I heard a strangely interesting monologue on NPR on Sunday, November 18, 2018. I tried, but I couldn't find a reference to it online anywhere. Either google failed me or I imagined the whole thing.
The pre-announcement was that the writer was going to explain why he didn't believe in free will. I thought it might be something tongue-in-cheek or from pop psychology, but maybe not, I thought, let's give it a listen. Its length coincided with my trip home from church.
It turned out the narrator was truly explaining why he thought there was no free will. He spoke as if he were the first one to think of this, but I think that was just the strategy for making it a compelling production. He'd studied physics and started with that. He gave no indication of having read philosophers as far back as Laplace, at least, who followed materialism all the way to its logical end, determinism. Every action and every thought was pre-determined at the moment of the Big Bang.
We are all meat machines, he concluded, even his two daughters, though they were "cute machines." The sensation we have of making choices and directing our lives is only a feeling. It's a curious oddity why that feeling even exists, but that was as far as he got with the observation. I don't know why he didn't take that sensation and try to explain it inside the deterministic paradigm, because it's an important piece of evidence on the two-sided question of free will vs. meaninglessness.
There are only two ways to reject the idea of determinism, he said: God or magic. "Go ahead and say it out loud," he said, by way of reinforcing how hopeless both options are. Both are embarrassing, but they're the only ways free will is reintroduced into our understanding of reality.
The narrator seemed like a nice guy, but I thought his presentation was puzzling in its lack of depth. He got to the determinist conclusion and stopped, never examining the assumptions that got him there. I thought maybe he was just unaware of them, at first. He said every thought is a contingent event, meaning a physical event physically caused, even if the only immediate cause was the firing of a particular combination of neurons in the brain. He's missing so much, though. Our thoughts have to have more of a cause than firing of neurons because there has to be a semantic content to the thought that is not reducible to electricity and tissue. He doesn't begin to explain thought-caused thoughts; the logos to our logic. But on top of that, so many features of consciousness are inexplicable by deterministic physicalism.
I feel like this guy had to know this. I think he was using this folksy homily on physics-as-reality as a way of sneaking unexamined raw naturalism into public discourse. I.e., it was dishonest, like so much else on NPR. God is rejected out of hand on this guy's analysis, and God-fearers too: believing in God equates to believing in magic. Anyone listening to this who is not conversant on the question of free will versus determinism (though it has been a subject of philosophy forever) has now had the deterministic materialist take on reality firmly planted, or reinforced. It was presented as a personal story of self-exploration, but it was an insidious indoctrination into anti-metaphysics. And this guy knew it.
I heard that guy, on "This American Life.' I thought it was as sophomoric and "sneaky" (sneaking naive materialism) as you so skillfully say. Thanks for the clarify of your account.
Thanks for commenting, and for providing the missing source. Don't know why I couldn't find it after-the-fact.


text:
Once upon a time, Roro Anteng and Joko Seger lived...
Once upon a time, Roro Anteng and Joko Seger lived on the foot of Mount Bromo After six years of marriage, they had not had any children. They prayed, pleaded to Gods for children. Their prayer was granted in one condition. They should sacrifice their youngest son to the Bromo crater.
After sometime, Roro Anteng gave birth to a child, and it happened every year until they had 25 children. They lived happily and forgot about the agreement. The mount Bromo erupted signaling that the Gods asked the couple to fulfill their promise. But they didn't want their youngest son, Raden Kusuma, to be sacrificed to the crater.
Raden Kusuma learned about the deal his parents had made. Meanwhile the lava from the crater had made the people living near the mountain suffered. Since Raden Kusuma was a kind and noble man, he didn't want his siblings and other people suffered because of him. Therefore he went to Mount Bromo and sacrificed himself to the crater. The eruption suddenly stopped.
After that day, the Tengger people have given offerings to the crater, as Raden Kusuma had sacrificed himself before.
The text shows that Roro Anteng and Joko Seger. . .
really loved Raden Kusuma
disliked their youngest son
let their son kill himself
agreed to their son's behaviour
S. Sumiati
Mahasiswa/Alumni Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
Dari bacaan di atas, kita tahu bahwa Roro Anteng dan Joko Seger sangat mencintai Raden Kusuma. Jawaban ini didukung oleh kalimat terakhir paragraf kedua, But they didn't want their youngest son, Raden Kusuma to be sacrificed to the crater. Maka jawaban A adalah jawaban yang tepat.
Once upon a time, there lived a little girl named Mary. She lived with her aunt and uncle because her parents had died. One day, she heard her uncle and aunt talking about leaving her because they wa...
Who disagreed with the idea of the princess' marriage?
What was Suta's duty in the castle?
The hunter was very ____ when the ant bit his foot.
What is the suitable tittle for that text?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Is The Inventory Shortage Choking the Hoboken Condo Market?
For the 1st quarter of 2013, average sales price for a Hoboken condo was $550k, a 10% increase year-over-year. Meanwhile median sales price jumped to $535k – an ALL TIME HIGH for Hoboken condos. This figure represents a more than 18% year-over-year increase.
Looking at activity – there were 137 deals closed in the 1st quarter of 2013. Exactly the same number as in the 1st quarter of 2012.
"This is what happens when you take both hands and choke off supply by the throat," said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel and the author of the Elliman report. He was speaking about Manhattan but Hoboken has a similar chokehold driving up prices. Hoboken inventory fell to an all time low of 107 units for Q1 of 2013 from 345 a year ago. That's more than a 200% drop!
I was amused when a buyer recently told me that they weren't going to get involved in "bidding wars". (We like to call them 'multiple offer situation'). I thought to myself, then you are not likely to purchase an apartment in Hoboken any time soon.
If you are interested, here is the link to the raw data – quarterly sales results going back to 2000. Please note that the numbers are all pulled from the MLS but – the numbers change every time I go back and double check them. Inaccurate reporting by agents, fudging dates, duplication, lack enforcement of reporting rules. They are pretty good – I'd say 95+% accurate – but not perfect. They are, however, the only source we've got and I do the best I can with that.
Why is there a shortage? Is this a bubble that will burst when inventory picks back up, or will demand continue to outpace supply?
Who will win the World Series in 2013? How high will Apple go by year end? Will it rain tomorrow?
You are asking something that can't be answered, only guessed at. I suspect there is a shortage because many owners chose to rent rather than sell and lose money in the past 4 years. I don't believe it is a 'bubble' in that the demand is not artificially driven by easy money though rates are very low. I can't predict what will happen in the future and neither can anyone else.
I dont see the future either..but I dont think this is a "bubble" and I certainly dont thin any "bursting" will happen in the hoboken RE market. These interest rates are an amazing opportunity for those that qualify! Mets will win world series, Apple will be at $525, and no rain tomorrow.
Oh, I hope Apple goes back to $700. Please, please, please.
In short re shortage, condo owners like myself who bought at height in 2007 are waiting for the market to get to the point where we can at least break-even, if not make profit given improvements. I have confidence in Hoboken real estate for next 10-20 years. After that, will have to see what happens with global warming/flooding. Meanwhile, I will rent-out unit if residential choice changes.
Real estate bubble in a town that is competing with third world shanty-towns wrt infrastructure? Mayor cursing out previous administrations over not investing in infrastructure and all money being siphoned off?
Ha ha. Good luck. May the suckers who buy in the bubble suffer their fate.
The only places worth buying are the ones right by the river, and may be a block or two in.
Then why do you live in Bayonne, Matt?
I hope all the optimists are right, but I see a lot of mixed messages in the market. On the one hand, the post says condo prices are at an all time high, on the other hand, someone comments that they won't sell until they break even. Inventory is low – but it's almost doubled since it was actually at an all time low – but, either way, I'd feel more comfortable if prices were rising when we have a healthy amount of housing stock on the market between 200-250 properties for sale. Then I'd feel the recovery was less precarious.


text:
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------
// <copyright file="IMessageQueue.cs" company="Akka.NET Project">
//     Copyright (C) 2009-2016 Lightbend Inc. <http://www.lightbend.com>
//     Copyright (C) 2013-2016 Akka.NET project <https://github.com/akkadotnet/akka.net>
// </copyright>
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------

using Akka.Actor;
using Akka.Event;

namespace Akka.Dispatch.MessageQueues
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interface to be implemented by all mailbox message queues
    /// </summary>
    public interface IMessageQueue
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Tests if the message queue contains any messages
        /// </summary>
        bool HasMessages { get; }

        /// <summary>
        /// Returns the count of messages currently in the message queue
        /// </summary>
        int Count { get; }

        /// <summary>
        /// Enqueues an mailbox envelope onto the message queue
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="receiver">
        /// The receiver of the messages.
        ///
        /// This field is only used in a couple of places, but it should not be removed.
        /// </param>
        /// <param name="envelope"> The envelope to enqueue </param>
        void Enqueue(IActorRef receiver, Envelope envelope);

        /// <summary>
        /// Tries to pull an envelope of the message queue
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="envelope"> The envelope that was dequeued </param>
        /// <returns> </returns>
        bool TryDequeue(out Envelope envelope);

        /// <summary>
        /// Called when the <see cref="Mailbox"/> this queue belongs to is disposed of. Normally
        /// it is expected to transfer all remaining messages into the deadletter queue which is passed in. The owner
        /// of this <see cref="IMessageQueue"/> is passed in if available (e.g. for creating <see cref="DeadLetter"/>s),
        /// "/deadletters" otherwise.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="owner">The owner of this message queue if available, "/deadletters" otherwise.</param>
        /// <param name="deadletters">The dead letters message queue.</param>
        void CleanUp(IActorRef owner, IMessageQueue deadletters);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
£10.15m acquisition loan for Birmingham PRS scheme
25 Apr 2019 By Octopus Real Estate
We provided Blackswan Developments, an experienced regional developer, with a 12-month £10.15 million acquisition loan for the acquisition of a development site in central Birmingham.
Currently a Mr Tyre storage facility, the prime 3.6 acre site has planning consent to deliver a mixed-use scheme comprising of 395 apartments for rent, including 38 affordable units, all finished to a very high specification.
Along with 32,600 sq ft of ground floor retail and leisure space and 120 undercroft parking spaces, residents will also benefit from access to 10,000 sq ft of amenity space, including residents' gym, lounges and a spacious lobby.
BBS Capital acted as debt advisor to the borrower.
Ludo Mackenzie, Head of Commercial Property of Octopus Property, commented:
"We are pleased to be supporting an established local developer with the proposed development of this industrial site into a major PRS scheme, in what is an historical and sought after part of Birmingham. The scheme's viability is well supported by attractive supply and demand dynamics, as well as the wider regeneration activity in the Jewellery Quarter. Following on from a recent £4 million refinancing provided to a student developer in Liverpool, we are seeing increasing appetite from borrowers for fast and flexible finance in the regions."
Located within the Jewellery Quarter on the north east fringe of Birmingham city centre, near to the Jewellery Quarter railway and tram station, the completed development is expected to benefit from the delivery of a new ticket hall for the station, which has trains connecting to both the city centre and London Marylebone via Birmingham Moor Street. The site also benefits from strong road and other public transport links.
The transaction follows on from a nine-month, £4 million refinancing facility provided to an established purpose built student accommodation developer, secured against a freehold development site in Liverpool, which has planning consent for a 320-bed PBSA scheme and 52 serviced apartments.
Adam Buchler at BBS Capital, said:
"We are delighted to have worked with Blackswan on the acquisition of this key site in the Jewellery Quarter. Our deep knowledge of the Birmingham market enabled us to present the scheme effectively to prospective lenders and secure the leverage and flexibility that our client required."


Today we'll be taking a look at one of Japan's most popular anime magazines, the July 2018 issue of Megami Magazine. The magazine itself features a lot of posters of anime from the winter 2018 anime season and a few from the spring 2018 anime season! This issue contains a total of 18 great posters along with previews, character profiles, articles, manga, and other great content.
My favorite posters from this months issue would have to be Hinamatsuri and High School DxD Hero.


text:
Issue Library
Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical
Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical Indoor Air Quality Monitor Review
Jay Basen
After my article "How to Monitor Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in Your Smart Home" was published by Residential Tech Today, I received a message from a reader informing me that I should take a look at the Kaiterra Sensedge IAQ monitor. At the writer's suggestion I contacted Kaiterra and while they didn't send me a Sensedge, they did send me one of their Laser Egg+ Chemical IAQ monitors to take a look at.
As the name implies, the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical includes sensors for both airborne particulates and chemicals. Both of these are very important indoor air pollutants.
Source of Image – https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics#PM
As the above image illustrates, PM2.5 particles consist of, among other things, soot and tobacco smoke. Examples of PM10 particles are dust, pollen, and mold. Both PM10 and PM2.5 particles are especially dangerous to human health because they can get deep into the lungs and, in some cases, even get into the bloodstream. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), particulate pollution exposure has been linked to:
Premature death in people with heart or lung disease
Nonfatal heart attacks
Aggravated asthma
Decreased lung function
Increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing or difficulty breathing.
The airborne chemical pollutants measured by the Laser Egg+ Chemical are volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Again, according to the EPA, VOCs are generated by:
Paints, paint strippers, and other solvents
Aerosol sprays
Cleansers and disinfectants
Moth repellents and air fresheners
Stored fuels and automotive products
Dry-cleaned clothing
Building materials and furnishings
Office equipment such as copiers and printers, correction fluids, and carbonless copy paper
Graphics and craft materials including glues and adhesives, permanent markers and photographic solutions.
Exposure to VOCs can typically result in irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. Headaches and nausea are another common symptom of exposure. However, more serious health affects are damage to the liver, kidney, and central nervous system along with cancer.
Because of the serious health issues that can result from indoor air pollution, an IAQ monitor, such as the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical, is an important tool for making your home a safe and healthy place to live.
The Laser Egg+ Chemical IAQ Monitor differentiates itself from the competition through the use of a laser particle detector for measurement of particulates in the air. Most residential IAQ monitors use an infrared detector that is not as accurate as the sensor in the Laser Egg. There is a great article on the Kaiterra web site describing the different sensor technologies used for measuring particulates. You can find the article here.
Another difference between the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical and other IAQ monitors I have reviewed is that the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical doesn't force you to use an app to view the readings it has collected. Instead the unit includes a 2.5-inch (measured diagonally) LCD display. Pressing the mode button on the top of the unit allows the user to cycle through the various display screens including:
Overall indoor Air Quality Index (AQI) based on a combination of the PM2.5 and Total VOC (TVOC) readings.
Indoor AQI that displays a reading from 0 to 500 based on PM2.5 level
PM2.5 concentration used to calculate the air quality index measured in micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3)
TVOC index that displays a reading from zero to 100 based on the TVOC level
Relative TVOC concentration in parts per million (ppm)
Details screen displaying >0.3 particle count, current temperature, and current humidity
A screen that will shut off the LCD back light so the unit can be placed in a bedroom and not disrupt someone trying to sleep
Connecting the device to the Kaiterra app does offer some advantages because it is through the app that the unit is connected to the homeowner's Wi-Fi network. These advantages are:
Display of the weather forecast
Pollution alerts sent as app notifications
Another convenience is that the app also offers the ability for the user to select which screens are displayed when the mode button is pressed. So, for example, if you don't care about the temperature and humidity data that is displayed on the "details" screen, that screen can be turned off to minimize the number of times the mode button needs to be pressed to cycle through all the screens displaying data.
Setup is very simple. After plugging the device in and pressing the mode button several times it starts providing limited IAQ readings, as described above. The next step is to connect the Laser Egg+ Chemical to the Kaiterra App.
After the app is downloaded from the appropriate app store, simply press the "Add" button displayed on the screen. After selecting the type of device you are adding, the device can simply be added through the capture of a HomeKit setup image. The room where the device will be located and the location of your home are then selected. It should be noted that it can take a few minutes for these selections to take affect after you have made them. There is an on-screen note that informing the person setting up the device of this; but it is easy to miss.
Finally, you can select the brightness of the display, the temperature format (Celsius or Fahrenheit), language (English or Chinese), the screens you want to appear when you press the mode button on the device, and the size that information will be displayed (zoom mode on/off).
It should be noted that while the Laser Egg+ Chemical currently only supports English and Chinese, the app supports English, Chinese, German, Polish, Spanish, French, and Hindi.
The Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical offers a wealth of ways to integrate the device into a smart home. Like most other IAQ monitors the device can be integrated with a smart home through IFTTT. Applets can be created that are triggered based on readings from the connected device, hourly averages of readings from the device, data from the device above a threshold, AQI by location, and AQI by location and above a threshold.
Unlike any other of the IAQ monitors that I have worked with, Kaiterra is the only one to include HomeKit integration. This is a welcome bonus for people whose smart homes are based around Apple products and their HomeKit standard.
Finally, the Kaiterra has published an API that can be used by smart home system manufacturers to integrate Kaiterra IAQ monitors with their platforms. The API is public and can even be used by hobbyists. I have used the API and developed a module to integrate the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical monitor with a Crestron based smart home system. The module is available for download from my GitHub here.
Suggestions for Improvement
While the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical includes a more accurate PM2.5 sensor compared to competitors and offers more integration choices it isn't without areas where I believe the product could be improved.
The app and the display on the device augment each other vs. providing some redundant views of the data. For example, the app displays the outdoor air quality from the local monitoring station but this data isn't available on the device. Another example is that the data for the primary pollutant (either TVOC or PM2.5) is available through the app but you can't see the other data readings accept in the form of historical graphs. While it makes sense that the App will display graphs that aren't available on the device's small display, all the basic IAQ data from the device should be available in the app. You shouldn't have to walk to the location of the device in your home just to view this data.
The two physical buttons (power and mode) on the unit itself are small. Larger buttons would be easier to use.
The unit makes a perceptible humming noise from a fan that helps to circulate air though it for measurements. The noise is loud enough that it might disturb someone trying to sleep if the unit were placed on a night stand. A quieter fan would be a nice improvement
Unlike any other IoT device I've worked with the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical doesn't come with a power supply. It does include a power cable but the purchaser is expected to supply their own USB power supply. Kaiterra has informed me that they are addressing this issue and units will be shipping with power supplies in the near future.
No CO2 sensor. CO2 is a common indoor air pollutant. It builds up in a home as people breath when there isn't adequate ventilation. Symptoms include drowsiness and headaches. On 9/24/19 Kaiterra released a Laser Egg+ CO2 IAQ monitor. Kaiterra sent me one to evaluate right before the publication of this article. While I didn't have time to include details about the LaserEgg+ CO2 in this article, I was able to update the Crestron module on my GitHub so that it will work with both the LaserEgg+ Chemical and the LaserEgg+ CO2. That being said, I would like to see a single, comprehensive monitor that covers particulates, VOCs, and CO2 rather than requiring a consumer to purchase two devices to get a comprehensive view of their indoor air quality.
The Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical includes HomeKit integration, IFTTT integration, and a published API. Unfortunately, it doesn't include integration with either Alexa or Google Assistant. Given how large a market share are held by these two voice assistant platforms, Kaiterra should include integration with at least one, if not both, of them.
Overall the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ Chemical is an excellent product. The inclusion of a laser particle counter for measuring particulate pollution along with a choice of integration options sets it apart from the competition. The only true miss in the device's design is the lack of a sensor to measure CO2; a common indoor air pollutant. Finally, the app should be improved to provide display of all the data captured by the device.
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Jay Basen has been a home automation hobbyist for over 30 years and has worked professionally in the industry for almost 20 years. His professional background is electrical engineering and software development. He has a master's degree in engineering and has been writing software professionally for over 40 years. To read more of Jay's articles, visit his blog http://topicsinhomeautomation.blogspot.com/
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Being a leader is rewarding and challenging at the same time.
Being a leader can be a rewarding experience but it also means facing a host of anticipated and unexpected challenges. Learning how to respond to these challenges will help you grow and mature as a leader. As you learn to deal with difficult situations, you will hone your leadership skills. Don't be discouraged — becoming an effective leader takes time and patience.
Handling conflicts in the workplace is an unsavory task for a leader, but a necessary one. The best scenario is one where employees work out their disagreements between each other. If the employees cannot overcome their differences, you must step in as a leader to resolve the conflict before the situation gets out of hand. Do not call out the employees involved in the conflict in front of their coworkers. Invite them to a private meeting and ask them to calmly discuss the matter with you. You must handle conflicts with a firm, yet gentle hand.
Favoritism does exist in the workplace; but you, as a leader, should never be guilty of it. This could be particularly difficult if family members are a part of your organization, but it is not only family a leader who must be concerned with playing favorites. You must be careful not to base promotions or better working conditions on close friendships or romantic involvements. Favoritism can be a motivation killer in the workplace.
It is against the law to discriminate against an employee because of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. While there may not be open discrimination going on at the office, a leader should be aware the of subtle ways by which prejudice and discrimination can occur. These include excluding a person from social events, disproportionately giving unfavorable job assignments, or simply avoiding the employee. Discrimination and prejudice have no place on the job, and effective measures should be taken to avoid it. Have an open-door policy so that any employee who feels he's a victim of workplace discrimination can discuss the issue with you.
Everyone wants to be liked by their peers, and sometimes leaders walk a fine line between being the employees' friend and also their boss. If you are too authoritarian in your leadership style, employees may become dejected and lack motivation. Likewise, being too lax or letting people slack will lend to an unproductive work environment. Your employees should respect your authority while still feeling you are a leader they can communicate their concerns to.
Few decisions come without compromise. A difficult task of leadership is to help people compromise and reach a consensus. The effective leader must clearly present all sides to an argument, while letting everyone's voices be heard. If concerns exist about the decision, each one must be addressed and dealt with. If a deadlock presents itself, you may have to begin the process again until a consensus decision can be gained.
Hunt, Janet. "The Five Hardest Things to Do As a Leader." Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-hardest-things-leader-32195.html. Accessed 21 April 2019.
What Are the Challenges of Being an Authentic Communicator & Leader?
What Are the Job Requirements of a Team Leader?


text:
Die Swedish Open 2009 waren ein Tennisturnier der WTA Tour 2009 für Damen und ein Tennisturnier der ATP World Tour 2009 für Herren in Båstad. Das Damenturnier fand vom 6. bis 11. Juli 2009, das Herrenturnier eine Woche darauf, vom 13. bis 19. Juli 2009 statt.

Herrenturnier

→ Qualifikation: Catella Swedish Open 2009/Qualifikation

Damenturnier

→ Qualifikation: Collector Swedish Open Women 2009/Qualifikation

ATP World Tour 2009
WTA Tour 2009
Tennisturnier in Båstad

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


"XXXO" is a song recorded by British singer-songwriter and record producer, M.I.A serves as first official single and released as a digital download on 11 May 2010 off her third studio album entitled "/\/\/\Y/\?". It was premiered on BBC Radio 1 on 10 May 2010.
Here we present M.I.A - XXXO video collected from youtube website. XXXO lyrics sung by M.I.A now available under the music video.
"Touch" is a song recorded by British pop singer and songwriter, Natasha Bedingfield released on iTunes USA recently but it's unconfirmed to be included on her fourth studio album expected for release this summer (2010).
Here we present Natasha Bedingfield - Touch video collected from youtube website. Touch lyrics Natasha Bedingfield now available under the music video.
"Unforgettable" is a song recorded by dope Canadian rapper, Drake featuring Young Jeezy off Drake's debut studio album entitled "Thank Me Later" expected for released on June 15, 2010 on Young Money under a joint venture with Cash Money and distribution by Universal Motown.
Here we present Drake - Unforgettable video collected from youtube website. Unforgettable lyrics sung by Drake now available under the music video.
Baby don't hold on too long cause that's how them stories start ?
I promise to stay the same .
"Hello Hello" is a song recorded by 19 years old Fabian Buch, the winner of Viva Flatstar reality tv show in Germany was released on May 21, 2010. The music video also released recently and it's hot.
Here we present Fabian Buch - Hello Hello video collected from youtube website. Hello Hello lyrics Fabian Buch now available under the music video.
What you mean you wanna talk about us?
You got the wrong number!
"She Seen Me" is a song recorded by American recording artist and actor, Usher rumored an unreleased track just surfaced on internet recently. I can't believed this great track not included on his latest album, Raymond v. Raymond that was released on March 26, 2010.
Here we present Usher - She Seen Me video collected from youtube website. She Seen Me lyrics sung by Usher now available under the music video.
"Don't you know my girl?"
I should've said, "Hold up, I got a girl"


The White House is considering Defense Secretary James Mattis' recommendation that TSgt. John Chapman's Air Force Cross be upgraded to a Medal of Honor, Air Commando Association Vice President and retired CMSgt. Wayne Norrad told Air Force Magazine. Chapman died at the Battle of Takur Gar, also known as the Battle of Roberts Ridge, on March 4, 2002, in Afghanistan and was awarded an Air Force Cross posthumously in January of 2003. "Our fingers are crossed," Norrad said Thursday, "but we're looking at the possibility of an upgrade for Chapman from the Air Force Cross to the Medal of Honor." He confirmed that "SecDef has pushed it forward with a recommended approval," and said he thinks the upgrade is "at the White House now." If the upgrade is approved, Chapman's would be the first Medal of Honor for an airman after September 11, 2001. "It would be pretty huge," Norrad said, particularly for the special tactics community, which has been awarded nine Air Force Crosses since 9/11.


I had recently graduated university and just finished my student teaching. I was living at my mom's and substitute teaching, preparing to go to the international teaching job fair later that year. It was winter. We were staying in a travel trailer next to the farm house they were rebuilding/remodeling. I read a lot of library books that winter. One of them was Pay it Forward. I remember sitting in my fold out bed, cozy under a pile of warm blankets, reading by a small light above me. I remember crying my eyes out through the end of the book. (Later there was a film with Haley Joel Osment based on the book.) The book is about a twelve year old boy that takes on a challenge given to him by his teacher, to come up with an idea to change the world. His idea is to do something kind for three people and when they ask what they can do in return for him, he simply asks them to pay his kindness forward. It's a great idea. So great, that the term has been coined as a way to do kindness for others, without reward. Brilliant. It would be brilliant if society did kind things for each other all the time and didn't expect anything in return. Sometimes they do.
You may be following Kate's story about losing her son Gavin, on Chasing Rainbows. On her birthday she had to say goodbye to her son. She asked for everyone to do something kind for someone else, in Gavin's name. In his memory and in celebration of her birthday. Beautiful. There are thousands of people all over the world reaching out and doing good things for others in Gavin's name. Kate's little boy has changed the world. Much like the little boy in Pay it Forward. But as Kate says, Gavin did so, without uttering a word.
My heart is breaking for the loss Kate and her family are experiencing. I wish I could be there for her, even though we've never met. She's asked that in lieu of flowers, Gavin's fans can show their love and support in other ways. In Lieu of Flowers Part 1 and In Lieu of Flowers Part 2 share the heartbreakingly beautiful stories of the organizations that she reaches out to us to show our support. The first is the Child Life specialist team at the hospital where he received much and frequent care and the second is an organization the supports families during a donor transplant (Gavin's kidneys were successfully transplanted into a 40 year old man). The third is the ogranization that helped Kate in her early days with Gavin and got her started with blogging.
We had a wonderful experience with our own Child Life specialist at the hospital recently when Sebastian underwent G-tube surgery. I am so thankful I was urged to contact them, I hadn't known they were there to help us. When my brother Josh died, my parents gave their consent for organ donation and months later we received a letter in the mail stating that his eyes had successfully been transplanted. A man could see because of my brother's healthy eyes. It was a strange and amazing feeling to know that someone out in the world was walking around with my brother's blue eyes. Ever since then I have been an organ donor. What do I need with my body after my spirit has left it anyway? I know other families that have also found great comfort using the Caringbridge site that Kate started on during their experiences with life threatening health situations too. It is a life line for many. And I know that even though it wasn't a specific site for me when I started, the blogging community brought (and continues to bring) me so much support and even new friends. I feel connected with all of these organizations. I love that Kate has invited us to show our support in such meaningful ways.
How will we Pay it Forward for Kate and Gavin, aside from the above? Sebastian's 5th birthday is coming up. There are a few charities that have helped us so much since we have lived in Toronto. I always want to give back but sometimes it's not financially viable for us. We are celebrating Sebastian's birthday at school with a puppet show party. For those school friends that want to get him a gift, we are asking they donate to one of those charities in Sebastian's honor instead. We are so thankful for all of the support we get from folks far and wide. We hope that we can Pay it Forward to Easter Seals, Ontario Federation for Cerebral Palsy, Three to Be, and Epilepsy Toronto.
Wow Kara, since I meet you I always think were this strength came from? Sebastian is a Magical Kid!! You are a wonderful Woman!! We decided to help Three to Be!!! Thanks a lot!!!


The Semacon S-1625 UV/MG is a heavy-duty bill counter with (UV) Ultra-Violet and (MG) Magnetic counterfeit detection can use in many type of business like retailers to large sized Stores. This unit is front-load and allowing the user to easily add bills while the machine is counting. We offer three different models, Basic, or with counterfeit options ultraviolet, or magnetic ink, and size detection. The Semacon S-1625 you can adjust the speed up to 1800 note per minute. It also can detect double bills, suspicious bill size, and chained bills.


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Carl Limberger (born 24 January 1964) is a former professional tennis player from Australia.

Limberger won one doubles title and reached eight doubles finals when on the ATP Circuit. His highest singles ranking was World Number 71 on 11 May 1987. His highest doubles ranking was World Number 53 on 6 July 1987. The right-hander resides in Sydney.

Career finals

Doubles: 8 (1 win – 7 losses)

External links

Australian male tennis players
Sportspeople from Wagga Wagga
Tennis players from Sydney
Australian people of German descent
1964 births
Living people


Decades of experience and over $1B in completed projects.
It all started in 1981 with our founders Don and Judith Oliphant. They had an idea and a dream to establish a real estate development and investment company. The goal was never to become large, but rather to stay focused and maintain the ability to adapt quickly to changes in the real estate market.
An understanding of regional economics and needs, as well as solid financial capability and a team with diverse talent, gives us a distinct advantage when it comes to investing in profitable projects. Controlled growth and a sound planning model have allowed our company to weather the storms of the sometimes turbulent real estate industry, and even grow through them.
Since our founding, DWO has been committed to supporting our community by contributing generously to local and regional charities that are making a positive impact.
Over the years, DWO has completed healthcare, industrial, land development, retail, commercial, and residential projects. Today, our company is mainly focused on multi-family projects located in the western United States, but remains open to other opportunities that offer the potential for healthy returns for our investors.


Ariel Agenbroad was selected as one of the Idaho Business Review's 2018 Women of the Year. Agenbroad is an area Extension educator, community food systems and small farms, based in Ada County.
The Mealtime Inspirations (PDF) team won First Place Western Region, Communications Television/Video Program Award 2017 at the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (NEAFCS) meetings in Omaha, Nebraska. Team members are Julie Buck, Laura Sant, Lorie Dye, Katie Hoffman, Leslee Blanch, Luke Erickson, Stuart Parkinson and Marnie Spencer.
The Eat Smart Idaho team for their effective marketing effort: Long Live Idaho! Let's get healthy together which received First Place Western Region Winner and State Winner, 2017 in the Marketing Package division at National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (NEAFCS) meetings in Omaha, Nebraska. Team members include Joey Peutz, Bridget Morrisroe-Aman, Annie Roe, Kristin Hansen, Elizabeth Comer, Nicole Telford, Shelly Johnson, Julie Buck and Rhea Lanting.
Joey Peutz won the Continued Excellence Award at the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (NEAFCS) meetings in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Idaho 4-H Food Smart Families (PDF) team for their Excellence in Healthy Living Programming Award. They took First Place in State, First Place Western Region and National Winners from National Association of Extension 4-H Agents (NAE4-HA). Team members include Grace Wittman, Maureen Toomey, Shelly Johnson, Joey Peutz, Rhea Lanting, Julie Buck, Donna Gillespie, Surine Greenway, Liliana Vega, Annie Roe and Bridget Morrisroe-Aman.
Liliana Vega received the Idaho Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's "Sembrador del Futuro" award for 2017 (Planting Seeds for a Better Future) in recognition for the work she does with youth in the Treasure Valley, the difference she's making in the community by helping shape tomorrow's leaders and for her activism within the Latino community.
Congratulations to Tyanne Roland for her recent scholarly publication in Rangeland Ecology & Management. Tyanne has collaborated with Oregon State University faculty on this five-year project. This original research report was titled "Effects of Wolf Presence on Daily Travel Distance of Range Cattle" the lead article in the journal and co-authored by Patrick E. Clark, Douglas E. Johnson, Larry L. Larson, Mounir Louhaichi, Tyanne Roland and John Williams.
, co-edited by UI Extension Specialist Lorie Higgins; Debra Hansen and Rebecca Sero, Washington State University; Scott Chazdon, University of Minnesota; and Mary Emery, South Dakota State University has been published. A free online monograph is available through the University of Minnesota Library's Digital Conservancy.
UI Extension Director Barbara Petty is a co-author on the publication, , published in the Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14307/JFCS109.3.23 Co-authors include: Jan B. Carroll, Barbara Chamberlin, Ester Devall, Roxie Dinstel, Doreen Hauser-Lindstrom and Barbara D. Petty.
В интеренете нашел важный блог со статьями про https://proffitness.com.ua.


To remain a certified member of aPaws, MEMBER agrees to abide by the following Code of Conduct ("Code"). MEMBER further understands and agrees that noncompliance with this Code of Conduct will be cause for immediate termination of one's membership and loss of all rights associated with such membership.
This agreement may be modified at any time by aPaws after appropriate action by its Board of Directors. MEMBER understands that he/she will be required to abide by the most current code at all times.
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An obligation to operate business in such a manner as to reflect honor upon the animal waste industry in the local community.
We must all take every opportunity to learn more about our profession and to improve our services.
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Gloves and facemask are recommended for all Members offering this service.
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Apollo - Michel van Osenbruggen who records under the name created this album ( released on Oct. Apollo music player download album art. Don' t forget if you like the piece of music you have just learned playing treat the artist with respect.
I' m not a big hip- hop fan so just the fact that I was able to enjoy this album shows how good it is. It starts off strong with some amazing back and forth rhymes and David Byrne hook on The People Tree but then gets less and less interesting as the album goes on, finishing with a. Check out James Brown Live At The Apollo, 1962 by James Brown on Amazon Music.
Stream ad- free or purchase CD' s and MP3s now on er Radio is a free internet radio service, light years away from the one- dimensional playlists that you' re used to.
That' s why we' re perfect for each other. Sheet Music Download is a site dedicated to all amateur music performers around the world, giving them the opportunity to download the sheet music for free for trial purposes.
Object Moved This document may be found here. Sheet Music Exchange is a web site for those who wants to access popular sheet music easily, letting them download the sheet music for free for trial purposes. It' s completely free to download and try the listed sheet music, but you have to delete the files after 24 hours of trial period.


I have been painting the dress for over a decade. Two years ago, while on a boat with my husband, I placed it in the ocean. The shape and texture of the fabric, the quality of light and the differences between wet and dry surfaces was visually compelling and inspired my most recent work.
Upon reflection, the dress revealed itself as a metaphor. Due to an unexpected spiritual experience in my life, the worn and well-traveled dress represents renewal by light and water.


I draw a lot of inspiration from vintage art and photographic images of the past. My mother's family were early adopters of amateur photography back at the beginning of the 20th century, and I am fortunate to have digital copies of the hundreds of photos that have survived 100 years or more. As a kid, I would look through old photo albums as if they were picture books. I've been hooked for a long time.
Two subjects I am drawn to are my own Grammy (Little Elsie) and her baby brother, Jackie. The illustration piece above is directly inspired by them (see the reference photo I used below). There have been a few iterations of this illustration over the past couple of years as I've played with it and tweaked it trying to find the right look for the original pencil sketch I did in my sketchbook. This week, I think I finally found it with watercolors.
As I worked on this piece this week, I realized that a lot of things in this world have changed over the years, but it seems that the relationship between a big sister and her baby brother are still very much the same. Baby brother still disrupt photography sessions of all-girls birthday parties. And big sisters still love them despite their shenanigans.
You rendition of this photograph is great! What a great illustration and the family photo is adorable.
Little brothers NEVER cease to be obnoxious....even when they grow up! But man, we love them, don't we?!


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News - Media
News - political
Outgoing IDF West Bank commander says security coordination with PA working, for now
[Haaretz: 1 October 2019] - Brig. Gen. Eran Niv describes IDF achievements in the West Bank and highlights the importance of security coordination with the Palestinians. He estimates that around 1% of Palestinians are involved in violence.
Israeli Army Forced to Admit Blindfolding Detained Palestinians is Against Protocol
[Haaretz: 13 August 2019] - A petition to the High Court of Justice has forced the military to reiterate and clarify regulations that forbid blindfolding detained Palestinians and to admit that had exceeded their authority by doing so.
"Endless Trip to Hell": Israel Jails Hundreds of Palestinian Boys a Year. These Are Their Testimonies
[Haaretz: 16 March 2019] - They're seized in the dead of night, blindfolded and cuffed and abused. Once at the army base or police station, the minor is placed, still handcuffed and blindfolded, on a chair or on the floor for a few hours.
Humiliation that Affects Everyone
[Haaretz: 20 March 2019] - The traumas that Palestinian teenagers and children experience in Israeli jails can cause lifelong scars, for them and their communities alike. The impact of these arrests accumulates and intensifies as more youths are arrested.
Sick Palestinian Teen Kept in Detention Because Israeli Official Failed to Write Report
[Haaretz: 12 February 2019] - A Civil Administration social worker says she didn't have time to write a detention report, as ordered by a military court, in a case that exemplifies discrimination between Palestinian and Israeli minors.
In Three Years, Israeli Military Courts Have Fined Palestinians $16 million
[Haaretz: 15 January 2019] - The army details how many Palestinians are tried in military court and for what, but does not give the criteria for the scale of its fines or their breakdown
Severe Punishment for Palestinians, but It's Not the Same Stone When Jews Throw It
[Haaretz: 7 January 2019] - A stone thrown by a Palestinian was endowed with magical powers by Israeli lawmakers, but then Jews also joined the ranks of stone-throwers and nobody would even dream of sentencing them to 20 years in prison
Israel Advances Bill to Reduce Prison Overcrowding that Excludes Security Prisoners
[Haaretz: 29 October 2018] - The approved version excludes security prisoners, those who were convicted in military courts in the territories or for security offenses. The bill now goes to the Knesset for its second and third readings.
Trump ambassador blocks scrutiny of Israel
[Politico: 16 June 2018] - Donald Trump's envoy to Jerusalem rejects criticism of Israel's policies and resisted an effort to apply stricter human rights tests to U.S. military aid for the country.
The Return of Lt. Col. Hirsch to a West Bank Military Court
[Haaretz: 24 January 2018] - The former head of the military prosecution in Judea and Samaria was in court last week, handing out leaflets containing his thoughts on detained Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi
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How the Pandemic Revealed Britain's National Illness
Boris Johnson has faced his share of blame for the country's death count. But the British system was failing long before the coronavirus struck.
Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, Britain's leaders asked their people to do three things, captured in one pithy slogan: "Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives."
On the first of those edicts, Britons largely followed through. Main streets, town centers, and public spaces were mostly abandoned, and the government pulled together a far-reaching job-protection program, ensuring that those who feared losing their jobs felt safe enough to not go to work.
To hear more feature stories, get the Audm iPhone app.
The second request was more unusual. During the pandemic, Britain was the only major country in the world to make protecting its National Health Service a central goal. Signs and placards went up outside people's homes, declaring their appreciation. The words Thank You NHS can now be seen on sidewalks and soccer jerseys, in children's bedrooms and even, until recently, the windows of 10 Downing Street. In part, this worked. The NHS adapted to the crisis at extraordinary speed, creating the emergency capacity required to deal with the surge of patients. When Prime Minister Boris Johnson was released from the hospital after contracting COVID-19, he said that Britain was winning its battle against the disease because the public had "formed a human shield around this country's greatest national asset," the NHS.
On the third count, however, the country did not succeed, certainly compared with almost any other developed nation. Britain did not save as many lives as others. It had the money, the tools, and the wherewithal to respond as well as any, yet more of its people died than anywhere else in Europe. Britain has not been alone in its failure to prevent mass casualties—almost every country on the Continent suffered appalling losses—but one cannot avoid the grim reality spelled out in the numbers: If almost all countries failed, then Britain failed more than most.
The raw figures are grim. Britain has the worst overall COVID-19 death toll in Europe, with more than 46,000 dead according to official figures, while also suffering the Continent's second-worst "excess death" tally per capita, more than double that in France and eight times higher than Germany's. It did not protect its oldest and most vulnerable, who died in nursing homes in appalling numbers. It allowed the disease to spread throughout the country rather than isolating it in one area. It failed to close its borders in good time, abandoned contact tracing too early, set targets that were missed, designed government programs that didn't work, and somehow contrived to let the three most senior figures overseeing its pandemic response, including the prime minister, catch the very virus they were fighting. Now it faces the worst recession of any developed country, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and is once again taking a gamble by easing its lockdown at a relatively early stage.
Read: The meaning of Boris Johnson's illness
Much of the focus has been on Johnson: an apparent manifestation of all that has gone wrong in Britain, a caricature of imperial nostalgia, Trumpian populism, and a general lack of seriousness. Yet this was not simply an issue of inept political leadership, inept or otherwise: Johnson stuck closely to a strategy designed and endorsed by the government's experts, leaders in their fields and respected internationally. Even if the prime minister did make serious mistakes, the country's issues run far deeper. The British government as a whole made poorer decisions, based on poorer advice, founded on poorer evidence, supplied by poorer testing, with the inevitable consequence that it achieved poorer results than almost any of its peers. It failed in its preparation, its diagnosis, and its treatment.
As prime minister, Johnson must accept that Britain's failures are his as well. Still, the difficult truth is that the country's failures clearly go beyond Johnson. They were collective, multilayered, and deadly. The most difficult question about all this is also the simplest: Why?
To try to answer that question, I spoke with leading politicians, including a former prime minister and five former cabinet ministers; three experts who either sit on the government's scientific advisory committee for responding to pandemics, SAGE, or have briefed it during the crisis; half a dozen influential officials working in Downing Street and the NHS; and specialists associated with the government's response, including professors of epidemiology, mathematics, history, and psychology. I also interviewed diplomats and officials from Britain and other European governments to understand what assessments were being made outside the country. Those in sensitive positions mostly asked for anonymity to be able to speak frankly.
What emerges is a picture of a country whose systemic weaknesses were exposed with appalling brutality, a country that believed it was stronger than it was, and that paid the price for failures that have built up for years.
At the start of 2020, Britain had been through 10 years of austerity following the 2008 financial crash—another great international crisis that hit the country harder than almost anywhere else. The NHS was stretched and fragmented, its lines of authority and responsibility tangled by years of regulatory tinkering. Outside London, the country's economy was unproductive and poor, and its elderly-care system an unreformed national disgrace. The civil service, which believed itself to be the best in the world, had become a shadow of its former self, almost entirely shorn of the ability to act operationally or think strategically, its center hollowed out, weak, and ineffective. The country itself seemed divided and angry, unable to agree on a unifying national story.
But step back and an even bleaker image is revealed. In the past two decades, the list of British calamities, policy misjudgments, and forecasting failures has been eye-watering: the disaster of Iraq, the botched Libyan intervention in 2011, the near miss of Scottish independence in 2014, the woeful handling of Britain's divorce from the European Union from 2016 onward. As one senior British government adviser put it to me, "We've had our arse handed to us recently."
When the pandemic hit, then, Britain was not the strong, successful, resilient country it imagined, but a poorly governed and fragile one. The truth is, Britain was sick before it caught the coronavirus.
Like America, the country failed to live up to its reputation as a pillar of pandemic readiness. But unlike America, Britain's political leadership stuck closely to the script experts had drawn up for it—and the country still struggled. In remarks echoed, though perhaps not as colorfully, by politicians, officials, and diplomats, one figure close to Johnson told me of his experience at the heart of the government machine these past few months: "It's a fucking disgrace."
Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives a press conference on the coronavirus pandemic with the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the chief scientific officer, Patrick Vallance, in Downing Street on March 16, 2020. (Richard Pohle / WPA / Getty)
Britain's pandemic story is not all bad. The NHS is almost universally seen as having risen to the challenge; the University of Oxford is leading the race to develop the first coronavirus vaccine for international distribution, backed with timely and significant government cash; new hospitals were built and treatments discovered with extraordinary speed; the welfare system did not collapse, despite the enormous pressure it suddenly faced; and a national economic safety net was rolled out quickly.
It is also too early to say precisely why, epidemiologically, Britain suffered more deaths than other comparable countries, such as France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. Some government officials and experts I spoke with—including a senior adviser to the leader of one of the best-performing countries in Europe—said that Britain may have just been unlucky in the number of holidaymakers it had returning from the wrong places at the wrong times. Britain is also more densely populated than almost any other country in Europe, with its preeminent city and busiest airport. Like a Silk Road port at the time of the plague, London is a 21st-century global hub unlike anywhere else in the region. It is no coincidence that the British capital and New York have been among the two worst-affected cities in the world.
Today, the scale of infection in Britain has been brought into line with that of the rest of Europe. The primary concern now being raised in London is the prospect of a second spike in Europe rather than Britain—which may or may not prove hubristic in time. Either way, one cannot definitively judge the overall success or failure of a country's response for months, or even years, to come. The final verdict will be influenced by when a vaccine is found—if at all—as well as each country's ability to bounce back socially and economically. Already, according to conversations I had with officials inside 10 Downing Street, the government believes that the economic recovery will soon be more important to the public's perception of British competence than the death count.
Yet no one I spoke with, Johnson friend or foe, claimed that Britain's response to date could reasonably be described as anything other than disappointing—too many people have died for it to be anything else. One influential U.K. government official told me that although individual mistakes always happen in a fast-moving crisis, and had clearly taken place in Britain's response to COVID-19, it was impossible to escape the conclusion that Britain was simply not ready. As Ian Boyd, a professor and member of SAGE, put it: "The reality is, there has been a major systemic failure."
The majority of those I spoke with—even those close to Johnson and the government's effort to contain the pandemic—agreed that, in hindsight, the prime minister and his most senior health and scientific advisers made serious missteps. Most also agreed that on top of poor decisions was poor management as parts of the system became overwhelmed and, as one senior U.K. official involved in the government's pandemic response said, simply collapsed. The civil service appeared unprepared for the scale of the task: One official close to Johnson told me that the Cabinet Office—the department that coordinates with all others for the prime minister—went through multiple organizational restructures during the pandemic, signaling its lack of readiness. The senior U.K. official recounted how, in some meetings, staffers had to tally total COVID-19 case counts on their smartphones based on figures scribbled on whiteboards hastily dragged into Downing Street, because the country lacked a well-connected data system. "It's obvious that the British state was not prepared for" the pandemic, this official told me. "But, even worse, many parts of the state thought they were prepared, which is significantly more dangerous."
When the crisis came, too much of Britain's core infrastructure simply failed, according to senior officials and experts involved in the pandemic response. Expert advisory committees proved too slow and ponderous, with not enough dissenting voices; crisis-response cells could not cope and had to be bypassed; the Cabinet Office buckled under the strain; the NHS had no adequate way of sharing data; authorities could not meet the sudden need for mass testing; the Foreign Office could not get people home fast enough; the Department of Health could not design a contact-tracing app that worked; the government overall could not sufficiently procure key pandemic equipment; and Downing Street generally gave the impression of lurching from one crisis to another.
"People will look back and say, 'Could we have done it earlier?' and with the power of retrospectroscope, which is an infinitely powerful instrument, the answer to that is, probably," Mark Walport, who like Boyd sits on SAGE, told me. But Walport said this was not the fundamental issue of the crisis. "Many of the challenges that we've had are not, as it were, about policy advice or the science advice; they are questions about resilience."
Dominic Cummings, the prime minister's most influential adviser, has used the analogy of the human immune system to explain what he believes is wrong with the British state, which he says has become too static. The immune system, Cummings argues, has no plan or central control; it is adaptable, and therefore stronger. He is only half right. The human immune system actually has two parts. There is, as Cummings correctly identifies, the adaptive part. But there is also an innate part, preprogrammed as the first line of defense against infectious disease. Humans need both. The same is true of a state and its government, said those I spoke with—many of whom were sympathetic to Cummings's diagnosis. Without a functioning structure, the responsive antibodies of the government and its agencies cannot learn on the job. When the pandemic hit, both parts of Britain's immune system were found wanting.
(Andrew Redington / Getty)
By the time Johnson chaired his first emergency coronavirus meeting, on March 2, Britain had officially recorded 39 cases. The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, had been subject to a brutal lockdown, while other places had experienced epidemics of their own. Northern Italy was about to become the first European disaster zone.
Yet in London, officials insisted there was no need to panic. Britain, it seemed, had time to ready itself, lagging a few weeks behind Italy, and was well prepared to weather the storm: The country was ranked second in the world for its preparedness against biological threats, behind only the United States, and had spent years preparing for a pandemic. It had the institutional structures in place to advise the prime minister, the health system to handle an outbreak, and the expertise to arrive at the right decisions.
The true extent of Britain's outbreak at that point, we now know, was likely much worse than the official figures, with cases brought back to the country from multiple parts of the world—seeds planted in the fertile soil of a heavily populated, globally connected economy.
On March 3, journalists—including me—were called into Downing Street for a briefing setting out Britain's strategy. Government advisers made clear that although they had not given up hope that the virus could be contained internationally, Britain could not do so alone. The country's experts told us then that any steps taken to slow the spread of the disease domestically needed to be timed intelligently, to ensure that they covered the peak of the crisis. If a lockdown were ordered too early, it would suppress the disease and save lives in the short term, but only delay the inevitable outbreak, and potentially make it worse by pushing it into the winter, a time when flu-related illnesses also peak, or to a point when public willingness to endure such severe social-isolation measures had run its course. This remains a concern. The government's job, as its leaders saw it, was to ensure that the most vulnerable members of society were protected and that the spread slowed to ensure that hospitals could cope.
This was not the response among Asian countries, which experienced outbreaks before Britain but nevertheless sought to permanently defeat the virus. South Korea, for example, instituted widespread testing, alongside a contact-tracing regime to keep the disease at bay until a vaccine could be found. Many others in the region adopted masks en masse. Travel restrictions were put in place. Lockdowns, large and small, were implemented.
Read: The U.K.'s coronavirus 'herd immunity' debacle
Like much of the Western world, Britain had prepared for an influenza pandemic, whereas places that were hit early—Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan—had readied themselves for the type of respiratory illness that COVID-19 proved to be. "There was a bit too much exceptionalism about how brilliant British science was at the start of this outbreak, which ended up with a blind spot about what was happening in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, where we just weren't looking closely enough, and they turned out to be the best in the world at tackling the coronavirus," a former British cabinet minister told me.
The focus on influenza pandemics and the lack of a tracing system were compounded by a shortfall in testing capacity. According to a report on the government's handling of the pandemic by Lawrence Freedman, a war-studies professor emeritus at King's College London, Britain's original plan was overwhelmed by the speed of the pandemic, which it did not fully understand until it was too late—an account supported by the experts I spoke with. If there had been more testing capacity, not only would the government have stood a better chance at tracing those with the disease, but it would have been better informed about the spread of the virus in general, and may therefore have ordered the lockdown earlier. Even doing so by a small amount of time would have made a difference. Neil Ferguson, one of the country's leading epidemiologists, told lawmakers in June that Britain's death toll could have been halved had the lockdown, which began March 23, been imposed a week earlier (though this was not SAGE's advice at the time).
Still, this narrow focus on when recommendations were given, and whether it was the best advice, runs the risk of appearing to absolve Johnson of blame—if the system is at fault, then no one person could have salvaged it. And his insistence that he was following experts' advice masks the inherently political choices all leaders must make in times of crisis. Other leaders, supported by other systems, arrived at better decisions more quickly than Britain. On March 10, restrictions began to be imposed in Berlin, a decision that Freedman concludes was a significant factor in Germany's overall success. Leaders in France and Italy enacted more stringent restrictions in their cities and countries, and suffered fewer deaths.
One of the central criticisms of Johnson's leadership—expressed to me in multiple conversations—is not a refusal to accept the truth (the charge of many international observers, including Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, lumping him in with populists such as Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro) but a failure to challenge his experts' strategy. It was the prime minister's duty to question the scientific advice, to demand more. This is not a critique made solely in hindsight: On March 12, Rory Stewart, a former Conservative lawmaker who took on Johnson for the party leadership last year, set out the reasons Johnson needed to follow Merkel's lead. "The key thing to understand in any emergency response is that you need to make a judgment," he said then. Stewart said Johnson needed to take responsibility and argued it was "deeply, deeply unfair" to claim that Britain followed the experts' plan, not his own.
To a large extent, Johnson's hope and trust in his advisers was understandable: A Downing Street official asked me to imagine the outrage if the prime minister had been accused of overruling scientific and medical advisers early in the crisis. Still, Johnson's strategy throughout was one that his hero Winston Churchill raged against during the First World War, when he concluded that generals had been given too much power by politicians. In the Second World War, Churchill, by then prime minister and defense secretary, argued that "at the summit, true politics and strategy are one." Johnson did not take this approach, succumbing—as his detractors would have it—to fatalistic management rather than bold leadership, empowering the generals rather than taking responsibility himself. (Of course, Johnson's hospitalization in April also had an impact, something even his detractors, among them Tony Blair, told me cannot be discounted when trying to measure the government's performance.)
Had Johnson not challenged his advisers because he was told what he wanted to hear—that locking down the economy was not necessary? Was Johnson, part libertarian, part optimist, simply too instinctively skeptical of draconian limits on individual freedom to impose them? "It was a mixture of poor advice and fatalism on behalf of the experts," one former colleague of Johnson's told me, "and complacency and boosterism on behalf of the PM."
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What it all adds up to, then, is a sobering reality: Institutional weaknesses of state capacity and advice were not corrected by political judgment, and political weaknesses were not corrected by institutional strength. The system was hardwired for a crisis that did not come, and could not adapt quickly enough to the one that did.
An elderly non-COVID-19 patient is moved from hospital to a care home near Portsmouth, in southern England, on May 5, 2020. (Leon Neal / AFP / Getty)
Over time, Britain's NHS has come to represent the country itself, its sense of identity and what it stands for. Set up in 1948, it became known as the first universal health-care system of any major country in the world (although in reality New Zealand got there first). Its creation, three years after victory in the Second World War, was a high-water mark in the country's power and prestige—a time when it was a global leader, an exception.
Of course, neither Britain nor its health-care system is exceptional anymore, at least in this regard. Every developed country in the world, apart from the United States, has a universal health-care system, many of which produce better results than the NHS.
Yet from its beginnings, the NHS has occupied a unique hold on British life. It is routinely among the most trusted institutions in the country. Its key tenet—that all Britons will have access to health care, free at the point of service—symbolizes an aspirational egalitarianism that, even as inequality has risen since the Margaret Thatcher era, remains at the core of British identity. It is impossible to entirely disentangle modern Britain from the NHS, or vice versa. The country, so often lumped together with the U.S. as economically "Anglo-Saxon," has a slice of socialism at the heart of its national life, largely left alone by governments of all persuasions.
More recently, the NHS has been at the center of every election for at least a generation, a main character in the fight over Brexit, and finally, the linchpin in Britain's battle to contain the pandemic. In asking the country to rally to the NHS's defense, Johnson was triggering its sense of self, its sense of pride and national unity—its sense of exceptionalism.
Before the coronavirus, the NHS was already under considerable financial pressure. Waiting times for appointments were rising, and the country had one of the lowest levels of spare intensive-care capacity in Europe. In 2017, Simon Stevens, the NHS's chief executive, compared the situation to the time of the health service's founding decades prior: an "economy in disarray, the end of empire, a nation negotiating its place in the world." Britain had come full circle, he seemed to be saying. A rebirth was needed. Instead, the country entered a rolling political crisis over Brexit, ending in Johnson's elevation to the premiership and election victory in December 2019. Then came the pandemic.
When Italy's hospitals quickly became overwhelmed in early March, there were serious concerns that the NHS would meet a similar fate. Extraordinary measures would be required to make space for the coming crisis. The question now troubling experts is: at what cost?
In early April, the first of England's seven new "Nightingale" hospitals—named after Florence Nightingale, the pioneering Victorian nurse—was opened in a conference center in East London, ready for the expected surge in patients. The hospital was built in nine days with space for 4,000 beds and opened by Prince Charles to much acclaim, restoring the belief that the country could still act with speed. Medical students were pushed into service, retired NHS staff were called back in, and an army of volunteers was recruited to help hospitals function. Existing hospitals were hastily redesigned, nonessential operations were canceled, and the public was urged to avoid overburdening the system where possible. By early May, such was the success in creating additional capacity that the government announced that the Nightingale hospitals would be wound down and put in "hibernation" after barely being used.
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Yet this apparent victory—of sparing the NHS the fate that met Italy's hospitals—may have been pyrrhic. According to Freedman's report, the effort to increase capacity potentially deterred people who needed urgent treatment but did not want to burden the health system. Others who required treatment might have been denied it because the focus had quickly shifted to COVID-19. The consequences may be serious and long term, but the most immediately tragic effect was that creating space in hospitals appears to have been prioritized over shielding Britain's elderly, many of whom were moved to care homes, part of what Britain calls the social-care sector, where the disease then spread. Some 25,000 patients were discharged into these care homes between March 17 and April 16, many without a requirement that they secure a negative coronavirus test beforehand.
In effect, Britain was rigorously building capacity to help the NHS cope, but releasing potentially infected elderly, and vulnerable, patients in the process. By late June, more than 19,000 people had died in care homes from COVID-19. Separate excess-death data suggest that the figure may be considerably higher. According to a report by the International Long-Term Care Policy Network, a London-based research body, Britain has recorded more deaths from COVID-19 as a percentage of its nursing-home population than any other country in Europe, apart from Spain. A cross-party parliamentary report was more cutting: Sending patients into care homes without testing them for COVID-19 was an "appalling error" and an example of the government's "slow, inconsistent and at times negligent" approach to social care.
This tragedy is an example of Britain's systemic failures of governance, according to leading health experts and former cabinet ministers I spoke with, an indictment of the country's short-term, centralized government apparatus. Britain failed to foresee the dangers of such an extraordinary rush to create hospital capacity, a shift that was necessary only because of years of underfunding and decades of missed opportunities to bridge the divide between the NHS and retirement homes, which other countries, such as Germany, had found the political will to do.
Ultimately, the scandal is a consequence of a political culture that has proved unable to confront and address long-term problems, even when they are well known. The NHS remains the pride of the country, but it is kept separate from the largely private social-care sector. In 1948, this made sense, when child mortality and diseases such as tuberculosis were the chief health concerns, and life expectancy stood at 66 for men and 70 for women (today it is 80 and 84, respectively). When the pandemic gripped Britain, these two systems came into conflict. The NHS was protected and given priority, leaving care homes in the lurch.
Britain is far from unique in seeing the disease rip through its care homes. Yet this should not distract us from the reality that, just as other political leaders made better choices than Johnson did, other health systems, such as Germany's, which is better funded and decentralized, performed better than Britain's. Those I spoke with who either are in Germany or know about Germany's success told me there was an element of luck about the disparity with Britain. Germany had a greater industrial base to produce medical testing and personal protective equipment, and those who returned to Germany with the virus from abroad were often younger and healthier, meaning the initial strain on its health system was less.
However, this overlooks core structural issues—resulting from political choices in each country—that meant that Germany proved more resilient when the crisis came, whether because of the funding formula for its health system, which allows individuals more latitude to top up their coverage with private contributions, or its decentralized nature, which meant that separate regions and hospitals were better able to respond to local outbreaks and build their own testing network. Also unlike Britain, which has ducked the problem of reforming elderly care, Germany created a system in 1995 that everyone pays into, avoids catastrophic costs, and has cross-party support. The reforms, although far from perfect, have provided the "foundations for a system that has been able to adapt and respond to changing circumstances," according to the British health think tank the Nuffield Trust—exactly what has not happened in Britain.
A second, related revelation of the crisis—which also exposed the failure of the British state—is that underneath the apparent simplicity of the NHS's single national model lies an engine of bewildering complexity, whose lines of responsibility, control, and accountability are unintelligible to voters and even to most politicians. In a number of conversations for this piece, the NHS's byzantine nature was likened to the spiderweb of regulatory bodies tasked with monitoring Britain's financial sector in the run-up to the 2008 crisis. That system was hailed as world leading but failed when called upon, and much of the regulatory burden has since been centralized.
Britain, I was told, has found a way to be simultaneously overcentralized and weak at its center. The pandemic revealed the British state's inability to manage the nation's health: to create a funding model that does not solely promote efficiency, to rise above short-term problems and tackle the problem of old-age care, and to mend the broken system of accountability that runs through so much of British public life. Throughout the NHS's existence, British governments, both Conservative and Labour, have found the political will to tinker with it, but rarely to tackle its long-term challenges, fearful of losing votes. The NHS did not fail, but the system overall did—and people died as a result.
(Justin Setterfield / Getty)
Britain's unwillingness to address systemic problems is not confined to health care. Since at least the 1970s, growing inequality between comparatively rich southeast England (including London) and the rest of the country has spurred all parties to pledge to "rebalance the economy" and make it less reliant on the capital. Yet large parts remain poorer than the European average. According to official EU figures, Britain has five regions with a per capita gross domestic product of less than $25,000. France, Germany, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden have none. If Britain were part of the United States, it would be anywhere from the third- to the eighth-poorest state, depending on the measure.
Britain's performance in this crisis has been so bad, it is damaging the country's reputation, both at home and abroad. According to one senior British official, who has decades of experience and who does not serve Johnson, there was a sense of shock internationally that Britain had so obviously fallen short, a feeling echoed along the corridors of power in Westminster. Inside Downing Street, officials believe that the lessons of the pandemic apply far beyond the immediate confines of elderly care and coronavirus testing, taking in Britain's long-term economic failures and general governance, as well as what they regard as its ineffective foreign policy and diplomacy.
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The reaction in Downing Street is a reminder that the Johnson program is revolutionary in instinct, aspiring to do far more than tinker, and Reaganite in its desire to overturn the status quo and usher in a new political zeitgeist that is more assertive on the world stage and more dynamic at home. Whether one believes the government or its self-perception does not change its intention to be transformative. One Johnson adviser told me the government would be remembered for "restructuring the British state."
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The trouble for the prime minister is that although the pandemic might reinforce the belief that Britain's problems are deep and structural, his handling of it may serve to undermine the country's consent for him to pursue the kind of program he says is necessary. And the scale of the task itself is enormous. "We need a complete revamp of our government structure because it's not fit for purpose anymore," Boyd told me. "I just don't know if we really understand our weakness."
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In practice, does Johnson have the confidence to match his diagnosis of Britain's ills, given the timidity of his approach during the pandemic? The nagging worry among even Johnson's supporters in Parliament is that although he may campaign as a Ronald Reagan, he might govern as a Silvio Berlusconi, failing to solve the structural problems he has identified. As Blair and others pointed out to me, it is not just in the big calls that Johnson, his scientific advisers, and the system have been found wanting, but in day-to-day governance as well: the ability to get children back to school, open restaurants, protect the economy, and roll out a working contact-tracing system. The prime minister indicated the kind of big-thinking optimism that he believes is necessary with a recent speech detailing his plans to bring Britain out of its pandemic slump with a Rooseveltian New Deal. Yet what did it amount to? Little more than a mishmash of existing projects—a speech and a plan that seemed to confirm Johnson's own critique about the country's systemic failure to think big and act boldly.
Britain is, of course, not alone in being beset by structural problems, failures of governance, and periodic crises. France, Italy, Spain, and the EU as a whole have obvious and lasting dilemmas that have not been addressed. And the United States is divided by racism and inequity. Britain's international reputation may also dramatically shift if it discovers and shares a working vaccine while avoiding the worst of a second wave. This is not a story of pessimistic fatalism, of inevitable decline. Britain was able to partially reverse a previous slump in the 1980s, and Germany, seen as a European laggard in the '90s, is now the West's obvious success story. One of the strengths of the Westminster parliamentary system is that it occasionally produces governments—like Johnson's—with real power to effect change, should they try to enact it.
But just because other countries screw things up does not mean Britain's problems aren't real and serious, and just because the country has recovered in the past does not mean it will again. It has been overtaken by many of its rivals, whether in terms of health provision or economic resilience, but does not seem to realize it. And once the pandemic passes, the problems Britain faces will remain: how to sustain institutions so that they bind the country together, not pull it apart; how to remain prosperous in the 21st century's globalized economy; how to promote its interests and values; how to pay for the ever-increasing costs of an aging population.
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If Britain is to solve them, it needs to up its game or be left behind; to realize it is no longer "world leading" in as many fields as it thinks, and that its problems run far deeper than whichever crop of politicians is in charge. "The really important question," Boyd said, "is whether the state, in its current form, is structurally capable of delivering on the big-picture items that are coming, whether pandemics or climate change or anything else."
Britain was sick before the crisis hit. If it is to survive the next one intact, it has to address its underlying health conditions.


A slightly different view of Machir Bay, looking towards Coull Farm from behind the dunes at the southern end of the bay. Taken on a sunny but breezy April day on Islay.
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