Although the Township of Fairfield only has a population of about 7,500 but has quite a bit of action when it comes to traffic and criminal charges issued within its 10.5 square miles. A major factor in the high number of those arrested or issued a summons lies in the fact that both Interstate 80 and U.S. Route 46 run directly through the town. This translates into a much higher number of drug arrests by the Fairfield Police Department, as well as the New Jersey State Police, within the boundaries of the municipality. If you or a loved one was arrested in Fairfield Township, our attorneys possesses the contacts and experience to get you results. We are one of the largest criminal defense firms in the state and feature a team that includes several former and county prosecutors. An attorney on our staff is ready to assist you in a free consultation now at 973-710-1520.
The traffic laws, as well as motor vehicle regulations in this state, can make it extremely costly if you are convicted almost any traffic ticket. All moving violations carry points which can trigger increased insurance rates, state DMV surcharges, as well as the possibility of license suspension where 12 or more are accumulated. It is therefore abundantly important that, at a minimum, you do whatever you can to avoid a conviction and the points that come with it. The fact also cannot be ignored that some summonses, for example, driving while intoxicated, operating without insurance or possession of CDS in a motor vehicle, carry mandatory license suspensions. There are still other tickets that make suspension discretionary on the part of the Judge like driving while suspended, leaving the scene of an accident or reckless driving. Notwithstanding all of this, what you should know is that our lawyers are able to avoid conviction for almost all traffic violations or, minimally, have the charge downgraded to save you considerable problems.
Criminal charges are measured in terms of severity by grades in NJ. The least serious are those which fall under the grade of disorderly persons offenses. The most of charges of this nature, which are heard in the Fairfield Municipal Court, are simple assault, harassment, possession of less than 50 grams of marijuana, and disorderly conduct. More serious criminal charges, referred to as indictable crimes of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th degree, can only be decided at the Essex County Superior Court. If you are facing a disorderly persons charge in Fairfield, you need to know that although the offense is considered a misdemeanor, you can be subject to fines and assessments of over $1,000, up to six (6) months in jail and/or probation, community service and/or other consequences. You will also have to live with a 2C record that shows that you were convicted of the offense.
Judge: Honorable Frank Pomaco, J.M.C.
Prosecutor: Marcella Matos Wilson, Esq.
When you are looking for the best attorney to handle your case, qualities like years of experience handling charges like yours should be important. So too, should the maturity and tract record of the law firm. At the Law Offices of Jonathan F. Marshall, we have assembled one of the largest criminal and traffic defense teams in the state. We have over 100 years of combined experience and many of us have served as municipal and/or county prosecutors as well. Call us 24/7 at 973-710-1520 for immediate assistance.


text:
Council Passes Resolutions about Investing in Fossil Fuels and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Today the Council voted on two resolutions that I had the privilege of sponsoring. Below are short summaries on both.
I. Resolution 31525
Resolution 31525 strengthens the City's commitment to greenhouse gas reductions by formalizing the City's policy begun under the previous administration to not invest the City's cash pool in corporations and other entities whose primary business is the production of fossil fuels. In 2012, Seattle became the first city in the US to begin the divestment; there are now 27 US cities and counties, 11 universities, 33 religious institutions, and numerous foundations that have committed to divestment.
Equally importantly to the formalizing of an existing policy, the resolution also requests that the Seattle Seattle City Employees' Retirement System (SCERS) Board of Administration work towards divestment of our pension funds from fossil fuel holdings. Fossil fuel holdings are estimated at 9% of the pension fund.
Why is divestment of investments in fossil fuels sound public policy? It's impossible to stop global warming one pipeline, coal plant or fracking well at a time. But when coal, oil and gas companies also have less control on our government and financial markets, we are able to better able to ensure that those interests will hear us. As it relates to our pension fund, I, as the Chair of the SCERS Board, have a fiduciary responsibility to minimize financial portfolio vulnerabilities at a time when financial analysts are increasingly warning investors of the risks that make fossil fuel reserves less valuable, or even 'stranded' and ultimately rendered worthless.
If you'd like to read more, here is an article from the Economist and a report by the Guardian. Finally, to get involved, contact 350 Seattle.
II. Resolution 301532
Resolution 301532 recognizes the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and "reaffirms the City of Seattle's unwavering commitment to civil rights, equal opportunity and freedom from discrimination for all."
In 1960, four African-American students from North Caroline A&T started a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro. Within days, 80 protests initiated by student activists challenging Jim Crow laws engulfed the city. As the protests spread to over 50 cities in nine states, local governments responded by arresting students and others joining them. Yet, these were not the first sit-ins of the African-American Civil Rights movement. In 1958, Carol Parks-Haun and Ron Walters, leaders in the local NAACP Youth Council, organized a successful sit-in at a Rexall Drug Store with a popular soda fountain, even though, at the time, the NAACP didn't sanction the sit-in. The Congress of Racial Equality sponsored sit-ins in Baltimore in 1952, in St. Louis in 1949 and in Chicago in 1942. In 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at a segregated library in Alexandria, Virginia.
It wasn't until June 11, 1963, when JFK called for legislation "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments."
Wednesday, July 2, 2014 is the 50th anniversary of the enactment of that landmark Civil Rights Act banning discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and national origin and outlawing segregation based on race in schools, work and public facilities. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to future civil rights legislation at each the Federal, State, and local levels. The landmark legislation enacted by legislators was important, yet we must still always remember the struggles and sacrifices of the many individuals who paved the way.
Posted: June 30th, 2014 under Budget and Economic Development, Civil Rights, Development and Sustainability, Energy, Environment, Race & Social Justice
RSS feed for comments on this post |
Comment from Nancy Robb
Time February 2, 2015 at 2:51 pm
Energy stocks are tanking these days. I wonder if it would have been more fiscally responsible to sell them and not take the hit to the SCERS portfolio that their lesser current values did.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Current: Notary Public Licensing
Notary Public Licensing
Email: crd@ct.gov
The Office of the Secretary of the State, Business Services Division, licenses all notaries public in the state. The fee for a new notary commission is $120 and the fee to renew a notary commission is $60. Notary commissions are good for five years. This page provide information on the following topics:
Notary Public Application Process
Notary Commission Renewals
Basic Information for Notaries Public
Notary Public Application Process (New Applicants)
If you are applying for a notary public commission for the first time, please complete the following steps to complete your application online. Note, that if you have previously been a notary in the state, but your commission has lapsed, you need to email our office and request a reinstatement -- you cannot use the new application process.
New Applicant Steps
1. Review the Notary Public Manual
The application contains an examination that tests your understanding of the material contained in the manual. You must answer each question correctly before you will be provided a notary commission.
2. Complete a Jurat and Writing Sample
The Jurat and Writing Sample is required for all new notary applications and reinstatements. You must upload a completed Jurat and Writing Sample during the online application process. The Writing Sample must be completed in the handwriting of the notary public. The Jurat must be subscribed and sworn to before a person authorized to administer an oath.
3. Have someone else complete a Certificate of Character
The Certificate of Character must be filled out completely and signed by a public official or a reputable business or professional person who must be unrelated to you and have personally known you for at least one year.
4. Be prepared to pay the statutory non-refundable application fee of $120
You may pay by credit/debit card with a Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover Card logo or you may pay using your checking account (ACH).
5. Go to the eLicense website
The eLicense website contains instructions on how to register for an account
Link to the eLicense website, https://www.elicense.ct.gov
6. Once logged in, select "Online Services" (top right); "Initial Application" and "Notary Public Certification"
Follow the onscreen prompts to complete your application. You will receive an email that your application has been received. You will also receive an email with your new notary certificate once your application has been approved (typically 3-5 business days).
Notary commissions may be renewed online quickly and easily. About 90 days before your commission expires you will receive a letter from our office either by mail or by email, notifying you that your commission is expiring and providing you a PIN to use through fast track renewal. If you did not receive this letter or need another one, email us at CRD@ct.gov, provide us an email address, and request another renewal notification.
Please note that a notary commission may only be renewed during the 90 day period before expiration and 90 days after expiration. If your commission has been expired for more than 90 days, you will have to request a reinstatement by emailing us at crd@ct.gov.
If your name has changed, you must complete the Change of Name form and email it to us at crd@ct.gov. We will email you an invoice to pay the $15 statutory fee for a name change.
If you need to report an address change, please email us at crd@ct.gov. We will send you a password reset link to your eLicense account, so that you can make the address change yourself for free.
Basic Notary Information
Qualifications, Fee & Examination
Any person eighteen years of age or older, who either resides in, or has a principal place of business in Connecticut may apply for appointment as a Notary Public.
All applicants must submit a completed application form (online in the eLicense system -- see above) and pay the application fee of $120.00. An examination is contained in the application process and the applicant completes the examination under oath. Successful applicants will receive a certificate of appointment.
Term of Appointment
Notaries in the State of Connecticut are appointed for terms of five (5) years.
Oath of Office & Recording the Certificate and Oath
All notaries, whether new or renewal appointments must take an oath of office before they can perform any notarial acts. The notary's certificate of appointment contains a panel for recording the administration of the oath. The oath may be administered by any official having the authority to administer oaths, but notary's may find it convenient to take the oath of office from the town clerk at the same time they record their certificate, as town clerks are authorized to administer oaths.
If the notary is a resident of Connecticut, the oath and notary certificate must be recorded with the town clerk in the town in which the notary resides. Nonresidents must record with the town clerk of the town where their principal place of business is in Connecticut, must also record their oath of office and certificate. That recording is made with the town clerk of the town in which their place of business is located. It is very important for all notaries to remember these requirements, which must be completed within 30 days of receiving the Certificate of Appointment.
Renewal of Appointment
Notary terms of appointment expire on the last day of the month in which the notary was originally appointed. Renewal applications are emailed (or mailed if we do not have an email address) three months in advance of the expiration date to the address recorded with the Secretary. For this reason, it is critical that you keep your email address on file with our office updated.
A notary may resign his or her commission at any time, by advising the Office of the Secretary of the State, in writing, of his or her intention to resign and the effective date of that resignation.


This "Easy Rider" bullhead style chronograph wrist watch was manufactured during the 1970s by Sorna and named after Jacky Ickx. This Sorna is made with a manual wind 17 jewel movement (EB 8420).
Why not join the mailing list and get special offers? Opting in means you agree to let us mail you, probably be a few times per year max. Your data stored according to new GDPR EU guidelines.
Special deals for special people, only on Facebook and Instagram. Follow!


Every year approximately 694 students graduate with a degree in BSN from Maine schools. If you too are interested in a career in BSN, Maine has 12 BSN schools for you to choose from. At BSN schools in Maine, you can expect to pay $9,569 per year in tuition for a degree in BSN.
The largest BSN school in Maine, by student population is University of Southern Maine. It is located in Portland. Approximately 165 students graduated with a BSN degree from University of Southern Maine in 2009, which was 24% of the total state BSN graduates for that year. If you decide to attend University of Southern Maine, you can expect to pay approximately $8,174 per year to earn your degree in BSN.
A majority of those with a degree in BSN choose to become nurses. If after graduation, you are planning on sticking around the state, you should keep in mind that the job outlook for BSN graduates in Maine is good. An estimated 14,500 nurses are in Maine state. The government expects, by 2018, for this number to increase by 16%, or to 16,830 nurses.
As a nurse in Maine you can expect to earn anywhere from less than $45,918 per year to more than $81,912 per year. In Maine, nurses make an average of $60,352 per year.


text:
Drama & precision: Grammy Award-winning Apollo's Fire orchestra to take Amp stage with expressive Baroque performance
by Max Zambrano	on July 27, 2021 438 views
Apollo's Fire
Apollo's Fire, The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, will be bringing Baroque back to Chautauqua at 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 27 in the Amphitheater.
Tonight's performance, titled "Apollo's Fire: Love in Venice," will include works such as "Summer Concerto" and "La Folia (Madness)" by Antonio Vivaldi, "Che si può fare" by Barbara Strozzi, and works from Claudio Monteverdi.
Baroque was a style of music and other arts from the early 1600s to the 1740s, with popularity spanning into the 1800s in the Iberian Peninsula.
"What we do is bring Baroque music to life in the way it was fresh and new when it was composed," said Apollo's Fire founder and musical director Jeannette Sorrell. "A lot of that is about moving the emotional moods of the listeners. That's kind of what we're obsessed with in Apollo's Fire. That's what we will be trying to do."
Sorrell said people might expect a more academic performance, but Apollo's Fire intends to bring the opposite of that.
"The way Baroque music was performed and meant to be performed in the 17th and 18th centuries was a lot about being expressive and emotional with music," she said. "That priority got lost in the 20th century, and people lost sight on how to play Baroque music."
Part of Apollo's Fire mission, she said, is learning and performing Baroque music the way it was meant to be played.
"We're kind of like detectives — unearthing the way music was meant to be played originally and trying to bring it to life for people," Sorrell said.
Apollo's Fire has played around the world, including several European and United States tours. The ensemble has performed on the BBC multiple times, and it has played for sold-out crowds in Wigmore Hall, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Carnegie Hall.
In 2019, Apollo's Fire won a Grammy in the "Classical Vocal Solo" category for its Songs of Orpheus album.
Still, the group is looking forward to playing in Chautauqua's Amphitheater.
"Playing in an amp is always extra fun because the experience of fresh air, and being closer to nature just adds an extra element of joy and brings people together as a community," she said. "We love that."
Apollo's Fire is a particularly special ensemble, Sorrell said, because each musician in the group is handpicked.
"We're all very much on the same page about wanting to play with emotional expression and drama, and bringing that sense of emotional commitment to the music in a way that really translates for an audience," she said.
In other orchestras, Sorrell said it's possible to have musicians from different backgrounds and experiences that clash with one another. Apollo's Fire musicians, instead, are picked so there is minimal clashing.
"We can achieve a really high level of precision because we all have the same approach to the music," she said.
Sorrell loves the ambiance at Chautauqua and is excited to return.
"Chautauqua has such a great atmosphere," she said. "We always love to be a part of it."
Tags : Apollo's FireBaroqueGrammy Award-winningLove in VeniceorchestraPopular EntertainmentWeek Five
Comedian Leighann Lord to bring entertainment, enlightenment to Interfaith Lecture Series
With NPR's Eric Deggans, 'SNL' cast member Ego Nwodim discusses comedic journey, importance of representation in industry


text:
Seaweed chair wins Nordic design competition
14.12.18 | News
"The Coastal Furniture" by the Danish designer Nikolaj Thrane Carlsen wins Nordic design competition
Robert Bednarczyk /norden.org
Mats Widbom of the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design, Hans Christian Asmussen of the Danish Crafts & Design Association, and Mary Gestrin of the Nordic Council of Ministers at the Nordic Pavilion during COP24.
Mail Facebook Linkedin Twitter Sign up to newsletter
"The Coastal Furniture" has come out top in the final round of the Nordic Design Competition. The chair by the Danish designer Nikolaj Thrane Carlsen won 22% of the votes at the UN Climate Summit in Katowice and was announced as the winner at a talk about design held in the Nordic Pavilion.
Seaweed roofs on the island of Læsø were the key source of inspiration for the design of "The Coastal Furniture", the shell of which is made of 100% biodegradable seaweed composite material. The key to the process was to combine sustainable thinking with aesthetics while preserving the unique seaweed texture. The jury says: "It's unique. It has a mission, and it is a stunning conversation piece".
No more objects
The vote in Katowice was the final stage in a competition that started in September when national rounds resulted in a total of 98 entries. Five chairs, one from each Nordic country, have been on display for two weeks at COP24. Everybody attending the climate summit was invited to vote for the 'People's Choice' award, and the winner was revealed at a special design event on 13 December.
Mary Gestrin of the Nordic Council of Ministers chaired the event, at which Hans Christian Asmussen of the Danish Crafts & Design Association and Mats Widbom of the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design discussed the importance of sustainable thinking in the design industry.
"Today sustainability is part of the design process. The world does not need more objects, it needs the right objects. The lifespan and quality are important since we can't stop consumption," says Mats Widbom, CEO at Swedish Society of Crafts and Design
New SDG
All five of the chairs have some relation to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, but it seems that 17 is not enough. Hans Christian Asmussen introduced a new goal at the event: SDG0: Global Ethics.
"The UN Youth Representatives represent a soft yet insistent force of will. They put pressure on us all to act now. SDG0 (zero) is dedicated to the coming generation. To remind us all that we have an enormous obligation to the coming generations," says Hans Christian Asmussen.
The Nordic Design Competition was run by the Nordic Council of Ministers' international branding project, The Nordics, in collaboration with the Danish Design Centre, DOGA, Iceland Design Centre, Ornamo in Finland and Swedish Form.
Tobias Grut
tobgru@norden.org
Elisabet Skylare
elisky@norden.org
International branding of the Nordic Region
The world is turning to the Nordic Region at the moment, and branding will help draw attention to what we have in common: our Nordic perspective, our values and a culture that stems from a shared history. Read more about the Nordic strategy.
The Nordic Council Environment Prize
The Nordic Council Children and Young People's Literature Prize
Nordic Council Literature Prize
The Nordic Council Film Prize
Nordic Council Music Prize
Nordic Design Competition: here are the winners
Nordic design sets the stage at COP24
Are you doing a Nordic project on trust, sustainability or equality?
Meet The Nordics around the world – 28 new projects


Father, even now, You give Words to Jeremiah for the people's salvation. Your mercy is so great that even after all they have done, You will spare them, if only they will turn back to You.
This is Your heart. That Your people will do the right thing. That they will love You, and return to You. That they will turn away from the things that are bringing them harm and death, and turn to You to receive life!
They had Your Word. It had been found in the Temple when Josiah, King of Judah had the Temple repaired. It caused a major revival in the young King. And in the people too, for a time.
But Josiah's son, who came next, was not a godly king. And the pull of idolatry was strong. And Your Word was not readily available to the people, so they relied on the leaders and priests to lead them.
Unfortunately, the priests had been doing their own thing for so long, most were not familiar with or devoted to Your Word.
Father, I have loved ones who are also pretty much doing their own thing. Yet You are calling them back to You with that same heart, wanting them to come to You and receive life.
My world is full of all kinds of idolatry, and the pull is strong. Father, send someone into their lives who they will listen to. Help them let go of the things that are causing them harm and leading them to death.
Father, those words are for me too. And just as You knew Jeremiah, even before he was born, You also know me. Just as You rescued him, You have rescued me.
You are the Lord of peace. Father, I so need Your peace. From my own doubts in understanding Your direction for my life, to relationships that are not all they could be, to the direction my country and the world seem to be heading.


Winter storm Jonas finally arrived Friday night, dropping anywhere from 18-40 inches of snow from Kentucky all the way up to New York. Although a state of emergency has been declared in 11 states, most reactions on Twitter to the blizzard are still pretty good natured. Nothing like being collectively snowed in to get people cracking their best snow jokes, dishing out their favorite blizzard recipes, and announcing their Netflix queues.
It is a serious storm, though. Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia have declared a state of emergency, according to CNN. There were almost 1,000 car accidents due to snow and low visibility, just in Virginia, according to local affiliates. In Kentucky, there's a 35 mile backup on Interstate 75 and people have been stuck in traffic for twelve hours, which is quite possibly the most horrible (and scary!) way to spend a snowy weekend.
People are stranded all over the place and it doesn't look like the snow is going to stop anytime soon. It's expected to start to slow down sometime Sunday morning. If you're not stuck on the highway, or one of millions of customers up and down the East Coast without power, being snowed in can actually be fun. When else do you have an excuse to stay in your pajamas, eat soup all day, and catch up on entire seasons of Pretty Little Liars?
People on social media are all about sharing their snow day secrets.
It's not really a blizzard until you tweet about it. And whether you're happily snowed in and snuggly or just trying to wait for it to end, at least Twitter's there to help you feel all your feels.


text:
Peace Process
Mindaviews
Marawi Crisis
Home Top Stories Officials say BOL gives Bangsamoro region more means to develop
Officials say BOL gives Bangsamoro region more means to develop
Antonio L. Colina IV
Commissioner Jose Lorena Jr. during the Media Forum on the Bangsamoro Peace Process and Violent Extremism in Davao City. August 3, 2018. MindaNews photo by GG BUENO
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/ 04 August) – The proposed Bangsamoro region will have more means to develop itself as it will keep all tax collections for the first 10 years after its creation and a 75% share thereafter, Undersecretary Nabil Tan of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Process said on Friday.
Tan said the present Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which will be replaced by the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao if the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) gets ratified in a plebiscite by November or December this year, lacks the fiscal autonomy that would unlock its potentials.
Speaking in a media forum on the Bangsamoro Peace Process and Violent Extremism at the Linmarr Hotel here on Friday, Tan said the Bangsamoro government will get 75% from local taxes and 25% will go to the national government after 10 years.
President Rodrigo Duterte signed the BOL on July 27, four days after his third State of the Nation Address.
Tan, implementing panel chair of the government in the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said the ARMM needs congressional approval of its budget.
"The resources are not provided. Every year, we have to beg to Congress. Meanwhile, it's in the organic law before that the region shall appropriate the funds, pass the bill. What is there to appropriate? There is no income," he said.
The BOL, previously called the Bangsamoro Basic Law, provides for the annual block grants that are automatically appropriated for the region and special development fund to be allotted for the rehabilitation of conflict-ravaged communities.
Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) member Jose A. Lorena Jr. said the existing law provides for provisions on equitable share from national revenues.
But he lamented that it was not translated into real terms, making ARMM "not fiscally capable to deliver the services that it is intended to deliver, because it has no fiscal autonomy."
Undersecretary Nabil Tan
Under BOL, he said block grants will be given under which the Bangsamoro government will receive 5% share from net collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and 5% share from the net collection of the Bureau of Customs, estimated by the Department of Finance to reach P67 billion.
"They are still short compared to other regions because other regions are receiving above P70 billion but at least they are now closer to us. Perhaps, in due time, they can cover up and there would be development at par in all regions of Mindanao," he said.
"Public investment has been short in the Bangsamoro, that's why private investment will not follow. As a professor in economics before, I do understand that," he said.
With the block grant, he said the Bangsamoro parliament will now approve the regional budget.
Lorena said the BOL provides for the creation of the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLFG) that will ensure internal control for funds from the Internal Revenue Allotment.
He clarified that that this is separate from the Commission on Audit (COA).
He said they need to add another layer of auditing, the pre-audit, because what the COA does is post-audit.
"If you have already released the money, there is no internal control, then the only remedy is to go to Ombudsman. But the money has already been expended and delivery of services have already been affected because money has already been technically used for purposes other than what is intended," he said.
He said he hopes the region would attain peace and stability as they envision an autonomous Bangsamoro that can support national development.
"If the abundance of the region can be fully utilized, it will not only contribute to that region but even contribute to the coffers of the entire country and we will be able to march forward to new heights of economic development," he added.
"The Bangsamoro region is a region of abundance. It has rich resources – mining, marine resources, timber area– untapped resources. But the question is, why are we poor? Technically the answer is always because while we are not hit by typhoon or eruption of Mayon Volcano we are hit by a calamity called conflict," he said.
He said the Moro people have often been displaced from their farms to evacuation centers.
This time, Lorena said the Bangsamoro government is given the subsidiarity that allows them to address internal issues.
"Subsidiarity is a concept common to all of us. If I have a problem with my wife in the house, we should be the ones who should solve the problem because we know the problem well. We should not allow somebody from the outside to provide the solution for all our problems," he said. (Antonio L. Colina IV/MindaNews)
bangsamoro
Ex-army official appointed BARMM minister
4 NPAs killed in Agusan Sur skirmishes
DepEd-Davao vows to make fair decision on complaints vs schools for Lumads
Bong S. Sarmiento - July 16, 2019 8:15 pm
Froilan Gallardo - July 16, 2019 5:51 pm
Antonio L. Colina IV - July 16, 2019 3:22 pm
DepEd to accept students from suspended schools for Lumad
Restrictions waived for Moro fighters aspiring to become cops, soldiers
TURNING POINT: Funny and Panicky
William R. Adan - July 16, 2019 2:12 pm
SOMEONE ELSE'S WINDOWS: Patrimony and sovereignty as collateral
H. Marcos C. Mordeno - July 11, 2019 4:12 pm
A SOJOURNER'S VIEW: Mindanao Cartographies of History, Identity and Representation
Karl M. Gaspar CSsR - July 9, 2019 5:30 pm
TURNING POINT: Exclusively Yours
William R. Adan - July 8, 2019 2:38 pm
ALPSIDE DOWNED: Hot
Brady Eviota - July 6, 2019 12:02 pm
Meet Pete Maverick Nicole Estudillo, 1st Summa Cum Laude to graduate from UP Mindanao
Renz Ybañez - June 19, 2019 11:31 am
14 investment firms offering Ponzi schemes closed; 39 more under probe
Antonio L. Colina IV - June 2, 2019 5:49 pm
Winners even before May 13 polls: 133 unopposed candidates in Mindanao
Carolyn O. Arguillas - May 11, 2019 8:53 pm
PACQUIAO WATCH: Thurman is hittable, beatable
Edwin G. Espejo - June 2, 2019 1:38 pm
BARMM HR investigator shot dead in Cotabato City
Ferdinandh B. Cabrera - May 1, 2019 11:40 pm
Another investment firm closed in Davao
Antonio L. Colina IV - June 11, 2019 5:15 pm
Business firm, hospital warn public against investment scams in Tagum
Mart Sambalud - May 10, 2019 5:30 pm
Where is Margarita "Gingging" Valle and why was she nabbed at the Laguindingan airport?
Carolyn O. Arguillas - June 9, 2019 5:05 pm
North Cotabato elects first Lumad governor
Carolyn O. Arguillas - May 18, 2019 11:14 pm
THE LEADERS YOU VOTED: Zamboanga del Sur 1987 to 2019
Mindanews - May 12, 2019 10:37 pm
MindaNews is the news service arm of the Mindanao Institute of Journalism. It is composed of independent, professional journalists who believe and practice people empowerment through media.
23C Saturn St. GSIS Subdivision, Davao City Philippines Tel. No.: 082 297 4360 editor [at] mindanews.com
MindaTweets
Tweets by @mindanews2010
Mindanews on Facebook
© Mindanews 2016 | All Rights Reserved


A perfect day for photos out at the Agers amazing home. These guys are very friends of mine and are an absolute blast to hang out with.
Meet Amanda and Tim. One of the funnest couples I have met and had the privilege to photograph. These two sure know how to have a good time. As a matter of fact all of their friends do as well.


text:
The Mamba Mentality
by Troy Smith February 24, 2020
On January 26th, the world came to a stop with the news of the legendary Kobe Bryant tragically passing away. Kobe Bryant, along with 8 other passengers, passed away from a dreadful helicopter accident on their way to a basketball tournament at the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks. Among those lost, respectfully, includes:
— Kobe Bryant - 41 — Kobe Bryant, also known as "The Black Mamba," is the epitome of a legend. The father, husband, son, and brother spent 20 years in the NBA, all of them with the Los Angeles Lakers. When he retired in 2016, his impressive resume included being a five-time world champion, 18-time All-Star, fourth on the all-time scoring list, and two-time gold medalist with the U.S. basketball team. He was also married to his wife, Vanessa, for 19 years and together they had 4 daughters, including their 13-year-old, Gianna, who also sadly passed away in the accident.
— Gianna Bryant - 13 — Gianna Bryant, Kobe's daughter, is known to remind people that Kobe never needed a son to continue his legacy. She was an outstanding basketball player and had the legitimate potential to be a star in the WNBA. People already saw this and she was only 13.
— John Altobelli - 56 — John Altobelli was an extraordinary baseball coach who led the Orange Coast College Pirates to over 700 wins in 27 years. He helped numerous players in Newport Beach earn scholarships to Division 1 programs and earned Coach of the Year in 2019 by the American Baseball Coaches Association.
— Keri Altobelli - 46 — Keri Altobelli was a mother, wife, daughter, and mentor. She was married to John Altobelli and was extremely loyal to her family, supporting them the best that she could.
— Alyssa Altobelli - 13 — Alyssa Altobelli was the daughter of John and Keri Altobelli and was also Gianna's teammate for their club basketball team that Kobe coached. In the past, Alyssa competed against Gianna and Kobe highly respected her game.
The Bryants and Altobellis were close with each other and have flown together before.
— Christina Mauser - 38 — Christina Mauser was the top assistant coach for the Mamba Sports Academy's girls' basketball team. She also led clinics for WNBA players at the Mamba Sports Academy. She put her heart and soul into the game of basketball and was highly respected by the Bryants.
— Ara Zobayan - 50 — Ara Zobayan was a veteran pilot who was well-versed in Los Angeles flight patterns. This was the only pilot Kobe trusted to fly him. Kobe frequently used helicopters as transportations and Ara Zobayan was always in the pilot's seat.
— Sarah Chester - 45 — Sarah Chester was an unbelievably caring mother who would do anything for her family. She was known to create a sense of community wherever she was.
— Payton Chester - 13 — Payton Chester was one of Gianna and Alyssa's teammates. She was also known for her passion for basketball and thrived in the Mamba Sports Academy.
Mamba Mentality and Grieving
Here at Practice U, we are still grieving from this tragedy along with the rest of Los Angeles, the United States, and the rest of the world. This tragedy reminds us of one of the many things that Kobe left behind: his attitude. Kobe was known for his "Mamba Mentality" and that was something he preached and something we take to heart at Practice U.
Having a Mamba Mentality in the wise words of the Black Mamba himself is, "... to be able to constantly try to be the best version of yourself. It's a constant quest to try to be better today than you were yesterday."
Through this process of grieving that we may all be going through, keeping the Mamba Mentality is crucial. We suggest you empower yourself by getting familiar with the 7 Stages of Grief to help you get through this time. Here are the 7 stages, some people only experience 5 of the stages. They are as follows: 1. Shock and Denial 2. Pain and Guilt 3. Anger and Bargaining 4. Depression 5. The Upward Turn 6. Reconstruction and Working Through It 7. Acceptance and Hope Whenever somebody is going through grief, an injury, or any of the unfortunate set of events that are inevitable in this life, they will gradually:
— Get back up
— Rebound from their personal agony
— Turn the corner and start the path of recovery
— Perform daily routines, self-reflect, and transition to acquire a Mamba Mentality
— Feel and understand the journey of the Mamba Mentality as a personal work of daily routines, growing and staying laser-focused on moving towards self-improvement. It does a body and mind good.
Practice U wants you to take this attitude on and off the field, court, or whatever your craft, skill set or talent may be. This all starts with a commitment to become something greater than yourself. Practice may not make you perfect, but it does show you are improving every time you repeat the work. That is something Kobe was religious about. One of the many examples of his dedication to repetitive work is that he practiced harder and earlier than the world's best players. During the 2008 Olympics, Dwyane Wade said, "Everybody else just woke up… We're all yawning, and he's already three hours and a full workout into his day." Translation, get up early in the morning or stay up extra hours into the night working on developing you before you interact with the world.
While we are all going through this grieving process of the passing of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna Bryant, and the seven other passengers, we are also wanting to encourage you to grieve with the notion of moving towards self-improvement, embracing that Mamba Mentality attitude and put it into practice repeatedly. Once you put the mentality into your daily routine, we want you to incorporate it in every area of your personal and public life. Be the best parent, son, daughter, friend, student and talented worker you can be. In short, Practice U, "the very best of you," so that you'll be able to master a higher degree of self, one day at a time.


Dr. Ioannis Tomkos, from Athens, Greece has been named an "IEEE Fellow", following the November 2018 meeting of the IEEE Board of Directors. With this Fellowship, he is being recognized "for contributions to dynamic optical networks". His work on the respective field has, in fact, impacted in a great way the optical networking scientific community (as evidenced by the extraordinary number of citations that his published work has received so far) and the development of optical communication products that made it in the market.
The IEEE Fellowships are conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon persons with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the broad IEEE fields of interest (including Electronic and Computer Engineering – ECE). "IEEE Fellow" is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important life-long career achievement. Less than 150 persons of Greek origin from any engineering field have received such a Fellowship over the more than 100 years since the establishment of the IEEE and currently, less than 20 of those are based in Greece.
The IEEE ("Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers") is the world's leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its over 425,000 members in 160 countries, the association is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.
Dr. Ioannis Tomkos (B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.), is with the Athens Information Technology Center (AIT), since Sep 2002. He was also named: "Chair of Excellence Professor" at the University Carlos III (2017-2018), "Adjunct Professor" at the College of Optical Sciences of University of Arizona (2013 – 2018), "Adjunct Research Fellow" at the ECE Department at University of Cyprus (2014-), and "Adjunct Faculty" at the Information Networking Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University, USA (2002 – 2010). In the past he was Senior Scientist (1999 – 2002) at Corning Inc. USA and research associate (1995 – 1999) at University of Athens, Greece. His research group was/is involved with leading role in many EU funded research projects, as well as in national and industry projects. Together with his colleagues and students he has co-authored over 600 peer-reviewed archival articles (over 400 IEEE-sponsored items may be found through IEEE Xplore database), which have received about 8500 citations to date (current h-index=45). For his research work he has been awarded several times by companies, organizations and societies. Dr. Tomkos received in 2007 the prestigious title of "Distinguished Lecturer" of IEEE Communications Society and he was named a "Fellow" of "The Institution of Engineering and Technology" (IET), in 2010, and "Fellow" of the Optical Society (OSA), in 2012, "for outstanding scientific contributions to the field of transparent optical networking". With the IEEE Fellowship he received in 2018, he is now the only Greek scientist/engineer who has been recognized with a Fellowship by all three (IEEE, OSA, IET) major professional/scientific societies in Science, Technology and Engineering (STEM).


text:
Al-Attiyah and Baumel's partnership
Dakar Rally 2018
Red Bull rally driver Nasser Al-Attiyah and his co-driver Mathieu Baumel share their relationship with each other and what it takes to work as a team in the Dakar Rally to make it to the end.
Inside Rally Raid
Latest & Greatest in Motor
Goodwood Festival of Speed
Sunday @ 7:20 AM UTC
Chichester, United Kingdom
Rally Kazakhstan
Monday @ 12:00 AM UTC
Jan 2 - 3, 2006
Nasser Al-Attiyah
In a brand new Toyota car this year, Nasser Al-Attiyah hopes to bring Toyota their first Dakar victory. See what else the professional rally driver expects from the 40th edition of the Dakar Rally.
Sébastien Loeb learns about the Dakar in 2016
At his first Dakar time in 2016, Sébastien Loeb dominated the rally in the opening week. But sometimes the rally-raid learning process can be cruel. Sébastien lost control 20km from the finish line, ending his hopes for victory.
Funny Frenchmen
The master and apprentice and best of friends, Stéphane Peterhansel and Cyril Despres, take time out from their hectic race to speak and joke with Mike Chen.
Totaled: Dakar Rally
Get an inside look at the origins of the toughest off-road race on the planet and how it's evolved over time.
Nasser Al-Attiyah GoPro
Experience the raw power of Nasser Al-Attiyah's Toyota as he launches it off the start line in San Juan de Marcona, Peru, for stage 4 of Dakar Rally.
Sébastien Loeb is back
Sébastien Loeb has confirmed he'll be driving as a privateer in the 2019 Dakar Rally.
Nasser Al-Attiyah Prepares to Race
Rally Jordan 2018
Rally driver Nasser Al-Attiyah talks about getting ready for the Jordan Rally. He's won the rally 11 times – how will he fare this year?
Nasser Al-Attiyah's Dakar car
Destination: Peru S1E3
Check out the details of Nasser Al-Attiyah's new car for the 2019 edition of the Dakar Rally.
Team Peugeot Total Gears Up
FIA World Rally Championship 2018
After three wins in Dakar Rally, Team Peugeot Total is ready to continue their winning streak with a full factory entry in the 2018 FIA World Rally Championship.
Preparing for Dakar 2019
Nasser Al-Attiyah is looking forward to the 2019 edition of the Dakar Rally and his car gets a test drive.
Off the track and off-road
On the road with Rally Raid S1E6
Josh Sampiero reports from behind the scenes of the 2019 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.
Before the Dakar kicks off
Meet the drivers and get an inside look at the pre-race scrutineering of the Dakar Rally.
Teamwork is key
Jump into all the action, and sand, for the final race day of Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge 2019.
Nasser Al-Attiyah's Dakar team
It's vital to have a solid team surrounding you, which is exactly what Nasser Al-Attiyah has.
Introducing X-raid's MINI JCW Buggy
Rallye du Maroc 2018
Carlos Sainz, Stéphane Peterhansel and Cyril Despres enjoy their first drive in the X-raid MINI JCW Buggy.
Race highlights
Catch the action as sand flies with drivers racing their way across the Sahara Desert in Morocco.
Sébastien Loeb: Off Roads
The WRC's best take on the Dakar
Sébastien Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena made WRC history. In 2016 they took on a new challenge: Dakar.
Nasser Al-Attiyah's career
Get the driving career breakdown of two-time Dakar winner, Nasser Al-Attiyah.


To deduct medical expenses they must exceed 10% (or 7.5% if you are 65 or older) of your income, and only that portion that exceeds 10% is deductible. For example, if you earn $50,000 as adjusted gross income, then only the medical expenses that exceed $5,000 are deductible. Please summarize your medical expenses and describe them below.


text:
Q: fatal: protocol 'git@https' is not supported I have this message pushing my repo
C:\Users\sejjilali\Documents\Test forge>git push --set-upstream origin master
**fatal: protocol 'git@https' is not supported**

I don't know how to solve it, the problem is everything works normally in an other computer. Maybe it's because is a company one they landed me?
Here is my remote configuration:
C:\Users\sejjilali\Documents\Test forge>git remote -v
origin  git@https://github.com/Saifou/testForge.git (fetch)
origin  git@https://github.com/Saifou/testForge.git (push)

A: The URLs for your origin remote are malformed:

C:\Users\sejjilali\Documents\Test forge>git remote -v
origin  git@https://github.com/Saifou/testForge.git (fetch)
origin  git@https://github.com/Saifou/testForge.git (push)

The git@ part comes from an SSH URL, but the rest looks like an HTTP URL. You can update them like so:

*

*If you want to use SSH URLs, something like
git remote set-url origin git@github.com:Saifou/testForge.git

Note that in this case we also convert a / to a : right after github.com.

*If you want to use HTTPS URLs, something like
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/Saifou/testForge.git

Once that's done, run git remote -v again to ensure that both URLs have been updated.

A: That's weird but once I had this error when I had '.git' in the path which is standard copy to clipboard from github
https://github.com/Saifou/testForge.git
change path to:
https://github.com/Saifou/testForge

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


On January 31, 2017 Pinterest has rolled out a new update allowing businesses to advertise directly on searches.
This is an incredible opportunity for people who sell products, as Pinterest is a massive resource for people who browse for ideas before actually making purchases. Everything from home renovations to clothing trends (heck, I even like to browse Pinterest for suits and dress clothes before I head to a store).
According to Pinterests announcement, they have 2 billion searches a month! And 97% of those searches are non-branded ( think "mens shirts" instead of "ralph lauren shirts" ). This is a powerful thing to know, especially for smaller and newer businesses attempting to sell products that may not have a big brand name attached to them.
Right now, ads are bidding very low compared to Facebook and Google, and I'm sure it will not take long to see these bids increase in price as more people begin to use them. But if you have a product or service to sell, now is an amazing time to jump on board and see what kind of return on investments you can get.
We are jumping in with both feet, and will be keeping you all posted on our opinions.


When I was in my mid 20s I fell madly, deeply in love on a backpacking trip through Europe. We started a long-distance relationship between Vancouver, Canada, and Hamburg, Germany, and I didn't question our strong and beautiful connection.
Then, after a few months, I learned that he had slept with his best friend.
He said it meant nothing, that our connection was everything to him and he was so sorry. While I opted to stay with him for another four years, we never quite recovered from that betrayal—he was lost in shame, and I was lost in anxiety and distrust. Then, as the relationship was deteriorating, I found myself at a party without him kissing someone I'd just met. Our relationship was over.
To be on either side of this story is heartbreaking and painful. I would never have envisioned myself or my ex as someone who would "do such a thing." This experience raises some questions. Why do we cheat in relationships? Can we do anything to prevent cheating? Are we destined to repeat what couples have been doing for millennia?
It's hard to truly see yourself, to look underneath the hood at what drives you unconsciously. But our acts of betrayal—from a tipsy holiday-party kiss with a colleague to a full-blown, years-long affair—often come out of a disconnection from ourselves and from our deeper motivations and underlying beliefs. We feel out of control—I don't know what came over me!—when we blindside ourselves and those around us with our actions.
In my book, The Blind Spot Effect, I lay out the myriad ways we miss what is right in front of us or see what's not really there. Blind spots can result from our physiology (like when we have optical illusions or miss something in our attentional field), our emotions (like when unconscious emotions motivate behaviors that harm us), or our thoughts (like when we judge ourselves harshly and can't see our finer qualities), and more.
While we all have these blind spots, we can learn how to recognize them and take precautions so that we aren't blindsided—in love or otherwise.
It's so easy to go blind in "love." Our impulses and drives can be strong, and create huge blind spots if we're not thoughtful and aware.
Psychologist Helen Fisher separates the whole falling-in-love process into three parts: lust, attraction, and attachment. This means we can be in a long-term relationship with someone we love (attachment) while simultaneously being attracted sexually (lust) to any number of people, and even experience falling in love (attraction) at the same time.
This essay is adapted from The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What's Right in Front of You (Sounds True, 2018, 208 pages).
When we fall in love, we experience sweaty palms, flushed cheeks, and feelings of passion and anxiety—accompanied by the reward-seeking neurotransmitter dopamine and a rush of cortisol, the stress hormone, mobilizing to help us deal with our plight. And sometimes, plight it is! Interestingly, when cortisol levels rise, serotonin, the neurotransmitter and natural mood stabilizer found primarily in our gut, gets depleted. This results in preoccupying thoughts, hopes, and fears that are related to infatuation—making our brains look a little obsessive-compulsive.
On top of that, we experience increases in adrenaline and an important chemical, norepinephrine, that feels good, but also makes us feel infatuated and obsessed. Combined with the motivated energy of adrenaline in our system, it's no wonder so many of us have good "love is blind" stories.
Knowing some of the science behind what our brain is doing and the behavioral research across cultures and animal species doesn't take the mystery and specialness out of connecting with, marrying, partnering up with, or dating someone. And it doesn't mean we become rudderless and throw our ethics and morals out the window—quite the opposite.
Understanding these processes helps prevent us from falling into blind, patterned reactivity when we feel some of these things. Normalizing what is happening in our biology is a powerful tool to harness our own awareness and inspire behaving with integrity despite our bodies going wild or, more likely, the fear of our bodies going wild, especially when we're in long-term relationships we want to preserve.
While these chemical reactions contribute to cheating, there are many psychological reasons people cheat, too.
Many of us cheat or lie or deceive because we are scared to lose our partner if we say the truth—that we aren't feeling connected anymore. Or sometimes we are scared to lose our idealized image of ourselves as the "perfect" partner who is loyal and committed. Or we may be driven by our unconscious drives to gain acceptance and love—something we may have never felt in our entire lives. In those moments, empathy for our partner goes out the window and we are blindly acting out of our own unconscious drives with unskillful and destructive behavior.
The good news is that in going all the way into what drives us and seeing it, we can find our path to something far deeper and truer in the quality of our connections. When we understand the nature of desire, and our own insecurities, needs, and vulnerabilities, we come into a right relationship with ourselves. We tell ourselves the truth and begin to listen in a way we haven't before to our own inner experience. We then get the chance to share our imperfect messy wholeness with another human being: It's the gift of a lifetime. And we have the chance to love their imperfect messy wholeness, too, a gift we now view as priceless.
If you find yourself falling in love (or just lust) with someone else while you are in a loving relationship, here is what I suggest.
Remember that "this too shall pass." Every feeling, no matter how strong, will change. Even though it may take over temporarily, try seeing the impermanence of it from a wide-lens view. Let that help guide the actions you take in response to what you feel.
A mindfulness practice can help make this concrete, teaching you to be both aware and nonjudgmental toward your experience. You can see feelings come and go without getting caught up in them. In fact, research shows that mindfulness training can reduce emotional reactivity, helping us to put our feelings in perspective.
Talk to your partner. Letting your partner know you have a crush on someone opens the door to asking if they can help you as a supportive team to approach the situation with some humor and creativity. Sometimes just sharing it can help lessen the feeling, especially if you have established agreements around sharing together when situations like this occur.
While it may be hard to even imagine doing this for fear of hurting or offending your partner, speaking the truth within an agreed-upon container of kindness and curiosity can build trust and a self-reinforcing loop of intimacy and connection. Honest communication, rather than deception, is likely to lead to greater emotional closeness—as long as you do so with sensitivity and the intention of growing intimacy rather than hurting your partner.
Do not act on it. If you feel tempted to have an affair, don't. Have that conversation with your partner first. You owe it to yourself and them to have integrity and clear sight. Even if it spells the end of your relationship, you'll have done it with authenticity and integrity. And you never know; it may rekindle a flame in your relationship that has gone out, as intimate shared conversations sometimes do.
Here's what happened to me: After 13 years with nothing but distance and no contact between us, I met up with my ex-boyfriend in December of last year in Hamburg, Germany. We were able to look each other in the eyes and tell the truth: how he could now see what had driven him to those acts of betrayal and insensitivity, and how I could see what had driven me to react and lose connection with myself, hurting him in return. Over a glass of mint tea, we healed what had seemed like a gulf of suffering with clarity, love, remorse, and forgiveness.
It's important for us all to recognize our blind spots and be honest about their hold on us if we want to create happier, healthier interactions with our loved ones. Only by returning home to ourselves can we gain the deeper connection and intimacy we long for in relationships.
Kelly Boys trains United Nations staff on the ground in the Middle East and beyond in a mindfulness and emotional intelligence program she co-developed for the UN, and has also trained tech companies, veterans, prison inmates, and psychotherapists. She is the author of The Blind Spot Effect: How to Stop Missing What's Right in Front of You, and she teaches retreats at spots like the Esalen Institute.


2018 starts off with a blast! Two new panel designs are now available for your upcoming projects, the BAUX Panel Arch and the BAUX Panel Curve.
Designed by Form Us With Love, the two new panels Arch panel and Curve panel combine with existing BAUX panel shapes, offering architects and interior designers exciting new possibilities for creative acoustic design.
Be sure to visit us at Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair from the 6th-10th of February. We have a new location this year with an even bigger and better stand.
We would like to celebrate the Stockholm Furniture Fair with style! Come and hang out with us on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and treat yourself to oysters and champagne!


All further blog entries are now on Blogspot.
After one week, Facebook finally fixed this problem and returned this particular page to its rightful owner. Unfortunately, judging from this discussion where hundreds of page owners have been crying for help for 6+ months, Facebook page theft remains rampant and will continue to be a terrible problem as their policies make it nearly impossible to recover a page. The only reason this particular page was recovered was due to the pressure of thousands of outraged followers.
Facebook page theft is a soft target with high reward. It is simply too easy to steal a Facebook page through the use of computer viruses and spyware. The reward to the attacker is very high, as they can use the hijacked page as a platform to infect confused page followers with viruses. Meanwhile, Facebook allows it to happen as it is their policy to never help legitimate owners recover their stolen pages.
How would you feel if you spent the last year building your Facebook fan page with thousands of followers, only for it to be hijacked, allowing the attacker to ruin your reputation by insulting your followers and attempting phishing attacks on your fans/customers? By current Facebook policies you cannot recover your stolen page.
Monday, June 13th, a popular Facebook Fan Page for a canceled TV show was hijacked by a script kiddie on a power trip. The attacker apparently targets admins of popular pages using phishing techniques to trick them into visiting dangerous websites, where their cookies are stolen or browsers exploited to install trojans and key loggers necessary to fully compromise their account. Once the attacker gains control of a Page admin's Facebook account, they are able to fully seize control by removing all previous admins.
Now two days later, the attacker continues to post taunting messages bragging about his conquest. Even worse, the page's 55k+ fans are exposed to confusing and dangerous links to sites that attempt to steal their cookies or exploit their browsers, an effective method of using the social network itself to compromise other accounts and hijack other popular fan pages. Despite the pleas of thousands of followers reporting the dangerously abusive phishing links on the self-proclaimed hacked page, it is apparently Facebook policy to do nothing.
What can I do if my group or Page has been compromised?
Please note that is not technically possible to compromise a Facebook group or Page. As long as the current administrators of a group keep their login details secure, keep their account enabled, and do not allow any suspicious people to become admins, then the group or Page will remain secure. If an unauthorized person gains admin status, we encourage you to contact them directly to resolve this matter. Unfortunately, Facebook is not able to reinstate you as an admin for any group or Page.
Facebook is unreasonable in these expectations, as it is far too easy for ordinary users to be infected by viruses and spyware and their personal accounts to become compromised. As an administrator of other Facebook pages for both companies and non-profit causes, it is absolutely frightening to learn that if the account of any page co-admin is compromised, then weeks or months of hard work may be stolen with NO RECOURSE. Most egregious of all, Facebook is unwilling to do anything about attackers using compromised pages as phishing attack platforms. Facebook's unwillingness to get involved puts the security of users at risk.
Some have suggested that Facebook could mitigate this problem of page hijacking by allowing greater protections to Creators like page-level mandatory cell phone verification or allowing the delegation of "assistant admins" incapable of removing other admins. While these measures would have likely helped to prevent this particular compromise, it wouldn't stop a determined attacker when the reward can be so large. Ultimately the policy of never returning a clearly stolen page to its rightful owner must be changed.
Facebook's social networking can be an invaluable tool to improve customer loyalty around a business or organize people around a cause. Unfortunately, given current policies, companies should be wary of investing real money in Facebook ads or putting significant effort into Facebook page recruitment when all of their hard work can be too easily destroyed.
There exists a serious issue affecting users who live in States like Arizona or Hawaii that do not observe DST where appointments in your calendar erroneously shift by one hour when DST changes in most States. Searching around both Google Calendar Help and Android bugs it seems this has been going on since at least 2009.
To make matters worse, in this bug Google seems to be blaming the users for misconfiguring their phones or Google Calendar timezones.
I just now discovered an annoying behavior with Blogger and my new blog syndicated to Planet. Apparently every time I edit an old post, it bumps a field in the atom feed that causes Planet to bump old posts to the top. This old post indicates this has been a common problem with Planet in the past. Is this a bug in Planet, miconfiguration in Planet, or a bug in Blogger?
UPDATE: Add ?alt=rss to the Blogger feed URL and it solves this problem!
Just a few thoughts about the Sprint Epic 4G.
MUCH BETTER THAN EVO: I previously had the Evo 4G for 30 days. It was a great phone, but I disliked the lack of hardware keyboard and the screen was just too wide. The Samsung Galaxy S seems to be about the upper limit of acceptable phone size.
BEST SPRINT PHONE EVER, especially if you live in a 4G area. I love the real hardware keyboard. Battery life is pretty good. Android UI and apps are very responsive. The apps included by Sprint (Telenav, Swype) are more useful than the stock apps included on my friend's Verizon Droid Incredible. I think it might even be currently the best Android phone out of all the carriers.
CUSTOMER SERVICE: Not about the phone, but I think it is important to mention. I've been with Sprint for the past decade. I've witnessed lousy customer service a few years ago, but I stuck with Sprint largely because I was grandfathered into an extremely cheap legacy plan. But in the last year or two I've noticed they've seriously turned things around. Their 30 day return policy surprised me. I disliked my previous Android phone. They let me return it and reverted to my previous contract, no questions asked.
POOR USB PLACEMENT: Micro-USB on the top of the phone? WTF were they thinking? Makes it very annoying to talk on the phone while the USB cable is plugged in.
DOCK DISASTER: Samsung's official desk dock for the Epic 4G is a complete failure of design. Even worse than Masochist's Teapot fail. The phone does not behave differently while in the dock. The screen remains in vertical orientation while the phone is horizontal in the dock. The volume buttons are under the phone, out of reach so you cannot change the volume of music while it is docked. To make matters worse placement into the dock often pushes on the volume buttons making it max out or mute the volume. Finally, you cannot have the phone in either of the two cases that they sell in the Sprint store, because the phone will no longer fit into the dock. Don't waste your money on the dock. UPDATE: A commenter pointed out that you need to install an app for the dock to automatically become a horizontal desk clock. So it isn't that bad. Only why didn't they install this app by default?
ANNOYING BATTERY FULL NOTICE: When the battery is full, it chimes and asks you to unplug the USB charger. Who thought this would be a good idea? Nobody is going to follow those directions and it is annoying to hear the chime for no good reason a few hours after you went to sleep.
This is one seriously awesome phone. Sadly they completely failed on the design of specific aspects like the USB port placement and dock. At least the Battery Full notice could be fixed in a future firmware update.
Tested on Sprint Epic 4G running Android 2.1 Eclair. Reportedly works on Spring Evo 4G as well.
Root the phone and install busybox.
The Evo is too huge. With the 4.3in screen it crosses the line of acceptable upper bound size for a phone.
On-Screen keyboard. It is simply clumsy and slow to use compared to a real physical keyboard.
The Android UI is less streamlined in design compared to WebOS. Various tasks on my Palm Pre that would take mere seconds would take 5X as long on the Evo. I found myself missing the sweeping gestures of the WebOS interface. I do not need to press upon precise locations on the screen to go "Back". Multitasking between apps on WebOS is very smooth with the card sweeping gestures.
Having used the HTC Evo 4G for a month, it became clear to me that Palm put a serious amount of good design into the usability of WebOS. There is a lot to like about the WebOS platform. Hackers have seen how friendly Palm has been toward developers. FOSS developers have commented about how Palm used various Open Source components like upstart and pulseaudio a well integrated fashion. If WebOS had launched a year earlier and with fewer initial hardware glitches, it might now be a serious contender to Android. But various indicators now show that Palm simply lacks the momentum of customers against the likes of RIM, Apple or Android. Palm is heavily investing in their app ecosystem, without which they have no chance. It remains to be seen if HP's continued investment will keep the platform alive.
I returned the HTC Evo 4G under Sprint's excellent no questions asked 30 day trial policy. The Evo is a very good phone, but I'm simply more productive with the streamlined interface of WebOS. I think the ideal phone would be a larger Pre, with horizontal instead of vertical slide-out keyboard and modern 1GHz processor. Unfortunately it seems no such device is in the plans. HP seems to be working on a WebOS tablet. I might consider the Samsung Epic 4G. The slide-out horizontal keyboard might make it usable enough for me to tolerate the UI negatives of Android.
Thursday I flew out from Boston to visit my friend in Phoenix, Arizona. While waiting for the plane I met this woman Jill who happened to be the tour manager for Paula Cole. Admittedly I did not know of Paula Cole prior to that day. But I looked her up and realized that I was familiar with some of her songs including the theme song of Dawson's Creek. She studied music and Jazz from Berklee College of Music in Boston and is a Grammy Award winner. As a wannabe musician, I have such a deep appreciation for genuine artists, especially singer-songwriters with formal roots.
Friday night we went to see her perform. It was a bit of an unusual performance in the tiny lounge of Harrah's Ak-Chin Casino in Maricopa. Not an ideal venue for this type of performance when you're surrounded by people who have more interest in the slot machine than the world-class performer only a few yards away. But not bad for a FREE concert! We got there a bit early to be sure we had the best seats in the lounge, ate some food from the takeout place around the left side of the lounge, and sipped some mixed drinks. She played mainly a mainstream style of music tailored for this particular crowd. I've seen videos of other performances where she does Jazz standards, so I know she is capable of a broader spectrum of musical styles. At the end of the performance she did some freestyle beat-boxing that was interesting to see.
spamassassin-3.3.1 was released last week. It fixes a few minor bugs from the 3.3.0 release, but most importantly adds support for the new URIBL Spamhaus DBL. See the 3.3.0 RPM announcement for other notes that remain relevant to this release.
Packages for Fedora 11, Fedora 12, and Fedora 13.
Packages for RHEL5. Requires deps from EPEL5.
spamassassin-3.3.0 release on January 26th, 2010 by the Apache Software Foundation. This is a very important upgrade for mail administrators as this is the first major version upgrade in nearly 3 years. While many improvements were made to the rules, for the most part it is almost a simple matter of a drop-in replacement for spamassassin-3.2.x. 3.3.0 trunk has generally of better quality in both stability and spam detection capability than 3.2.5 for many months now. I personally have been running snapshots leading to this beta release on my production RHEL5 server since early 2009.
While 3.3.0 is much improved, the most exciting part of the 3.3.x series is improving upstream processes to enable more frequent rule updates, in order to better combat changing spamming patterns.
Rule development and auto-promotion to stable rule updates happen in the same source control, encouraging new and updated rules to land in the sa-update channel far more regularly.
Expanded recruitment of additional volunteers for the Nightly MassCheck. While any volunteers willing to sort mail are helpful, non-English speakers are in high demand. More variety of types of ham and spam used in nightly automated checks of SpamAssassin helps to improve the quality and safety of rules. A larger sample size allows for Rescore MassChecks to happen more often, allowing for more frequent balancing of new rules and greater overall safety. If you can sort mail into separate ham/spam folders, you can help to improve spamasssasin.
See upstream's release notes for complete details of this new upstream release. Many of the rules were made safer especially for a few non-English languages (Japanese and Italian tested), while many other rules were improved or added since the 3.2.x series.
Rule updates are now ENABLED BY DEFAULT on a nightly basis. As of 3.3.0 upstream considers rule updates mandatory. You may edit /etc/cron.d/sa-update if you wish to modify or disable the scheduled time where update occurs. /usr/share/spamassassin/sa-update.cron is the script that runs. Channel definitions are defined in .conf files contained in /etc/mail/spamassassin/channel.d/ where you can see the simple config format and make your own .conf file if you wish to add additional channels. You will note that the script updates by default only if it sees a spamd, amavisd or mimedefang daemon running.
Justin Mason's SOUGHT anti-fraud channel is enabled by default for nightly updates. From personal testing SOUGHT is the only non-default channel that I personally trust as safe and effective. Read about its interesting auto-generation methodology.
Subscribe for Spamassassin RPM News at Warren's announce-only mailing list. You will occasionally receive news and helpful tips to improve your spamassassin configuration.
amavisd-new-2.6.2 is the minimum compatible version with spamassassin-3.3.0. This ticket contains a possible quick workaround to make your old version of amavis compatible. This is only an issue for EPEL5 users which currently has an older version of amavisd-new. Steve is aware of the issue and will be upgrading the EPEL5 version soon.
maia-1.0.2a is INCOMPATIBLE with spamassassin-3.3.0. Upstream is aware of the issue and said they are working on this.
mimedefang versions in EPEL5 and Fedora are reportedly good.
STOP USING SARE or OpenProtect. They died a long time ago. Some of their rules are dangerous or redundant. Many of the better rules were integrated into spamassassin upstream.
Packages for Fedora 12 or Fedora 11.
RHEL5: I personally use these scratch builds. You will need some new perl module dependencies from EPEL5. The plan is to push spamassassin-3.3.0 final + new perl modules to RHEL-5 sometime early 2010 after extensive testing. But for now these are unofficial test packages. Please file bugs if you see any problems.
Optional packages: These packages are not required, but they probably will improve your spam filtering results.
SpamAssassin Bugzilla for most issues. If you report upstream please indicate the exact package version you are running as reported by rpm -q spamassassin and where you obtained that package.
Red Hat Bugzilla if you are having an issue specific to my Fedora or RHEL5 package.
Warren runs this announce-only mailing list. You will occasionally receive news and helpful tips to improve your spamassassin configuration, or warnings of new problems and workarounds, or news about how you can help to improve spamassassin.
Do you receive lots of non-English legitimate mail? Want to help to improve SpamAssassin upstream for your language? While we need help from speakers of any language, we especially need volunteer participants from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea or other Asian countries.
Volunteering is easy, you only sort mail into folders then run a script on your folders every night in a cron job, which then uploads your logs to the central server. Your mail remains private.
Contact Warren Togami or Fedora's auto-mass-check recruitment coordinator Nick Bebout if you are interested in joining.
spamassassin-3.3.0-rc1 was released today. Here are extensive release notes upstream of many improvements and bug fixes since 3.2.5. 3.3.0 trunk has generally of better quality in both stability and spam detection capability than 3.2.5 for many months now. I personally have been running snapshots leading to this beta release on my production RHEL5 server since early 2009. We expect almost no changes are necessary before 3.3.0 final to be released during early January 2010. This is the LAST CHANCE to test and report any problems.
RHEL5: I personally use this scratch builds. You will need some new perl module dependencies from EPEL5. The plan is to push spamassassin-3.3.0 final + new perl modules to RHEL-5 sometime during 2010 after extensive testing. I especially need test feedback of systems currently using spamassassin-3.2.5 with Mailscanner, Amavis or Mimedefang.
I decided today that I would try to fix an arrangement of a song, and attempt to mix a recording using fully FOSS tools. For now all I have is my laptop running Fedora 12 and a headset (microphone + headphones) plugged into my laptop.
Sunday: Downloaded sheet music of an arrangement that looks plausible for a flute trio.
Monday 7:48pm: cjb tells me about the existence of jokosher.
1.5 hours: Fighting bugs and design problems in the Linux desktop.
30 minutes: figuring out why Fedora 12 wont print the sheet music to my printer. Eventually chose some non-obvious non-default menu options and PackageKit decided it needed to download some PPD package, and it began working.
jokosher got stuck and needed to be restarted a few times.
jokosher crashed a few times.
During recording, playback of the other tracks would skip a lot.
jokosher exports the flattened audio with metronome enabled by default.
jokosher export would export an infinite size WAV file beyond the end of the recording.
nautilus when attempting to view Properties on that WAV file got stuck in a 100% loop.
lame can't recognize the file format of the WAV file exported by jokosher. oggenc worked fine.
15 minutes: I discover that the arrangement was wrong. Listened to original song and guessed a middle voice that seems to make more sense.
15 minutes: Three takes per part.
9:50pm: OGG or MP3. Quality is very poor, 80% because this human didn't play for 6 years. 10% poor microphone, 10% microphone was too close to the air column (air noises). My next attempt will have a better microphone properly positioned. I will also try audacity instead of jokosher.
Brownie points to the first person who identifies the song title.
spamassassin-3.3.0-beta1 is out. This is very close to what 3.3.0 final will be. 3.3.0 trunk has generally of better quality in both stability and spam detection capability than 3.2.5 for many months now. I personally have been running snapshots leading to this beta release on my production RHEL5 server since early 2009.
Fedora 12: spamassassin-3.3.0-beta1 in updates or download here.
RHEL5: I personally am using these scratch builds. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK, but feel free to file bugs in RH Bugzilla and assign it to me. You will need some new perl module dependencies from EPEL5. The plan is to push spamassassin-3.3.0 final + new perl modules to RHEL-5 sometime during 2010 after extensive testing. I especially need test feedback of systems currently using spamassassin-3.2.5 with Mailscanner, Amavis or Mimedefang.
This is a modified version of livecd-iso-to-disk.sh that will install the Fedora 12 Beta i386 or x86_64 onto an ext3 formatted USB drive. You should be able to boot the USB drive, and it should automatically detect the .iso copied there. ext3 format required! The 3GB+ DVD .iso wont fit on vfat filesystem due to the 2GB file size limit.
Does this script work running on Fedora 11 to write the Fedora 12 DVD .iso? I don't know. Please try it and report back.
I run my own Postfix server. Recently I tried to enable SSL and TLS authorization so my Palm Pre phone can login with name and password and send outgoing mail from any network. There was no trouble setting up Thunderbird to use SSL authentication for SMTP, but the Palm Pre was very frustrating to figure out. It turns out that my GoDaddy SSL Certificate was not automatically trusted by the Palm Pre mail client. You have to import the certificate (self-signed or "real" certs) for it to successfully use encrypted SMTP. The following steps worked for me.
Test it with Thunderbird to be sure it is working, in my case port 465 with SSL.
Send an e-mail to yourself, attach the SSL certificate (public key) used by your postfix server.
Read that mail on your Palm Pre, download and open the attached cert file. Import into the Certificate Manager.
RCN in the past week has apparently been rolling out DNS hijacking. When you attempt to query a domain name that does not exist, their DNS servers respond with bogus responses that attempts to redirect your browser to their own search page. This is a horrible idea for many reasons like breaking various software, but they don't care because it brings them more revenue in advertising click-thrus.
If you are experiencing DNS hijacking with RCN, call 1-800-RING-RCN and complain about this. If they don't know what you are talking about, say you want to opt out of "Paxfire". Then file a complaint, because this is a horribly bad idea to inflict this upon customers by default.
Test RPMS for Fedora 10+, RHEL-4 and RHEL-5. Rawhide has this version too.
Upstream says there are no remaining serious issues left for release. They are fixing a few minor bugs and hopefully releasing 3.3.0 in about 2 months.
The main concern for release is to improve the qualty of the scores. At the moment there are only five people participating in the NightlyMassCheck used for weekly score generation. More volunteers are needed to follow the HandClassifiedCorpora procedure, where manually sorted Spam and Ham (non-Spam) are fed into the masscheck script on a nightly basis, and logs are uploaded for statistical analysis. They especially need real persons with a mix of opt-in commercial e-mail (Ham) and unwanted Spam. Please read NightlyMassCheck if you want to help improve spamassassin's accuracy for everybody.
Reminder: If you use spamassassin, you should edit /etc/cron.d/sa-update and enable nightly score updates.
pidgin-2.5.8 builds for Fedora 9, 10, 11 and 12. Please let me know if anything became worse.


For most American households, moving is a certainty and something that will happen at one or more points in their life. In fact, according to statistics published by the United States Census Bureau, slightly more than 11 percent of the population moved to a different home during the counting year between 2015 and 2016. While this makes moving a common activity, many family moving experiences quickly disintegrate into a frantic, messy process full of delays and stress.
But moving does not have to be a negative experience when you use the following tips for a better moving experience.
Although emergencies can happen, situations where your family has to make an emergency move in just a few days rarely occur. In fact, most families typically make moving plans months ahead of the actual date when they will relocate.
Part of the plan is to plot these tasks and any others that apply on a detailed, written timeline and post it in a visible area of the home. This will help to keep all family members informed of progress and encourage them to work together to accomplish each task and speak out about any problems or concerns they may have.
A common problem when families move is mindlessly packing all the items currently inside the home, garage, and yard. In reality, many of these items have likely been outgrown or damaged.
Go through each room or area and sort out any unwanted or unneeded items to reduce the size and time it will take to accomplish the move. Since moving companies typically quote moving costs by the weight of the items to be moved, eliminate unnecessary items to achieve significant savings on the total cost of the move.
Another benefit to sorting through household goods, furnishings, and family possessions as part of the moving process is the potential to sell, donate, or recycle the unwanted items. Families who have made their moving plan and want to earn some cash can use this time to market their unwanted items via online classified sites, newspaper ads, or a garage sale. You can also take them to a consignment shop.
If time is short, families may want to donate their usable, unwanted items to local charities or groups who can distribute them to those who need them. In most cases, these organizations offer a receipt for the items that can be used to claim a tax deduction when filing income taxes for the year.
Moving fatigue can be a real problem for families, even when using a well-designed timeline. Homes where familiar items are being packed away can be stressful environments, especially for families with children who may not understand the concept or who worry about leaving friends behind.
Children of all ages can also benefit from taking a break from packing chores for a field trip to the new town or area. Show them the new home, school, or neighborhood to alleviate scary uncertainties and help children to feel more positive about the move and their future in their new home.
At Bekins, we have helped generations of families enjoy a less stressful moving experience. Our team of friendly professionals is always ready to use their experience and skills to make your next family's next move the best one yet. Call us today to get a free estimate for your move.


text:
A Theory To Better Understand Diversity, And Who Really Benefits
By David Shih
UCLA students hold crosses, while taking part in a 2006 rally on campus to express their concerns about the lack of racial diversity in the student body.
Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appointed Candice Jackson as the acting assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights. Jackson will oversee a staff of hundreds charged with responding to thousands of civil rights complaints every year, including some from students who feel discriminated against based on race, color, national origin, sex, ability, and age.
ProPublica reported that while an undergraduate at Stanford University, Jackson, a white woman, wrote an article for a student newspaper complaining about a section of a calculus course designed for "minority" students. The math class was an example of "racial discrimination" against white people, she wrote. In another op-ed for the paper, Jackson dismissed the needs of women "banding together by gender to fight for their rights." Might Jackson's words from twenty years ago fuel the idea that her office may not fully enforce Title VI and IX protections for people of color and white women? Do they signal that she may instruct her staff to elevate the complaints of white students or faculty who believe they are victims of racial discrimination?
A stronger line of inquiry begins with this question: what if these diversity policies actually improved the social position of white students and faculty?
As an Asian American professor who teaches about race, I regularly find myself at the center of campus diversity programs and initiatives. I work at a public Midwestern university where approximately 90 percent of students and faculty are white. Because this lack of racial diversity is so conspicuous, my institution has sought to advance and measure its progress to racial equity for many years. I've led several of these efforts, some more effective than others: antiracist professional development, resident assistant training, campus climate surveys, Equity Scorecard, general education reform, etc. Initiatives like these can begin to dismantle institutional racism, or they can further entrench it. In any similarly-minded effort, the key factor is something called "interest convergence."
Interest convergence is a theory coined by the late Derrick Bell, law professor and spiritual godfather to the field of study known as critical race theory. Interest convergence stipulates that black people achieve civil rights victories only when white and black interests converge. The signature example is Brown v. Board of Education, which happened because it advanced white interests too, Bell argued. Specifically, desegregation raised the nation's prestige in world politics during the Cold War. Eventually, when interests diverged, the enforcement of civil rights was curtailed: Brown was undercut by later cases that sanctioned segregation for decades. Bell pointed to later affirmative-action triumphs as examples of renewed interest convergence.
Schools and universities are natural sites to observe interest convergence because inequitable access to quality education ensures white social advantage. However, recent dispatches from around the country might lead some to believe that black interests are not only ascendant on college campuses but are absolutely oppressive.
In March, Middlebury College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, burst onto the national scene with its protest against a lecture by Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve. A Middlebury professor was assaulted during the protest and later hospitalized for her injury. Earlier this month, students at Claremont McKenna College blocked the entrance to a room where conservative thinker Heather Mac Donald was planning to speak. Her book The War on Cops criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement and pushes the discredited theory of the "Ferguson Effect." Every week seems to bring a similar story of speeches interrupted or canceled on college campuses.
But speakers come and go, and it would be difficult to claim that a single protest is a systemic effort to discriminate against white people. However, campus diversity policies are sometimes misinterpreted as doing just that. Responding to a wave of antiracist student protests over the past two years, most memorably at the University of Missouri and Yale University, colleges and universities have begun to refashion their identities to make room for the secular trinity of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Some of these are indeed systemic efforts — rewriting curriculum, updating tenure and promotion policies, hiring Chief Diversity Officers — meant to change how institutions evaluate themselves, students, and faculty.
Interest convergence helps to explain diversity policies once we understand that institutions will lose more than prestige if they are perceived as unwelcoming or even hostile to students of color. Any college president can attest to how crucial the tuition of international students is to their institution's bottom line. A recent survey indicated that almost 40 percent of US colleges report declines in applications from international students, chiefly those from Middle Eastern nations, China, and India. Many students submitted applications before recent spikes in hate crimes and hate-group activity and before the current administration's efforts to make good on its promise to ban travel from six Muslim nations. Thus, the drop in yield of international students actually enrolling may be steeper than that of applications. Quite simply, it is in an institution's financial interest not to be seen as racist.
Institutions like the University of Oklahoma are hoping that changes they have already put into place will improve campus climate. In response to a 2015 viral video of fraternity members singing a racist song, OU implemented mandatory "diversity experience trainings" for its first-year students the following year. This initiative has not been well-received by all. Complaints arrived from members of OU's College Republicans, who charged that the trainings made them feel "uncomfortable" and forced "them to be 'politically correct.'" These comments might resemble the kinds of complaints that Candice Jackson's office will need to make sense of.
However, when the "OU Freshmen Diversity Experience" touts its professional benefits over its potential to reduce discrimination, its origin in interest convergence is evident. Diversity skills can be marketed to employers. "Businesses want to hire graduates who understand their role in building a truly inclusive culture," OU explains on the program's site, and so the Experience "uses research-based curriculum to equip students for future employment." Moreover, the training may even hamstring graduates who aren't white men. Researchers found that minority executives (white women and people of color) who promote diversity in the workplace are rated worse by their supervisors than are white men doing the same. The business model for diversity teaches students about cultural preferences and how to avoid offense, but it is ill-equipped to unpack social group power dynamics. This disconnect was painfully brought to life by a recent commercial featuring Kendell Jenner slipping a cold Pepsi into the hand of a white police officer in riot gear — to the cheers of a diverse crowd of protesters.
Students of color can benefit from diversity trainings and curricula, but the outcomes are not uniform and may even be counter-productive. This is because initiatives like OU's Experience were not designed for them or to reduce the discrimination against them. Next fall, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa will roll out its "diversity and inclusion" requirement as part of its general education program. Matthew Bruce, a member of the executive board of the school's Black Student union, bluntly expressed his doubts about the requirement: "I don't necessarily see a course designed for people who are culturally incompetent as empowering students of color." Mandatory courses on "cultural competency" often further stigmatize and isolate students of color.
It's not only administrators whom student leaders work to hold accountable — faculty members have also been called out by students, partly because they are more familiar figures, but also because tenured faculty can seem to be able to get away with anything, including racism. And while student activists and an institution's governing board might find a lot to agree with over diversity-friendly personnel policies, faculty can struggle to locate their place within this kind of interest convergence.
In California, Pomona College entered the spotlight last year because of new diversity and inclusion tenure requirements. Pomona students volunteered examples of practices they would consider tenure-threatening. These included "Teaching an economics course on poverty using only white scholars" and "Saying things that are blatantly rude or disrespectful to students based on their background." Seemingly in response, the Oregon Association of Scholars recently released a report highly critical of what it calls "ideological litmus tests" for faculty hiring and evaluation. It names four Oregon public universities whose diversity policies allegedly violate academic freedom and unfairly target "non-left wing scholars."
Yet many faculty are in favor of personnel policies that reward them for bringing equity, diversity, and inclusion to their profession. Pomona's policy, however, is remarkable because it regards diversity as not "just a plus but a requirement" for tenure, according to Eric A. Hurley, a psychology and Africana studies professor who worked on the policy. At other institutions such as Virginia Tech, faculty "may" account for "diversity and inclusion" in applications for tenure and promotion, but they are not required to do so — a distinction its Provost made sure to emphasize publicly.
Weak diversity policies fail to change the status quo today because they trade binding commitment for symbolism and good intentions.
Interest convergence provides a lens for keener insight into policies that on the surface seem to offer obvious diversity benefits. For example, the Excelsior Scholarship, New York State's plan for free college tuition at its public colleges and universities, provides free tuition in exchange for a promise to attend college full-time, graduate on time, and live and work in New York for as many years as their scholarship was awarded. While the Excelsior Scholarship will no doubt boost college enrollments, its conditions assure that it will disproportionately benefit middle-class families and thus probably widen the racial educational gap — because Pell grants and other aid already pay tuition for poor students. And if the plan is ever broadly perceived as disproportionately benefiting students of color, calls for cutting or eliminating its funding are highly likely.
Might a period be on the horizon when a white student's discomfort in an ethnic studies class verges on a civil rights violation?
An institution might prepare for this day by understanding its diversity policies as naked interest convergence. This will entail making the case that white students and faculty benefit just as much from them as do their peers of color, if not more. But the core argument can no longer be the vague "compelling interest" of diversity. It must be economic. Instead of measuring qualitative outcomes such as "cultural competency" or "cognitive empathy," institutions might measure "salary upon graduation" or "promotions to full professor." Had affirmative action been consistently measured on similar merits, how much white people benefit from it would be common knowledge.
Interest convergence offers the most sobering and viable approach for the contentious issues around diversity and inclusion.
If white interests must continually be met so that they might leave behind a whit of racial justice, then the theory can make the future seem cynical or even hopeless. Interest convergence is not without its critics. Justin Driver has challenged it on multiple grounds, pointing out its contradictions and the necessary diminishment of black agency in its insistence upon the permanence of racism. But so much depends on our capacity to be open to the idea. Even if enduring white supremacy is a foregone conclusion, that fact does not preclude the possibility of individual righteous action, which is its own liberation.
David Shih is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Follow him @ProfessorShih.


where they are at a lower salary step to move to the highest step they have attained at another community college.
For the first time, instructors who have taught two or more courses for five years can anticipate that a second course will continue to be assigned.
seven days of the start of classes.
The agreement also boosts payments for lab instruction, which moves from 66 percent of a credit rate to 74 percent of credit rate.
The agreement streamlines the grievance process and calls for a more formalized system of performance review.
Make sure you're saving as much as you can.
Carry the free MTA Prescription Drug Card.
Legal questions arise every day. No matter how trivial or traumatic they might be, LegalShield gives you access to experienced law firms and attorneys when you need help. From real estate to divorce advice and speeding tickets to will preparation, attorneys are available to offer advice and assistance.
Protect yourself today so you can worry less and live more.
You deserve affordable legal protection.
With LegalShield you can access it.