text:
A Public Letter To New Chinese Immigrants
Frank H. Wu, Contributor
Author, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White
03/22/2017 12:59 am ET Updated Mar 22, 2017
I have learned a profound lesson. I will never forget it.
I recently wrote a blog here about the Asian American movement and newer Chinese immigrants. It went "viral." I had hoped to promote cooperation. I urged an audience of progressive activists to reach out and respect their cousins who have arrived more recently and might not agree with all of their advocacy.
However, good intentions are not enough; consequences matter. I was insensitive to how the words would be received, including in translation and repetition. Many people interpreted my message as its opposite. They understood me as saying I, an American proud to be of Chinese heritage, felt superior to Chinese who have come to these shores in the past generation.
An apology that implies the offended party was to blame is hardly worthwhile. I do not begrudge my friends who were hurt. I see how they inferred tone. "They" noticed the framing of "us" versus "them." The shared aspiration is for "them" and "us" to be as one.
To make amends, it is worth repeating: Bridge building is crucial. That means across the Pacific Ocean, as well as with whites and blacks. Yet it also encompasses the vast Chinese diaspora. There are generational divides that can be united through effort, and only through effort.
In addressing the long-time civil rights champions, whom I admire, about the community for whom they would fight, among whom I count myself, I made two points.
First, as a matter of principle, we must strive to be inclusive. This is a pure concept. We cannot say we are fighting for someone if in fact we are fighting with them. It would be hypocritical.
Second, if that were not persuasive on its own, the demographic trends matter. We cannot condescend to people who are like us but for a few years difference in residence here. All of us, "we" and "they," must be welcoming. That is not simply for strategy. But for those to whom I was speaking, unwilling to accept the first point, they ought to be won over by the second point.
It might be tempting to suggest that issues of race, culture, and identity are fraught, contentious, and subject to misreading. That is all the more so played out among strangers through social media. But I realize that I should have been more clear. I am entrusted with a leadership role. I am both honored and humbled that others believe I can represent them, including to those who already have stereotypes in their head that are less than positive. That means I have to fulfill a responsibility.
Please allow me to conclude personally. So many who had contacted me have responded with the intensity we usually reserve for intimates. I embrace those who have come from China to America. My parents were once among them. I would not be who I am but for their sacrifices. They believed in a dream that continues to beckon the world over. Indeed, my father helped me appreciate the problem I caused. We — specifically I — can do better.
I applaud those who would argue with me for their assertiveness. If only we all stood up and spoke out as they do.
Addendum. Speaking for myself subjects others to risks. Needless to say, my observations are mine, and mine alone. None of those great institutions with which I am privileged to be affiliated should be impugned by any of this, ranging from University of California Hastings College of the Law to Committee of 100 to the United States Department of Education.
United States International News Racism Overseas Chinese Chinese Emigration


text:
Ladysmith Tourism Guide
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Raven Point Inn viewed from the marina (Cole Schisler photo)
Page Point Inn and Marina will be revamped and renamed under new ownership
Under the new name Raven Point Inn and Marina, the beloved property will reopen to the public
Cole Schisler
Across the water from Ladysmith is a tranquil marina and inn. At one point in time, it was known as the Mañana Lodge, more recently Page Point, and now under new ownership, it has become Raven Point Inn and Marina.
Daniel Maloney, development manager and architect for Raven Point, has been living in Ladysmith full time for the past year. He has been active in engaging with the community in the design and planning of updating the property and marina.
"We've been cleaning up the place, fixing up the inn. We've revamped the inn completely, we've revamped the old wing, and we're also going to be doing some upgrades on the marina to get it up to the point where it's fully functional and able to service the bigger boats," Maloney said.
In 2020, Raven Point will apply for rezoning of the property to build 16 high-end oceanfront condos. Maloney plans to build the condos with cutting edge technology that would reduce emissions and limit utility bills.
The Inn itself will have six private rooms. There is also a section called the old wing, which is a larger room with a private kitchen for guests that want to be more private and self sufficient. In the future, Maloney said they may build small float houses so guests can stay down on the water.
The final stage of the plan is in 2021 when the marina will be fully upgraded. Maloney plans to expand the marina to accommodate super yachts that come to Ladysmith from Victoria, Vancouver, and Seattle. Some came to the marina in 2019, but Raven Point did not have the capacity. Maloney hopes with the expanded capacity that the marina could also become a Harbour Air stop.
"The plan — at the end of the day — is to ensure that we provide not only a lifestyle through the luxury Condo Units but also a warm and welcome experience for the local community to enjoy through the restaurant, Inn and most of all the marina," Maloney said.
Through conservations with the community, Maloney understands the history of the property, and how important it has been to people in the surrounding area.
"There's all this historical background that we want to use as a platform to build the new, but still keeping part of that history. That's why we're not doing too much to the inn, we're going to enhance the inn on the outside, enhance the restaurant, because the buildings are old, and they need a little bit of a face lift," Maloney said.
Although the property is surrounded by water, accessing clean drinking water has been a challenge for the property throughout its history. Maloney took an innovative approach, and implemented designs for a water treatment plant to supply the property with adequate water drawn from the ocean and a sewer treatment plant with a fully operational pump out station to service the property and the marina. The plant sources seawater from the strait, and desalinates the water so it can be used to meet every water demand of the inn and marina.
Both plants were approved by the Vancouver Island Health Authority in 2011. Upgrades will be required for the re-instatement of the permits. The system will provide the property with sufficient water pumped from the ocean. There will be an onsite mechanical engineer to oversee the system and ensure it functions smoothly.
Maloney said he plans to submit applications to the Cowichan Valley Regional District before the end of the year. He hopes to have all approvals in place sometime early in 2020 and reopen Raven Point for the public.
"When we get to the point where we achieve this, I think we'll really have reached our goals by providing services to extend peoples experience and lifestyle both on land and in the marina. We've spoken to quite a few of the community members around us, and everybody's pretty excited," Maloney said. "This little place is going forward, and it's going to be developed for the better and allowing the community to experience memorial moments from the past and the future."
Experts warn against picking Vancouver Island's magic mushrooms species
Police officer in Victoria used lights and siren to get kids to school: report
'Snowmaggedon 2020' has passed, but 20-30 milimetres of rain expected Friday
Residents should brace for rain and clear drains to prevent localized flooding
What happens in the Cowichan Valley when an earthquake strikes
When an earthquake does happen, will the Cowichan Valley be ready for it?
Exploring life, the afterlife, and near death experiences with Dr. Lynn Echevarria
Echevarria will deliver a talk to the LRCA Seniors Centre Tuesday, January 21 at 1:30 pm
Winter storm warning now in effect for Island's east coast
Environment Canada issues new weather warning late Wednesday afternoon
Town of Ladysmith snow removal crews prepared to respond to overnight snowfall
10 to 15 centimetres of snow are expected for Ladysmith overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The newly appointed people operations manager of a fast growing scale-up (120 people today) called me. She had just started, and if I could give some advice. We drank a coffee in Amsterdam. Below a short summary of my tips.
Managers in the organisation are fed up with all the people work. Recruitment, selection, contracting, onboarding, dealing with issues etc. becomes too much work.
It is decided to hire an HR manager (people operations manager, chief happiness officer, what have you), with the hope that she or he will quickly deal with all the issues.
It is not so easy to find a top HR professional for such a small organisation, also because there is most of the time not a lot of money to be payed. Luckily someone knows someone who likes to work with people, and the decision is made to give it a try.
The newly appointed jack of all trades is quickly flooded with work. Recruitment requires a lot of attention, and soon she is the go-to person for all things slightly people related. Help!!
The HR manager has no time to work on structural scalable solutions. Soon she asks for more people in her team. The first grumbling can be heard. "We thought with HR things would be better, but we hardly see this. Maybe it is better to do some things ourselves".
The quality of the people hired drops. Staff turnover increases, and more vacancies need to be filled. A negative vicious circle.
My choice would be to outsource HR. Find a partner who can act as your HR department, and who can offer you tailored services at a level far beyond what small organisations can afford. A partner who can find specialists when required, and who knows what organisations comparable to you are doing. A partner who knows about cool HR Tech solutions that work.
The best investment you can do, is making sure you have a very solid and rigid selection process. Lowering the selection threshold is a big risk, especially in fast growing companies. Hiring decisions should not be decentralised, but should be taken at the top. Selection should include personality and capability tests, not just a couple of interviews. There are attractive gamified tests on the market, with high validity (do not use MBTI or tests where the reports contain any reference to primary colours). Interviews should be highly structured.
Many people chose to work for you, because they want to learn and develop. Not many people are suitable coaches, and the interests of the organisation are not necessarily aligned with those of the employees. Employees will be looking for guidance, and when there is an HR professional available, they will turn to you. Coaching 120 people is a lot of work, and probably you are not very good at this. It will take your eye of your main focus: building a scalable people operations organisation. There are many good coaches available, today there are even chatbot coaches. Make a selection, or choose an online coaching platform, and make this available for all your staff. Make clear, the coaches are personal coaches for them, and that the coaches will not communicate in any way to the organisation. Use of a coach is not mandatory, but you can communicate that you expect people to check in 2-4 times per year.
Design a simple process to measure employee engagement frequently. There are many good apps available, and if you use Slack, there are several plugins you can use (read Trends in employee mood measurement). Measure how your candidates and employees experience the different parts of their journey. Simple short surveys, that help you to get feedback on where to focus the improvement efforts. You can relate the engagement data to other people and business data (turnover, supervisors, productivity etc). Think like marketing, not like HR.
Time was up, more advice to be given, but these four points might be a good start.


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text:
require "omnibus/util"

module Omnibus
  class GitRepository
    include Util

    def initialize(path = "./")
      @repo_path = path
    end

    def authors(start_ref, end_ref)
      formatted_log_between(start_ref, end_ref, "%aN").lines.map(&:chomp).uniq
    end

    def commit_messages(start_ref, end_ref)
      formatted_log_between(start_ref, end_ref, "%B").lines.to_a
    end

    def revision
      git("rev-parse HEAD").strip
    end

    def latest_tag
      git("describe --abbrev=0").chomp
    end

    def file_at_revision(path, revision)
      git("show #{revision}:#{path}")
    end

    private

    attr_reader :repo_path

    def formatted_log_between(start_ref, end_ref, format)
      git("log #{start_ref}..#{end_ref} --pretty=\"format:#{format}\"")
    end

    def git(cmd)
      shellout!("git #{cmd}", :cwd => repo_path).stdout
    end
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


When Shehla Rashid, a social activist and Jawaharlal Nehru University graduate student, started a Twitter thread about why she was feeling suicidal, it started a conversation not about depression, or stress, but about a condition no one knows much about: premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD.
It set off a tidal wave of responses — women either confessing that they were undergoing a similarly devastating experience, or expressing that they had never heard of PMDD at all.
The National Center for Biotechnology describes premenstrual dysphoric disorder as a severe form of premenstrual syndrome. Like PMS, PMDD follows a predictable, cyclic pattern. Symptoms begin with ovulation and end shortly after menstruation begins, making it difficult for women to identify where regular PMS ends and the more extreme PMDD begins.
Since these feelings would come and go with her periods, it took her a long time to realize that it was not just PMS. "When I told my gynecologist about it, she immediately diagnosed it as PMDD," Shah said.
PMS symptoms typically include tenderness of the breasts, abdominal pain along with headaches, back pain and fatigue. They may also feel generally down or irritable, and have lower self-esteem in the days leading up to their period. Some might also feel like they are losing control over their body and emotions.
In extreme cases, when it is so severe that she complains of depression or anxiety, it can be termed as PMDD. Doctors say for a diagnosis to be made, the symptoms must cause significant distress or impair work or interpersonal relationships, be present across several menstrual cycles, appear in the week before the onset of a menstrual period, and diminish and disappear shortly after the onset of the period.
A 2017 study has revealed that of the 20% of women suffering from PMS in India, 8% show signs of PMDD, indicating that a large chunk of the country's female population struggles with physical and mental health regularly.
Yet the condition is shrouded in misperceptions that stem from a bigger fact: "Researchers do not know the exact cause of PMDD. Most think it is an abnormal reaction to hormonal changes related to menstruation," says Dr Sushma Tomar, Obsetrician and Gynecologist at Fortis Hospital.
Traditionally, the medical and scientific communities have viewed menstruation as a monthly aberration from a normal state – therefore, what is normal and what is abnormal during menstruation is difficult to parse; little to no research into PMS, PMDD and the most extreme, menstrual psychosis, has been conducted. While some researchers are starting to explore what menstruation means for women's bodies and challenging this view, progress is slow, leaving many women bewildered by what happens to them each month.
"PMS and PMDD can be confusing but observing symptoms over a course of time and talking about it can help gynecologists detect the problem as the first step in getting [women] help," says Dr Kedar Tilwe, psychiatrist, sexologist and geriatric psychiatrist at Hiranandani Hospital.
Dr Rajeshwari Pawar, obstetrician and gynecologist at Pune's Motherhood Hospital, says that one of the most common ways to treat PMDD is via oral contraceptive pills. Doctors may also prescribe antidepressants, too, she adds.
Alternatively, counselling is can be helpful, says Dr Pawar. Regular therapy "can help patients identify their symptoms, make them understand that treatments will … go a long way in improving [their] condition," she adds.
Therapists can help a woman struggling with PMDD build techniques for managing stress and regulating emotions during the premenstrual phase, says Dr Dhara Ghuntla, a clinical psychologist with Mumbai-based MindSpace Clinic. They may also recommend lifestyle-related changes, like following a healthy diet, having a regular exercise regime, or trying meditation and other relaxation techniques, that can also help the patient in managing symptoms in the long term.
The combination of medication and therapy has helped Shah. "I'm sure the medications are doing what they're supposed to, but when I finally accepted I needed help, it felt like half my job was done. Coupled with counseling, yoga and meditation, I'm in a much better place now," she says.
Ultimately, that awareness and acceptance seems to be what drove Rashid to tweet about her experience.
Anubhuti Matta is an associate editor with The Swaddle. When not at work, she's busy pursuing kathak, reading books on and by women in the Middle East or making dresses out of Indian prints.
Thank you so much for talking about this. I had no idea and it is such a revelation. Just wanted to drop in a line to say – your essay made a difference, thank you.
We're so happy to hear it. Thank you.


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Vyckie Garrison was once a minor celebrity in the Quiverfull Movement, made famous by TV's Duggar family. As a devout, Bible-believing Christian and the mother of seven homeschooled children, Garrison spent 16 years, with her husband, publishing a newspaper for families on a similar path. Today, via a website called No Longer Quivering, she publishes resources for women leaving the movement.


text:
Q: Scattering off upside-down parabolic reflector (radio frequency) Suppose I have a steel frame parabolic reflector with a handful of steel wire supports. The size is approximately 10m high and 20m in radius. Assume the gaps in the triangular trusses are roughly 3m.
Presumably, if I focus roughly 30Mhz radio signals at this structure they will reflect and be concentrated at a focal point some distance from the center of the dish.
Simple question: if I flip that structure upside down, and focus 30Mhz radiation centrally (so normal to the plane tangent to the minimum of the parabola), how will the radiation scatter?
I suppose an answer could range from simply "the signal will scatter", to a more precise description of the scattering. There's obviously a U(1) symmetry here, but it would be interesting to know how the power is distributed across the z-axis.
The analogy in the visible range is a convex mirror. The plain English answer would be "the image is distorted, and parts of the image look bigger or smaller. You can see across a wider angle."
Thanks!

A: If you use parallel rays  thee scatter as if they would come from the focal point on the opposite side.
if you have rays coming from one point, you can construct the scattered rays like  coming from  the imaginary picture of your source like in a convex mirror. You can use the same equations which are easy to find.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
Q: How to calculate age in years? In Excel 2010, I'm using the formula =(TODAY() - 05/31/1996) / 365.25 to calculate the age in years between today's date, May 30, 2013, and May 31, 1996. I'm expecting some number close to 17.00, but I get 113.41. How do I use a single formula to calculate the difference in years between two dates? I've formatted my cell as a number with 2 decimal precision.
I'm using formula based on this similar question.

A:
"How do I use a single formula to calculate the difference in years between two dates?"

Because of the exact way you have phrased your question I think the DATEDIF formula will better suit you. Try using the below formula. It's simple! Hope this helps. :)
=DATEDIF("05/31/1996",TODAY(),"Y")  Or  =DATEDIF(A1,TODAY(),"Y")
"Y" makes the formula count the difference in Years.

A: This will work: =(TODAY()-DATEVALUE("5/31/1996"))/365.25
As will this:  =(TODAY()-A1)/365.25 where A1 contains an Excel datevalue.

A: You need to coerce the date as written into a real date. There are several approaches. Using a DateValue() function has been outlined. Another way is this:
=(TODAY()-("31/5/1996"+0))/365.25

This formula works for regional settings with dates represented as DMY. If your regional settings use MDY, try
=(TODAY()-("5/31/1996"+0))/365.25

The text of the date will be coerced into a number by adding a zero, and will then be processed further.
Of course, you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you entered the date into a different cell and then just refer the formula to that cell
With A1 having the value of 31-May-1996 (in whatever format your regional settings serve up), you can then use
=(TODAY()-A1)/365.25

A: The answers given by chuff and teylyn work fine for scientific calculations; e.g., the normal height and weight of a person of a given age, or how long a bottle of wine has aged.  This may be good enough for you.  But they're not perfect for legal purposes; e.g., on 5/31/2013, their formula computed 16.99931554.  Admittedly, this will display as 17.00 if displaying two decimal digits, but it will test as being less than 17.  Not good if you are trying to compute somebody's age in the normal, societal/legal sense, that we would use to determine, for example, whether he's old enough to buy that bottle of wine.
For brevity, I'll use the alternative suggestion that the ancient date is in A1, and that today's date is in T1.  I suggest that you use this formula:
=(YEAR(T1)-YEAR(A1)) + (DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(T1),DAY(T1))-A1)/365.25

This computes the difference between the two years, and then computes the fractional year difference between the start date and the current date mirrored in the ancient year.  For example,
I'm writing this on June 12, 2013.  The first part of the above formula, YEAR(T1)-YEAR(A1)
(the surrounding parentheses aren't necessary) is 2013-1996 which, of course, is exactly 17.
The second term,
                       (DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(T1),DAY(T1))-A1)/365.25

becomes (DATE(1996,6,12)-A1)/365.25 or ("6/12/1996"-"5/31/1996")/365.25 or 12/365.25,
which is 0.03012, so the sum is 17.03012.
But if T1 is 5/31/2013, the formula evaluates to 17.00000.
Oh, my formula has a slight glitch.  If the ancient date is in a non-leap-year (e.g., 5/31/1995), and the current year is a leap year (e.g., 2012), then T1 = 2/29/2012 and T1 = 3/1/2012 will yield the same result, because, even though Excel raises an error for 2/29/1995, it treats DATE(1995,2,29) as 3/1/1995.


As a regular reader of WhoWhyWhy, you know that we have focused like a laser on election integrity and uncovered story after story about voter suppression in Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and elsewhere. But important as all of this is, it's only part of the bigger story.
It was Joseph Stalin who said that "it's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." The 2000 presidential election was a fantastic example of why that matters.
You all remember chads, hanging chads, punch cards, Votomatic machines, and how 540 votes and five Supreme Court justices changed America. What if those hanging chads had not been an accident? What if it wasn't the fault — as was claimed at the time — of incompetent voters who didn't know how to completely punch out a chad? What if the cards themselves had been engineered to fail?
In a never-before-told story that reads like a detective novel, investigative journalist Stephen Singular finds himself on the floor of the factory that made the infamous punch cards, in negotiations with 60 Minutes trying to get their help, and being given hundreds of unused punch cards to test as he tries to unravel the first great electoral mystery of the 21st century.
In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, Singular talks to Jeff Schechtman about his just-published ebook Stolen Future: The Untold Story of the 2000 Election.
Singular takes us inside the machines that manufacture the perforated cards, whose precision, down to 1/5,000th of an inch, shaped the fate of the republic. Imagine that the war in Iraq could have been caused by a dull blade in one high-speed perforating machine in one factory, or maybe engendered by foul play.
Singular examines how the failure of punch cards not only impacted the 2000 election, but became the reason for states to place orders for hundreds of millions of dollars in new electronic voting systems — made by the very same private companies responsible for the 2000 mishap.
He tells Schechtman about ES&S, an Omaha-based company with close Republican ties and far-right roots, that manufactures most of the systems to which we entrust our vote.
Singular takes us inside 60 Minutes and their failure to pursue a story that may have been too hot for them to handle.
In the best tradition of investigative journalism, Singular's journey goes from working with an old friend to test an idea, to having door after door slammed in his face. It's a story that should add a sober new dimension to the efforts to preserve our democracy next week.
Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to radio WhoWhatWhy. I'm Jeff Schechtman. If you've been a regular reader of WhoWhatWhy, you know that our focus on election integrity has been relentless. You have followed the stories about voter suppression in Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, and North Carolina. But important as all this is, it's only part of maybe only half of the story. It was Joseph Stalin who said that it's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.
We saw in the 2000 presidential election, the degree to which that really matters. But even then, with the presidency decided by five Justices of the Supreme Court, did we really get the full story? Do we really know to this day what happened in Broward County or Miami-Dade? What did we learn? And more specifically, what did the people who counted the votes learn that may have impacted us in 2016 and may still be impacting us in just a few days?
To give us insight to this part of the story, WhoWhatWhy has just published its first e-book entitled Stolen Future: The Untold Story of the 2000 Election. Its author is our guest today, Stephen Singular. Stephen, thanks so much for joining us.
Singular: Oh, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.
Jeff Schechtman: Tell us how you first came to get yourself curious about the story.
Singular: Well, I had followed, of course, the aftermath of the election and the Supreme Court decision and didn't really think too much about it up until that point. But then I knew somebody as a friend in Florida who had voted in Broward County and who had voted with an absentee ballot, with the punch cards, and this individual happened to be a mechanical engineer. We've known each other for a long time. He called me and started telling me about his experiences as a voter, which was basically that he'd punched out his cards. He and his wife had, and they noticed that the chads, the little perforations that you punch out to signify your candidate had basically gone back in their holes. And he didn't quite understand why that would happen. I mean, we know about the hanging chads and how they hang off the back of the piece of paper. We've all seen that, but these actually went back into the hole.
What that meant was if he hadn't done anything else, and just mailed in his absentee ballot, it would have looked as if he'd voted for no one. But he was a curious fellow and an engineer, and very, very bright and he looked at it and said, "Well, that doesn't really make sense." So he punched it out again, and so did his wife, and they actually tore the perforations off of the cards and mailed them in, went on vacation, came back on November 7th or thereabouts, the election night of 2000, and watch this chaos unfold on television where the networks came out, as many will remember, and said that Al Gore was the 43rd President of the United States. I think it was, and that was what had happened, and that was based upon the polling that television networks have relied on for a long time.
People vote, they come out, they ask them who they voted for, they do statistical extrapolations. It's a very scientific thing. And in the past, it had worked. Suddenly something went wrong and the networks with great chagrin, came back on and said, "Well, we take back our projection. The vote totals seem to be changing for some reason, and we don't really know who won." Many of the problems were being generated in that Miami-Dade, Broward County, South Florida area, and all over the state in some instances, but heavily down there.
My friend was watching this with his wife and the light went on and he thought, "Well, I wonder if other people either through absentee ballots or through voting at the polls on that night, that day, had had a similar experience." Because what was coming in was what are called the number of undervotes, which means that it looks as if you didn't vote for anybody because nothing is punched out or overvotes where multiple chads have been punched out and it looks as if you voted for three or four people or how many.
As many listening here will remember. I mean, it's set off absolute chaos and in terms of the presidential election, the networks were flip-flopping. We got kicked into the courts, very complicated situation because George W. Bush is running for president. His brother Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida. Bush's confidant, let's say is secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who controls what the time frame is for when votes will be counted and certified. They clearly were interested in shutting this down as quickly as possible and saying that George Bush won by about 541 votes. Yeah, 541 votes in Florida, which is obviously a tiny margin in the state with six million voters. And Gore had won the popular election as well.
All of this was brewing for about six weeks. And then I started talking to my friend and he said, "Everybody's talking about the machines that were used, the Votomatic machines, where the punch cards go through, and people are telling about the incompetence of voters, and they're too stupid to figure out how to punch through a card and all of those things, but nobody's talking about the cards themselves and how they actually performed." He said, "Maybe you should come down here and look into this." By that time, the legal situations were resolved on December 12, Bush was effectively appointed the President of the United States, as you said, by a 5-4 vote, and that does kind of clear, but a couple of things were happening.
A number of people groups like the NAACP were suing various organizations in Florida over what had happened because a number of the discarded ballots had occurred in heavily African-American precincts. The Votomatic machines were being looked into and there were people rushing forward in the election systems business and saying, well, those punch cards don't work anymore. Let's rush in and sell all these disgruntled folks electronic voting machines. Florida itself bought about $70 million worth of that technology in order to get around this problem the next time.
Jeff Schechtman: While all this was going on, what did you decide to do next?
Singular: I decided to go to Florida. My friend lived in Fort Lauderdale, which is very close to the elections warehouse where much of the equipment from the recent voting was kept. Not only the equipment, but the cards that had been used. And beyond that, the cards that hadn't been used. So there were what we call virgin voter punch cards on the premises there and on almost a lark we decided to go in and see if we could get some of those unused cards and just start to examine them.
The interesting part of that, when I think back on it, is that we did go in, talked to the Supervisor of Elections, and he gladly and openly gave us a couple of batches of cards. When I look back on it, I think, they didn't know what happened either. That was the thrust of everything these election officials said, is that "We're getting blamed for this but we didn't do anything differently from any other election. Now we're in the crosshairs of lawsuits, bad jokes by comedians, just being trashed right and left, and we don't know what happened." And I think there was a little bit of curiosity on their part to say, "Well, if somebody wants to look into this, well and good, because we don't have a clue." That's where the story really started, was going there, getting some cards, and then proceeding from there.
Jeff Schechtman: Was there a thought in your own mind that what happened may have been as much incompetence as anything mischievious?
Singular: Well, yeah. It's a very complicated story, and there are multiple explanations. One of the things I say is that it's not that we do know what happened, it's that we still basically don't know, and that's the crux of this story, that there were opportunities to learn more and they weren't really developed. When you look into the punch card arena, the way they're manufactured is that the paper is fed through an assembly line basically, and they're hit with a stamping wheel which makes the perforations on the card.
In Broward County, it was 228 of those little perforations, in Miami-Dade it was 312. But those things are calculated down as I would learn, to about 1/5,000th of an inch, so you're dealing in microscopic differences in how those machines function and they become dull through usage as any machine does. There's always a margin for just incompetence or human error or machine error in that card making process. It was rather startling for me to learn that our election system sort of hangs on that 1/5000th of an inch. I'd never even imagined anything like that before getting involved in issues or think it would be a little more protected than that. But that was coming straight from the election officials.
We got the cards. My friend began to test them on his own. We were looking for a piece of equipment called a strain gauge, which is what measures downward pressure as it's measured in grams. There's this industry standard for cards that is basically 150 grams to 350. So when you're applying that pressure downward, the chad should come out. We had cards from two major manufacturers. One was Sequoia Pacific from California, and one was from ES&S based in Omaha, Nebraska. And the great bulk of the cards in Broward and Miami-Dade had come from ES&S.
We wanted to see if there was any variation in the cards, variation in the chads, variation in how they might have behaved when you were putting pressure on them. Would they fall out easily? Too many would fall out creating an overvote. Would they be very difficult to push out? And then if you push it out would the chad go back in, as it apparently happened in widespread cases in the election causing an undervote. There were approximately 200,000 of these votes, overvotes and undervotes, in the election itself. As you will recall me saying a few minutes ago, Bush was apparently or allegedly ahead by 541 votes. Razor thin margin, obviously. What was contained in those 200,000 votes that were tossed aside?
What drove this was that in Miami-Dade, if you were looking at some of the African-American precincts, there were 9000 votes that were thrown out, based upon on what I was just saying. They voted 10-1 for Al Gore. That would be nine, nine out of 10 would be 8100 votes, Bush is ahead by 541, you can do the math. The point being obviously highly contested, what really happened here? And was there any possibility that cards could be produced to behave in a certain way, so that you would in fact get undervotes or overvotes in certain precincts that could possibly be targeted. That became the overriding and compelling question of the investigation.
We got the cards, we ran some tests. They were preliminary, and we were not utilizing the most sophisticated equipment. There appeared to be some variation in the cards from one manufacturer to another, and there appeared to be some variation in how the chads behaved on some of the cards. But this is highly technical stuff. And after a week or so, I decided that we had to have much more muscle involved in what we were doing. This is around the seventh day of January, of 2001, which is to say it's about 13 days before the George W. Bush administration will take office. If something happened that had helped cause some of these problems from an intentional perspective, and if it made the entire election really illegitimate, or even if it just needed to be investigated further, all of these things are totally in play by January 7. I thought, we potentially have a very large story here and we need to get some help.
Jeff Schechtman: You were two guys in Florida trying to test these cards. Where did you think any help was going to come from?
Singular: I knew somebody at 60 Minutes, CBS, and had worked with this individual in the past and made a call. That person called Mike Wallace, the renowned anchor of CBS, 60 Minutes, and within a few hours we had kick-started a process there for they would look into this and maybe do something with it. A huge leap forward. One of their people or a couple of their people went to Florida, met my friend, got some of the cards, I think, got some more of the cards and began the process of testing them in a much more sophisticated way than we were capable of doing.
That becomes a part of the story going forward because they did test the cards. I tried to communicate, I tried to learn more about what was going on, and I was totally and completely shut out. It becomes a muddy area after that. I know that the cards are tested, I know that developments were going on around this, and I know that that went on, so that leads me to believe that they were learning things about the cards at a very intricate level that were important while they were doing that and they told me that I couldn't do anything. In other words, I couldn't investigate any further, I couldn't talk to anybody in the card industry. I gradually became very annoyed with that and decided to just keep working on my own.
I went to Dallas, outside of Dallas to the ES&S manufacturing plant. I talked my way in there through one thing and another and got on the factory floor to see how these cards were actually made, and to try and talk to some of the people there and learn more about it. I saw it was very critical to do that, in order to get any grasp of the technical understanding of this. I was given a brief tour of the factory. I was asking some rather pointed questions about what had happened in Florida where they had sold 4 million cards to Miami-Dade County and 1.5 million to Broward County prior to the 2000 election.
Over time, over a brief period of time, I became aggravating to the man who was showing me around and he basically showed me the door. But I was able to see, and he was the man who told me point blank that as he put it, we live in a 1/5000th inch world. In other words, we're a variation of 1/5000th inch on a stamping wheel that perforates those cards could basically … The fact how the card behaves once it's in the voting booth in the counting machine and that was a very eerie thing for me to hear. I mean, we just had a president basically selected by the Supreme Court based upon what appeared to be the fragility of our voting system. I think history pivoted right there in front of us, and that was the whole impetus in this.
If there's more to this story, we have to get it out there. We have to figure out what happened. Not only because of what the result was in the 2000 election and what that implies for our politics going forward, but all of these companies, as I said, these voting system companies are coming in and they're selling electronic equipment to replace the punch cards. Well, we can all understand how a punch card works, but there are very few of us that understand the intricacies of computerized voting. Again, I thought this is a major issue. What if we're replacing a system where we don't even know what the problem is yet. We need to answer these questions.
Jeff Schechtman: What happens next at this point?
Singular: The story proceeded from there. I was told repeatedly, CBS, 60 Minutes is going to do something, "We're going to get it on the air. We're going to have something." That was all I was told. And they never knew that I went to Dallas and got on the floor of that factory. If they had, they would have been very upset. They never ran the story, they never communicated with me what they uncovered, but I am quite certain that they uncovered certain things. It sort of began to trail off. And then if you can put yourself back in June-July, of 2001, George W. Bush's ratings were down, everything was stagnant, and all of that, the story still seemed to be unfolding behind the scenes.
And then, of course, we got 9/11 and everything that I was working on, or I think that others were working on, just sort of died. Nobody was going to now criticize George Bush or how he was elected, or what was involved in that. Again, as I said, the world sort of pivoted in this nine month, 10 month framework where … And then everything that happened after that happened.
Jeff Schechtman: You argued that this story has ramifications that go beyond the 2000 election, that it even goes into the 2004 election. Explain that.
Singular: The story didn't die. If one wants to delve into the 2004 election where the key state was not Florida but Ohio, John Kerry was leading in Ohio, which was the pivotal state in the election. Whoever won it was going to win the 2004 presidential election. They now had installed not punch cards, but an electronic voting system. At 11:14 PM they hit in the polls, that the system crashes or goes down. It comes back up a few minutes later, and he's behind, and he loses the election.
That is one more chapter in the story. And then of course, what really caused me to revive the story and to look into it was the election of Donald Trump in 2016. I've laid all this aside, and it was dormant. I told people back in 2001, well, what if some group gets their hands on the electronic voting system or some aspect of it and tries to manipulate the election in that manner? If you really delve into the 2004 election, that appears to be the case. It's not really what I wrote about here, and others have written about it in far greater depth and know more about it than I do.
Jeff Schechtman: And as you see it, what's the ramifications even in 2016?
Singular: We get to 2016 and Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote by 3 million votes. And every poll is wrong, every poll is dead totally wrong, which is what happened in Florida, which echoes that, which tells me that more is going on here than meets the eye. Because polls are quite accurate and I thought, let's see if I can revive this story and tell it and maybe there's … Enough things have gone wrong around this issue and enough is at stake where three of the past five presidential elections in the United States are at best questionable, and at worst a lot more than that.
And I went to WhoWhatWhy, and Russ Baker, and I found a receptive group there, and I greatly appreciate the fact that they were willing to bring this out. Because I think it shows how important this issue actually is, how it is, how it's been in the recent past, how it is now, and how it will be going forward.
When polls are strikingly wrong, I think you have to look into the voting aspect itself, not just saying that people went on Facebook and put up fake news and that kind of thing. I think it's a lot deeper than that. If you grew up like me, really believing in investigative journalism and the power of it, and this is when we really needed it the most, was in my view, in 2000. The media has changed over the years, and there just isn't that much emphasis on that anymore. I sort of ran into that headlong, and I think if we had gotten to the bottom of it, the whole history of the past 17 or 18 years might be different.
Jeff Schechtman: One of the things that you talk about is that in each of these stories as this evolves, there really are different voting systems that are at play. There was the Votomatic system with the punch cards that we're talking about in 2000, then the electronic voting, the kind that came after that that was really part of the debate in 2004, and then it all moved to this optical scan system later in 2016. Talk about that and the broad framework of the fact that while the systems are different, a lot of the players and a lot of the companies and all of these systems are exactly the same.
Singular: Yeah, the main company that I focused on was this ES&S out of Omaha, and they were very much involved in the punch card situation in Florida in 2000 even though two days after the election they put up something on their website that said their systems were not really used. It's a very curious turn of phrase. Their systems may not have been used but their cards were, and their cards were absolutely the issue. Then again what happened in Florida was that they rushed in, Jeb Bush, his first choice as Governor of Florida for the Secretary of State was not Katherine Harris but another woman named Sandra Mortham, who was a lobbyist, paid that lobbyist I believe before ES&S.
It was all very entangled, well after the punch card fiasco, ES&S sold $70 million worth of voting equipment, electronic voting equipment to Florida where Bush was governor. Then you've got the Democratic primary of 2002 and Janet Reno was running. I think the opponent was named McBride. I'm a little foggy on that. But then you had electronic voting and the same things happened just from a different angle. Votes weren't being counted, the system malfunctioned, and they didn't know who won, and there was a deadline to make a decision. Janet Reno in the confusion just caved in and said, "Okay, I'll let the other guy win." And so that's what happened. It didn't solve the problems and it created more and probably more intricate problems with that kind of voting system.
Then you go to 2004, as I said, and people would have to do a little digging in and on their own with that, but people with were very strong republican ties were tied into the backup system that came up when the first one went down at 11:14, the night of that election. I mean, again at very best, it's just a totally questionable part of our history. A man named Richard Hayes Phillips wrote a book about it and went into far greater detail than I have and shows you how the numbers shifted after the system came back up and all of that. Two elections right in a row where you don't really know who won the presidency and I would, without going too political, I just think these are crucial things. There are major, major consequences that come out of these elections.
Jeff Schechtman: Getting back to the punch cards and what you discovered about them in the limited amount of time you had, in the limited testing that you did with this, you said, kind of primitive equipment, did you find any difference between the cards that were produced by ES&S and cards that were made by other companies like Sequoia?
Singular: What we found was that my friend was the one running it, and he was an engineer, and he understood it better than I did. He blew the photos of the chads up 30 times so we could get a better idea of how much paper this very intricate stuff was holding on each chad. What he found was that there were some differences that he detected on the ES&S cards compared to Sequoia Pacific which seemed to be rather consistent in how they behave. But what he found most intriguing was that all of the chads came out in a similar way, and that did not appear to him to be a random situation. In other words, they could come out bottom to top, side to side, all of that sort of thing, and they were coming out in a consistent pattern that he called garage door, meaning that the two bottom areas swung up to the top. And then they fold it back in their holes as we talked about it.
He thought that that was perhaps not entirely random, and he just started raising what I thought were all of the right questions about how had this been made, and could these kinds of variations be built into the cards when they were being produced? I go into more detail about this in the book and the intricacies around all of that. He thought, and I thought, not that we had found the holy grail, but we had found enough that it needed to be looked into in more depth. I think given everything that had happened, and that there was absolutely no explanation for the malfunction of the 2000 presidential election, and that's what you have to remember as you go back. Again, you're blaming black people because they didn't vote properly in Miami-Dade. You're blaming elderly people in Broward County because they didn't know how to vote. You're blaming the machines, you're blaming everything.
There was no reasonable explanation on the table for why any of this happened. We thought this was a potential doorway into understanding that, and that's why we took the actions that we did. His discoveries, I think, were preliminary findings like in any investigation that require more investigation. And that's the point we got to. I wish I could say I have the definitive answer here for you, but I think if we'd gone down that road, we would have learned a lot more relevant information about this.
Jeff Schechtman: Did you have a theory or did your friend have a theory about how this might have been manipulated, that in fact, if this was the case with the cards, that it would have done it for Republican punches or Democratic punches, Gore or Bush punches. How could this have been manipulated?
Singular: Well, our understanding, which was somewhat limited, was that you could potentially just program it into how … When I was on the factory floor, when you're standing there and you're watching this stamping wheel going around at incredible speeds making the perforations in the cards, there were some understanding that that could be manipulated to create variations in the cards. That's what we were looking into. I was taken into a room where they examine these cards in great detail and I wanted to stay there with this man who was showing me around and say, "Show me the finest intricacies of the cards as they're made through something called an optical comparator. I want to see the variations here and all that." And he grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the room and subsequently very quickly got me out of the whole building.
So that was the fundamental question. Could you build variations into these things in the production process? We speculated on that. But again, that's what CBS, that's what 60 Minutes was investigating. And that's the information that we never got to.
Jeff Schechtman: The other question, I guess, is that if you could build the variations in, you could deliver certain kinds of cards to certain areas and other kinds of cards to other areas.
Singular: Well, what we learned was that, and this came from the election people in Florida, was that the voting card manufacturers know ahead of time where the cards are going, what precincts they are going to, and what the voting habits are in those precincts. So yes, it's an absolutely relevant question. They have a map, basically, of the voting before the cards are ever made. And so they have that information. The cards are coded in a particular way for each precinct so that they'll know where those cards are being used on election night. They have that ahead of time, and that's the first question. The next question becomes, could you then build variations in, based upon that knowledge?
Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit about the security of these cards. When you first started talking about walking in to where the cards were stored, and then being in the factory where they're made. What kind of security existed for all of this?
It wasn't hard to get into their factory, but once they realized that I was there to ask some pretty piercing questions, they shut it down real fast. I would assume that security is probably tighter now than it was then, but those people were on edge in the wake of that election.
Jeff Schechtman: You spend a lot of time in the book also talking about ES&S, and a little bit about the company, people that were involved in its history. Talk a bit about that.
Singular: They're based in Omaha. They are a privately held company. They have major ties to the Republican Party. The count, I think, about that time was about 100 million votes a year. There have been numerous issues raised around the company for years with their electronic voting. WhoWhatWhy does an article every now and then about it.
A controversy has swirled around it because it seems to be a heavily republican company. Again, these are the people making the election systems, making the cards, controlling all of that. They're privately held so it's hard to get any information out of them at all. And again, it just raises these uncomfortable questions about who's controlling our election system. Again, I mean, there seems to be a rather consistent pattern here. Gore goes down in 2000, Kerry goes down in 2004, and Hillary goes down in 2016. It's obvious who's on the winning side here. Again, I don't offer readers all the answers, but I think we got to start asking the pertinent questions.
Jeff Schechtman: What is your theory and what does your gut tell you with respect to what happened regarding 60 Minutes? Did they lose interest in it? Did 9/11 cause them to lose interest in it? Or did something else potentially happen?
Singular: I think that there were a lot of issues afloat there. I think they were somewhat afraid of the story. I think the story was maybe a little too much. I mean, you got to pull back and think about it. I mean, you were talking about the potentially fraudulent election of an American president after he's been installed in office. This was an incredibly explosive story if it had blown. I think it was a hard story to prove based upon an examination, purely an examination of the cards, because again, you could always simply say, well, the blades got dull and they created these variations. That's always the fallback position.
After a while, they said to me, what we need is somebody from the factory or somebody in the election system who will come forward and talk about this on camera. If you think about the movie The Insider, if you're familiar with it, or the people listening are familiar with it, that involves tobacco. Tobacco is a big story, the fraudulent election of the President of United States is a bigger story. We came out of this without knowing what we needed to know, but what we do know is that our election system has been increasingly fragile over the last 17 or 18 years. If we had gotten to the bottom of this at the appropriate time through the appropriate channels with the right people, our entire history of the last 17 or 18 years might look very different.
Jeff Schechtman: Did you ever get to the bottom of what really happened with 60 Minutes?
Singular: Ultimately, what 60 Minutes wanted was somebody to come on and spill the beans on everything and just lay it out for a lay audience so everybody could understand it. I was told, and this was later, this was years later, it wasn't right then, that eventually they found somebody who was willing to do that. I heard this from multiple sources, but they couldn't work out the details of the legalities of talking about it and that's a very complex thing. The person wanted to be indemnified against any legal action that might come as a result of talking about this, very similar to what happened in the movie, The Insider, where Russell Crowe, his character didn't get that kind of protection. Maybe this person was aware of that and asked for it, couldn't get it, and nothing happened as a result of that.
Jeff Schechtman: Stephen Singular. The book is Stolen Future: The Untold Story of the 2000 Election. It's available in e-book from WhoWhatWhy. There are numerous links here on the page.
Stephen, I thank you so much for spending time with us.
Singular: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Jeff Schechtman: And thank you for listening and for joining us here on radio WhoWhatWhy. I hope you join us next week for another radio WhoWhatWhy podcast. I'm Jeff Schechtman. If you like this podcast, please feel free to share and help others find it by rating and reviewing it on iTunes. You can also support this podcast and all the work we do by going to whowhatwhy.org/donate.


Quoted in full from Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame.
In Bernie's defense, scrimping on donations to the needy increases his tax liability. This is a feature, not a bug. In other words, Bernie "donates" by paying more taxes to be distributed to lobbyists. Mean-spirited conservatives avoid paying taxes by funneling money to those who really need it.
Glen Reynolds: "To be fair, I don't think there's much question about her patriotism.
Max Eden writing at the City Journal has an article about The American Educational Research Association's (AERA) annual conference beginning this weekend in Toronto.
The conference, to be blunt, has devolved into a gathering of credentialed but stupid academics who have subsumed their mission to educate in favor of the latest Lefty racism trope – whiteness and privilige.
"Whites" and "whiteness" are not the problem. The SATs and other test scores tell the story. Since the mid-1960s, whites have been dutifully helping to make schools more equal by getting dumber every year. The real problem is Asians. Let's hope the next education conference deals with "Asianity," and its disturbing quest for excellence.


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Home » Quiet, clean and fast – MTU hybrid drive from Rolls-Royce for Lake Constance Belt Railway
Quiet, clean and fast – MTU hybrid drive from Rolls-Royce for Lake Constance Belt Railway
The MTU Hybrid PowerPack could be used on the Lake Constance Belt Railway (Bodenseegürtelbahn) between the cities of Radolfzell and Friedrichshafen. These are the findings of simulations that have been carried out by MTU.
Successful simulation of hybrid train operation on Lake Constance Belt Railway
MTU Hybrid PowerPack reduces emissions, noise levels and operating costs on the existing infrastructure
Development is part of the Rolls-Royce electrification strategy
By TNL Bureau
Friedrichshafen, Germany – The MTU Hybrid PowerPack from Rolls-Royce could be used on the Lake Constance Belt Railway (Bodenseegürtelbahn) and thus simultaneously provide environmentally friendly, economic and reliable rail operations even before electrification of the line. These are the findings of simulations that have been carried out by MTU on behalf of the Lake Constance Belt Railway community of interest (Interessenverband Bodenseegürtelbahn). Local emission-free operations, in urban areas and tunnels, for example, are feasible. Compared with a train driven by diesel engines alone, CO2 emissions can be reduced by up to 20 per cent using the hybrid drive system on this route. Generally speaking, these findings are also applicable to other routes. On an MTU test bench, the route between Radolfzell and Friedrichshafen was covered with a real-life Hybrid PowerPack and a computer-simulated environment (consisting of vehicle and route). It was shown that trains equipped with the MTU hybrid drive were able to keep to current timetables and timetables required in the future.
"With the Hybrid PowerPack, we are offering an environmentally-friendly rail drive solution that combines the benefits of battery and diesel-driven trains," said Lars Kräft, Vice President Industrial Business at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. "Trains fitted with our hybrid drive system could improve operations on the Lake Constance Belt Railway within just a few years – with considerably less noise, fewer emissions and more connections with more stops – and this can be done with no additional infrastructure costs."
The operation of the current VT 612 railcar was simulated – it had been retrofitted in virtual reality with MTU Hybrid PowerPacks. That such a retrofit is also possible in a real-world environment has also been demonstrated by a feasibility study carried out by the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary, DB Systemtechnik. This is particularly relevant because these are vehicles that travel fast on curving track. Only these trains, which are fitted with "tilt technology", are able to negotiate the numerous curves encountered on the Lake Constance Belt Railway track at high speed and thus provide a fast service between Basel and Ulm.
The MTU Hybrid PowerPack is a high-tech product from Friedrichshafen and the result of collaboration between the local companies Rolls-Royce Power Systems and ZF Friedrichshafen. It combines the following components to produce an intelligent drive system: a modern MTU diesel engine with exhaust gas aftertreatment, which meets current emission regulations in addition to the future EU Stage V that will come into force as of 2021, an innovative ZF automatic transmission, an electric motor that recovers energy in braking mode and also serves as a drive unit, and an advanced battery system to store the recovered brake energy. The Hybrid PowerPack has demonstrated its reliability, for example, in real-life test runs with a length of around 15,000 kilometres.
The technology is an important milestone on the way to the hybridisation and electrification of MTU drive systems, which are a current focus of developments at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. The company is working on a range of technologies now being developed primarily for rail, marine and power generation applications, which are to go into series production in the near future. These include so-called microgrid energy systems, which combine solar energy, gas gensets and battery storage systems. But hybrid drive systems for yachts will also be included in the range of products available from MTU in the future.
The Hybrid PowerPack combines a diesel engine with an electric machine, which can be used either as an electric motor or generator, and the MTU EnergyPack battery system, which stores the energy recovered during braking.
Powers Appointed NASA Press Secretary
Rolls-Royce supplies first MTU Tier 4 final Oil & Gas engines in China to Jereh Petroleum Equipment


When Erin's best friend contacted me and wanted to gift her a portrait session for her birthday, I was overjoyed to be a part of this awesome surprise! She told me that Erin was not thrilled about turning 50, so she wanted to give her a confidence boost, and this was the PERFECT gift idea for that.
Jean-Tyler, you are truly a sweetheart and such a wonderful friend for gifting Erin this experience. The type of friendship that you two share is very rare, and it was so fun to meet you both and create some awesome images for Erin and her family to enjoy and treasure always.
Erin, you are also wonderful, beautiful, and fun. I hope this experience sticks with you always, and I hope I get to photograph you again (maybe along with the family next time!).
Kirsty Wingfield of Richmond Make Up Artist was here to pamper Erin and get her photo-ready!


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Sociologists have been trying to answer questions like that for decades. Why do some kids "break bad" when others don't? Is it possible to predict which children are more likely to exhibit aggression, behave inappropriately and misuse substances when they get older?
One study published recently in The Journal of Early Adolescence shed some light on this issue. Researchers from Illinois examined several traits of preteen boys in an effort to detect relationship between high school students and the misuse of tobacco, marijuana or alcohol.
The scientists studied more than 2,600 boys from 37 schools in four American cities from the time they entered sixth grade until they completed the eighth grade. Researchers measured the students' social, emotional, learning and conduct traits at four points during the study, and they also periodically surveyed the boys on their use of cigarettes, marijuana and alcohol.
Once the results were examined, the researchers divided the subjects into four distinct groups. The first group, known as "high all," represented the boys who scored highly in all four domains. Unsurprisingly, these students represented the best outcomes in the study.
The second group, "positive social skills," comprised boys with strong social domain scores but moderate deficiencies in learning, conduct and emotional skills. As they matriculated through middle school, these students increased their use of both marijuana and alcohol.
The researchers hypothesized that boys in this group may be more susceptible to negative peer pressure, which may lead them to experiment with alcohol or drugs.
The third group, "poor social skills," showed problems with socializing, conduct and learning at the outset of the study. These boys exhibited the most behavioral problems upon entering sixth grade. However, their marijuana and alcohol use did not increase throughout the study, and their aggression and use of tobacco declined.
The fourth group, "low all," displayed problematic tendencies in all four domains studied. They were the most prone to misuse all substances and display aggressive behavior. This supported the results of prior research into troubled youth, which found that such individuals were associated with the poorest life outcomes in their teenage and adult years.
The results of this study imply that parents of boys who show warning signs like bad school conduct, anxiety, learning problems or social difficulties should take immediate steps to address their child's problems.
Therapists and psychologists are trained to diagnose many conditions and formulate strategies and treatment plans to help boys improve in these areas. Parents can also be proactive in teaching their children social skills and helping boys express their emotions in healthy and positive ways.
If your adolescent son misuses substances, don't despair. There are plenty of treatment programs for teens that can provide your child with coping skills to help him eschew tobacco, alcohol or drugs. In addition, it's important to identify and address the underlying causes of the substance misuse through therapy, medication or other methods so that the boys are better equipped to make good decisions.
Boys aren't just born bad. Often, they simply have inadequate emotional or social skills that require some extra attention and guidance. When they do get the assistance they need, boys are much more likely to grow up and become well-adjusted men.
If your preteen uses alcohol, marijuana or other drugs, contact Next Generation Village for information about teen treatment options.


St. Louis, Mo., May 10, 2017 — Washington University in St. Louis will send one singles player and a doubles team to the 2017 NCAA Division III Men's Tennis Individual Championships, held May 25-27 at The Champions Tennis Club in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Junior Johnny Wu was one of 32 individuals selected to compete in the singles championship, while junior Jason Haugen and sophomore Konrad Kozlowski were one of 16 doubles teams selected to compete in the championship.
Wu enters the postseason as the fifth-ranked singles player in the Central Region and No. 43 in NCAA Division III. He has a 15-13 record in singles this season, including a 10-10 mark at No. 1 singles. Wu has recorded three wins over ranked opponents.
Haugen and Kozlowski are ranked No. 4 in the Central Region and No. 23 in NCAA Division III. The duo has a 16-10 overall record, including a 10-8 mark at No. 1 doubles. They have also posted a 4-3 record against ranked teams.
WashU (16-4) will host the St. Louis Regional of the 2017 NCAA Division III Championship May 11-13, at the Tao Tennis Center. The Bears are the top seed in the five-team regional. WashU received a first-round bye and will take on the winner of Wheaton College (17-7) and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (19-8) Friday at 11 a.m.
The draw for the individual championship will be released on the last day of the team championship, which is scheduled for May 22-24.


The 273-unit luxury property, which opened at the end of 2016, features a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments across 10 buildings.
Allied Orion Group will oversee the operations of One Real Estate Investment's 224-unit market rate property, positioned south of the Tom Landry Freeway.
The company adds another four properties with a total of 512 units to its portfolio.
Exciting innovations include a cloud-based intercom, an online talent retention system, a resident move-in streamlining program and a pet-waste product.
The 2016 NMHC OPTECH Conference & Exposition explored the on-demand economy, package management and other issues affecting multifamily.
The upcoming apartment community will include an onsite public art park.
Provenza at Windhaven, a newly-built 324-unit community in Lewisville, Texas, is owned by Momentum Real Estate Partners.
Spurred by Dallas' exemplary post-recession performance, a fund sponsored by CBRE Global Investors has acquired BLVD, a 417-unit, class A apartment community in Dallas.
Hines and AEW Capital Management have started work on the second phase of Parc 114, a fully-leased industrial park in Irving, Texas.
Global data center provider CyrusOne announced that it has expanded its 670,000-square-foot data center in Carrollton, Texas.
Bell Partners Inc., the nation's 7th largest apartment renovator and 12th largest apartment operator, recently announced that it closed on behalf of its investors on Lancaster and White Buffalo, a 316-unit community in Fort Worth. According to the company's official statement, the community will be managed by them and it will be renamed as Bell Lancaster.


text:
AAV Vector Targeting Strategies for Gene Therapy
Bartlett, Jeffrey S.
Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, United States
Search 9 grants from Jeffrey Bartlett
Search grants from Nationwide Children's Hospital
Understanding the Exopher: A Novel Mechanism for Extrusion of Neurotoxic Contents
Optimization of HDAC6 Inhibitors in the Treatment of CMT
? The focus of this proposal is the development of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector targeting strategies for therapeutic gene delivery. Recombinant AAV represents an appealing vector system for human gene therapy due to its lack of pathogenicity, long-term transduction potential, and it's ability to transduce quiescent cells. However, regardless of its potential promise, the AAV vector system still faces certain inherent problems. One such problem relates to the endogenous tissue tropism of AAV and the limitations that this places on the development of AAV vectors for specific gene therapy applications. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that by characterizing and modifying the AAV capsid proteins we will not only increase our understanding of viral tissue tropism, entry, immunoreactivity, and particle assembly, but also be able to develop AAV-based vector systems for the targeted delivery of genes to specific cell populations. First, this project will examine our ability to target AAV vectors to specific cellular receptors by incorporating ligand polypeptides into the vector system. Second, by characterizing AAV capsid functional domains we will further define the process of AAV infection and gain a better understanding of the biological properties of these reagents that will ultimately expedite their introduction into the clinical arena. As such, this proposal has three aims. First, the characterization of functional domains within the AAV capsid proteins and the identification of sites that tolerate peptide insertion. These studies will also allow the definition of capsid regions essential for the viral life cycle, including regions of the capsid involved in binding to cellular receptors, entry and trafficking of viral particles in host cells, packaging of viral DNA, and particle assembly. Second, the development of AAV vectors with altered cell/tissue tropism by incorporating ligand polypeptides into the vector system. Third, the determination of the ability of AAV vectors with modified capsid proteins or attached targeting ligands to direct gene transduction to specific target cell populations relevant to effective nuclear entry and expression of AAV vector transgenes. We will also examine the intracellular consequences of entry via an alternative receptor, in regard to altered trafficking and induction of host innate immune responses, and we will examine the in vivo targeting and biodistribution of AAV vectors with altered tropism. ? ?
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
1R21AI051388-01A1
Medical Biochemistry Study Section (MEDB)
Chiodetti, Lynda
Davis, Adam S; Federici, Thais; Ray, William C et al. (2015) Rational design and engineering of a modified adeno-associated virus (AAV1)-based vector system for enhanced retrograde gene delivery. Neurosurgery 76:216-25; discussion 225
Shi, Wen-fang; Bartlett, Jeffrey S (2008) Estrogen plays a critical role in AAV2-mediated gene transfer in ovarian cancer. Acta Pharmacol Sin 29:1440-50
Arnold, Gregory S; Sasser, A Kate; Stachler, Matthew D et al. (2006) Metabolic biotinylation provides a unique platform for the purification and targeting of multiple AAV vector serotypes. Mol Ther 14:97-106
Shi, Wenfang; Hemminki, Akseli; Bartlett, Jeffrey S (2006) Capsid modifications overcome low heterogeneous expression of heparan sulfate proteoglycan that limits AAV2-mediated gene transfer and therapeutic efficacy in human ovarian carcinoma. Gynecol Oncol 103:1054-62
Shi, Xiangqun; Fang, Guangguang; Shi, Wenfang et al. (2006) Insertional mutagenesis at positions 520 and 584 of adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2) capsid gene and generation of AAV2 vectors with eliminated heparin- binding ability and introduced novel tropism. Hum Gene Ther 17:353-61
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Choosing the right coach and personal development or weight management program can be challenging. However today, I'd like to offer some insight that may assist you in making the choice that will help you soar in your life and business. Below you will find 7 top reasons to join a group coaching program with like-minded individuals. You will also find a video filmed in Montreal, QC at a massage therapy conference I spoke at a couple years ago on the subject " Choosing The Right Coach for You." Finally, you will find a few testimonials from some of my clients. More are available on my Thumbtack professional profile. No matter which coach you choose to work with, expect to find supportive resources and testimonials that will give you a snapshot of your coach's professional experience and program outcomes.
Get the same quality coaching, but at a fraction of the cost of individual coaching. Group coaching is a smart and affordable way to receive top-notch guidance.
It's more fun to go out to dinner with friends than by yourself, right? Working with a group is a social event that participants look forward to. You'll join a close-knit group that is energizing, motivating and most of all – fun! Group members often become lifelong friends.
Ms. Kennebrew was a delight to work with! She provided me with great feedback in moving forward in my endeavors and was very encouraging. I look forward to continuing to work with her!!
Versandra Kennebrew workshop addressed how we can improve the way we care for mind and body. The group conversation was relatable and the atmosphere was welcoming.
Versandra Kennebrew is a dynamic and passionate women willing to share her journey to empower others to live a holistic and meaningful life. Each week on the popular internet radio show, The Brand New Mommy, Versandra leads the conversation on pressing RESET, provides realistic tips for each one of us to get better and think smarter. I love how she has helped me personally and professionally.
Sign-up today for "Me-Time" a 4-week group coaching series that will assist you with carving out time for self-care and improve your capacity for self-love. Sign-up Now!


I don't know why we didn't find the time to visit Aberfoyle Antique Market more than once this past summer... Oh wait, yes I do! It turns out that life changes quite a bit with a baby and it is no longer fun to drive an hour away, only to spend a couple of hours looking at antiques when you have an active baby who wants to crawl around and play. Sigh.
Luckily, we still managed one trip out to Guelph. This time, I had a plan. Instead of browsing, I was going to find a few pretty teacups to fill the hooks below the floating shelf in our kitchen.
I ended up going with my mom early one morning and it was a lovely way to spend a few hours. We shopped a bit and chatted and haggled with vendors and managed to be back home by noon. It was a lovely way to spend the day and I snapped a few photos to boot!
One of my favourite vendors was Memories by Dawn. Look at all her pretty vintage wares!
I ended up bringing home a few new teacups. All bone china from England.
I like green and herbal tea, but I mostly use them for espresso or cappuccino. Both taste better in a lovely cup.