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The shootings are not senseless
By Jim Dowd October 4, 2015 October 4, 2015 Uncategorized
Every time there is a mass shooting (which on average is every sixty four days) one of the key words we hear describing the tragedy is "senseless." This would suggest the action was without meaning or purpose.
I hate to tell you this, but nothing could be further from the case.
The most recent attacker, Christopher Harper-Mercer, follows the strict pattern of highly-aggrieved men trapped in a cultural paradox from which they cannot escape. His and the other attacks like it, congruent down to sporting military-style clothing, are an attempt to call "society" to task for leaving them behind. To these men, who perceive they are not receiving the level of respect to which they feel deeply entitled, it's nothing less than a revolution. When you read their posts online they discuss previous attackers like the Dylan Klebold of the Columbine massacre and James Holmes of the Aurora theatre shooting and now Harper-Mercer as a martyr, a hero and most disturbingly, a "warrior" for the cause.
These young men, when you read their writings (and they write a lot), are trapped in ideologies insisting on a natural order where the strong dominate the weak. Overwhelmingly their stunning number of journals, manifestos and posts show them to be captivated by thinkers and leaders like Nietzsche, Rand and Hitler. Ironically, these typically introverted outsiders fully buy-in to the idea that there should be a ruling class over the "undeserving" in society. Yet, in each case they have come to realize through a pattern of personal setbacks and failures they themselves are not exactly the Übermenschen ole Friedrich described in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Additionally, they all suffer from acute paranoia, developing a blind rage at those whom they feel have unfairly usurped the power that is rightfully theirs.
Usually I would make a mustache joke here but fuck it, this whole topic is too depressing.
The shooting is simply a release of this cognitive dissonance. It fills the strong need to demonstrate in the context of their ideology they are not the losers, the "others" are. Dr. Donald Dutton and a trio of psychologists from the University of Vancouver went and read everything the assembled killers had written to date in 2013 and uncovered this pattern.
"They become and remain fixated and obsessed with rejection by what they see as an elite in-group, whom they see as having unfairly achieved success," Dutton and his colleagues write in a compelling paper just published in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. "Instead of transcending the rejection, they formulate plans to annihilate the transgressors, which they justify as vengeance for the transgressions made against them."
Ok, so that's the individual motivation. But now it gets worse, thanks to the Internet with its dark corners like 4chan, these desperate outsiders have begun link up. They have developed an increasingly organized doctrine that blends white supremacist beliefs with garden-variety nihilism, the so-called "mens' rights movement" pick-up culture, and others to form an ideological toxic sludge of byproducts from Western Civilization. And thanks to the NRA they can arm themselves for considerably less effort than it takes to adopt a cat from the animal shelter.
So, quick quiz: What do you call a group willing to kill innocents and die themselves for an ideology centred around striking back at what they are convinced is an irredeemably oppressive regime? Hint: it rhymes with "Leher-cyst"
The mass shooting epidemic is, in actuality, best described as a nascent domestic terrorist movement which like many others uses mass-casualty suicide attacks as their primary weapon. We will continue to see it develop and organize if social conditions continue as they have, isolating growing numbers of volatile young from the benefits of our society. The shooters are the tip of the iceberg, once you start poking around online you find a massive bulk of rage under the surface.
We refuse to admit this glaringly obvious fact at our peril. Yes, their ideology is hateful and stupid. But like most uprisings it centers in legitimate grievance, metastasized into it's own mass of lizard-brain hatreds. Young men don't regularly kill large numbers of innocent members of their own society in a healthy culture, that is a simple fact.
Think I'm wrong about this? Look at Saudi Arabia, which spawned Al Queda. Unlike what many of my liberal brethren believe, the 9/11 attackers who took down the World Trade Center, attacked the Pentagon and crashed flight 93 into a field in Pennsylvania were not indigent Muslims fighting back against the economic oppression of the West. They were, in actuality, disaffected middle-class young men who found themselves increasingly incapable in their home country of meaningful attainment in the highly stratified power and wealth structure imposed by the House of Saud and supported by its global superpower partner the United States. These men were seduced into giving their lives to murder Americans by terrorist recruiters who prey on finding such personalities and providing their perceptually meaningless lives with a grand purpose.
In 2007 American forces raided a suicide-bomber training camp in Iraq. Interviews with those captured conducted to discover the motivations for suicide attacks it was discovered over half of the recruits had come from a Libyan town called Darna. Here is what researchers found:
The reason why so many of Darnah's young men had gone to Iraq for suicide missions was not the global jihadi ideology, but an explosive mix of desperation, pride, anger, sense of powerlessness, local tradition of resistance and religious fervor.
This is the exact same set of motivations, minus the organized religious component, we find in most mass shooters here. The researchers also found the attacks were typically organized and carried out from the bottom up, not as top-down attacks directed from an overseeing power. Again, just like here.
Before their attacks, suicide bombers also post long, rambling speeches on the web.
So why is this happening in the United States? For similar reasons it happens anywhere else in the world. These young men feel humiliated and powerless. They find themselves incapable of achieving the status they perceive necessary to secure what they want most, typically access to sexual partners (and let's not forget that suicide attackers in the Islamic tradition are awarded 72 virgins in paradise). They then attack the people who they think are responsible for their standing, typically at a school or a workplace where their daily perceived humiliations are carried out.
Is this so hard to understand? Just like in other countries where there is extreme change and social tension, the formerly empowered group being pushed "out" is fighting back with violence. We continue to perceive these mass shootings to be individual, isolated incidents. They are not. They are like car bombings and transit attacks overseas, individual incidents but linked to a greater struggle.
"Humiliation" is the word you see again and again. That's the engine driving this, the never-ending loss of face of volatile young men.
Today a growing segment of young adult males will not achieve the material and social success necessary to be attractive mates and form households. By way of comparison, a generation ago in his mid-20s my father had a house, a wife, two kids and a stable job things I was unable to achieve until my '30s (he would go on to fuck all this up later, but that's another story). Today Increased economic opportunity and higher educational attainment for women has removed the economic need to be tied down to undesirable dudes. This is a good thing for almost everyone. But for those on the outside, however, it turns social awkwardness and the tail end of the achievement bell curve into a prison planet of isolation. And that generates rage.
If a disaffected young man does not find an identity in some positive group or activity where he can demonstrate a level of mastery, he will find his answers late at night on a message board where an anonymous poster will explain the problem is not him, but instead is women or blacks or Jews or 'sheeple' or some other shared lunacy which in the group-reinforcement model that describes closed circles of thought will eat his mind.
And there will be guns around to level the score. Militarized, menacing, assault weapons optimized for mass output. A ticket to forever fame and glory among his new online friends and the ultimate bullhorn to telegraph his resentments at everyone else for less than the cost of a medium-range laptop.
I for one am not surprised that an increasing number of these men, whom the experts call "grievance collectors" have taken this route. What does surprise me is how they are organizing, though I suppose it shouldn't. Here's one of many posts in support of the attacker post CoAlpha a "radical free speech" site after the killings at UC Santa Barbara by Elliot Rodger in 2014. CoAlpha is just one place, there are dozens of others.
"Incel" is a term they use to define themselves. It means "Involuntary celibate."
We may not want to give this the legitimacy of a "movement" just yet. That risks elevating the perpetrators to the level of "freedom fighters" beyond their own small and marginalized ranks. But we have to let the air out of the support and encouragement for violent attacks carried out by the most unstable of their number.
And the most effective, cheapest and least blood-soaked way to reduce and remove the motivation for the attacks is to alleviate the fundamental grievance of inequity. Put simply- we can't let a generation of young men flounder. Yes, they can be assholes and no we don't need as much of what young men are traditionally good at anymore- dangerous, dirty and difficult jobs requiring brute strength and a lack of self-concern, but we need young men to grow up into reliable citizens. And for them to do so there has to be an acceptable pathway, not just a stew of grievances they marinade in until they get their shit together.
Because some won't and we'll all end up bearing that cost. And in an increasing number of cases, it will be too much to bear.
Guncrash
By Jim Dowd February 24, 2018 February 25, 2018 Uncategorized
In 1992 science fiction author Neal Stephenson released a book called "Snowcrash" which was about, among other things, an information virus with the ability to infect the human brain the way a computer virus gets embedded in operating software.
After the past week, I've seen it. It's now painfully obvious that, as a country, we're guncrashed.
The book also features an Innuit biker with a nuclear bomb sidecar, a skatepunk girl who attaches herself to cars, Sumerian religion, the mob, Russian attack helicopters and atomic cyborg dogs. The whole thing is pretty badass, is what I'm saying.
I have now come to believe the very idea of guns in our culture, literally just the thought of them, is restricting the ability of our brains to conduct logical operations. Last week someone online posted the popular meme that we blame bombers, not bombs and therefore we should blame shooters, not guns. When I replied that we do, in fact, restrict access to bombs, he pointed out one can still buy fertilizer like the kind the Oklahoma City bombers used.
Except you can't.
I told him you can't buy more than 25 lbs of Ammonium Nitrate without a background check now and that industry has actually formulated it to be less explosive. It's a perfect example of a mass killing leading to reasonable regulation. People still farm, but it's much harder to build a bomb that way now.
His response? He didn't believe me, then changed the subject, then got mad and said, "Why do you always assume everything I say is wrong?" This is after what he said was demonstrably wrong, a counterpoint to the point he was trying to make. But he couldn't handle it. Guncrashed. He's totally guncrashed. 17 people were dead and his primary thought was, "I'd better get out there and defend guns." No one who isn't guncrashed would think that way.
What's worse is person is actually a computer programmer- someone who inherently understands logical operations. Yet he refused to accept the logical outcome of reasonable restrictions leading to effective outcome, even though there is ample evidence of same. As before, people still farm. Ammonium nitrate is still available, we're just more careful with it now. But applying this same reasoning to firearms is simply not possible when you're guncrashed. Just the idea alone of guns somehow prevents these calculations from being made accurately. Every subroutine somehow ends with "All guns are OK all the time," and then tries to work backwards from there, often leading to sadlarious results, as the above "blame the bomber" example demonstrates.
We outlawed some specific kinds of availability to fertilizer and yet non-outlaw farmers still grow crops. Weird.
Think of how guncrashed we've been. 20 years of mass killings with guns and the simple idea that some firears are just too powerful to be owned by the general public is still anathema. And the absurd arguments, especially the idea that adding more guns into the mix will somehow help, is maddening to watch for the non-guncrashed. It's gone from annoying to terrifying.
Did you know there are ants who literally get taken over by a tiny flatworm, Dicrocoelium dendriticum? This fluke releases chemicals into the ant's brain making it think the idea of hanging out chomped on to the top of a blade of grass where it can get eaten by a bird is the best idea, like, ever. I imagine the other ants yelling up to it, "Ted! Ted, you stupid asshole, that's incredibly dangerous, you're going to get eaten by a bird, Ted!" and Ted yells back, "BUT I'M SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL!" That ant is "wormcrashed." It's pretty much the same thing. He's getting positive signals from his brain for thinking something obviously wrong and very likely harmful to himself.
The exalted place guns are given in our society, how they feature in movies, TV, games- and not just the stuff the kids play, but shows like "24" and "Homeland," the power they give to the characters, is completely outsized to their actual utility (guns, like all tools, do have utility). But we've come to treat them as totems of power and respect in a society where weakness is seen as anathema. I would argue our history as Americans coupled with a lack of any kind of social safety net and an increasingly "winner take all loser gets none" society has left a power vacuum in many people's psyches that the idea of guns has come to fill. True or not, the idea of guns in our minds is nothing like the reality.
There are actually very few problems that can be solved satisfactorily from the perspective of either party with a gun. And even when it's possible, it's unlikely- for instance NYPD officers only hit their targets less than 20% of the time. Yet we imagine guns, and we especially picture our own selves armed with guns, saving the day, making impossible shots, being the hero. Yet Chris Kyle, a SEAL sniper, was shot in the back by someone he trusted on a firing range in Texas. The trained, armed deputies in Parkland Florida did not go into the school and try and confront the shooter, even though protocol calls for them to form a "contact team" and attempt to do so. It turns out the gap between what we imagine guns can do, and what they can actually do in the hands of failable humans is massive. A chasm the guncrashed have fallen into, and it honestly remains to be seen if they can or care to return.
The late Richard Earle, an early pioneer in cause marketing, had an incredible observation about powerful ideas once they have rooted themselves in the brain. His teams found that when making anti-drug ads, if you showed a needle with copy or voiceover saying, "When you use drugs you go broke, lose your family and will probably die," addicts didn't listen to the message at all. They just saw the needle and wanted to use. The idea of the drug had "infected" the brain of the user through the memory of the powerful pleasure chemicals they had released, and was now communicating on a deeper level than language. You might call them "drugcrashed." All addiction could be framed this way: a powerful idea or compulsion that makes an end run around our logic filters and causes us or others undue harm.
Only $3.98? Gotta get me some.
Guns in America, it is all too obvious, have bypassed the language and logic centers. They are chomped up there on the blade of grass where everyone can see. The one hope is for the first time in a long time we seem to have a clear view of the situation. In no small part this is thanks to the Parkand High School Students slapping us out of our guncrash coma, and for this alone we owe them a huge debt of thanks. We're starting to realize we have to actually do something, and that the truly guncrashed can't be reasoned with, as somehow they are blocked from this capability.
It's going to be up to the rest of us.
Author's note: Please don't read this article and attempt to argue that once high-capacity firearms have been restricted perpetrators will then conduct mass killings by other means and try and fall into the massive logical fallacy that more people are killed with hammers than guns. Even if that's true, we're talking about mass shootings here, not mass hammerings, which to our knowledge are exceedingly rare. You're guncrashed. Get help.
Gloucester's Ken Lawrence, AKA "MC Hawking", to Perform for Stephen Hawking
By Len Pal June 25, 2016 July 5, 2016 Uncategorized
By Len Pal, Clamrespondent and Co-Host of MC Hawking's Podcore Nerdcast
We here at Clammedia Towers have some pretty nerdy friends. (We're drawn to others of our own kind.) And just as communities cheer on the success stories of local athletes, musicians, or businesspeople when they achieve national or global recognition, we must do the same for our local nerds.
Take Ken Lawrence, for example. On the exterior, one might not even notice what a gigantic nerd he is. (Sure, he's a software engineer, but these days, who the hell isn't?) Most folks from Gloucester just know him as a guitarist in the heavy metal band F-Bomb, which plays at bars on the North Shore about ten times a year. How nerdy can you be when you're banging out guitar solos to songs by bands like AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and Tool?
Ken Lawrence performing with F-Bomb
But beneath that badass rocker façade lies a nerdy underbelly the likes of which have not been seen since Lewis, Gilbert, Poindexter, and the rest of the Lamdas went up against the Alpha Betas back in '84. About sixteen years ago, Ken discovered that his computer at work had a text-to-speech program, and he noticed that when it read what he typed, it sounded a lot like Stephen Hawking. For fun, he keyed in some rhymes and made it rap.
That got a lot of laughs out of his co-workers. He could have just stopped there. Instead, he went home and wrote a few rap songs and put them on the Internet, purporting to be "lost tracks" uncovered from Stephen Hawking's "largely unknown career as a gangsta rapper". He created an MC Hawking website that included the songs, lyrics, some brilliantly photoshopped images of Professor Hawking alongside rap legends like Run DMC, NWA, and the Beastie Boys, and a fictional biography of Hawking's path to rapping.
MC Hawking and Coolio Dropping Science
And people dug it. I mean, like, a lot. Think about it: who was using the Internet for more than e-mail in the late nineties? Mostly nerds. Hey, even the real Stephen Hawking heard it, and found it flattering, likening it to Spitting Image. And right around that time, a couple of other nerdy rappers were putting songs up there too. It became a whole thing. A rapper named MC Frontalot coined the term "nerdcore hip-hop", and it stuck.
People wanted more MC Hawking tracks, and eventually Brash Records signed Ken to create a full-length album, A Brief History of Rhyme: MC Hawking's Greatest Hits, released in 2004. It featured staple braggadocio rap tracks like The Mighty Stephen Hawking and E=MC Hawking, gang-style tracks like All My Shootings Be Drive-Bys, and most notably, the science tracks. UFT for the MC explains the concept of a unified field theory, and why it is so important. The Big Bizang describes the birth of our universe. And Entropy uses the melody of Naughty by Nature's O.P.P. to explain the principles of entropy in such plain English that science teachers started using it in classrooms.
The album also included a few skits voiced by a voice actor named Dave B. Mitchell. You probably don't recognize his name, but if you play a fair amount of video games, or watch the National Geographic channel, or for some reason you like the San Jose Sharks, you've probably heard Dave's voice. Oh, and did I mention that the album cover art was done by Tony Moore, one of the creators of The Walking Dead?
Album Cover: A Brief History of Rhyme
Great stuff, right? You can listen to it on Youtube or buy it on iTunes (Warning: explicit lyrics and dope rhymes). "Wow, Len!" you're probably saying. "You're right! These songs are great. Ken must have gone on to become super rich and famous! And hey, have you lost weight?" Well, maybe a few pounds. It's a struggle; I mostly work at a desk, and I really like brie, pasta, and Oreos. As for Ken, real life happened. Ken slacked off because like all of us, he has a job, other hobbies, and ten cats. Well, I don't have ten cats, but Ken tells me that it's totally normal to have ten, and that having ten cats doesn't make him weird at all.
So the follow-up album sat on the back-burner for a really long time. A few years ago, Ken said "Hey, I got an idea for an MC Hawking podcast, and maybe that will motivate me to get going on more songs and stuff." And so we did that, and maybe the effort level on new MC Hawking tracks went from about 5% to about 15%. But then one night when we were about to record an episode of the podcast, Ken said "Check out this e-mail I just got…"
It was from Deborah, Stephen Hawking's personal assistant. She was writing because this year's Starmus Festival in Spain's Canary Islands was going to honor Stephen. The festival's founder, Garik Israelian, hoped that MC Hawking could come to the festival to perform for the professor.
Um, what?
That's right, they want MC Hawking to perform live on stage for the real Stephen Hawking (along with all of the other attendees and delegates, including eleven Nobel laureates, a handful of famous musicians and composers, and a whole bunch of scientists and astronauts. They're nerds, but will they get it? We hope so. But how the heck do you perform an MC Hawking track live? They know the voice comes out of a computer, right?
The festival was hoping Ken would write a new song, and figure out a way to make it work on stage. They also hoped he'd allow a guest on the track, and spent a lot of time trying to get RZA from the Wu, but there were communication issues, and so Ken reached out to MC Lars, a nerdcore rapper most known for rapping about literature. (I wrote about him for the Clam a while back.)
The finished product is a track called Fear of a Black Hole. Inspired by Stephen Hawking's recent discovery that energy isn't destroyed in a black hole, but instead is simply changed, the track applies that as a metaphor for dealing with adversity or depression: "No matter how low you go, energy can never be destroyed." To make the song work for a live performance, it includes verses using the regular "MC Hawking" voice (as well as a verse by MC Lars), and Ken's and MC Lars' voices on the chorus. Ken will also perform the guitar solo live.
And so on Sunday, Ken will be arriving in Tenerife. (And me too, because I weaseled my way into the trip.) On Wednesday, he'll perform.
It's been a long time coming, so go on: Cheer for your local nerd hero.
Sure, let's send a bunch of pale nerds to a subtropical island.
Would you order a refreshing "Boston Marathon Explosion" at your local pub?
By Jim Dowd March 11, 2015 March 10, 2015 Uncategorized
All you do is plop a shot of Fireball into a pint of Sam Adams and BOOM! Hilarious drunktasticness! You can almost hear the desperate moans of the maimed as you enjoy!
Wait, what? You wish to never stop mashing your fist into my squishy asshole face because I'm the biggest shit in the entire universe? Maybe you should wait until you've finished your drink there. What is that you're having by the way? Oh, an "Irish Car Bomb"? You and your twelve frat buddies just ordered these? Sounds fantastic.
By all means use my holiday to spend an evening celebrating terrorism before you go puke in an Uber.
Strange, no one ever orders a "Flaming Manhattan" on 9/11. We have no drink representing the Sandy Hook Massacre. Should somebody break out the mad mixology skillz and come up with a cocktail to commemorate the Virginia Tech shootings, the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris (Contreau and bloody Mary mix?) or the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland (Jager and single malt)? No? Or you could order your buddy who did two rotations escorting convoys in Iraq an "Explosively Formed Penetrator"? Tasteless? Offensive? Ass-kicking worthy?
If yes (and I hope you said yes) then why the fuck does the goddamned "Irish Car Bomb" exist? How is it ordered in 2015, and how are those who request it not told to go respond to their own mother's 'Casual Connections' ad on Craigslist? This is a town where a fair number of Irish and Brits live. How are we still doing this?
For the record, the last major terrorist attack in Ireland was the Omagh bombing in 1998. A Vauxhall Cavalier full of semtex was detonated on a busy street at three in the afternoon killing 29 people of all backgrounds and ages. Kids. A woman pregnant with twins. This wasn't in the ancient past or even a generation ago, it was a few short years before 9/11. Bombings perpetrated by Irish terrorists have injured civilians as recently as 2010.
If this doesn't look so familiar it turns your stomach, I don't know what to tell you.
They were enjoying a nice day out, too.
When you tell someone in Ireland you're from Boston they joke, "Boston is the capitol of Ireland!" So, citizens, try ordering that drink anywhere in that country and see what happens to you. Hint: There is a fair chance you will get to see how good you are at picking your teeth up off the sidewalk with broken fingers.
As Bostonians, we claim many special rights. The right to be a small city that gets to play with the big boys. The right to be a town where wicked smart people are celebrated alongside sports heroes and rock stars. A place that will unapologetically get all up in your face for being a dumbass (try being in the wrong lane on Storrow or giving money to that sob story guy on the train) and where we show terrorists what it's like to fuck with the wrong town. Our composure after the Marathon bombing, our resilience, and our strength showed the country and the world how we do things here.
All of that is for shit if one week out of the year we tolerate a bunch of dick-holes in green plastic bowlers and those horrific louvered sunglasses to order "Irish Car Bombs" without challenge, without someone saying "dude, not cool". We can just revert to being nothing more than comically-accented provincial idiots, swimming in our own fetid hypocrisy, in that case.
Your call.
No Snark Sunday: Big Things That Can Kill You
By Jim Dowd February 8, 2015 February 8, 2015 Uncategorized
We're at a weird time in our species' history but anyone with teenagers recognizes it instantly. You go from being a kid where everything is bigger and more powerful than you to having an unprecedented amount of control over the world. And it's not until a few years later when, as an adult, you realize, "holy crap, what an illusion that was. It's a miracle I survived."
Really the whole early history of humans and civilization is about managing or at least coming to terms with big things that can kill you. Unlike most of our fellow mammals, our bodies are under equipped as far as animals go. Put a naked human being next to a bear or a tiger [editor's note: don't actually do this] or even an otter or a rabbit and you get a sense of how helpless are. No claws, no fur, not especially fast, not a particularly great sense of smell, of the entire animal kingdom our offspring are the worst helpless idiots and for years. What other species young would willingly walk off a cliff or eat a poisoned berry unless watched and cared for constantly?
I imagine a saber toothed tiger chilling with a cave bear at the base of some glacier a few hundred thousand years ago. They're gnawing on some bones and just swapping predator talk while watching a rag-tag band of early humans struggle by in the mud of the effluvial outwash. The tiger points with his paw and says:
Soon hipsters will be dressing like this
"Will you look at those things? Hobbling around on just the two back legs, covered in preyskins because they can't even grow their own fur. They're slow, they're loud, they are clumsy as hell and it takes like 10 of them to bring down a mammoth. Pathetic, really."
The bear nods his head and then after a second says,
"Yeah, but have you seen that fire shit they do?"
Fast forward to the present day and the only physical memory of both of their species is a drawer in a museum and the place where they were chatting is now a moped dealership.
I firmly believe that if human beings had any decent innate tools at all to fight against our early predators besides intelligence we would never have gotten past the "sharp stick" phase of technological development. We develop tools and ideas to protect us from big things that can kill us.
But somehow, in the teen years of our species, before we really know what the hell is going on and are just reacting to the day-to-day, we're confused about the big things that can kill us. For all our knowledge and technology, most of us are just really bad at pointing out and avoiding the most obviously dangerous things.
Usually when someone makes this point they start talking about auto crashes or heart disease, but I want to spend a minute thinking about trains. Yes, trains, our relationship to trains is more indicative of the problem at hand, I think than cars which for their danger are incredibly useful or fatty foods, which our brains are actually programmed to want.
Trains have been around for a century and a half. One can easily predict where a train won't be, and even predicting where one will be is limited to a highly defined area called "train tracks." If you are not on train tracks, which when you think about it are pretty small comparatively, you will not be hit by a train. It's that simple. Yet people are killed by trains all the time and engage in all kinds of risky behaviors around them.
I commute by train when I go into Boston and have done so for years. You would not believe all the dumbassery that takes place around trains (and I'm not talking about the incredibly sad cases of folks who've actively chosen to end their lives this way). People step in front of them, they walk along the tracks, they drive across the tracks when the train is coming and I once even saw a dude go under the train as it was leaving Gloucester so he could get to McDonalds that much quicker, saving him the time of having to wait for all seven cars to pass.
Essentially, trains are this
This woman in New York last week who caused an accident that killed five people had stopped to check her car because it had clipped one of the crossing signals. All the details are not out, but it looks like she leapt back into her car and drove even further into the path of the train, maybe with the car in the wrong gear? You'd think she wasn't trying to gun it across, but in my time as a rail commuter I've been on trains that have hit cars on three separate occasions.
Even more unclear on the concept of Newtonian physics was the guy who jumped off the train in Lynn when he realized it was express to Salem and not stopping there. We were stopped for hours and hours as they investigated the scene and the poor bastard ended up losing an arm. When we finally got moving the conductor shook his head and said, "He risked his life to get INTO Lynn? I just don't get it."
So why can't a too-large portion of the population come to grips with the fact that trains are dangerous while at the same time freaking out over things like ebola, which obviously aren't? I think it's familiarity. I think if things are too common we forget to be afraid of them. A friend works in an elementary school in Essex where they routinely practice lockdown drills in case of an armed intruder. This is wise and desperately sad, but the shootings are so uncommon that there is not much else you can do. Sealing the place up like Masada is going too far. At the same time, you may not know this, but Essex Massachusetts is currently under a plague of rabid skunks. Read their police notes, it's like the frikin zombie skunk apocalypse over there. I'm an outdoorsy person, I have an overly-curious collie, I walk in Essex sometimes and the stink-monsters from Hell are far more dangerous to creatures I love and all those kids on that playground than some loon with a gun, who is indeed dangerous but just not common.
We take the common dangers in stride, push them away and habituate ourselves. We append no risk to the boring or the mundane. The snowstorm has to be sold as a howling death fury to get our attention. By March even blizzards will probably fail to get a reaction and they will start giving them dull names. Winter storm "Sheldon", snow event "Ed." Maybe to be scared we need a little drama and hype, maybe to take precaution we require some pizzaz. Local media does it with storms, maybe we can get Fox 25 to do a "Deathtrain Watch" or we could combine two boring things together to make them a more exciting and therefor more avoidable threat.
Strap rabid skunks to the front of the trains, is what I'm saying. It's the obvious solution.
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You're a .Net developer. You've worked with MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases on more than a few projects. You feel pretty good about your abilities, right? Now, enter an opportunity to work with Oracle.
Oracle shouldn't be too bad, right? How different could it be? To the inexperienced, one might think that there really is no difference at all. However, depending on the client and the level of security desired it could be vastly different.


Jaya Holdings announced it has signed a contract to charter its newbuild DP2 Platform Supply Vessel (PSV) Jaya Vigilant for a long term operation in the Indian Ocean, offshore Mozambique. The two-year contract, which includes charterer's options, has a value of more than $20 million. Jaya Vigilant, designed as a large PSV, is now being upgraded with additional equipment required for the charter's work scope prior to delivery from Jaya's own yard in Batam, Indonesia at the end of September 2013.
The steamship ' Earnslaw' has been operating on New Zealand's Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown for more than a century, but its future could be in doubt, after ongoing complaints about the smoke from its coal-fired boilers, reports 3News. Real Journeys, which runs the Earnslaw, stated that it does what it can to keep emissions down, including looking at how the coal is burnt and adopting new technology where possible.
OW Bunker, one of the world's largest suppliers and traders of marine fuels and lubricants, appoint Adrian Tolson to the new role of Regional Manager for the company's North American operation. Mr.
Fugro has been awarded a major hydrographic survey project in the Middle East region which has an estimated value in excess of USD 80 million. The survey will commence in October 2013, utilising a combination of vessels and aircraft and is expected to take 14 months to complete. According to Fugro this is one of the largest commercial hydrographic survey projects to combine both airborne and vessel based techniques ever undertaken.
Seadrill's mandatory offer to purchase all of the shares in Sevan Drilling ASA at NOK 3.95 per share has been accepted. Seadrill has received acceptances of the Offer totalling 47,394 shares.
Great Lakes Shipyard was awarded a contract by Whiskey Island Marina to fabricate a new floating breakwater. The Shipyard will fabricate two 150' long steel cylindrical modules that will be bolted together and anchored in the lake bottom in front of the marina. The project is to be completed by mid-November. The 10-foot diameter breakwater is used for wake attenuation to protect the boats and docks in the marina basin from heavy weather and is ballasted to the 6.5' waterline.


Who gets paid more, Transit and Railroad Police or Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Engineering Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Legal Support Workers, All Other?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Insurance Appraisers, Auto Damage?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Farm Products?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Postmasters and Mail Superintendents?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Geological and Petroleum Technicians?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Childcare Workers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Human Resources Specialists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Including Fast Food?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Gas Plant Operators?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Cashiers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Anthropologists and Archeologists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Surveyors?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Artists and Related Workers, All Other?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Sales Representatives, Services, All Other?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Electrical and Electronics Drafters?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Special Education Teachers, Middle School?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Waiters and Waitresses?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Cooks, Short Order?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Training and Development Specialists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Special Education Teachers, Secondary School?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Public Relations Specialists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Food Preparation Workers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technicians?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Historians?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Shampooers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Manicurists and Pedicurists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Subway and Streetcar Operators?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Motion Picture Projectionists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Personal Care Aides?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Cartographers and Photogrammetrists?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Cooks, Fast Food?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Parking Lot Attendants?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Amusement and Recreation Attendants?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Counter Attendants, Cafeteria, Food Concession, and Coffee Shop?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Dishwashers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers?
Who gets paid more, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians or Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Sales Representatives, Services, All Other?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technicians?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Childcare Workers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Dishwashers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Postmasters and Mail Superintendents?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Cooks, Short Order?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Special Education Teachers, Middle School?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Gas Plant Operators?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Legal Support Workers, All Other?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Including Fast Food?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Shampooers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Insurance Appraisers, Auto Damage?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Engineering Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Subway and Streetcar Operators?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Cashiers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Counter Attendants, Cafeteria, Food Concession, and Coffee Shop?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Farm Products?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Artists and Related Workers, All Other?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Surveyors?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Waiters and Waitresses?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Geological and Petroleum Technicians?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Anthropologists and Archeologists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Cartographers and Photogrammetrists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Personal Care Aides?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Historians?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Hosts and Hostesses, Restaurant, Lounge, and Coffee Shop?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Electrical and Electronics Drafters?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Training and Development Specialists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Parking Lot Attendants?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Human Resources Specialists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Manicurists and Pedicurists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Food Preparation Workers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Amusement and Recreation Attendants?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Cooks, Fast Food?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Motion Picture Projectionists?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Special Education Teachers, Secondary School?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers?
Do Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technicians earn more than Public Relations Specialists?


There was no treasury report.
The minutes from the March 10, 2010 meeting were read and approved.
Baltimore Corridor Project: Tree pits are being dug for the planting on April 24, 2010. Tools are being borrowed from UC Green. Joyce Prentice volunteered to hand out tools the day of the planting. Elsie Mueller agreed to handle registration of the volunteers. Lunch to be provided to the volunteers was discussed. WaWa and local supermarkets will be contacted for lunch prices. Volunteers from previous plantings were contacted by email and telephone.
Reservoir Park – 15 trees will be planted at the park under the direction of Dave William, Land & Stream Management.
Arbor Day Celebration – the celebration will take place on April 30, 2010 at Sycamore Park. Students from St. Philomena, Lansdowne Friends and Ardmore Avenue Elementary Schools will be invited to attend. A creative story contest will be conducted with prizes for winners.
Edward Lewis has been contacted to present a program. He will portray the black Revolutionary War hero Eward "Ned" Hector. He will be offered $200 for 45 minutes.


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We are part of a society that is much more connected than ever before. This is due to the use of the internet. We are connected through our smartphones, smart televisions, social media, and other outlets. As a result, we are much more data-driven than ever before. As the internet evolves, so will our dependence on it.
The internet affects everything in today's world. It is constantly reshaping the way that we do business in private as well as public sectors. It is becoming incorporated into our everyday lives now. You think of the internet in terms of smartphones and computers in your home, as well as business and academics. However now, the internet is being included in vehicles and various electronics around the home.
Net neutrality means that everyone will be able to access the internet. It will be an "open web" which means that it should remain decentralized and useful for all. Although data and the internet have dramatically changed our way of life, there are still more people in the world that aren't connected to the internet than those that are. The internet will become much more accessible to those people who live in poverty-stricken areas of the world.
By delivering internet access to these areas there will be a reduction of poverty as education levels will increase. In the event that the internet does not remain decentralized, there could be many more risks and problems arise.
The internet and the exchange of information are growing daily at an alarming rate. There needs to be rules and regulations that can keep up with this growth of information. If these regulations cannot keep up, then there will be an increase in tensions between various nations in the world as cyber-attacks could become more prevalent. More and more people shop and do their financial business online than ever before. People could have their financial information stolen.
Privacy could easily become an issue with the future of the internet. We could very well have little privacy. As we are more connected and we all begin to own these smart devices, we could have our location kept up with regardless of where we go. In a sense, our smart devices could be used as a type of surveillance anytime, anywhere. We may not have much of a choice in where we decide to go or what we decide to do, because our every move could be watched both online and in the real world.
The majority of the world does not speak English, even though most of us like to believe that the English language runs the business world. This being said, there will need to be a way that we all can understand one another throughout the internet as our languages will need to be understood. People will allow the transfer of data, information, thoughts, business proposals, and ultimately interconnectedness across space. The more people become connected, the more diverse the internet will become in the future.
The future of the internet will definitely be interesting. There will be a need for increased security, more accessibility, and we will need to be sure that it remains an open network for anyone to be able to use. We should be careful that it isn't exploited to allow the rich to become richer and keep others in poverty.


MILAN, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Telecom Italia (TIM) and Open Fiber have signed a non-disclosure agreement that could include initial moves towards merging the two companies' network assets, daily La Repubblica reported on Saturday, without giving further details.
Open Fiber, controlled by Italy's biggest utility Enel and state lender CDP, started two years ago to build a fast fibre network in the country after Rome accused incumbent TIM of acting too slowly to upgrade its ageing copper network.
But the populist government which took office in June thinks a single network would be more efficient, although Economy Minister Giovanni Tria has said it was a matter for private companies to decide.
CDP also owns almost 5 percent of TIM.
A source close to the situation said the agreement, which was signed earlier this week, is a continuation of a commercial accord signed in November by Open Fiber and TIM's previous chief executive Amos Genish.
The source did not know if this new agreement included any additional measures.
TIM and Open Fiber both declined to comment.
Open Fiber CEO Elisabetta Ripa said on Thursday commercial deals were the only ground on which its company and TIM can collaborate.
TIM CEO Luigi Gubitosi said this week in an interview with Corriere della Sera daily that the former telecoms monopoly is ready to discuss commercial accords, co-investments and a possible network combination with Open Fiber.


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In one of my presentations I have a slide called Portrait of the Author as a Mushroom?. It's a rather unflattering personal metaphor that came to me at a leadership workshop (led by Colin Hall) when we were asked to describe ourselves in one word.
It's become a vivid symbol to me of the importance of engaging with the world. Like many mushrooms (the introvert types described by Myers Briggs who typically derive their energy from within rather than from dealing with others), I am often more inclined to hide in the cool dark than step bravely into the sunlight.
But although the shade of solitude can be replenishing and centering, it's only by stepping out that we feel truly alive. It's by speaking up and sharing thoughts that we are able to learn from and inspire others. It's by discovering a common humanity that we remember we are part of something bigger and experience magical moments of connection and synchronicity.
On a personal level, it's been a really tough year in many ways but as the weather warms and spring promises new beginnings, I realise that it's not the books I've read or the quiet moments I've spent alone that have sustained or replenished me. The real gifts have come from stepping outside of myself and I've been blessed with many opportunities for doing so this year.
I've had the privilege of engaging with inspiring leaders both locally and internationally and I share some highlights with you below.
The chances are good that the now famous words incorrectly attributed to Madiba in his inauguration speech (actually written by author Marianne Williamson) were written for mushrooms by a mushroom.
The good news is that we've still got some wonderful events planned for the rest of the year. So this is a special invitation to mushrooms and their more extroverted colleagues to join us where you can and delight in the discovery of what happens when you have the courage to step into the light.
Writing this newsletter is my commitment to doing the same.
My approach to women's leadership is shaped by the premise that our role today is far more radical than trying to score points in a culture that we've always found alienating. It's about changing the game completely and creating a different, healthier set of rules.
If we knew that feminine practices of leadership were genuinely welcomed, what would we do differently?
Check out the pictures under Gallery on http://www.qualitylife.co.za/conf2.asp. This will definitely become a regular event on the QualityLife Company calendar.
In June I was invited to participate in a five-day leadership conference in Tallberg, Sweden, with the theme "How on Earth Can We Live Together".
Every year leaders from all over the world and from various sectors of society gather in the small Swedish village of Tallberg to talk about the challenges and opportunities that stem from global interdependence.
The formal program was studded with world leaders from business, government and civil society. But the richest learning came from conversations with remarkable people from all over the world as we walked and drove through the beautiful Dalarna countryside.
I was particularly lucky with my bus ride companions. (A three-hour trip from Arlanda airport to Tallberg begs for good conversation) United in the irritation of having our luggage lost by Swiss Air, I was entertained and inspired by the formidable but equally modest Dr Tariq Banuri, an economic policy advisor who heads up the Stockholm Environment Institute. His passion was infectious and saw me joining a two day workshop which focused on Lake Tonle Sap on the Mekong River in Cambodia. (!) Although I could contribute very little to the conversation about fishing and ended up feeling a little water-logged, I was impressed by Tariq's design of the process and commitment to multi-stakeholder participation. He made sure that three fisherman were present at the workshop (a translator had to be present throughout) to ensure that the local fishing community was adequately represented.
It was strange to experience a part of the world where it doesn't get dark at night. Bliss for an insomniac and late night conversation junkie. On the bus drive back to Stockholm I met Subhash Agrawal, editor of India Focus who runs a think-tank that advises international players on Indian trends and strategic issues. It was yet another gift of this kind of international meeting that a girl from Jo'burg should meet a kindred spirit from Delhi. I also got to meet some amazing South African leaders. One of these was Iqbal Surve, of Sekunjalo who will be participating in our Cape Town Soul of Business Conference.
My own conversations in Sweden reminded me once more of the words of Open Space Technology founder Harrison Owen who discovered that the most valuable part of any conference is the coffee breaks. So this year we were even more committed to building breathing space for conversations into the conference and will do the same in Cape Town in October. Always a challenge with such an exciting speaker line-up!
A huge thank you to Dunne and Debby for managing to put another quality event together. You understand the ripple effect, so you must know that your efforts are appreciated by a large proportion of people that do not know you exist! I'd like to share some of the "ripples" from Lekana. After the conference last year my department adopted a local charity, raised funds and were able to make some major changes that affected the lives of 90 odd old folk over a period of time. (these are often the forgotten generation within our society). This was all done democratically and all the funds raised were by staff through staff – my involvement was limited to creating the environment for them to do so. We then challenged other Lekana departments to do something similar and now have two main initiatives running. Most important for me was that these are ordinary staff making a difference, not only giving money but of their time … over time.
One of our keynote speakers at Business Unusual was Anthony Fitzhenry, the modest founder and CEO of IT-infrastructure company Axiz. Anthony has become the poster-child for what is described as 'the employee ownership' model in business circles. Axiz insists that all employees "from floor sweepers to executives" acquire shares in the company the day they join, paid for by way of a modest salary deduction. The business model draws heavily on Mondragon, a co-operative established in Spain's Basque country in 1954. It's also based on an inverted hierarchy in which management are accountable to company employees. You can read more about Anthony in the book Meet the CEOs: Essential Leadership Styles in Today's Business World (Penguin).
6. Newsflash: Soul of Business in Cape Town, October 18, 19 and 20, 2006.
This year for the first time, we're taking the Soul of Business Conference to Cape Town. Thank you to General Manager Chris Godenir for suggesting we do this and for offering the Peninsula Hotel as a venue. There are some amazing business unusual initiatives taking place in Cape Town and we are very excited to learn more about the inspiring leaders behind them. Some of our Jo'burg speakers will be joining us but there will be a strong local flavour too. You can check out the full programme on http://www.qualitylife.co.za/program_19_10_06.htm.
Last month I participated in a Wits panel discussion on "How women leaders and academics manage the glass ceiling" at the invitation of Professor Margaret Orr. Margaret runs The Centre for Learning, Teaching, and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand where I've run workshops for both academic and support staff.
The discussion (chaired by Denis Beckett who was on top form) was part of the launch of Buttons and Breakfasts. (Wits University Press.) It's a powerfully candid read about the struggle to succeed within a male dominated academic environment edited by Margaret Orr, Mary Rorich and Finuala Dowling.
More Wits news is that I wrote an article for the Wits Business School Journal on women's leadership earlier this year. Write to me at debby@qualitylife.co.za if you'd like a copy and I'll email it to you. I'd love to know what you think.
October's a very busy month! I'll be running my Women's Leadership programme Chaos, Creativity and Conversations twice, once at the invitation of the YPO and once as a public QualityLife Company workshop.
Earlier this month I presented There's Fairydust on my Filofax: How to Create Magic at Work for the teachers at the beautiful St Andrews school (where headmistress Pauline Jackson tells me they manage time-keeping without the use of bells). We are loving the rewards of a garden which we planted in February this year. Poppies, sweet peas and pansies abound, it's a good lesson for a last minuter like me of how some things take time and need to be planned for in advance!
In November it will be time for Good Fairy Week again. Last year organisations around the country participated and spread good cheer to people they'd never met. Unemployed people found jobs, weary mothers went on time-sharing holidays and anonymous bouquets of flowers were delivered to homes and offices all over South Africa. Not in our wildest dreams did we realise how popular this "Pay it Forward" concept would be and we worked late into the night for weeks matching fairies and wishers!.
QualityLife Company and South Africa – The Good News are teaming up to publish a book on the Soul of South African Business. The intention is to find the organisations and leaders who are forging new paths in business that are more conscious of the challenge of integrating people, business and broader society. Some of the themes we're going to be exploring include Spiritual (values-based) Leadership, Corporate Social Investment, Volunteer Programmes, Enterprise Development (trade not aid), Business Unusual and Sustainability. We're looking for companies that would like to be aligned with the values of this important project and who are in a position to sponsor a portion of it. If you'd like to be involved, please call Dunne on 0118809749 or email him on dunne@qualitylife.co.za.


We'll return to your regularly unscheduled Nanowrimo spotlight tomorrow, but today I wanted to share a small epiphany about my writing process. As many of my friends and followers may know, I set myself creative goals for each month, and I often like to switch between different books, stories, or other projects I'm working on at the same time. My October Goals list was pretty ambitious, and I've been scrambling a little to get ready for Nanowrimo (both in the personal writing sense and as a Hamilton ML,) and also cross as many things off that list as I can.
And something inside my brain complained! It wasn't anything that I could put into words right away, but as I sat there at the laptop, trying to figure out what was wrong, I got a good guess of what the problem was. Over the past few weeks, I've been working on developing plot bunnies for two different novel ideas I'm going to be tackling in November, as well as revising some of my short stories and going through a course on learning how to write good flash fiction. I think that at this point, trying to juggle three different novels, the two I'm going to be writing in about a week and the one that I was planning revisions for in September, is just too much for my brain to be holding and working with in the same timeframe.
I've never really thought that much about how much story I can work with at a time, or run into the limit in quite this way before, but it makes some sense. In the Iron Druid books, the main character, Atticus, talks about building 'headspaces' that he can then use to perform Druidic bindings like taking many people across to another plane of existence at the same time. He builds up the headspaces by learning languages or memorizing great swathes of literature by productive people. His apprentice still has only one or two headspaces at this point in the series, so she's more limited in what she can do.
So that's about it. For now, I'm respecting my headspace limit and trying to minimize the creative stuff that I'm doing this week beyond prepping for Nano. Four days, four hours and counting!
This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2014 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Goals, Projects, and Resolutions.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


Surveillance cameras captured the minutes before a fatal road rage shooting left a 10-year-old girl dead in Phoenix, Arizona, Wednesday night. A white pickup is seen hot on the trail of a sedan in which a family of four was heading home. When dad pulled into his driveway, gunfire rang out from the truck, and a bullet struck and killed 10-year-old Summer Brown, who was sleeping in the back seat. "She gasped because it woke her up, and she was trying to breathe," mom Taniesha told Inside Edition.


text:
Lack of specific links to asbestos exposure dooms ship worker's case
Toxic Tort Talk
By Craig T. Liljestrand
Craig T. Liljestrand' a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP' has experience in toxic tort litigation. He practices in the areas of asbestos' silica' welding fumes' lead paint, chemical and occupational disease claims. His client base includes Fortune 500 companies in which he has defended various industrial product and equipment manufacturers' contractors and premises owners in numerous toxic tort cases throughout the country. He is also the regional counsel for a major industrial manufacturer.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the trial court's grant of summary judgment in favor of all defendants in an asbestos liability case.Based on the rule in Henderson v. Allied Signal Inc., 644 S.E.2d 724, 727 (S.C. 2007), the court concluded that the plaintiff did not show evidence of exposure to a specific product on a regular basis over some extended period in proximity to where the plaintiff actually worked (the "frequency, regularity and proximity" test). Pace v. Air & Liquid …
Channeling Sen. Collins — SCOTUS counsel and lawmakers go to battle
The interaction between Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Hank Johnson and counsel to the Supreme Court continues, with the counsel, Ethan Torrey, not providing any answers to the senators' questions.
By Daniel A. Cotter
Corpus linguistics methodology used in Jan. 6 trial
In one of the Jan. 6 prosecutions for obstruction of an official proceeding, where the government asked for an eight-level sentencing enhancement, a federal judge in the District of Columbia used the corpus linguistics methodology to determine whether Congress was engaged in "administration of justice," under Sec. 2J1.2 of the U.S. sentencing guidelines, when it considered certification challenges under the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
By Steven P. Garmisa
7th Circuit corrects misstep in 11th Amendment order
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals spotted an error in an order that tossed Zenon McHugh's state-law statutory claim against his former employer, the Illinois Department of Transportation, based on 11th Amendment immunity.
Judge critiques federal government's reach under commerce clause
Life cycle of short sale in 2022 is evolving as market begins to cool
In 2021, the local real estate market showed us an inflated market born of limited supply, buyers' desires to adapt to changes in the way we live as a result of the pandemic, and "FOMO" — the fear of missing out, a sense that one had to buy now.
By Erica Minchella
7th Circuit judges disagree on burden-shifting 'comparator'
With one judge dissenting, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Andrew Dunlevy provided an appropriate "comparator" for a McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework in a discrimination case against the City of Springfield and its mayor.
District court ruling for Uber is 'in tension' with 7th Circuit
Granting Uber Technologies' request to order individual arbitration of a driver's class action complaint, a federal judge in New York acknowledged his decision is "in tension" with a 2012 decision from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals about the residual clause in Sec. 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act.
Bayard Rustin, an agitator for justice, was charismatic, prophetic and gay
Though historically dubious, basic lessons of the civil rights era rarely venture beyond the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott and the bravery of Rosa Parks to understand how formerly enslaved Blacks overcame Jim Crow and other vestiges of white supremacy. It is essential to know the historical precedent that served as a prelude to the struggles for racial justice in the 1960s, a watershed decade.
By Judge Ramon Ocasio III

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Yesterday, this very provincial poet enjoyed a rare day in London. The main reason: David Bowie Is at the V & A.
Online tickets having sold out for the duration, I joined the thankfully moving queue for tickets and engaged in 'seventees reminiscence with the ladies in front of me. Forty minutes later, ticket bagged, I had time for an Earl Grey tea break in the Madejski Garden before my 12.15 slot (another, shorter queue).


Mated to a 6-speed 'Rev-Tronic' automatic transmission with sequential sports mode, the automatic transmission features an adaptivelearning function which constantly monitors brake and throttle applications. This allows the transmission to automatically select the most appropriate shift points and lock-up points depending on the driver's behaviour, the vehicle's load and speed. A smooth shift six-speed manual transmission is also available. It features a superior gear-lever pivot point, reducing gear-shift travel for a sportier feel.
*Braked towing on 4x4 and 4x2 high-ride models when fitted with an optional genuine Isuzu D-MAX tow bar kit.
Isuzu is fully committed to lowering emissions over the course of a vehicle's life cycle - from materials procurement to disposal and recycling. This philosophy is no better illustrated than in our Isuzu D-MAX.
The Isuzu D-MAX will redefine your spirit for adventure and allow you to go places you've never before dared. Independent double wish-bones with coil springs and gas shock absorbers guarantee superior front end grip and steering control. The rear suspension consists of long span leaf springs (under-slung on low-ride models and over-slung on high-ride models) resulting in excellent traction and stability under every road condition - with or without loading.
AAt your fingertips you will find all the technology and modern conveniences you have come to expect in a new ute.
Every D-MAX offers a generous complement of standard equipment, including an audio system with iPod® and Bluetooth® connectivity for phone and audio streaming. All SX and LS models come equipped with a touchscreen audio as well as a reversing camera as standard. LS-U and top of the range LS-T models are equipped with touchscreen SatNav as standard.
All SX and LS models conveniently feature steering wheel cruise control and audio controls to help keep you focused on the road ahead. Remote keyless entry, power windows and mirrors are standard on SX and LS models. For the ultimate convenience, the top of the range 4x4 LS-T comes standard with a Passive Entry and Start System so you can unlock and start your car without ever having to touch your key.
The Bluetooth® word mark is owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. Not all devices will be compatible and functionality will vary depending on the device. iPod® is a trademark of Apple, Inc.
Further enhancing driver safety is a collapsible steering column and brake pedal, while pedestrian safety is increased with an impact absorbing bonnet design, recessed fog lamps and shatter resistant polycarbonate headlamp covers. All of this adds up to give 4x4 and 4x2 High-Ride Crew Cab Isuzu D-MAX models a 5 star ANCAP safety rating~ to keep you safe whether you're hard at work or on an adventure.
~5 star ANCAP safety rating applies to D-MAX 4x4 Crew Cab variants built from November 2013 and 4x2 High-Ride Crew Cab variants built from November 2014.
The Isuzu D-MAX comes from a lineage of the world's toughest, most reliable workhorses. A truck-tough chassis means better balance and performance whether loaded or not, delivering superior stability and roadholding in all conditions. Isuzu has created over 26 million diesel engines around the world, engines that have been honed in trucks and light-commercial vehicles for generations, and under the hood of the D-MAX is a robust engine that won't let you down.
Over 4,000,000km of strenuous testing in searing heat, heaving rain, hail and even snow was conducted in the development of the Isuzu D-MAX to ensure it never lets you down.
As a testament to our immense confidence we have in building durable, reliable and efficient utes, every Isuzu D-MAX is backed by the Isuzu UTE Australia Service Plus Program which adds further peace of mind when it comes to protecting your investment. Designed with superior know-how you don't just get a ute, you get the tools to go your own way with every Isuzu D-MAX.
The D-MAX range has been engineered to be extremely efficient, with low fuel consumption from 7.2L/100kmΔ. Lower fuel consumption means fewer trips to the fuel pump and valuable cost savings across your fleet.
ΔFuel consumption and emissions figures based on ADR 81/02 (combined cycle test) and are to be used for vehicle comparison purposes only. Actual fuel consumption and emissions will vary depending on many factors including, but not limited to, traffic conditions, individual driving style and vehicle condition.


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The hyper-realistic robot that is 'indistinguishable from humans'
By admin	 On Apr 18, 2018 94 0
A 'malfunctioning' robot has terrified shocked drinkers in a London pub, by smashing a pint glass and talking about a 'robot invasion'. The life like automaton (right), modelled to be an exact replica of actor Tedroy Newell, 55 (left)
A 'malfunctioning' robot named Fred has terrified drinkers in a London pub by smashing a pint glass while talking about a 'robot invasion'.
The hyper-realistic automaton, modeled to be an exact replica of London-based actor Tedroy Newell, sat down for a refreshing lager at The Prince Alfred pub in Maida Vale, in the west of the capital.
Unsuspecting customers were unprepared for what came next, with the humanoid berating locals before crushing the drinking vessel in his hands.
The robot, described as 'indistinguishable from humans', was created as part of a stunt to promote TV Series Westworld.
A 'malfunctioning' robot has terrified shocked drinkers in a London pub, by smashing a pint glass and talking about a 'robot invasion'. The life like automaton (right), modelled to be an exact replica of actor Tedroy Newell, 55 (left)
Fred the Robot was built by five engineers from robotics company Engineered Arts, based in Penryn, Cornwall, over twelve weeks.
The team developed several hundred thousand lines of computer code and tens of thousands of components, including a sophisticated metal skeleton, silicone skin, real hair and solid acrylic eyes – all 3D-scanned from Tedroy to bring Fred to life.
To field test Fred, the London pub was rigged with hidden cameras and Fred was planted in the bar to see if he could beguile the public.
Relaxed in the bar, the android struck up conversations with members of the public.
Reactions ranged from startled confusion to fear and unease as they digested a series of weighty questions, including 'what are your thoughts on the impending humanoid robot invasion?'
They were then witness to a scheduled 'malfunction', in which Fred began to glitch before dramatically shattering the pint glass.
Unsuspecting customers were unprepared for the Westworld stunt, with the humanoid berating locals before crushing the drinking vessel in his hands
Unsuspecting drinker were unprepared for what came next, with the hyper realistic humanoid berating locals before crushing a drinking vessel in his hands
Fred's human-like interactions were controlled by Engineered Arts' telepresence system, which uses inbuilt sensors, cameras and microphones to track how people interact with the machine.
The robot, who was created to engage in natural conversation in real-time as a human would, responded to their shock appropriately with emphasised gestures and punctuated speech, voiced by a remote operator.
Mr Newell, 55, who the robot was modelled on, said: 'Seeing yourself in robot form is a very, very strange experience.
'I'm honestly amazed at how realistic they were able to make it look – you can barely tell us apart.
'Not many people have had the chance to meet their 'robotic twin' so it's very cool to have been a part of this project.'
Reactions to Fred ranged from startled confusion to fear and unease as members of the public digested a series of weighty questions, including 'what are your thoughts on the impending humanoid robot invasion?'
Fred was funded by streaming service Now TV to promote the return of dark science fiction show Westworld and was inspired by the show's artificially intelligent 'hosts'.
Emma Quartly, marketing director at NOW TV, said: 'We are still a long way away from creating artificially intelligent hosts as sophisticated as those in Westworld, but to celebrate the show's return we wanted to give the general public a little taste of what is possible.
'Fred is the next generation in human-like robotics and so it seemed fitting to hand the show's promotion over to him.
'Needless to say, there were some stunned reactions, especially when in true Westworld style he started to glitch.'
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
robot indistinguishable from humans
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Some of the countries Turkey has a reciprocal agreement for the purchase of land and properties: England, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, USA, Spain, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, Australia, France, Greece, Portugal, Poland, Croatia, Israel, Finland, Estonia, Hungary, some African and South American states.
Is property I purchase likely to increase in value?
Yes, Seventy one percent of IFA's believe their clients could benefit from investing abroad and one in five believe Turkey is the place to make the most money.
As Turkey is still an unfairly unknown market where information on potential opportunities is not so readily available it creates space for extra profit for investors.
Turkey is knocking on the door of full entry to the EU and in the meantime it is offering exceptional value to potential investors.
An Annual Property Tax is payable by the owner of the property to the Local Council in May and November each year. This tax is determined on the declared value of the property under the rate of a threshold determined by the Government. The new owner must declare the price paid for the property to the Council by the end of the year the property was aquired.
Capital gains made from the sale of a property are taxable. However, individuals do not have to pay Capital Gains Tax provided they have owned said property for more than 5 years.
Contact us OEC Developments for details.
The local currency in Turkey is the Turkish Lira (TL) Cash can usually be exchanged without commission at bureau de changes, banks and hotels. Exchange rates are published daily in Turkish newspapers.