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Holly McDede
Predicting earthquakes, from 14-year-old prophets to train-stopping ShakeAlerts to lessons from disaster flicks
Erica Hanna
Earlier today, I called my mother, a natural disaster film junkie, and asked her, "Do you know of any movies where someone predicts natural disasters, but no one believes the guy, and so everything goes a little haywire?"
"10.5, Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Volcano, Deep Impact, and Knowing," she replied without any hesitation. "But in Knowing the protagonist gets help from aliens to predict disasters, so I don't know if that's bordering on fiction."
Despite the hundreds of natural disaster blockbusters warning the public to listen when someone predicts catastrophe, earthquake prediction technology can't defeat the rules of physics and the unpredictable nature of shaking earth. When a 14-year-old from Florida claims he predicted the recent Napa earthquake, for instance, doubts are raised, heads were tilted, and facts must be checked at once.
"I started jumping up and down when I heard about the earthquake," high school student Sugganth Kannan told us.
Kannan was sad about the destruction, sure, but he also thought the earthquake's timing, location, and magnitude validated his prediction that an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 5.0 would occur 50 miles from the South Napa location within 180 days from last December when he made the prediction. So, he was close, but off by a few months.
To make his prediction, Kannan used the Spatial Connect Theory, which states that all earthquakes within a fault zone are related. Then, looking at past earthquakes, he made functions based on the angle of change, geographical difference, and the time between earthquakes to eventually come up with a pattern. His work has been published in the Journal of Geology & Geosciences.
Of course, earthquakes in California are both as no-kidding-predictable as they are scientifically unpredictable. According to the US Geological Survey, which cites studies examining the past 14,000 years, catastrophic earthquakes strike along the southern San Andreas fault about once every 150 years. And if you don't believe the US Geological Survey, there's always Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has stated, "There's a real likelihood of a major, major earthquake in the next 10, 15, 20 years." We're seismically active, and we know it.
While 14-year-old Kannan and the lieutenant governor might want futures as earthquake prophets, Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, is just happy he can predict earthquakes within 10 seconds of their first furious rumble. He helped pioneer an early warning system called ShakeAlerts that's currently got 150 subscribers and does just that.
Now there's an idea for a natural disaster movie: Nicholas Cage predicts an earthquake a whopping 10 seconds before the disaster happens, causing BART trains to automatically come to dramatic, adrenaline-rushing halt, saving thousands of lives! It might not be fodder for disaster movies, but it is good news for actual and real world of real and actual earthquakes.
BART is one of Shake Alert's users. When the Napa earthquake went off, an alarm went off at BART's offices announcing an approaching earthquake. Spokesperson John McPartland explained at a press conference on Monday that the trains moving at 33 MPH or less would have stopped had they experienced a a 3.1 earthquake or higher. But in the Bay Area, the magnitude was much smaller, and the trains raced on, unknowing.
"If there's an earthquake, and you're on BART, the best thing you can ask for is for the train to stop," said Allen. You can check out a video for CISN ShakeAlert here. In the video, you can hear buzzing, and then a somewhat intense robotic voice telling you, "Earthquake! Earthquake! Light shaking expected in 10 seconds. Earthquake!"
"The farther away from the earthquake, the sooner you'll get the alert," Allen told the Guardian. "In the best case scenario — as in, the worst case scenario earthquake — you'll get up to a minute warning. For this one, BART got 10 seconds. There's no way to improve that. It's physics."
He hopes to get more funding to bring ShakeAlert to more people, and to one day develop a mobile app so anyone can be alerted seconds before an earthquake occurs. Ten seconds might not sound like a lot of time, but for those knitting with dangerous needles, or cooking with sharp knives, or just generally doing things not conducive to huge earthquakes with large, pointy things, 10 seconds could mean a whole lot. Although California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law to turn Shake Alert into a statewide program last fall, the project has only received $10 million of the $80 million it needs for new sensors and infrastructure.
Then there's virtual reality. Michael Oskin, a professor of earth and planetary sciences who studies earthquakes and seismicity at UC Davis, has taken his students to the site of the Napa earthquake to take photographs of the destruction and use the photographs to build 3D models to help them understand the wrath of the quake and what could come next. At UC Davis' W. M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES), researchers get to experience earthquakes virtually and take heed.
Much of Oskin's work with virtual reality assimilation revolves around looking at earthquakes before and after they've occurred, examining the fault lines throughout these phases, and studying how the faults have moved afterwards.
"If you want to understand the record of faulting, you look at earthquakes that have just happened to see how complicated they are and how they've changed. Then you get a better sense of how to interpret them," Oskin said. From there, he can also create a virtual world to provide a visual of what could happen to houses built along fault lines.
"Hopefully in 20 years, the tools will be available for everyone to use – on laptops and 3D TV screens so you can visualize an earthquake on a screen in 3D," Oskin said. "It's not high end software. It's just creative programming."
If earthquake forecasting apps for all is the dream, we're certainly getting closer. John Rundle, a UC Davis physics professor, co-launched OpenHazards.com, which produces earthquake forecasts and a mobile app.
"What we do is we count smaller earthquakes to forecast bigger earthquakes," Rundle explained. "Once a magnitude 6 earthquake occurs, like the one in Napa, we start counting the number of small earthquakes that occur in the region after that. Once we get 1000 earthquakes with a magnitude of 5, it's time for another 6 to occur. We convert that statement into a probability around the world, every night, and display it on the website."
Rundle said his system has a 80-85 percent accuracy rate. "If you were to make a whole bunch of random forecasts today, and you were to do that tomorrow and the next day and then compare the forecasts we use, Open Hazard would be better 80-85 percent of the time," he explained. "That's roughly equivalent to a weather forecast three or four days into the future. That's where our accuracy is."
Back in 2012, an Italian judge convicted seven scientific experts of manslaughter and sentenced them to six years in prison for failing to give warning before the April 2009 earthquake that killed over 300 people. But that's why earthquake forecasting is called forecasting, and not predicting. Fortune tellers may not be trusted, but you can't kill the weatherman, especially over quakes.
The school principal who raps
Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
Picture your former principal in a rap video. Oh, mama. It hurts, psychologically and emotionally, doesn't it? That's because, following the guidelines set by many mainstream rap videos, said principal is probably wearing a gold necklace the size of a newborn baby, performing a circus act of smoking weed, simultaneously taking a bubble bath with scantily clad women while also, somehow, driving a flashy red Jaguar.
OK, that's an exaggeration. Not all rap videos are like that. But Rappers Ain't Sayin' Nothin' is indeed a far cry from the norm. The music video features Academy of Arts and Sciences Assistant Principal Joe Truss, proving that it's possible for school principals to be in touch, talented — maybe even hip.
With two of his former Lowell High School classmates, Carlos Teasdale and Daniel Velarde, Truss formed rap group Some of All Parts back in 2007. Now, when kids are sent out of class and walk into his office, he plays his rap for them. "And they'll be like, 'Is that you rapping?'" Truss laughed. "We'll talk for fifteen or twenty minutes about rap, and then I'll be like, 'So. Why did you get kicked out of class? How can we get you back in?'"
His attempts to connect with students through music follows recent outcry over the number of students facing suspensions at the SFUSD. This past February, the Board of Education voted unanimously to shift their policy of suspension for "willful defiance" to a new system featuring restorative practice, positive behavior intervention, and support for teachers over a three year span. All that might sound like throwing happy, feel-good keywords into the air and seeing what happens, but according to recent reports, suspensions really are decreasing throughout the SFUSD.
"There's too many African American students failing and getting pushed out of schools," Truss said. "Now teachers are talking about it a lot more. Principals are talking about it and saying, 'How do we get kids to stay in class? Maybe they're tired of these old books. Maybe they want to read books written 5 years ago by someone who looks like them. We're much more understanding of where kids come from and where they want to go."
In the video for 'Rappers Ain't Sayin Nothin', a wannabe rapper throws his corn row wig off his head, his leather jacket on the ground, and realizes that the messages in many rap songs are idiotic. Some of Truss' students at the Academy appear in the video, doing the Bernie Lean together in harmony.
Most of Some of all Parts' songs are heartwarming like that. 'On the Block' talks about growing up in the Tenderloin and in the Fillmore. It's also about heartbreak, relationships, and…everything. "We wrote a song about Oscar Grant and police brutality. We have a song about working out, because that's what we do," Truss said. "We have a song about riding bikes, song about going green, the environment, and the economy. If it's a social issue, it comes up in our songs."
Truss recently got funding at the Academy for a music studio, including sweet mixers, mics, and editing software. He plans on teaching kids how to rap.
Students can connect to that. And, on the whole, it seems like there's less of a disconnect between students and staff in the SFUSD.
A recent report by the San Francisco Board of Education revealed that student suspensions had decreased significantly, from 2,311 in 2011 to to 1,177 in 2012. African American and Latino student suspensions decreased by 50 percent that same year. These decreases even occurred before schools officially removed "willful defiance" as a reason to suspend students in San Francisco, under the new Safe and Supportive School Policy set to kick in this fall.
Who knows? Maybe some of the rowdy students are even being deferred to Assistant Principal Joe Truss, where making beats, writing rhymes, and becoming rap stars might just be the new meaning of getting sent to the principal's office.
On September 12th, Some of All Parts will be performing in Hip Hop for Change's "Fire from the Underground!" show in San Francisco's Elbo Room. Allegedly, it'll be fat, or is it phat? Ask Principal Truss. Check out more of Some of All Parts music here.
Citizens United measure challenged — does it matter what Californians think about corporate personhood?
Sasha Cuttler
Recently, the California Legislature approved a nonbinding question that would allow California voters to show their thoughts – mainly, their disdain – for the 2010 US Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that allowed corporations to make unlimited campaign contributions.
But on Tuesday, opponents filed a lawsuit seeking to remove the question from the November ballot. They say the ballot should be reserved for laws, not the measurement of non-binding feelings. Meanwhile, advocates say putting the question on the ballot provides California voters with the very voice often quieted and underfunded compared to the corporations that the court decision empowered.
The advisory measure, which would appear as Proposition 49, is threatened by a lawsuit filed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an advocacy group for taxpayers' rights. Gov. Jerry Brown isn't a massive cheerleader for the advisory measure, either. He opted not to sign it, pointing out that the Legislature had already approved a resolution asking Congress to convene a constitutional convention to overturn the decision.
He added that the state should not "make it a habit to clutter our ballots with non-binding measures as citizens rightfully assume that their votes are meant to have legal effect." The HJTA claim the measure is an attempt to increase voter participation in a a mostly mundane statewide election.
"It is very disappointing that the majority in the Legislature views the elections process as their personal plaything," HJTA President Jon Coupal wrote in a biting statement.
Similarly, the Sacramento Bee wrote that the proposed ballot measure is "designed to lure more Democrats to the polls when legislators are trying to keep their seats."
But the initiative's supporters argue that it's important to bring voters to the polls because citizens could use more of a voice. This argument is not so different than those who think political protests matter because they help voice public opposition and attract political attention. This measure just has a more legislative flavor than the typical street protest, and involves more taxpayers' cash. But according to Michael Sutter, volunteer organizer for The Money Out Voters In Coalition, it would only cost voters two pennies at most.
"This is one of those issues where Californians know that this is wrong, want to do something about it, and feel that this is a very good way to have the national conversational in an unavoidable way," Sutter said. "We can make big noise here in California."
Since the Citizens United decision, cities around California have found comfort in voicing their disapproval through non-binding resolutions at the local level. In 2010, Richmond voted unanimously to support a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood, and two years later, San Franciscans followed suite, passing Proposition G with 81 percent of the vote.
Yet the Citizens United decision still stands, and the usefulness of such non-binding resolutions remains to be seen.
John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech for the People, launched a national campaign opposing Citizens United right after the decision was made. Since then, 11 states have passed some kind of resolution announcing their support for overturning Citizens United.
"It was not a waste to have Montana voters vote on this kind of measure in 2012, nor to have Colorado voters vote on this measure in 2012," Bonifaz told the Guardian. "This is a critically important measure for the future of our democracy. Are we going to become a nation where only the big money interests and corporations are able to be heard, or are we in fact going to reclaim a basic fundamental promise of government by and for the people?"
Non-binding measures rarely make an appearance on the California ballot. According to Sutter, the last time to come close was in 2007 when the State Senate passed a non-binding ballot measure asking voters if they supported withdrawal of troops in Iraq. "We only use these kinds of measures when national policy is directly at odds with the will of the California people," Sutter said.
The Iraq ballot measure was promptly vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Critics condemned its usefulness; after all, how could California opposition bring the troops home? And now, how can opposition in California to outrageous campaign contribution help level the political playing field?
The truth is that maybe it won't.
"By allowing SB 1272 to become law without my signature, it is my intention to signal that I am not inclined to repeat this practice of seeking advisory opinions from the voters," Brown stated.
But Sutter thinks his attitude is the problem, and that maybe political figures should consider seeking voter feedback more often. "Jerry Brown has a problem with the concept of the people advising their representatives, and that's an attitude I have a problem with," she said.
Prop. 49 might not change the Citizens United Decision, but — if it survives the lawsuit — it will make it apparent that a whole lot of California voters want the court decision overturned. The question is whether or not those in power care what people think.
Last chapters?
The tale of the threatened independent bookstore, quivering under the might of Amazon, is nothing new.
It's only been two months since Marcus Books was evicted from its Fillmore District location. Both Adobe and Forest bookstores fled the Mission's 16thh Street last year. But ebook sales growth is shrinking, and sales for many of San Francisco bookstores are up.
Instead, the tale of the struggling indie bookstore has become less about Amazon and more about a different monster: gentrification. San Francisco's rising rents, demand for commercial space by deep-pocketed chains, and lack of commercial rent control are putting the squeeze on the city's remaining bookstores.
Take Bibliohead, for instance. Its owner has recently been forced to relocate in spite of her bookstore's success. Bibliohead is an easily navigable, highly curated, and tiny book jungle — more like a carefully manicured garden, really. The whole store can be explored in minutes, and there's a gumball machine that dispenses poetry out in front once the book-happy are satisfied.
Its size has served it well. Sales at Bibliohead — Hayes Valley's only bookstore — have risen solidly 7 percent each year since the store opened 10 years ago.
"We're small, but mighty," Melissa Richmond, Bibliohead's owner, told the Guardian. "Although recently we haven't been feeling so mighty. I'm kind of a wreck."
In May, Richmond learned that she has until January 2015 to leave her store for four months while her building undergoes mandatory earthquake retrofitting. The landlord will double Richmond's rent after the retrofitting, and has asked Richmond to pay for further renovations to the building when she returns.
"It's off the table that I can stay here," Richmond said. "I will not be offered a new lease. I don't hate landlords, but I want a landlord who will contribute to the spirit and creativity of San Francisco."
On June 22, Richmond launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the $60,000 she'll need to move and attract new customers. So far, with a little less than a month to go, she's raised almost $3,000.
"What really breaks my heart is when a new customer walks in," Richmond said. "They ask you how you're doing after they've fallen in love with the place a little bit. Then you have to break their hearts by saying you don't know what's in store for your future right now."
DISPLACEMENT TREND
Richmond is not the only bookseller in San Francisco forced to relocate. Last year, Adobe Books and Forest Books were forced out of 16th Street within three months of each other when their rents increased. Forest Books slipped quietly off to Japantown, and has since experienced an increase in sales. Adobe Books' anticipated closure was met with an invigorating Kickstarter campaign that raised $60,000. It was enough to keep the store alive, but not on gentrifying 16th Street.
Nowadays, Adobe is re-branded as Adobe Books and Art Cooperative at its 24th Street location. The original Adobe's charming, lackadaisical, and no- structured structure has been traded for alphabetized and carefully curated books. There are only two staff members, and its used books are selling far faster than in the old location, despite its shrunken size.
"It's strange. A lot of the times I was not sure if it would work at all, and now here we are in this shop," Brett Lockspeiser, a member of the Adobe Books and Art Cooperative, told us. "Things are running differently, but it's still Adobe."
Adobe will soon be celebrating its first anniversary in the new spot. The store might not be making any profits, according to Lockspeiser, but the cause for celebration is that it's survived.
There has been discussion among the collective members about whether or not Adobe should try to sell eReading devices, like Green Apple Books has done without much success for almost two years with the Kobo eReader. Adobe's collective voted against Kobo, preferring not to use the same weapons as its competitor.
"I'm pretty technology positive, but I think some people in the group thought it was an 'us or them' kind of thing," said Lockspeiser. "Like either you're a book reader or you're a techie who reads on a Kindle."
Besides, it seems that ebooks' incredible growth rate has finally simmered down. According to the Association of American Publishers, ebooks accounted for 27 percent of all adult trade sales in 2013. While that was up from 23 percent in 2012, it marked the first year ebook growth was down to the single digits. In January, a Pew study reported that among adults who read at least one book in the past year, just 5 percent said they read only an ebook.
Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, reports that book sales throughout San Francisco bookstores have increased overall in the past two years. Green Apple Books, an expanding bookstore with an growing collection of books and records, is even poised to open another location in the Sunset below beloved video rental store Le Video on Aug. 1.
Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, said he recently got a call from Bibliohead's owner asking for advice on potential neighborhoods and techniques for negotiating with landlords. But he can't always explain his own store's success.
"Some of it is just the economy. All that money floating around South of Market is maybe trickling over here," he told us. "Or maybe the waiters are getting better tips. I don't know what it is, but things have been better for us."
The growth of bookstore sales, Landon said, is mainly because Barnes & Noble has been cast out of San Francisco. Last year, Barnes & Noble, the nation's largest bookstore chain, reported that its revenue decreased by 8 percent in the final quarter. The company's Nook division, meanwhile, slid down 32 percent.
Yet Joe Marchione, who owns Mission Street's Valhalla Books, still places the blame for his diminishing foot traffic on Amazon, which has made his hard-to-find books pretty easy to locate online. In 1998, when his store opened, 90 percent of Valhalla's business came from people browsing through his odd and unique assortment of rare and used books. Now, 95 percent of his business is online.
"People forgot the joy of browsing," Marchione told us.
As soon as his landlord makes him commit to a lease, he says he's going to have to leave the business. "When we first opened, we were smug. We said there was no way trendy was ever going to come to Mission between 17th and 18th [streets]. Get real!" he said. "But trendy creeps in closer by the week. There's no problem with that, except it's forcing us out."
"TRENDY CREEPS IN"
It's even forcing successful booksellers, like Bibliohead's owner, to worry. Her faith in the printed word remains strong. "I find that there's a whole core of people who are relieved to feel something in their hands, to flip the pages of really cool, beautiful books and kind of remember with their bodies what reading is like," Richmond said.
When Kate Rosenberger opened a fourth bookstore in 2011 — Alleycat Books on 24th Street — many questioned her sanity, the owner said. The store has only recently been able to pay its own bills, having been relying on Rosenberger's other store, Dog Eared Books, for survival. But the rent at Dog Eared Books is set to increase, and that means trouble.
"You can talk about e-readers, and people being distracted. You can talk about people slipping out since the Gutenberg press was invented, and all that's true, sure," Rosenberger told us. "But when you get hit with a huge increase in your rent, how do you deal with that? When the lease is up, you can pretty much figure you're gone."
These days, you deal with it by setting up a crowdsourcing campaign, and crossing your fingers that people with money like you. Or maybe you transform into an art cooperative. Or you just go somewhere else. But Richmond doesn't want to leave San Francisco.
"I would like to preserve the culture of the city," Richmond said. "I still think there's something really special here."
Barnes & Noble might be gone, ebook sales might have stabilized, and the printed word might just still be alive — but for San Francisco's booksellers, that no longer means anyone in the book business is safe.
SF bankers now exporting tenant-displacing TIC loans
Fractional mortgage loans used to convert apartments into owner-occupied tenancies-in-common have fed the eviction and displacement crisis in San Francisco, where the median home price just surpassed $1 million for the first time. Now, some of the same San Francisco banks that pioneered fractional loans here have started offered them in the East Bay and on the Peninsula.
TIC housing is an ownership model for multi-unit buildings, where each unit is independently owned. This option appeals to would-be homeowners because it's cheaper than a condominium, but less fraught than a traditional loan shared by various owners in a TIC building, which does not allow for independent ownership of each unit.
TICs local have grown in popularity in San Francisco as housing prices continue to skyrocket, since they help homeowners find something affordable, although that benefit usually comes at the cost of evicting all the tenants in the building, often including seniors, those with disabilities, and low-income people in rent-controlled units.
Previously, fractional TIC loans were only accessible in SF. Now, as people seek affordable housing outside of expensive San Francisco, the demand for fractional TIC loans has grown. And San Francisco bankers have stepped up to meet that demand, according to a recent article in the San Francisco Business Times ("High-priced SF housing market exports fractional tenants-in-common loans," June 28).
Sterling Bank & Trust has become well-known for providing fractional TIC loans (more than $480 million worth so far, according to the Business Times), and is the first company to offer the loans outside of San Francisco. "We're helping the firefighter and school teacher, or what I like to call the 'non-tech' buyer, purchase a home," Stephen Adams, senior vice president of Sterling Bank & Trust, told the Business Times.
Adams is also president of the San Francisco Small Business Commission, presiding over what critics say is a shift in that commission toward rubber-stamping initiatives from the Mayor's Office rather than defending small business interests. When we contacted Adams to ask about the evictions and displacement caused by fractional loans, he told he had "no comment to make at this time."
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, the director of counseling programs at the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said that he doesn't know how the TIC loans might affect those in the East Bay. But he does know they're bad news for San Francisco, where there's now a 10-year moratorium on new condo conversions but few controls on the creation of new TICs.
"They're scary," Avicolli Mecca told us. "It's a disaster for San Francisco. Basically, if you're buying a tenancy in common, you don't need to condo convert. It used to be that you wanted a condo conversion so you could have a separate mortgage on what you own. With a fractional loan, you have your own mortgage from the start."
He added that the loans make it easier for sellers to convert buildings into any size that they can market to home buyers. With the loans, combined with the state Ellis Act allowing owners to remove apartments from the rental market, evicting tenants becomes even more profitable.
The Bank of San Francisco confirmed that it also offers TIC loans in the East Bay. The bank will be making them more attractive with interest-only payments, fractional financing for buildings with more than 12 units, and loans up to $2 million.
Dylan Desai, a spokesman for the Bank of San Francisco, told us that the bankers "do not extend financing to buildings where there has been an eviction" and, to their knowledge, they never have. "We're sensitive to tenant rights."
Hopefully the other banks offering these loans will be just as sensitive as they branch out into communities in the region that have already been absorbing an influx of working class former San Franciscans.
Security officers target Apple over contractor's unfair labor practices
Next time you head to your neighborhood Apple store to get that smooth and harmonious feel that can only comes with the gentle touch of an iPad air, you might be greeted by an unhappy security officer picketing outside. The officer might share some choice words about the working conditions at Apple's security guard contractor, Security Industry Specialists.
Over the next few weeks, the SEIU United Service Workers West has organized a series of actions with security guards to demand Apple choose a more responsible security contractor.
Currently, Apple, Google, and Ebay all have contracts with SIS, a firm the SEIU claims has unfairly terminated employees and surveiled union meetings. The SIS denies these allegations, devoting an entire page on its website to confronting what it's termed "SEIU lies and distortion."
"The contrast between Apple's boom times and worker's decrease in wages is incredibly startling," said Alfredo Fletes, communications specialist for SEIU. "You would think that a company that has benefited so much from what Silicon Valley has to offer would support the jobs for workers – not just in their engineering department, but at all levels."
Since the launch of the iPod in 2007 to 2012, Apple saw a 600 percent growth in its stock. Meanwhile, from 2008 to 2012, average worker wages in Santa Clara County dropped by 3 percent. On average, Silicon Valley's security officers make $15 an hour through SIS.
But the actions SEIU has organized aren't just about wages, nor are they just about Apple. Walter Redding, for instance, was one security officer working for SIS through Google. He'll be attending some of the actions, because he's angry. He was fired for taking a phone call from his girlfriend while she was in labor.
"I thought I was doing great," Redding said. "But I got screwed. I only got two checks since I got fired. It's been almost a year. My friends got fired for things, too. Everybody gets treated unfairly. I love the products. I'd buy them everyday. But when it comes to working for Google or Apple, I don't know about that."
Bryce Miller-Williams, an organizer for SEIU's Stand for Security campaign, says that the SIS is harsh everywhere, but Apple is where security officers really don't want to work.
"There's a very militaristic atmosphere there," he said. "One gentleman sat down to tie his shoe. Guards are supposed to be standing at all times, and so he was let go because of that."
Although Apple doesn't employ the security guards directly, Fletes said the tech company still has the power to select a better security guard contractor. To him, changes at Foxconn, one of Apple's largest suppliers, offers proof. When labor activists launched an outcry following a series of suicides at Foxconn, Apple stepped in. According to a report from the Fair Labor Association last December, working conditions at Foxconn have since steadily improved.
"I don't think it's too much of a stretch to ask Apple to look into workplace issues for security officers in the Bay Area," Fletes said. "Or, at the very least for them to meet with security officers who, despite working for one of the most valuable companies in the world, are still struggling to survive."
Apple does at least give the appearance of wanting to do good. The Cupertino company requires its suppliers meet a "code of conduct" and issues a Supplier Responsibility report to document its progress each year. This past December, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about his company's code of conduct in a video message sent in a company-wide email urging employees to behave like good, righteous Apple employees.
"As Dr. Martin Luther King once said, the time is always right to do what's right," Cook proclaimed. "At Apple, we do the right thing. Even when it's not easy. If you see something that doesn't meet our standards, speak up. Whether it's a quality issue or a business practice, if it affects Apple's integrity, we need to know about it."
Fletes said that when SEIU members protested outside an Apple shareholder meeting last February, Cook said he would look into job quality issues. The allegations of unfair treatment by SIS' security officers have since continued. Apple did not respond to the Guardian's requests for comment.
The actions will continue throughout the Bay Area throughout the summer, ending in San Francisco on August 28th.
San Jose cracks down on pot clubs after eschewing SF's regulatory approach
San Jose's current (and harsh) crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries contrasts with San Francisco's decade-old (and still working well) regulations.
Over the last five years, cannabis club after cannabis club sprouted throughout San Jose while the city's local government debated, wavered, and faltered over the best way to regulate their pot clubs. But last month, San Jose City Council members, citing an abundance of pot clubs as the cause of a surge of marijuana use in schools, got tough. They voted to enact regulations that would make it too costly for more than 70 of their pot clubs in the city to operate. Only about 10 would survive.
Meanwhile, San Francisco pot clubs rest easy, undisturbed, and untouched — at least by the San Francisco officials who pioneered regulations in the city early on. In fact, the city's Planning Department has recently recommended expanding the so-called Green Zone where dispensaries are allowed to operate by allowing dispensaries closer to schools.
As it stands, getting a permit to open a dispensary in San Francisco is no easy task. San Francisco regulations mean dispensaries are limited to less than 10 percent of all of San Francisco.
"Because zoning is so limited, the biggest struggle is finding a location," Shona Gochenaur, director of Axis of Love SF Community Center, told the Guardian. "I've known collectives that have searched for over two years for a space correctly zoned. If you get through all those mindfields and to your Planning Commission hearing, it's smoother. Very few permits have been denied if they survive to that point."
But San Jose's proposed regulations take it a step farther: they would limit pot shops to industrial areas that make up roughly 1 percent of San Jose. Plus, under San Jose's proposal, San Jose's pot shop owners will have to grow their own cannabis and produce any topicals and edibles in house. For that, they'll need kitchens, labs, health inspections, and a host of costly equipment. Also unlike San Francisco, no concentrates will be allowed, causing many marijuana patients to suffer from lack of access to the medicine they need.
After San Jose approved the relegations, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to enact a temporary moratorium on the establishment of medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated Santa Clara County. David Hodges, a member of the Silicon Cannabis Coalition and owner of the All American Cannabis club, says he has until July 18 to put forth a referendum that would undo San Jose's vote.
"I want regulations that work," he said. "We want to remove the language that makes it impossible for dispensaries to operate and to keep everything else."
The problem, he said, is that San Jose hadn't enacted regulations soon enough. San Francisco was way ahead of them.
Gochenaur worked on some of San Francisco's early regulations, recognizing that the feds would step in if cannabis activists didn't act first.
"[The] San Francisco movement came with the AIDS crisis with city electeds that were both empathetic and personally affected by watching loved one's suffering, our ZIP code being hit the hardest," said Gochenaur ."We had the risk takers and the trail blazers willing to open their doors."
Risk taking for San Francisco included regulating dispensaries in ways the state has since failed to do. Since San Francisco began regulating dispensaries in 2004, anyone wanting to open up a dispensary in San Francisco has had to jump through a series of tough bureaucratic hoops while also garnering neighborhood support.
San Jose, instead, opted for the laissez faire approach, allowing their dispensaries to grow, and then regretting it later.
When San Jose attempted to enact similar regulations back in 2011, Hodges used a referendum to stop the council's plans. But, once he succeeded in defeating San Jose's proposal, no new regulations were proposed.
"The cannabis movement in San Jose is back at square one," Hodges wrote on his website after his referendum succeeded.
John Lee, director of the Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition, said his organization's biggest mistake was repealing, rather than revising, San Jose's proposal 3 years ago. "We just knew that we couldn't do with what they were proposing," he said. "We just wanted to stop their relegations. But we had no idea how to regulate this back then. Now we want to."
Having narrow relegations to begin with leaves San Francisco with room for revision later. For instance, Sup. John Avalos is working with the Planning Commission to help expand the Green Zone by bringing dispensaries 600 feet away from schools rather than 1,000 feet now. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Santa Clara Deputy County Executive Sylvia Gallegos has claimed before that San Jose's dispensaries, totalling over 90 at the time, caused a 106 percent increase in drug abuse-related suspensions of students in East San Jose schools in 2011-2012.
"I was smoking pot in high school before I even knew what a cannabis club was," Hodges said. "Keeping dispensaries away from schools won't stop that."
If Hodges referendum fails, he says he'll leave the cannabis industry for good.
"Right now, this could happen anywhere. There's no safe place," he said. "Save for Oakland – kind of. And San Francisco. But they have the territory well-covered in those areas. There's no need for me there."
San Francisco dispensaries may have local support, but without statewide regulations, they're not immune to federal crackdowns, either, as the closures of Vapor Room and HopeNet made clear back in 2012. For years, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano has been trying to create statewide regulatory framework for California to help limit the crackdowns. In May, his most recent bill to address statewide regulation failed to pass the Assembly Floor. Since then, Ammiano has backed a bill from Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) that would force dispensaries to obtain local approval prior to obtaining state approval.
David Goldman, a former member of the San Francisco Medical Marijuana Task Force, told us, "It's basically the only sensible approach towards state framework. The US Attorney is less likely to go after states with a strong structure. The tighter the regulations, the less the feds will go after dispensaries."
For now, cannabis owners in San Jose must focus on their own, local battle to save themselves. As for the San Francisco cannabis owners who've passed their bureaucratic tests and received their golden permits, business resumes as usual.
Workers' new website demands: Hey, Tech, do better
Can Silicon Valley tech companies "do better?" With the launch of a new website, the tech industry's security guards are coming forward with tales of inequality in Silicon Valley, and asking Google and other big tech companies to do just that.
Protesting security guards outside Google's IO conference last week used the annual developers' conference to demand tech companies pay them living wages — as well as to broadcast their new website, TechCanDoBetter.org.
"We're trying to change the conversation, because so much of the narrative is around tech and what good it's doing," said Alfredo Fletes, communications specialist for Service Employees International Union. "Our website is a safe space to learn more about workers who face the challenge of making it."
Fletes said a Google spokesperson recently agreed to meet with SEIU to address the security guards' concerns, but also mentioned this was the first the union heard from the spokesperson since last year.
Google hasn't yet addressed the issue head on. The tech giant's spokesperson wrote in press statement: "Thousands of Googlers call the Bay Area home, and we want to be good neighbors. Since 2011 we've given more than $70 million to local projects and employees have volunteered thousands of hours in the community. We're excited to be expanding that work in 2014 with the recent Bay Area Impact Challenge winners – several of them have even joined us at I/O!"
The spokesperson added, in reference to the protestors' Darth Vader-themed attire, "May the force be with them."
Google's Bay Area Impact Challenge means that Hack the Hood, Health Trust, Bring Me a Book, and Center for Employment Opportunities will all be receiving awards of $500,000 each. But donations aren't the same as fair pay: The average Silicon Valley Security guard, Fletes said, will be receiving $22,000 this year.
Charles Justin Wilson, a security guard in Silicon Valley, speaks out about pay equity at the Google I/O conference last week. Photo by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez.
In TechCanDoBetter.org's video game (aptly named Dream Crushers), users are invited to play the role of a struggling security guard. The gameplay forces the player to make tough budget choices. Maybe, for instance, you'd like your security guard to eat. Maybe you'd like him to pay his utility bills. But if you try to do all the basic necessities – transportation, food, utilities, child care – you lose.
"You're not meant to win. Security officers who played the game said it was frustrating," Fletes explained. "But they also said their lives were way more difficult."
It's not just about wages, either. "Look at at Apple and Google's security contractor record of harrassment, discrimination, and surveillance," Fletes said. Those are the kinds of stories security guards are invited to send to TechCanDoBetter.org. Workers can also fill in surveys on the website to help SEIU advocate for them, and sign up to receive text message alerts from SEIU.
Charles Justin Wilson, 31, moved from Chicago to Silicon Valley to build a life for himself. Now he's a security guard, and he spends his days "dealing with everything from giving someone directions to a [fighting a] knife-carrying nut job." He said he'd like to see Silicon Valley tech workers "even try to do" what he does. Like many security guards, he makes $12 an hour.
"Anyone who thinks you can survive on $12 in Silicon Valley is either out of touch, really stupid, or just plain evil," he said.
Google has been the center of a series of protests since January when San Francisco residents began blocking the company's buses. Google's profits rose 36.5 percent to $2.9 billion last fall. The average worker wages in Silicon Valley dropped 3 percent even as the cost of basic needs for a family of four in Silicon Valley rose by nearly 20 percent between 2008 and 2012.
"They're not doing a lot," Samuel Kehinde, another security guard, said outside Google's conference. "So, we are just asking them to pay attention to their home and to give back to their community. They cannot turn a blind eye on the community."
Maybe they can. Or, they could do better. For tech giants, there are options.
Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Pumping up awareness
Warning! This is just a friendly reminder that your petroleum habit is hurting us all.
Berkeley's Community Environmental Advisory Commission recently approved the concept of stickers to be placed on gas pump handles that warn drivers that greenhouse gases such as those emitted from automobile tailpipes contribute to global warming. If it makes sense to warn that cigarette smoking increases the likelihood of developing lung cancer, then hey, why not remind drivers that by using fossil fuels, they're increasing the planet's temperature and volatility.
The campaign is led by 350 Bay Area, a grassroots environmental organization affiliated with 350.org, a global climate movement. The name reflects its main goal: follow scientists' warnings to reduce the amount of C02 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm, a crucial threshold of climate instability.
While Berkeley has gained the most political traction for 350 Bay Area's "Beyond the Pump" campaign, 350 Bay Area is also working on getting San Francisco to adopt the gas pump stickers and other planet-saving tactics.
Since last year, advocates with 350 Bay Area worked in collaboration with Sup. John Avalos on a 10-Point Climate Action Work Plan that was officially adopted in April. This plan commits the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. The group has also been in contact with Avalos and his legislative aide Jeremy Pollack about sponsoring an ordinance to place the warning stickers on gas pumps in San Francisco.
"I think it's great. We need reminders about the impact of fossil fuels on an individual basis," Avalos told the Guardian. "We have choices, and this is a great way to build awareness of those choices."
Avalos said that his office has already started looking into the idea of putting stickers on gas pumps. Right now, he's still waiting on enough research to ensure the stickers can pass legal muster against any challenges by the petroleum industry.
"Hopefully it will work out. The City Attorney is looking into it, and we're waiting to see what happens with Berkeley," Pollack told the Guardian. "We tried something similar with warnings about cell phone radiations, but the court struck it down."
He's referring to the nearly three years of legal battles with the mobile phone industry group CTIA over a San Francisco law passed in 2011 that had required every store selling cell phones in the city to display the specific absorption rate of radiation expected from each phone model.
CTIA took San Francisco all the way to the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, saying the law interfered with their free speech rights. And, it won. Finally, last May, San Francisco gave in and killed the warning law. Those legal battles are not something San Francisco is likely to forget, no matter what environment-happy warning labels come along.
Yet the San Francisco public might not mind a gentle push. According to a recent poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 77 percent of San Franciscans think that residents should be doing more to address climate change. The stickers could serve as a gentle push in that direction, and though Avalos is confident his city will get stickers eventually, it looks like Berkeley residents will get their warnings first.
"We're not going to stop at Berkeley," Jack Lucero Fleck, 350 Bay Area Steering Committee member, told us. "Right now, there's no clues in gas stations that fossil fuels might be a problem. But advertising works. That's why corporations spend billions on it. The human mind can't ignore it."
The campaign — the only one in the country with political fraction — is parallel to a Toronto campaign called Our Horizon. But unlike the stark, graphic warnings in Canada, 350 Bay Area takes heed from failed attempts by the US Food and Drug Administration to pursue graphic cigarette warning labels.
Right now, thanks to tobacco advocates who've aggressively protected their free speech rights, warnings on US cigarette packaging are tame. But if you go to Canada for a smoke, you'll find packaging that reads, "This is what dying of lung cancer looks like," followed by the image of an emancipated, corpse-like body. The least graphic image is of a gentle crib, but even that's followed by information about the connection between smoking and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Berkeley could opt for similar, hardcore carbon emission warning graphics (picture it now: baby polar bears balancing on ice, fish washed up on shores, massive dust clouds about to drown villages), but 350 Bay Area is more mindful of the legal fallout that would likely follow.
Instead, the Berkeley warning sticker samplers are downright peppy. In hot pink, the sticker shouts, "Global warming alert!" followed by a pastel blue that informs drivers, with the gentle nudge of a concerned parent, "Burning gasoline emits C02. The City of Berkeley cares about global warming." Then there's a picture of a cute little car emitting a cloud of murky C02.
"We wanted the language to be careful and the facts noncontroversial," 350 Bay Area Campaign Manager Jamie Brooks told us. "We have to be as gentle as possible. It's tough love."
One sticker sampler reads, "The State of California has determined that global warming caused by C02 emissions poses a serious threat to the economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment of California."
You can't really argue with that, it's even enshrined in California law. Plus, the stickers aren't anywhere near the gruesome Canadian samples that show famine in deserts and unhappy kids suffering from smog-induced asthma.
Berkeley City Council member Kriss Worthington, who sponsored the council item in support of the stickers, said, "We made sure we had language that wasn't questionable and that it wasn't pre-emptive to state or federal law. The language in the stickers is language already law in the state of California."
Sure enough, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, adopted in 2006 as Assembly Bill 32, already states that emissions are harmful to humans and the environment.
Yet Western States Petroleum Association's President Catherine H. Reheis-Boyd isn't pleased. She issued what Brooks called a "love letter" to the advisory committee. Just as tobacco lobbyists argued that cigarette warnings are forced — and therefore not free — speech, Rheis-Boyd ignores the global warming debate and instead focuses on the US Constitution.
"Far less restrictive means exist to disseminate this information to the general public without imposing onerous restrictions on businesses and forcing unwanted speech in violation of the First Amendment," she wrote.
Reheis-Boyd goes on to appeal to Berkeley's history in the Free Speech Movement: "Perhaps no city in our nation has as rich a tradition in the exercise of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech as the City of Berkeley." She also accuses 350 Bay Area of advancing messages that are not "purely factual" but a "policy determination by the State of California."
This is true; the stickers do reflect policy determination from AB 32, which mandates the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that's why they're likely to stick.
Besides, the stickers will likely only appeal to global warning believers; they're meant to remind drivers that there are ways to curb their appetite for gas, such as by choosing public transit or other alternatives modes of transportation. The campaign's technical advisor, Dr. Kirk R. Smith, said, "The cigarette analogy isn't perfect, because gas is only one factor in climate change. But individual decisions are important."
The question is whether or not such peppy stickers can get drivers thinking about the implications of their transportation choices.
The campaign in Berkeley isn't done yet. After the Energy Commission votes in July, the sticker proposal will head to the Berkeley City Council in September. And from there, 350 Bay Area will see if those in San Francisco might like some friendly warning stickers on their gas pumps.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


How to wipe HD and do a fresh Lion install to sell laptop?
Discussion in 'Mac OS X Lion (10.7)' started by Gherkin, Aug 14, 2011.
I have a 2010 MBP that I am selling. ~3 weeks ago, I upgraded that machine to Lion.
Last week, I bought an iMac. I did the Migration Assistant thing and transferred everything from the MBP to the new iMac.
Now I want to wipe the HD on the MBP clean and put a fresh install of Lion so I can sell.
So, I restart the MBP, I hold down CMD+R during the boot up, I select Disk Utility, and I select my drive and click erase. I get an error that says "Couldn't unmount drive."
I was selecting "75.5 GB Hitachi" instead of "Macintosh HD." I guess you are essentially erasing your Home folder on the machine when you do this.
You have to put the OS the machine came with back on before you can sell it.


I feel a little like the night my dad brought home a brand new Firebird. I was 17 years old and my ride was an old 1972, Orange International Harvester Scout. As you can imagine, I couldn't wait to borrow the keys. However, Dad couldn't wait to show me what was under the hood. Well I don't have a new car to show you but I do have some new equipment in the HPE Storage Solutions lab for SAP HANA and when I looked under the hood I thought, I've got to show this to somebody!
First let me show you the new HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen10 server. The ProLiant DL servers I have in the lab are SAP HANA TDI certified Intel based x86 servers.
The server configuration I have in the lab includes four Intel Xeon 8180 processors supporting 112 cores. They have 3TB of RAM using forty-eight HPE 64 GB SmartMemory LRDIMMs. If you want more RAM, you can scale up to 6TB by installing HPE 128 GB LRDIMMs.
Each server is equipped with two SN1200E dual port 16GB Fibre Channel (FC) HBAs, two 530SFP+ dual port 10GB Network Adapters, and HPE Integrated Lights-Out 5. All of this provides multi-path IO support to two separate Fibre Channel switch fabrics, network redundancy, and full control remote network management.
That is a lot of IO horsepower under the hood. To get all of that into a 2U rack enclosure requires some serious design work. As you can see packing all of that in this server requires two layers of CPUs and memory stacked on top of each other.
To persist the SAP HANA database, I am using the new HPE MSA 2052 Storage all flash array. Now, you might be thinking, "Hold it. I though the MSA is an entry level array for small and medium businesses." Well…yes, and it is a great array for that environment; however, I can tell you, the HPE MSA 2052 Storage array is a very versatile storage array. And it is super-fast. So fast that is has been SAP HANA TDI certified to support up to 8 SAP HANA nodes.
The MSA 2052 has two active/active controllers each configured with a quad port multi-purpose Fibre Channel or iSCSI interfaces. The multi-purpose ports can be configured as all 8Gb/16Gb FC or all 1GbE/10GbE iSCSI, or a hybrid of 2 ports for FC and 2 ports for iSCSI. We use volume replication on the MSA to protect the SAP HANA database and that in conjunction with the FC/iSCSI combination is a great configuration for replicating volumes using iSCSI connectivity.
The MSA array enclosure supports 24 Small Form Factor (SFF) Solid State Drives (SSD) delivering to hosts over 200,000 IOPs. The configuration in the lab consists of 24 1.6TB SSDs and is configured with all 8 FC ports connected to two separate storage switch fabrics for redundancy. To support the HPE ProLiant DL 560 Gen10 servers with 6TB of RAM you should consider using the 3.2TB SSDs.
The HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen10 server and HPE MSA 2052 Storage array combination is a great choice for teams looking for a fast and space savvy solution for SAP HANA TDI. The 2U footprint of both devices creates an economical and efficient configuration of 12 DL560 server nodes and 4 MSA arrays in a single rack. That is 72TB of SAP HANA 6TB Scale Out nodes in a single rack.
So there you have it. A quick look under the hood of the HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen10 and HPE MSA 2052 Storage array working in the HPE Storage Solutions lab for SAP HANA.
In future posts, look for more moments under the hood from the HPE Storage Solutions lab as I share configurations, reference architectures, protection practices, and new discoveries as we work on storage solutions for SAP HANA.
HPE Storage Solutions Engineer specializing in servers, storage, infrastructure design, solution architecture and implementation.
Comparing your new equipment to a Firebird, interesting comparison. Good article, nice picture of you.
Thanks Wayne! I've always like looking under the hood of cars and with the new equipment coming into the Storage Solutions Lab, I can't wait to show what's under the hood. The newest system that just rolled into the lab is a Superdome Flex!
Thanks @FannyO - will pass that on to Rheid! (Sorry for not posting your comment sooner - I missed it).


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One Tree Hill is a town on the outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia. It is located in the City of Playford.

History
The town takes its name from the 'One Tree Hill Inn' (licensed in 1851), for many years the meeting place of the District Council of Munno Para East. The inn's name, in turn, referred to a giant red gum tree which stood on the intersection of Black Top Road and Walters Road. The tree burnt down in 1890 and was cut down in 1934 and replaced with 5 trees which can still be seen today.

Aboriginal history
The Kaurna people were the indigenous inhabitants of the Adelaide region, which includes One Tree Hill. The Peramangk people, living further inland, visited the area from time to time, chiefly in the warmer parts of the year. This was due to the area being cooler and better watered than the plains. The hills at this time were well wooded with tree species that had been in the area for around 6000 years. Along the rivers and creeks and wide valleys could be found tall, heavy eucalypts, many of which had wide, hollowed bases large enough for the Aboriginals to use as shelters. There were many such shelter trees in use by the Kaurna and Peramangk as late as the 1840s, and evidence exists that they hunted and gathered in the woodlands and grasslands for many generations prior to European settlement. Unfortunately, the community declined soon after European settlement, and most of what we know about them today comes from the few artifacts and sparse archaeological evidence that they left behind.

European settlement
Europeans settled the area in the early 1840s, and the township commenced in 1851 with the building of the One Tree Hill Inn. The settlement was located in a strategic location, being close to several larger towns (such as Gawler and Salisbury) with facilities, and became the meeting place of the surrounding rural community, including Gould Creek and Uleybury. A post office and general store were built in 1858 which featured a large cellar where produce including local wine was sold. In 1906, the Institute, which cost about £600, was built across the road from the post office, and became a town meeting place and recreation centre, which was expanded considerably in 1978.

One Tree Hill Post Office opened on 19 May 1857.

Demographics
The 2016 Census by the Australian Bureau of Statistics counted 1,095 persons in One Tree Hill on census night. Of these, 569 (52.2%) were male and 522 (47.8%) were female.
The majority of residents 791 (72.7%) are of Australian birth, with 155 14.2% born in England.
The median age of One Tree Hill residents is 45. Children aged 0 – 14 years made up 16.8% of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 14.9% of the population.

Community
The township has one primary school and several historic primary school buildings: Precolumb School (1855-1938), Uley School (1856 to 1971, now the Uleybury School Museum). In 1972 the current primary school was built on McGilp Road. One Tree Hill has an Institute Hall built 1906 and Uniting Church built 1867 (originally Methodist) and many historic buildings. The township has a small shopping centre and a hotel named the Blacksmiths Inn.

Attractions

Parks
The Para Wirra Conservation Park is north-east of the town.

Transport
There is no specific provision for bicycles on any of the local roads. There are footpaths on most roads within the town and along Black Top Road in some sections up three kilometres west of the town using land from the old alignment of the road.

Roads
The town is serviced by the following main roads:
 Black Top Road to Adelaide and Salisbury
 Yorktown Road to Elizabeth
 Gawler - Kersbrook Road to Kersbrook, Gawler and Williamstown
 One Tree Hill Road to Golden Grove

Public transport
The area is not serviced by Adelaide public transport; the nearest service is an Adelaide Metro bus route at Craigmore, five kilometres to the west of the town.

From the commencement of a Bowman's bus service around 1937 until Friday 14 May 1982, a daily bus service ran from the township to Adelaide via Golden Grove and North East Road (Route 540E). Before that the nearest transport was at Smithfield Railway Station.

See also
List of Adelaide suburbs

References

External links
City of Playford
Local Government Association of SA - City of Playford
2006 ABS Census Data by Location

Suburbs of Adelaide

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Mexico's best kept secret
Mexico's best kept secret and one of its finest beers, Victoria Beer, joined forces with TSN this November for a 4 month long winter campaign on nearly 30 trucks throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and East Los Angeles.
Making its debut in the U.S. just a couple of years ago, it is now officially in 39 states, with California remaining one of its most important markets. Until recently, Victoria was only available in Mexico.
"We are committed to successfully running and investing in the world-class Mexican brewery and are very excited about the potential for developing new products and line extensions within the portfolio of brands in the U.S." said Rob Sands, president and chief executive officer of Constellation Brands. For this winter promotion, TSN was asked to bring the big branded TSN trucks to the streets where Victoria's core market shops and eats.
With previous campaigns from Corona and Pacifico, Victoria is the latest line of beer brands that's a highly valued client of TSN Advertising. TSN looks forward to the many opportunities the partnership will bring in 2016.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Alzheimer's Disease robs its victims of their independence and identity and greatly affects the lives of their loved ones. This disease and other forms of dementia afflict approximately 50 percent of Americans age 85 and older. Due to the rapid growth of our elderly population, experts expect that the number of individuals who will develop this debilitating illness will dramatically increase. As we observe National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, we rededicate ourselves to fighting this devastating affliction and to supporting Alzheimer's patients, their families, and their caregivers.
Alzheimer's Disease harms its victims by altering the brain's chemistry and disrupting signals to the brain by attacking cells, nerves, and transmitters. Those who develop Alzheimer's Disease may experience memory lapses, confusion, or mood swings. They can also become withdrawn and depressed due to lost confidence, and they have significant problems communicating. These symptoms usually worsen over time and, in most cases, patients eventually need help with all of their daily activities.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and in the private sector are working to understand how Alzheimer's develops. We hope that their advances will lead to new methods for early diagnosis, new medications that will aid Alzheimer's patients in all stages of the disease, and ultimately a cure for this debilitating illness. Recent studies suggest that commonly used substances, including certain vitamins and anti-inflammatory drugs, may help prevent Alzheimer's Disease. In addition, we are working to increase understanding of the genetic and nongenetic risk factors that may influence the development of this disease.
As we continue to pursue better prevention and treatment regimes, we remain committed to caring for those now afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's patients generally live for an average of 8 to 10 years after they are diagnosed. As the disease progresses, patients require increased support from families and caregivers.
Scientists at the NIH and the Department of Veterans Affairs are continuing their research to help improve patient care and ease the burdens of caregivers at home and in nursing facilities. The Administration on Aging is working to develop best practices for serving persons with Alzheimer's disease and assisting States as they attempt to improve their responsiveness and the accessibility of home and community-based long-term care services and other support resources. My Administration is increasing access to available information, education, and referrals about diagnostic and treatment services for those afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease.
During National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, I commend the members of our research community for their commitment to improving diagnosis and treatment for Alzheimer's Disease; and I encourage those suffering from or at risk for Alzheimer's to participate in clinical treatment studies and therapy trials. These studies and trials have been and continue to be an important part of our progress against this disease. I also commend the families and caregivers of individuals suffering from Alzheimer's disease who provide the care and support to their loved ones and carry the daily burden of this tragic disease.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2002 as National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-seventh.


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'making' a DIFFERENCE
Dalai Lama Scholars from UCI social sciences organized third annual campus event to develop products for people with disabilities
Elisa Tran and Lara Nguyen led this year's third annual OC Make-a-Thon to develop projects for people living with disabilities.
Kindness and compassion have been motivating factors for Elisa Tran, a senior in social policy & public service, and Lara Nguyen, a senior in international studies and public health policy, who have set out to make a positive impact at UCI. As the campus's 2018-19 Dalai Lama Scholars, they led this year's third annual OC Make-a-thon, an intensive three-day event that brings together students from multiple disciplines – many of them in engineering – to develop products for people living with disabilities.
Tran and Nguyen received support from UCI's XIV Dalai Lama Endowed Scholarship and a Barnes & Noble College Scholarship to "make" it happen. Participants in the 2019 event worked on projects ranging from a campus navigation app for visually impaired students to more accessible bathroom doors and adaptive gardening.
It's a labor of love for Tran. "My mom faces many challenges common to those who have had strokes, such as navigating daily activities with one arm," she says. "This affects her ability to put on her jacket, button her jeans, cook, and clean." Tran brought her mother to the inaugural 2017 OC Make-a-thon and paired her up with a team who worked on a cane allowing her to get up on her own if she fell and also zip up her jacket without help.
"I was inspired to be a part of the OC Make-a-thon after working at a camp for people with disabilities for three years," Nguyen says. "I met some of the most resilient individuals who tackled structural barriers with such grace and happiness. However, I saw the injustice in that simple daily tasks such as swimming, eating, or walking on sidewalks became dangerous undertakings that required additional assistance." "The campers were very individualistic and brave in that they wanted to accomplish things on their own but sometimes couldn't because of the lack of tools for their disability. The OC Make-a-thon bridges the discrepancy and misunderstanding between the abled and disabled communities."
She and Tran even partnered with Anaheim's H.O.P.E Center, which offers mental health services, because their goal is to also aid people with psychological impairments. They visited the center twice and met with staff who helped identify key needs to inspire projects at the OC Make-a-thon. Understanding the challenges confronting those with disabilities lets event participants take human-centered approaches to creating useful technology and practical products. In addition, the OC Make-a-thon gives students an opportunity to translate academic knowledge into real-life solutions.
"While all of the projects never cease to amaze me, I think one of the most impactful for me was when a team developed a walking cane for blind individuals that had motion detectors attached to the end in order to help them navigate through narrow hallways," Nguyen says. "One of the team members had a close relative who is blind. Thus the passion and determination to really see the problem from another perspective and find an answer came from genuine intentions and heart. It was truly an incredible project to watch evolve." The 2019 OC Make-a-thon was held the second weekend of April in UCI Applied Innovation's Cove facilities.
"We are honored to feature this event," says Kate Klimow, chief administrative officer and director of external relations at UCI Applied Innovation. "One of our objectives is to bring together the UCI community to help advance campus innovation, entrepreneurship, and partnerships for the greater good of the wider community. This event does exactly that."


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The best town to work in the UK revealed
Slough.
Yes, that's correct. A town that first received prominence thanks to David Brent, Slough has been named as the best town in the country for jobs. A survey by job site Glassdoor found the Berkshire town, located on the M4 tech hub corridor, came first for work, the cost of living and employee satisfaction.
Its research showed Slough's median salaries are £35,000, the town has more than 26,000 vacancies and the median price of a house is £390,000. The town was given a score of 4.2 out of five by employees working there and has come top of a ranking of the 25 best UK towns to work in.
It beat Manchester, which came second, and Cambridge, which entered the third spot.
Dr Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor's Chief Economist, commented that Slough is in a part of the country which offers "pleasant environments" meaning "an increased quality of life for employees".
"The UK's M4 corridor remains Britain's global tech backbone, with companies such as Oracle, Cisco and Microsoft all along this route," he continues. "Towns and cities around this area offer pleasant environments, above average salaries and a lower cost of living, meaning an increased quality of life for employees."
Surprisingly, London did not make it to the top 25. "Although people in London are generally satisfied, it has proven not only to be an expensive place to live, but also an ultra-competitive city in which to find a job," Chamberlain adds.
Nancy Lalor from the Slough Chamber of Commerce said she is not surprised by the study: "We've got so many head offices that are based in Slough, so many 'corporates', and an amazing trading estate with over 350 businesses on it, so I think it's really on the up.
"There's so much new build, so much development going on in the town, every few months the whole look of the town is changing and I think people are inspired by what's going on."
Who would have thought it? David Brent was right.


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Speedway Children's Charities raises record $3.1 million in 2016
Speedway Children's Charities Speedway Children's Charities
CONCORD, N.C. - Speedway Children's Charities announced earlier this week that 2016 was a record-breaking year, as the nonprofit raised $3.1 million that will be distributed to a record 448 charitable organizations across the country.
The charity, which has chapters at all eight of Speedway Motorsports Incorporated's facilities — Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Kentucky Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, and Texas Motor Speedway — experienced an increase of more than $200,000 in donations from 2015.
"Our impact is felt throughout the nation and none of it would be possible without the invaluable support of race fans and the tireless work from our volunteers who have helped make Speedway Children's Charities into what it is today," said Major General Chuck Swannack, executive director of SCC.
Each chapter of SCC provides grants to programs targeted at helping children in their respective region. Chapter support comes from providing winter coats and backpack meals to low-income families as well as facilitating clubs that provide healthy after-school activities and aiding hospital cancer research.
Since being founded in 1982, Speedway Children's Charities has raised nearly $49 million. Donations are received through fundraisers that include track events, holiday light displays, and auctions for unique race day experiences.
If you'd like to register to volunteer or donate to Speedway Children's Charities, visit speedwaycharities.org.
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