, 2019, put some pressure on the Bruins and see how they respond. For the Carolina Hurricanes, things need to change. Quickly. The Eastern Conference finals shift to PNC Arena for the next two games, meaning the Canes will have home-ice advantage and the ability to make their lineup changes after the Boston Bruins. In theory, having the last change at home can create more favorable matchups for the home team. After a 5-2 beating in Game 1 and then Sundays 6-2 battering in Game 2, both in Boston, the Canes must find a way to create more offensive chances in Game 3 on Tuesday and better matchups could help. But Canes captain Justin Williams more or less dismissed the last change advantage Monday. Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month Get full access to The News & Observer content across all your devices. SAVE NOW #ReadLocal I dont think it has anything to do with matchups, to be quite honest which is a shame, because youve got to have something to rest on, Williams said. But no, it has nothing to do with matchups. It has everything to do with how we play. Playoffs are all about putting pressure on the other team and seeing how they do with a little bit of pressure. So we have to get a win (Tuesday) night, first of all, and then push back a little bit and see how they respond. Just squeeze the other team a little bit. Theyve squeezed us twice. We need to do a little bit of punching back. The Canes played well at times in Game 1, taking a 2-1 lead into the third period at TD Garden. They did not play well, in any facet of the game, much of Sundays game in falling behind 2-0 in the best-of-seven series. Carolina Hurricanes Saku Maenalanen (8) moves the puck against Jake Bean (24) during practice on Monday, May 13, 2019 at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C. Robert Willett [email protected] It looked like we were really tired, Canes coach Rod BrindAmour said Monday. Weve only played two games in 10 days but I think the mental fatigue got to us. There was a real strong push by our guys for four months and it felt like we didnt have that extra gear you need at this time of year. Thats hard to fathom. The Canes are in the conference finals, eight wins away from the Stanley Cup. The Bruins seem enthusiastic enough about the situation, about the opportunity in front of them. We have to be way better and we all know that, Canes forward Warren Foegele said Monday. Its the Eastern Conference finals and we havent played the way were capable of playing. And theres no excuse for that. Playing in front of the home crowd should provide a jolt of energy for the Hurricanes. In the first-round series against the Washington Capitals, the Canes came home in a 2-0 hole and promptly won two games, urged on by rowdy sellout crowds at PNC Arena. This series has a different feel to it because of how the Bruins have controlled play in the first two games, especially on special teams. And part of that has been the matchups. In the opening game, BrindAmour sent out the Jordan Staal line with Williams and Nino Niederreiter as part of his starting lineup. Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy, with the last change at home, countered with his fourth line -- center Sean Kuraly and wingers Joakim Nordstrom and Chris Wagner. Staal called that a little surprising Monday while also conceding the Kuraly line has played well in both games. The Staal line and Kuraly line started the third period in Game 1 and Staal quickly was called for boarding Wagner. The Bruins then scored on the power play and turned the game in their favor. Carolina Hurricanes captain Justin Williams (14) and his teammates work on the power play during practice on Monday, May 13, 2019 at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C. Robert Willett [email protected] Cassidy continued to roll out the Kuraly line at times against the Staal line in Game 2 while Patrice Bergerons line, with Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak, with defensemen Torey Krug and Brandon Carlo, often was on the ice against Sebastian Ahos line with Andrei Svechnikov and Teuvo Teravainen. Whatever the matchups, it all worked for Boston. According to Natural Stat Trick, a hockey analytics web site, the Canes had just four high danger scoring chances in Game 2 while the Bruins had 17. We were late getting to our forecheck, which allowed (Boston) to make easy exits, which allowed them to get to their game, BrindAmour said. Our battle level in our end was no good. They were just tapping pucks in around our goalie and that cant happen. There was a lot of stuff, a lot of issues in that game. BrindAmour changed up the lines during Sundays game and had some different looks Monday in practice -- Aho centering Niederreiter and Williams, Staal with Teravainen and Svechnikov. But BrindAmour said not to read too much into those line combinations, indicating they might change come Tuesday and Game 3. Nor did BrindAmour commit to a starting goalie -- Petr Mrazek again, or Curtis McElhinney. Were down 2-0 but its not because of goaltending, he said. The Canes goaltending, that is. Tuukka Rask has looked sharp in net throughout the playoffs for the Bruins. We need to play with our speed and be more aggressive, Foegele said. We have a bunch of fast skaters and were not executing that enough. We havent played the way we done all year. We werent fast, we werent relentless. When were relentless were hard to play against and we havent shown that yet. | https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article230340119.html |
Is there a Capitol jail where Democrats could lock up Trump aides who refuse to testify? | CLOSE The House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, escalating the Democrats' extraordinary legal battle with the Trump administration over access to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report. (May 8) AP, AP WASHINGTON When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked recently whether Congress will hold administration officials in contempt for refusing Democratic demands for documents and testimony, she dropped this nugget. We do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol, Pelosi said to laughter last Wednesday at a Washington Post Live event. Wait. No. No, theres not. Theres something that looks like a jail cell. Except its really a tomb. Without the intended body. Which was George Washingtons. There was a structure known as the Old Capitol Prison. But that building, located across First Street where the Supreme Court now stands, never housed prisoners and lawmakers at the same time. Man behind the subpoena: A GOP senator subpoenas Don Jr. and a firestorm erupts 'Must a record': Barr jokes about contempt vote Various rooms around the Capitol, including one described in 1868 to have smelled like the den of some foul reptile, have been used to hold offenders. A journalist, who was arrested in 1848 for refusing to divulge who gave him a secret treaty ending the war with Mexico, was imprisoned in a presumably better-smelling Capitol committee room during the day and slept at the sergeant-at-arms home at night. But the last time Congress detained a member of the administration in 1934 he was imprisoned overnight in a hotel room near the White House before being transferred to a Washington, D.C., jail. Cold shoulder and cheese William P. MacCracken Jr., was a prisoner in a hotel room last night, held on charges of contempt of the Senate, after a day of legal merry-go-round probably unprecedented in court history, the Washington Post reported at the time. The paper later noted that MacCrackens first meal at the jail included cold shoulder, cheese, fried pineapple, creamed potatoes, fruit, jello and coffee. A gated vault below the Capitol rotunda has led to a myth that there's a jail in the basement. Built to serve as George Washington's tomb, the vault instead houses a catafalque. (Photo: Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY) If the Democrat-controlled House votes to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt as the House Judiciary Committee did Wednesday for refusing to turn over an unredacted version of the Russia report, he could legally be taken into custody by the House sergeant-at-arms. Other options include asking the U.S. attorney who works for Barr to prosecute. Or, the House can file a civil lawsuit in federal court to compel Barrs testimony. Its unclear if things will get that far, as lawmakers try to negotiate with the White House to unwind what Pelosi has called a constitutional crisis. But the pending showdown has renewed the chatter over whether there is or ever was a Capitol jail, a question that comes up when lawmakers discuss their enforcement powers. "I have to say, congresswoman, that what used to be the Capitol jail was the cafeteria now in the basement," Charles Tiefer, a law professor and former House general counsel, said at a 2016 congressional hearing. Lawmakers were debating whether Congress can force state attorneys general to comply with congressional subpoenas, a move some Republicans sought to take to try to block state investigations into whether Exxon Mobil Corp. committed fraud by hiding evidence about global warming. Now, its the Democrats who potentially want to exercise Congress power to hold people in contempt and imprison them if necessary a right upheld by the Supreme Court in 1821. In addition to seeking various documents that the administration doesnt want to turn over, House Democrats have issued a subpoena for former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify. Theyve also prepared subpoenas for four other former Trump aides. The Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to appear before the Republican-led panel. In the past, they had a House jail, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said after Barr refused to appear before the panel this month. I don't think we're going to go that far, but courts have upheld that as well. Katherine Scott, associate historian in the U.S. Senate Historical Office, said the story of a jail in the basement of the Capitol probably persists because of a vault under the Capitol Crypt. The vault was to serve as the tomb for the first president. But by the time the crypt was completed, Washingtons descendants wanted him to remain in his Mount Vernon tomb. The vault is gated to secure a catafalque, the platform used to support coffins for officials who lie in state. I think that some people are assuming, that because of those bars, that was a place where they `imprisoned people, Scott said. Thats just not true. Den of 'foul reptile' But several rooms in the Capitol have been used at various time as detention cells, according to the Architect of the Capitol. An entry in the 1877 Congressional Record describes the confinement of two Louisiana election officials in a little room in the basement of the Capitol, with but two windows, opening upon no sunlight, but upon a narrow confined court into which no gleam of sunshine can ever enter. Used to keep thieves arrested around the Capitol, the room was described as smelling like the den of some foul reptile. A Capitol police car is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Photo: Luis Alvarez, AP) Today, the Capitol Police have a holding cell three blocks from the Capitol. But if House Democrats direct the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Barr or another member of the administration its more likely that Congress would use its power over the District of Columbia to commandeer a space in the city jail. Margaret L. Taylor, a senior editor and counsel at the Lawfare blog, wrote in January that such a scenario would likely not sit well with a public that does not favor physical confrontation in U.S. politics. And Vice President Mike Pence last weekpushed back on Pelosis description of the confrontation as a constitutional crisis. This can be resolved, Pence told Fox & Friends. Well leave it to the attorney general to work out arrangements. But its time to dial down the rhetoric on Capitol Hill. Contributing: Bart Jansen Read more: Download the USA TODAY app Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/14/capitol-jail-trump-officials-locked-up-if-contempt-congress/1154047001/ | https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/14/capitol-jail-trump-officials-locked-up-if-contempt-congress/1154047001/ |
Has MLS expansion come at the expense of the league's established teams? | The league is spreading its reach across North America. But some believe MLS and its owners have forgotten about clubs who helped build the league in the first place The routine is well practised by now. The great and good of the North American soccer community are invited for an announcement to be made by Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber, usually flanked by a league legend; someone like Alexi Lalas or David Beckham. Promises are made of a new stadium, a name revealed, a badge unveiled, official songsheets passed around and a new MLS franchise is confirmed. In the past two years alone, this routine has been observed in Austin, Cincinnati, Miami and Nashville and with Garber recently revealing that MLS will expand to hit 30 teams over the next few years (26 by 2020) it wont be the last time that such rituals are performed. Sacramento, St Louis, Charlotte, Detroit and San Antonio are already vying for position. The league has spent so much effort extending its reach that certain teams, some of which are woven into the fabric of soccer culture in the United States, have been neglected. At least thats the argument put forward by many fans of these teams. Why David Beckham is desperate to keep Inter Miami out of the suburbs Read more We certainly believe that the Crew has received less attention from the league than other newer, shinier teams, says David Miller of Save the Crew, the grassroots organisation that rallied to stop the Columbus Crew from being moved to Austin. For example, this season our home matches occur heavily in the early part of the season, when you often have to wear full winter coats to games. Youre not going to incentivise random drop-in attendance when the temperature is approaching freezing. He has a point. Eleven of the Columbus Crews 17 home games this regular season will be played before the first day of July, six of which took place in March and April. At least the Crew, with new ownership and a new direction, have hope of rejuvenation, with ground to be broken on a new downtown stadium later this year. For the New England Revolution, another of MLSs forgotten franchises, the outlook is much bleaker. Only the LA Galaxy have made more MLS Cup appearances than the Revs, they are part of the MLS bedrock and yet the franchise has suffered almost existential erosion in recent years. With an average crowd of around 12,000 per game, New England have one of the lowest attendance records in the division. Their owners, the Kraft family, have overseen the New England Patriots dominance of the NFL but are much-maligned for barely maintaining an interest in the Revs. The team are slumped at the foot of the Eastern Conference with just three wins from their opening 13 fixtures, and they fired their coach, Brad Friedel, last week). Its little wonder the Revs support feels disenfranchised. We still operate very much as we did when the team was founded, explains Matthew Puglise of The Rebellion supporters group. This club needs a rebrand badly. We need to sign players that draw people to the stadium, like when a Thierry Henry or a Zlatan [Ibrahimovic] comes to town and we get 40,000 people into Gillette Stadium. However, getting a winning team on the pitch would only go so far in addressing the deep-rooted issues the New England Revolution face. At Gillette Stadium, an out-of-town mega-stadium designed for NFL rather than soccer, they are a fading franchise. Relocation to Boston has been mooted, but as things stand there are no immediate plans. While the Columbus Crew have built a soccer-specific stadium, albeit a flawed one, and will start construction of another one within two decades, the Revs are still stuck where they have been since the start. Geography is a common problem. MLS has identified and quantified the value of being in as many downtown locations as possible. That is where the leagues young and progressive fanbase can be found and so teams like the Crew and Revolution are paying for their failure to capture this audience in unsuitable suburban stadiums. The Chicago Fire can also count themselves among such company, although much like the Columbus Crew there are at least plans afoot to make changes. Big ones. Just this week, it was reported that the Fire have agreed to pay $60.5m to end their SeatGeek Stadium lease early. Next season, they are expected to play at Soldier Field before a long-term stadium plan is drawn up. There has also been talk of a rebrand. We like to see the Fire unleash its potential out in the whole market, said Bridgeview mayor Steve Landek in light of the news. Of course, much of the debate over MLSs forgotten franchises comes down to how much interference one believes the leagues central office, in its centralised structure, should have in the ownership and operation of member clubs. How much, for instance, can Garber really do to revive the Revolution when Robert Kraft shows no sign of dipping into his pockets, the same pockets that have helped fund the New England Patriots six Super Bowls this century. Back in the mid-2000s, when the league could barely give franchises away, MLS had more freedom to shape the division as it pleased. Now, the dynamic in MLS ownership has shifted, perhaps for the better, but almost certainly for the more complex when it comes to the resuscitation of flatlining franchises. At a point, one wonders how such a large league will function, says Karl Schuster of the Section 8 Chicago fans group. If expansion leads to neglect of older clubs then it seems to be a bit of a myopic strategy on the part of MLS. Indeed, while evolution is undoubtedly positive for the league, it will only have the desired effect if everyone is carried along with the turn of the wheel. | https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/14/has-mls-expansion-come-at-the-expense-of-the-leagues-established-teams |
Will Dallas' new children's hospitals compete on price or amenities? | Cook Childrens of Fort Worth is confident that its new childrens hospital in Prosper will be welcomed, even if the area north of Dallas becomes saturated with new pediatric facilities. We dont believe employers or insurance companies would ever object to competition in the marketplace, a Cook official wrote in an email last week. That Texas value is often reflected in the states light approach to regulation. Texas does not require a certificate of need to build a hospital, for example, choosing to let the market sort things out. But all health care competition is not equal, not in a region with high medical costs and large swaths of the population living without health insurance. No ones gonna complain about price competition, said Devon Herrick, a Dallas health economist and former hospital accountant. But employers and insurers dont want hospitals competing on marble atriums and birthing suites and machines that arent necessary. He points to the fast growth of free-standing emergency rooms in Texas. Many believed they would bring greater access for patients and more competition for traditional hospitals, and hundreds popped up. But most were in affluent areas and had high, out-of-network prices, and many customers felt burned. Did they really fill an unmet need, or would we have been better off expanding doctors' office hours or adding more urgent-care centers? Herrick said. | https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/05/14/after-adding-kids-hospitals-suburbs-will-providers-compete-amenities-price |
What Will Happen in Veronica Mars Revival That'll Cause a Strong Fan Reaction? | Kristen Bell is getting prepared for you, dear reader, to finally see the return of Veronica Mars. Bell returns as the titular character in an eight-episode miniseries that is sure to leave fans with some thoughts. The actress, who is also an executive producer on the Hulu revival, previously told E! News that the revival will be "controversial." "How did you hear that?" Bell asked E! News' Justin Sylvester when he brought up the "controversial" description. "How did you hear that?! Not from me!" "This will be a controversial season. Let me just say that," Bell previously told E! 's Erin Lim. "I am excited for people to watch and I am also probably going to stay off the internet once it airs." Bell clarified her tease while working with the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card. | https://www.eonline.com/ap/news/1041038/what-will-happen-in-veronica-mars-revival-that-ll-cause-a-strong-fan-reaction |
Was Kawhi Leonard's buzzer beater the best game killer in US sports history? | After the Toronto Raptors sealed victory over the Philadelphia 76ers at the death, we look at other great deciding moments in sports Kawhi Leonards four-bounce buzzer beater on Sunday night will live as one of basketballs greatest buzzer beaters. We have five (along with some honorable mentions) to conjure memories of the times when nobody could quite believe what they had just seen. 1) The Minneapolis Miracle, 14 January 2018 In nine years the Minnesota Vikings had won a total of zero playoff games. And it took a miracle for them to snap that streak. Minnesota trailed 24-23 with 10 seconds left, no timeouts remaining and the ball spotted at their own 39-yard-line. To keep the clock from expiring, quarterback Case Keenum found sure-handed wideout Stefon Diggs, who intended to catch the ball and immediately run out of bounds to stop the clock. New Orleans Saints safety Marcus Williams inexplicably ducked presumably to try and knock Diggs down in-bounds but accidentally tripped teammate Ken Crawley, the only other Saints player in position to make a tackle. Diggs scampered the remaining 35 yards untouched for the winning touchdown as time expired. The eventual Super Bowl champion Eagles demolished Minnesota in the ensuing weeks NFC championship game, but Minneapolis Miracle remains a fond memory for the fans of a team that still havent gone to the Super Bowl since 1976. Honorable mention: The Tackle, Super Bowl XXIV Rams-Titans, 30 January 2000 Tackling may be the most essential skill in football, so the play known as The Tackle is worth mentioning, Rams linebacker Mike Joness last-ditch wrapping of Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson as time expired ended one of the greatest Super Bowls of all-time. 2) Kris Jenkinss buzzer beater to lead Villanova over UNC, 2016 NCAA tournament championship, 4 April 2016 The American publics obsession with March Madness isnt solely due to the prospect of winning an office gambling pool. The NCAA tournament buzzer beater remains one of sports most captivating moments, and Villanovas Kris Jenkins delivered a classic in the 2016 national title game. One possession after North Carolina guard Marcus Paige hit perhaps the greatest shot in NCAA history to tie a game, Villanova had 4.7 seconds to make a shot to win the national title and prevent the game from going to overtime. Most audience members would have likely guessed that Villanova guard Ryan Arcidiacono, the senior leader who owned the school record with 143 games started, would take the final shot. Instead, the senior feigned driving to the hoop before scooping the ball to Jenkins, the teams leading three-point shooter, who drained his shot from over 25 feet away. The shot secured Villanovas second national title and first since 1984-85. Honorable mention: Christian Laettner, Duke to beat Kentucky, 1992 East Regional Final, 28 March 1992 Its the one nicknamed The Shot and may still be the most recognizable moment in the history of college basketball. Laettner was college basketballs most polarizing player, reviled by so many as the apparent posterboy of Dukes superiority but widely considered the games best player (even on a team with Grant Hill). The technique on the 1992 East Regional Finals game-winner remains flawless, even for those who despise the Blue Devils. 3) Joe Carters walk-off home run wins the World Series, Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, 23 October 1993 When Blue Jays announcer Tom Cheek bellowed Touch em all, Joe! Youll never hit a bigger home run in your life! he was speaking the truth. Not that Toronto slugger Joe Carter was incapable of hitting another clutch homer, but that it was impossible for anybody to smash a more significant home run than Carter had just hit. With feared closer Mitch Wild Thing Williams pitching, the Phillies were just two outs away from forcing Game 7. Carter approached the plate with two runners on base against Williams, known as much for his erratic control as his high-octane fastball. After waving at a breaking ball to put him on the verge of a strikeout, Carter cranked Williamss next pitch over the leftfield wall to complete the only walk-off home run to ever win a World Series. Carters homer secured Torontos second championship in a row, but the franchise is still looking for another title 26 seasons later. Honorable mention: David Freese saves the Cardinals season, Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, 28 October 2011 The Cardinals were one strike away from their season ending to the Texas Rangers until St Louis native David Freese clubbed a triple over rightfielder Nelson Cruzs head to tie the game. Two innings later, the hometown hero hit a walk-off home run to force Game 7. Eight years and three teams later, Freese receives a standing ovation anytime he returns to play the Cardinals. 4) The Shot, Michael Jordans buzzer beater over Craig Ehlo, Game 5 of the 1989 Eastern Conference playoffs first round, 7 May 1989 Just about every basketball-obsessed youngster has recreated Jordans shot over Ehlo in front of their bedroom mirror. The 1989 Bulls finished a mediocre 47-35 and lost all six of their regular-season meetings to the opposing Cavaliers, who finished the season tied for the leagues second-best record. Jordan entered the deciding Game 5 having scored 94 points over the prior two games and 42 points to his name that evening, With three seconds remaining and his team trailing 100-99, Jordan darted to the free-throw line while being trailed by Ehlo. As Jordan rose for the game-winner, he sensed Ehlo closing in to block his shot, triggering one of the most iconic plays in NBA history a mid-air pump fake that left Ehlo empty-handed as the future hall of famer downed his shot to clinch the series. Of the countless shots that would define Jordans historic career, this one remains known as The Shot. Honorable mention: Morris Petersons mid-air miracle, 30 March 2007 This came in a insignificant late-season game between the Raptors and Wizards, but must be mentioned for its sheer improbability as well as the hilarity of each announcing teams reaction. 5) The Play, Cal run through the band to defeat Stanford, 20 November 1982 It was a play that secured nothing but bragging rights between the rival schools, but it remains the most bizarre and hilarious ending in the history of college football. Leading 20-19 with just four seconds remaining, Stanford kicker Mark Harmon squibbed a kickoff that Cals Kevin Moen caught around his own 45-yard-line. After two laterals, the Stanford band thought that Cals Dwight Garner had been tackled to end the game, so they rushed the field to celebrate their (apparent) victory over the rival Bears. Except that the ball was still in play. Four Cal players charged down the right as the band and cheerleaders stormed the field while the Stanford defense tried, unsuccessfully, to make a game-ending tackle. Rivalry games often deliver madness, and its a play still annually celebrated in Berkeley (even if the Bears havent defeated their rivals since 2009). Honorable mention: Michigan State beats Michigan after a botched fake punt, 7 October 2015 All Michigan needed to do was complete a successful snap to its punter and they would have secured a win over their rival. That didnt happen. | https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/14/kawhi-leonard-nba-buzzer-beater-other-great-moments-sports |
What Is Pornography Doing to Our Sex Lives? | The problem with beginning any sentence with porn is is you know right from the start that a person is about to generalize about all sexually explicit media, and that's really a mistake, says Emily Rothman, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. Rothman says porn use can be compulsive, but so can television. She says porn use might have contributed to the sharp rise in erectile dysfunction treatment. But theres also rising anxiety, and rising obesity, and, most obviously, the proliferation of ED medication. In the last decade, Viagra has spent millions of dollars telling millions of American men to ask your doctor about the drug; presumably, a few of them did. The truth, she argues, is that porn is like food. Much of it is harmless. And some of it is bad. But some of it is simply good. Younger people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, growing up in a small town without friends who share their sexual orientation, might discover in pornography a window into their own experienceand the message that there is nothing wrong with their feelings. They might see pornography almost like a safe space, Rothman said. It can be inspiring and really helpful. Still, every academic I spoke to agreed that porn is generally a poor, and even harmful alternative to sexual education. When I look at a cooking show I know not only my own eating habits but I know everybody's eating habits, says Marty Klein, a well-known sex therapist in Palo Alto. I have ways of calibrating what I see on the mass media when it comes to food. When it comes to sex, most people never ever ever get to watch one other person having sex. But with digital pornography, young people discover a trove of tantalizing content thats been utterly decontextualized from any real persons sexual experience. Porn is not meant to be sex education, he says. But for many young people, it isand thats especially problematic if the porn is violent. Just as extremism on social-media platforms often spills over into the physical world, dreadful sex ed can lead to dreadful early sexual experiences. In my own study that I did years ago, there were girls who said because their boyfriend had seen something in pornography they were then forced or coerced to do that thing, Rothman said. And they were unhappy about it. Porn critics like Mary Anne Layden, a psychotherapist at the University of Pennsylvania, say this can have two parallel effects: More sexual violence for some, and a withdrawal from sexual experiences by others. Everybody I spoke to noted that porn can offer vulnerable consumers an infinite buffet of false, decontextualized, and potentially harmful ideas about the world. If that sounds familiar, its because thats precisely the claim against the dangers of extremist and falsely conspiratorial content on todays social media platforms. | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/what-is-pornography-doing-to-our-sex-lives/589576/?utm_source=feed |
How much was pilot error a factor in the Boeing 737 MAX crashes? | In his opening statement Wednesday at the House Aviation subcommittee hearing on the 737 MAX in Washington, D.C., the lead Republican congressman blamed errors by the Indonesian and Ethiopian pilots for the two deadly MAX crashes in those countries. Pilots trained in the United States would have successfully been able to handle the emergencies on both jets, said Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He added that preliminary reports about the accident compound my concerns about quality training standards in other countries. Graves was repeating the main points in a report written by two pilots at a major U.S. airline that pointed to pilot error as the most consequential factor in both crashes. Their report was commissioned and paid for by institutional investors with large holdings in Boeing stock. That case for pilot error as the major cause of the crashes seems close to a surrogate for what Boeing has only hinted at, and may be a key part of the manufacturers legal defense in liability lawsuits. Yet two flight-simulator sessions replicating the conditions on the doomed flights contradict Graves contention that better trained pilots would have escaped disaster. And some Western-trained pilots criticize the report as based on unverified assumptions and minimizing the intense stress Boeings runaway flight-control system imposed on the two flight crews. A good pilot on a bad day Im disappointed with those who sit in their lofty chairs of judgment and say this wouldnt have happened to U.S. pilots, said a veteran captain with a major U.S. airline, who asked not to be named to avoid involving his employer. The flight crew on the March 10 Ethiopian flight faced a barrage of alerts in the flight that lasted just 6 minutes. Those alerts included a stick shaker that noisily vibrated the pilots yoke throughout the flight, warning the plane was in danger of a stall, which it wasnt; repeated loud DONT SINK warnings that the jet was too close to the ground; a clacker making a very loud clicking sound to signal the jet was going too fast; and multiple warning lights telling the crew the speed, altitude and other readings on their instruments were unreliable. The Lion Air crash in October would have been at the forefront of the Ethiopian pilots minds, and they seem to have focused solely on following the Boeing procedure to eliminate the MAXs new flight-control system called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that was pushing the nose down. Advertising They did so by flipping two cut-off switches. But then the heavy forces on the jets tail prevented them from moving the manual wheel in the cockpit that would have corrected the nose-down attitude. What would the best pilot do on their worst day with all of this sensory overload? the veteran U.S. airline captain said. Who knows what any of us would have done? The manufacturer isnt supposed to give us airplanes that depend on superhuman pilots, he added. We should have airplanes that dont fail the way these airplanes failed. Rep. Graves, mirroring the investor report, criticized the Ethiopian pilots in particular for allowing the airplane to accelerate at almost full thrust to a very high speed. He also cited their deviation from the procedure Boeing had recommended after the first accident, when they turned MCAS back on just before the jet crashed. Advertising But the veteran pilot said that he understands completely how the pilots, failing to budge the manual wheel, in desperation abandoned the Boeing procedure and turned the electric trim system back on only to bring back MCAS, which finally forced a fatal nose-dive into the ground. Reenactment in a flight simulator Countering the notion that U.S. pilots could have overcome the emergencies that brought down the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines jets, the latest issue of trade magazine Aviation Week describes a simulator test flown as part of recurrent training by a U.S.-based 737 MAX crew that re-created a critical part of the crashed Ethiopian flight. The simulation indicated that the pilots faced a near-impossible task of getting their 737 MAX 8 under control. Starting from the point where the Ethiopian pilots hit the cut-off switches and stopped MCAS from operating, the U.S. MAX crew tried in the simulator to recover. Even though the U.S. crew performed the simulator experiment at a normal speed of 250 knots instead of the more than 350 knots of the Ethiopian jet, the forces on the jets tail still prevented them from moving the manual wheel in the cockpit that would have corrected the nose-down attitude. To get out of it, the pilots used an old aviator technique called the roller coaster method letting the yoke go to relieve the forces on the tail, then cranking the wheel, and repeating this many times. This technique has not been in U.S. pilot manuals for decades, and pilots today are not typically trained on it. Using it in the simulator, the U.S. MAX crew managed to save the aircraft but lost 8,000 feet of altitude in the process. The Ethiopian MAX never rose higher than 8,000 feet, indicating that from that point in the flight, the crew couldnt have saved it. A similar experiment, though without the use of the roller-coaster technique, was performed by a European airline pilot and 737 flight instructor who runs a popular Youtube channel called Mentour Pilot about aviator skills. His simulator session ended as the pilot pulled with all his might on the yoke to try to keep the jets nose up, while the co-pilot beside him tried futilely to move the manual wheel. In response to criticism of the design of MCAS that led to these struggles in the cockpit, Boeings leadership has avoided explicitly accepting responsibility for the accidents pending the completion of the crash investigations. The company has said that the accidents come down to a chain of events, and Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg has cited as parts of that chain both the MAXs new flight-control system as well as a failure on the part of the pilots to respond adequately. The report to institutional investors by pilots Don McGregor and Vaughn Cordle reflects that view. Their report doesnt let the company off the hook it states that Boeing bears secondary culpability for the design of MCAS. Yet they conclude that the major contributing factor to these accidents was pilot error. In an interview, McGregor and Cordle cited rather reckless and in some cases gross negligence by the pilots in how they approached the emergencies. Advertising McGregor conceded that any pilot put in the scenario the Ethiopian crew faced would have a very difficult time recovering. But he dismissed the simulator re-creations as starting from the most difficult part of that 6-minute flight and contended that the pilots should have been able to stop the sequence of events earlier. He pointed to the lack of experience of the Ethiopian first officer, who had only 361 total flying hours in his career, when 1,500 hours is needed to join a major U.S. airline. And he cited as a disastrous mistake that the engines, which were set at full thrust for take-off, were never throttled back when the plane got into trouble, causing the jet to exceed its certified maximum speed and greatly reducing any window of opportunity to recover. The Ethiopian pilots, he said, didnt display basic, fundamental flying skills to control the aircraft. Talk to us We continue to seek information on the design, training and certification of the Boeing 737 MAX. If you have insights, please get in touch with aerospace reporter Dominic Gates at 206-464-2963 or [email protected]. To communicate on a confidential and encrypted channel, follow the options available at https://st.news/newstips. One takeaway from their report is that adequate pilot training will be central to having the MAX return to flight safely around the world. The authors said they disagree with Boeings plan to offer pilots computer-based training only two hours on an iPad before the MAX flies again. They need at least one simulator session that comes close to the same profile as the accident scenarios, said McGregor. Advertising Cordle said he has conducted studies of foreign airlines over several years for a leading airplane lessor and found some to be absolutely horrible in their pilot training. Enormous pressure in the cockpit Three pilots interviewed for this story said the report from McGregor and Cordle is very one-sided, and all objected to what they saw as blinkered chauvinism in this view of U.S. pilots as superior. Its unfair to put the blame on the crew solely, said the Mentour pilot, who asked not to be named as he doesnt speak for his airline. As in any air accident, there are going to be a combination of factors, one being mistakes by the crew. But they shouldnt have been put in that position in the first place. The pilots were put under an enormous amount of pressure and at a very low altitude, he said. If you put any number of normally trained crews in that situation, you would have a lot of different outcomes, and most of them wouldnt be very good. And he said his training of 737 flight crews has shown him that hours of flying time does not equate to pilot competency. Ive seen poor captains with 30,000 hours and very good first officers with just 300 or 400 hours, he said. Bjorn Fehrm, a Swedish pilot and aerospace engineer who is an analyst for Bainbridge Island-based Leeham.net, said the report assumes the accidents could have been avoided by a really proficient pilot on a good day. But he said Boeing and Airbus cannot rely on the roughly 300,000 pilots flying worldwide having a good day and being perfectly trained for every emergency. Advertising Its not the reality, and reality rules, Ferhm said. The aircraft have to be safe for these 300,000 trained pilots. He added its clear this is possible, because of how Boeing has developed a software update fix for MCAS. That update, Fehrm said, has all the considerations it should have had from the start. The veteran U.S. airline captain said that the American aviation community needs to avoid getting too cocky about U.S. pilots being immune from mistakes. He said hes spent a lot of time flying with local pilots in western China where the mountains are high and the flying is hazardous. Advertising Id put them up against American airline pilots any day, he said. They are exceptional airmen. And he criticized Boeing for designing an airplane in which a system triggered by a single sensor failure would present such challenges and require such a high-performance response from the pilots. That cant be good, he said. I cannot believe Boeing is proud of this. A former senior executive at Boeing, one still involved in the aviation world and who asked not to be identified to maintain industry relationships, said its true that some pilots overseas lack the experience of their U.S. counterparts. He said that the universe of customer airlines that Boeing serves, once heavily skewed toward North America and Europe, has shifted dramatically over the past 25 or more years toward the rest of the world. In developing countries, pilots dont have the infrastructure or heritage to do the training we do. He added that we and Airbus should have been more on top of things in terms of offering more pilot training support. Advertising And yet, acknowledging the key role of Boeings MCAS design, he did not place blame on the Indonesian and Ethiopian pilots. We put the pilots into a bad situation, he said. MCAS put them in a situation they were ill-prepared to handle. You wonder about the detailed systems engineering that went into that. | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/how-much-was-pilot-error-a-factor-in-the-boeing-737-max-crashes/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business |
What Is Anti-Fascism? | Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. As activists have publicly challenged an emboldened white-nationalist movement across the country, the idea of anti-fascism has circulated broadly but vaguelyseeming sometimes to unsettle mainstream commentators more than expressions of fascism itself. Ad Policy In her new book, On Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life, the essayist Natasha Lennard considers the meaning and the fearful reception of anti-fascist organizing today. In meditations on riots and surveillance, sex radicalism and First Amendment controversies, Lennardwho moved to the United States from London a decade ago and is now one of the most astute thinkers to emerge from the Occupy movementoffers a crystalline vision of how fascism can be fought without reliance on the state and why it must be. Marissa Brostoff Marissa Brostoff: The press often treats anti-fascist organizing merely as a spectaclethe image of white men in black blocs circulates, but neither the meaning of those tactics nor a broader vision of anti-fascist movements seems to register. Natasha Lennard: Anti-fascist is a troublesome term. To state ones political position as anti-fascist after 1945 is, in a sense, close to meaningless: Most everyone claims to be anti-fascist, so long as they agree that Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were baddies. A better conception of fascism, which sees its expression not only in historic state regimes but in aspects of daily life under capitalism, entails a more nuanced understanding of anti-fascism, too. Im more interested in talking about anti-fascist tactics or practices, since as an identity anti-fascist is somewhat impossible. In the simplest, most popular sense, anti-fascist organizingoften known as antifais a militant, no-tolerance approach to far-right, racist nationalism. As a practice taken up by the far left, socialist and anarchist alike, antifa is an illiberal intervention that does not rely on the state, the justice system, or any liberal institution to resist fascism. It finds organization online, in the streets, on campuseswherever fascism is to be found. Much antifa work today involves exposing white supremacists online and taking action to shut down spaces where fascistic desires get fostered, fueled, and legitimized. Sometimes this involves physical, confrontational tactics. Related Articles Black Women Create a Force Field of Support Around Ilhan Omar Rebecca Pierce A Louisiana Court Is Trying to Silence Black Lives Matters DeRay Mckesson Elie Mystal What the media tends to get wrong is what undergirds these tactics and why theyre necessary and effective. The mainstream press often calls for civility and reasoned debate. The problem is, fascism is not a position that is reasoned into; it is a set of perverted desires and tendencies that cannot be broken with reason alone. So anti-fascist interventions instead must make the entertainment and maintenance of fascist organizing intolerable. The use of anti-fascist violence is thus far from foolish thuggery: its goal is to create consequences for fascist organizing. For the most part its based on a better philosophical understanding of how fascism proliferates than is held by most liberal centrists demanding civil debate. Current Issue View our current issue MB: A lot of your work in this book and elsewhere is about violence. NL: To be clear from the outset, while I do use this idea to defend, say, riotous protest against racist police killings or the punching of neo-Nazis, my point is not to deny the importance and historic success of movements who have used strategic and principled nonviolent protest. Rather, my point is that there is never, in any of these situations, really such a thing as nonviolence. A categorical error is made in any media narrative resting on the idea that protests turn violent, or counterprotesters instigate violence in these circumstances. The error exists in the tacit suggestion that there was a situation of nonviolence, or peace, from which to turn. Any circumstance in which cops take black life with impunity, any context in which it is still necessary to state that Black Lives Matter, any situation where neo-Nazis march and murder, is a background state of constant violence. Yet the media consistently attributes the act of turning to violence to people who literally cannot turn from it, whose lives and deaths are organized by it. NL: The writer Raven Rakia made the point that the term riot is deeply racializedwhite people get to protest, black protest is called riot to denigrate it as senseless and depoliticized. For this reason, I very much understand why some people refer to the riotous protests in Ferguson and Baltimore as uprisings, which they were. If we also want to hold on to the term riot as a politically useful word in its own right, that entails rejecting the white establishments efforts to depoliticize such protests, which involve black people damaging property, confronting cops, and sometimes looting. When thenPrime Pinister David Cameron called the 2011 London riots criminality, pure and simple, it was a useful lie for a politician keen to brush away the racist devastation of his governments austerity regime, like the many middle-class Britons who went into the street with brooms to clean up after the riots aftermath. Rioting is not senseless destruction; on the contrary, it is often a deeply political challenge to property and white supremacytwo concepts intractably entwined. MB: You discuss the ways the US legal system has dangerously narrowed what counts as peaceful protest in recent years. But you also suggest that social movements shoot themselves in the foot when they accept the states authority to distinguish between good and bad forms of protest, period. NL: The Trump administration has made it clear that little from the left can count as permissible protest. I bring this issue up when writing about the mass arrest of protesters during the J20 inauguration protests. All the charges from this unjustified arrest were eventually dropped, but the government still hit people with felony charges for being part of a protest where property damage took placea clear violation of First Amendment protections. We should take this as a goad to abolish the old good protester/bad protester canard altogether. On a practical level, though, we often cant help but accept the states authority to distinguish between good and bad forms of protest, because the state will enact its authority regardless. When youre forced to work within the states logicsay, in courtyoud be foolish not to speak the states language, which means appealing to your rights! The J20 defendants were absolutely correct to do so. But I argue that when we focus too much on our rights to speak and assemble, our fight becomes atomized over the fact of assembly, rather than the reason for protest. And as weve seen, that leaves a lot of room for white-supremacist speech to gain purchase in a liberal defense of free speech rights, with scant regard for racial justice. MB: As recently as the Occupy movement, you write, activists were deeply shaken by revelations about the portals to state surveillance that open every time we take out our smartphones at a protest. Today, you note, we take it for granted that we are perpetually being tracked by our phones. NL: Its sad that it almost feels quaint to ask whether we can resist the normalization of surveillance. Too late! And it seems like a long time since Edward Snowdens revelations produced shock. The essay in my book that deals with this question asks whether and how to talk about our complicity with this state of totalized surveillance, given that it informs so much of how we live today. Im interested in stepping away from narratives of resistance to surveillance that focus exclusively on privacy protections or transparency from tech leviathans. These interventions are reformist at best and do little to challenge the gargantuan power asymmetries undergirding contemporary mass surveillance. So I think more important questions involve democratizing technological life, like Ben Tarnoffs calls to nationalize or communize data. Issues of privacy matter hugely; protection from corporate-government surveillance is a matter of life and death for some people. Amazon works with ICE in its violent deportation machine. No amount of best privacy practices or transparency rules will suffice; these companies need to be dismantled! As always, if were interesting in fighting capitalism, we have to think about property. MB: Your most personal essays in the collection, about ghosts and suicide, are also among the most philosophical, drawing on thinkers from David Hume to Ludwig Wittgenstein. NL: My background was in pretty dry analytic philosophy, which was both an education in rigor and exposed me to the risk of hermetically sealed logical universes. Im pleased to have seen the risks of pretending Enlightenment reason is free of ideologya belief that haunts liberal discourse. So it takes philosophical work and political action together to undo violent hierarchies and the ideologies by which they are maintained and defended. | https://www.thenation.com/article/natasha-lennard-fascism-book/ |
Is Miguel Cabrera scared to face 'best friend' Justin Verlander? | CLOSE Former Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander reflects on the many memorable moments he had at Comerica Park, May 13, 2019. Jeff Seidel, Detroit Free Press Columnist Its the matchup everyone wants to see former teammates and future Hall of Famers, once co-faces of the Detroit Tigers franchise but Miguel Cabreras health hasnt allowed it to happen. Who? he said on Wednesday afternoon. Who is that? Miguel Cabrera, left, and pitcher Justin Verlander during media day in Lakeland, Fla., Feb. 28, 2015. (Photo: Michael Wilson, The Ledger) After leaving Tuesday nights loss to the Houston Astros with right knee soreness in the late innings, Cabrera was out of the starting lineup for the series finale against Verlander. Im pretty sure he was chomping at the bit to get a piece of Verlander, manager Ron Gardenhire said, But sometimes, thats not a good antidote for soreness. Cabrera got a little sore last night with his knee, Gardenhire said. Were not going to run him back out there today, he said. Let him have a day. If youre a little bit sore, you gotta protect that guy weve said that all along and were not going to do it. More: Justin Verlander explains why Tigers lost twice in World Series More: Justin Verlander helped Daniel Norris get past darkness of rehab Gardenhire said Cabrera had not dealt with the issue this season and that he might have had an MRI scan, though such tests have become increasingly more common these days, especially for a player of Cabreras magnitude. Its just swelled up a little bit last night, Gardenhire said. Not a big deal, hes had that before. I dont think hes did any one thing to it, its just part of it. Cabrera, 36, is hitting .282 with one home run and 15 RBI in 40 games this season. He missed Verlanders two previous outings against the Tigers last season after rupturing his left biceps in early June. The two have only faced each other one time before, during a live batting practice session on the back fields in Lakeland, Fla. in spring training 2017. When they finally meet, it would mark one of the premier matchups in baseball: Cabrera vs. Verlander would rank as the second-highest combination of Wins Above Replacement among active players, according to Baseball-Reference.com. Miguel Cabrera, left, and Justin Verlander laugh during an NBA playoff game at Oracle Arena, May 27, 2015 in Oakland. (Photo: Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports) The highest combination is Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols against Verlander. The two face off frequently, both playing in the American League West division. Cabrera is not expected to be sidelined for an extended period of time. He later confirmed to the Free Press that he does, indeed, know who Verlander is. Hes my best friend, Cabrera said. More: How Tigers prospect Jake Rogers fixed his swing, and now is in Toledo More: What the Tigers will deal with their shortage of starting pitchers More: Tigers' Casey Mize is now top-ranked pitching prospect in MLB Contact Anthony Fenech at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech. Read more on the Detroit Tigers and sign up for our Tigers newsletter. | https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2019/05/15/miguel-cabrera-justin-verlander/3687149002/ |
Is KAG the new MAGA? | Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump was in his prime on Tuesday night. Speaking to thousands of MAGA-hatted supporters from the center of an arena in Orlando, Trump officially launched his reelection bid. He didn't put forth any new policy proposals, but he vowed to keep on fighting and keep on winning, and to protect his supporters from the Democrats who want to destroy the country (in his words). Trump also literally audience-tested his latest campaign slogan, asking the crowd to cheer for one of two options to determine what his 2020 slogan would be: "Make American Great Again" or "Keep America Great." The loudest cheers would determine his pick. And even though it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, "Keep America Great" prevailed Read More | https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/donald-trump-campaign-slogan-2020/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fedition_us+%28RSS%3A+CNNi+-+U.S.%29 |
Where does Patriots' Sony Michel rank among NFL RB1s entering 2019? | originally appeared on nbcsportsboston.com Sony Michel enjoyed a tremendous rookie season for the New England Patriots and played a pivotal role in the team's run to a sixth Super Bowl championship. Scroll to continue with content Ad The 24-year-old running back ran for 931 yards and six touchdowns in 13 regular season games, but his real value, however, was shown in the playoffs. Michel tallied 336 yards and a rookie postseason record six touchdowns in three games, culminating with 94 yards and the Patriots' only touchdown in their 13-3 win over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Former NFL running back Maurice Jones-Drew ranked Michel at No. 11 in his rankings on NFL.com. Here's what MJD had to say about the Georgia product: Michel showed he can be a bell cow during the postseason, with 71 carries for 336 yards and a rookie-record six rushing TDs in three games. He underwent a minor knee procedure in June, but Michel should still be the effective rusher he was in the postseason starting in September. Plus, I think Patriots OC Josh McDaniels will be more creative with the running game now that Rob Gronkowski is no longer on the team. Jones-Drew put New York Giants rookie sensation Saquon Barkley atop his rankings, with Alvin Kamara of the New Orleans Saints, Le'Veon Bell of the New York Jets, Ezekiel Elliott of the Dallas Cowboys and Christian McCaffrey of the Carolina Panthers rounding out the top five, in that order. Story continues The Patriots offense was carried by its ground game in the last season's playoffs, and we could see more of the same this coming season after New England selected talented Alabama running back Damien Harris in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft. The Pats now have Michel, Harris, Rex Burkhead and James White leading a really impressive group of running backs that should make the team's offense a well-balanced unit next season. Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device. | https://sports.yahoo.com/where-does-patriots-sony-michel-230036336.html?src=rss |
Which 2020 Democrats are powering their campaigns on fossil fuel donations? | Democrats accept the climate crisis must be confronted but theres a split between those who signed a pledge to no longer accept industry money those who havent Among the vast field of Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination there is a broad acceptance that the climate crisis must be confronted. However, there is a split between those who have signed a pledge to no longer accept money from the oil, gas and coal industry and those who haven't . Of those who haven't signed a pledge, frontrunner Joe Biden and New York mayor Bill de Blasio have said they won't take fossil fuel money. In June, Biden released a climate plan that promised action "well beyond" what the Obama administration achieved. Prior to signing the pledge, nearly all of the 2020 Democratic candidates took money from fossil fuel executives, other employees and via political action committees (Pacs), according to data on donations stretching back to 1989. Source: OpenSecrets Beto O'Rourke has taken more than $600,000 to date. The majority of this money, however, is from individuals working in Texas' large oil and gas sector rather than Pacs. ORourke voted twice to lift a ban on the US exporting its oil overseas but has high marks from League of Conservation Voters, an environment group, with a 95% lifetime rating. Michael Bennet , who has been a senator for Colorado since 2009, has taken the second largest amount from the sector among the candidates. He has also taken the most through Pacs - $184,245. He hasn't signed the fossil fuel donations pledge. New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand , who has signed the pledge, has taken around half of her fossil fuel contributions via Pacs. Conversely, Bernie Sanders hasn't taken any dollars via Pacs but has taken money from people who work in the oil and gas sector. As the politics over global heating has become polarized, so have industry donations. Once split fairly evenly, fossil fuel companies are now overwhelmingly funding Republicans rather than Democrats. In the 2016 election period alone, Donald Trump received nearly $1.3m from the sector. | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/jun/20/democrats-2020-fossil-fuel-donations |
Is Nicolas Winding Refn's Amazon show an indulgence too far? | Television is a writers medium, while cinema is a directors one. So goes the old maxim, and for years it was more or less true: episodic TV directors were regarded largely as journeymen, keeping things running smoothly and crisply with minimal formal fuss, while writers absorbed more of the acclaim when a series struck gold. Rarely in TV criticism did you read much reference to directorial style or mise-en-scne, while expansive breakdowns of plotting and character arcs served such a demand that television recapping became a review form in itself. Too Old to Die Young review - Nicolas Winding Refn's dead-eyed LA nightmare Read more That was never entirely fair, of course. You need only look at the rolling sequence shots from a prime episode of ER, or the fevered, jittery handheld energy of Homicide: Life on the Street to see that American network TV was never simply a creative wasteland of shot-reverse-shot constructions to say nothing of David Lynchs Twin Peaks, for so long held up as the oddball exception that proved the rule. Twin Peaks was an anomaly at a time when TV and film were demarcated as separate realms, the latter a graduation from the former for a lucky few: instead, the NBC series was the first thing Lynch created after scoring an Oscar nomination for Blue Velvet, aired in the same season he won a Palme dOr for Wild at Heart. Three decades later, that zigzagging between big screen and small doesnt seem nearly so unorthodox, either for major actors or film-makers. Everyone from Martin Scorsese to David Fincher to Andrea Arnold is doing it, taking advantage of bigger, wider home entertainment screens and more flexible broadcast options to bring their trademark cinematic sensibility to a smaller format even if, in many cases, its only for a statement-making episode or two before letting the regular TV directors take the reins. Nicolas Winding Refns new Amazon series Too Old to Die Young, however, commits a little more doggedly and eccentrically to the expanding possibilities of auteurist television. Spanning 10 episodes and 13 hours every one of them directed by the loathed-and-lauded Danish director of ultraviolent art films Drive and Only God Forgives this seamy Los Angeles cop drama doesnt feel like TV in any conventional sense, from its shaping to its pacing to its aesthetic. Rather, it plays as a Refn big-screen provocation permitted to expand languidly into a more radical, audience-testing format: slow cinema both shrunk and swollen for home viewing, and aptly premiered on the sacred cinephile turf of the Cannes Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, its proved divisive with critics and audiences alike. Many viewers wont have made it past the 93-minute pilot episode, which is a pretty emphatic mission statement for the whole. Introducing its protagonist, Miles Tellers chilly, taciturn LAPD police officer, at considerable leisure, it sets a scant handful of remote plot points in motion principally, the shooting of his partner while wallowing in humid, fluorescent atmospherics and simmering, circuitous conversation over some of the longest, most measured individual dialogue scenes ever committed to series television. | https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/20/too-old-to-die-young-nicolas-winding-refn-amazon-show-an-indulgence-too-far |
Is South Africa edging out Turkey as the big EM short? | LONDON (Reuters) - Move over Turkey and Argentina, emerging markets investors have another country to sweat over: South Africa. A shopkeeper counts out change above her cash box at her shop in Hillcrest, west of Durban, South Africa, January 11, 2016. REUTERS/Rogan Ward The most industrialized economy in Africa was among the Fragile Five emerging markets identified by analysts as long ago as 2013 and it has struggled since with reforms to spur growth, including to state firms like power utility Eskom. But things now seem particularly precarious. Unemployment has reached a 15-year high of 27%, while the economy contracted by 3.2% in the first three months of 2019 the biggest quarterly slump in a decade. On top of that, some politicians now want to tinker with the central banks remit, while South Africas largest trading partner, China, is being dragged deeper into a trade war with the United States. There has been a confluence of negative news for South Africa recently, said Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategist David Hauner, who reckons the rand is now the most-shorted (bet-against) emerging market currency. That is largely because it is used as a liquid proxy for the Chinese yuan. It makes a lot of sense because China is the countrys biggest trading partner, Hauner said, noting that South Africas time zone also means the currency is tradable in Asia, Europe and the Americas. This week could be a key one. President Cyril Ramaphosa gives a State of the Nation address on Thursday in which he is widely expected to announce more measures to support ailing Eskom. He also needs some fresh ideas on how to bring down a government deficit projected to rise to 4.5% of GDP this fiscal year. That will all influence another critical issue the fate of South Africas last remaining investment-grade credit rating. Oxford Economics now ranks South Africa behind Turkey and Argentina as the big emerging market most at risk of a debt crisis, which warrants downward pressure on its rating, said Evghenia Sleptsova, an economist at the firm. Expectations are growing that Moodys will cut South Africa to junk from a current Baa3 before year-end or at least issue a downgrade warning, as Societe Generale predicts will happen at Moodys next scheduled review on Nov. 1. Just the fear that a country will slip from investment-grade into the speculative category can have a severe market impact. In the five months before S&P removed Brazils remaining investment-grade rating in 2015, the real lost 30% of its value against the dollar, while Turkeys lira slumped 25% in four months before Fitch cut it to junk in 2017. A full set of junk ratings can trigger the ejection of a countrys bonds from the global fixed income indexes used by big money managers, forcing them to sell and pushing up borrowing costs for the government. Societe Generale has estimated in the past that being booted from both the FTSE World Government Bond Index (WGBI) and the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate could trigger sales of South African debt worth between $6 billion and $17 billion. The quarterly decline (in the economy), the largest in 10 years, is credit-negative, Moodys lead South Africa analyst Lucie Villa warned bluntly this month. For the year as a whole, GDP is expected to grow only 1%. THE BIG SHORT More than 85% of South African government debt is in rand, helping shield it from exchange-rate shocks. Foreigners hold almost 40% of it though, and with the currency down 20% since February, it looks like some have already been selling: a year ago that figure was 43%. I am underweight (South Africa debt and the rand) and have been for some time, said Edwin Gutierrez, head of emerging market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Standard Investments. The bond position is not disastrous because you have the possibility of interest rate cuts, but the tricky thing is the rand and whether you can effectively hedge it. Reuters polls had predicted a modest rand bounce later in 2019, but the shock Q1 growth reading may cause a revision. Societe Generale analysts see the rand dropping to 15.4 per dollar by year-end from 14.8 now, and to 16 by mid-2020. BAMLs latest positioning survey flags it as the most-shorted EM currency when real money and higher frequency funds are added together, whereas there are now modest longs on both Turkeys lira and Argentinas peso. That is despite the rand registering as 10% undervalued on a real effective exchange rate (REER) basis, calculated as its 10-year weighted average value against a basket of currencies. Argentinas peso has a similar REER reading while the lira notches up an almost 30% undervaluation. Sentiment (towards South Africa) is quite poor but it hasnt really sold off to the extent Turkey did when it was really moving, said North Asset Management portfolio manager Peter Kisler. If things start to snowball though, volatility could really pick up. | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-emerging-safrica-shorts/is-south-africa-edging-out-turkey-as-the-big-em-short-idUSKCN1TL0IP |
Wheres the cheapest place to store 500GB of data online? | Ive just received notification that my Dropbox account is going up in price to more than 90 a year. I like Dropboxs interface and ease of use from the mobile app, but 90 seems steep for what I require. Kate Most of us just evolve the way we do things by making convenient short-term decisions. A price jolt should prompt you to rethink how you are storing your data, where you are storing it, and why. Different people have different devices and different needs, so I cant pick the best strategy for you or anybody else. However, I can give you a few things the think about. The core question, of course, is why you need to store 500GB of stuff online in the first place. You could buy a 4TB external hard drive for less than 90. The first and best reason is that you often need access to the same data from multiple devices, some of which you use while away from home. The second very sensible reason might be that you want an off-site backup where your data will be safe if youre burgled, your house burns down, or there is some other catastrophe. A third reason might be that you are sharing your photos and (less likely) data with friends and family, or possibly with the public. Millions of people shared their photos on Flickr, and billions share reduced-quality versions on social networking services such as Facebook and Instagram. A fourth reason might be that you have no way to keep a local backup. If so, you are in trouble. Online storage services are like lobster pots: its easy to get into them but hard to get out. In a better world, you would be able to move 500GB of data from one service to any other in a few seconds, without downloading it and re-uploading it. Sadly, thats not the case today. And if your data only exists in one online storage pot, then you have no backup and your data is at risk. People lose data every day because they forget and cant recover passwords, their accounts are hacked, or their service provider has a hardware malfunction or makes a mistake. Some people lose data when services close down, like Flickr, or go bust, like Streamload. Some people lost data when Megauploads servers were seized by the FBI. Some could lose data when The Big One hits California. Having only one copy of their data in one online pot is a gamble that many people will lose. You should have local copies and backups of everything, so that you can walk away and just let Dropbox close your account. If you are not in that position, keep paying Dropbox until you are. Popular cloud services | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/jun/20/wheres-the-cheapest-place-to-store-500gb-of-data-online |
Who's No. 2 in 2020? | (This is the 14th edition of our power rankings of Democrats most likely to get their party's presidential nomination in 2020.) (CNN) There's no question who the frontrunner is, right now, in the 2020 race. It's Joe Biden. The answer to that question has been, for a very long time, easy: Bernie Sanders. It's not so easy anymore, thanks to the steady rise of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- particularly among the most liberal voters that she and Sanders are competing most aggressively for in the race. There's also the fact that Warren is a woman and Sanders is, well, not. If Warren can fight the "who's the most liberal of them all" question to a draw, the female voters who came up in droves to push Democrats back into the House majority in the 2018 midterms might just line up behind her 2020 candidacy, which could be decisive. Below, our rankings of the 10 candidates most likely, as of today, to wind up as the Democratic presidential nominee. We update these rankings every two weeks, so if your favorite candidate isn't on the list -- or isn't as high as you think they should be -- just stay tuned. This is politics! Things change! Read More | https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/politics/2020-democrats-rankings-biden-warren-bernie-sanders-pete-buttigieg/index.html |
Is LeBrons Space Jam 2 cast also the future of the Lakers? | LOS ANGELES, Calif. What a coincidence. LeBron James co-star in Space Jam 2 is also his new superstar teammate. Anthony Davis, who was recently acquired via trade by the Los Angeles Lakers, will have a key role in the film that wont arrive until 2021. According to reports, James will also be joined by NBA stars Damian Lillard, Klay Thompson and Chris Paul. WNBA players Diana Taurasi, and sisters Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike will also appear in Space Jam 2. Coincidentally, Thompson is expected to be one of the most coveted NBA free agents this summer, while recent Houston Rockets drama reportedly has Chris Paul on the trading block. If you follow the rumors, its not likely either player will join the Lakers. But that hasnt stopped fans from joking that James is using his film to recruit talent to Los Angeles. | https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2019/06/is-lebrons-space-jam-2-cast-also-the-future-of-the-lakers.html |
Why Are Democrats Such Cowards? | The celebration of charismatic, conflict-averse uniters in Democratic-led White Houses omits a key, and punishing, shift in Democratic politics from anything resembling a viable effort to build a long-term majoritarian liberal coalition. Over the past two decades, Democrats steadily lost disaffected former supporters, while failing to consistently mobilize young or economically precarious people alienated from the entire political process, as the Republican Party increasingly became a nihilistic, anti-democratic machine designed to bamboozle a white elderly base and thwart the desires of the larger public for the sake of an entrenched oligarchy. All the while, Democratic leaders continue to campaign and govern from a crouched, defensive position even after they win power. They have bought into the central ideological proposition, peddled by apparatchiks and consultants aligned with the conservative movement, that America is an incorrigibly center-right nation, and they have precious little strategy or inclination to move that consensus leftwardto fight, in other words, to change the national consensus; the sort of activity that was once understood as politics. Consider just how deep-seated this reflexive inertia has become within the Democrats own leadership caste. At a 2015 Democratic presidential debate, Anderson Cooper asked the candidates an accidentally revealing question: Which enemy are you most proud of? None of them named an individual (well, former Senator Jim Webb sort of did, mentioning an enemy soldier he, uh, strongly implied he killed in Vietnam). Their answers were faceless evils like the coal lobby and the NRA. Hillary Clintons contribution, after the Iranians, was probably the Republicans. It was a funny response for a number of reasons. First, because while Clinton had astutely mocked Obamas theory of post-partisanship in 2008, the Clintonian approach of simply being 25 percent more Republican-likevoting for the Iraq War and supporting antiflag-burning amendments out of some bizarre idea that doing so would cancel out the salience of those issues for the movement identified with nationalism and jingoismhad already definitively failed at either establishing long-lasting Democratic majorities or cooling the hysterical opposition of the right. Second, because even though Hillary Clinton has absolutely every reason to consider Republicans her enemies, no one familiar with her record or biography really thinks she seriously considers them in such stark terms. She and her husband are longtime personal friends of the Bush family. Even this jocular responseIm proud that our political opponents intensely despise mewas too divisive for other members of Clintons own party. I dont consider Republicans enemies; theyre friends, one Democratic elected official said in response. And he added, the next day, I really respect the members up there, and I still have a lot of Republican friends. I dont think my chief enemy is the Republican Party. This is a matter of making things work. That official was Vice President Joe Biden. Now Biden is himself running for president, presenting himself as the bridge-building antidote to Warrens unseemly naming-and-shaming. Here is Joe Bidens theory of how politics works in the year 2019, as articulated at a campaign stop in New Hampshire just a few days after Warrens West Virginia town hall: The thing that will fundamentally change things is with Donald Trump out of the White House. Not a joke. You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends. And its already beginning you are seeing the talk, even the dialogue is changing. So look, let me put it another way. If we cant change, were in trouble. This nation cannot function without generating consensus. You cant do it. What happens is, if you cant generate consensus under our system of separated powers, all the power moves to the executive. Theres an addled, half-remembered version of a coherent centrist analysis buried in there. The idea that the system cannot function without consensus is by no means an indefensible claim. But the modern Democratic Party has adopted it as a governing ethos, and it has led them to some weird places. There is no sense that a new political reality can be forged, even with a foil as corrupt and unpopular as Trump. In Bidens case, it has resulted in a perpetually amnesic structural critique of the conservative opposition. This is not your fathers Republican Party, he likes to say on the trail. He also enjoyed saying it on the trail in 2012. And in 2008. The reporter Paul Blumenthal tracked him saying it all the way back to 2006. Joe Biden is 76, not 13, so we can charitably imagine that the father he is referring to remembers a much older and different GOP. One answer is, Biden is just telling people what they want to hear. Democratic voters, by and large, despise Trump, but also value a willingness to compromise in their own leaders. And portraying Trump as aberrant gives sometime Republican voters who dont wish to feel personally implicated in the profound rot of the conservative movement cover to vote for Biden. And all of that seems at least partly correct. But another answer is, Biden has nothing else to offer. He simply doesnt have a model beyond consensus-seeking, which is why his camp is floating the absurd claim that Uncle Joe is the only candidate who can strike deals with the Democrats canniest enemy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, when the record shows McConnell ruthlessly undermining the Obama White Houses ability to execute consensus-style governance at every turn. The supporting evidence for Bidens lack of imagination is, basically, the entire rest of the partys elder leadership. Its easy to forget that Democratic leaders greeted Trumps election by enthusiastically seeking to find common ground with him. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who seemed to believe that he had some special ability to deal with Trump as his fellow New Yorker, spent the early days of Trumps presidency insisting everyone would come together on some sort of infrastructure deal, even as literally millions of people marched on the streets in protest of everything Trump stood for. Or at least, it would be easy to forget those overtures if Democrats didnt again, this spring, post-Mueller report and everything, rekindle their old deal-making magic. As Politico put it: By all appearances, they are mortal enemies. President Donald Trump has been at war with Democratic leaders in Congress for months, as the two sides trade subpoenas, lawsuits, and accusations of bad faith. But on Tuesday, Trump, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer did something few people expected: They got alongor at least pretended to. All sides had apparently agreed on a handshake deal to spend $2 trillion on roads and bridges. As Politico alludes to, this is odd behavior for two parties seemingly at war. For dedicated liberals whod listened to Democratic politicians refer to Trump, regularly, as manifestly unfit for office, corrupt, and a danger to our constitutional norms, watching them negotiate with him was enervating or enraging. A deal that Trump would get the majority of the credit for, leading into his reelection year. (The fragile accord for an infrastructure initiative fell apart right on schedule, when Trump demanded that Democrats halt all investigation into his administrations staggeringly bountiful record of wrongdoingwhen, in other words, the GOP executive predictably claimed his birthright of venting untrammeled anger at will, as feckless Democratic leaders looked on and shrugged.) Democrats first outsourced their attempts to fight Donald Trump to the office of Robert Mueller. Then, given a House majority with which to investigate the administration, they found themselves totally stymied by Trumps stonewalling. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been answering that question pretty consistently: Wait for the Trump administration to go away on its own. She has almost complained that Trump has committed so many acts of malfeasance that hes goading Democrats into impeaching him, and warned that they shouldnt take the bait. The president is self-impeaching, the AP reported her saying in a private caucus meeting. Hes putting out the case against himself. Obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. Ignoring subpoenas and the rest. Pelosi and her allies opposition to escalation in this largely one-sided war quickly reached comic heights. By the end of May, she was arguing that she was declining to open an impeachment inquiry into the president out of love of country. When a caucus argument broke out over the White House leaning on former counsel Don McGahn to ignore a subpoena to testify, Pelosi stood firm: This isnt about politics at all. Its about patriotism. Its about the strength we need to have to see things through, she said, according to Politico. Theres the bizarre anti-politics of center-liberalism stated plainly: that the American people dont want to see conflict, and so therefore you mustnt be seen as being responsible for it. Pelosi and her allies believe they are nobly withholding from their base (which they define as being distinct from the American people) the sugar high of aggressive oversight, for their own good. There is no sense that a new political reality can be forged, even with a foil as corrupt and unpopular as Trump. As Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Pelosi ally, said: We did not run on impeachment, we did not run on collusion ... so logic suggests that we should carry forward with the agenda that we communicated to the American people. The American people did not send Democrats to the House of Representatives to do politics, despite what it may have looked like when millions, very much inspired by their antipathy to Trump, voted to send a large Democratic majority to the House in 2018. And so the response of congressional leadership has been: infrastructure week. They would not be tricked into treating the administration as an opponent to be fought and defeated. They would find compromise. This amounts to a bifurcated bit of political messaging in which Trump is the unique problem preventing congressional Republicans from negotiating in good faiththe thing, were all serenely assured, that President Joe Biden will do with Mitch McConnell, in a burst of centrist fairy-dust magic. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are jostling themselves eagerly within range of TV cameras to be seen negotiating in good faith with Donald Trump on deals whose inevitable later collapse they will then blame on the extremism and intransigence of Mitch McConnell and congressional Republicans. Its almost as if all this good faith negotiating is not exactly being carried out in good faith. But if the messaging here seems flatly contradictory, it makes a rough sort of sense in terms of consensus-seeking politics. In all these cases, the solution to Republican extremism is the removal of bad actors, and not the political defeat of the dominant mode of conservatismwhich is now thought impossible, despite its having been achieved (temporarily, as all political victories are) in the past. Its as if the ultimate lesson of the collapse of the New Deal order is that it was a miracle that can never be repeated. Nancy Pelosi is loath to take the fight to Trump, asserting that he will self-impeach. Erin Schaff/The New York Times/Redux After we talked politics and populism over beers a while back, one longtime veteran of left-leaning organizations left me with the words, Read Mouffe. Chantal Mouffe, a left-wing political theorist from Belgium, has diagnosed this fixation on consensus above all else as a failure of liberalism. She writes, A well-functioning democracy calls for a confrontation of democratic political positions, and says a political culture that seeks to tamp down those confrontations causes people to reject liberal democracy altogether. Too much emphasis on consensus, together with an aversion towards confrontations, leads to apathy and to a disaffection with political participation, she says. Its a conclusion that might ring all too familiar to Democrats who saw many disillusioned voters sit out the election in 2016, disappointed that the top of the Democratic ticket didnt present a genuine alternative to oligarchy as usual. Mouffes work deals with how to channel the inherent antagonism of democratic society into healthy democratic politicsi.e., how to ensure that we share a common allegiance to the democratic principles of liberty and equality for all, while acknowledging that we are in a fight over what those principles mean when put into practice. I bring up Mouffe because she has become an extremely influential figure in the new populist European left, and a small band of organizers and activists is trying to import her ideas here. It is not a coincidence that one of the few American interviews with Mouffe, which was published in The Nation in 2016, was conducted by Waleed Shahid, who is currently the spokesperson for Justice Democrats, the grassroots PAC that helped the insurgent campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeat establishment Democrat Joe Crowley in New York. In America, you can plainly see that the right has a muscular and coherent antagonistic approach to politics. They name enemies freely and tell their supporters how they will defeat them. They tell stories with villains: that George Soros is sponsoring an immigrant invasion, or that, somewhere in the brackish backwash of the 1960s, Frances Fox Piven and Bill Ayers created Barack Obama as a sort of socialist Manchurian Candidate. The rights fondness for conspiracy-inflected scapegoating is one of the things that has traditionally scared liberal Democrats away from a politics that clearly defines ones opponents: At some point, between the New Deal and the Reagan Revolution, they internalized a belief that the end point of that sort of politics is totalitarianism. (David Sessions explored the source of that liberal tendency, as expressed by consummate liberal Adam Gopnik, in the June 2019 issue of this magazine.) But the aim of left-populists following Mouffe is not bloody revolution or a leftist version of QAnon. It is the expansion and radicalization of small-d democracy, which they believe must be used to fight the power of entrenched oligarchya power, embodied by people like Trump, that liberalism has utterly failed to deal with. In a funny development, and in direct response to how the liberal establishment has failed to stop or rein in Trump, a lot of Democrats and liberals who probably havent read a word of Mouffe have stumbled onto a folk wisdom version of some of her central insights: that division cannot be reasoned away, and that successful politics requires the articulation of an enemy. (That is to say, an enemy in rhetorical terms. Mouffe says the challenge for pluralist democracies is to turn a friend/enemy confrontation into a confrontation among adversaries, which allows confrontation to take place within democratic institutions instead of playing out as civil war.) This conception of politics has come to dominate the discussions on Pod Save America, the hugely popular liberal podcast hosted by a quartet of Obama administration veteransnot exactly left-wing insurgents. Slates Isaac Butler noticed this shift as it happened, writing last year: Early on, there was the occasional tut-tutting about polarization, but now the Pod Save America crew wants the Democratic Party to hit hard, to experiment broadly, to run the most progressive electable candidate in each district, and to refuse to compromise. Pod Save Americas affiliated web site, Crooked Media, is edited by former New Republic senior editor Brian Beutler, who regularly excoriates Democrats for their failure to fight the Republican Party, and Donald Trump, more vigorously. (I asked Pod Save America host Jon Lovett, the funny one, if hes ever read Mouffe. At the time this story went to press, I had not heard back.) You can see the growing Democratic divide between antagonism and conciliation in the dozens of people running for the Democratic nomination. There is Biden, who promises to sit down with McConnell and a GOP in post-Trump recovery and negotiate deals, and there is Warren, who has made it clear that she believes her ambitious agenda requires reforming government and making it more democratic and responsive to peopleby eliminating the electoral college, for example, or taking a look at how to disassemble the Senates de facto 60-vote threshold to pass legislation. The stark differences in Bidens and Warrens records are part of why this is commonly painted as an ideological divide, with the left on the side of fighting and the moderates on the side of compromise. And that is broadly true of their overall projectsthe left wants to overturn the order of things, which will take a fight, while the center wants to return to the pre-Trump status quo, which wont. But adversarial politics arent the sole domain of the left, nor does everyone who wants to fundamentally reshape the country subscribe to them. Take Cory Booker, who seems like an obvious addition to the moderate bucket because he is, constitutionally, a consensus-finder. He deplores the idea of naming adversaries, a tendency memorably displayed when he went on Meet the Press in 2012 and bemoaned the Obama campaigns (fairly mild) attacks on private equityattacks that happened in the context of Obama attempting to win an election against a former partner in a private equity firm. But Bookers actual policy agenda is not noticeably more moderate than most of the rest of the field, and he has a genuinely progressive vision for his signature campaign issue, criminal justice reform. (That issue in particular has attracted a parade of consensus-driven liberals, who believe they have found, in the libertarian right, a movement with which they can negotiate in good faith. They applaud any reform bill that, in a slightly watered-down form, makes it to the presidents desk. And the president, representing the libertarian rights political coalition, appoints authoritarians to every federal law enforcement agency, expands and empowers the internal deportation force, and deploys the armed forces on domestic soil for nakedly political purposes.) The right has a muscular and coherent antagonistic approach to politics. They name enemies freely and tell their supporters how they will defeat them. Or take Bernie Sanders. His politics are distinctly Mouffe-ian. His goal is to create a we the people and mobilize them to take on the oligarchy (or as he prefers to call them in stump speeches, millionaires and billionaires). But, as his liberal critics frequently note, he is often quiet on the small-d democratic reforms (he is not enthusiastic about eliminating the filibuster, for example) that will be necessary for his left-populism to have any chance at success within our decrepit constitutional system, and hes less inclined than Warren to personalize his villains. Its not that hes unwilling to name nameshe has attacked the Walton familys wealth and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimons successful regulatory capture schemes. But theyre all interchangeable cogs of oligarchy to him. (Wolf Blitzer grilling Sanders on CNN about his Dimon criticisms in 2012: Because as you realize, Im sure you agree, until now Jamie Dimon has had a sterling reputation as one of the most brilliant guys on Wall Street. Sanders: It is not Jamie Dimon. It is the absurdity of having those people who are supposed to be regulat[ed] doing the regulating.) And despite his reputation for standing alone, hes spent decades building (working) relationships in Congress, where, if he never managed to pass much in the way of major legislation, he was still known for his ability to attract Republican support for amendments focused on his priorities. Sanderss enemy is a class, not the individuals of the opposition party. The differences in Warrens and Sanderss approaches were made clear when both were invited to hold town halls on Fox News. Sanders accepted, and turned in a performance in April that perfectly showcased his political strengths. He got the crowdthe Fox Newsselected crowdto give a show of approval to single-payer health care. He was open and polite to the members of the audience, and appropriately sarcastic and dismissive of Foxs disingenuous moderators. He took his message directly to an audience that otherwise would hear only a skewed version of itand showed that it is actually popular. Fox invited Warren a month later. She refused, with a pointed statement that painted Fox News as a tool of the plutocrats. Fox, she wrote, is designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption thats rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class. And, she pointed out, the Democratic town halls, which regularly scored large ratings, were urgently necessary for Foxs bottom line. A Democratic town hall gives the Fox News sales team a way to tell potential sponsors its safe to buy ads on Fox, she said. Warren is, of course, correct. Fox News is a poisonous influence on our society, a propaganda organ that irresponsibly foments racial hate for the sake of a media barons bottom line. Its also defensible for Sanders to turn that media barons weapon against him for an hour. Even if their respective quasi-populist projects led them to different decisions, they do better on these questions than nearly every other Democrat, because both of them understand not to conflate Fox the product or Fox the business with the audience, and both of them seek to win over at least a portion of that audience. (It would be surprising if that crowd in Kermit, West Virginia, that cheered on Warren for attacking the Sacklers didnt include any regular Fox viewers.) Then theres Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a candidate whose appeal at first seems extremely shallow (young, credentialed), but who also quietly scrambles many of these categories. Hes resolutely opposed to pinning down his own ideology, but he freely tells reporters about his radical process agenda. He explicitly rejects compromise with Republican politicians, telling Ezra Klein that any decisions that are based on an assumption of good faith by Republicans in the Senate will be defeated, and telling Kleins Vox colleague Zack Beauchamp: In recent times, appealing to Republican legislators has been wasteful because theyve mostly been acting in bad faith. Buttigieg also supports a grab bag of democratic reforms, like filibuster elimination and altering the makeup of the Supreme Court to loosen the GOPs death grip over the judicial branch. These measures have the potential to fundamentally change American politics. Buttigieg also fluently speaks the language of Obama-style centrist comity. He says he appeals to Republican voters by focusing on results and making common-sense arguments, and insists on prioritizing values over policies. And when Pete Buttigieg did his own Fox News town hall, shortly after Warren declined hers, that was very much the mode he operated in. He was heavily autobiographical, as usual, and light on policy detail, as usual. Where Sanders couldnt hide his contempt for his hosts, Buttigieg had moderator Chris Wallace essentially eating out of his hand by the end of the broadcast. Ironically, Buttigiegs father, Joseph Buttigieg (who died just this past January), was perhaps Americas foremost scholar of Antonio Gramsci, and Gramsci, as it happens, is one of Chantal Mouffes greatest influences. Her theory of politics is heavily indebted to Gramscis writings on hegemonyi.e., the political and institutional forces that determine what a society considers common sense to begin with. Mouffes left-populism seeks to create a new hegemonic order, to change what common sense is in the same way Thatcherism and Reaganism did. Its hard to imagine Buttigieg seeking to upend the status quo so dramatically. After all, this is a candidate who went to work for the mega-consulting firm McKinseywhich in recent months has been accused of advising the Sacklers on how to turbocharge opioid salesto, he claims, see how money works. Mayor Pete seems to be the candidate of the problems are bad, but the hegemonic forces that produced them those are very good. But the new populist left shouldnt assume their monopoly on the language of fighting will last. Biden himself recently fantasized about beat[ing] the hell out of Trump. In Biden and Buttigieg, we see two forms of a sort of centrist populism. Im gonna punch you in the mouth until you make me compromise, on the one hand, and, on the other, a long march through the institutions carried out by the institutionalists themselves. Both represent a misunderstanding of the argument, a shift from answering the question of how to win a political fight to one of how to win an election. But like many such strictly procedural approaches to political power in America, neither approach seems to connect up very convincingly with the actual conditions of living, getting byor fighting for what one believes inin these United States. Its enough to make one wish for self-impeachment. | https://newrepublic.com/article/154113/democratic-party-fighting-spirit-give-war-chance |
What Kind Of Value Should We Put On Speed? | Getty Recently one of our founders asked me for help with something and I immediately fired off an email reply, and then another, and another, and another. Truth is, it wouldnt be the first time. I love to get stuff done, so much so that when I was at eBay Meg Whitman called this mode Action Jacksonand it wasnt always a compliment. In this case, the founder wasnt overwhelmed. Not at all. Hes what I call a step on the brakes person. You never have to tell him to step on the gashes always going fast. Its a delight to be on a ride with him. Hes built a unicorn company and achieved amazing returns for his employees and investors. His vision and his execution extend far beyond what it was when he started and hes on the fast route to building a company that lasts. Its amazing to work with people who are so unstoppable in their pursuit of success. Looking back on it now, I realize that my parade of emails to him was a response to his enthusiasmit energized me. Im reminded of the magic that happens when you are in step with someone. However, other times, people are not moving at the same clip. You can become frustrated with the speed at which success is being pursued and you need to tell someone to step on the gas. This used to bother me to no end. I was unsympathetic when I saw this kind of behavior, which I interpreted as someone not caring enough, or not working hard enough. I cared so deeply about racing for excellence that I incorrectly saw this as a battle of will power and I would only focus on getting things done, even if I had to do it myself. As I matured, I learned that it was my role to inspire others to achieve great results. Additionally, as my career took off, I was able to let some of my issues around speed go. I responded differently when I saw someone go at a less frenetic pace and I became driven to try to help make everyone successful. I soon discovered that making the team better was a lot more fun and a lot more scalable. And personally, I learned that instead of acting like it was my way or the highway, it was much more rewarding to inspire people. Inspiration is ultimately what gets everyone moving in syncand allows us to go much further, much faster. Furthermore, I learned that someones pace is more situational than I once understood. If someone isnt moving as quickly as youd like it might mean their priorities are not the same as yours. Thats a cue to slow down, listen and get alignment. A few thoughts on the pros and cons of going too fast and too slowin the hope to get a pace thats just right. Step on the brakes. Thats amazing. It means you are driven to have an impact and trying to move fast to get somewhere quickly. At the same time, those around you may have to watch out as there can potentially be a lot of carnage. To those who are always told to slow down, take a moment to think about the rest of the team. Your agenda is important, but its not the only agenda. Understand that you can get a lot more done if you work smoothly with others. You will surprise yourself that youll be able to go even faster if you take the time to communicate and get alignment. Step on the gas. If people are telling you to move faster lets take a step back and look at why. If so, its time to have a discussion and determine priorities that stack up. Now, if youre aligned on whats important, but youre still going slow, then its time to set different expectations. Maybe someone has unrealistic expectations. But if you are being frequently told to go faster, youre probably not on a path to greatness as promotions and financial rewards come from measurable achievement. If you arent able to achieve at the same rate as others, you might not have the career growth you aspire. Again, lets look at why. If you are not inspired and are not working on something that is soul food then maybe its time to find something that will help unlock that magic. All of us should be working on something that we care about, things in our genius zones that allow us to create and have fun. That is a way to unleash enthusiasmand speed up success. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/maynardwebb/2019/06/20/what-kind-of-value-should-we-put-on-speed/ |
What Can Marketers Learn From The City Of Austin? | Getty I recently joined about 130 fellow Nashvillians on a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored trip to Austin, Texas, to learn about how a city much like ours has done very well, especially in building a strong tech industry, something our PR firm is actively involved in bringing about here in Music City. I learned a lot during our three action-packed days in Austin. Here are some lessons that are valuable not only to city leaders but also to marketing pros and their clients who want to think bigger: Talent matters more than anything. Austin has succeeded for many reasons, but the main reason is the concentration of talented people who live there. Some of the nations most innovative businesses are moving to Austin to have access to this incredible talent pool. Austin makes it easy to learn, with great public and private universities. It also makes it easy to live, thanks to Texass low tax philosophy. Lessons for marketers: Encourage your people to be lifelong learners and give them the resources, like a training budget, that enable this to happen. And dont overtax them with small-minded tasks. Make sure they have time to stretch their imagination. Expect resistance all the time. There is a strong "no growth" contingent in Austin, especially among the political class, which makes economic progress a constant challenge. So the business-minded folks in Austin must be both persistent and innovative in how they pursue growth. Lessons for marketers: Seek out challenging projects and clients to keep you on your toes, and realize that your strongest competitors have the most to teach you. Play to your competitors' weaknesses. One of Austins biggest advantages is that it is not in California, New York or Illinois -- high tax states that are shedding talented, productive people at a rapid clip, who move to states with no income tax, like Texas. Of the 570 companies that have moved to Austin in recent years, 168 of them are from California, according to the Austin Chamber. Lessons for marketers: Look for other companies that are doing something to make their customers unhappy and make it obvious how your company is different. Dont buy customers. Austin Chamber representatives also told us that, of the 570 companies that have recently moved to Austin, only 18 got any kind of financial incentive. That's a remarkable track record today, when corporate relocation executives regularly extract huge tax abatements from cities. Lessons for marketers: Dont compete on price. It may get you a few customers, but there's a good chance they wont be loyal and will leave for the first competitor that offers them a better bribe. Plant seeds for tomorrows successes. Austin is now in the fourth generation of its tech boom. It is strong today because companies like IBM, Motorola and Texas Instruments established a presence in the city decades ago. They laid the foundation of the culture that today attracts the best and brightest away from California, New York and Illinois. Lessons for marketers: Build a legacy by deciding to be good at a few things, instead of trying to be OK at everything. Embrace 'coopetition.' There is a collaborative culture in Austin. Competitors believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, so they often work together for the good of the entire economy. They still compete, mind you, but its not cutthroat, and they work to learn from each other. Lessons for marketers: Get to know your competitors and dont be afraid to get together with them occasionally to share information that can make you both better, because it makes the market better. Cross-pollinate. One of the most unique things in Austin is the way that private enterprise and the public sector work together to solve civic problems. This kind of cross-pollination has led to some very innovative solutions, such as a private equity fund that invests in affordable housing projects. Lessons for marketers: Get outside your comfort zone. Seek out people and organizations that can provide you with a radically different viewpoint and be open enough to learn from them. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/06/20/what-can-marketers-learn-from-the-city-of-austin/ |
Have the Vandy whistler and College World Series called a truce? | CLOSE The Vandy Whistlers, Jeff Pack and Preacher Franklin, are the fans that other SEC fans love to hate. Adam Sparks OMAHA, Neb. The TD Ameritrade Park employee that previously threatened to toss the Vandy whistler from the stadium instead shook his hand during Vanderbilt's College World Series game Wednesday. "I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to be a butt," said Preacher Franklin, one of two Vanderbilt fans dubbed the Vandy whistler. "I don't think they should shut down my whistling. But they didn't totally shut me down, and they worked with me." VANDERBILT BASEBALL: A Tennessean subscription gets you unlimited access to all our Vandy Boys coverage The Vandy whistler's notoriety came to a tipping point this week in Omaha. During Vanderbilt's game Sunday, Franklin was warned at least twice by a stadium employee to reduce his whistling, which had drawn complaints from fans at the ballpark and ESPN viewers. If Franklin did not quiet down, he risked being ejected for violating a ballpark policy that prohibits "disruptive noise." TD Ameritrade Park spokesperson Kristyna Engdahl said that could be defined "at the discretion of crowd management and ushering staff." Franklin expected more complaints Engdahl said there had been "a slew of negative comments and complaints" from fans at the ballpark and ESPN viewers about the whistling. Perhaps even more complaints were expected from Mississippi State fans for the Bulldogs' game against Vanderbilt Wednesday, which the Commodores won 6-3. VANDY WHISTLER: 5 things to know about the loved, hated Vandy whistler Mississippi State fans have had physical confrontations with both Vandy whistlers, Franklin and Jeff Pack, in the past. And several Mississippi State fans said via social media and emails to The Tennessean that they would complain to ESPN and TD Ameritrade Park if the whistling continued. Franklin said he overheard Mississippi State fans unaware that he was the Vandy whistler planning their complaints before the game started. "But I tried to behave," Franklin said. Franklin said his wife told him during a phone call not to get thrown out of the ballpark, especially since he drove 800 miles from Nashville to Omaha to attend the College World Series. He tried his best to whistle less frequently. "I held (the whistling) down all day long," Franklin said. "They are working with me. (The TD Ameritrade Park employee) was very nice and shook my hand. I told him, 'I will try to keep it down a little. But, look now, if Vandy does something big, I'm going to whistle my butt off.'" Warned again, but only once Franklin's whistling was noticeably lessened in Wednesday's game. He was also helped by a few whistling Vanderbilt fans near his section that drew attention away from him. "That helped take some pressure off me," Franklin said. "I was a pretty good boy, and then I kind of got carried away a little bit and started whistling a lot more. They warned me once in about the fifth or sixth inning." Franklin said he agreed to only whistle when Vanderbilt did something well, similar to cheering. The stadium ushers told him that was acceptable, just as long as he didn't whistle constantly during at-bats when the rest of the crowd was quieter. Vanderbilt advanced to Friday's bracket final (6 p.m., ESPN). One more win and the Commodores will move on to the national championship series, beginning Monday. Franklin said he plans to keep whistling without pushing it to the degree of an ejection. And Pack, the other Vandy whistler, hopes to come to the College World Series if Vanderbilt reaches the national championship series. That would be two Vandy whistlers in TD Ameritrade Park, a combo that could threaten the tenuous truce apparently called in Wednesday's game. Reach Adam Sparks at [email protected] and on Twitter @AdamSparks. | https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/vanderbilt/2019/06/20/vandy-whistler-college-world-series-espn-vanderbilt-baseball/1502144001/ |
Can Airbnb transform adventure travel? | For more stories like this, check out The Chronicles weekly Travel newsletter! Sign up here. In spring of 2018, Quincey Cummings and Mitchell Andrus flew from the Bay Area to Panama to buy their new home: a 30-year-old, 46-foot sailing yacht named the Esprit. They cruised through the Panama Canal and spent a few days in Panama City prepping for the voyage ahead. Then they swung around the Azuero Peninsula and turned the bow north. Forty-seven days after leaving Panama City with a handful of stops for resupply and maintenance Cummings, Andrus and the Esprit docked in Berkeley. The two-cabin yacht has become the couples full-time residence (which they share with a reluctantly seafaring cat named Panda) and the foundation of their business. With Andrus as captain and Cummings as mate and chef, Q+M Travels takes visitors on sailing day trips, sunset cruises and overnight tours around San Francisco Bay and along the California coast. Last week, Cummings and Andrus became two of the first hosts on Airbnb Adventures, the short-term rental giants expansion into multi-day, adventure-focused tours. Airbnb jumped into tours in 2016 with Experiences, adding activities like dumpling making in Shanghai and salsa classes in Havana to its standard stock of rental residences, available rooms and the occasional treehouse. We launched in 12 cities around the world with about 500 hosts, says Airbnbs Caroline Boone. Three years later, she adds, you can book activities in almost every country on the globe. Boone is head of Adventures, which she says is designed to expand Experiences from hours-long diversions to multi-day excursions with all the logistics minus your flight included. A few stretch longer than a week and cost thousands of dollars, but most are a handful of days and a few hundred bucks adventure travel with a relatively light commitment. Among the hand-picked itineraries for launch are a three-day canyoneering and cultural trip in Oman ($599), a two-day trek and homestay in Northern Vietnam ($82) and a three-day mushroom foraging journey along the Oregon coast ($385). Weve always had this idea about end-to-end travel on Airbnb, Boone says of providing a complete travel experience, rather than just one piece of the puzzle. Adventures is a bid to make that a reality, but launching longer, more active trips poses new issues and concerns both for the travel-booking website and the hosts it relies on. To establish safety guidelines and quality control procedures, Airbnb turned to the Adventure Travel Trade Association, a membership organization that represents adventure tour providers, tourism boards, hotels and travel agents. The ATTA advised the company on the risk factors for specific activities and techniques for making sure guides are qualified to deliver an exceptional outting and keep their guests safe. If a traveler is going to track lions in Kenya or go rafting in the Yukon, they need to feel confident in the guides steering them through rapids or leading them through the bush. Should a trip go south somewhere in the backcountry, you cant just pack your bag and make for the closest hotel. This is where you dont want your local 18-year-old to say, I can take you on a whitewater rafting trip, says ATTA CEO Shannon Stowell. Its one thing to do that with an art museum and a cooking class, but its a different ballgame when you step into nature and culture. It has to be done sensitively and safety. Boone says Airbnb has created a vetting procedure for Adventures that includes assessing the experience of the host and the safety criteria for each trip. For more technical activities, hosts may need special certifications and to carry their own insurance on top of Airbnbs $1 million policy. After years of marketing the ideas of local residents renting homes and tours hosted by chefs and musicians who dont work full time in tourism, Adventures is nudging Airbnb toward more professional hosts. Stowell says a handful of ATTA members were part of the launch, and many of the people listed on the platform have their own travel companies, operating on the ground in their chosen destinations. If adventure travel presents new challenges for Airbnb, it also offers new opportunities. The ATTA estimates the adventure travel market at $683 billion, a number thats grown 260% since 2012. Boone sees the potential to expand that market by making tours more accessible lowering the price point and broadening the definition of what counts as adventure. Stowell believes Airbnb will introduce adventure travel to a community of Airbnb users and younger travelers. From my perspective as a trade association, the most interesting and exciting thing is that theyre opening up a big new channel of travelers that might not have considered adventure travel before. I view it as an opportunity to widen the market. Q+M Travels Cummings and Andrus hope Airbnb can do that for their business. In the couples first year selling sailboat charters, theyve booked mostly day trips and sunset cruises, but theyre eager to move into longer excursions that make use of the Esprits size and layout, like the 3-day, 2-night Culinary Sail in San Francisco Bay listed on Airbnb Adventures. The trip posting details a hike on Angel Island, an on-board cooking class and learning to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, but the couple stresses that the itinerary is flexible, subject to the whims of the weather and their guests. We consider it more of a sample itinerary, says Cummings. Part of the joys of sailing is that it is kind of spontaneous. Where do we want to go next? Andrus hopes that Airbnb will be a springboard for Q+M Travels, that the platforms massive audience and marketing reach will be worth the 20% cut it takes from every booking. Still, he worries that the Airbnb website forces travel providers into a box, the trip that he and Cummings have dreamed up and designed lost among a sea of other tours with equally enticing photos and titles. I dont feel like it displays the Quincey and Mitch factor of us as entertainers and hosts and experienced people, he says. Its just another business on Airbnb. Quinn Carson is another one of the businesses on the platform. The dreadlocked, Midwestern recording engineer-turned-surf instructor relocated to California in 2011 and started introducing visitors to surfing via short lessons and overnight tours with his company Eat Sleep Surf. He was one of the early hosts to join Airbnb Experiences, and today, about 60% of the clients for his two-hour classes book via the website. Airbnb, since they launched Experiences, has been a real source of business for me, he says. When Experiences first debuted, however, Carson wasnt offering quick surf sessions to tourists. He had assembled what he considers his flagship tour: two days of surfing, hiking and camping in Malibu. Only it didnt sell. That trip kind of flopped originally when the market started going toward cheap, quick experiences, Carson says. Boone says an early effort at multi-day trips called Immersions didnt take off. We kind of had to earn the trust and the right to go deeper with multi-day experiences. The new Adventures provides a platform for exactly those kind of excursions, and Carson recently revived his original itinerary as the Malibu Surf Camping Trip, a pair of surf lessons and a favorite hike with a night at a scenic campsite on a private vineyard. Carson is cautiously optimistic about Adventures and his second attempt to share the trip he loves most with Airbnbs audience. Hes already designed another more ambitious itinerary called the So-Cal Trifecta, a three-day, greatest-hits mix of surfing in the Pacific, climbing in the desert and hiking in the mountains. But hes not ready to list it on Airbnb quite yet. Im waiting to see how this goes, he says. Last time I put so much energy into putting this together, and they started pushing these cheaper experiences and sort of put me out of business. When Airbnb launches something you never know whats going to happen. Sarah Feldberg is The Chronicles Assistant Travel Editor. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @sarahfeldberg | https://www.sfchronicle.com/travel/article/Can-Airbnb-transform-adventure-travel-14021077.php |
Where can growing number of elderly sex offenders live in FL? | Getting homeless sex offenders off the streets Miami-Dade is taking action against a homeless encampment of sexual offenders. Homeless Trust workers alongside city employees and police officers talk to the residents of the makeshift, homeless camp near Hialeah about finding them places to live Up Next SHARE COPY LINK Miami-Dade is taking action against a homeless encampment of sexual offenders. Homeless Trust workers alongside city employees and police officers talk to the residents of the makeshift, homeless camp near Hialeah about finding them places to live When Mark Sullivan found his roommate, Aquila Bud Albertson, grasping onto their refrigerator door, clearly in pain, Sullivan said the 94-year-old needed medical attention, but Albertson tried to downplay it. The roommates both knew Albertson wasnt getting the medical care he needed daily. It was left to Sullivan to feed him, give him his glaucoma medicine and clean his sheets when he had accidents. But even Sullivan, 58, couldnt provide around-the-clock care. He only found Albertson that day because he was given the day off from his job at a West Palm Beach call center. Only months after Albertson died, Sullivan thought that the lack of care might have been because of his criminal history. Both men are registered sex offenders. Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month Get full access to Miami Herald content across all your devices. SAVE NOW He had his issues, like we all do, but he did not deserve to live there and waste away like that, Sullivan said. It angers me that maybe he slipped through the cracks as a sex offender. Albertson is among a growing number of elderly sex offenders in Florida. People on Floridas list of 73,000 registered offenders who are 65 and older jumped 2 percentage points between 2015 and 2016, according to the states legislative auditors, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. Floridas registry has about 10,200 elderly offenders. Offenders who need care struggle to find help when their families reject them for their crimes, like Albertsons did, or live within 1,000 feet of schools or parks, as the states sex offender laws restrict. In addition, within Florida, counties and cities have different rules limiting where offenders can live. As of November 2018, there were 166 local residence restrictions, according to the state. Miami-Dade and Broward counties are considered among the most restrictive. Both have a 2,500-foot residency restriction, which is less than half a mile. Living at home isnt always an option for offenders, either. Sullivans last home before going to prison for inappropriately touching neighborhood kids was blocks from a Boynton Beach school. When offenders families are unable to move from areas near school or parks, offenders seek housing elsewhere. For some residency restriction advocates, any risk that a sex offender might lapse back into criminal behavior is too high. Ron Book, a former legislator, lobbied for Floridas restrictions after his daughter Lauren Book, who is now a state senator, was assaulted by her nanny in the late 90s and early 2000s. Miami-Dades residency ordinance is named after Lauren Book. He said he has met elderly offenders and is aware of cases when they committed new crimes. He does not think the state should change laws to account for the aging offender population. Sex crimes are sex crimes, he said. Doesnt matter if theyre 18 or 98. Researchers have found that the chance of recidivism decreases by half every five years an offender is out of prison, said Jill Levenson, professor of social work at Barry University and an expert in sex offender treatment and policy. Registrants remain on the registry for life, meaning a young offender will continue to face the same restrictions upon aging into his or her senior years. When asked if parole officers had noticed an aging population, Miami-Dade Police responded with a written statement: The registration requirement would carry them through their elder years. Being classified as a sexual offender or predator can have a bearing on where they live, work, visit or their chosen educational path. Gail Colleta, an advocate for sex offenders, has asked lawmakers to consider lifting the states residency restrictions if an offender is a certain age or has ailments. This is a humanity issue, said Colleta, president of Florida Action Committee. Were more concerned about stray animals than we are about people with issues, that need to have medication, that need to have oxygen, that are just human beings. This idea was also brought up at the last sex offender subcommittee meeting of Palm Beach Countys Reentry Task Force, said Nicole Bishop, the countys director of justice services. Bishop stressed the discussion was limited to offenders who are too ill or disabled to pose a danger to society. Enclave communities Residency restrictions are the most common hurdle for offenders searching for housing, with unwilling property managers a close second reason, according to sheriffs offices responses in the states accountability office survey. Both contribute to the growth of enclave communities where offenders live together, usually in mobile home parks. There are no known, comprehensive lists of communities or neighborhoods that accept sex offenders. Some in Florida include a St. Petersburg trailer park that was the subject of a 2016 documentary called Pervert Park. Sullivan and Albertson found housing in a community for sex offenders in rural Pahokee in Palm Beach County. The community, Restoration Destination, may be one of the largest in the state, with about 100 duplex units and 120 residents. Many of Restoration Destinations residents have families in South Florida they cant live with because their homes are near schools or parks, so Pahokee is the closest option for them, said Ted Rodarm, the manager of the community. While Restoration Destination just had two vacancies, Rodarm expects those to fill within 45 days. Rodarm said theres a pipeline of applications. Sex offenders in Florida must already have an address they will live at before they can leave prison. Finding housing is considered one of the biggest barriers for sex offenders recently released from prison. Federal rental assistance in public housing is not available to sex offenders. Many offenders have Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid. Some get financial help from family or friends. Few have jobs. At Restoration Destination, rent is $550 a month including utilities. Every apartment is fully furnished, from pots and pans to bathmats. New residents even get a set of toiletries and snacks to start off with. Many of the guys we get coming straight out of prison often have nothing more than the clothes theyre wearing, Rodarm said. Rodarm said that if he didnt provide this option for offenders, he expects some would be left on the street. Homeless While only six percent of sex offenders are homeless in the state, Miami-Dade and Broward have higher rates of homelessness than the state average. Miami Police said more than a quarter of the offenders living in the county are homeless. Only 4 percent of nearly one million housing options in Miami-Dade were compliant with the overlapping state and local restrictions in 2009, according to a paper Levenson co-authored on homeless sex offenders. Of those, one percent cost less than $1,250 a month. Levenson also cited a study by Broward County Commission in 2009 that found a 200-foot increase in residency restrictions from the state requirement decreased housing options by 40 percent in the county. Book, who helped implement residency restrictions, said two factors cause greater setbacks for offenders seeking housing than buffer zones: landlords who dont tolerate criminal histories and unemployment. However, Book said there are options for offenders who are in need. Book chairs Miami-Dades Homeless Trust and visits encampments to convince the homeless, including offenders, to find alternatives to living on the street. He hands out flyers in English, Spanish and Creole on how to apply for rent assistance. Preference is given to vulnerable homeless people, meaning those with physical or mental impairments, he said. According to Book, a handful of offenders have taken him and the Trust up on assistance in the past year, but Book could not quantify what a handful is. Counting is difficult because some applicants give up on finding housing and others cant keep a steady income once rental assistance runs out, he said. Offenders without a permanent address are required by state law to re-register every three days. The three-day requirement can be a burden for offenders with mobility or mental deficits. One of several offenders who sued Miami-Dade County in 2018 was diagnosed with cognitive impairments and missed his deadline to register by a day, according to Valerie Jonas, one of the attorneys on the case. At the time, the 74-year-old was sleeping on a concrete slab near the intersection of Northwest 36th Court and 71st Street in Hialeah. Lauren Book, a Democratic senator from Broward and a survivor of child sexual abuse, gives paperwork to homeless sexual offenders, Claudia Marie Baker (L) and Luis Concepcion at a homeless camp for sexual offenders near Hialeah, Monday night, August 21, 2017. Miami-Dade is taking action against the homeless encampment of sexual offenders. Homeless Trust workers alongside city employees and police officers, canvased the tents to talk to their occupants about finding them places to live that dont conflict with county rules on how close offenders can be to schools and parks. EMILY MICHOT [email protected] Our jails and prisons are filled with registrants who committed technical violations of probation because they didnt have a place to live, Jonas said. A federal judge dismissed the suit against the county but noted the physically disabled plaintiffs could potentially argue the ordinance is punitive given their health conditions. The case is now in appeals. The county attorneys office declined to comment for this story, citing a policy not to discuss pending litigation. The county commission office referred questions to the Homeless Trust. At least one of the plaintiffs is eligible for assistance from the Trust, Book said. That plaintiff and other offenders living on Miamis streets do so by choice, he said. A vast majority of these folks never went and looked [for housing] in the first place. They wont even take an address thats handed to them, he said. They say, Nah, I dont want it. Im OK living on the streets. Hundreds of homeless offenders have drifted over the years across Miami-Dade County. In 2010, after an encampment of offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway was disbanded, many moved to the Shorecrest neighborhood. Some found rentals while others lived on the street. Two years later, a pocket park was built in the neighborhood, and offenders were forced to leave. Nearly 100 offenders who moved into or near River Park Mobile Home Park, at 2260 NW 27th Ave., were evicted again in 2013 when the area was considered not compliant as it was near Miami Bridge Youth and Family Services. Parole officers recommended offenders move to the Hialeah encampment, according to the lawsuits complaint. The scene from a tent encampment of registered sex offenders outside of Hialeah in August 2017. Nine moths later, it remains. But Miami-Dade says it is ready to dismantle the village, and a judge has sided with the county. Emily Michot [email protected] The same offender who missed his registration deadline is also in a wheelchair. Homeless offenders with mobility issues can struggle with basics like finding a bathroom. That offender relied on others to take him to the Walmart nearby to use the stores restrooms. While some offenders are able to return to their families homes during the day, due to a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew enforced by the state, they must return to the streets at night, unable to receive nightly assistance. Assisted living homes For offenders who cant live without assistance, nursing or retirement homes are not a guarantee. Even if the retirement home isnt within 1,000 feet of schools and parks, managers of nursing homes often reject elderly felons. The state policy for long-term care homes is this: Management can choose to accept or reject applicants. Privately owned assisted living homes have reasons for rejecting offenders. They may be financially responsible for lawsuits if a resident is assaulted by another resident with a criminal history. A Pennsylvania nursing home agreed to pay $6.75 million in damages to the estate of a resident who was assaulted there. The home knew the resident who assaulted her was a registered offender. Brookdale, a national senior living company with dozens of Florida locations, determines if it accepts residents with criminal histories on a case-by-case basis. Factors Brookdale management considers include the vulnerability of the other residents and visitors at the community, Heather Hunter, a Brookdale spokeswoman, said. Assisted-living homes may also face reputational damage and lose other prospective clients if their commercial addresses show up on sex-offender registries. Although Restoration Destinations staff of three is not equipped to deal with the increasing need for medical services, Rodarm said elderly residents roommates have helped when they can. When Sullivan found another housing option closer to his work, he turned it down, thinking the elderly offenders at Restoration Destination need his help. Since Albertson died, Sullivan has started taking care of a neighbor named Kenny and plans to continue living in the Pahokee community as long as there are Kennys here, he said. As for himself, Sullivan doesnt know where he will find health care when he ages but prays for another, younger offender to care for him. I would hope that there was a me there for me when I get there, he said. | https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article231296693.html |
Why do people faint? | (The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Anne R. Crecelius, University of Dayton (THE CONVERSATION) Maybe its a bride standing in a hot chapel, or an exhausted runner after a race. It could be someone watching a medical procedure on television or a donor at a blood drive. Maybe youve even experienced it yourself. You start to feel lightheaded, your stomach may hurt, your palms are sweaty, your vision closes in, your ears start to ring . Then you wake up on the floor, staring up the ceiling, and realize youve fainted. Fainting or what medics more technically call syncope can be caused by a number of factors. Ultimately it comes down to not enough blood getting to your brain. Sufficient blood pressure is necessary in order to deliver blood and therefore oxygen to all of the tissues in your body. The brain, which when youre sitting or standing is above the level of your heart, especially relies on sufficient pressure to overcome gravity and drive blood up to your head. Nerve signals at odds By far the most common trigger for fainting is a drop in blood pressure due to a strong vasovagal response. This reflex is named after the vagus nerve, which runs from your brain to your heart, lungs and digestive tract. The vagus nerves job is to regulate your parasympathetic nervous system. This is one half of your autonomic nervous system, all of which works without your needing to think about it. The parasympathetic functions are often characterized as rest-and-digest. For example, in the heart, the vagus nerve releases a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine binds to special pacemaker cells to slow the heart rate down. Behaviors such as deep, slow breathing during yoga try to increase parasympathetic activity, slowing the heart and leading to a more relaxed state. While relaxation is a good thing, slowing the heart down too much is not as when it leads to a brief loss of consciousness. You need your heart rate to be a certain number of beats per minute in order to contribute adequately to your overall blood pressure. The other half of your autonomic nervous system is the sympathetic nervous system. Its responsible for the fight-or-flight response, the functional opposite of the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system makes sure the small blood vessels in your bodys tissue maintain a baseline level of constriction. This resistance as blood flows through all your narrow blood vessels contributes to sufficient blood pressure for the whole system. An increase in parasympathetic activity reverses this resistance, allowing blood to linger in the peripheral tissues rather than heading to the heart and brain. A lack of resistance, along with the lowered heart rate, causes a dramatic decrease in blood pressure. And youve fainted or more technically, experienced a neurocardiogenic syncope. While sometimes embarrassing, its fairly common and, in itself, not overly dangerous. When a sight or sound is the trigger The physical causes of fainting make logical sense. But theres some psychology involved here, too. Think about someone who faints at the sight of blood. Typically, when the body senses an initial stress like seeing blood it triggers a fear-filled response that increases sympathetic nervous system activity and the heart rate rises. The body reflexively compensates by increasing parasympathetic activity to slow the heart rate back toward normal. But if the parasympathetic system overcompensates and lowers the heart rate too much, blood pressure can decrease too much, the brain gets less oxygen and you lose consciousness. Whatever the cause of the fainting spell, the loss of consciousness is typically brief; most people will come to immediately after hitting the floor or even slumping over in a chair. In this sense, some researchers have suggested that fainting is protective. Once lying down, theres no longer a gravitational challenge in delivering blood to the brain its now at the same level as the heart. And, if one were actually hemorrhaging, or losing blood, the lying down, motionless posture would preserve blood and reduce further injury. The process of going from standing or sitting to lying on the floor is actually one of the more dangerous aspects of fainting, though. Individuals may hit their head or other body parts on the way down, causing injury. The idea that fainting may be related to the potential for blood loss, rather than a response to needles themselves or a medical procedure in general, has been a topic of recent investigations. In one study of healthy people, watching a video of a blood draw led to slightly greater activation of the parasympathetic response than did watching a very similar video of an injection, suggesting there is something special about the blood itself. This same research group has also shown that, if a person believes they are able to stop the procedure at any time, vasovagal symptoms can be minimized. This suggests the feeling of fear or lack of control may contribute to the severity of peoples responses. Minimize the likelihood All the different causes for fainting and all the various reasons one person might be predisposed remain unclear, although its well accepted by scientists that females are more likely to experience syncope. What is clear are some of the strategies that can help prevent fainting. - Undergo procedures lying down in the supine position. If you do feel faint, bend your knees or elevate your legs to facilitate blood flow to your brain. - Contract the muscles in your arms and legs to help move blood back to the heart and brain. - Stay well hydrated to maintain sufficient overall blood volume. Remember that an occasional episode of vasovagal syncope is likely not of concern, as long as you havent been injured in the process. But if fainting occurs repeatedly, its worth scheduling a medical exam. [ Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversations stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today. ] This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/why-do-people-faint-109620. | https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Why-do-people-faint-14024567.php |
Does the state of Texas have a Class 7A in the UIL? | The concept of a Conference 7A was briefly discussed during the policy standing committee last week. We dont have more details or information at this time, but reclassification and realignment policies for the 2022-2024 alignment will be discussed at Legislative Council meetings in the future, said UIL media coordinator Kate Hector. That means if the UIL were to add a Class 7A, it wouldnt happen until at least 2022. Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month Get full access to Star-Telegram content across all your devices. SAVE NOW Of course with the growth of the state, new schools will always be built. Eaton opened its doors in 2015 and spent its first two years in 5A before being bumped up to 6A during this calendar year. Mansfield ISD has built four schools since 2002 in Summit, Legacy, Timberview and Lake Ridge. While Frisco ISD has opened four new schools since 2014 and six in the past 10 years. It also has two more new schools in the works. According to the UIL, the 2018-20 realignment cutoff is 1,150-2,189 for Class 5A. Class 6A is 2,190 and above. If the UIL were to add a Class 7A today and applied those numbers, any school roughly around 3,200 and above would be included. Here are the 66 schools in the state with an enrollment of 3,200 and above (20 are from Dallas-Fort Worth including seven of the top eight): Allen 6,664 Allen head coach Terry Gambill holds the UIL state championship trophy up after Eagles beat Austin Lake Travis, 35-33, for the Class 6A Division I title at AT&T Stadium, Dec. 23, 2017. Paul Moseley [email protected] Plano West 5,654 Plano East 5,342 Plano 5,197 Galena Park North Shore 4,754 Dallas Skyline 4,568 Lewisville 4,564 Duncanville 4,451 Duncanville quarterback JaQuinden Jackson (3) heads into the end zone with four minutes remaining in the second half of a high school Class 6A Division I State Semifinals football playoff game at AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018. Duncanville defeated Allen 44-35. (Star-Telegram Bob Booth) Bob Booth Bob Booth Conroe The Woodlands 4,435 Laredo United 4,422 Alief Elsik 4,283 Pasadena Dobie 4,277 Deer Park 4,083 Pearland 4,026 Houston MacArthur 4,009 Conroe 3,998 Alief Hastings 3,993 Odessa 3,992 Klein Oak 3,955 Odessa Permian 3,919 Coppell 3,834 Klein Forest 3,750 Klein 3,700 Arlington Sam Houston 3,651 Arlington Sam Houston quarterback Jacob Dollar, right, started all 10 games for the Texans in 2015. He returns to pilot an offense that will look for balance after the graduation of workhorse tailback Peytton Pickett. Brad Loper Special to the Star-Telegram Houston Davis 3,643 Klein Collins 3,643 Humble Atascocita 3,641 Flower Mound 3,618 Hebron 3,584 Cypress Woods 3,547 Katy Seven Lakes 3,538 Cy-Fair 3,529 Houston Bellaire 3,528 Jersey Village 3,527 Cypress Lakes 3,523 San Antonio Reagan 3,518 Spring 3,511 Cypress Falls 3,499 Pasadena Memorial 3,491 Katy 3,487 Euless Trinity 3,470 Trinity running back Courage Keihn (21) follows his lead blocker, Toby Harrah (5), during Fridays game. Bob Booth Special to the Star-Telegram Arlington Martin 3,456 Irving MacArthur 3,451 Round Rock 3,426 Midland 3,417 South Grand Prairie 3,407 DeSoto 3,398 Houston Lamar 3,390 Los Fresnos 3,386 Katy Tompkins 3,380 Northside OConnor 3,367 Belton 3,366 Cypress Creek 3,362 Spring Westfield 3,354 Del Valle 3,334 Houston Aldine 3,325 San Antonio Madison 3,286 Laredo United South 3,283 Flower Mound Marcus 3,274 Alief Taylor 3,260 Irving 3,246 Keller Timber Creek 3,241 Conroe Oak Ridge 3,225 Irving Nimitz 3,223 Midland Lee 3,211 San Antonio Lee 3,208 | https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/dfwvarsity/prep-football/article231724128.html |
Should We Be Afraid of AI in the Criminal-Justice System? | When Cicurel and her team looked more closely at the assessment technology, they discovered that it hadnt been properly validated by any scientific group or judicial organization. Its previous review had come from an unpublished graduate-student thesis. Cicurel realized that for more than a decade, juvenile defendants in Washington, D.C., had been judged, and even committed to detention facilities, because the courts had relied on a tool whose only validation in the previous 20 years had come from a college paper. The judge in this case threw out the test. But criminal-assessment tools like this one are being used across the country, and not every defendant is lucky enough to have a public defender like Rachel Cicurel in his or her corner. In the latest episode of Crazy/Genius, produced by Patricia Yacob and Jesse Brenneman, we take a long look at the use of AI in the legal system. Algorithms pervade our lives. They determine the news we see and the products we buy. The presence of these tools is relatively obvious: Most people using Netflix or Amazon understand that their experience is mediated by technology. (Subscribe here.) But algorithms also play a quiet and often devastating role in almost every element of the criminal-justice systemfrom policing and bail to sentencing and parole. By turning to computers, many states and cities are putting Americans fates in the hands of algorithms that may be nothing more than mathematical expressions of underlying bias. Perhaps no journalist has done more to uncover this shadowy world of criminal-justice AI than Julia Angwin, a longtime investigative reporter. In 2016, Angwin and a team at ProPublica published a detailed report on COMPAS, a risk-assessment tool created by the company Equivant, then called Northpointe. (After corresponding over several emails, Equivant declined to comment for our story.) In 2013, a Wisconsin man named Paul Zilly was facing sentencing in a courtroom in Barron County. Zilly had been convicted of stealing a lawn mower, and his lawyer agreed to a plea deal. But the judge consulted COMPAS, which had determined that Zilly was a high risk for future violent crime. It is about as bad as it could be, the judge said of the risk assessment, according to the ProPublica report. The judge rejected the plea deal and imposed a new sentence that would double Zillys time in prison. They got access to the COMPAS scores of 7,000 people arrested in Broward County, Florida, and compared those scores with the criminal histories of those same people over the next few years. The score proved remarkably unreliable in forecasting violent crime, they found. Only 20 percent of the people predicted to commit violent crimes actually went on to do so. They also concluded that the algorithm was twice as likely to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals as it was to falsely flag white defendants. | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/should-we-be-afraid-of-ai-in-the-criminal-justice-system/592084/?utm_source=feed |
Is AI Ready To Transform The Marketing Industry? | Getty Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are becoming increasingly common throughout the world of business and marketing, especially since they allow unprecedented levels of efficiency due to automation. A survey found that 80% of enterprise-level organizations are already using some form of artificial intelligence (AI) in their business -- of which, 32% is related to marketing. Having said that, over 90% of the organizations surveyed also anticipated significant barriers to full adoption due to the complexity and relative unfamiliarity with the technology. Lets take a look at some of the biggest challenges to AI marketing success: A Lacking IT Infrastructure AI-driven marketing strategies require a robust IT infrastructure to be truly successful. AI and machine learning derive insights through intensive data analysis, and that requires vast quantities of data as well as powerful hardware to compute through such voluminous data. Setting up such an infrastructure can be expensive. State-of-the-art computers and related devices that feature the latest technologies can cause a dent in your budget. Furthermore, such complex infrastructure requires frequent updates and regular maintenance to ensure smooth operations. Ensuring a separate budget for the IT infrastructures maintenance can be a big obstacle, particularly for small and medium-sized organizations. Getting alignment from the C-suite and an adequate budget for the right infrastructure and its maintenance should be your organizations priority when working toward AI marketing success. Insufficient Data Utilization AI marketing software can analyze a decades worth of data to identify trends and conduct predictive analysis. However, acquiring such data can be a major obstacle. Devoid of high-quality data in volume, AI is likely to deliver poor results. We are living in the big data era of computing, where businesses are leveraging organizational data to go beyond standardized metrics and draw deeper insights into how markets work. However, there is a noticeable divide in the amount of data produced, as opposed to the data that is utilized effectively by organizations. In order for AI to be successful with marketing, organizations need to be careful in extracting organizational data and make sure theyre using the right technologies to gain maximum insights out of this data. The Past Is Not Always A Prologue To The Future Marketing firms need to realize that, even when a company has sufficient data to create AI applications, the models and data sets their AI algorithm is trained against isnt obligated to work forever. The ever-changing nature of the marketing arena makes it impossible for data sets to remain consistent over the years. Take AI applications used to manage marketing campaigns, for example. IBM announced that it would use its AI software, Watson, to manage all of its programmatic campaigns. According to the company, and as reported by Ad Age, the average cost per click for IBM marketing campaigns fell by 35%, and in some cases as much as 71%. Watson utilized advanced analytics to make the bidding process increasingly efficient. It did so by analyzing massive amounts of data sets and predicted the value of target consumers based on the time of the day, the device and browser used, as well as the language they spoke. However, as the past has shown, the advertisement market isnt static and previously successful models face difficulty as consumer behavior evolves. This is particularly true for AI learning, as its ability to compute and predict is heavily reliant on the data sets that it is trained on. Changing ad formats, evolving markets and tastes, as well as the increase in the number of organizations that utilize AI in their marketing endeavors all have the potential to change marketing conditions. The marketing arena can be significantly different from the one that existed when the data was gathered for AI algorithms to train on. Businesses need to account for this risk of a gradual decrease in efficacy by allocating safeguards, such as a continuous learning curve for the AI algorithm. Dearth Of AI Experts Regardless of the hype that surrounds AI and how it impacts the world we live in, the truth is that only a small fraction of the population can be considered professional experts. Even if marketing organizations overcome other obstacles and develop successful in-house AI marketing solutions, they are faced with intense competition when looking for AI talent. The market is currently facing an AI skills gap that greatly impacts the businesses that are looking to invest in the AI sector. As the number of companies that are looking to integrate AI technology into marketing increases, the existing pool of AI talent will likely fall sufficiently short on filling these new positions. Even companies that are using readymade AI marketing software need to ensure that they have trained their employees to properly deploy and manage new technology. Failure to do this will result in software that is unable to provide accurate analysis and results. The shortage of AI trained employees also places a burden on the already stretched marketing and human resources budgets. In short, candidates who are already familiar with newer technologies need to be offered higher salaries due to increased demand. This may be a primary reason that many small-to-midsize enterprises are reluctant to integrate AI into their marketing efforts. They just dont have the budget to hire skilled employees or compete with large organizations in a bidding war for them. Overall, based on what Im seeing, modern organizations are quickly adapting to advancing technology and leveraging newer marketing avenues that are afforded by AI integration. As the market continues to be shaped by data analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence, organizations must embrace this revolutionary technology and continue to work to overcome these obstacles for future sustainability. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2019/06/20/is-ai-ready-to-transform-the-marketing-industry/ |
What is driving more people to rent? | Shutterstock / pogonici Numbers from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) vividly illustrate the continuing boom in the UK property private rented sector. The numbers the latest the ONS has published on the matter reveal that the number of households in the private rented sector has shot up from 2.8 million in 2007 to 4.5 million in 2017, a 63% leap in a decade. Offset against that is a 15% decline in the number of households purchased using a mortgage in that time, from 9.8 million to 8.3 million. That period of time covers, of course, the high-profile 2008 financial crisis that engulfed many markets the housing one included but even as markets have recovered, more people are turning to rent rather than owning properties. Money Cost is an obvious factor. The average UK price house, according to Land Registry Data, has risen from 176,578 in January 2007 to 215,084 a decade later. Thats a jump of just shy of 40,000, or 18%, across a decade of economic turbulence. As prices rose, so did the average deposit required to a purchase a property, now averaging at a price point well beyond those without pre-existing capital or generous parents. Perhaps tellingly, the volume of property sales has decreased across that period. For instance, in January 2007, 107,331 homes were sold, against 72,121 in January 2017. In an era where wage increases have also been suppressed the average UK wage, as per ONS statistics, fell by just over 3% in the same period inevitably, many have turned to the rental market because purchasing a property is too much of a financial leap or not one theyre willing to take given past financial uncertainties. Risk Those financial uncertainties are worth exploring further. Its no secret that the housing market bore a heavy brunt of the aforementioned financial crisis, and the ramifications that continue include lower consumer confidence in property ownership. Brexit, and what form it ultimately takes, is a huge concern too, with an expected short-term knock-on (at least) on the nations economy. With many analysts predicting that interest rates will start to rise again over the coming years, a growing number of people are looking to mitigate that risk eschewing a 25-year mortgage in favour of a far less risky rental contract. Changing society Whilst the reasons explored thus far have a primarily negative tinge to them, theres also the feeling of a cultural shift - that people are actively making a choice based not on whats historically expected by society, but on what they actually want to do. For instance, according to a 2016 AXA-backed survey of the market, around one in five people now rent because they simply prefer to. Likewise, the slow decline in marriage and a divorce rate over 40% means that many over 45s are also preferring to rent over buying property again. For the younger generation, just as jobs for life are becoming a thing of the past, so the societal expectation to settle down quickly and have a family has evolved. With that, the expectation to buy a house has changed too. The workforce is slowly shifting away from full-time PAYE employment towards more flexible working, and more and more people are preferring the flexibility of renting by choice. Some have suggested it might be because they want to spend their money on other things that enrich their lives in the here and the now. Interestingly, 37% of the respondents to the aforementioned AXA rental survey cited the ability to relocate at the drop of a hat as a reason to rent. These, to a younger generation, rightly feel like valid choices, and theyre choices that theyre far more in control of. Its not a behavioural shift thats big enough yet to move the UK to a model of rental over home ownership as the norm, but elsewhere in Europe, thats been the case. In Germany, just about half the population own their own home, and a possible decline is predicted over the coming year. Even traditionally heavy home-owning nations such as Spain are witnessing some degree of change in favour of renting. In short, the demand on someone to own their home has softened. The future Its difficult to see a reversal in the shift towards renting over buying, for a whole mix of both positive and negative reasons. Rather than fight change, Id argue that the industry should adapt to it. In days gone, renting was traditionally an annex as such to estate agency businesses, with outright purchases seen as core business. That is certainly changing for most agents who are now forecasting equal parts of growth from sales and lettings. And is likely to continue to be the narrative for estate agencies in the foreseeable future. When the ONS publishes its next decade findings in 2027, dont be surprised to see a further significant jump in its numbers. Those agencies positioned to offer a comprehensive service to rental customers stand primed to benefit. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/garybarker/2019/06/20/what-is-driving-more-people-to-rent/ |
Who is Clarence Geist and why did they name a reservoir after him? | CLOSE Buy Photo Clarence H. Geist, former owner of the Indianapolis Water Company and Geist Reservoir namesake. Anyone who has boated on Geist Reservoir has probably swooned at the expensive waterfront mansions. The reservoirs namesake would surely approve of the opulence. It was named for Clarence H. Geist, who purchased the Indianapolis Water Co. in 1913. Geist also operated gas, light and water utilities in northern Indiana and across the country. He made Philadelphia his home but held memberships in several Indianapolis clubs, building business relationships along the way. Geist foresaw the potential population growth in Indianapolis and likely water shortage that would result. In the 1920s, he began purchasing land on the northeast side of Indianapolis and was bound and determined to build a reservoir, never mind that the hamlet of Germantown was smack dab where it was to be built. Geist got his reservoir. Geist always got his way. Buy Photo Geist Reservoir, circa 1960, shortly before the Indianapolis Water Company announced it was planning to close land around the banks and convert it into exclusive homesites. In the foreground is the dam, built by the water company across Fall Creek. (Photo: William Oates/Indianapolis Star) A LaPorte native, Clarence H. Geist was the son of a farmer and was a cattle breeder himself. Geist became a brakeman for the Rock Island Railroad until he found his true calling was utilities owning them, that is. Geist tried hard to shake the Indiana farm boy image. He was a savvy businessman who thrived on status and social standing. Where else but Palm Beach could one attain both. Clarence Geist could be compared to Carl Fisher, another Hoosier boy who made good in Florida. Geists outcome would prove to be more successful. Geist built a mansion in Palm Beach and assumed all the social privileges would soon follow. When he was snubbed for membership in the Everglades Club, he decided he didnt need their fancy membership and would show them a thing or two. Support our journalism Become an IndyStar subscriber today to support stories like this one. Get unlimited digital access here! Geist purchased the Cloister Inn in 1928 for $71,500 and turned it into one of the most luxurious private clubs in the world. Geist spent $7 million on land and added 300 rooms, swimming pools, dining rooms and quarters for the employees. When the newly renovated facility reopened as the Boca Raton Club in 1930, you gained entry by being a millionaire. Given that the stock market crashed just months before, it was a wonder there were any millionaires left. But there were plenty of people able to pony up the $5,000 membership fee, although prospective members had to be personally screened by Geist. Since the club was the largest employer, the town of Boca Raton was at Geist's beck and call, and he ran it as his own little fiefdom. The town budget went through him for approval. He had election dates changed from November to February when his club staff was at full operation and could vote even though many werent American citizens. Not even a street sign could be erected without his approval. RetroIndy: Carl Fisher was the 'P. T. Barnum of the Automobile Age' Fatal heist: Missing millions and the murder of grocery heiress Marjorie Jackson In retrospect, Geist could be considered eccentric. He would occasionally stroll through the lobby in a bathrobe or long underwear. Nothing ever started until Geist arrived. He refused to ride in the public elevator with the guests. Geist forbid any newspaper photographers inside of the club and even tried to destroy all photographs of himself and his family for fear of being kidnapped. In 1963, the Indianapolis News published a story by author Cleveland Amory, which told of his mortal fear of being kidnapped by strangers and even his friends. Nobody who ever knew Clarence would ever have wanted to kidnap him, Geist's bodyguard stated, if they did, they would have bitterly regretted it. Geist died in 1938. The Boca Raton Resort and Club is now a Waldorf Astoria Resort. Five years after his death, Geist Reservoir was constructed by damming Fall Creek. Follow IndyStar Visuals Manager and RetroIndy writer Dawn Mitchell on Twitter: @dawn_mitchell61. Read or Share this story: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2019/06/20/who-clarence-geist-and-why-did-they-name-reservoir-after-him-geist-reservoir-boca-raton/1491784001/ | https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2019/06/20/who-clarence-geist-and-why-did-they-name-reservoir-after-him-geist-reservoir-boca-raton/1491784001/ |
Who says raising taxes is a profile in courage? | U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, recently traveled to Boston to accept the 2019 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, which has been given out by the JFK Presidential Library since 1990. The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award was created in 1989 by members of President Kennedy's family to honor President John F. Kennedy and to recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most, the JFK Library website says of the awards origin and goal. The award recognizes a public official (or officials) at the federal, state or local level whose actions demonstrate the qualities of politically courageous leadership in the spirit of Profiles in Courage, President Kennedys 1957 Pulitzer prize-winning book, which recounts the stories of eight U.S. Senators who risked their careers by embracing unpopular positions for the greater good. A review of the list of past JFK Profile in Courage Award recipients shows an interesting trend: when the JFK Profile in Courage award is not given to a progressive or liberal Democrat, it will often go to a Republican politician who recently raised taxes or betrayed their constituents in some other manner. A look at the Republicans who won JFK Profile In Courage Award and why provides a case study documenting how much liberals admire tax-hiking Republicans. The basis of the courage award given to many Republicans over the years, it turns out, is lying to voters and caving to spending interests. Ten years ago the JFK Profile In Courage Award went to California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, both Democrats, and two of the four Republican California state legislators who helped facilitate what was the largest state tax hike in American history at the time it was enacted by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009. Those two Republican state legislators, Sen. Dave Cogdill and Assemblyman Mike Villines, in exchange for their campaign pledge-breaking votes, could not even point to the kind of meaningful reforms in state government that you would expect the Democrats to offer up in return for Republicans votes for massive income, sales and car taxes that will ... cost every family in California an average of well over $4,000, Jon Fleischman, publisher of the California Flash Report, wrote at the time of the 2009 tax hikes enactment. One of the earliest JFK Profile in Courage Awards went to a famous Republican tax hiker in 1992, when it was awarded to then-Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker Jr. because he, according to the JFK Presidential Library, shocked many residents of the state by proposing a first-time ever personal income tax as part of his fiscal year 1992 budget package. When Weicker enacted that income tax nearly three decades ago, he made Connecticut the last of the 41 states with an income tax to pass theirs. Weickers act ushered in a quarter century of further state tax hikes, economic decline and population out-migration from a state that used to serve as a tax haven for those looking to escape New Yorks high tax rates. Connecticut, thanks to Weickers legacy, demonstrates how once a new a tax is put in place, the rate tends to subsequently go in one direction: up. In 1991 Weicker signed into law the initial flat 4.5% state income tax. In the ensuing three decades, the rate has been raised many times and a progressive rate structure installed. Today, Connecticut has seven income tax brackets with a top rate of 6.99%, a 55% increase from the original rate enacted by Weicker. What happened after Weicker imposed Connecticuts income tax also demonstrates how new forms of taxation beget larger government. The imposition of Connecticuts income tax in 1991 was followed by a noteworthy uptick in the size of state government. The size of Connecticut government, using state spending as a percentage of GDP as the metric, is more than 32% larger today than it was the year the income tax was put in place by Weicker. When the income tax went into effect in 1992, state spending in Connecticut as a percentage of state GDP was 8.9%. As of last year state spending in Connecticut was 11.9% of state GDP, meaning that the size of Connecticut state government has grown by more than 22% since Weicker imposed Connecticuts income tax. The action that won Weicker his JFK Profile in Courage Award has done real damage to the Connecticut economy, has chased thousands of people and employers out of the Nutmeg State, and has made Connecticut less important to the national economy today than it was before state lawmakers enacted the state income tax. Connecticuts income tax first took effect in 1992, the same year that Americans booted President George H.W. Bush, another JFK Profile in Courage Award winner, from the White House in large part due his broken read-my-lips/no-new-taxes promise, widely recognized as among the most famous broken promises in American political history. Even Republicans who try, but fail, to raise taxes have put themselves in the running for the JFK Profile in Courage Award. Thats what happened to former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis in 2015, when he won the award simply because he now lobbies for a carbon tax, a regressive levy that would disproportionally harm low-income households. Former Congressman Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., who lost re-election last November and now lobbies for a federal carbon tax, might not have a vote in Congress anymore, but he is certainly a contender to win a future JFK Profile in Courage Award. Frankly, he should be miffed he did not win it this year. Perhaps the award committee can change it up next year so that both a Democrat and a Republican receive the award in 2020 and every year moving forward. The award given to the Democrat can continue to be called the JFK Profile in Courage Award, but the Republican will be given the JFK Profile in Taxpayer Betrayal Award. Based on history, that sounds fitting. Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform. Patrick Gleason is ATRs vice president of state affairs and a senior fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee. | https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Who-says-raising-taxes-is-a-profile-in-courage-14020894.php |
Is Shake Shack planning a fifth Arizona location in the East Valley? | Shake Shack, the popular hamburger and hot dog chain with four locations in Arizona, has plans to open a fifth restaurant in Gilbert, according to documents submitted to the town. The proposed Shake Shack restaurant would be located on the northeast corner of SanTan Village Parkway and Williams Field Road inside the SanTan Village shopping center. Shake Shack representatives did not return calls and emails to confirm the company's plans in time for publication. The New York City-based restaurant chain started as a hot dog cart inside Madison Square Park in 2004. Since then, it's grown to more than 200 locations around the world. Subscribe to azcentral.com for guides, reviews and expert advice. What we know about Shake Shack Gilbert The design plans for the freestanding Gilbert restaurant include an approximately 3,100-square-foot building with an 800-square-foot, south-facing patio off Williams Field Road. The plans show seats for 100 diners, almost 40 of which would be on the patio. Seating inside the dining room will primarily consist of low top tables, though two communal high top tables also are planned. Architectural renderings of Shake Shack at SanTan Village in Gilbert. (Photo: Town of Gilbert) The project would be located near the existing Dick's Sporting Goods. What to expect on the menu Popular Shake Shack menu items include: ShackBurger: Cheeseburger topped with lettuce, tomato and ShackSauce. SmokeShack: Cheeseburger topped with Applewood Smoked Bacon, chopped cherry peppers and ShackSauce. Chickn Shack: Crispy chicken breast topped with lettuce, pickles and buttermilk herb mayo. Shack-cago Dog: Rick's Picks Shack relish, onion, cucumber, pickle, tomato, sport pepper, celery salt and mustard. The Shake Shack menu also includes crinkle cut fries, which can be ordered with bacon and or cheese, and a selection of shakes and frozen custards. These often include seasonal and locally inspired flavors. Shake Shack at Uptown Plaza is now open in Phoenix. (Photo: Shake Shack) Where to find Shake Shack in Arizona Shake Shack's first Arizona restaurant opened at Scottsdale Fashion Square mall in 2016. Since then, the company has opened three additional restaurants in the Valley. Current Shake Shack locations in Arizona include: Scottsdale Fashion Square. Kierland Commons. Uptown Phoenix. Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, Terminal 3. Details: shakeshack.com. Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram at laurensaria, on Twitter at lhsaria and on Facebook at facebook.com/lsaria. Support local journalism and subscribe to azcentral.com today. Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/dining/2019/06/20/shake-shack-new-arizona-restaurant-location-santan-village-gilbert/1500682001/ | https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/dining/2019/06/20/shake-shack-new-arizona-restaurant-location-santan-village-gilbert/1500682001/ |
How far would Trump go to punish his own Federal Reserve chairman? | Donald Trumps contempt for the current leadership of the Federal Reserve is hardly a secret. Last fall, the president told reporters, I think the Fed has gone crazy. He soon after told a national television audience he believes the central bank is going loco. As recently as two weeks ago, the Republican told CNBC, We have people on the Fed that really werent you know, theyre not my people. It was an odd thing to say, since Trump personally nominated most of the Feds current board. Nevertheless, theres a new question as to what, if anything, the president intends to do about his frustrations. Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported that the White House in February explored the legality of demoting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Asked about the report, Trump didnt deny it, telling reporters, Well, lets see what he does. That was on Tuesday afternoon, ahead of yesterdays Fed announcement on interest rates. Powell, we now know, kept rates where they are, which isnt what the White House wanted to hear. All of which set the stage for a new Bloomberg News report last night: President Donald Trump has told confidants as recently as Wednesday that he believes he has the authority to replace Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, according to people familiar with the matter. [] White House lawyers think there is a way to follow through with a demotion if thats what the president wants, but there has been some disagreement in the Counsels office, according to a person familiar with the matter. Its worth emphasizing that all of this could be little more than posturing. The White House wants Powell to cut rates, and its possible Team Trump is making provocative leaks as part of its lobbying campaign. But that doesnt make the circumstances any less remarkable. After all, the Fed is an independent agency, which is supposed to operate free of political interference. The fact that Trump has lashed out publicly and wildly at Powell the chairman Trump chose for the job is without modern precedent. The fact that the White House has kicked around the idea of demoting him news that has now reached the public makes the larger dynamic that much more extraordinary. For his part, Powell told reporters yesterday, I think the law is clear that I have a four-year term, and I fully intend to serve it. If the Bloomberg News report is correct, Trump and his team may be prepared to test that law. | http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-far-would-trump-go-punish-his-own-federal-reserve-chairman |
Why has Facebook coined their new cryptocurrency Libra? | Cryptocurrency is a new word with ancient roots and Libra is just the latest to enter the digital money market This week Facebook announced that it was to launch a new cryptocurrency, a form of digital money aimed at hoovering up profits from people in developing countries without access to banks or, as Mark Zuckerberg put it more subtly: I believe it should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo. The ancient Greek root kryptos (from which we get crypt) means concealed or secret. So an animal might be a cryptodont (lacking obvious teeth), and a politician might be a crypto-fascist. Cryptography is secret writing, or coded communication as with the German Enigma machine, or encrypted messaging services. And cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin) is digital coinage that uses cryptographical techniques for secure transactions. Facebook calls its new cryptocurrency the Libra, which was the Roman word for scales or balance and also a unit of weight. So the modern pound is abbreviated lb, and the star sign Libra holds the scales of justice. And, given its record on privacy, users might wonder just how long their cryptocurrency transactions will remain safe from prying eyes. | https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/20/cryptocurrency-facebook-libra-steven-poole |
Are Commercials In The Cards For Netflix? | London, UK - July 31, 2018: The buttons of the streaming app Netflix, surrounded by BBC iPlayer, Speedtest, News and other apps on the screen of an iPhone. Getty Streaming service Netlfix has been proudly commercial-free since its inception - give or take those annoying trailers that start playing if you hover over a program for more than a few seconds. Some of the company's competitors don't think so. Several industry executives at a panel at the Cannes Lions conference said they believe that sooner or later, Netflix will be tempted by the revenues and opportunities of ad-supported programming. When you have to make more programming thats not guaranteed to be a hit, you have to spend more money, you have to build your brand, you have to help the consumer discover your stuff the price will go up for the subscription, and it would be logical to mitigate those increases to take ads, said Linda Yaccarino, the chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCUniversal, according to CNBC. Offsetting the rising costs of original content development isn't the only driver. Netflix's audience of 150 million subscribers represents a tempting target for brands looking to reach customers using precise data analytics, via a platform that has already demonstrated advanced capabilities to deliver personalized interactive content. As that audience continues to grow - and some analysts think it could double in 10 years - there will be even more money on the table. Of course, Netflix might be betting that the longer it holds out, the more its audience will eventually be worth. It's reasonable to assume that whatever brand gets first crack at Netflix viewers will pay handsomely for the privilege. Doing a series of select, exclusive sponsorship deals around particular programs might end up being more lucrative than a wholesale change in policy, at least in terms of roll-out. The other big pull for advertising may come from an unlikely source: viewers. Sure, lots of people don't care for commercials and pay a premium to avoid them. But recent data suggests there is a significant division of opinion. A survey conducted by OpenX in April, 2019 found: 72% of OTT users understand there is a tradeoff between watching free content and having advertisers use their data to serve ads Most respondents do not find ads bothersome if they are relevant 46% of OTT customers are willing to pay $10/month for a service with no ads 25% prefer a free service with ads 29% want a hybrid model with a few ads and a lower monthly cost Consumers are willing to pay up to $24/month for a premium package on a single service That data suggests that Netflix could expand both its revenue and its reach with a tiered strategy that welcomes advertising support on a free or cheap service level, limits it for standard customers, and excludes it altogether for a premium price. The consumer wants choice and they want something that creates value for them, said JP Morgan Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau at a roundtable discussion in April. To the extent that youve got this subscription version versus the non-subscription version, consumers will take that tradeoff. Remember also that Netflix doesn't operate in a vacuum. Its competitors, including the looming threats of Disney+, Warner Media and Comcast, are looking at that same data and planning accordingly. If the near-future of entertainment involves consumers building custom bundles of streaming services to fill all their content needs, you can fit a lot more selections on the menu if discounted, ad-supported options are available. Finally there's the opportunity to reinvent the television commercial for the data-driven age. Advertisers have been drooling over the opportunities for niche segmentation, micro-targeting, personalization and interactivity for more than a decade. As viewers move from passively watching shows on wall-mounted TV monitors to binging on handheld devices like phones and tablets, interactive transactional ads that enable people to pause, click and buy have become big money-makers. That argument was made by another of Netflix's competitors, Peter Naylor, head of ad sales for Hulu, at the same Cannes Lion panel. The future of ad-supported media does not resemble what were doing today in terms of ad load or even ad shape, Naylor said. It can be interactive advertising or non-intrusive advertising. I think youre going to see a lot of innovation from all of these new OTT providers because were allowed to. Were not married to the clock. Fifteen and 30-second ads were a product of linear TV. When everythings on demand and served through an IP address, the ad experience is going to dramatically improve. Better ads, willing customers, more money. That's a powerful combination of incentives. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2019/06/20/are-commercials-in-the-cards-for-netflix/ |
Is Going 'Passwordless' Really The Future For Enterprise Security? | Getty For many years, an online account of any sort has required a password - its the accepted norm. Organizations have tried to make passwords more secure over the years by adding stipulations for users, including that they must use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as numbers and special characters. Two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) have given both enterprises and users further confidence that their account will not be hacked into. However, insecure passwords are still one of the easiest ways for hackers to break into accounts, and this can cause major damage to organizations of any size. Despite this, passwords have still remained, and they are so ingrained in our society that it would be difficult to imagine a world without them. Okta, the identity management organization, wants to change this train of thought. Theyre encouraging the idea of a passwordless future, and claim that they can make this a reality. Ahead of the Okta Forum 2019 in London this week, the company released The Passwordless Future Report, which surveyed 4,000 employees across the UK, France and the Netherlands. The company found that 78% of all respondents admitted to using insecure methods to help them remember passwords. This would include using the same password for multiple accounts, writing passwords down on paper, typing them on their phone or computer, or even using well-known passwords such as 123456 or password. It also found that the majority of respondents (70%) believed biometrics would benefit the workplace. The company hopes that the use of biometrics could help fuel a passwordless future. Some enterprises have caught on to this idea. Mark Cameron, enterprise IT architect at Zurich Insurance, a customer of Oktas, believes the company will be able to go passwordless in a few years. The conversation with the group security people has changed recently. It used to be about passwordless being insecure and that they needed passwords, to the realization that passwords are not secure. They are only as secure as what the end user does with them and you have absolutely no control over that they could write their password on a whiteboard in the office, for example, says Mark Cameron, UK, enterprise IT architect at Zurich Insurance. Cameron believes the technology is getting to the stage where passwordless could be feasible, but says that he hasnt yet convinced everyone at the Swiss financial services company when the technology is ready, he thinks it will be easier to persuade them to switch to a passwordless option. Passwords are high risk and they are high cost. We have a constant service desk team at high costs, just managing peoples passwords and their credentials to get in. Were moving into a single global active directory where youve got something called My ID and then your passwords associated with that for accessing everything, and were rolling that out with Okta, Cameron explains. This means that a single set of credentials and multi-factor authentication will combine so that users dont have to remember their passwords for each enterprise app or system. If we have a single mechanism, which in itself is inherently secure, it removes the risk associated with forgetting passwords, he says. This may seem like the first step towards passwordless, but Dubai Airports EVP Technology & Infrastructure, Michael Ibbitson, isnt convinced that passwordless will be a possibility in the near future. The fundamental shift at the moment is the way the operating systems and hardware work together, so things like fingerprint sensors and Face ID remove the need for a password and Okta supports that. I can go through the whole cycle of using apps hardly ever entering my password today but I still have to reset it and that is because our directories the fundamental technical layer that controls our identity - still relies on a key variable that we as an end user have to change, and that is still a password. Sadly, the biometric on top of that is actually just inputting the pin number or password for us through a secure chip or component within the software, he says. We have to fundamentally re-engineer that but the problem with this is historically every computer has a keyboard so you can enter a password and not every compute device has a biometric. Thats becoming more a reality, so the future can be passwordless, but we have to have ubiquitous access to biometrics, he adds. It seems to be a question of 'when' not 'if' a passwordless future will happen, and despite Okta's confidence, it may well be other vendors who get there first, particularly as there is an appetite from enterprises to get there. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/soorajshah/2019/06/20/is-going-passwordless-really-the-future-for-enterprise-security/ |
Is Big Tech Too Big Or Not Big Enough? | null Getty Adam Mosseri is in a tight spot. He's the head of Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook's social media conglomerate a conglomerate that is facing louder calls to break up. There is a renewed bipartisan push in the United States to reign in the power of Big Tech companies like Facebook, Alphabet (Google), Apple, and Amazon, and ensure they are abiding by antitrust legislation. This is the justification for a recently launched investigation by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission as well as a slew of Congressional hearings and potential action by state attorney generals. Fear about the consequences of increasing monopolization by big tech companies has even led Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to call for the breakup of these companies. Yet, at the Code Conference on June 10th in Scottsdale, Arizona, Mosseri defended the size of his parent company and criticized the idea of breaking up the company. He argued that without Facebook's resources (Facebook's employees who work on integrity and safety outnumber Instagram's employees in total), it would be difficult for Instagram to address the problems on its platform: "If youre trying to solve election integrity, if youre trying to approach content issues like hate speech, and you split us off, it would just make it exponentially more difficult particularly for us at Instagram to keep us safe. Sundar Pichai is also in a tight spot. He's the CEO of Google, a company that, in addition to adjusting to the EU's new copyright directive and worrying about antitrust investigations in the US, is still dealing with fallout about community guidelines enforcement on YouTube. The proliferation of conspiracy theories, pedophilia, hate speech, and harassment on the media platform has made it a very difficult year so far for the site. In an interview with CNN, Pichai discussed this very problem. Although he pointed out that YouTube has made massive strides in monitoring its content for community guideline violations, he acknowledged the problem would never really go away. The platform's size. Any large scale systems, its tough. Think about credit card systems, theres some fraud in that. Anything that you run at that scale, you have to think about percentages," he explained. YouTube's growth as a platform is, in part, due to its acquisition by Google. When YouTube was acquired it was little more than a site for funny videos. With Google's financial resources to back projects like the YouTube Partners Program and movie rentals and increased access to partner with other companies for sports games and presidential debates, YouTube transformed into a popular platform full of engaging content. The acquisition also improved monitoring and video recommendations, as current YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki acknowledged, but it also caused content monitoring to be such an issue in the first place. The platform's continued success sows more seeds for monitoring failures. Mosseri and Pichai tell two different stories. According to Mosseri, Big Tech is justifiably big to monitor its content, while Pichai explains that Big Tech is too big, making monitoring all content difficult. From both these accounts, it seems that tech companies in social media have created their own worst monster. As their platforms expanded, so did the number of people who conspired to abuse them. This trend has also provided them with a crutch. Big Tech companies in social media can both evade calls for being broken up and criticisms of how they handle content on their platforms by either saying they're too little or too big. While the breaking up of these companies may worsen the problem of monitoring, it is clear that the growth of social media platforms following their acquisitions by Big Tech companies has engendered the same danger. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/masonsands/2019/06/20/is-big-tech-too-big-or-not-big-enough/ |
Does The Most Interesting Teacher Pay Proposal Belong To A Billionaire Friend Of Trump? | ASSOCIATED PRESS Stephen Schwarzman might have an idea. Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, has been named a Bloomberg Most Influential person of the year more than once, and in 2007 he was one of Time's 100 Most Influential people of the year. He is a long-time friend and advisor of Donald Trump, including help set up Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum. He has given away a great deal of money and put his name on a wide variety of enterprises, from the Schwarzman Scholars program for global leadership at Tsinghua University in Beijing, to having his name inscribed six times on the New York Public Library. You may remember him from a donation to his old high school that turned into a flap about renaming the school, but he is most recently in the news for a huge donation ($188 million) to the University of Oxford to change the way the humanities departments at Oxford interact, and to study the ethics of artificial intelligence. That's in line with his donation last year to M.I.T. of $350 million to anchor a new billion-dollar Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing for the study of artificial intelligence. Schwarzman is well connected and he lives large, but some of his ideas do always not match what we might expect from the typical plutocrat. His interest in AI ethics, for instance, is in part focused on the problem of displacing human workers. And when he spitballed an economic Marshall Plan for the middle class in April, he identified "income insufficiency for the bottom 50% of society" as a major problem, and said finding a solution "is not optional." He advocated for a minimum wage increase, and for more CTE style education. In education, he shares a common misconception; he thinks that when he was young, the US was number one in primary and secondary, and now they have slipped. It's unclear what measure he's using, but if he is commenting on PISA testing, the golden age he remembers from his youth never existed. The US was never number one. But his most intriguing suggestion was his third one. Teachers are central to education, he says, so "we should make teachers pay no tax." "It's not just money," he adds. "We need to make teachers a special class in our society." And then the interviewer cut him off. I reached out to Schwarzman to elaborate, but did not receive a reply. But let's look at this. The financial side of this is interesting. Several Democratic candidates have proposed raises for teachers, but there are plenty of problems with trying to collect federal money and somehow spread it down to local school districts. Let's assume that we're only talking about federal tax exemption for the moment. Teacher Tax Freedom would give almost every teacher in the country an instant raise. For some it would be a few thousand dollars. In states and districts where the pay is well below the national average, the raise would not be huge--in fact, for some folks struggling with low pay and a family, the tax freedom would give them almost nothing except a respite from tax form paperwork. From the local school district's point of view, it is an instant raise that doesn't cost them a cent. In fact, it reduces the amount of work they have to do to deal with deducting taxes from paychecks. Of course, there would be lost revenue for the federal government. The exact amount is impossible to calculate, but let's look at some rough numbers. According to the NEA, the national average teacher salary in 2017-2018 was $60,477. Federal taxes on that amount, for a single person, would be, according to tax calculators, around $6,500. Add a spouse and two kids and that drops to $3,764. But the average tax bite will be lower because teachers on the lower end of the scale fall under a lower effective tax rate. There are roughly 3.2 million public school teachers. If we arbitrarily set the average tax bite at $3,000, we get a loss of under $10 billion to the federal government. That's roughly double the hole that DeVos would like to open up in the budget with the proposed $5 billion tax credit scholarship program. One could argue that Teacher Tax Freedom would put that $10 billion in the hands of people all across the country, to be spent in the local community in ways that would stimulate the economy. But we would be trading a cost to the government for teacher financial gains that would be limited. All the tax forgiveness in the world does not turn a $39,000 salary into a $60,000 salary. But there is no discounting the second part of Schwarzman's explanation. Teacher Tax Freedom would clearly mark teachers as a special class in society. Closing the respect gap is no small thing, and a proposal that did so would have value beyond dollars and cents (though if more respect for teachers were there, it would be followed by dollars and cents). Education policy in the last few decades has been exceptionally creative in the many ways it has found to treat teachers with disrespect; Schwarzman may have stumbled on a way that policy could actually work in the other direction. It wouldn't solve all the issues of respect for teachers, and it wouldn't solve the problems of teachers who are working multiple jobs to get by. But it wouldn't hurt and, unlike more complicated and ambitious plans, it would be really easy to implement. We'll wait and see if anyone besides Schwarzman decides to talk about it. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/06/20/does-the-most-interesting-teacher-pay-proposal-belong-to-a-billionaire-friend-of-trump/ |
What Is A VPN? | This story was written in collaboration with Forbes Finds. Forbes Finds covers products we think youll love. Featured products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Forbes may receive a small share of that sale. Getty As of April, almost 4.4 billion people were active internet users, a whopping 58 percent of the worlds population, according to Statista. Most of those users do not give a second thought to the digital trail of personal information they leave behind. In order to keep you and your data safe on the internet, a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, can help with that task. The main purpose of a Virtual Private Network is to give you additional security and privacy while you surf the web or use the internet whether you are on a PC, Mac, tablet, or smartphone. VPN is a method to give you additional protection when you do anything on the internet from email to visiting websites to using a banking app on your smartphone. A VPN will shield or mask your internet protocol (IP) address by creating a private path or tunnel through the public internet. Some features and benefits of a VPN: It will hide your browsing history (but again, you are not completely anonymous, depending on a variety of other factors, such as the VPNs terms of service) A VPN will mask your IP address and physical location (the VPNs IP address shows instead of yours) Can reduce the risks of identity theft because you are in this private, protected zone or space Can be illegal in certain countries, so know your specific laws and regulations. They are legal in many countries. You can probably guess which ones do not allow it, but China, North Korea, Russia, Iraq, Turkey, and a few more have outlawed VPNs currently. A VPN can improve and increase your security and, to some degree, your privacy. In essence, a VPN is like creating a private road alongside all the back alleys and main streets of the internet and let you communicate on the internet with an additional degree of protection. The actual protocol to make that secure connection from one network to another is known as a Tunneling Protocol. Tunnels seem like a slow way to travel, perhaps because I grew up in and around New York City and remember heavy traffic. Maybe we should change the term to something like the Hyperloop Protocol (with all due respect to Mr. Elon Musk and his idea, which happens much faster, but still in a tunnel, so nevermind). In this VPN series, I will explore and give you details on a number of different, affordable VPN services. Ill explain a bit more about how VPN works and more about why you should use a VPN. I will look at the pros and cons of paid VPN services versus free ones (spoiler: you get what you pay for, right?). My earliest research is pointing me to: NordVPN and ExpressVPN, for their "No Log" policy, but I know there are many others. Stay tuned. Overall, a VPN can protect you, your data (be that an email or information you share on a website) from prying, spying eyes, no matter where they are. To be clear, VPNs are not foolproof and bulletproof - they have their limitations that I will explore in a future post. But if you have been looking for a way to protect yourself, a VPN is a thorough first step. By the way, securing your internet connection is important enough in the U.S. that even the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) offers a consumer protection page with advice about VPNs. You can read it here: Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/06/20/what-is-a-vpn/ |
Why Use A VPN? | This story was written in collaboration with Forbes Finds. Forbes Finds covers products we think youll love. Featured products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Forbes may receive a small share of that sale. Getty Nearly every week there is a news story about a major brand or business getting hacked. Privacy, security, and what happens with your data is often, or should be, top of mind. If you do not like the way Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others track your every move online (and arguably offline, too), then heres why you should be using a VPN (virtual private network). As discussed in other recent posts on what a VPN is and how it works, I wanted to list a few more reasons why you want to consider using a VPN service. Privacy is obviously at the top of the list, but a VPN can protect it in various ways. From services like PureVPN to InvinciBull VPN, there are many options to choose from. Here are some reasons that people use free and paid VPN services: A VPN Helps You Maintain Your Right To Privacy A VPN will thwart attempts by search engines, advertisers, government entities (no conspiracy theory in that one), your internet service provider (ISP), and even basic websites that exist to sell your data. A VPN will keep your Web browsing private. As I explained in How Does A VPN Work, in some countries any VPN use is illegal, so know the law. Bypass A Restrictive Network Even beyond country-specific restrictions, you may find that your office, your college or school, or even your public library may restrict certain sites or words. Im not recommending you break the rules, but there are times that the rules infringe on common sense. For example, lets say you have an illness involving a part of your body. Some basic terms are blocked because they can lead to inappropriate images and videos. However, you may still need to research a topic with a forbidden term. Some people want to shield their Web activity from their employer, so at work, they use a VPN. (Note: Companies can still figure out what you are doing with key loggersa pretty standard corporate methodas well as seeing that your browsing history keeps showing the same IP address.) Better Protections On Public WiFi Use You simply do not know what your local cafe or even the large coffee houses have for internet security. Same goes for hotels and airports. A VPN gives you a layer of security in public locations. Access All The Netflix Content Access full streaming content from anywhere. To be clear, I do not recommend piracy, but there are reported restrictions on Netflix users in different locations (usually outside the United States) where the content licensing varies. From everything I have read, Netflix is on top of these uses, but subscribers keep trying to get to content that is not allowed in a particular place. There are other streaming examples that are not illegal that you may prefer to work around. VPN Provides Better Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) Phone Calls Think Skype or Google Hangouts: VOIP, or Voice-over-IP, is a free or inexpensive way to call people. It may seem like a rare activity, but like any internet service, it can be hacked. A VPN can prevent people from tracking and intercepting your phone conversations. I love Googles free services, but they know an awful lot about meand you. Many privacy experts say Google is collecting too much data on us. If you want to understand just how deep the rabbit hole goes then you will want to read my post: Alexa Is Listening All The Time: Heres How To Stop It, which includes a link to former Forbes writer Kashmir Hills post about how she tried to remove Google from her life: I Cut Google Out Of My Life. It Screwed Up Everything. Spoiler: It was super-hard to doand she had technical help. Bottom line, a VPN can help you hide your Web tracks, even from your ISP, even from Google. The few reasons I listed here are just a sliver of why you might want to start using a VPN. It is essential today to take your internet security seriously. In the past, VPNs had a reputation that only people who had something to hide used them, but no more. Every citizen, who believes in privacy, should be considering a VPN as a normal way to connect to the internet. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/06/20/why-use-a-vpn/ |
Should I Use A VPN? | This story was written in collaboration with Forbes Finds. Forbes Finds covers products we think youll love. Featured products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Forbes may receive a small share of that sale. Getty There is a battle raging around the world about internet privacy and data security; a battle for your digital rights. As this series has pointed out, there are many good reasons for using a VPN, but let me be even more explicit in this post if you are still asking yourself: Why should I use a VPN? I sheepishly admit that I once thought I could make do with the private browsing mode in Chrome or Firefox. But as soon as I started researching Virtual Private Networks (what VPN stands for), I knew the answer: Private mode does not protect much at all. Important note: There are dozens of VPN providers in the marketplace today and plenty of other reviewers and rating sites. The recommendations I'm sharing are based on my usage, my tests, my research on the services themselves and what my network shares with me as well. I like NordVPN and ExpressVPN for their no-log policies. I am still reviewing TunnelVPN and Fastest VPN and they appear to have the features and mindset to make them worth a closer look. To answer this question about if you should be using a VPN, lets look at some of the myths surrounding VPN usage. VPN is for advanced users only . This is what I thought myself. This concept that it is too hard to set up and manage a VPN is what made me turn to browser privacy settings and add-on apps. Some of those are good, of course, but a VPN is the most robust solution I have found. VPN will allow you to remain completely anonymous . A VPN makes you more anonymous, but even the VPN cloud services have to respond to legal requests from the government or if you have committed a crime. Some VPNs keep a log of user activity, some do not. So a bit of research can tell you just how protected you areand where the VPN is based has an impact (Switzerland versus Panama versus the United Kingdom, for instance). You are totally safe from hackers, criminals and the government if you use a VPN . Yes, using a VPN will keep you and your data safer. You will make it harder for hackers and criminals, but being totally safe is impossible. VPN slows the connection. This is both false and true. Much depends on your own internet service provider and which service you choose as your VPN provider. For most high-speed internet users, a VPN is often not noticeable. There are plenty of people who may argue this point, but the answer is: It depends. Despite the many factors impacting your internet privacy today, you can do something positive to protect yourself. There are many high-quality VPN options in the marketplace today. Most of the ones I have used or researched cost money, though there are a few free ones. The free ones tend to be ad-supported, which somewhat nullifies part of what one is trying to accomplish with a VPN, in my opinion. I will be providing additional posts that review and compare some of the major VPN services in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you are still on the fence on whether you should use a VPN or not, check out these VPN resources: Former Forbes editor Kashmir Hills work in and around privacy is simply the best thing you can read to wrap your head around how the Big Five Tech Giants are using your data. Here is her final post about her digital well-being project: I Cut the 'Big Five' Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell. Two recent Pew Research Center reports (2018) on how Americans feel about online privacy and safety: How Americans have viewed government surveillance and privacy since Snowden leaks and Americans complicated feelings about social media in an era of privacy concerns are quite revealing as well. The bottom line is to learn more about a VPNASAP. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/06/20/should-i-use-a-vpn/ |
How Does A VPN Work? | This story was written in collaboration with Forbes Finds. Forbes Finds covers products we think youll love. Featured products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Forbes may receive a small share of that sale. Getty In my previous What Is A VPN post, I outlined that a virtual private network (VPN) encrypts and protects your identity, location, and data. It isnt bulletproof, but A VPN provides a way to reduce the tracking of your web activities. So far, I have looked at market leaders such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN, but Pure VPN and SpiderVPN are two that I have added to my research list. Here's how VPNs work and how they protect you: VPNs disguise your actual IP address and location. The network service scrambles your data in a process known as encryption. The VPN service puts your internet data into capsule, of sorts, to send it through a private tunnel to the website you requested. In order to understand how a VPN works, lets cover a few basics and quick history lesson about the internet. The internet was designed to send packets of information (data) as efficiently as possible. The core idea involved moving data on top of whats known as the Internet Protocol (IP), a set of rules that govern how packets move from one place to another. In those early days of connecting computer servers over long distances, users simply wanted to make sure data would keep flowing. If one network node failed, the information packet would move to another one. Security of data was not the primary concern - getting it from point A to point B was, and still is, the main focus. This means the internet is still, by design, largely insecure. Many services still send your information without any security measures at all. Just one common example: if you are checking your bank or credit card information from that local cafe or your local library, it might not be that safe. Once you are inside the bank website or app, on its secure server, you are mostly safe, but getting to and from that server, your information is vulnerable and unsafe. The MDN Web Docs site, formerly known as the Mozilla Developer Network (the fine folks who bring you the Firefox browser), have an excellent, simple breakdown of How the Web works: For now, let's imagine that the web is a road. On one end of the road is the client, which is like your house. On the other end of the road is the server, which is a shop you want to buy something from... When you type a web address into your browser (for our analogy that's like walking to the shop). I like this analogy to explain how public your internet requests really arepeople can see you walking from your house to the shop, unless you use a VPN, which is like going to the shop at night wearing sunglasses and a dark coat via back alleys. So, the VPN encrypts those request packets at the originating point (your home), hiding not only the data, but also the information about your originating IP address (again, your home). The VPN software on your end then sends those packets to VPN server at some destination point, decrypting that information. Then it sends them over the public internet to the website server. The information comes back through that same process. Expanding the Mozilla analogy, it is like you hire a person to go to and from that store for you, wearing the dark coat and sunglasses. Here is a simple breakdown of the steps: All of your internet traffic, these requests for website information, move securely from your location to the VPN. Your computer appears to have the IP address of the VPN server, masking your identity and location, as you make this request to any website. When your data reaches the VPN server, it exits onto the public internet. Even if someone managed to grab this data on its way from point A to point B, it would be very difficult to trace the data back to you, because it looks like it came from the VPN server. Many readers will have some familiarity with VPNs through their employers, who also know that the internet is not that safe. Corporations have historically used them to grant employees remote access to the corporate server. A VPN would give you access to the software and company resources while you were not in the office. You can now affordably do the same thing to access your home network while traveling locally or internationally or simply whenever you connect to the internet. Many people think that the private browser tab on Google Chrome or Firefox will shield all of their activity. It will not. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/06/20/how-does-a-vpn-work/ |
Is A VPN Worth It? | This story was written in collaboration with Forbes Finds. Forbes Finds covers products we think youll love. Featured products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Forbes may receive a small share of that sale. Getty The reality around internet privacy is that there is no perfect shield or protection. A VPN will not cover your every need for privacy and security while browsing or using the internet, but it is one way to start securing your time on the internet and reclaiming access to your personal data. The internet is still a wild frontier where your explorations put you at risk. But a VPN will lower that risk. There are so many solid VPN providers, but three of the market leaders are NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and PureVPN. Each offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can test with assurance. Even with everything I have written in this VPN series, I have had conversations with a handful of friends about if a VPN is really worth it. Most of them have felt that, yes, it is worth it. Some of them have told me they go about it differently using the TOR browser for additional privacy and anonymity, but my experience with TOR is my high-speed connection drops to barely breathing. Both are worth a look if you find that a VPN is not worth it for you. Here are two main reasons why I believe it is worth it to sign up with a VPN service: Your privacy matters. If nothing else, getting started with a VPN starts you thinking about how insecure and valuable your data is to others. If you read only a few of the posts in this series, and the related links, you will discover that the large tech companies, among others, have been selling your data. Anything you can do, that I can do, to reduce that data transfer improves our digital well-being. At the very least, a VPN will help to cut down your ISP (internet service provider) snooping on you. In addition, many people report that accessing their bank or other websites from public Wi-Fi locations (hotels, cafs, airports) are when they get hacked. It is important to note that a VPN will not secure your information once you start sharing it if that website or business is breached. For instance, a VPN will not keep your information from being shared if Facebook, or your bank, or your credit card company, is breached by hackers. It is equally critical that you decide how you will share information with any business. It is not that hard or expensive to set up a VPN service. It is true that your security is only as good as the actual service you install or purchase (rent, really, since it is a monthly service fee). As I pointed out in an earlier VPN story, there are free services. While I have often agreed with many others who say you get what you pay for, there are high-quality free VPN services that can help you secure your internet travels. Quite often, yes. But if spending an extra $100 to $200 per year for a VPN is breaking your bank, then embrace and use the free services. Add to that some of the ideas that additional privacy links suggest at the end of this post. Over time, I believe we will have to be more vigilant in managing our personal, private data. The government and public and private companies are not likely to do the heavy lifting. Some of the very people making those decisions do not truly understand what they are doing or the impacts their decisions will have on our future. So take your future into your own hands and ask yourself if a VPN is worth it. I think you will find the answer is yes. Resources If You Are Still Unsure If A VPN Is Worth It: Again, a VPN will not make you completely anonymous. If thats what you are after, research and visit the Tor Project. This excellent service is of the Firefox browser with privacy issues fixed. They invented whats known as onion routing (think: layers) to give internet users as much privacy as possible. The core idea was to route traffic through multiple servers and encrypt it each step of the way. If your main concern about using a VPN is to increase your security against government surveillance, I would strongly encourage you to dig in on the PrivacyTools.io website. They discuss a number of issues around where servers are based, country-specific data and tips, and a host of other security topics. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2019/06/20/is-a-vpn-worth-it/ |
Does American Airlines Airbus A321XLR Order Send A Secret Message To Boeing? | Artist's rendering of new Airbus A321XLR long-range narrow-body airliner. AIRBUS S.A.S 2019, COMPUTER RENDERING BY FIXION. PHOTCREDIT DREAMSTIME.COM 2019 Its official: a relatively small airliner, the just-announced Airbus A321XLR, is the biggest hit of the Paris Air Show. The official hit imprimatur was placed on the long-range plane with an American Airlines order for 50 A321XLR aircraft. The order from the worlds largest airline comes on top of orders from International Leasing Corp, Middle East Airlines, Qantas, and Frontier Airlines parent. Just announced this week, the A321XLR already has 191 orders. One message might be frustration at the continued grounding of the Boeing 737MAX, itself sold as a long-range, afford operating solution up until its grounding for safety issues. The MAX is so efficient that in some cases, it is even replacing widebody service, notes a Boeing article from 2018. Aerolineas Argentinas replaced its 4-times weekly A330 service from Buenos Aires to Punta Cana with daily MAX service. That route covers 3,252 nautical miles. To airlines fed up with their costly and currently unusable aircraft, the purchase of the A321XLR might provide insurance, or at least back-up, against continuing 737 MAX issues. A second message to Boeing from the airlines might be about the need (or lack of same) for an airplane that does not yet exist. Some pessimists even claim its prospects were damaged by the A321XLR at the Paris Show. That would be the Boeing NMA, or New Mid-Market Airplane, sometimes called the B797. An announcement of the much-rumored plane, supposedly an all-new 220-250 seat model that will replace the aging Boeing 757 and 767, did not appear at the Paris Air Show, as Boeing grapples with the 737MAX issues. Now Boeing is sniping back, claiming the A321XLR addresses only "a sliver" of the market for a new mid-sized airplane. Of course, the A321XLR (extra-long range) isnt an all-new plane. We wrote about it a year ago, when journalists debated whether it was the aviation industrys version of vaporware. With a 4700 nautical mile range, the 180 to 220 seat A321XLR can fly even farther than the current Airbus A321LR (long range). Both LR and XLR are variants of the Airbus A321neo, itself a stretched and re-engined version of the companys popular A320 family of twin-jet, single-aisle airliners. The American Airlines deal includes the conversion of 30 of Americans existing orders for A321neo airliners to A321XLRs, plus what Airbus calls incremental orders for an additional 20 A321XLRs. Deliveries will begin in 2023. Pricing was not disclosed, but the list price of an Airbus A321neo is $129.5 million. The plane offers the airline long range in an easy-to-fill form factor, a combination which can open up many new routes. The A321XLR should also cost less to operate. Airbus touts its 30% lower fuel burn per seat compared with previous generation competitor aircraft. Airbus A321XLR facts and figures, including range, passenger capacity and possible route map. Airbus Industries The planes range of up to 4,700 nautical miles (8700 kilometers) will allow American to operate the aircraft from U.S. East Coast airports to medium-size European cities. (The A321XLR can operate out of airports not always associated with European travel, like Baltimore-Washington, Jacksonville, Providence, Charlotte, NC, etc.) The 8700-kilometer range of the A321XLR can make nearly every major city in South America accessible by non-stop from Americans Dallas-Ft. Worth hub, including Santiago, Chile (7,872 km away). Only Buenos Aires (8,516 km from DFW) seems out of reach. American is the largest Airbus operator in the world with 422 Airbus aircraft. The A321XL will join the more than 220 A321 and A321neo aircraft American is already operating. Familiarity and what Airbus calls commonality means that there should be a shorter learning curve for key personnel like pilots, flight attendants and mechanics. In the video presentation, Robert Isom, President of American, showed his excitement over the new aircraft. He describes it as giving us the ability to fly farther and to be more efficient, take complexity out of the operation. U.S. Airways Chief Operating Officer Robert Isom, right, speaks as American Airlines Senior Vice President, Customer Service, Jon Snook listens during a news conference announcing the merger of both airlines Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013 at Sky Harbor ASSOCIATED PRESS This opportunity, with the enhancements that are being made to the NEO to create the XLR, is really cool, he enthused. The A321XLR offers American the chance to open up some new markets that will help the network. For us, when we take a look at the opportunities, whether it's TransCon opportunities, or close-in Europe or close-in South America, we can configure this aircraft anywhere in between. Concerns have been raised about passenger comfort with the A321XLR. While some say the cabin pressure in the XLR might increase jet lag, other experts dismiss this. The A321 has the widest single-aisle cabin in the sky, according to an Airbus spokesperson, 7 inches wider than the 737. Economy seats on A321 aircraft are often as wide as economy seats in widebody jetliners. Economy or Core seats on Jet Blue A320 family aircraft, for example, have a seat pitch ranging from 32 to 34, with a width ranging from 17.8 to 18.4. So passengers may have some breathing room, even when flying for seven hours. Airbus says the A321XLR will also include a version of the soothing Airspace Cabin, with its jet-lag reducing lighting system, larger bins, and connectivity options. Such cabin technology may come in handy, because airlines like American clamoring for the A321XLR hope to operate the new planes as far, and as full, as possible. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2019/06/20/does-american-airlines-airbus-a321xlr-order-send-a-secret-message-to-boeing/ |
Is Trump punking America on deportation? | Administration officials had to quickly follow the president to clean up his tweet, to tell us what he really meant. As an unnamed administration official told The Associated Press, "millions" referred to the more than 1 million unauthorized residents in the United States with final deportation orders. In other words, nothing to see here. Move along. We wish, against all experience, the president would avoid red-hot tweets filled with ambiguous and even misleading declarations. Instead of bringing clarity and direction, they create anger, fear and frustration among too many. Meanwhile, the tweets raise expectations that the president apparently has no intention of delivering on, even as they create unrealistic marching orders for federal law enforcement. Whatever the Twitter bluster from Trump, the Obama administration still holds the record for deportations over a full year with 419,384 in 2012. The president would have to send more than twice that number out of the country by 2020 to live up to his tweet. | https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/06/20/trump-punking-america-deportation |
Is Social Media Simply Too Sick And Depraved To Continue? | Getty The Verges latest expose on the inhuman working conditions of Facebooks content moderators sheds light once again on the depravity of the human condition and the indescribable horrors that people all across the world share on social media. The working conditions outlined in the Verge article are absolutely horrific, bordering on modern day coal miners. Yet they exist because of the horrors that people choose to share on Facebook each and every day. The content those moderators are forced to encounter each day is nothing short of indescribable. Animals tortured to death on camera, young children being filmed as they are cut open and their organs harvested while still alive and screaming in agony, dogs with firecrackers detonated in their mouths, torture, terrorism, genocide, young children sold into slavery or raped while their attackers live-stream it laughing before brutally and graphically murdering them the things moderators encounter each day are breathtaking in their horror and inhumanity. It is not just one or two people worldwide sharing this content if it were, those few users could simply be banned from the platform and the digital world would go on happily without them. Instead, the sheer volume of material reviewed each day by content moderators reminds us just how much hate and horror and depravity there really is in our world. The Web did not usher in an era of horror. It merely globalized its visibility and monetized it. Today Facebook makes a handsome profit from terrorism, rape, torture, genocide, slavery, animal cruelty, human trafficking, organ harvesting, hate speech, threats of violence and other horrific content. Every live-streamed terror attack, every videotaped rape, every image gallery of human trafficking, every image of a tortured animal makes very real money for Facebook that enriches its stockholders and executives. Its employees earn a portion of their paychecks from supporting the absolute most depraved and inhuman behavior on earth. Every single Facebook worker owes some portion of their pay to the most indescribable horrors on earth. Rape, torture, terrorism, genocide, slavery and other activities are profitable businesses for Facebook. Every rape video that is published to the platform not only revictimizes that individual globally but earns very real money for Facebook. A murder may end a life but the video and imagery of it earns Facebook revenue forever. A childs life may be forever changed by being sold into slavery but Facebook earns a profit from their sale. A terror attack may terrorize society but it is merely money in Facebook's pocket. Facebook represents capitalism at its best and its worst. Its best because it is able to extract revenue from the worlds most profitable horrors and its worst because that profit comes on the back of the very worst of human nature. Through Facebook, the worlds consumer brands find their names and likenesses appearing alongside rape, torture, genocide and every other imaginable horror. Time and again when asked whether it would refund the revenue it earns from these activities, Facebook has declined to comment. It would be quite trivial for Facebook to institute a policy that all content it removes for policy violations should have their ad revenue refunded, but the company remains silent on whether it would even consider such a penalty on itself. Asked again for this article whether it would consider refunding the money it earns from such content, including allowable content like animal cruelty (which the company issued a statement confirming it permits under some circumstances), the company again remained silent. Facebook offers a medium that allows publication and global distribution of the worst of societys darkest side. Putting this all together, in its rush to connect the world, Facebook and its social brethren gave little thought to the horrors to which their platforms might be put. The myriad safeguards and design principles that could have been built into their platforms from the beginning to deter their misuse were cast aside in the single-minded pursuit of profit at all costs. Even today, asked whether it would refund the revenue it earns from the worst of societys depravity, the company steadfastly remains silent. In light of all of this, I asked Facebook whether it still believes that the good it offers in connecting the world still outweighs the harm it does to society in giving voice to societys darkest horrors. Silence. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/06/20/is-social-media-simply-too-sick-and-depraved-to-continue/ |
Could Torontos laneway homes create the character-filled streets of the future? | They are not your grannys flats. When Toronto approved the rules for building homes on the citys more than 300 kilometres of laneways one year ago, the new housing was frequently described as secondary suites, a term that suggested the homes would be the above-ground equivalent of a basement apartment. That is not what Joel Leon of Denegri Bessai Studio envisions. He thinks laneway homes create an opportunity to build exciting new streetscapes along city alleyways that are currently used mostly for parking and service vehicles. Leon led a tour of three laneway homes and an infill house Tuesday, organized by the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), the home construction industry group. The whole point is that one day laneways would be beautiful, narrow streets with a European flavour, Leon said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Although many homeowners include parking in their laneway home plans, there is no requirement for car space. Instead the city requires two bike parking spots, he said. The rules are, very much guided towards a more pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly Toronto, he said. Leon says the lanes themselves will become wider as they are increasingly used for housing because laneway homes have a 1.5-metre setback from the property lines, compared to a one-metre setback for the garages that are there now. Most homeowners considering a laneway house are looking at it as family space, and are often parents concerned their children wont be able to afford housing in the future, he said. Many laneway homes have a connection to the main house, sometimes through shared garage space. But they are also being built as investments for rental and, in some cases, can be bigger than the street-facing house. No one has yet asked the city for a lot severance so they can sell a laneway house separately from the main house, Leon said. That would require applying to the Committee of Adjustment and the owner would have to make the difficult argument that the laneway home fits with the character of the surrounding neighbourhood. But, Who knows what council will vote for in 20 years, he said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Seen as low-hanging fruit in the fight to address the citys housing shortage, laneway housing represents very gentle densification, said Leon, whose company is in the permit process for two laneway homes, with another six on the way. But the strict technical requirements, mean they arent feasible for every lot. Laneway homes can be up to eight metres wide and will, in some cases, be bigger than the street-facing house. In the case of a skinny lot, the eight metres could cover the full width of the property. For fire access, they require at least a one-metre-wide passage from the street or be within 45 metres of a main street so toward the end of the laneway. The space between the two houses has to be 85 per cent softscape, such as grass, plants or gravel that are porous for rain water. By the time you do a walkway to connect the laneway house to the front yard, you have probably eaten your 15 per cent of (allowable) hardscape, Leon said. Decks are considered hardscape which presents a challenge because in older Toronto homes the doors can be several feet off the ground. It requires a rethinking of how we use our backyards, Leon said. The city has issued only 12 building permits for laneway suites but another 25 applications are in the permit review process. Those are among 102 preliminary project review applications and 36 minor variance applications to date. Three laneway homes and an infill house Abbott Ave. Owners Jeffrey and Shelley Lim live with family and rent out their street-facing home. They expect to do the same with the two-storey, 1,400-square-foot laneway house that is supposed to be complete in October. Although it will have a basement, the laneway house rules prohibit that space being used as living quarters. The new home is quite massive but it could have actually gone another metre into the yard, said architect Michael Baytman, who on Tuesday was on-site where theres currently a hole in the ground, in a laneway near Bloor and Keele Sts. Because the rules dont allow a carport, the second storey will be cantilevered over a minimally sized parking spot. The Lims are going to the Committee of Adjustment so they can put a canopy above the entrance and the parking spot. Baytman says there are generous windows on both the yard-facing and the laneway-facing sides of the new home. The lot, which has more than a metre of clearance between the neighbouring house, is ideal for laneway construction, Leon said. But, because of the softscaping requirements, the deck on the back of the main home will likely have to be torn down. Boultbee Ave. The antithesis of a granny flat, this 1,500-square-foot family home is virtually indistinguishable from the garages and other buildings facing this east-end alley. Access is through an exterior corridor that opens into a bright, modern great room with a spacious office area to one side. This project was the transformation of an illegal, one-bedroom apartment into a two-storey unit, said Sarah Donaldson, an intern architect with Craig Race Architects, which completed the home last year. The project, which went to Committee of Adjustment back in 2013, predates the new laneway rules and would not conform to all the current requirements. The master bedroom is on the second floor of the home where there is also a laundry and bathroom. The second bedroom on the first floor is outfitted with bunk beds for children of the family that is renting the house. There is a large deck between the front and rear houses. It steps down to a generous sitting area. Leslie Gardens The home of laneway house advocate University of Toronto architecture professor Brigitte Shim isnt strictly speaking a laneway house because its not located on the back of a street-facing house. Its privacy-driven sunken design is built on a scrap of land down a lane that is neighboured by garages and back yards. Leon gave Shim full marks for walking the talk by building the kind of home she envisioned in a book she co-authored in 2004, Site Unseen: Laneway Architecture and Urbanism in Toronto. The house won the Governor Generals Medal for Excellence for Architecture in 1994. The fact that she created such a great piece of architecture really elevated that conversation. It wasnt these little back buildings, it was award-winning, worthy architecture, he said. Shims book, written with Donald Chong, says it was intended as a catalyst for emergent possibilities for intensification. Dagmar Ave. Included on the BILD tour as an example of sustainable, urban infill housing, the homes occupant is architect Craig Race, whose company, Lanescape, wrote the laneway house policy. Race bought the neighbouring house on a double-wide lot. Originally intended to be a semi-detached house, it remained a single because there was an underground river beneath the property that required some tricky foundation work on the new build. | https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/06/20/could-torontos-laneway-homes-create-the-character-filled-streets-of-the-future.html |
Is time running out for Houston to build a startup culture? | Second of two parts. Read Part 1 if you have not already done so . Houston entrepreneur Mark Schmulen went to Silicon Valley for a three-month business startup program in 2009 and ended up staying, selling his social media marketing company to the digital marketing firm Constant Contact an unlikely outcome had he stayed in Houston. After six years in the Bay Area, Schmulen is back in his hometown, raising three kids and sensing that entrepreneurs might now be able to launch, grow and keep companies in Houston. Since his return in 2015, more organizations have popped up to nurture startups, more investors are looking for deals and more community leaders are focusing on supporting fast-growing tech companies. What we were doing in the past was not working, Schmulen said. What were doing now is working better. On HoustonChronicle.com: MassChallenge business accelerator opening in downtown Houston Schmulen is among the optimists who believe that Houston, after decades of fits, starts and failures, still has the chance to create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship to propel the citys nascent startup scene into a thriving tech sector. Houston, these optimists say, has resources, including major universities, great wealth and a concentration of Fortune 500 companies hungry for technologies to improve efficiency and lower costs. In more than 30 interviews, company founders, investors and analysts laid out strategies to exploit these advantages while overcoming challenges as fundamental as money and talent. But time, they said, is running out if the city is to keep young companies, such as Schmulens old firm, from finding success elsewhere. Were at risk of exporting that innovation outside of Houston, outside of Texas, Schmulen said. And our role in the world as the energy capital, as a health care mecca, could be at risk. Money matters Houston startups face a problem familiar to young companies outside established tech centers: a lack of capital. But the problem comes with more than a little irony in a city of oil tycoons dripping with wealth. Here, the challenge isnt so much finding pools of money, but rather directing it to startups. Houston tech companies last year raised less than $360 million in venture capital compared to $65 billion in Silicon Valley, $14 billion in New York and nearly $12 billion in Boston, according to financial data and software company PitchBook. Austin entrepreneurs raised $1.9 billion five times as much as their Houston counterparts. If youve got a good idea on where to drill another hole in the ground and find oil, you can raise $10 million (in Houston) with a phone call, said Jack Gill, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist who teaches entrepreneurship at Rice University. To raise $500,000 to start a medical device startup is like pulling teeth. One reason that wealthy investors steer clear of technology is theyre unfamiliar with it, said Harvin Moore, an angel investor and the recently-named president of the nonprofit tech organization Houston Exponential. They know oil, they understand oil and thats where their money goes. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston Exponential names Harvin Moore president Connecting them with angel investor groups is one way to make them more comfortable with startups, allowing new tech investors to pool their money with more experienced ones, said Moore. These groups of wealthy investors vet young companies, helping to weed out companies with weak management teams or products, and advise investors to spread risks by backing a variety of companies. Robert Tucci, managing director of the Houston-based Texas Halo Fund, which invests in early-stage businesses, said early stage or larger venture capital funds also can lower risks by putting an investors money into multiple startups across different sectors. Tucci, whose expertise is in life science startups, would like to sway the investment companies and charitable foundations of wealthy families to invest in startups, which he promotes as a way to make money while juicing the innovation ecosystem and helping the local economy. You can make good money, Tucci said he tells investors. You can help the regional economy. And you can improve medicine. And I feel that to be a very compelling argument. Chicken and egg Houston startups need more venture capital, but venture capitalists have been reluctant to set up shop here because theres not enough deals to be made. So young, growing companies leave to find capital in places such as Silicon Valley, Boston or Austin, which in turn makes Houston less attractive to investors. Theres this cycle of, Yea, we need more venture money, but venture money wont come here because our startups that are here leave because theres no venture money, said Lawson Gow, founder and CEO of startup hub the Cannon. Gows Cannon project is experimenting with one possible model. Along with the startup hub, which aims to host and support up to 300 companies, Gow is creating Cannon Ventures, a network of investors ranging from those on crowdfunding sites to angel investors to venture firms. The idea is to nurture both startups and investors, connecting them under one roof. On HoustonChronicle.com: Report: Houston needs more 'growth' venture capital to reach its ambitious goals Another way to attract more venture capital and create more startups is to increase the number of local company exits such as initial public stock offerings and acquisitions that provide investors and entrepreneurs with their payoffs, said Samantha Lewis, director of the investment group GOOSE Society of Texas. More exits would show venture capitalists that theres money to be made in Houston. Returns make venture funds eager to invest again. Entrepreneurs often use some of their exit money to launch new companies or invest in other startups. Getting companies to that exit stage, however, would require the buy-in of Houstons large corporations. Lewis said they need to offer pilot programs for startups to prove their technologies, which would allow young firms to generate revenues and attract more funding. Several organizations are focused on this, including the startup hub Station Houston, the health care-focused Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute and the energy-focused Eunike Ventures. Meanwhile, Houstons hard-working entrepreneurs are beginning to attract venture capital interest. BuildGroup, an Austin venture capital company, entered Houston in July 2018. And Baird Capital, the private investment arm of the Milwaukee financial services company Robert W. Baird & Co., added a Houston venture partner in September 2018. For venture capital firms that wont open local offices, Houston offers visitation rights. Station Houston, for example, has set up an office in downtown Houston for visiting venture capital firms. At least 21 firms are examining local deals, according to Station Houston. Ed Egan, who spent three years studying Houston as the former director for the McNair Center at Rice Universitys Baker Institute, said Houston needs to focus on attracting top-performing venture capital firms, such as the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins. These firms, with their experience, large portfolios of companies and extensive networks of entrepreneurs, have the resources and connections to provide mentorship to young companies, adding skills and expanding the talent pool that feeds the innovation ecosystem. One way to do that, Egan said, is for the state to offer transferable tax credits to, say, energy technology startups that attract venture capital investments from top performing funds. Venture capitalists would like that the state is essentially contributing money, in the form of tax breaks, alongside their investments. Startups could make a deal to transfer their tax credits to energy companies in exchange for a pilot program, which in turn would create higher-quality startups with real-world experience the ultimate attraction for top-tier venture capitalists. Many of Houstons local venture capitalists invest most of their money outside of Houston. Work America Capital, however, invests solely in Houston startups. After opening in Houston three years ago, it has backed 10 local companies with investments ranging from $1 million to $6 million. Im not for sure any of those 10 would have actually gotten capital, said Work America Capital co-founder Mark Toon, or they would have left Houston to get capital. Toon describes Work America Capital as different from the traditional venture capital firms as it raises smaller funds and invests in fewer companies. The model works because its local money investing in local startups with a local management team to provide guidance on subjects from business strategies to sales to recruiting talent. Its part of Toons efforts to build the local ecosystem. Toon and his partners are funding a 32-acre work-live-play entrepreneurial community called the Founders District. The Cannon, which received an investment from Work America Capital, will sit in its center. Capital is only one part of the solution. A key reason companies locate and prosper in a city or region is the ability to tap into a skilled local workforce. Think of Houston and energy. But Houston and technology is a different story. Disco, a legal technology company, for example, was founded in Houston but moved to Austin in 2018, citing the state capitals unrivaled technology talent pool. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houstons tech sector lost jobs in 2018 as other Texas cities gain prominence While there is no shortage of technical skills in the region Houston has the fifth highest concentration of engineers among large metropolitan areas those skills dont always meet the needs of the modern technology industry, said Moshe Bar, managing partner of venture capital firm TA Capital, which has offices in Houston and Germany. Plenty of software developers write code in programming languages preferred by big businesses such as C++ and Java, but tech startups tend to use newer languages such as Python, Rust and Googles Go for server or cloud operations, and JavaScript and Node.js for web and mobile applications. There its very, very hard to find people in Houston, Bar said. I would say almost impossible. They get absorbed immediately. He said more software developers conversant in these languages need to be trained in Houston. Both Rice University and the University of Houston, which offer extensive computer science and entrepreneurship programs, should further expand them and graduate more students in technical disciplines, Bar said. And the city could use technical schools similar to New York City College of Technology, which has the express mission of providing a technically proficient workforce. If I was the mayor, if I was the governor of Texas, I would try to build the university system first before trying to build the venture capital, Bar said. Capital will come to Houston if the developers are here. Its the wrong way around to look for capital first and developers after. Nothing succeeds like success Houston needs more CEOs with experience leading and growing early-stage software and technology companies, said Gray Hall, former CEO of Houston-based cybersecurity company Alert Logic who is now with BuildGroup. Experienced CEOs know how to build management teams, break into markets and develop product strategies all factors crucial to the growth and success of innovative technology companies. Houston also needs several tech companies that earn $10 million to $50 million in revenues. With many companies of that size, Hall said, talent in other parts of the country would feel more comfortable moving to Houston. If they didnt like that first job, they would have options to move to other companies. Successful clusters, economic research has shown, are built on a regions strengths. In Houstons case, that would likely start with energy and health care. On HoustonChronicle.com: Venture fills gaps in connecting Houston's tech startups and big energy players There is a local case study. Houston is home to the worlds largest medical complex. In 2014, the Texas Medical Center launched its TMC Innovation Institute and the TMCx accelerator to foster medical technology startups, helping 251 companies that have received funding and funding commitments of more than $900 million. For Dana Deardorff, it was the Texas Medical Center that lured him to Houston from Boston. Deardorff started several medical technologies companies and has more than 20 years experience in the medical device industry. Now, hes managing director at the Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center, a collaboration between TMC and Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J. There needs to be something to trigger that, Deardorff said. Theyre not just going to come for no reason. Reasons for optimism Schmulen, who sold his company after moving it to Silicon Valley, returned to Houston because he viewed it as a good place to raise his family. He and other entrepreneurs are optimistic about growing a local tech sector, citing advantages such as proximity to large corporate buyers needing innovation, a diverse and growing population, and a wildcatter history of taking risks and starting from scratch. Schmulen, 39, is preparing to launch a new venture, a software platform related to property management. And this time, he said, will be different. I intend to stay here and build the company here, he said. And I believe its more possible to do that today. [email protected] Twitter.com/andrearumbaugh | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/article/Is-time-running-out-for-Houston-to-build-a-14021703.php |
Can Houston avoid mistakes of the past as it tries to build its tech scene? | Can Houston avoid mistakes of the past as it tries to... First of two parts. Fresh from attracting a $200 million investment, the Houston software company Onit proceeded to get it backward last month. Instead of pulling up stakes and heading west, or selling out to a California tech company, the startup stayed put and bought a Silicon Valley rival. That milestone, for both Onit and Houstons nascent tech sector, follows others that have included the opening of a Houston branch of the Boston startup accelerator MassChallenge and the selection of Houston by digital payments company Bill.com as its first location outside the San Francisco Bay Area. These successes have fueled optimism within the citys small, yet earnest startup community, but they also are raising new anxieties that Houston is squandering the momentum as it tries to build a technology sector. Those anxieties came through in more than 30 interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, analysts and academics, many worried the city is repeating the mistakes of the past as it pursues policies mired in top-down approaches and politics, often overlooking the startup community and accepted economic development practices. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston misses Amazon's cut; 'Work to do,' say local leaders For example, economic development specialists say the key to a thriving tech sector is density, a concentrated cluster of companies, people and amenities from coffee houses to restaurants to gyms where ideas, talent and money can mix, connect and cross-pollinate. But instead of neighborhoods such as Montrose or Uptown that offer this type of density, Rice University is spending $100 million to renovate the former Sears located in a desolate part of Midtown where Jack in the Box is the choice dining opportunity. Houston and other cities have become seduced by the notion that if we just create a building and we allow people who we think are talented to occupy the building then were on the road to economic riches, said Jon Roberts, managing director of the Austin consulting firm Tip Strategies. And the reality is so far from that. The stakes for getting it right this time are higher than ever as climate concerns drive a shift to electric cars and renewable energy, threatening the oil and gas industry on which Houston has long relied. The tech sector, meanwhile, has become one of the nations leading engines of economic growth, generating about $1.4 trillion in products in 2017 and expanding four times faster than the economy as whole for most of the last 20 years. Ultimately, Houston needs to follow an entrepreneurial model that identifies a need in the market, finds a solution and brings it to commercial scale, said Ed Egan, former director of the McNair Center at Rice Universitys Baker Institute. Its a long and difficult process that requires extensive research, persistence and determination. It demands learning from failures, pivoting to new ideas and conducting unvarnished assessments of strengths, weaknesses and competition. Everybody is chasing headlines, Egan said, rather than doing the hard work. How we got here Houstons previous technology push began about 20 years ago, when a building owned by the Midtown Redevelopment Authority was remodeled to create the Houston Technology Center. Sixty percent of the project was financed by a federal grant and 40 percent by the redevelopment authority, an independent city agency that gets a share of local taxes to fund economic development, affordable housing and other things. The nonprofit Houston Technology Center was designed to support, incubate and accelerate high-tech startups. HTC started with high hopes and good intentions, and had successes. It coached more than 1,000 companies, including 277 client companies that created some 6,000 direct jobs and raised some $3.5 billion over nearly two decades, according to a study by the consulting firm Accenture. But the tech incubator and accelerator began to lose momentum in its later years. It became more focused on corporate fundraising than helping new companies get off the ground, said Eric Elfman, once an HTC mentor and now CEO of Onit, which creates software to automate processes for legal and business teams. It didnt quite get the startup culture, either. Events were scheduled for early mornings to accommodate corporate sponsors needing to be at their offices by 9 a.m., rather than entrepreneurs coding late into the night and waking up mid-morning. The startups, in a lot of ways, were treated almost as a petting zoo, said Marc Nathan, who spent July 2007 through January 2010 as managing director of IT startups at HTC and now works with startups in Austin. They were nice and cute and fun to play with for the corporates, but they really had zero invested interest in seeing the startups grow. Deja vu all over again By 2016, the Houston Technology Center had competition from a new startup hub, Station Houston, which initially moved into Midtown. Station Houston grew quickly, charging membership fees to startups and matchmaking fees to corporations seeking new technologies. It later moved into a downtown highrise. Its companies have raised more than $270 million in venture capital. Meanwhile, the citys establishment got involved. Greater Houston Partnership, the business-financed economic development group, launched a technology innovation roundtable. The administration of Mayor Sylvester Turner created the Mayor's Technology and Innovation Task Force. In October 2016, the Greater Houston Partnership commissioned the consulting firm Accenture to create a road map for nurturing and enticing tech startups with a potential to grow quickly. A centerpiece of the strategy was a new organization called Houston Exponential, or HX, that would market the citys innovation sector and serve as a clearinghouse to connect startups to accelerator programs and investors. It absorbed the Houston Technology Center, the Greater Houston Partnerships tech roundtable and the mayors task force. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston Exponential to harness startup potential HX launched at the end of 2017. In January 2018, Houston suffered the humiliation of being the only of the nations four biggest cities not to make the list of 20 finalists for Amazon.coms second corporate headquarters a list that included Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio, and Newark, N.J. After Amazon, we were all rowing together, said Gaby Rowe, CEO of Station Houston and an HX board member. We didnt ever not want to make the short list again. But more than 18 months after HX was launched, local entrepreneurs say its hard to think of many notable programs or initiatives undertaken by HX, save the layoffs of 11 of the 19 full-time employees brought over from the Houston Technology Center, and the recent ouster of its first executive director, who lasted just over a year. They described HX as slow moving and bureaucratic, with as many as 14 committees involved in running the organization at one time. The board of directors has 22 members, many with political and corporate connections, but few with experience founding a tech startup, critics say. The chair of the HX board is Gina Luna, a former chair of the Greater Houston Partnership who had a 22-year career in banking. This is formal Houston politics, not on-the-ground startup activity, said Nathan. I have no idea what theyre doing outside of having meetings. Houston Exponential said its board, which includes four entrepreneurs, is large to represent diverse interests. Other members come from startup development organizations, venture capital or angel investment groups, academic and research institutions, civic and community organizations and corporations. In an interview, Luna said that HX has cut the number of committees to four and boosted awareness of the citys tech sector. It has raised $30 million of a planned $50 million fund to attract venture capital to Houston, launched HTX Talent as a one-stop shop for technology job openings and helped spur the creation of the Tech Sales Academy, set to launch in September as part of the Stephen Stagner Sales Excellence Institute at the University of Houston. We can point to so many tangible things that are in motion or have happened, Luna said, that are clear evidence that we are moving in the right direction. A big gamble The city of Houston is pinning much of its hopes on developing an innovation corridor stretching along the light-rail route from downtown to the Texas Medical Center. The corridor, the centerpiece of Houstons Amazon bid, includes the former Midtown Sears and 16 surrounding acres. The owner, Rice University, plans to invest $100 million to renovate the 80-year-old building into the Ion, a hub for startups, venture capital firms, angel investors and accelerator programs. Its scheduled to open late next year. On HoustonChronicle.com: Rice, partners envision innovative future for retired Sears building in Midtown But such build it and they will come strategies can have lackluster results. In Newport News, Va., for example, economic development officials tried to capitalize on research from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, a Department of Energy laboratory. In 1996, Newport News developed a 122,000-square-foot applied research center with office and co-working space with the goal of spurring private investment in other areas, including an adjacent 44-acre parcel controlled by the real estate arm of the College of William and Mary. The sites lay fallow for years, through the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and into the beginning of this decade, when the William and Mary parcel was sold, rezoned and developed into a shopping center, apartment complex and technology park, according to a 2016 report by the NAIOP, a commercial real estate association, and the Virginia Tech Program in Real Estate. The shopping center and apartment building are up and running, but just one building is open in the research park. The technology park faced several challenges, the 2016 real estate study found. Perhaps the most daunting was the lack of a strong entrepreneurial culture in a region historically dependent on heavy manufacturing and federal contracting, with few tech firms. Houston is a much bigger city than Newport News, but the Ion must overcome similar cultural hurdles in a Houston economy long dominated by energy, health care and big business. The Ions location was selected to be near universities that provide not only cutting-edge ideas and research that can feed a tech ecosystem, but also talent pools. Think Stanford in Silicon Valley, Harvard and MIT in Boston, or, closer by, the University of Texas in Austin. But Egan said an innovation district should already have startups, investors, and research and development facilities. It should be in a neighborhood of bars, restaurants and coffee shops to foster the types of interactions through which ideas incubate and deals and money flow. Do you think people are going to be doing $10 million venture capital deals in the Jack in the Box? he asked. The location isnt ideal for energy startups, in particular, as most customers are out west in the energy corridor, said Amy Henry, co-founder and CEO of Eunike Ventures, which aids startups in testing their technology with exploration and production companies. Proximity to the energy corridor is one reason the startup Data Gumbo, which uses blockchain to automate business transactions in the oilfield, works from the Cannon startup hub near the intersection of I-10 and Beltway 8, said Data Gumbo CEO Andrew Bruce. Allison Thacker, president of Rice Management Co., which manages Rice Universitys $6.3 billion endowment, said the university did not undertake the Ion project on a whim. It studied successful innovation districts and hired consultants. We could have simply sold the land off to developers and made a good return for the endowment, Thacker said, but our view was its very rare to have such a large position of undeveloped land in an urban, growing city surrounded by great neighborhoods. Jump-starting innovation Thacker views the innovation district as part of a broader innovation community that includes the Cannon startup hub and Founders District entrepreneurial community in west Houston, the collaborative manufacturing workspace TXRX Labs east of downtown, and the Texas Medical Centers Innovation Institute in the medical center area. The Ion is attracting tenants, including GOOSE Society of Texas, a group of 25 ultra-high-net-worth individuals who invest into venture deals. Station Houston, which will oversee programming, and the Ion Smart Cities Accelerator program, whose partners include Microsoft and Intel, will be tenants, too. On HoustonChronicle.com: In latest reboot, startup hub Station Houston becomes nonprofit Station Houston last year reincorporated as a nonprofit, arguing that would better align with Rices mission and allow it to attract funding from grants and foundations. But critics of the move worry Station Houston could lose its edge if its financial interests arent tied to the success of startups, risking the fate of the Houston Technology Center, which lost momentum as its focus shifted toward raising money. Elfman, the CEO of Onit and a serial entrepreneur, has broader concerns, questioning whether Houston can shift enough of its focus from oil and gas. I wonder if were fighting against the inevitable here in Bayou City, he said. If this is just never going to be a technology or innovation center. Its hard to change your nature as a city. PART TWO: Its not too late. How Houston can grow an innovation sector . [email protected] twitter.com/andrearumbaugh | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/techburger/article/Innovation-1-14021608.php |
Which schools have produced the most NBA players all-time? | Every year, a new group of NBA hopefuls hear their names called on draft night to give them a chance to start their professional basketball careers. This season's class received some of the biggest hype in years thanks to Zion Williamson, who's been called the biggest NBA prospect since LeBron James. Williamson and his teammates R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish helped lead Duke to a 326 record and appearance in the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament last season. Many powerhouse programs like Duke have helped prepare college players for their professional careers. Other top programs like Kentucky, UCLA and North Carolina rank ahead of Duke on the list. Check out the 10 colleges that have produced the most NBA players all-time, according to data observed by Grand Canyon University: 1. Kentucky-107 players The Wildcats not only have produced the most NBA players but have also been one of the top college basketball programs in the nation historically. Kentucky has won eight national championships, which ranks second-most all-time, and has made 17 Final Four appearances in school history. Since coach John Calipari took the helm in 2009, Kentucky has gone 30571. Top players like Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Devin Booker represent Kentucky in the NBA today. 2. UCLA-97 players UCLA holds the record for most NCAA championships with a whopping 11 titles thanks to legendary coach John Wooden and his strong recruiting. Some of the NBA's biggest legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and Bill Walton played under Wooden before going pro. Other former Bruins turned NBA players include Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, Lonzo Ball and Reggie Miller. 3. North Carolina-90 players UNC has been to the NCAA Tournament 48 times and reached the Final Four a record 20 times. The Tar Heels have won six national titles, with three of those coming under current head coach Roy Williams. While plenty of big-time NBA players started at UNC, the most notable Tar Heel is also one of basketball's greatest starsMichael Jordan. Enough said. 4. Duke-83 players UNC's in-state rival doesn't sit far behind them on the list of NCAA Tournament achievements. Duke has reached the Big Dance 41 times and made it to 16 Final Fours. The Blue Devils have won all five of their national titles under legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski. Notable Duke players that went on to the NBA include Kyrie Irving, Grant Hill, Elton Brand, Marvin Bagley and Jay Williams. 5. Kansas-72 players Kansas also has an amazing history with 46 NCAA Tournament appearances and 14 trips to the Final Four. The Jayhawks have won three national championships and started the careers for several notable NBA players. Former Jayhawks include Wilt Chamberlain, Paul Pierce, Andrew Wiggins, Danny Manning and Joel Embiid. 6. Indiana-66 players 7. Louisville-58 players T8. Notre Dame-56 players T8. Arizona-56 players 10. St. John's-52 players | https://www.si.com/nba/2019/06/20/most-nba-players-produced-by-colleges-kentucky-statistics |
How Much Could Alcoa Add To Its Aluminum Revenue Over The Next 5 Years? | After its split to form two separate entities Alcoa and Arconic in 2016, in spite of volatility in global aluminum prices, Alcoa (NYSE: AA) successfully added about $0.7 billion to its aluminum business over the last three years, increasing the segment revenue base from $6.5 billion in 2016 to $7.2 billion in 2018. Trefis estimates that revenue over the next two years would remain subdued due to a decline in global aluminum prices (with rising exports from China), exacerbated by lower aluminum shipments with the expiration of the Tennessee tolling agreement in December 2018, under which Arconic supplied can sheet products for certain customers of Alcoa. However, beyond 2020, revenue growth could be driven by strong demand from end markets and pick up in global price levels which could help Alcoa add about $1 billion to its aluminum revenue over the next five years (2019-2023). and modify the key drivers to arrive at your own volume, price, and revenue estimates for the company. In addition, here is more Materials data. Historical Shipment and Revenue Trend Vis--vis End Market Performance Alcoas primary end markets automobile and housing construction witnessed a steady increase from 2016 to 2018. However, after increasing in 2017, Alcoas aluminum shipments decreased in 2018, driven by a drop in production output due to expiration of certain sale agreements, operational curtailments, and strikes. However, in spite of lower shipments, aluminum revenue increased in both years 2017 and 2018, led by an increase in price realization per ton, with global aluminum prices increasing on the back of a supply deficit. Forecasting Global Aluminum Market Shipments Trefis estimates total global vehicle sales (commercial vehicles + passenger cars) to increase from 98 million units in 2018 to 108 million units by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 2%. With an average aluminum usage of about 0.4 ton per vehicle, the total aluminum shipments to automobile manufacturers is expected to grow at a CAGR of 2% to 43.2 million tons by 2023. Rising aluminum demand from EV players is likely to be partially set off by decreasing sale of non-EVs. However, automobile is expected to remain the largest end market for aluminum players, contributing about 30% of the global aluminum demand. Steady growth in this end market is expected to lead to global aluminum shipments increasing to 144 million tons by 2023, from about 131 million tons currently. Forecasting Alcoas Aluminum Shipments Over The Next 5 Years Trefis estimates Alcoas aluminum shipments to decline from 3.3 million tons in 2018 to about 3 million tons in 2019. The expiration of the Tennessee tolling agreement is expected to reduce aluminum shipments by 0.5 million tons in 2019. Though, growing global demand would partially offset this decline. However, from 2020, shipments are expected to gradually increase, driven by expectations of improving end market performance and higher production with the companys focus on asset quality. Price Realization Alcoas aluminum price realization has largely moved in tandem with global price levels, except in 2017, where the realized price declined in spite of a rise in global prices, mainly due to lower grades mined. Historically, Alcoas price per ton sold has been at a premium to global prices, due to the sale of rolled aluminum which fetches a higher price compared to primary aluminum. We expect price realization to remain subdued over the next two years, due to weakening in the global price trends. Aluminum prices have fallen from about $1,974 per ton in December 2018 to about $1,855/ ton currently. Though the management forecasts a year of aluminum supply deficit, it is not reflecting in pricing due to a continuous rise in Chinese aluminum exports, which have exceeded 500 kmt in seven of the last eight months. China is a leader in semi-fabricated products and a major exporter. As increasing number of steel players are shedding capacity and demand from Chinese automobiles being modest, China has increased its exports of semi products at a lower price, which has in turn led to a decline in primary aluminum products worldwide. However, with a pickup in EV sales and rising construction and industrial activity, price realization is expected to improve from FY-2021, to reach approximately $2,290/ton by FY-2023. Forecasting Alcoas Aluminum Revenue Though revenue is expected to remain subdued in 2019 and 2020, higher shipments and price level is expected to drive revenue growth beyond 2020. Thus, as per Trefis estimates, Alcoa is expected to add about $1 billion to its aluminum revenue, which is expected to increase from $7.2 billion in 2018 to $8.2 billion 2023. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/06/20/how-much-could-alcoa-add-to-its-aluminum-revenue-over-the-next-5-years/ |
Is Cultured Meat The Answer To The World's Meat Problem? | In 1931, Winston Churchill predicted that the earth would be consuming lab-grown meat by the 1980s. Although his timing was off by four decades, his prediction was not. As the world struggles to meet the needs of 9-10 billion mouths by 2050, while simultaneously addressing the negative environmental impacts of factory farming, food is increasingly becoming a product of human design the first cultured meat products are expected to appear in supermarkets as soon as 2021. Mosa Meat It has been suggested that cultured meat is livestock agricultures lab-based response to the vertical farming movement. Meat is grown from animal muscle cells through tissue culture in controlled laboratory conditions. These are then combined with fat cells and additives for texture, flavour and colour. The cell-to-fork process takes two to six weeks. With livestock farming accounting for close to 18% of all greenhouse emissions, monopolizing 70% of all arable land and 46% of all crop-production for feed, and with an expected increase of 73% in global demand for meat products to 2050, the development of clean meat is timely. According to Maastricht University in the Netherlands, cells from a single cow can produce 175 million quarter-pounders, while traditional farming methods would need 440,000 cows for the same output. Because cell culture is a sterile process, there is no need for antibiotics and since the fat and cholesterol levels of cultured meats can be controlled, there are also positive health implications. On an intuitive level, eating lab-grown meat also makes environmental sense; the significant contribution of livestock farming to climate change and environmental degradation has been established. According to clean meat producer, Mosa Meats, the cultured meat process requires 99% less land and 96% less water than livestock agriculture and a 2018 report from the Good Food Institute indicates that exclusive consumption of cultured meat could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 74 to 87% versus traditional beef. Despite these assertions, the potential temperature impacts in the production of cultured meat production have yet to be thoroughly investigated and scientists continue to debate the environmental impacts of the industrial systems required to produce synthetic meat. Many have argued that replacing biology with industry may in fact be more energy intensive and that the CO 2 produced by labs is problematic, as it remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years in comparison to the methane produced by cows that remains in the atmosphere for twelve years. (Frontiers for Sustainable Food Systems, February 2019) The journey to mass production continues to be in its early stages. Scientists have been vocal about the challenges associated with replicating the texture, and flavour of beef from cattle and there continue to be issues surrounding the production of cultured meat in a cost-effective, scalable manner. The very first lab-grown burger, produced in 2013 cost $1.2 million per pound, with a single burger requiring billions of cells. According to scientists, the very expensive process of cell production will continue to make clean meat cost prohibitive to consumers for at least the next decade, until technology catches up. A self-designed online poll conducted across a geographically broad demographic yielded several hundred answers in 3-days and revealed a predominantly negative perception surrounding lab-grown meat. Approximately 57% of respondents stated that they would not be interested in consuming synthetic meat, with many expressing suspicion of the new trend, indicating, I would not consume anything made in a lab. Its not natural and could end-up damaging our health or People need to move to a plant-based diet and if they eat meat they should eat it from an organic, sustainable source. Other, more enthusiastic respondents stated Sure I would! But it has to taste good and Meat is meat. If no suffering and I get my energy I buy it. I would even pay more for it! ! Globally, there have been geographic discrepancies in acceptance. In February 2019, a global survey funded by the Animal Advocacy Research Fund revealed that 29.8% of U.S. consumers, 59.3% of Chinese consumers, and 48.7% of Indian consumers would be very/ extremely willing to regularly purchase cell-based meat. Corporate and VC response to the clean meat movement tells a speculatively optimistic story. In 2018, cultured meat companies raised $50 million in capital across 14 deals and in May 2019, Israeli cultured meat start-up Aleph Farms raised $12 million in Series A funding. There are currently 9 cell-culturing companies in the United States and another 17 worldwide, with a few companies potentially set to emerge in China. If it is successful in achieving mass acceptance, clean meat will revolutionize the food and agriculture industry. A.T. Kearny has projected that the market share of traditional meat will drop to 40% in relation to synthetics over the next 20 years, resulting in a reduction in the number of cows from 1.2 billion to 30,000 worldwide (Mosa Meats). With investors such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and agriculture giant Cargill backing the trend it may only be a matter of time before consumer perception will adjust. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/daphneewingchow/2019/06/20/is-cultured-meat-the-answer-to-the-worlds-meat-problem/ |
When two sommeliers meet, which wines do they drink? | You never know where youre going to find a fellow wine lover with a great palate. As it turns out, I came a cross a master sommelier who just happens to be an actor in the stage musical Dear Evan Hansen now playing in Toronto. Her name is Claire Rankin and she plays Connor and Zoes mom, Cynthia. I always like to taste with fellow die-hard wine enthusiasts. So she and I met at the Toronto Star kitchen with three bottles each. As we popped corks, I learned she was born on Prince Edward Island, had moved to Toronto at the tender age of 17, and was performing at The Stratford Festival by 19. By 25 years old, she was an actor in Los Angeles and soon found herself falling in love with wine. There in California, she studied wine at the Professional Culinary Institute near Napa, earned her certification at the Court of Master Sommeliers, and worked part-time as a wine buyer in Venice. It was fantastic! she said. The shop is still there. Its called Lincoln Fine Wines on Lincoln Boulevard, just a few blocks from the beach. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW She moved back to Toronto five years ago, and here we were. To taste together, she had brought a lovely French ros, a Spanish curiosity, and a smart Californian classic. Id brought a favourite from Nova Scotia, a white blend from Portugal, and a fancy red from Ontario. We sniffed, swirled and sipped the wines. Here are our thoughts. 2018 Gerard Bertrand Cotes des Roses, Grenache-Syrah-Cinsault, Languedoc, France (Available now in Vintages 373985 $18.95) Claire brought this bottle because she thinks its perfect to bring to a barbecue or give as a gift. And she thinks it turns into a great water bottle. Note the glass stopper. On the nose, the wine is quite complex but restrained with aromas of apricot pit, strawberry and nougat, with a whisper of raspberry and rose petal too. The entry is soft but refreshing with delicate flavours that flit from pink grapefruit and fresh apricot to briny red berries and floral notes. Violet. Rose. Soon, it tapers back toward grapefruit and leaves a chalky lick of sea salt on the finish that pulls you back for another sip. Delicious. Score: 92 2017 Quadrus (white), Douro DOC, Portugal (To be released July 6 in Vintages $19.95) I brought this wine because I hadnt tasted it. But I thought it could be exciting given Id awarded the 2013 Quadrus (red) 95 points last June. This new wine is a blend of three Portuguese varietiesRabigato, Cdega do Larinho, and Viosinho. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The nose is very understated with muted scents of lemon oil, lanolin and dried herbs. The palate is all about yellow stone fruit, then shifts toward a grapefruit oil finish. While not terribly complex, this wine is well-balanced, crisp and cleanan unobtrusive choice if youre looking for a neutral wine, but not outstanding. Score: 87 2015 Cuatro Pasos Mencia, Bierzo, Spain (Available now in Vintages 39313 $18.95) Claire brought this wine because she wanted to taste something interesting from Spain. So she chose this wine because its made from Mencia, an indigenous grape grown mostly in the Bierzo region. Imagine very dark berries rolled in gravel: thats the initial scent of this wine. Then a puff of smoke emerges somewhere. On the palate, the black fruit is counter-balanced by savory notes of dried herbs and crushed stones, as well as a spike of sour cherry. The wines texture is angular rather than velvety or smooth, but that works well with food. This wine calls to mind Old World culture. Its not a cocktail wine. Score: 90 2016 Reserve Megalomaniac Cabernet Merlot, VQA Twenty Mile Bench, Niagara (Available at the winery only $59.95) I brought this bottle because Ive been impressed with Megalomaniac wines lately and had not yet tasted this more premium offering. I had high hopes for it. This wine is immediately intoxicating on the nose. Just dab it behind your ears. Scents suggest cassis and homemade blackberry crumble, complete with browned topping and a split vanilla bean in the filling. Then, a mouthfilling hit of fruit follows thats thunderclap but also resonant and complex. It reveals itself in layers. First theres the black fruit all velvet and lush. But it quickly unfurls with bright red fruit tooredcurrant, sour cherriesas well as tarragon, cherry cola, and milk chocolate. Love the long Amaretto finish. Score: 93 2016 Ridge Three Valleys, Sonoma County, California (Available now in Vintages 652875 $49.95) Claire brought this wine because its a classic Californian red made by a solid producerRidge Vineyards. And its not wildly expensive. Its a blend of 68 per cent Zinfandel, 15 per cent Carignane, 12 per cent Petite Sirah, and five per cent Grenache. The nose is stewed plums with baking spicesstar anise and clove. Then, on the palate, its lush, rich, and hedonistic. The entry is fresher than the nose would suggest, with ripe raspberry, orange peel, toasted oak, and caramelized meat juiceslike the grillmarks of a great steak. Then, the finish is smooth mocha topped with shaved baking chocolate. Just a gorgeous wine. Score: 94 2018 Benjamin Bridge Nova 7, Nova Scotia (To be released June 22 in Vintages $24.95) | https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/opinion/2019/06/20/when-two-sommeliers-meet-which-wines-do-they-drink.html |
Are US child migrant detainees entitled to soap and beds? | Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Migrants inside the fence of a makeshift detention center in El Paso, Texas A Trump administration lawyer has disputed in court whether detained migrant children are entitled to toothbrushes and soap. The Department of Justice argued the government was adhering to a landmark ruling requiring migrants to be kept in "safe and sanitary" facilities. The attorney pointed out the law did not mention soap. But a panel of judges in California questioned the rationale, saying the children were sleeping on concrete. In July 2017, US District Judge Dolly Gee found the Trump administration had breached the 1997 Flores agreement by not providing migrant children with appropriate food or hygienic supplies, housing them in cold facilities without beds. The agreement states that immigrant children cannot be held for more than 20 days and must be provided with food, water, emergency medical care and toilets. But Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian argued on Tuesday that the federal government had not violated Flores. Image copyright US Customs and Border Protection Image caption This 2018 image from the US Customs and Border Protection shows the foil blankets given to children Ms Fabian maintained in a Ninth Circuit court in San Francisco that the government had fulfilled the Flores agreement because it did not specifically list items such as soap or toothbrushes. "One has to assume it was left that way and not enumerated by the parties because either the parties couldn't reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine," she said, Courthouse News reported. "These are the challenges of interpreting a very old agreement." Ms Fabian argued that children in shorter-term immigration detention did not require soap or toothbrushes. Circuit Judge William Fletcher questioned the government's reasoning. "Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you've got an aluminium foil blanket?" He added that it was "inconceivable" that the government would describe those conditions as "safe and sanitary". Fellow Judge A Wallace Tashima remarked: "It's within everybody's common understanding that if you don't have a toothbrush, you don't have soap, you don't have a blanket, those are not safe and sanitary [conditions]." Ms Fabian agreed "there's fair reason to find that those things may be part of safe and sanitary" conditions, but said the Flores agreement was "vague". Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The cost of detention v the alternatives The hearing comes on the heels of a bitter debate sparked by Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called US-Mexico border migrant detention centres "concentration camps". Ms Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram on Monday: "The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalised practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it." The New York Democrat emphasised that she was not comparing them to Nazi death camps. She likened them instead to US Japanese internment camps during World War Two. Ms Ocasio-Cortez was supported by actor George Takei, who was sent to such a camp with his family. Acting Director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Mark Morgan criticised this characterisation of the centres as "completely inappropriate", "reckless" and "flat out wrong". Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming also lashed out at Ms Ocasio-Cortez, saying the comparison was demeaning to Holocaust victims. Ms Ocasio-Cortez fired back by asking: "What do YOU call building mass camps of people being detained without a trial?" Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Five numbers that explain why the current US border crisis is different Thousands of Central American migrants have been seeking asylum in the US, fleeing extreme poverty and insecurity. US immigration authorities made a total of 396,579 apprehensions on the south-western border in 2018, and 303,916 the year before. Border Patrol stations have become overcrowded and temporary shelters have been created in states such as Texas. This month, the US reached an agreement with Mexico to help stem the flow of migrants by deploying Mexican National Guard troops to border regions. | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48710432 |
Which countries take in the most refugees? | Developing countries shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility for hosting refugees, according to the UNHCR refugee agency, with the poorest nations hosting 6.7 million individuals, a third of all refugees worldwide. These countries have the least resources to respond to people seeking refuge, when they are already facing structural barriers to development. On World Refugee Day, a look at which countries take in the most refugees: Pictured: Syrian refugees, who crossed the Evros river between Greece and Turkey, board a police truck transferring them to a first reception center, near the village of Nea Vyssa, Greece, May 2, 2018. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis Close | https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/which-countries-take-in-the-most-refugee-idUSRTX6XYJN |
Where do the most refugees come from? | Last year, almost 70.8 million people around the world were forcibly displaced as a result of conflict, violence, persecution or human rights violations, according to the UNHCR, the highest level that the refugee agency has seen in almost 70 years....more Last year, almost 70.8 million people around the world were forcibly displaced as a result of conflict, violence, persecution or human rights violations, according to the UNHCR, the highest level that the refugee agency has seen in almost 70 years. Almost 60% were internally displaced within the borders of their own country, while the global refugee population now stands at 25.9 million. Over two-thirds of the world's refugees come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia. On World Refugee Day, a look at the top 10 countries where they come from: Pictured: Rohingya refugee children pose for a picture at the Balukhali camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, November 15, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain Close | https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/where-do-the-most-refugees-come-from-idUSRTX6XYJJ |
What Are The Best Digital Habits That Boost Productivity? | originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Stuart McLeod, CEO & Co-founder of karbonhq, on Quora: Tech has made our lives easier in so many ways. We can buy clothes or groceries with the click of a button, navigate new cities easily, answer work emails from a Caribbean beach, and keep up with our friends and family all over the world. But despite its myriad benefits, tech has also helped fuel our worst habitsprocrastination, laziness, and overspending, just to name a few. Over the last few years, there's been a loud call for re-evaluating our relation to our devices. For all the good our phones do, our grip on them can create a slew of problemsfrom the physical (like eye strain to carpal tunnel) to emotional (like depression and anxiety). The rise of digital detox retreats is compelling evidence that our need to disconnect periodically is ever-increasing. We depend on them for so much, yet we feel utterly unable to disconnect. We fear that if were not online at all times, well miss something important. Its no wonder most of us have a love-hate relationship with our devices. That said, the genies out of the bottle. Were not going to be parted from our smartphones anytime soon, and the world is becoming more digital by the day. As tech becomes an even bigger part of everyday living, we have to think of ways to work smarter with the tech we have, rather than let it dictate our lives. Here are some healthy tech habits to start cultivating now: 1. Turn off all the notifications. You know the drill. Youre in the middle of a productive work meeting or a great writing session, and your phone lights up with a notification that someone has added you as a friend on Facebook or that Netflix is suggesting a new show you might like. Your focus quickly shifts from the task at hand to your phone, and your productivity goes out the window. After their advent in 2008, push notifications proved to be a marketer's dream: They're nearly impossible to immediately distinguish from a text or email, so you have to look before you can dismiss them. In 2013, Apple proudly announced that 7.4 trillion push notifications had been pushed through its servers. Today, that number is almost certainly higher. But remember, these notifications are designed for selling things, not making our lives easier. In fact, the single easiest digital habit to help you get more done is to simply turn them off. Unfortunately, neither Android nor iOS offers an easy way to turn off all your notifications at once. In both cases, you have to into Settings, then turn them off app-by-app. It's a pain, but well worth your while. And make extra sure to turn off notifications on all the social apps, shopping apps, and from Netflix, Spotify, and Kindleas these can be particularly addictive. If youre worried youll miss something, know that turning off notifications doesnt shut you out from using your favorite apps. It just puts the control back in your hands so you're on your phone when you want to be. Apps like Instagram and Facebook are built to show you the best stuff every time you open the appyou won't miss much by ignoring notifications. Well, you're welcome. 2. Set your phone to black and white. Technology is engineered to be addictive and hijack our attention. And when your phone is in color, everything looks that much more enticing. Silicon Valley insider and non-profit founder Tristan Harris likened the allure of your phone to that of a slot machine. If you find youre whiling away the hours scrolling through photos on Instagram, or clicking on just one more Buzzfeed listicle, try enabling grayscale on your phone. It might not cure your addiction completely, but the Internet is much less fun when its not rendered in vivid technicolor. Heres how to do it: For Androids, the process differs per model, but its typically accessed via the Accessibility menu. In iOS 10, go to Settings > General > Accessibility >Display Accommodations > Color Filters. Switch Color Filters on and select Grayscale. When youre phones in black and white, youre less likely to spend mindless hours staring at your screen and can move through the digital world with intention. It may not seem like a major change, but it can make a big difference. 3. Keep tech out of the bedroom as much as possible. Our bodies are wired to respond to natural light. But today, were bombarded with a constant stream of artificial light from our devices. This revs up the brains machinery, pumping hormones to keep us warm, alert, and anxious. We play on our phones in bed and wonder why our body has trouble shutting down. If you have trouble sleeping, keep in mind that all the blue light from laptops and phones is keeping you awake at night. Research shows that exposure to blue light suppresses the production of melatonin more than any other type of light. To feel and sleep better, try purging your tech at night. That means no devices after 8:00 p.m. This includes work emails. Technology addiction inhibits your brains ability to relax, so you need to find a new pre-sleep activity that doesnt involve your phone. Play some soothing music, read a book, journal, or meditate. It takes a lot of discipline at first, but it sure beats being tired all the time. Your marriage will benefit too! 4. Reconsider social media. In recent years, Facebook has been scrutinized for a variety of privacy concernsmost famously the 2018 data scandal, when it was revealed that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of millions of people's Facebook profiles without their consent. Shortly after, I deleted Facebook for ethical reasons. And Ive never been on Instagram. I know Im not the only one inclined to opt out of social media. Recent research reveals that 34% of Gen Z, or people born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s, say they're permanently leaving social media, and 64% say theyre taking a break from it. Reasons included worries about time-wasting (41%), feeling it was too negative (35%), privacy concerns (22%), too much pressure (18%), too much commercialization (18%), and that it makes them feel bad about themselves (17%). As Gen Z is the rising generation, this study reveals the social media craze may be on its way out. People are realizing you dont have to be on Instagram or Facebook to connect with peopleand in fact, these platforms may make you feel even more lonely and disconnected that you would without them. 5. Find your quiet place. One of the most effective ways to cultivate a healthy relationship with your tech is to have a digital detox. And the best way to do this is to find a special place where you can be free of distractions. For some, its their commute. For me, its a bike ride. Bike riding doesn't require as much concentration as many other sports, so you can really get in the zone and relaxI do my best thinking on the bike. Once youre 20 minutes or half an hour into a three- or four-hour ride, you have clarity. Youre also outdoors in gorgeous scenery. Spending time outside has been shown to lead to significant health benefits. Studies have shown that walking in the woods can improve blood pressure, boost mental health, and decrease cancer risk. Beyond that, youre less likely to think about your phone. In Blake Snows Log Off: How to Stay Connected after Disconnecting, the writer explains that his family spends two entire weeksonce in the spring and once in the fallwith no electronic devices. Although it feels a little scary at first, an electronics fast forces you to connect with others and with yourself, which is crucial to overall well being. While tech is no doubt benefiting our lives in countless ways, we all have to figure out where to draw the line in order to get the most from our devices rather than falling prey to them. This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter and Facebook. More questions: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/06/20/what-are-the-best-digital-habits-that-boost-productivity/ |
How Much Can Electronic Arts' Console Revenue Grow Over The Next Three Years? | Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) console gaming revenue could grow at a CAGR of 6.4% from $3.33 billion in fiscal 2019 to $4.0 billion in fiscal 2022, according to Trefis estimates. This growth will likely be driven by newer generation consoles, which, in turn, could drive the demand for games as well. New consoles could hit the market by the second half of 2020. The console is an important platform for Electronic Arts, as it contributes close to 67% of its annual revenue. In this analysis, we compare Electronic Arts growth in console platform vis--vis its primary competitors and provides an outlook of the future course of business. for more details. In addition, you can see more of our Information Technology data here. Electronic Arts console game sales have grown from $3.0 billion in fiscal 2014 to around $3.3 billion in fiscal 2019. This represents a 3% average annual growth in console revenues (2015-2019). This can primarily be attributed to the success of its franchises, such as FIFA, and Battlefield. Newer generation consoles are expected to launch in the second half of 2020, and this should aid the console gaming demand as well. Revenue growth over the next few years will likely be led by its new titles, along with continued growth in e-sports franchises. The companys newly launched game ~ Apex Legend ~ has already reached the milestone of 50 million players. This momentum could continue in the near term. New games in the pipeline are from popular franchises, including Star Wars, FIFA, Madden, NBA, NHL, Need for Speed, and Plants vs. Zombies, which should aid revenue growth over the next few years. Electronic Arts console games sales have grown at an average annual rate of 3.0% since fiscal 2015, which is lower than that of Activision Blizzard, and Take Two Interactive. Activision Blizzard console sales grew at a CAGR of 4.4% from $2.2 billion in 2014 to $2.5 billion in 2018, and they could grow in mid-single-digits on average over the next few years. Activision Blizzards gaming growth is largely being led by the Call of Duty franchise. Take Two Interactives console games sales grew at a CAGR of 27.5% from $882 million in fiscal 2015 to $2.2 billion in fiscal 2019, and they could grow in the low teens on average over the next few years. While Take Two Interactives 2019 revenue growth numbers are partly driven by a change in accounting method (historical numbers not restated), much of the growth can be attributed to strong demand for its games, primarily Red Dead Redemption 2 last year. Global console gaming market grew at a CAGR of 4.8% from $30.1 billion in 2015 to $34.6 billion in 2018. Electronic Arts share has hovered around 10% over the last few years. Looking forward, the overall market could continue to expand in mid-single-digits in the near term, and Electronic Arts share could remain around 10%, in our view. Electronic Arts console game sales accounted for 67% of the companys total revenues in fiscal 2015, and it increased to 70% in fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018, but declined back to 67% in fiscal 2019. We expect the figure to remain around 67% in the coming years. Explore example interactive dashboards and create your own. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/06/20/how-much-can-electronic-arts-console-revenue-grow-over-the-next-three-years/ |
Could Web Archives Serve As Canonical Online Imagery Archives To Combat Deep Fakes? | Getty Countless solutions have been proposed to combat the rising danger of deep fakes and other digitally fabricated and altered imagery and videos. A common weakness among all of them is that the cat-and-mouse game of falsification and detection yields solutions that will have only short shelf lives as new approaches are built to defeat them. One of the few approaches to combating digital manipulation that requires no fancy or fragile algorithms is the reincorporation of provenance into the digital sphere, tracing imagery and video back to their original sources. Once the exclusive domain of teams of skilled artisans, image and video manipulation today is quickly becoming a point-and-click affair. This ease-of-use, automation and rapidly improving results has created a crisis of trust in visual information. Techniques to detect altered imagery are as myriad as the tools and techniques used to alter them, but a common denominator of all of these approaches is that as soon as they are released, adversaries develop countermeasures to defeat them. In contrast, tracking visual information from its moment of creation to the moment it appears in a given context can help fact checkers and the public flag altered material or content presented in a false or misleading context. Reestablishing provenance on the Web would go a long way towards lending the context necessarily to establish credibility and authenticate imagery in an era of increasingly trivial digital modification. Best of all, provenance is the one approach that is not subject to the algorithmic arms race. While discussions of provenance tracking these days typically readily turn to blockchain and similar technologies, a far more readily available resource could be the Web archives that have steadfastly recorded the Webs evolution over the decades and already have the infrastructure to crawl, archive and version the Web at scale. Imagine if the Internet Archive and its peers each constructed content fingerprint hashes for every distinct image in their archives dating back more than two decades. These fingerprint hashes do not record any of images actual content they are merely the outputs of mathematical equations that permit images to be compared to one another through their visual similarity without having to have access to the original images. Thus, the Archive could construct hashes of all of its images and release a master signature database of more than 20 years of image hashes, with each hash accompanied by the URL where the image was first seen and the date and time it was first seen. This signature database would act as a sort of ISBN number for the Webs imagery over the past two decades, assigning each image a unique identifier. What would make such a database so powerful is that by using these signatures, similarity algorithms could be used to cluster these images together through their visual similarity, showing how a given visual narrative has evolved over the years and how it has spread across the Web. Most importantly, such a database could be used today to authenticate and trace the provenance of contemporary imagery. An image circulating on Twitter claiming to depict a protest from an hour ago in Syria could be scanned against this signature database to find the most similar images from 20 years of the Webs history in a form of reverse image search. An image that results in no matches could yield a note attached to the image indicating that it does appear to be a novel image, unseen on the Web before. Alternatively, if the image is found to be nearly identical to an image seen previously on the Web, with the exception of a section of the image that was cut-and-paste and replaced with a second image, it can be flagged as a likely digital alteration, regardless of how expertly crafted the alteration was. Even a nearly flawless doctored image that cannot be detected by any current algorithm can still be caught by a provenance-based system simply by locating the originals from which it came. Of course, most imagery and video found in digital falsehoods are not themselves fabricated or modified. They represent genuine material that has been purposely or inadvertently repurposed with a false or misleading caption and description of their contents. Rather than the work of hours of Photoshopping, that Syrian protest image might be identified as a very real image that has previously appeared on the Web over the years and first appeared on the Website of a major human rights NGO, taken by one of their photographers during a Saudi Arabian protest ten years prior. In turn, the textual captions of each of these previous appearances could be examined to determine Saudi Arabia as the most common location used to describe the image, automatically flagging the image as having a potentially incorrect or misleading caption. In fact, this is precisely the service that Googles Cloud Vision API offers through its WebEntities feature, which performs the equivalent of a reverse Google Images search, returning both a list of the most similar images across the Web and the top locations, topics and activities mentioned in their captions. Looking to the future, such a database would make it possible to readily connect the imagery of the online world with that of the offline world, identifying when images from television appear online and vice-versa and providing rich context to television imagery. In fact, the first elements of such a database already exists - digital signatures and the AI-created descriptions of more than half a billion worldwide news images stretching back three years. Putting this all together, perhaps the future of combating deep fakes and other digital alterations will come not from fancy algorithms that are quickly outdated but rather from a return to that age-old concept at the heart of information science: provenance. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/06/20/could-web-archives-serve-as-canonical-online-imagery-archives-to-combat-deep-fakes/ |
Do Thought Experiments Rely On Human Intuition? | originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Its hard to ignore that some of the most famous thought experiments: Galileos two masses falling with a thin connection between them, Einsteins chasing a light beam, Newtons cannon and others, are notable at least partly because they bear against our intuition. Galileo used his thought experiment to show that heavier objects could not fall faster than light ones, Einstein that if electrodynamics were valid space and time must be malleable, Newton that orbiting around the earth is just as much falling as an apple dropping from a tree. None of those are intuitive. If anything, they directly challenge intuition. Theres a fair amount of literature in the philosophy of science on what is going on with thought experiments. They can seem almost magical putting in nothing but imagination in one end, and extracting conclusions that appear to be some sort of paradoxical blend of analytic (logically necessary) and empirically contingent (could have been otherwise). This is not the place to go into the intricacies of the literature, but its a rare area of philosophy where theres a majority view. Not a unanimous view of course that never happens but a dominating majority. And this majority view is that thought experiments do not draw on intuition; or at least they do not need to. They are arguments. Heavily disguised, colourful and imaginative arguments, sure, but arguments nonetheless. As such, they depend on premises that may include some background theory (such as the validity of quantum mechanics), have some reasoning steps (that are often disguised by an appeal to imagination), and present a conclusion (the result of the thought experiment). Sometimes, for sure, intuition can appear in your premises either explicitly, or more often implicitly as the audience is invited to follow the thought experiment through, but this is a choice. As such, then just as you are free to appeal to intuition or not in the premises of a general argument, you can appeal to intuition or not in the premises of a thought experiment. As such, it is highly recommended when applying thought experiments to quantum mechanics to ditch intuition and appeal to alternative, non-intuitive premises like: standard quantum mechanics is correct. This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter and Facebook. More questions: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/06/20/do-thought-experiments-rely-on-human-intuition/ |
Why did KCs Freedom, Inc. fund a racist campaign mailer? | Missouri Rep. Brandon Ellington denied entry into Crossroads Correctional Facility Missouri Rep. Brandon Ellington was denied access to the Crossroads Correctional Facility in Cameron, Missouri on Thursday, August 30, 2018. Up Next SHARE COPY LINK Missouri Rep. Brandon Ellington was denied access to the Crossroads Correctional Facility in Cameron, Missouri on Thursday, August 30, 2018. On its website, Freedom describes itself as a political and civil rights organization that is responsive to the needs, issues and concerns of the African American community. Which doesnt at all line up with the Hey, white people, be afraid! mailer targeting a black Kansas City Council candidate the group did not support, Missouri state Rep. Brandon Ellington. He narrowly won anyway on Tuesday 29,700 votes to 28,165 and will succeed Mayor-elect Quinton Lucas in the 3rd District at-large seat on the City Council. But in an effort to beat Ellington, Freedom donated $12,500 to a third-party PAC known as the Concerned Citizens of Waldo, which sent out a mailer juxtaposing a photo of a rifle-wielding Ellington from the cover of a rap CD he put out years ago with an image of Kansas Citys Country Club Plaza. Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month Get full access to The Kansas City Star content across all your devices. SAVE NOW In other words, LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, because an armed black man is on the loose and gunning for the upscale shopping district where even the presence of minority kids can set off a panic. The ad was so bad that it fatally wounded the black candidate it was supposed to help, the Rev. Wallace Hartsfield II, an old-school mensch who most certainly did not approve this message, or even know about it beforehand, and was heartsick when he did see it. These are the kind of negative images that historically have been used to demean and dehumanize particularly young black men, said Hartsfield, pastor of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist on Linwood Boulevard in the urban core. Its a stereotypical projection a young black man with a gun has been one of the stereotypes. None of this was lost on my mostly white neighbors south of UMKC, who referred to the mailers message as a disgusting racist stew and an ugly embarrassment in an online conversation on a neighborhood website. That picture of him holding the rifle with the Plaza tower in the background is so clearly racial in its intent, one wrote. Sure it was. Yet somehow, folks at Freedom claimed not to know why anyone would think that. First of all, said co-president Gayle Holliday, who said we put it out? The political action committees own required financial report, thats who. We contribute to several PAC groups that were supporting our various candidates, she said, and claimed no one at Freedom had any idea what the PAC would do with that money. Holliday said she still hasnt even seen the mailer, which if true might be even more irresponsible. I think some were upset about it, she said, but you have to make your own story. Im not going to give you a story. Two other people at Freedom, neither of whom wanted to be quoted, said the group didnt design the mailer or know what would be in it, but whats the big deal when it did Hartsfield no harm, everybody puts out similar mailers, and anyway there was nothing racist about it. The absurdity of me telling them what racism looks like makes me wonder why this supposed civil rights group still exists. One of those I spoke to said that despite the description on Freedoms website, it has nothing to do with civil rights, but is concerned with electoral politics, period. It wasnt a good decision on that basis, either. Ellington still blames Hartsfield, whose whole lifes work argues against his involvement, and many others assumed his guilt, too. Freedom and Wallace got a negative reaction and want to separate themselves, Ellington said, now that people have seen through it. Because you cant prove a negative, there was no way for Hartsfield to change that perception, either. Theres so much I still dont understand about it, says the reverend, who is not a politician at all, but a man who was asked to step up and run and did. He does think the mailer may have lost him the contest in such a tight race, but Im not blaming anyone because I still dont know everything. I just dont think it helped anything. Amen to that. Inside Freedom, which gave black people a voice when they didnt have one, there were some sick stomachs over the mailer after it hit. But the groups leaders couldnt have thought it was going to be an aboveboard ad because thats not what third-party PACS do. That they were desperate to see Ellington lose and Hartsfield win is no excuse. Our editorial board also enthusiastically backed Hartsfield over Ellington. But to fight racism with racism is to become what you hate. And more than that, to forget who you are. This is a state where black motorists are 91% more likely than whites to be stopped by police, and a country where babies are ripped from their immigrant parents arms. Where only the latest front-page affront to decency involves that Phoenix family of a 4-year-old black girl surrounded by cursing police officers, guns drawn, after she took a doll from a dollar store. So Freedom, you need to apologize for rather than try to deny your attempted contribution to the perception that black men are thugs and white voters are easy to manipulate. Once-powerful Freedom, whose influence has been waning for years, had another not good night on Tuesday. Their mayoral candidate Quinton Lucas won, but in such a citywide blowout that no one could argue that the group deserves credit. In addition to Hartsfield, Freedom-blessed candidates Geoff Jolley and Dwayne Williams both lost. And this was the first time since the 70s that the Freedom-backed candidate didnt win in the 3rd District, where the organization was born and grew up. If it doesnt learn from that outcome, its atrophy will continue. But the greater disappointment is that Kansas City will be denied the throwback, completely non-egotistical service of Wallace Hartsfield as a direct result of Freedoms cynical attempt, too-Machiavellian-by-half, to get the right result with wrong action. | https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article231746128.html |
What Happens To The Nuclear Deal If Iran Keeps Stockpiling Uranium? | Iran says it will exceed the limit on its stockpile of uranium agreed to under the 2015 nuclear deal. NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Ambassador Wendy Sherman who helped craft that deal four years ago. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Suppose Iran does what it says it will do. Iran has been increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium. And it says within days, Iran will exceed the amount it is allowed to have on hand under a 2015 nuclear deal. The U.S. withdrawal from that deal has slowly led to a confrontation. The U.S. blames Iran for an attack on oil tankers off its coast and is sending an additional 1,000 troops to the region. We'll discuss all this with Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who's on the line. She was the leader of the U.S. negotiating team for the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration. Welcome back to the program. WENDY SHERMAN: Always good to be with you, Steve. Thank you. SHERMAN: Well, we will see. The inspectors still are inside of Iran, meaning that there are eyes on what they are doing with their nuclear program. They still have many parts of their program that won't be functioning yet for a number of reasons. But the fact is that they will essentially have violated the deal. They will, in essence, be withdrawing from the deal. Whether they do that slowly or all at once remains to be seen. But I think your introductory point's the important one. The U.S. - by withdrawing and by increasing the pressure on Iran by reimposing sanctions - taking other actions - has started an escalatory cycle so that the people that I call the hard hard-liners in Iran are also joining that escalatory cycle. And it's a very dangerous moment for all of us. INSKEEP: Suppose that some of the Iranians with whom you once negotiated called you up and asked you for advice. SHERMAN: I would tell them - for the safety and security of their country and for the world, please stay in compliance with the nuclear deal. But that's easy for me to say because the sanctions the U.S. have spun on have had an enormous impact on Iran - have really decimated a lot of their economy. And Iran's got politics. People don't think of that, but they do. And the hard hard-liners, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force, the folks who do a lot of the maligned behavior in the Middle East, are on the ascendancy. INSKEEP: Suppose you got a call from someone in the Trump administration - and granted, you disagreed with the decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal, but that's done. SHERMAN: I'd say, Mr. Trump, if you really want to negotiate with Iran, you've got to put something on the table. You know, when he wanted to have a meeting with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, he said, well, we won't do exercises anymore with South Korea. He called them war games, which is what North Korea calls them. And he could put something on the table and perhaps get the Iranians there. But they are a culture led by the theocracy of resistance. They went through Iran-Iraq War for 12 years. They're not going to capitulate easily to President Trump. INSKEEP: Let me ask you about another set of players here because, we should recall, that this was not just a nuclear deal with the United States. There were European powers involved; there was Russia involved; China was involved. Iran has still been keeping the deal with them even though the U.S. withdrew. SHERMAN: We've put our European allies - really our closest partners - in an impossible position. They've been trying to keep the deal together by creating a mechanism to, in essence, get around some of our sanctions, particularly for humanitarian aid - medicine and food. That's not working so well for a number of reasons. And Europe, once this deal is violated, is going to have to reimpose all the sanctions. They're going to be in a very difficult position. And it is weakening the U.S.-European alliance, and they are very important partners for us economically and in terms of security. INSKEEP: You talked about an escalatory cycle, Ambassador. I'm wondering if Iran's announcement is particularly meaningful there. I know that there's been a lot of news coverage of tankers that were apparently attacked in the Gulf of Oman. The United States has blamed Iran. We can have an argument about who exactly is responsible and how strong the intelligence is. But in the case of this announcement on the nuclear deal, there's no doubt about what Iran itself has said. SHERMAN: Indeed. There is no doubt. It is a really - moment of great concern. I know that acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan said these thousand troops are really for defensive purposes only. But there is a lot of buzz going around that, in fact, the U.S. will take some kind of retaliatory action against those tanker attacks, believing that it was Iran that did it. And we could find ourselves at war. SHERMAN: Well, they've sent troops to send a signal that we are going to make sure that the Strait of Hormuz stays open. Thirty percent of the world's commerce goes through the strait. They could, in fact, take a cruise missile strike against particular targets of concern in the region that are controlled by Iran. I don't want to go into those specifics of what other administrations have thought about when they might face similar circumstances because we know the Pentagon, fortunately, plans for everything and any eventuality. But any kind of a strike could further exacerbate this escalatory cycle. There would be a further reaction. And as I said, we might find ourselves at war. INSKEEP: Ambassador, thanks for your insights - appreciate it. SHERMAN: Thank you, Steve. INSKEEP: Wendy Sherman led the U.S. negotiating team that completed the Iran nuclear deal. Copyright 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. | https://www.npr.org/2019/06/18/733633671/what-happens-to-the-nuclear-deal-if-iran-keeps-stockpiling-uranium?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=analysis |
Who won the USA vs. Sweden World Cup soccer match? | Morgan: Outside pressure wont penetrate our bubble of team camaraderie USWNT team captain Alex Morgan says the pressure to win the World Cup again won't affect the team's chemistry throughout the tournament. Up Next SHARE COPY LINK USWNT team captain Alex Morgan says the pressure to win the World Cup again won't affect the team's chemistry throughout the tournament. The last time the United States played Sweden in a major tournament, Team USA was exiting at the earliest stage it ever has in its tradition-rich womens soccer history. Sweden eliminated the United States in the quarterfinals of the 2016 Olympics. Three years later, the U.S. Womens National Team had its revenge at the 2019 FIFA Womens World Cup. The United States struck early, with Lindsey Horan scoring in the third minute off Megan Rapinoes corner that trickled through traffic to find Horan for a tap-in goal. It was the fastest goal of this World Cup. The Americans got a second goal early into the second half when Tobin Heath created some space on the right side of the box and fired a shot that deflected off Sweden defender Jonna Anderssons leg before finding the net. Unlimited Digital Access: Only $0.99 For Your First Month Get full access to Star-Telegram content across all your devices. SAVE NOW The victory means the United States won Group F and faces Spain in the Round of 16 on Monday in Paris. Sweden faces Canada in the Round of 16 as a runner-up. Team USAs Julie Ertz did not play due to an injury, according to multiple reports. Star striker Alex Morgan left at halftime, substituted by veteran Carli Lloyd. Lloyd had her goal scoring streak end. She came close in the second half. Instead, her record ended at six consecutive World Cup matches with a goal. | https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/mls/article231771833.html |
Why do people leave their dogs in hot cars? | Open this photo in gallery ILLUSTRATION BY WENTING LI First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide. So, maybe I did over react. Perhaps. That does seem to be the growing consensus. And, upon sober second thought even though there wasnt a whiff of any intoxicant on my breath at the time Im willing to consider the possibility. But some things really get me worked up and Im then inclined to shoot from the lip. It was a beautiful spring day in mid-June one of the first really fine days when you can taste summer in the air. Birds were singing, a soft breeze was blowing and the sun was shining in an almost-cloudless dome of blue. And the dogs were barking. Thats what yanked me out of my blissful reverie the sound of dogs barking: close-at-hand but also in an odd, slightly muffled way. Story continues below advertisement A quick look around and I couldnt see anyone walking a dog or even a stray on the street. And then my attention was drawn to a small car parked on the curb in front of my neighbours house with two large dogs locked in the backseat. The windows were down an inch or so, under the June sun. Now, dogs barking is nothing new to me. Our own mutt barks up a storm when she recognizes the sound of our car approaching the house or someone on the doorstep. Our neighbourhood in the east end of Toronto is practically a regional extension of the Kennel Club dogs of any and all sizes and breeds make their homes here (along with their owners). So, barking is part of the normal ambience of the street, and not a problem. But this sounded different. I looked around and didnt see anybody on the street or on any of my neighbours steps, and I didnt recognize the dogs or the car. I could feel the bliss of the day ebbing away, slowly replaced by concern and rising anger. The dogs didnt seem in much distress certainly not as much as I was as I thought about children and pets mindlessly left in cars on hot days, and the grim possibilities that too often follow. A stranger came out of my neighbours house with their dog in tow, and I called to her, These your dogs? Yeah, what of it? she shouted back. We were clearly off to a good start. My back was up (was this when I overreacted?). I was thinking of what to do, maybe to call the Humane Society or the cops about dogs left in a hot car. Yeah, maybe that was a bit over the top. She responded with defiance: It was none of my business, I was an idiot, I should go someplace a lot warmer (think hell-fire and brimstone), etc., etc. A lot of colourful, although not particularly original, language was sprinkled liberally throughout for emphasis. As a dog walker (professional, at that! ), she insisted she knew what she was doing: She had opened the windows, it wasnt that hot out and she was only gone a minute. No big deal. She hurled a few more f-bombs at me as she crammed the third dog into the back seat, climbed behind the steering wheel, started the car and revved the engine hard for added effect. Of course, the intelligent arguments, the sensible replies, the whip-smart wit that could have made sense of the situation never came to me. I managed to stay reasonably calm, even though my anger was bubbling away. I blathered about the risks and the irresponsibility (especially with someone elses dogs) but was totally bowled over by the tirade of abuse and justifications as she squealed the tires in her getaway. Every summer, small children, dogs, cats and occasionally even an elderly person are left in a hot car. Many die a cruel, unnecessary, completely preventable death, because of negligence. And always, always, there are the same justifications and rationalizations accompanied by tears and regrets. I was only going to be a minute. It didnt seem that hot out. There was a breeze and I left a window open. The car was in the shade when I parked. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Im not particularly proud of my little encounter. I dont like being on the outs with anybody, including so-called professional dog walkers. And, Im still struggling with the question of whether I went overboard. Yes, she was possibly only gone a few minutes. It really wasnt very hot out, and, indeed, the windows were open a bit. Plus, my opening gambit may not have set the tone for the kind of conversation Id hoped for. Upon sober second thought, the risk to the dogs was probably minimal. But anybody who has opened a closed-up car on a sunny day even in mild weather knows how hot it can quickly get. A minute turns into 15 in the blink of an eye. The gentle breeze disappears. The sun inevitably moves across the sky and the shade evaporates. Life is full of unintended consequences especially for the vulnerable ones who trust us to care for them, be they two- or four-legged. Im wondering if thats what really got me so worked up that otherwise-perfect June afternoon. Every day, the papers are full of news about how the vulnerable and helpless are neglected or abused. A caregiver kills elderly patients in a nursing home, refugees are denied a safe haven, children are taken away from their families in the name of national security. The list goes on and on. The voiceless and powerless suffer and die at the whim of those who thoughtlessly wield their power and indifference, unless someone takes a stand. Sometimes that begins with speaking up for dogs locked in a car on a sunny day. Sometimes that means being on the receiving end of more f-bombs than you can swing at. Sometimes, I guess, that means overreacting today to prevent the hand-wringing, tears and regrets of tomorrow. Daniel Benson lives in Toronto. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-why-do-people-leave-their-dogs-in-hot-cars/ |
Why has June been so stormy in Dallas-Fort Worth? | Lately, it seems like North Texas cant catch a break when it comes to stormy weather. As of Wednesday, there have been 11 days this month when at least a trace of rain has been recorded at DFW International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. The area has gotten its fair share of strong to severe storms too, including those on June 9 that caused widespread straight-line wind damage. Another round a week later produced four tornadoes, and on Wednesday more powerful winds and hail were reported in parts of North Texas. If all that severe weather seems unusual, thats because it is. "Usually we start to see severe severe weather die down by this time of year, but we just keep getting these active weather patterns, producing more chances for storms," said Sarah Barnes, a weather service meteorologist. | https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2019/06/20/june-stormy-dallas-fort-worth |
Is it better to watch sports on TV or in person? | by Daniel Tran Theres nothing quite like going to a stadium, smelling the popcorn and peanuts, and watching a sports game in person. With everything from affordability to unruly fans and line of sight, watching games on TV is an overall more enjoyable experience. But nothing in your home theater can replace hearing the cracking of the bat or the roar of the crowd at a stadium. Situation: You spend money to get into a place where you sit in uncomfortable chairs, overspend for what is supposed to be cheap beverages and food, and leave upset because an entity you invested time and energy into fails. Because that's what happens when you go to a ball game. There is no logical reason why anyone should be fleeced to watch sports that are perfectly viewable on television. Watching games at home is easy. You literally sit down on your comfortable couch, open an adult beverage you bought for a reasonable price and watch the game, unafraid that some drunken idiot is going to try and start trouble, like the morons in this video. That sounds way more fun. The barrier of entry to enjoy a live game is too high. With player contracts skyrocketing, teams have to make up the difference by overcharging for tickets to turn a profit. As a result, people who want to go to the games cant because they are being priced out. Not that you would have a better experience if you actually went, having to deal with obstructed views or sitting in a seat far away from the action. Being able to watch the game stress-free with enjoyable camera angles close to the action is a much preferable experience. You can be lazy, and just sit in front of your television to watch the game, or you can join thousands of other fans for an experience. Watching sports at stadiums is one of the most thrilling experiences for any true sports fan. There is electricity and anticipation waiting to see what athletic feat your favorite player will accomplish right in front of your eyes, without having to depend on a camera to capture it. More importantly, there is no home in the world that can host thousands of screaming fans who are just as passionate as you are about your team. There is a special sense of community that comes with making the effort to watch the game at a stadium. In the end, its all worth it to be with people who share your love of the team. One of the many great things about going to a sporting event is being part of the action. No longer are you just screaming at a television; you are yelling at people who can actually hear you. At home, you can't influence anything. At a stadium, being a part of a collective distraction can affect the outcome of a game. Sometimes, if youre lucky, youll also be the star of the show. Try doing that from home. The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, wed love to hear what you have to say. | https://www.cleveland.com/tylt/2019/06/is-it-better-to-watch-sports-on-tv-or-in-person.html |
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