An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated. Numerous methods have been devised to facilitate this. Increasing the ease of access to absentee ballots is seen by many as one way to improve voter turnout, though some countries require that a valid reason, such as infirmity or travel, be given before a voter can participate in an absentee ballot.
Among countries where voters are allocated to one or several specific polling station(s) (such as the polling station closest to the voter's residential address, or polling stations within a particular district, province or state), some countries provide a mechanism by which voters can nevertheless cast their ballots on election day at a different polling station.
The reasons for allocating voters to specific polling stations are generally logistical. Absentee voting at a different polling station might be catered for by, for example, designating some larger polling stations as available for absentee voting, and equipping such polling stations with the ballot papers (or the means to produce ballot papers) applicable to an absentee voter.
In the electoral terminology of some countries, such as Australia, "absentee voting" means specifically a vote cast at a different polling station to one to which the voter has been allocated. "Early voting", "proxy voting" or "postal voting" are separate concepts in these countries.
In a postal vote, the ballot papers are posted out to the voter – usually only on request – who must then fill them out and return them, often with some form of certification by a witness and their signature to prove their identity.
To cast a proxy vote, the user appoints someone as their proxy, by authorizing them to cast or secure their vote in their stead. The proxy must be trusted by the voter, as in a secret ballot there is no way of verifying that they voted for the correct candidate. In an attempt to solve this, it is not uncommon for people to nominate an official of their chosen party as their proxy.
Corporations sometimes use Internet voting in shareholder elections (i.e., "at annual or special meetings for members of the board of directors, and on certain issues relating to the organization or governance of the company.").
In the 2012, French citizens living abroad were permitted to cast vote electronically in French parliamentary elections (but not in presidential elections). In 2017, however, the system was dropped after the French National Cybersecurity Agency assessed an "extremely high risk" of cyberattacks in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Similarly, electronic voting was banned in the Netherlands in 2007, and in 2017 Dutch authorities also abandoned electronic vote counting, conducting an all-paper, all-manual vote count in an effort to block foreign interference in its elections.
In Switzerland, six cantons are conducting an electronic voting pilot program. In three cantons, Swiss voters resident abroad may vote electronically; in the cantons of Geneva and Neuchâtel, "some of the electorate living in the canton" may also vote electronically. Since June 2016, in the canton of Basel Stadt, both Swiss voters resident abroad and persons with disabilities living within the canton may vote using an electronic system.
Since 2005, Estonia has allowed voters to cast votes via the Internet (encrypted to protect voter anonymity); 2% of Estonians cast ballots via the Internet initially, and 25% did so in 2011. The Estonian Internet-voting system uses the Estonian national identity card, which is associated with a PINs unique to each voter: "all Estonians are issued a government ID with a scannable chip and a PIN number that gives them a unique online identity — they can use this identity to file their taxes or pay library fines or buy bus passes."
Texas law allows American astronauts who cannot vote in person and are unable to vote via absentee ballot such as those aboard the International Space Station and Mir space station cast their ballots electronically, via email, from orbit since 1997. Ballots are sent via secure email to the Johnson Spaceflight Center and then passed on to the astronauts' home counties in Texas. The first American to cast a ballot from space was astronaut David Wolf. Washington voters who are military or overseas may return their ballots by email to their county elections department as an alternative to the standard vote-by-mail system.
In Australia the term "absentee ballot" refers specifically to the procedure used when a voter attends a voting place which is not in the electoral district in which they are registered to vote. Instead of marking the ballot paper and putting it in the ballot box, the voter's ballot paper is placed in an envelope and then it is sent by the voting official to the voter's home district to be counted there.
Postal voting and early voting are separate procedures also available to voters who would not be in their registered electoral districts on a voting day.
In all German elections, postal votes are available on demand. The requirement for an excuse has been removed in 2008 for elections on the federal level.
As of now, India does not have an absentee ballot system for all citizens. In a restricted sense, The Representation of the People Act-1950 (RPA) section 20(8) allows people such as people on polling duty and serving in armed forces, and Head of state like President to vote in absentia through postal means.
Section 20 of the RPA-1950 disqualifies a non-resident Indian (NRI) from getting his/her name registered in the electoral rolls. Consequently, it also prevents an NRI from casting his/her vote in elections to the Parliament and to the State Legislatures. In August 2010, Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill-2010 which allows voting rights to NRI's was passed in both Lok Sabha with subsequent gazette notifications on Nov 24, 2010. With this NRI's will now be able to vote in Indian elections but have to be physically present at the time of voting. Recently several civic society organizations have urged the government to amend the RPA act to allow NRI's and people on the move to cast their vote through absentee ballot system.
In the Republic of Ireland, postal votes are used in Seanad Éireann elections for the university constituencies and the vocational panels, both of which have restricted franchises. Otherwise, postal voting is only available in a restricted set of circumstances. The Irish constitution requires a secret ballot and the courts have interpreted this quite narrowly. Postal votes are available to people who by reason of their occupation cannot vote normally. They are also available to students living away from home, to people with disabilities, to prisoners (since January 2007), and to long term residents of hospitals, nursing homes and other similar institutions.
Israel does not have an absentee ballot system for all citizens. Absentee ballots are restricted to soldiers, prisoners, sailors, overseas diplomats, disabled persons and hospitalized people. The votes are not cast directly but placed in a double envelope with identifying information and counted directly by the elections committee only after verifying that the voter has not voted at his official polling station. Most absentee ballots are cast the day of the elections in alternate polling stations. Early voting is limited to civil servants overseas. There is no postal voting.
In the Netherlands, liberalised proxy voting is available. Voters can authorise someone else to cast their ballot without having to go through a registration procedure. Voters can cast a maximum of 2 proxy votes along with their own ballot. Postal ballots and Internet voting are only available to Dutch citizens living abroad, or having occupational duties abroad on election day.
As provided by the Overseas Absentee Voting Act, absentee voting in Philippine elections is only available in certain circumstances, such as for Overseas Filipino Workers or other migrants. Votes must be cast in person at select polling places, such as a consulate office; mail-in ballots are an option for Filipinos in select countries. Local absentee voting as pursuant to Republic Act No. 7166 and Executive Order No. 157 is only available for members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, and government personnel on duty on election day. The absentee voting in both overseas and local is still manual vote counting system.
Recently, absentee voting in Hong Kong and Singapore was done through the optical scan voting due to COMELEC Resolution No. 8806 in the 2010 general elections.
Absentee voters can only vote for candidates elected by the entire electorate: the President, Vice President, senators, and party-list representatives.
In Poland, each citizen registered in the local voters' register, can get an absentee voter's certificate (AVC), which is a piece of paper with the person's details and the local government's stamp. The person can vote with AVC at every polling station countrywide and worldwide (in polish embassies and consulates; the polling stations abroad are created by the Minister of Foreign Affairs before every elections). An AVC is issued only for President of Poland elections, parliamentary elections and elections to the European Parliament (in that case, the AVC can be got by Polish or EU citizen, so the EU citizen can vote for polish deputees at polling station in Poland and polish embassies or consulates, or for deputees from the country of origin. Although, if the EU citizen registers himself in the polish voters' register, the local officials informs appropriate office in the country of origin). In case of Senate by-elections, AVC may be issued only for voters living and registered in given single-member constituency.
A postal voting and proxy voting are also possible. Postal voting is possible both in country and abroad, but proxy voting is possible only in Poland. The proxy must be registered at the same local voters' register as a voter. The mail with the voter's ballot in postal voting is free of charge in Poland, but voter resides abroad must pay to send his ballot to the appropriate consulate.
Swiss federal law allows postal voting in all federal elections and referenda, and all cantons also allow it for cantonal ballot issues. All voters receive their personal ballot by mail and may either cast it at a polling station or mail it back.
Absentee balloting started in Thailand first time in the 2000 general election. It is promulgated according to a provision in the 1997 constitution. The absentee ballot can be cast within Thailand and in foreign countries, where Thailand has diplomatic missions. Voters can cast the absentee ballot in 2 cases: (1) those who have their household registration in their constituency but will not be at their constituency on the election day, and wish to cast their vote in advance; and (2) those who physically reside in other locations out of their constituency at least 90 days prior to the election day, and will not be able to travel back to their constituency on the election day.
In both cases, voters wishing to cast their absentee ballot must register with the election committee 30 days in advance prior to the general election date. Voters within Thailand can cast their vote either at the designated district offices for absentee voting in their provinces or through mail. Likewise, voters overseas can register to vote with the Thai missions in their country of residence or send the ballot to them by mail. The absentee voting date is normally designated a week ahead of the general election date.
In all United Kingdom elections, postal votes are available on demand – no reason must be given – although a vote rigging scandal involving postal votes marred the 2004 Birmingham local election.
No-excuse early voting in U.S. states, as of September, 2014.
In the United States, absentee voting takes place "by mail-in paper ballot prior to the day of the election." Typically, "the voter may return the ballot by mail or in person."
States typically require that a voter fill out an application to receive an absentee ballot. Many states help facilitate this process by making absentee ballot applications available online for voters to print and send, and at least five states (Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota and Utah) permit a voter to submit an application entirely online. Arizona has some counties that have online absentee ballot applications, and in Detroit, Michigan, voters can request an absentee ballot through a smartphone app.
While all states offer some version of absentee voting, there is quite a lot of variation in states' procedures. For instance, some states offer "no-excuse" absentee voting, allowing any registered voter to request an absentee without requiring that the voter state a reason for his/her desire to vote absentee. Some states also allow a time period before the election for voters to appear at the elections office or other designated location in person to request, fill out and cast an absentee ballot in one stop. Still other states permit voters to vote absentee only under a limited set of circumstances.
As of March 2017, an excuse is required to vote by mail in 20 states, while in 27 states and the District of Columbia, any qualified voter may vote absentee without offering an excuse. Eight states and D.C. maintain a "permanent absentee ballot" list; "once a voter asks to be added to the list, s/he will automatically receive an absentee ballot for all future elections."
Three states—Colorado, Oregon, and Washington—conduct all elections by mail, sending ballots by post to all eligible voters in each election. In Oregon and Washington, counties provide drop boxes throughout the county to allow voters to drop off their ballot on or prior to election day, rather than paying postage by sending it through the mail. In 19 other states, certain elections may be held by mail.
As noted by the U.S. Postal Service's Domestic Mail Manual, the voter must typically pay postage for mailing his or her absentee ballot, but "balloting materials for any election ... must indicate in a prominent location that the proper amount of postage must be paid." Balloting materials may be sent via the U.S. Postal Service without prepayment of postage for "members of the Armed Forces in active service (and their spouses and dependents)"; "members of the U.S. Merchant Marine and their spouses and dependents"; and "U.S. citizens residing outside the territorial limits of the United States and the District of Columbia and their spouses and dependents residing with or accompanying them."
It is sometimes inaccurately claimed that absentee ballots are not counted unless the race is close; in fact, all valid absentee ballots are counted even if they will not affect the outcome of the election.
American citizens who are overseas, including active members of the military, are covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act that, among other things, provides for a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot which may be used in place of absentee ballots provided under state laws. The Federal Voting Assistance Program is a government program that assists such voters and exercises other authority under this act. This has been supplemented by the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act.
In 1997 the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing residents to cast absentee ballots from space, because of the presence of the NASA Johnson Space Center and the astronauts that live in the Houston metropolitan area.
^ Exercise your Shareholder Voting Rights in Corporate Elections, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, SEC Pub. No. 028 (4/10).
^ France drops electronic voting for citizens abroad over cybersecurity fears, Reuters (March 6, 2017).
^ Josh Lowe, Netherlands Abandons Electronic Vote Counting Amid Hacking Fears, Newsweek (March 6, 2017).
^ Electronic voting, Swiss Confederation.
^ a b Brad Plumer, Estonia gets to vote online. Why can't America?, Washington Post (November 6, 2012).
^ "Astronauts beam votes home". CNN. 2 November 2010.
^ "Military and Overseas Voters". Washington Secretary of State. Retrieved 2019-03-27.
^ "Who can vote by postal ballot?". timesofindia-economictimes. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ "Election Commission to ensure postal votes don't get invalid". dna. 7 November 2013. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ "Pranab to become first president to cast vote via postal ballot". www.oneindia.com. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ PTI. "Govt. issues notification for NRI voting rights". The Hindu. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ "THE CITY OF BRIDGES". Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ "Welcome nrivotingrights.info - Hostmonster.com". Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ "Homepage Parlement & Politiek". Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^ "REPUBLIC ACT No. 7166 - AN ACT PROVIDING FOR SYNCHRONIZED NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTIONS AND FOR ELECTORAL REFORMS, AUTHORIZING APPROPRIATIONS THEREFOR, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES". Commission on Elections. Archived from the original on 26 May 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-29.
^ "GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE SPECIAL BOARD OF ELECTION INSPECTORS AND SPECIAL BALLOT RECEPTION AND CUSTODY GROUP ON THE VOTING, COUNTING, AND TRANSMISSION OF RESULTS FOR OVERSEAS ABSENTEE VOTING IN HONGKONG AND SINGAPORE IN CONNECTION WITH THE 10 MAY 2010 NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTIONS". Commission on Elections. Archived from the original on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-29.
^ "การเลือกตั้งนอกเขตจังหวัด [The procedure of absentee ballot voting]". Archived from the original on 2011-05-26. Retrieved 2011-01-15.
^ "Judge upholds vote-rigging claims". BBC News. April 4, 2005.
^ a b c d e f g Absentee and Early Voting, National Conference of State Legislators (March 20, 2017).
^ "Oregon Secretary of State: Oregon Drop Box Locator". sos.oregon.gov. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
^ a b "Section 703: Nonprofit Standard Mail and Other Unique Eligibility". Domestic Mail Manual. United States Postal Service.
^ "The Facts on 10 Common Election Misconceptions" (PDF). The Canvass, an Elections Newsletter for Legislatures. No. 63. National Conference of State Legislatures. October 2015.
^ "Absentee voting myths vs. realities". Federal Voting Assistance Program/U.S. Army. September 25, 2014.
^ "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about absentee voting". Federal Voting Assistance Program.
Vote.org - a non-partisan, non-profit resource for U.S. voters. Includes a widget to guide voters through the absentee ballot process.


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Brexit Deconstructed: Snap election would offer no way out for May's Brexit
Theresa May announced a snap general election last year. Picture: PA
As Theresa May's cabinet divisions continue to stunt the progress of Brexit, JAMES BALL examines the factors which could trigger another snap election.
If you like putting pencil crosses in boxes it's been a good few years for you.
The UK had a general election in 2015, the Brexit referendum in 2016, and another general election in 2017 – and if you believe newspaper reports from the weekend, we could be facing a snap election in October.
Number 10 denied the reports but there were also emphatic, multiple denials that Theresa May would call an election in 2017 – even just days before she actually called one.
So, just in case, here's a guide to snap elections: why might we be facing one, how it would work – and whether it could help fix Brexit.
Why might Theresa May call an early election?
May is finding it very hard to get any aspect of Brexit done. Her cabinet is currently deadlocked over two different models for the future UK/EU relationship, despite neither of those options being acceptable to the EU – meaning that she can't even get her ministers to agree on a totally unworkable ask, let alone any actual compromise.
Given she can't control her cabinet, it's perhaps unsurprising May is having trouble with her backbenchers too: she has around a dozen MPs with a high risk of rebelling to either block Brexit or to stay in the single market, and around 50 at risk of rebelling for a hard Brexit. She's facing them having to vote on these issues in the near future, thanks to repeated rebellions in the House of Lords on Brexit – and it's not clear she has the votes to rebuff all of these, let alone the votes on any actual Brexit deal later in the year. This is made even harder by May's reliance on the DUP – who are unlikely to like anything she offers on the Irish border question – to keep her in government.
So, faced with the unavoidable need to get some kind of Brexit deal by the March cliff-edge, and the impossible parliamentary maths she faces in doing that, May's left with pretty much only one way out: another early election.
How does an early election happen?
Elections used to be called in one of two ways. The first was through votes of no confidence: if the government lost a confidence vote in the House of Commons, and parliamentary maths didn't let the opposition try to form a coalition, the country would head to the polls. The second was even easier: if the prime minister wanted to call an early election, they could.
Thanks to the Fixed Term Parliament Act that is no longer the case. The new system fixed parliamentary terms at five years, and to call an election earlier than that requires two-thirds of MPs to vote in favour of it (this could in theory be avoided by repealing the Act, but that would also need to pass the Lords).
This makes May's position in trying to call an election difficult: when she called an election last year, she was a new party leader receiving rapturous write-ups in the media, and with a double-digit polling lead – so her backbenchers were more than happy to vote in favour of an early election.
This time, that's not the case: MPs with wafer-thin majorities, especially in cities, will be reluctant to vote themselves out of a job. While May can likely rely on the opposition parties to vote in favour of an election – it doesn't look good for oppositions to try to keep the government going for longer – she could be left in the humiliating position of losing a vote on calling an election. This would be unprecedented in British political history, another bit of uncharted territory to which Brexit leads us.
Once an election is agreed, there are a number of technical requirements which kick in governing the length of the campaign, spending limits, and various other bits of election law – though in a snap election there would be no time to update these for the post-Cambridge Analytica era.
Do early elections tend to work out well for the people calling them?
Generally speaking, they do not: Labour had a tough election in 1950, seeing their majority drop from 146 to just five. Faced with the difficulties of managing such a small parliamentary majority, Attlee took the country to the polls again in the Autumn of 1951, in the hope of a more workable majority. The result was government with a stronger majority of 17 – but it was a Conservative one.
The 1960s give a more optimistic picture for May: Harold Wilson took power in 1964 with a majority of just 4, and opportunistically called an election less than 18 months later to try to get a more workable parliament. It worked – in 1966's election he picked up a majority of 96, something May at this point can only dream of.
Wilson's record otherwise was more mixed: after returning to power in February 1974 in a minority government – May's current position – he took the country back to the polls just eight months later, and netted a tiny majority of three. That dwindled to a minority over the course of a sclerotic four-and-a-half year government which got very little done – and opened the door to the Thatcher era.
What might parliament look like after a snap election?
The danger of trying to guess what the outcome of a snap election would be is that the polls have called the last two general elections wrongly: when May announced the 2017 vote, most experts were forecasting a Conservative majority of at least 50, with many saying it could hit triple figures.
Those polls tightened dramatically and led to last year's indecisive outcome. Today, the polls generally show the Conservatives with around a three- to four-point poll lead. This would likely see Conservatives in target, urban constituencies lose out to Labour rivals, with the reverse taking place in the commuter belt and small towns.
If the polling numbers stayed where they were now, we would expect the most likely outcome to be a minority government, with it being a virtual toss-up as to whether Labour or the Conservatives would be in the best position to govern. However, either government would be very weak, and would struggle to get any legislation passed – especially not unpopular legislation.
Would a snap election be good for salvaging Brexit?
The grim news is that it probably wouldn't. The UK's two biggest political parties are stuck in deadlock against one another, but are polling together at above 80%, keeping smaller parties from breaking through or building the size of their parliamentary blocs. The leaderships of both parties support a hard Brexit, even if their backbenchers (and in Labour's case members) often do not.
An election at present would likely result in another very weak government with one or the other of those parties at the helm – leaving the UK in almost exactly the same position it is in now, but having run down another two months of negotiation time, when the EU insists we need a deal agreed by October and ratified by March.
When the country is this bitterly divided, we would usually expect very little to happen until a new political leader emerged who broke the deadlock and gained a majority. This time is different: Brexit, at the moment, is happening.
To get any kind of sensible plan together, the big parties would need to work together and agree a compromise position they would try to urge all their backbenchers to support. That kind of cross-party work is anathema to both Corbyn and May's leadership styles – and would be to many of their voters, too.
The politics of Brexit are stuck in a dead end – but at present, an election doesn't seem to offer any way out.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Kentucky Route 312 (KY 312) is a  state highway in Kentucky that runs from Kentucky Route 192 northwest of Corbin to U.S. Route 25E and World Drive in eastern Corbin via Corbin.

Route description

KY 312 begins at KY 192, heads southeasterly and passes through the unincorporated community of Keavy. It then enters Whitley County and crosses over Interstate 75 (I-75) without an interchange. The highway descends Gordon Hill into downtown Corbin. The road then enters Knox County and ends at U.S. Route 25E (US 25E).

Major intersections

References

0312
Kentucky Route 312
Kentucky Route 312
Kentucky Route 312

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


With less concern about its effect on the state's reputation, the Traveler in some of its old trappings lingered on the periphery of the state's life throughout the 20th century.
For example, well-dressed visitors to Hot Springs were photographed for Happy Hollow postcards, in front of rustic Arkansas Traveler backdrops. Bob Burns, "the Arkansas Traveler," and the team of Lum and Abner (Chet Lauck and Norris Goff) achieved great success as radio and movie entertainers, basing their gentle humor on the backwoods image of Arkansas. Beginning in 1968, the Arkansaw Traveller Folk Theater in Hardy revived the music, story and image of the Traveler.
In 1941 the Arkansas General Assembly created the Arkansas Traveler Certificate to honor out-of-state visitors, presenting the first one to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These Certificates continued the "Traveler as outsider" theme, placing visitors in the role of the Traveler, but by this time the image had lost its power as a regional stereotype, and the Certificate has become a regular feature of gatherings where visitors are honored.
The "backwoods" aspect of Arkansas has now become a positive attraction – the tourism folks tout Arkansas as the Natural State.


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6PR, Mornings with Gary Adshead
Interview Transcripts 17 December, 2020
Topics: MYEFO; domestic borders; JobKeeper; Australia-China trade relations 17/12/20 10:36AM Gary Adshead: Simon Birmingham is the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Plenty to talk with him about this morning. Thanks very much for your time. Simon Birmingham: G'day. Great to be with you. Thank you. Gary Adshead: First of all, what's…
Doorstop, Parliament House
Topics: MYEFO, JobKeeper, Australia-China trade relationship, International borders/travel 17/12/2020 07:52AM Simon Birmingham: Later today the Treasurer and I will release the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. This is an important opportunity for us to provide an update in relation to the Budget and economic outlook, which itself was, of course, only handed down…
Interview on Sky News, First Edition, with Peter Stefanovic
Topics: COVID-19 cases; Budget Update; 17//12/2020 07:32AM Peter Stefanovic: Well, joining me live now from Canberra is Simon Birmingham, Minister for Finance, Trade and Tourism. Minister, good morning, good to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning. So, just- we'll start there, there does appear to be a chink in the armor when…
Interview on Channel 9 Today Show with Sylvia Jeffreys
Topics: Barley WTO; Australia-China trade relations, Jobkeeper 17/12/2020 07:20AM/AM Sylvia Jeffreys: Well Australia is officially taking China to task over barley tariffs this morning, calling in global umpire, the World Trade Organization, as the trade war escalates. But Beijing's pointing the finger right back, accusing Australia of breaching its Free Trade Agreement by blocking…
Interview on Channel 7, Sunrise, with Monique Wright.
Topics: Barley WTO; Australia-China relationship, 17/12/2020 07:14AM Monique Wright: Well, Australia is officially taking China to the World Trade Organization over tariffs on barley as our trade dispute escalates. Earlier this year, Beijing imposed an 80 per cent import tariff on Australian barley, claiming that we were dumping it on the market by selling…
Press Conference, Parliament House
Topics: Australia to initiate WTO action for tariffs imposed on Australian barley by China 16/12/2020 12:18 PM Simon Birmingham: Late yesterday out of courtesy Australian officials in Canberra, Beijing and at the World Trade Organization in Geneva advised their Chinese counterparts of Australia's intention to request formal consultations with China in relation to the…
Interview on 2GB Afternoons with Joe Hildebrand
Topics: Australia-China trade relations; foreign interference; tourism industry; cruise industry 15/12/2020 12:15PM Joe Hildebrand: Another big thing in the news, of course, is the trade war with China appears to have escalated again. The Chinese-English language newspaper, The Global Times, which is basically just a propaganda sheet for the Chinese Communist Party, has reported…
Press Conference, Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices, Sydney
Featured News, Interview Transcripts 15 December, 2020
Topics: Australia-China trade relationship 12/15/2020 10:07AM Simon Birmingham: Thanks, thanks very much for coming along today. We've seen further deeply disturbing and concerning reports out of China in the last 24 hours in relation to Australian exports, and particularly as it relates to exports of Australian coal. Our government is very, very concerned…
Interview on ABC Radio Adelaide, Breakfast with Spence Denny
Topics: Australia-China trade relations; Travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand. 15/12/2020 08:47AM Spence Denny: But the other aspect in Simon Birmingham portfolio at the moment is what's going on with China. We know that there have been trade restrictions over the last couple of months involving our wine and other products. And now…
Interview on Radio National, Breakfast with Fran Kelly
Topics: Australian coal exports to China; Australia-China trading relationship. 15/12/20 06:18AM Fran Kelly: And the breaking news this morning is that Australian coal exports appear, to China that is, appear to have been formally blocked. This comes after months of import restrictions that have thrown the $14 billion export coal industry into turmoil. For…
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text:
David Demanuelle (* 27. September 1981) ist ein kroatischer Cyclocross- und Straßenradrennfahrer.

David Demanuelle wurde im Jahr 2000 kroatischer Meister im Cyclocross der U23-Klasse. 2006 belegte er bei der nationalen Straßenradmeisterschaft den zweiten Platz im Einzelzeitfahren und 2001 wurde er Dritter, wie auch 2004, 2005 und 2007. Bei der Cross-Meisterschaft wurde Demanuelle in der Eliteklasse von 2003 bis 2007 fünfmal hintereinander Erster. 2004 gewann er auf der Straße die Trofej UCKA und 2008 war er bei dem Memorial Zambelli erfolgreich. 2009 fuhr Demanuelle für das kroatische Continental Team Loborika.

Erfolge - Cyclocross
2000
  Kroatischer Meister (U23)

2003–2007
  5× Kroatischer Meister

Teams
 2009 Loborika

Weblinks

Radsportler (Kroatien)
Kroatischer Meister (Radsport)
Cyclocrossfahrer
Kroate
Jugoslawe
Geboren 1981
Mann


text:
Own manufacturing and development
Chemicals sale
Homepage /
Diagnostics manufactured in the company's laboratories are used for basic examinations in the fields of clinical biochemistry, hematology, microbiology and histochemistry. The best-selling include Giemsa-Romanowski, May-Grünwald and other reagents.
Pentanals are company products protected by the company's own trademark, and rank among its most important product ranges. In particular, these include volumetric solutions and pH buffers in many sales modification. In addition, we have developed following brand products: Penrost (preservation agent), Aquatitron (water content determination agent), NERO (neutralising solution) and many more.
Nitric acid
Penta has specialised in the manufacture of highly pure nitric acid since the year 2007. It offers it in various concentrations, qualities and volumes according to customers' requirements, and in packages from 1,000 ml to containers and cisterns. In addition, the company is one of the few which can also offer red fuming nitric acid in a concentration of 98 to 99.8%.
Collodia
The manufactured collodia meet USP and ÖAB requirements. For medical applications, 1,000 and 2,500 ml packages are available, while the menu also includes packages with larger volumes, to 200 l.
Ing. Petr Švec - PENTA s.r.o.
102 00 Prague 10
© 2023 Ing. Petr Švec - PENTA s.r.o. All rights reserved.


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Idaho Politics
Idaho Conservatives
An Investigation Into the Power of One Vote
The past few presidential elections have shown us that votes, in many ways, truly matter. I'm almost certain this same principle is all the more applicable for elections from the state level all the way down to local city elections in your own community.
For one reason or another, there is a collective feeling among many Republican voters in predominantly red states that sometimes their vote doesn't matter. Whether this is due to an overwhelming amount of support on the right or the left, there are many people who choose not to vote solely based on this feeling.
In the past presidential election our eyes were opened to the fact that there are voters out there who had never voted once in their adult life, but the political circumstances surrounding them inspired them to vote. Nobody knows for sure whether or not Trump's victory can be attributed to this sleeper group of voters, but they certainly helped.
The point is, every vote counts. They always matter and will always make a difference. Take, for example, a recent election in Virginia last month. Prior to the election, the state Republicans had maintained a majority in the State House by just one seat, that is, until the election last month.
Shelly Simonds won her election by a single vote – 11,608 to 11,607. Her win meant an even split in the State House, now at 50-50 – something that has not happened in the 400-year history for the House of Delegates.
If there is one thing to learn from this, it is that votes actually count. I imagine there are at least 2 Republican voters who chose not to vote that day, feeling that their vote really would not matter. In this case, as with all others, it really does.
Elections are not won by hoping your party shows up at the polls. It is done by making sure each individual you come on contact with will make it to the poll, then one by one, the votes will stack up in your favor.
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h = Height of the hollow column.
R = Centre to the outer radius of the hollow column.
r = Centre to the internal radius of the hollow column.
Also Read – How To Calculate Cutting Length Of bent Up Bars In Slab.
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Drawing Comparisons To James Blake, Alt-J, and Disclosure – Enjoy a Q&A with Your New Favorite Band – OYLS
By : Nicole DeRosa
Tag: All Access, All Access Music, All Access Music Group, allaccessmusicnicole, Artist Interview, band interview, Best of Wilson Picket, Black Messiah, D'Angelo, Deerhoof, Dr. Dre, Dungen, Dungeon, Eminem, Gandhi, GFM, Ground Floor Mgmt., Groundfloor Management, Groundfloor Mgmt, Hit The Road Jack, Jesus Etc., Judge Judy, Let It Bleed, Marshall Mathers, Marshall Mathers LP, Michael Jackson, music interview, musicians, OYLS, Ray Charles, Rolling Stones, Run The Jewels, Sly & The Family Stone, Sly And The Family Stone, The National, The Rolling Stones, There's Gonna Be A Riot, Trouble Will Find Me, Wilco, Wilson Picket
OYLS was conceived on an Amtrak train somewhere along the hour-and a half stretch between Davis and Berkeley California. David Kirshenbaum, the taller half of the OYLS duo, proudly recalls, "Michael had just suffered a break-up and so it was the perfect time to convince him to get back into music." Some tears, several glasses of scotch, and one all-nighter later, "Dots and Dashes" was born and what started as a therapeutic jam session, soon revealed itself to be the creation of an entirely new sound. OYLS seamlessly blends the writing ethic of rock, soul and motown with a rhythmic backbone that draws from a 21st century electronic landscape.
Drawing comparisons to James Blake, Alt-J, and Disclosure, OYLS finds itself at a new frontier of electronic music, and lends a melodic and lyrical vulnerability to a genre that is too often poetically terse. Read on as All Access Music writer, Nicole DeRosa catches up with David + Michael of OYLS below!
Hi Guys! How are you today? What's on the agenda today besides our interview?
M: We're good!–right now were sitting at my dining room table and Judge Judy is playing in the background. We're about to practice. And our 'band dog' Grace keeps lifting our arms with her nose because we're not giving her enough attention. So we'll probably take her for a walk after.
For those that are not familiar with OYLS and your music, how did you get your start? Who or what was the catalyst for you to want to live the life of a musical gypsy?
M: We've both been making music since we were kids, and met each other when we were in high school. I think I made David really uncomfortable at first.
D: It took me a really long time to understand when Michael is being serious. I couldn't tell when he was messing with me or not. He still might be. I think the real tipping point for me–that pushed me to go all in with OYLS– was that I found someone who was equally determined to make a career out of music and that I knew he would stick it out with me.
M: And we were really excited about what was coming out of our writing sessions. It didn't make sense because it didn't sound like anything either of us had created previously.
D: Yeah, there was a lot of excitement when we found ourselves creating music in a genre with so much uncharted territory.
What did you learn between your previous bands, collaborations and playing live, that you felt you wanted to infuse into your latest release?
M: I played in a funk cover band throughout college. We were called Jordan's Beard because our bassist was named Jordan and he had a really long beard that he died red. I think it taught me that people really want an excuse to dance. It became important to me that whatever I was going to make, regardless of how heavy the content, that there would be a relief in the beat.
D: My first experience playing music was in an orchestra and that really imprinted on me the importance of dynamics in music. Modern recorded music has a very high emphasis on compression and a feeling of 'loudness,' and in OYLS we definitely embrace that to a degree, given our genre, but I always try when writing as well as mixing to never let our modern approach completely overshadow the movement within the music.
Who have been your inspirations growing up (be it film, music, art, etc.) that also inspire you today?
M: My grandpa, Gandhi, and Sly and the Family Stone
D: Michael Jackson, forever and always.
Nowadays, everything is so instant…you press a button and it's yours ala Spotify, Souncloud, iTunes etc. What was the first album you saved up your hard earned money and bought for yourself?
M: It was a used 'Best of Wilson Picket' CD when I was 7. It was $6 and given my allowance of $1 per week, it took me six weeks to save up for. I'm going to go listen to it after we wrap this interview, in fact! 😉
D: Oh, it was definitely Eminem. My friends and I thought we were so cool if we could get an uncensored version of the Marshall Mathers LP. I mean, up until that point either my parents bought me or my friends lent me most of my CDs. But when it came to Eminem, my parents decided to be 'responsible' or whatever and my friends wouldn't lend people theirs, because then they wouldn't be really cool anymore. Turns out we were listening to a pretty great album, but I don't think it was really about that.
What was the first song you fell in love with and why?
M: "Hit The Road Jack" by Ray Charles. 'Why' is hard to answer– I was 4 and it's all I wanted to listen to. In hindsight, I must have been really drawn by Ray Charles' melodies, passion and that hook…
D: I'm sure I went through a million different songs that I can't think of, but the first song I distinctly remember being incredibly moved by was "Jesus Etc." by Wilco. They're hands down my favorite band to this day.
As far as songwriting goes, how do you capture inspiration as it comes to you?
M: It's definitely not consistent. Sometimes a feeling strikes and a song just pours out faster than we can track it and other times I'll spend months on a single lyric or melody until it feels just right.
D: Usually it's a strong emotion, either personal or a result of being moved by a situation, event etc. But even when I'm not feeling inspired, writing often needs to get done regardless. So basically, I'll start playing around with sounds or melodies and just keep my ears peeled for a second or two of it that I enjoy. It's easy to get excited about little bits of potential and then to build from there.
Who is in your current playlist? What artists or bands are in current rotation for you?
M: D'Angelo's Black Messiah, The National's Trouble Will Find Me, Rolling Stone's Let it Bleed, Sly & The Family Stone's Theres a Riot Goin' On.
D: I've been all over the place lately — I'm loving Run the Jewels 2, and I've been revisiting older albums by Deerhoof, and Dungen. And the new Dr. Dre. It's been a couple months now and I'm not really sure how to stop listening to it…
What's on tap next for you OYLS? What are you most excited about for this year?
M: Playing live a lot. Very excited to be writing and completing an EP. My latest obsession has been projection mapping and making a live lighting show that reflects our music.
D: Oh boy, a year. I'm not even sure what next month will look like. Like Mike said, preforming and writing are always a blast. And just the excitement that more and more people have been listening to and enjoying our music. But more than anything it's having no idea what else could be right around the corner that makes it pretty impossible to ever get bored.
To keep up to date with OYLS , visit them via their socials:
Website + Twitter + Soundcloud + Instagram: @OYLSband
Nicole DeRosa joined the All Access Music Group family in February 2012. She loves the infectious energy and enthusiasm of the music industry and she feels right at home having music compliment her every day. Nicole blends her experience and skills which she has culled from her time working in New York as a photo researcher and editor at Entertainment Weekly and Harpers Bazaar Magazine. After New York, Nicole moved to London for school and there she stood in line for hours on Oxford Street to hear Paul McCartney play an impromptu concert on a rooftop. Another notable experience while living in London was her first time ever calling into a radio station, she won an invite to a record release party with the Beastie Boys for their album 'Ill Communication'. "I love London as it has such a vibrant and diverse music scene and I couldn't help but go out every night to check out gig after gig. It was a wonderful time." Living near the notable Sherpards Bush Empire music venue one of her most favorite concerts to date was seeing Bjork. Nicole has also worked for Walt Disney World in Product Development and later went on to work at Disney's Feature Animation Archives in Florida. Nicole has a passion for travel and adventure and has always wanted to live in California so she packed up and moved four years ago to the "left coast" and has been loving it ever since.
THE DRAMA STATE Shares A New Song, Their Favorite Vans Warped Tour Memories, Biggest Musical Inspirations and More!
MADONNA'S Rebel Heart Tour Hits Los Angeles With A Bang!


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Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America. Over two dozen cities and towns claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day.
Regardless of the exact date or location of its origins, one thing is clear – Memorial Day was borne out of the Civil War and a desire to honor our dead. It was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11. "The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land," he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn't the anniversary of any particular battle.
On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.
The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war).
It is now observed in almost every state on the last Monday in May with Congressional passage of the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363). This helped ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays, though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19th in Texas; April 26th in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10th in South Carolina; and June 3rd (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.
"We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue."
James A. Garfield May 30, 1868 Arlington National Cemete
Brothers and Sisters at rest
we never forget
the gift you give
we still receive
how could you know
that your battle
must be won
may we, in your eyes
pass your test
and one day, with honor
join your ranks
Posted in Culture and Religion | No Comments »
The DNC is Splintering, Too
Well let's go from the sublime of gravitational waves to the ridiculous known as the presidential election of 2016 in the USA. Since Trump became the presumptive Republican candidate, the airwaves have been alive for and against Trump high-noted by the Washington Post proudly announcing that 20 . . . yes, 20 . . .reporters have been assigned to find out everything, hopefully everything evil, from the Post's point of view, about Trump. And they have already found out that Trump likes to dilly-dally with beautiful women, apparently something the Post finds reprehensible. Hell, I find it comforting that there are still some men, like Bill Clinton and a few others in the political limelight who also still do. So, the NYT, the WP, LA Times, etc are full of these articles and how the GOP is splintering. Therefore , I'd like to feature a story one will not find in the left wing media, a story that there is a lot of splintering on the other side of the aisle as well.
The American Thinker
Fury builds among Sanders supporters over stonewalling by Dem establishment
By Thomas Lifson
The biggest political story that the media wants to ignore is the bitter split in the Democratic Party, as Sanders supporters refuse to capitulate to Hillary Clinton's purported inevitability, while the party establishment steamrollers the Big Fix in Philadelphia. The ingredients for a repeat of the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago are being assembled, as the media pilot fish at the New York Times and Washington Post prefer to use their resources to deliver the shocking news that Donald Trump likes beautiful women.
Did you know that Hillary supporter Barney Frank "was booed and shouted at as a "sellout" who should "go back to Massachusetts" by Sanders supporters at the Maine State Democratic Convention on Saturday? Somehow, the mainstream media managed to overlook this sign of the divisive passions rending the Democratic Party as its establishment strong-arms Hillary Clinton. Along with the incredible story of the Nevada State Convention where DNC officials fled, violence erupted and John Law had to be called in, signs are that the party is falling apart.
At issue right now is fixing of the standing committees at the Philadelphia convention, especially the rules committee that will shape who is allowed to speak and what is allowed to happen. Daniel Strauss of Politico reports:
The most recent flare-up occurred last week, when Sanders publicly released a letter to Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accusing her of stacking the deck against him on the convention's standing committees. "[W]e are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention," wrote Sanders, several days after a tense phone conversation with the chairwoman.
According to a Sanders official with knowledge of the call, the senator demanded more representation on the committees but Wasserman Schultz would only assure him that he would have representation. A DNC spokesman declined to characterize the conversation and would only confirm that it took place.
Foolishly, the DNC is virtually freezing out the Sanders faction in the committees that will govern the convention.
Both the Hillary Clinton and Sanders campaigns had submitted names for consideration on the convention's standing committees, but in January when Wasserman Schultz handed down her final list of 75 nominations — all of whom were approved by the DNC's Executive Committee — nearly all of Sanders' choices had been disregarded.
Wasserman Schultz has demonstrated many times her detachment from reality and ability to stick with fantasy, and her current vision, that Sanders supporters will just fall in line and behave themselves on the floor of the convention and outside the venue on the streets is dangerously deluded.
But of course, she answers to Hillary, who is panicking over her inability to close the deal.
The GOP is supposed to be the party that is hopelessly divided. The MSM has told us so many times. But as the GOP begins to unite, the leadership of the Democrats is behaving like the aristocrats at Versailles as the Parisian mobs gathered in front of the Bastille.
The Philadelphia convention will be must-see TV. I expect Hillary to employ her customary level of finesse so we could be in for quite a spectacle
Posted in New Ideas, On His Own Writing, Other Topics, Politics | No Comments »
The Discovery of Gravitational Waves
This is a remarkable story, a story of genius upon genius, determination and "stick-to-it-ness" that has brought forth the most startling scientific breakthrough of this century and among the most important of any century in the past.
The life's work that proved Einstein right
By Eric Moskowitz Globe Staff May 14, 2016
Cambridge — Long before he designed the detector that proved Einstein right, Rai Weiss climbed out of the subway on his first day at MIT and ran smack into a suffocating stench.
He had applied to the school without visiting and thought suddenly that he had made a mistake, unprepared for the acrid byproducts of mayonnaise, chocolate, and soap manufacture that belched from the smokestacks of East Cambridge.
When he found a seat in a crowded auditorium, he heard an imposing figure command the freshmen to look left, then right: One out of every three would be gone by graduation.
"Holy sh–," thought Weiss, a streetwise New York City kid who had never taken calculus. "That's me!"
And he was right. He hung on for two years before flunking out, losing his way while pursuing a girl he met on a ferry.
Listening to the universe
What it means that Einstein was right about relativity
It was a failed experiment of sorts — and one Weiss can laugh about now, a venerated physicist who did much more than find his way back to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he still works six days a week as a professor emeritus at 83.
Weiss is the cheerfully cursing, relentlessly curious experimenter who dreamed up and helped will into fruition the massive antennae that captured the "chirp heard round the universe" — the first detection of gravitational waves rippling toward Earth from a cataclysm in a distant galaxy, two black holes that collided a billion light-years away.
That discovery, made secretly last fall and revealed in February, would have made a splash if it had simply been the first recording of gravitational waves, something Einstein initially conceived a century before.
But it also marked the first detection of black holes in pairs — orbiting each other before colliding to form a more massive black hole — a cataclysmic event more common than theorists ever dreamed.
For Weiss, it was the culmination of a half-century of work that began with a "thought experiment" he proposed during his one and only semester teaching general relativity. He was just groping for a tangible way to help his students understand what Einstein was talking about without getting lost in his elegant and exceptionally complicated mathematics.
What seemed at the time like a fanciful idea — build a device so sensitive it could detect faint, invisible ripples in space-time — became a professional obsession.
By the early 1970s, Weiss had drawn blueprints for detectors that would split and bounce laser beams back and forth between mirrors hanging freely inside long vacuum-tube arms, a way, he hoped, to record fleeting distortions caused by passing gravitational waves.
Back then, Weiss's MIT colleagues considered him a starry-eyed flake. But in persevering, he eventually won federal support for the construction of two L-shaped observatories known together as LIGO — one carved into a Louisiana loblolly forest, the other resting in the high desert of Eastern Washington — so finely tuned they did just what Weiss dreamed.
The laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatories measured a wave that briefly squeezed and stretched their 2.5-mile arms by just 1/1,000th of a proton's width.
"I love listening to Rai speak because it reminds me why doing science is so thrilling." said Avi Loeb, theoretical physicist
It was a rare discovery that crossed over into pop culture even as it wowed science. This month, Weiss and his team won both the $500,000 Gruber Cosmology Prize and the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Many predict a Nobel Prize will follow.
But the detection of the waves is merely the beginning. As the LIGO equipment becomes more sensitive, and as more observatories are built, scientists in the newly minted field of gravitational-wave astronomy expect to unlock more messages from the unseen universe.
Because he has opened a window — an ear — to space, some have likened Weiss to Galileo.
But even that comparison may not do justice, said Kip Thorne, a decorated theoretical physicist. Galileo refined the telescope and pointed it at the sky, but he did not invent it. Weiss is both LIGO's intellectual father and its chief mechanic, Thorne said.
"He really is, by a large margin, the most influential person this field has seen," said Thorne, a longtime collaborator with Weiss. "And will see."
Weiss does not just dismiss such talk; he all but covers his ears and hums.
"Complete crap," he said, quick to cite the 1,000 scientists and engineers in 15 countries who brought LIGO to life — a team he has insisted on sharing prize money with — and worried that Thorne, whom he admires, has gone "completely insane." But Thorne is hardly the only one who feels that way. Nergis Mavalvala, a MacArthur "genius grant" recipient who trained under Weiss and has devoted her career to LIGO, speaks of Weiss in the same breath as Einstein.
Though Weiss has devoted 100,000 hours to searching for gravitational waves, he also found time to advance the atomic clock and contribute to the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, the leftover light lingering from the Big Bang.
"He's worked on three different things, and every one of them has changed the way we understand physics and the universe," said Mavalvala, an MIT professor.
Though Weiss lights up about the way gravitational waves have sparked the public's imagination, he has no stomach — or time — for exultation.
"Don't tell me what Nergis said!" Weiss protested. "I don't want to know! It just gets worse and worse."
Unwanted sounds
LIGO's success hinges on tuning out "noise" — a falling tree, a seismic rumble — that could obscure the quiver of a gravitational wave.
As a boy, Weiss wanted to eliminate another kind of noise: the hiss and scratch of a stylus on the shellac records of the late 1940s.
By 12, he was repairing AC radios that blew out from being plugged accidentally into DC outlets, skipping school to read textbooks in the public library and scour the city for parts. By 16, he was building hi-fi systems from scratch so good that his parents' friends lined up to buy them.
All they heard was vivid sound. But Weiss heard something else, especially in the music's quiet passages, and remained obsessed with doing something about "that record scratching that drove me absolutely crazy."
It wasn't as if he came from a technical family. Born in Germany in the last heady days of the Weimar Republic, Rainer Weiss was the product of a New Year's Eve fling between an actress, Gertrude Loesner, and a young neurologist, Frederick Weiss — the rebellious communist son of one of Berlin's wealthiest Jewish families.
As the Nazis rose to power, the Weisses fled to Prague and eventually New York City, toting Rai and baby sister Sybille. For years, they bounced among shabby apartments, Weiss's mother supporting them with odd jobs until his father regained his footing, becoming a psychoanalyst.
Free to roam the city, Weiss became a teenage hi-fi pioneer. "I could've made a real killing, because I was there at the beginning," he said. "But I was never a businessman."
Obsessed with that hiss, he tried to invent a smart circuit with varying bandwidth, to capture the full range of fast, loud sounds while narrowing whenever a record grew slow and quiet. He didn't quite succeed. "It made me madder than hell," Weiss said. Though his grades were spotty, a teacher who saw his promise and technical ingenuity guided him to MIT.
Intending to major in electrical engineering, Weiss was deterred by a curriculum geared more to heavy-equipment design than acoustics. He switched to physics — simply, he says, because it had fewer requirements.
And then he met a girl on the ferry during a brief trip to Nantucket, a piano student at Northwestern. He decamped for Chicago, taking up folk dancing and piano in a Hail Mary courtship, returning in time for exams.
"I flunked the girl. I flunked out," Weiss said. "Every way possible, I flunked."
Mechanical prowess
Unenrolled and casting about, Weiss wandered one day through MIT's "Plywood Palace," a ramshackle complex erected a decade earlier as temporary World War II laboratory space.
Overhearing an argument, Weiss peered through the grill on a lab door and saw what looked like a torpedo. One guy was seated on top, manipulating knobs; another guy barked frustrated instructions as he watched a light flicker on a galvanometer across the room.
Weiss offered to help these experimental physicists, using his electronics know-how to wire the controls and make their life easier. Soon, he had a full-time job, joining a salty-tongued crew of technicians who had previously fixed gunsights and repaired radar in the wartime Pacific. He loved it.
Weiss's evident intellectual curiosity caught the attention of Jerrold Zacharias, the influential professor who ran the lab and was trying to develop an atomic clock, convinced that tracking the regular oscillations inside atoms could provide more precise measurements of time.
He cleared a path for Weiss to return to MIT and to stay on as his grad student. "Given my lousy record, it was sort of amazing," Weiss said.
Zacharias thrilled Weiss with talk of using the clock to test a wild slice of general relativity, that time would appear to speed up or slow down in varying forces of gravity. He wanted to put one clock atop a mountain and another in a valley to test if they ran at different speeds.
They built a small version — now in the Smithsonian — that would become the world's first commercial atomic clock. Zacharias left the lab to lead a national effort to reform science education, but Weiss kept toiling, hoping to perfect the even bigger, more precise clock needed for the mountaintop experiment.
Though he never quite got there, he helped advance the design of the most precise atomic clocks in the world.
Weiss was in no hurry to finish his doctorate until he married, beginning a family with Rebecca, a Radcliffe student. After stints at Tufts and Princeton, he returned to MIT as an assistant professor in 1964.
Soon after, the department head asked Weiss to teach relativity — just once, until they hired a theorist who knew it better.
But that was long enough for Weiss to engage the students with his hypothetical notion of how to detect gravitational waves. At the time, some still doubted whether they existed, let alone could be measured. Einstein himself had wavered about the former and died doubting the latter.
Others were just starting to try. A Maryland physicist named Joseph Weber had made a splash by claiming he had designed sensor-laden aluminum bars that rang whenever gravitational waves passed. When other scientists tried to replicate that experiment, though, they heard nothing.
It spawned a fierce dispute that tarnished the whole field; a pioneer, Weber quickly became a pariah. But Weiss was fascinated. Instead of following the few who continued testing Weber's bars, Weiss wondered if he could design a device sensitive enough to do it by tracking the movement of laser light between floating objects.
Weiss proposed taking an existing device called an interferometer, which splits and times the travel of a light beam, and adding critical innovations — lasers, miles-long vacuum arms, and freely hanging mirrors.
The idea was that the mirrors would float as if in space, sensitive enough to be jiggled by a gravitational wave. Beams would traverse the long tubes many times, bouncing back and forth between the mirrors, simulating a beam long enough to make a minuscule change detectable.
In a 1972 article published in an MIT bulletin, he laid out the basic design for a laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (the future "LIGO"), while identifying noise sources that would obscure the signal and ways to suppress them.
The project electrified him. But at MIT, where prominent faculty did not believe in gravitational waves or black holes, Weiss garnered mostly skepticism. He started building a prototype about a yard and a half long, but he had to pursue it on the side.
Still, he wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation in 1974 for a grant to keep building his tiny prototype, his laser-interferometer dream. He got rejected.
Then the Germans called. The uproar that had tainted the gravitational-wave search hadn't extended across the Atlantic. Some experimenters at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics had seen a copy of Weiss's failed NSF proposal and were intrigued.
They asked if they could build a prototype. Without hesitation, thrilled that they might advance the field, Weiss encouraged them. Jolted by the German interest, he again appealed to the NSF for money — around $50,000 — and this time succeeded.
Theoretical dilemma
Meanwhile, NASA in 1975 asked Weiss to run a Washington committee examining what the agency might do to advance cosmology and gravitation, and he invited a rising talent named Kip Thorne to testify. But Thorne, who had become a full Caltech professor at 30, failed to book a room for his visit.
Forced to bunk together, the physicists stayed up until dawn. Though Thorne was a theorist, he had Caltech's backing to start a lab on the cutting edge of gravitation research. He had also co-written an influential textbook that included a line dismissing the tracking of split light beams as a dead end for finding gravitational waves.
In the hotel, Weiss began scribbling on scrap paper. "I explained to him that night where they had it wrong," he said.
Indeed, the conversation proved "quite momentous," as Thorne put it. He returned to Pasadena eager to build a prototype, persuading Caltech to hire experimenters and throw its weight behind the project. Weiss was not in position to move West, but suggested a Scottish experimenter named Ron Drever with a reputation for brilliance.
While the Germans and Caltech advanced test models large enough to fill a hall, Weiss retreated to MIT and dreamed of building "the big one" — or two, rather.
He knew multiple observatories were needed to determine whether signals were caused by a gravitational wave rippling past Earth and not, say, a truck backfiring.
Knowing a project of that magnitude would require collaboration, Weiss partnered with Thorne and Drever. With a second NSF grant, he also developed a blueprint and cost estimates for full-scale construction.
In 1986, the NSF urged them to go for it and to hire a director who could help them as they moved from tabletop experiment to "Big Science."
But over the next several years, the project would nearly derail amid a funding battle with other researchers. Every observatory in history had used telescopes that used the electromagnetic spectrum to see the universe. LIGO was completely different, a detector made to hear invisible waves. Astronomers feared it was a pipe dream that might siphon funding from a limited supply.
"Feuding Scientists: 'Leggo my LIGO!' " one newspaper headline put it.
Two directors, Rochus Vogt and then Barry Barish, helped Weiss and Thorne keep pressing the case. Lawmakers eventually approved the money sought by NSF and LIGO, providing $1 billion for design, construction, and operations over 20 years.
At the same time, a culture change at MIT — new administrators, younger professors — elevated Weiss and his project. He was able to work on it full-time, while helping graduate students earn their doctorates from this experiment alone.
Everything about LIGO pushed existing limits. Some particle accelerators had longer vacuum tubes, but those were skinny as a straw.
LIGO's four vacuum arms, stretching 10 combined miles, are wide enough for a child to walk through — yet achieve an absence of atmosphere approaching interstellar space. Inside, the laser beams set a new standard for stability; the mirrors, the most flawless made, are suspended by silica fibers less than a millimeter wide.
The first-generation LIGO began searching for real in 2002, while work started in 2008 on "Advanced LIGO," a project to upgrade the components and achieve greater sensitivity.
Amid a sprawling collaboration, Weiss earned a reputation for trouble-shooting down to the smallest detail; at one point he ventured through dank tunnels to pinpoint a vacuum leak — caused by a mouse family whose urine had broken down molecules in the steel.
Finally, last summer, Advanced LIGO neared the sensitivity needed to begin its first official run. They were still in test mode on Sept. 14, when a brief chirp played through speakers in the control room of the Louisiana observatory at 2:50 a.m., a sound like a hand abruptly brushing up the left half of a piano. Seven milliseconds later, the same thing happened in Washington.
The constant tiny movements of LIGO's mirrors feed data to continuous graphs. If and when a wave hit, they expected the differences on the graph to be so minute they could only be distinguished from noise by a computer. But this one was so big it jumped off the screen, with the same waveform at both sites.
Weiss was in Maine, vacationing with family. As he does daily, he rose early to check LIGO's overnight logs. "Holy mackerel!" Weiss shouted. His wife and son came running, thinking something was wrong. So did Weiss. The signal was so strong. It must be a mistake, a hack.
The LIGO collaborators spent five months parsing the findings and preparing a paper, and by then there was no doubt: The signal represented the final movements of two black holes that combined were about 65 times as massive as our sun.
But when they slammed together, they formed a single black hole about 62 times as massive — with the balance radiating out as gravitational waves, ripples through the universe that took 1 billion years to reach Earth.
At a press conference that streamed live around the globe, an elegant animation demonstrated the collision of the black holes and the way LIGO found them.
When it was Weiss's turn, he stepped forward as if from central casting, a professor in tortoise-shell glasses and tweed, producing from his pocket a simple section of mesh. He stretched and squeezed it, explaining how the ripple moved through space-time — his arms waving with excitement, an index finger in the air.
In the weeks ahead, he couldn't believe how the finding grabbed people — even referenced in a New Yorker cartoon. Some might have relished a victory tour, but Weiss longed to disappear back into LIGO, whose components were still not as sensitive as he hoped.
"I mean, we were lucky!" Weiss admitted in April at an invitation-only workshop for 75 physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists around the launch of a Black Hole Initiative at Harvard. Though LIGO was not quite ready to detect the less powerful waves that theorists had predicted, the wave from the black-hole collision was so strong it couldn't be missed. "That's the big discovery," Weiss said, that black holes exist, they exist in pairs, "and there seem to be about one of them a month that we can detect."
."Did you say one a month?" said Avi Loeb, the theoretical physicist behind the Harvard initiative, as others repeated it.
"Yes," Weiss said.
"Rai!" said Vicky Kalogera, a Northwestern professor who is part of the LIGO collaboration, which has not yet published that particular finding. "You're being recorded!"
"That's all right," Weiss said. Laughter erupted.
Afterward, Loeb called Weiss's candor a sign of "his young, free-spirited approach to science." He said too few experimenters aim big, because long-shot projects are at odds with the publishing pressure of the job market.
"I love listening to Rai speak because it reminds me why doing science is so thrilling," he added. "Forty years ago, mainstream astronomers were laughing at Rai's hope to measure gravitational waves. His story illustrates how taking the path not taken can pay great dividends."
Indeed, as Weiss made his way toward the exit, a Harvard theorist named Cumrun Vafa asked Weiss if he thought LIGO's innovations could have benefits for other projects, like the Large Hadron Collider.
Weiss wasn't sure. But with a child's gusto, he turned to a blackboard nearby. In an instant, he was filling the surface with calculations, a small crowd gathering around him.
A voice in back called out, "Stephen is coming" — Stephen Hawking, surrounded by cameras — and the room parted as the most celebrated figure in world physics rolled to the front. Weiss hardly seemed to notice, engrossed as ever in finding an answer.
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at eric.moskowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeMoskowitz.
Posted in New Ideas, Other Topics, Science | 1 Comment »
The Congressional Republicans are a Disgrace!
Monday, May 2nd, 2016
Do you see why Donald Trump has attracted the vast nmbers of Republican Voters? The Congressional Republicans are a Disgrace!
The Daily Signal
Morning Bell
How Republicans Lost Control of the Spending Fight in Congress
Rob Bluey / May 01, 2016
Republicans arrived in Washington this year promising a return to "regular order" in Congress. It was a hallmark of Paul Ryan's quest to be House speaker and Mitch McConnell's way of showing that the Senate could get things done.
Gone were the days of omnibus spending bills and continuing resolutions—or the dreaded combination of the two, known as a CRomnibus. In their place would be a budget and 12 spending bills.
But four months into 2016, House Republicans have yet to approve a budget (missing the April 15 deadline) and their Senate counterparts are unable to pass even the least controversial spending bill.
Their earlier promises have given way to the prospect of 2016 being a repeat of the status quo that Americans are rejecting in record numbers this election year. And to make matters worse for conservatives, Republicans are proposing to spend more money and avoiding substantive policy fights.
Not surprisingly, conservatives blame Republican leadership in the House and Senate for losing control of the government spending fight—viewing concessions to President Barack Obama as an abandonment of GOP campaign promises.
Last year, Republicans added the Senate to their control but ended up cutting a deal with Obama to bust the budget caps agreed to in 2011. Now, as Obama's term draws to a close, GOP leadership would prefer to stick with the higher spending number.
Under the leadership of Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the House missed the April 15 deadline to approve a budget. That number—$1.07 trillion—is $30 billion higher than what conservatives want. Republicans don't have the votes to pass that $1.07 trillion budget in the House, although they are toying with the idea of a so-called "sidecar" that would make cuts in spending. Leadership sent signals Friday that such a plan might win approval when lawmakers return after a weeklong recess. There's no guarantee it would ever be enacted, however, giving conservatives pause.
While the House is facing a standstill over its budget, the Senate is charging ahead with a series of appropriations bills that adopt the higher level of spending.
The most recent example comes in the form of the Senate's energy and water spending bill. It's the first of 12 spending measures on the docket. The appropriations bill spends $355 million more than what was enacted last year and comes in $261 million higher than Obama's budget request.
GOP leadership justified the higher spending by saying it conforms to the budget deal that then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Obama struck last fall before Boehner left office. Conservatives stridently opposed the measure in October and remain against it today.
In his final move as House speaker, John Boehner cut a deal with President Barack Obama to increase government spending.
As if the higher spending numbers weren't enough to infuriate conservatives, they also were told their policy riders wouldn't be included in the underlying bill or considered in committee. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the appropriations subcommittee overseeing the energy and water measure, made clear in March that "controversial riders will not be added."
Republicans who wanted to amend the spending bill would need to do it on the Senate floor—a harder feat to accomplish. And that's exactly how it played out last week. After adopting eight amendments by voice vote last week, the Senate took roll call votes on nine others.
Four GOP amendments were rejected while five Democratic amendments won approval—by a wide margin in some cases. Three Democratic amendments had 70 or more votes.
In one case, Democrats outmaneuvered their GOP colleagues on a measure to block funding for the Environmental Protection Agency's controversial Waters of the United States rule. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., demanded a 60-vote threshold because he said it wasn't germane to the bill. Republican leadership acquiesced and the amendment failed, even though it had the support of 54 senators, including four Democrats.
"The strategy is designed to let moderate Republicans get on record voting for nominally good conservative policy while still allowing bad liberal policy to move forward," an aide to a conservative senator explained to The Daily Signal.
As the energy and water spending bill moved closer to final passage last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., announced he would introduce an amendment related to the Iran nuclear deal. The move infuriated Democrats, prompting them to filibuster the spending measure.
Now, the GOP is left wondering if Senate Democrats were ever going to make a good-faith effort to pass appropriations bills or if they just wanted to use the process to load them up with liberal policy and more spending. Ultimately, that might work in Democrats' favor if lawmakers resort to an omnibus spending bill—a scenario that appears more likely.
With the Senate gone for a weeklong recess, it's unclear if the energy and water appropriations bill—or any that follow—will win the bipartisan approval that Senate Majority Leader McConnell so craves.
Conservatives, meanwhile, are left wondering if that means they'll once again be presented with a massive bill that spends more money, lacks conservative policy riders, and funds government programs that have proven to be ineffective.
They'll find out leadership's next move in about a week. Until then, it's recess on Capitol Hill.
Posted in New Ideas, Politics | 4 Comments »


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Q: UINavigationBar right button selection I would like to know how to stop the right bar button from being selectable until the user has for-filled obligations.
I currently set up my right barbutton like this
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And although it looks non selectable because I have set setstyle as disabled it is still selectable.

A: [self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem setEnabled:NO]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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ExxonMobil's oil reserves have been barely marked down at all, despite the two-year downturn. Is the SEC right to be suspicious or is Exxon truly an outlier?
The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) on two charges. First, on hiding evidence of climate change -- evidence that would have changed both shareholder value and industry outlook. Second, on possibly incorrectly reporting written-down values of their oil.
In this week's episode of Industry Focus: Energy, Taylor Muckerman and Sean O'Reilly explain the context around the charges, what Exxon has to say in their defense, and how the findings might affect the company and shareholders.
Also, the hosts take a look at what will probably come of the OPEC meeting next week, why Smart Sand has chosen to IPO during a downturn in the energy industry, and why BP is on their radar this week.
Sean O'Reilly: Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market every day. Today is Thursday, September 22nd, 2016, so we're talking about energy, materials, and industrials. I'm joined in studio by The Motley Fool's very own Taylor Muckerman. I am Sean O'Reilly. Taylor, happy autumnal equinox!
Taylor Muckerman: Is that what it is today?
Muckerman: What does that mean?
O'Reilly: It means that the days are starting to get shorter.
Muckerman: But that's been happening, right? It's just the first official day that it's shorter.
Muckerman: We don't have time to get into it.
O'Reilly: No, we're not going to do that. But what we do need to talk about is ExxonMobil.
Muckerman: Yeah, making our lives shorter by denying climate change.
O'Reilly: How did that conclude? It was merged, obviously, but... ?
Muckerman: ... it reached the statute of limitations with no decision. So, it just expired.
Muckerman: Now, though, if you look at Exxon and think, "Oh, $200 billion in writedowns, maybe it's the smaller players," no. If you combine Shell, Chevron, BP (NYSE:BP), and Total, they've written off $50 billion worth of assets since the downturn started in November of 2014.
Muckerman: It's impactful on their business, so that's what that original investigation is for -- not necessarily financially, but whether or not they're being upfront with their shareholders. Exxon, traditionally, produces outlooks for the industry that go out 20, 30 years.
O'Reilly: Right. So, moving on, the energy sector is getting an IPO! What's going on?
Muckerman: Yeah! It's not a bankruptcy, it's a birth!
Muckerman: Yeah, you're looking at millions of tons of sand used on an annual basis, millions of pounds used per well. EOG said they're using 700% more sand per well than they were in 2010.
Muckerman: 700%. And that's the largest independent U.S. producer. That's moving the needle. This isn't some tiny little regional mom and pop shop. This is the largest U.S. independent oil and gas producer, 700% in six years.
O'Reilly: So, "Smart Sand operates," I'm just reading from the article you sent me, "two white sand processing sites in Wisconsin with a combined 344 million tons of proven recoverable" -- there's that word again.
O'Reilly: Right. 344 million tons of recoverable sand reserves!
Muckerman: You have a couple other players: U.S. Silica, Hi-Crush Partners, those might be two of the biggest in the industry. And then, CARBO Ceramics is a proppant producer, but they make their own silica proppants, so they're not necessarily a sand miner. But they were the industry darling during the peak of this fracking, because you could create custom pellets, basically, to optimize the well. But when you look at pure sand plays, you're looking at U.S. Silica, Hi-Crush Partners, and possibly Smart Sand, as they IPO fairly soon.
O'Reilly: But on the other hand, more sand is being used per well, so that something, too. So, The Motley Fool is more about long-term investing, fundamentals, looking for a good company. We don't really pay attention to macro stuff. But I think we have to talk about OPEC a little bit here.
O'Reilly: I know you don't want to, sorry.
O'Reilly: They kind of set off this whole oil downturn in 2014.
Muckerman: They did, like, the day before Thanksgiving.
Muckerman: Maybe on Thanksgiving. I'd just gotten done hiking in Texas with zero cell reception. I turn on my phone, I'm in the car with the buddies I went hiking with, and I look at the market, and I'm like, "Oh my dear god, oil is down 40%. What is going on?"
O'Reilly: And that was basically them being like, "No, we're not going to support oil prices, sorry."
Muckerman: Yeah, it was basically a race to the top in terms of who can produce the most, rather than who can save prices.
O'Reilly: Right, and then that set off Saudi Arabia being like, "We want to go for market share now... " They meet, what, once or twice a year?
O'Reilly: Money, just say it.
Muckerman: Yeah, money, to the industry. But, this is a scheduled meeting next week in Algeria.
O'Reilly: Got it. So, that's been scheduled. We obviously don't know what will happen, but there's hopes that they're going to put at least a production cap or something.
Muckerman: Yeah, but then again, that's clever phrasing, and they leave a lot of the facts out, especially the facts that they're producing record highs.
O'Reilly: They're all producing at record highs, yeah.
O'Reilly: Iran is already in the 3.5 million range, I think.
Muckerman: Iran is there. Venezuela is looking to dump $3.5 billion into their Orinoco project. Schlumberger just signed on to help them drill 80 wells. Even though Schlumberger has been letting people go in the country and removing itself from Venezuela, they just, I think this was either today or yesterday, they signed to be the driller of 80 wells. And then there's maybe 400 other wells they're trying to drill. But, those are usually private drillers that are doing that. But the reports say they're going to use Halliburton and Baker Hughes' equipment.
Muckerman: All three companies are going to be involved in some way, but Schlumberger will actually be an operator. So, those are four countries right there that are trying to ramp up production. And we expect a production cap.
O'Reilly: That's the thing with cartels, you have an incentive to cheat, too. So, really quick before we head out, I wanted to talk about, you're an analyst for one of our services, doing very well up there in Canada, I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about a stock that is interesting right now.
Muckerman: Yeah, I think this is something that we'll continue, right? Maybe at the end of every show, we'll highlight one stock?
O'Reilly: That is it for us, folks. We'd like to give a special shoutout, as always, to our producer, Austin Morgan. Hi, Austin!
O'Reilly: He's behind the glass, working his video and audio magic. If you're a loyal listener and have questions or comments, we would love to hear from you. Just email us at industryfocus@fool.com. Once again, that's industryfocus@fool.com. As always, people on this program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against those stocks, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear on this program. For Taylor Muckerman, I am Sean O'Reilly. Thanks for listening and Fool on!