text:
First Letter to Prof. Iliffe
When intellectual dishonesty becomes a crime: Nature and its cynical promotion of bad science.
The Death Of a Truthful Man. Pierre Doupagne, (1923-2008)
The Bushmeat Theorists Fail to Deliver Once Again
Michael Worobey's Wobbly Research into the Early History of HIV
Submitted by Ed Hooper on Wed, 19/03/2008 - 11:36am
Michael Worobey's wobbly research into the early history of HIV.
In late October and early November 2007 there was coverage in several media outlets (mainly in the US) of a newly-published study entitled "The Emergence of HIV/AIDS in the Americas and Beyond". The lead author was Michael Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Worobey's study focuses on the early spread of HIV-1 and AIDS out of Africa – and to the rest of the world. It concludes that, after it emerged from Africa, the first staging-post of pandemic HIV-1 was on the island of Haiti, and that it was from there that the virus later moved on to the United States and Canada. (The phrase "pandemic HIV-1" is used to mean the type of HIV that is found predominantly in North America and Europe: the so-called "Euro-American strain" of HIV-1, known officially as HIV-1 Group M, sub-type B.)
In itself this seems a reasonable hypothesis, one that was first mentioned in the non-medical literature as long ago as 1987, when it was proposed in Randy Shilts' seminal book on the AIDS epidemic, "And The Band Played On" [New York: St Martin's Press]. It is one of several hypotheses that seek to explain how the human immunodeficiency virus arrived on the North American continent, three of which are outlined below.
Hypothesis 1. The Africa – Haiti – North America transmission hypothesis favoured by Worobey is also supported by historical data, for it is known that thousands of Haitian teachers and technocrats worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC, the former Belgian Congo) in the 1960s, after the exodus of Belgian officials in and after 1960, the year of Independence, left a critical vacuum. . (The DRC is now almost universally accepted as representing the initial hearth of pandemic AIDS.) Haitians were ideal replacements for the Belgians, being well-educated, French-speaking, black – and more than eager to leave a country dominated by the dictatorships of the Duvaliers.
Hypothesis 2. This hypothesis proposes that subtype B might have travelled straight from Africa to North America where it infected a gay or bisexual man who later infected a Haitian counterpart (probably a bisexual, and very possibly during a vacation). Again, there is some historical support, for during the 1970s gay cruises from the US were extremely popular, and almost all featured Haiti as one of the most favoured stopovers.
Hypothesis 3. In The River, I wrote about another possibility: that the virus was exported first from Africa to Europe (and in particular to West Germany), and thence to Haiti and the US. In support of this, the first two retrospectively diagnosed AIDS cases in West Germany date from 1976 and 1977, and thus predate the earliest recorded gay cases from the Americas; both were male patients who died in January 1979 (one of whom is known to have been an active gay/bisexual). A third significant early case was a gay German chef who died of AIDS in Manhattan in 1980, after spending the three previous years working in Haiti, where he first displayed symptoms. This man apparently originated from Gelsenkirchen, the same city where Zaire (as the DRC was called from the 1970s to the 1990s) played two of its three games in the 1974 World Cup; thousands of Zairois came to Germany to support their team. Where, one wonders, was this man infected – in Haiti or Germany?
Hypothesis 4.
There is also a fourth possible hypothesis about how HIV-1 might have arrived in North America and Haiti, one that was tentatively advanced in my book "The River" in 1999. The clue that prompted this hypothesis was an apparently anachronistic historical detail. The earliest convincing case of AIDS in the United States involved a female baby born in New Jersey in 1973 or 1974 to a sixteen-year-old girl, who was identified as a drug-injector who had had multiple male sex partners. The infant died in 1979 after having shown the symptoms of AIDS for 5 years; her stored tissues later tested positive for HIV-1. Because the baby's case of AIDS predates any other known AIDS case in North America by at least four years, it would seem to have real significance.
The strong indications are that she was infected perinatally by her teenage mother, who must have been born at some point between 1956 and 1958. Might it be, I wondered, that 16 years earlier, the mother had been one of the infants born to women prisoners at Clinton State Farms in Clinton, New Jersey in the ten years beginning 1955, nearly all of whom were experimentally vaccinated with Hilary Koprowski's oral polio vaccines?
From late 1955 onwards, Koprowski and his team used Clinton Farms as a convenient North American testing-ground for their early OPVs, and it is therefore eminently possible that they tested not only batches of vaccine that had been produced in the US, but also vaccine batches that had been prepared locally in the Belgian Congo.
Former Koprowski aide Stanley Plotkin has reported that this Clinton hypothesis has been disproved, but I can demonstrate that his claim is incorrect.
There is considerably more to report on this subject, but I feel that this is not the right time to place these matters in the public domain.
[However, more detailed information about the early history of HIV-1 and AIDS in North America, Haiti, and West Germany may be found in chapters 3 to 5 of The River (pages 55 to 88), and more about the Clinton hypothesis appears on pages 692-700 and 778-779.]
The inherent bias of Worobey's paper.
In his Americas paper [PNAS; 2007; 104 (47); 18566-18570; official e-pub October 31st, 2007; formal publication November 20th, 2007], Dr Worobey states that his analysis of the sequences of 122 persons infected with HIV-1 Group M subtype B indicates a 99.8% probability that Hypothesis 1 is correct, and that the subtype B virus travelled from Africa to Haiti to North America, and not by any other route.
On the face of it, the conclusions of Worobey's paper seem reasonable enough. But there is a huge caveat about this work.
The 122 subtype B sequences on which the work is based consist of five sequences from early Haitian AIDS patients tested in the USA, and 117 subtype B sequences selected from the HIV/AIDS Sequence Database, (after attempts were made to exclude atypical strains and strains which suggested that they might be recombinant in origin). The five early Haitian sequences all apparently came from a Florida doctor, Arthur Pitchenik, who had gathered samples from Haitian men who had emigrated to the US in or after 1975, and whose blood was taken in either 1982 or 1983, after they had first displayed symptoms of AIDS. (It would seem, therefore, that some of these men may have been living in the US for 7 or 8 years before they fell sick.)
As additional historical background (not considered by Worobey), the first plausible case of AIDS from Haiti itself was a retrospectively identified case from 1978, and 7 further plausible Haitian cases have been identified from the years 1978 and 1979. Four of these eight cases from the 1970s were from Haiti itself, and four involved Haitians living in Canada and the US.
Save for the intriguing paediatric AIDS case from New Jersey mentioned above, the first American to show symptoms of AIDS did so in the first quarter of 1978. A total of 12 US cases (11 in gays/bisexuals) were retrospectively identified from 1978 and 1979 (one of whom may have been Haitian; [Selik RM, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Trends in the United States, 1978-1982"; Am. J. Med.; 1984; 76; 493-500.] (However, in other papers the first Haitian with AIDS in the US is documented as presenting in early 1980.)
By the end of 1981 there were hundreds of American AIDS cases, and Haitians were one of four risk groups who were indiscreetly described by certain CDC scientists as "The 4 Hs": homosexuals, heroin injectors, haemophiliacs and Haitians.
Of course, this historical background begs a question. Where are the viral sequences from the early AIDS cases from the US – the cases that did not involve Haitian immigrants?
The earliest US HIV-1 sequences included in Worobey's study are eight sequences dating from 1981 and one from 1982. Although the eight 1981 sequences predate the earliest Haitian sequences in the study by one year, this may not be very significant. This is because, as far as I can determine, all nine of these early US sequences are from gay/bisexual men, and the epidemiological evidence suggests that HIV-1 only entered the hothouse atmosphere of the gay bath-houses in 1977-8, after which the virus spread like wildfire. (The fact that the first people in the world to be identified with AIDS were gay American men was probably a function of the fact that multiple partner exchange, especially in the bath-houses, allowed a large number of gay men to become infected with HIV very rapidly. Partly because of the weight of numbers, and partly because multi-partner gay sex also encourages a wide range of other infections, it was almost inevitable that some of these gay men became "fast progressors", and progressed rapidly to showing symptoms of AIDS. We now know that roughly 1% of HIV-infected persons display frank symptoms of AIDS in less than a year.)
It is therefore apparent that many of the US AIDS cases who provide the 1981 and 1982 sequences in Worobey's study may only have been infected with HIV since 1978-1980. By contrast, the five Haitian AIDS patients tested in 1982-3 may not have been fast progressors, and may well have been HIV-infected before leaving Haiti as early as 1975. (It is worth noting that 1975 represented the peak year for "boat people" – Haitians who escaped to the US by sea.)
In short, Worobey finds that the five Haitian sequences are more ancient (set deeper in the phylogenetic tree) than the US sequences, but this may merely, or mainly, be a function of the fact that the Haitian patients were infected in an earlier year, as in all likelihood they were. So what he may actually be recording here is the year of initial infection.
To guard against this possibility, he surely needs to include in the study some sequences from US citizens who were infected back in the 1970s.
And indeed, there is no obvious reason why earlier US HIV-positive serum samples were not also studied. Huge numbers of serum samples were taken from gay and bisexual American men for many different studies throughout the 1970s. In particular, starting in 1977-8, sera were routinely gathered from hundreds of gay and bisexual men in five different North American cities (including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco), as part of the Five Cities Study. The earliest retrospectively proven HIV-positive serum sample comes from a gay man tested in New York on September 6th, 1977 – but within the next 27 months a viral explosion took place, for both the San Francisco and New York cohorts referred to above were retrospectively found to have levels of HIV-positivity of above 10% by the end of 1979!
Yet as far as I know, there has never been any molecular analysis of HIV-1 viruses from these 1970s sera, or from the stored tissues or sera of US AIDS cases from the 1970s.
What, I wonder, would be the result if the US sequences included in Worobey's study had included sequences obtained from the very beginning of the gay epidemic, or from one or more of the seven HIV-positive babies (all born to drug-injecting mothers in New York and San Francisco, many of whom may also have been prostitutes) in 1977? [See River, pages 71-72.] Or what if his study had included a viral sequence from the HIV-infected baby born to a drug-injecting New Jersey mother in 1973-4 (alluded to in Hypothesis 4 above)?
I believe that if sequences from early US AIDS patients (or, indeed, early German AIDS patients) had also been included in this study, the outcome of the molecular analysis might have been different.
For instance, such a study might conclude that HIV-1 travelled first from Africa to the Americas, and was then exported via a US infectee to Haiti, where it first entered the gay/bisexual community, and was then re-exported back into the US and Canada a few years later, perhaps via a gay cruiser, or else one of the boat people, thousands of whom fled Haiti for Florida from 1975 onwards. Or else such a study might conclude that the virus had actually travelled from Africa to Germany to Haiti to the US.
In short, it may well be that the findings of Worobey's study were almost inevitable, given his choice of samples. Under these circumstances, I would propose that his conclusions (that HIV-1 arrived in Haiti before it came to the US) cannot be relied upon. When a study is biased in its selection of samples, it is hard to draw any meaningful conclusions.
The strange dearth of early molecular data from the US.
The lack of any molecular studies of early HIV-positive stored sera and tissues from the United States is remarkable, and deserves further comment.
It would seem that North American doctors are keen to do molecular analysis on potential AIDS cases and HIV infectees from Africa (many studies); the UK (the famous case, apparently later refuted, from 1959: the so-called "Manchester sailor") and the Caribbean (Worobey's research), yet there is apparently a total lack of studies of early US and Canadian HIV-infected sera and tissues, and thus no molecular analysis of early North American HIV sequences.
This great gap in the published research also extends to epidemiological studies of the US epidemic. Beginning in 1990, I conducted interviews with doctors from the CDC and elsewhere who were involved in the early days of the American AIDS epidemic. In retrospect, one thing I repeatedly noticed was that nobody from the CDC was willing to talk about the earliest cases.
People such as Jim Curran, the epidemiologist who was the first head of AIDS research at the CDC, and who was the last author of the aforementioned "AIDS trends in the US, 1978-82" paper, were notably reticent about these crucial cases. I was asking for details such as dates, places and symptoms, and not for the names of patients, so there was no need for excessive confidentiality. Despite this, I met with a wall of silence. The only witnesses who were more forthcoming on this topic were a couple of doctors who had left the CDC, and with their cautious help (allied to information obtained from Shilts's epic book, "And The Band Played On"), I managed to reconstruct a fair part of the early US epidemic (see Chapter 3 of The River).
Many questionable decisions were made in those days. For instance, Shilts relates that the notebooks of the epidemiologist who had single-handedly tracked the early spread of AIDS in San Francisco were shredded by the local public health department within two months of her retirement, with patient confidentiality apparently cited as the reason. These days, such wilful destruction of vital epidemiological data would appear breathtakingly irresponsible.
For studies of ancient sera and tissues, the names of patients or serum donors are automatically withheld, which removes the risk of compromising patient confidentiality. This makes it truly remarkable that no virological studies of early US samples, and no molecular analyses of early US HIV-1 viruses, have yet been carried out (or at least reported in the medical literature).
Is it possible that these vital ancient samples have been autoclaved (just as that early epidemiological data from California was apparently shredded)? I very much doubt it. But in that case, why the dearth of early HIV-1 studies from the US itself? Is it possible that there are concerns that such analyses might reveal some inconvenient or embarrassing information?
The unique prehistory of Subtype B.
There is one further strange historical detail that needs to be mentioned. From the late 1970s onwards, HIV-1 Group M Subtype B experienced epidemic spread in North America and Europe (and indeed in the rest of the world outside Africa). In fact, in many parts of the world outside Africa, it quickly became the dominant strain of HIV.
And yet in Africa itself subtype B apparently either never existed, or else quickly died out. Indeed, until the last few years, the only strains of HIV-1 subtype B ever detected in Africa came from three or four blood samples obtained in the 1990s, which in all likelihood represented viruses that had been re-imported to Africa from the West.
The only plausible candidate for a genuine African subtype B virus was one that was retrospectively reported in 2001. It came from a serum sample from a Congolese woman from Kinshasa who was originally tested at some point between 1983 and 1985. Some 15 years later, her virus was among a group of HIV-1 viruses from the DRC that was sequenced by Tom Folks' retrovirology team from the CDC with the results published as: M.L. Kalish, T.M. Folks et al., "Evidence for the Presence of all Known HIV-1 Group M Subtypes and Some Unclassifiable Strains in Kinshasa, Zaire, in the Early to Mid-1980s"; 8th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections; 2001; Abstract 268.
Every single one of the major subtypes of pandemic HIV-1 (ten, in those days) had been found in this early sampling of the city of Kinshasa – a unique and hugely significant result.
The presence of a subtype B virus in that city was especially fascinating. In 2002 I e-mailed Folks, asking whether he thought that this 1983-5 subtype B had been a local virus (ie one originating from Zaire, now called the DRC) or a Western re-import, and he e-mailed back: "Only a hunch, but I would guess home (local) infection."
I found this implausible, in that it was his own team that had sequenced the virus, and yet we then heard nothing more about it – as we surely would have done, if this had been the only genuine sample of African HIV-1 subtype B in existence.
Five years later I asked Folks (now retired from the CDC) the same question, and on December 16th, 2007 he e-mailed back a different answer: "Yes, I agree, it would be strange to find it [the subtype B sequence] there [in Kinshasa] if it were not reimported, but of course, no proof."
It appears, therefore, that (alone of all the subtypes) the molecular biologists have found no genuine examples in Africa of HIV-1 subtype B.
Of course, the ancestor of all subtype B viruses could still have existed in the DRC back in the 60s, and could have caused onward spread to Haiti, the US and the rest of the world, before dying out in the DRC itself.
Alternatively, the OPV theory (and in particular the Clinton sub-hypothesis outlined above) clearly provide another possible explanation.
This sub-hypothesis would beggar the following questions:
What if the original subtype B virus existed in a vaccine batch that was prepared in the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, but was either never given to humans in that country, or else used only on a limited scale in the Congo, causing only sporadic infections that were insufficient to spark a full-scale subtype B outbreak in that continent?
And what is this same batch was among those sent back to the US for laboratory testing, and was also tested in vivo on an infant or infants from the women's prison in Clinton, New Jersey?
Depending on one's beliefs about origins, this scenario may or may not seem far-fetched. But I believe that it is no more far-fetched than the scenario proposed by Michael Worobey, which is based on a whole series of assumptions, none of which are scientifically proven.
When one examines the information (including historical details) available from a number of different sources, rather than making a theoretical analysis that is solely based on a phylogenetic dating theory that has been shown to be inherently flawed, it is revealed that Worobey's near-certainties are actually based on rather flimsy ground.
Hypothesis 1 (the Africa-to-Haiti hypothesis favoured by Worobey) is a perfectly plausible hypothesis, and may indeed reflect what actually happened historically. However, I firmly believe there is nothing in Worobey's paper that disproves Hypotheses 2, 3 or 4.
Worobey's wobbly dating analysis.
In a press release dated October 29th, 2007, Professor Worobey also proposed some dates to flesh out his transmission scenario. He suggested that HIV-1 arrived in Haiti from Africa in "about 1966", and that the first American was infected with a Haitian version of the virus in "about 1969". This was sexy stuff, and it engendered coverage in several newspapers.
The latter date is somewhat earlier than many previous estimates, such as those which placed the arrival of HIV-1 in the United States in the early to middle 1970s, mainly on the basis of epidemiological analysis. It requires HIV-1 to have been circulating in the US for 12 years before AIDS was first recognised and reported (in Los Angeles in 1981). I find this rather implausible, but it is certainly not impossible.
What is far less plausible, and in fact highly controversial, is the use of phylogenetic or molecular analysis to try to date the age of HIV-1 isolates.
A brief aside. The early molecular analysis of immunodeficiency viruses by people such as Beatrice Hahn, Paul Sharp and Bette Korber was incredibly useful. It illustrated, for instance, that a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) discovered in a Tanzanian baboon had been acquired from a local African green monkey (perhaps one that the baboon had attacked or eaten); this was one of the earliest proofs that cross-species transmission of SIVs occurred in the wild.
And the systematic surveys of SIVs in primates that these and other doctors are currently conducting in different parts of Africa (which have recently discovered an SIV in the gorilla, one that is related to – and probably derived from – chimpanzee SIV) continues to this day to provide dramatic and important new information.
But unfortunately, as the activities of these researchers have grown and their grants have multiplied, some of them have over-reached themselves and have started to make exaggerated or misplaced claims.
Their attempts to date the events on their family tree of SIVs and HIVs is perhaps the best example of science that is based on assertion, rather than on solid scientific principles.
I strongly believe that their research into the "molecular dating of HIV" is inherently unscientific, because it is based on a false premise. This premise is that HIV-1 mutates at a constant rate, according to a molecular clock that beats like a metronome – and that this mutation rate can be measured and used to calculate the dates of significant events in the virus's early history.
Or to put it in Worobey's own words, from an interview he did with National Public Radio on November 12th, 2007: "Because viruses mutate at a relatively constant rate, you can actually calibrate what we call a molecular clock, and when we did that we find [sic] that the US epidemic basically – all of it – traces back to what looks like a single migration event of the virus, somewhere around 1969, plus or minus a couple of years."
In reality, this molecular clock approach is a reasonable approach for dating DNA-based viruses like smallpox, which evolve almost exclusively through mutation. However, it begins to fail for RNA-based viruses, and in particular retroviruses, where a substantial degree of evolution occurs through recombination. Recombination occurs when two different viruses meet inside a cell, and exchange portions of each other's genomes (much as a male and female human have sex and produce a baby with the genetic characteristics of both parents).
Recombination is a totally different form of evolution from mutation, and it cannot be measured by a molecular clock.
HIV-1 is the most recombinogenic human virus (ie the human virus most prone to recombination) known to medical science. A study published back in July 2002 spelt out just how recombinogenic this virus is. In its title it referred to "massive recombination" and it revealed that recombination is four to ten times more common than mutation in both HIV and SIV. [S. Wain-Hobson et al., "Network analysis of human and simian immunodeficiency virus sequence sets reveals massive recombination resulting in shorter pathways"; J. Gen Virol.; 2002; 84; 885-895.] This important paper also revealed the direct implication of this finding: that HIV sequences were in reality younger (ie closer to the present) than had been anticipated by molecular dating analysis.
A commendably fair-minded commentary on this "really interesting and beautiful study" written by Science staff writer and AIDS specialist Jon Cohen (himself no friend to the OPV theory in the past) concluded that it "raises significant questions about phylogeny trees that attempt to date the origin of HIV, all of which intentionally discard suspected recombinants to make the data interpretable". [Science; 2002; 297; 312-313.]
As Wain-Hobson and Cohen highlight, all that geneticists such as Michael Worobey can do in their dating attempts is to exclude obvious recombinant HIV-1 sequences from their analyses, so that what they are left with are sequences that have supposedly evolved only through mutation.
In reality, however, HIV-1 sequences that recombined early in their evolutionary history can no longer be identified or recognised, and therefore cannot be excluded from the geneticists' analyses. In short, there is no way of knowing whether or not any given HIV-1 sequence features ancient recombination.
What this means in practice is that evolutionary dating analysis of HIV-1 is inherently flawed, and that it tends to promote dates of origin that are (a) unreliable, and (b) too far back in the past.
Perhaps the best-known example of HIV-1 phylogenetic dating was published in 2000 by Professor Bette Korber's team at the HIV Sequence Database at Los Alamos. This was a paper published in Science, which proposed that the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) of pandemic HIV-1 existed in about 1931 (plus or minus 10 or 15 years). [Korber B. et al.; "Timing the ancestor of the HIV-1 pandemic strains"; Science; 2000; 288; 1789-1796.] Effectively, Korber was proposing a date of origin for the HIV-1 virus in Africa, and thus a start date for the global AIDS pandemic.
The publication of the paper was promoted by a huge press conference, and it naturally garnered world-wide headlines. The science it proposed was elegantly presented, but it was essentially fantasy.
It is noteworthy that Michael Worobey stresses that his dates for the arrival of HIV-1 in Haiti and the US are broadly consistent with this 1931 start date.
In reality, the principal HIV-1 molecular daters turn out to be quite a small group of American, British and Belgian scientists who tend in practice to come up with dates that are consistent with Korber's ancestral date of 1931. This in turn may mean one of two things:
That the work of all these scientists from Korber onwards is remarkably accurate, even though they are using a molecular clock to try to measure the mutation rate of a virus that evolves mainly through recombination, or
That the findings in Korber's original study were dubious, and that all HIV-1 molecular dating studies since then have been equally dubious, as they have strived for internal consistency with Korber. In short, that these researchers' results tend automatically to be self-confirming.
I personally favour scenario (b), and I am not alone. Many scientists with whom I have spoken and corresponded, including molecular biologists and population geneticists, believe that in reality, the molecular dating studies of HIV-1 represent a 21st century version of alchemy, the medieval science which claimed that base metals could be "transmuted" into gold. In the Middle Ages, alchemy was an accepted science. Nowadays, alchemy is viewed with gentle amusement, since it is recognised that the basic premises and assumptions underlying that "science" were wrong.
With the molecular dating of HIV-1 so many different parameters are possible, most notably the selection or rejection of different HIV-1 sequences and the choice of the specific model used to create the molecular clock, that one can arrive at any one of a rather wide variety of dates in the final results column. It therefore becomes relatively easy to come up with dates of origin that tie in with one's preconceptions, and to convince oneself that one is producing great science when all one is actually doing is reflecting and repeating dubious science of the past.
The latest type of model that the HIV-1 molecular daters (including Worobey in his "Americas" study) like to use is called a "relaxed molecular clock", which allows the mutation rate to vary among the various HIV-1 sequences. In lay terms this means a clock that does not always act like a clock. With such a clock, it is not so difficult to bend time.
However, a recent key paper from this school of phylogenetic daters (Anne-Mieke Vandamme's group from the University of Leuven, a seat of learning which was a major collaborator on Koprowski's 1950s CHAT vaccination trials in Africa) contains rather revealing information about the limitations of these procedures. It concedes how difficult it is, even among the major HIV-1 subtypes, to identify recombinant sequences, and states the following: "As current phylogenetic methods are not capable of accurately reconstructing the evolutionary histories of highly recombinant strains, it may never be possible to correctly assign for all strains which one is the recombinant and which one is the parent." [Abecasis AB, Vandamme AM et al.; "Recombination confounds the early history of human immunodeficiency virus type 1; subtype G is a circulating recombinant form"; J. Virol.; 2007; 81 (16); 8543-8551.]
(Finally, it is worth pointing out that Vandamme's group at Leuven is not unique, for nearly all the American, British and Belgian phylogenetic daters mentioned above are either from labs which collaborated directly with Koprowski in the CHAT trials in Africa in the 1950s, or else are scientists who are known to have had contacts in the recent past either with Koprowski's former deputy Stanley Plotkin, or Plotkin's group of anti-OPV collaborators. Whether this is significant or coincidental in not yet apparent.)
Possible explanations for the phylogenetic dating mumbo-jumbo.
Outside the heady atmosphere of the molecular dating labs, an increasing number of scientists have over the last seven or eight years realised that molecular dating analyses for HIV-1 are unreliable. The fact that relatively few have spoken up about it is mainly a factor of the way Science is conducted today.
The origins-of-AIDS controversy is one of the most politically-loaded debates in Science. Over the years many scientists (some of whom are generally regarded as eminent) have spoken to me off-the-record, on the basis that I never mention their names. There is widespread concern that getting involved in this debate on the "wrong" side could turn out to be injurious to your health (ie to your funding and career prospects).
This fear may seem incredible, or exaggerated. If you think so, then cast your mind back to the 1930s, when millions of Germans (and indeed, Britons and Americans and others) found it acceptable, or possible, to cast a blind eye to what the Third Reich was doing in Germany. Let me be absolutely clear: I am not suggesting that the HIV-1 geneticists are Nazis! I am merely underlining that there are many ways in which (and levels on which) beliefs, whether or not they are sincerely held, can be transformed into dogma. I am also stressing the fairly obvious fact that because the man and woman in the street (and indeed, the scientist in the lab) don't have the time to investigate every scientific issue for themselves, they tend in practice to accept much of what they are told by scientists who have spent years studying those particular issues, and who are perceived as experts. In reality, it is not that easy to question the expertise of "experts".
The dissenting scientists referred to above all expressed deep-seated scepticism about the molecular dating of HIV-1, but insisted that I treat their words as either unattributable or off-the-record. Of course, I have respected their wishes. However, there are also some highly experienced scientists who have spoken up on the record. I am keeping some up my sleeve for now, but two who have come out publicly are professors Gerry Myers and Mikkel Schierup.
In 2000, Professor Myers had recently retired from his job as head of Group T-10 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (the group responsible for compiling the HIV Sequence Database), where he had been Bette Korber's boss. Despite having health problems at the time, Myers wrote an intelligent and powerful critique of Korber's HIV-1 dating work. Gerry Myers was not well enough to fly to London to present this paper at the Royal Society conference on "Origins of HIV and the AIDS epidemic", but it was presented instead by a young statistician who had co-authored the paper, Tom Burr. [T. Burr, G. Hyman and G. Myers, "The origin of AIDS: Darwinian or Lamarckian?"; Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (London) B; 2001; 356; 877-888].
However, five months earlier I had flown to Los Alamos to meet with Myers (for the second time) in order to discuss the molecular analysis of HIV-1. A classicist by training, Myers is a logical and independent thinker, and during our April 2000 meeting he gave me a clear sense of the extent of the disagreement and uncertainty that had existed among the HIV phylogeneticists about how best to undertake the dating of ancient HIV-1 isolates.
In his Royal Society paper, Professor Myers found Professor Korber's dating approach inherently flawed and questioned some of the specifics of her work. However, as he has told me and others on several occasions, he feels constrained from presenting a more sustained critique, partly because Korber is a personal friend of himself and his family.
Another open critic was the Danish population geneticist Mikkel Schierup, whose paper entitled "Recombination and Phylogenetic Analysis of HIV-1" was first presented at the 2001 meeting on HIV origins at the Lincei Academy in Rome; [Atti dei Convegni Lincei; 2003; 187; 231-245]. Schierup's paper ably dismantled the molecular dating approach for HIV-1 by using deliciously understated scientific language. Sadly, the closing speaker at that conference (Robin Weiss) together with Paul Sharp (who also spoke at the conference, but who later withdrew his paper from the published proceedings) and his fellow HIV daters have found it easiest to ignore the import of Schierup's paper.
So why is misleading research based on the molecular dating of HIV-1 promoted and published in the pages of the major scientific journals? The answer may be fairly simple. It ties in with the vague but non-controversial bushmeat hypothesis of origin of AIDS, which proposes that the AIDS pandemic arose through Africans eating or butchering chimpanzees in or around the 1930s. Moreover, it appears to refute the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) hypothesis of origin, which proposes that AIDS arose through the experimental vaccination of some 900,000 Africans in the Belgian Congo (now the DRC), and what is now Rwanda and Burundi, with vaccine grown in chimpanzee cells in the late 1950s.
Unfortunately, Michael Worobey now appears to be a committed molecular dater, just like his mentors, molecular biologists Bette Korber and Paul Sharp. As a result, he tends to come out with sweeping and unreliable statements. For instance, in his November 12th, 2007 interview on NPR, he said the following: "[T]here's a lot of evidence that [the HIV-1] virus was circulating in central Africa for many, many years before it emerged elsewhere in the world." Worobey went on: "That evidence comes in part from" the fact that similar viruses are found in African apes and monkeys, and that these primates are sold as bushmeat in African markets.
That was all the explanation he gave. In reality, this constitutes no evidence at all, merely a hypothesised mode of transmission which has never been supported by a single compelling piece of evidence.
I believe that Worobey's claim (that HIV-1 had been circulating for "many, many years before it emerged elsewhere in the world") is unreliable. Even if one accepts Korber's date of 1931 plus or minus 10 or 15 years for the emergence of HIV-1 in Africa (which, remember, is an entirely theoretical calculation), this would place emergence in Africa only some 25-35 years before Worobey's date of export to the rest of the world. This is hardly "many, many years before", especially when one considers that Africans must have been killing, skinning and eating SIV-infected primates for hundreds of thousands of years!
Given the premises and vague assumptions of the bushmeat school, I would have expected HIV-1 to have emerged in Africa not in 1931, but in 1931 BC….or perhaps 1931000 BC!
The question that the molecular daters prefer not to ask.
I often wonder how these HIV phylogenetic daters can avoid asking themselves what seems to me to be the key question. The question is this. Why is it that, according to them, ten separate transfers of SIV from African primates to man have all occurred during the recent past (in fact, during the middle part of the twentieth century), whereas Africans have been eating and butchering chimps and other monkeys since time immemorial?
According to their own analysis, these ten primate-to-human transfers comprise seven transfers of sooty mangabey SIV to make HIV-2 Types A to G (only two of which, Types A and B, have spread further among humans to cause actual human outbreaks), and three transfers to humans of chimpanzee SIV to make HIV-1 Group M (causing pandemic AIDS), Group N and Group O.
I believe that these geneticists are actually caught in a cleft stick. On the one hand, they cannot argue that HIV and AIDS existed as far back as the early 19th century, because it is easy to prove that those millions of Africans who were forcibly taken to the Americas during the Slave Trade were not infected with any of the HIVs. So this is where their much-vaunted phylogenetic dating analysis comes in. This allows them to argue that those ten proposed transfers of SIVs to Homo sapiens occurred during the 20th century, but only during the first half of the twentieth century, a few vital years before the polio vaccination campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s!
The molecular biologists contend that the index case of the AIDS pandemic, the very first HIV-1, existed in 1931. So why, according to them, was no AIDS seen in Africa before the 1960s or 1970s? They argue that it must have been there, but went unrecognised (a) because the numbers infected were smaller, and (b) because these early cases were instead diagnosed as one of the typical AIDS indicator diseases, such as tuberculosis.
To my mind (and here I am confident of the support of many Africa-based clinicians), this rather jesuitical argument actually demonstrates a basic misunderstanding, or misinterpretation, of the clinical presentation of African AIDS. In reality, AIDS very rarely presents as just a single disease such as TB. In reality it usually presents with a striking range of opportunistic infections (such as oral thrush, and certain specific – and untreatable – dermatological, respiratory and enteropathic complaints) which allows it to be recognised surprisingly quickly. (In the years before AIDS was identified, such a case would have been recognised as striking and unusual; from the 1980s onwards it would have been recognised as AIDS.)
Indeed, this is a key point about AIDS, one that I tried to make in the opening chapters of The River. Even to inexperienced observers, the condition of AIDS is readily recognised as something that is different and new. For instance, the first cases in the Rakai district of southern Uganda were seen in 1982, and by 1984 the local people had given this apparently new disease a new name: "Slim". (This was even before Slim was recognised by Western doctors in Africa as a presentation of AIDS.) The Sharps and Worobeys, by contrast, apparently believe that thousands of Africans must have been infected between the 1930s and the 1960s, but that nobody noticed that anything new was going on!
In any case, even if one were to accept their 1931 start date as accurate, there is another possible explanation, one that is I believe far more compelling. As I have reported since year 2000, experimental polio vaccination campaigns that used vaccines grown in the kidneys of (a) chimpanzees; and (b) baboons and "other monkeys" (including sooty mangabeys) were staged in Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s, in the very places which are now known and accepted as the geographical hearths of HIV-1 and HIV-2.
The geneticists assume that the various outbreaks of AIDS all evolved from a single index case of HIV infection. However, their molecular dating approach cannot distinguish between one single HIV infection in, say, 1931, and a small cluster of index cases infected via the African vaccines used in the late 1950s. This is because, according to their model, their 1931 index virus would, over 25 or 30 years, have evolved genetically to the same extent that would obtain if multiple HIV-1 variants were introduced to humans in the late 1950s via different batches of vaccine.
To put it another way, the geneticists believe that the nine or so genetically divergent subtypes of HIV-1 group M (pandemic HIV-1) all evolved from that one index case between the 1930s and the 1950s, whereas I believe that the different HIV-1 subtypes represent the different viral strains that were transferred to humans via the different vaccine batches. (It appears that the OPV batches given to humans in Africa were produced in series, one from another, so there is the potential for new chimp viruses to have entered the "soup" and recombined every time that new chimp tissue cultures and chimp sera were employed to grow a new batch of vaccine.)
In short, despite the two very different scenarios for first transfer proposed by the bushmeat and OPV hypotheses, the epidemiological (and phylogenetic) patterns from the late 1950s onwards would be exactly the same.
Has there been a cover-up?
Major scientific journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences continue to publish the impressive-sounding (but ill-supported) scientific research of researchers such as Bette Korber and Michael Worobey, while refusing all submissions that contain material or analysis supportive of the OPV hypothesis, even submissions from men as eminent as Bill Hamilton.
Why are these leading scientific journals showing such apparent bias? I believe that the reasons are partly financial and political, and partly ideological.
The Belgian Congo vaccination campaign was master-minded by American and Belgian scientists, and they and their successors can be imagined to be far from happy at the prospect of being sued for billions by large numbers of AIDS patients, for instance in a class action suit.
The governments of the USA and Belgium, both of which backed the trials financially and administratively, may feel very much the same way, and be every bit as defensive.
As for the ideological reasons, vaccination is the Holy Grail of Modern Medicine, and is the process on which most public health interventions are based. It is therefore also the process that can never be allowed to be seriously questioned or criticised in the public domain.
Never mind that I repeatedly emphasise in my writings that most vaccination campaigns are safe, and that I am simply questioning the safety of one experimental campaign conducted in the 1950s. From the perspective of many (far too many) of those in the public health fraternity, it's a case of never mind what happened in the past: OPV/AIDS is a "dangerous theory" that could adversely affect popular confidence in the vaccination campaigns of the future.
I believe that the bias, as evidenced in part by the censored coverage in major scientific journals, is so extensive that it amounts to an implicit cover-up. Unfortunately, many scientists do not have the time or inclination to investigate these matters themselves, and they therefore tend to accept what Nature and Science have already pronounced on the subject. In practice, this means accepting the assurances of well-known scientists such as British retrovirologist Robin Weiss, who is, I believe, one of the principal architects and promulgators of the "official" bushmeat version of how AIDS began.
In response to my book The River in 1999, Professor Weiss wrote a cautious, but basically positive, review in Science, and then helped organise the Royal Society meeting on "Origins of HIV and the AIDS Epidemic" in September 2000. He skilfully arranged and co-ordinated that meeting so that it highlighted the establishment response to the OPV hypothesis, a response that was based on (a) the bushmeat hypothesis, (b) phylogenetic dating analysis, and (c) the testing of samples of CHAT vaccines obtained in the US and UK.
The latter samples of vaccine had never themselves been used for vaccination in Africa, and they clearly represented different batches of vaccine from those used in Africa (although Weiss and others tried to argue otherwise, mainly by obfuscating the issue). Of course, all these vaccine samples from the US and UK tested negative for SIVs and for chimpanzee DNA.
Apart from promoting and favouring such misleading research, several speakers at the Royal Society meeting deliberately tried to confuse and obfuscate the history of what had actually happened during the OPV campaigns in Africa. And then came the coup de grace in the form of Professor Weiss's closing speech. His comments were quite blatantly biased, favouring only the bushmeat theory, and these were the comments that got reported in the press and in scientific journals the world over.
Weiss was also present at the second major origins of AIDS conference, held at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome in September 2001, where, strangely, he was once again appointed to deliver the final summing-up. This time he was even more flagrantly biased, in that he managed to ignore virtually every bit of the new evidence that I and others (such as Luisa Bozzi and Mikkel Schierup) had presented. This time I was so disgusted that I surprised myself by getting up and walking out, shouting at the podium as I did so: "This speech is a disgrace."
Michael Worobey's past and future research.
The author of the "Emergence of HIV in the Americas" study is the young Canadian Michael Worobey, a Rhodes Scholar who first worked under molecular biologist Eddie Holmes (another bushmeat proponent) at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, and who a few years back was appointed head of his own evolutionary biology lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Worobey actually has a significant history of involvement in the origins-of-AIDS debate. Furthermore, he would appear to be the man who is being promoted by kingmakers such as Robin Weiss to become the new "star investigator" of the bushmeat lobby.
The Haitian research may therefore be part and parcel of a continuing process designed to position Dr Worobey in the public eye, and to lend kudos to his work. In reality his Americas paper was not an especially ground-breaking study, but it is one that garners easy headlines – especially when allied to his estimates of when HIV may have arrived in the United States.
And what comes next? This is revealed by the last line of the press release, which states: "Worobey's next step is following the trail of HIV-1 even further back in time using older archival samples".
Some clues about what he is actually looking at are provided by Worobey's 2005 grant proposal to the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the NIH). This ended with his promise to "illuminate the remarkably unstudied early phase of HIV evolution (from around the time of discovery of AIDS, back to 1955 or perhaps even earlier)".
I consider the fact that Worobey specifically mentions the year 1955, which immediately predates the polio vaccine trials, to be very telling – and in a companion essay to this one I shall explain why such responsible-sounding work is in reality a cause for considerable concern.
Edward Hooper. First version written November 1st, 2007; this updated version written January 20th, 2008; minor changes made and posted on March 19th, 2008.
[See also the essay on "Michael Worobey's possession of 1950s tissue samples from Stanleyville", which leads on from this one.]


While olive oil generally originates from Spain or Italy, olive oil is found in the cuisines of many cultures around the world, and has certainly become widely used in American cuisine and by Americans, on account of olive oil's versatility and its healthiness as an ingredient.
While you can incorporate olive oil into pretty much any style of cooking, if you're interested in exploring Spanish cuisine, look no further than our free recipe e-book on our website. Download it now to get access to a range of appetizers, mains and desserts that are part of the canon of Spanish cuisine.
We know you'll really enjoy Spanish food, because it's rich, healthy and satisfying. That means that the next thing you need to do is to stock your pantry with a few of the basics for Spanish cuisine, so that you can explore and experiment with Spanish flavors and recipes.
So, what would you typically find in a pantry in Spain?
Obviously, the number one thing is olive oil. No surprise there! But what else? What often distinguishes one type of cuisine from another is the way food is seasoned and flavored, for example particular herbs and spices are more prominent in Spanish cuisine than in French cuisine.
The spices, seasonings and flavor packed ingredients that you'll want to keep on hand to give your recipes some Spanish flair are: pimentón (paprika), saffron, piquillo peppers and anchovies. Add to this list: manchego cheese. Pimentón is a smoked paprika that differs from the, often more common, Hungarian paprika, so make sure to get the Spanish style paprika.
Other ingredients you'll often see come up in Spanish recipes, that are also commonly found in American pantries, are canned tuna, almonds and fresh tomatoes.
To source the most authentic ingredients search your local area for Spanish food shops or specialty stores or ask your grocer if they carry any imported Spanish foods.
The last and most important step is to have a party! Have fun organizing a Spanish-inspired dinner for family and friends to gather around and make delicious memories. And, make sure to tell us about it on our Facebook page.


Today is a day of great rejoicing in central Oklahoma: It sleeted overnight and schools are closed. Although it technically isn't much of a "snow day," we haven't had many chances to go sledding the past few years so Rachel and I headed out to seek a winter adventure this morning. I shot some video with my iPhone5, and used the "trailer project" feature of iMovie for iPhone for the first time to create the following winter classic, "Sleet Sledding." I uploaded this with the free YouTube Capture app in 720p. Enjoy!
The "trailer project" feature of iMovie for iPhone lets you choose a theme and customize it, specifying the types of clips you should insert for each part of the trailer storyboard.
I really like how it shows you (with a yellow line) which parts of your videos you've used already, so you won't have any repeated footage in your final production.
I initially thought I'd try using a different video editing app, other than iMovie, to piece together some of our videos from today. An iMovie trailer proved to be even better, however, and the final product exceeded my expectations.
I love using Apple's creative digital tools.
Where's the "iMovie for Android with movie trailer capabilities," you ask? I don't think that app exists yet. Will someone develop it? Maybe. But since they haven't, why would anyone with a desire to create media (who has the means, of course) use any smartphone other than an iPhone?


Clicking a size will search for banners in that size for the chosen brand. Copy and paste the embed code for a banner to display it on your site. You can also use the search function to enter more values in for the search.
Sample of linking codes page.


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40 Years of Activities and Programming
As part of our continued 40th anniversary celebrations in May, we're focusing on 40 years of fun with activities and programs.
Through our signature Sunrise Live With PurposeTM programs, we're focusing on 40 years of fun with activities and programs to celebrate 40th anniversary.
News & Updates May 2, 2022
At Sunrise, every day is an opportunity—to get active, learn something new, enjoy a favorite pastime or hobby, and spend time making connections with friends, neighbors, and loved ones. This is thanks to the incredible programs and events facilitated by our team members. So, as part of our continued 40th anniversary celebrations in May, we're focusing on 40 years of fun with activities and programs.
Through our signature Sunrise Live With PurposeTM programs, residents in all communities and across every neighborhood can choose from a variety of activities that meet their unique interests and passions.
"Sunrise Live With PurposeTM helps residents do more of what they love and is a huge part of the personalized Sunrise lifestyle," said Vice President of Engagement and Program Services Michelle Minor. "Residents can participate in the programs that most interest them. From exercise classes and garden clubs to painting and puzzles to music therapy and more, there is an activity to meet just about everyone's interests. And residents can participate in the way they choose. They may love group events or prefer activities they can enjoy one-on-one with a team member or solo in the comfort of their suites."
Each community has team members who are charged with developing programming that is fresh, engaging, and fun: Activities and Volunteer Coordinators (AVCs) and Activities Directors (ADs). They work closely with community leadership, residents, and families to build and a comprehensive calendar of programs that are tailored based on local offerings and then customized to meet the preferences of each resident.
"Quality programming is more than a fun way to pass the time—it impacts quality of life," said Michelle. "In that sense, it is also a key competent of Sunrise's holistic approach to providing a lifestyle that promotes wellness and engagement. We know staying active and connected is good for your heath—physical, mental, and spiritual—especially for seniors. It has always been a Sunrise priority for four decades and counting.
While the Sunrise team has always been creative in their approach to programs and events, outside-the-box thinking became essential at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when group activities and outside visitors with limited to help mitigate the spread of the virus.
"Even at the height of the pandemic, the creativity of our AVCs and ADs was invaluable as they continued to provide a number of safe, but engaging activities when residents were spending most of their days in their suites," she said. "We introduced Suite Stops where team members would bring games, activities, snacks, and drinks directly to residents' rooms."
The pandemic led to other innovative solutions, including supplying every community with additional dedicated tablets and iPads to facilitate virtual visits between residents and loved ones to keep those connections strong—even when they couldn't see each other in-person.
Fortunately, over the past year-plus, Sunrise has gladly welcomed brighter days and a new way of operating that has enabled communities to introduce activities—both resident favorites and new opportunities—and welcomed back beloved visitors while still prioritizing infection control to help keep residents and team members safe and healthy during the ongoing pandemic. Still, the team remains flexible and ready to adjust to whatever new challenges may come their way.
"As tough as the pandemic has been, we've learned a lot and proven to ourselves, our residents, and families how flexible and adaptable we are even in the most unprecedented of circumstances. And through it all, always prioritizing the livelihood of those in our communities," said Michelle. "While we're thrilled that community life today looks more like it did before the beginning of the pandemic, we remain poised to adapt our programs to residents' future needs."
Beyond Sunrise Live With Purpose,TM another important piece of daily life at Sunrise is an incredible team of intergenerational volunteers who engage with residents and help light up their days. Volunteers may include scout troops, local students, family members, and even had hospice volunteers who come into communities (virtually and in-person) to help spread joy.
While big-hearted volunteers and industry-leading activities and events have been a Sunrise mainstay for four decades, the team is also always changing, adapting, and introducing new elements to meet the evolving wants, needs, and expectations of current and future residents. One recent example of this is the introduction of our family engagement app.
"We heard from our families that they wanted to better understand what residents were doing in their daily lives at Sunrise," said Michelle. "So, we introduced our family engagement app as an easy way for our team members to share real-time updates and photos with families. This app is also a way for AVCs and ADs to post activity calendars and have two-way conversations with families. It's a great function that helps keep our families that much more connected."
Other new upcoming program offerings include a specialized music therapy session created in partnership with SingfitTM that families can lead with their loved ones during their visits. That should be introduced later this summer. Communities will also introduce a new Live with MelodyTM offering created by Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) and Arizona State University. It is a virtual senior wellness series that includes two engaging video collections that are specifically designed to meet therapeutic goals and foster phycological well-being for seniors. Part virtual museum visit, part music therapy session, one video collection is tailored to the needs of those living with memory loss and the other geared more toward active seniors. Stay tuned for more to come on these exciting new offerings!
One thing's for sure: Thanks to our engaging programs and events, there's never a dull moment at Sunrise. We're proud that residents can choose their own adventures and live a life full of meaning, purpose, and fun.
Article By: Sunrise Senior Living
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Broke-ish®
Arts & Culture Podcasts
In the Broke-ish space, we talk about being broke—broke and Black in America. We talk about all the unbelievable *ish that America has done to black people to keep us in this Broke-ish state. We've been bamboozled in ways that personal finance tips and traditional financial literacy can't fix. Our co-hosts, Amber and Erika, are grown @ss women sharing candidly about money, wealth-building and the financial urban legends that need to die. You'll hear them draw from research, statistics and personal insights to create an engaging podcast whose mission is to be a part of changing the narrative around money. Broke-ish is for those who still persevere, in spite of all the things that America, capitalism & white supremacy, have done to Black people. We're Broke-ish. Let's talk about it.
http://www.brokeish.com/
Race and Economics: The Unfinished Civil Rights Movement
Ready or not, you can't run. You can't hide; America's unjust, racist economics are gonna find you!! In this episode, Amber and Erika are joined by Dr. Algernon Austin, the Director of Race and Economic Justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss how capitalism and economics often function as the invisible, undiscussed arm of American racism. Dr. Austin starts with a historical exposit on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and this nation's intentional attempts to sanitize,...
Here we go again, Brokers! Amber and Erika are back for the Season 6 opening episode. Not only do we catch up, but we discuss all the new things coming this season. From audio and visual episodes (we fancy now!), to our new membership in the Black Power Media Network, and our expanded platform - we are giving you the scoop on everything you can expect in the upcoming episodes. We can't wait for y'all to join us in our new adventures as we try to expand our reach and dive deeper into the...
Look Back at It: Season 5 Recap
They say, "Time flies when you're having fun!", and Season 5 has definitely flown by so quickly. On this Season 5 recap, Amber and Erika take a stroll down memory lane and discuss all the highs and lows of the season, including the takeaways from each episode and the wisdom imparted by our guests. We also spill the tea on what we're working on and the new things you can expect in Season 6. Tune in to look back at it with us!! Links for giving: 1....
Ain't None of Us Free Until We All Free - The Remix: Haiti and Black America
On this episode, Amber and Erika are joined by Haitian native, Dieula Previlon, to discuss both the beautiful history and present-day environmental and political crises in Haiti. Dieula, who is a trauma counselor, ordained minister, and non-profit executive, offers us unique insight into both the factual occurrences and the real impacts on the hearts and bodies of people living and surviving through it. We start by recounting the courageous history of Haiti's founding, which is rooted in a...
What's the 411?: The Media and Misinformation in Black America
On this episode, Amber and Erika are joined by Dr. Jared Ball, Professor of Communication and Africana Studies at Morgan State University and expert in media literacy. Dr. Ball, an honorary member of the Broke-ish family, helps us to trace the origins of the media's power in our society and the ways that powerful elites profit by curating the messages that they want society to believe and buy into. Dr. Ball gives the Brokers a historical overview of how racism within the media shapes the...
The Price of Black Pain: Money and the Movement for Social Justice
On this episode of Broke-ish, Amber and Erika are discussing how not all skinfolk are kinfolk in Black social justice circles. It gets a bit messy as we call out some of your faves and interrogate whether they do more harm than good elevating the stories of victims of police brutality. We question the motives and methods of well-known activists and try to figure out where all the Black Lives Matter money is. Take a listen to the episode to hear what we're talking about!
On this episode, Amber and Erika discuss money, marriage, and the unique ways that systemic and economic inequities burden Black love. The impacts of mass incarceration, wage and education gaps, student loan debt, and gender expectations can combine with other societal and cultural barriers to make building an effective financial partnership within a marriage especially difficult. Tune in to hear the hosts' personal experiences and the objective data on the joys and pains of combining...
Fifty and Fabulous: 50th Episode Family Reunion!
Broke-ish is officially fifty episodes in, and we couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than a family reunion! Broke-ish co-founder and former co-host, Delina McPhaull, stopped by to interview Amber and Erika. No topic was off-limits as we strolled down memory lane, discussed current events, and of course, we cut up a little and had some fun! Through our reflections on Broke-ish's past impact and our hopes for its future, this fiftieth episode is all about the love, joy, and familial...
Don't Hate The Playa: Black Athletes, Activism, Agency, and Ownership
On this episode of Broke-ish, Amber and Erika are discussing Black Athletes - the challenges faced at the highly competitive collegiate level, the impact on mental and physical wellness, finances, and of course, the increasing social and political activism in and out of the sports arena. Joined by Jarrett Drake and Destanie Sykes, two former NCAA Division I athletes, who provide a firsthand account of the unique ways Black collegiate athletes are commodified and expected to produce without...
Little White Lies: Critical Race Theory 101
In this episode, Amber and Erika debunk the lies surrounding Critical Race Theory and discuss why so many people are invested in disseminating false information and political misstatements around what was, until recently, a relatively unknown interdisciplinary area of study usually reserved for graduate students. Tracing its historical origins to the aftermath of the 1960s Civil Rights Movements, CRT combined legal reasoning and sociological concepts to explain why desegregation did not lead...
Why Being "Not Racist" Ain't Enough: Anti-Racism 101
On this payday, Amber and Erika are joined by special guest, Jen Kinney, to break down the ins and outs of anti-racism. Jen, our editor, is not only a treasured member of the Broke-ish family; she is also a writer, podcaster, and true ally in the fight against injustice. Through historical references, sociopolitical analysis, and Jen's personal experiences, we lay out what it means to be truly anti-racist, and why it's not the same as just being "not racist". Take a listen and learn the...
Ain't None of Us Free Until We All Free: Black America Israel, and Palestine
In a Broke-ish first, Amber and Erika venture beyond the borders of the United States to discuss the current unrest in Israel and Palestine, specifically the unjust displacement and evictions of Palestinians and the Israeli government's discriminatory policies towards Palestinian people. In diving into the creation of the State of Israel, Amber and Erika expose the connections to European imperialism and settler colonialism, which are the roots that this nation is founded upon as well. In...
No Weapon Formed Against Us: The Black Church and Oppressive Theology
This week Amber and Erika are joined by Reverend Mia Michelle McClain to discuss how weaponized theology combines with insidious White Supremacy and latent self-hate to render the Black Church socially and politically ineffective while also perpetuating harmful pathologies of pain and spiritual dysfunction. Pastor Mia helps us to challenge many long-standing beliefs held by Black evangelicals, in addition to offering insight into how the Black Church can reclaim its place as a center of...
B(l)ack Like We Never Left: Season Five is Here!
Season Five is here, and Amber and Erika are kicking things off by catching up with the Brokers about what's been going on in both their personal lives and current events. From COVID to the murder of George Floyd, they highlight the broken "ish" around us that continues to disproportionately impact Black America. And finally, the ladies spill the tea about what you can expect from this season's episodes and how we highlight not only systems but the people working to both rise above and...
Look Back at It - Season 4 in Review
In this episode, join Amber and Erika as they "look back at it" and discuss the highlights of Broke-ish season 4! If you missed any of this season's episodes, this is the perfect way for you to catch up and get the scoop on the discussions and fabulous guests. We hope you'll tune in to the finale episode and look back at this season with us!
Beyond Martin & Rosa: Black History Month in Modern Black America
This week, Erika is talking about all things Black History. She explores the history of Black History Month and asks if we still need it, does it benefit us, and is it broken. Pull out your best MLK suit or Rosa Parks dress and listen as we think about the celebration in a new way.
The (Broken)Promised Land: The Plight of Black American Farmers
This week, Amber and Erika are joined by Dr. Cindy Ayers Elliott, CEO of Footprint Farms, LLC in Jackson, Mississippi to discuss the substantial, but little known role that Black farmers play in American agribusiness as well as the ways that systemic racism and White Supremacy have undermined Black farmers' industry prominence and financial gain. Using both a historical context plus her own unique experiences as a Black business owner and woman, Dr. Ayers Elliott offers us a unique insight...
Never Enough: The Myth of Productivity as a Measure of Success in a White World
In a capitalistic world where "the hustle" and "the grind" are consistently glorified, productivity is prized as proof of both inherent value and meaningful ambition. In this week's episode, Amber and Erika discuss the unique ways that we as Black people often feel the pressure to be productive and define ourselves by what we do. Starting with the brutal commodification of chattel slavery, the episode explores how American capitalism has imbued into Black bodies a belief that rest is...
All Black Everything: An Honest Conversation on the Diaspora, Diversity, and Difference in Black America (Part 2)
In this week's episode, Amber and Erika are joined by former Broke-ish co-host Delina McPhaull and attorney Tiffany Kamuche to have an honest conversation about the intricacies and nuances of Blackness. So often American Blackness is framed against a subtext that assumes we all have the same experiences and beliefs. In this two-part conversation, we first discuss Blackness as an identity - where we enter into it, how our childhoods shaped it, and our beliefs about now in adulthood. Next, we...
All Black Everything: An Honest Conversation on the Diaspora, Diversity, and Difference in Black America


Posted September 8th, 2014 .
FDC has recently completed the fitout of PPB Advisory's head office, Levels 6 through 8, 8 Chifley Square, Sydney CBD.
PPB Advisory is a leading professional advisory firm that helps clients break through the barriers that may hinder their success – whether they need to optimise the value of a business, think differently about how a company is structured, or are in financial distress.
The 2,600sqm project was undertaken over 14 weeks and involved the fitout of three levels including reception area, boardroom, meeting rooms, large kitchen and entertaining area, kitchenettes, print/utilities, comms room and office space.
The HVAC services component of the project was executed by FDC Mechanical Services, which included the installation of supplementary AC units for meeting rooms and the boardroom, an N+1 CRAC unit installation for the Comms Room, and the relocation of existing active chilled beams.


I can accom and also travel.
I'm a European guy, 35 yo, interested/begginer in ayurveda and yoga. Not a professional but with some experience.
I can offer a relaxing session of skin therapy with natural oils and lotions to make you feel more light and fresh.
Any request or special attention just ask.
Text me but don't call, please.


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GreekReporter.comGreek NewsEconomyThe Guardian: Fear of Default Grows in Greece
The Guardian: Fear of Default Grows in Greece
The fear of default has appeared again in Greece, after talks between Athens and lenders on the bailout program review have stalled over the new contingency measures creditors require, says a report on The Guardian.
"The review that should have been completed months ago has been beset by wrangling as Alexis Tsipras' leftist-led government has argued with lenders over the terms of a bailout agreed last summer," says the report.
The endless talks and the continuous postponements of the review completion have brought back a sense of crisis. "Yields on government bonds have risen, protesters have taken to the streets, and "Grexit" – the catch-all word that so conjured up Greece's battle with economic meltdown – is being murmured again," Helena Smith, the report's writer continues.
The fact that Greece has to repay a total of 5 billion euros to the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in June and July has financial analysts to speak of a "fatal miscalculation".
"After defying the doomsayers, there are fears Europe's most indebted country could now be heading towards a disorderly default," the report continues.
The Greek government will try to use as a negotiating tool the Eurostat figures that were released on Thursday showing that Greece has attained a better-than-anticipated primary budget surplus in 2015. "Greece, which has a primary surplus of 0.7 percent, does not need extra measures. What Greece needs is an essential debt relief," Tsipras told Euronews. "We must move forward and finally overcome this crisis."
Athens wants to complete the review so that debt relief talks commence and the much-needed next loan tranche of 5.7 billion euros is disbursed.
However, time is running out and the funds might not be released in time if the review delays much further. "Analysts say it is vital the review is wrapped up in May before Europe gears up for the UK referendum on EU membership. The risk of ongoing talks spilling into a crisis in the banking system will grow if that is not achieved," the Guardian report says.
The Greek Orthodox Archbishop Who Walked with MLK in Selma
Tomb with Greek Mummy Unearthed in Aswan, Egypt
Elon Musk's Name Appears in 69-Year-Old Book About Space Travel
TUI Aims to Double Tourism to Greece in 2021
Greece Braces for Snow, Sub-Zero Temperatures


The George Carlin of the Barilkosphere, Down Goes Brown, is sharing this great Google ad.
Google gets us. They really, really get us.
I'm listed in the first page of Google results for that search, by the way. Watch the Wendel Clark "All Heart" video here.


Delicious gastronomy that will surprise you.
Taste fabulous moments in Palma.
With views to Palma's bay and with a bar area.
With comfortable deck chairs by the swimming pool.
3 salons and 11 meeting rooms.
From 7.00 to 10.30 am (M-F) and from 7.30 to 11 am (S-SU and holidays).


text:
Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn – Audiobooks , MP3
+ Author : Daniel Gordis (Author), Fred Sanders (Narrator)
The first comprehensive yet accessible history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, "one of the most respected Israel analysts" (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem.
Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world's attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future?
We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel's people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel's history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people's story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse – but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel's deepening isolation.
With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on Israel's past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.


Mara's Blog » We call it playing t.v.
We have snow on the ground again. School is closed. What shall we do? Make some videos of course. We calling it playing t.v. and the kids absolutely love hamming it up for the camera. Check out these videos and get a good laugh. Honestly it was hard holding the camera still. Not sure I did a great job of it because it was so amusing to me. Thanks for the Harmonicas Nana and the Ukelele Grandma.


text:
Q: Modificar metodo de Ordenamiento Quicksort Necesito ayuda para modificar la implementacion de los metodos publicos y privados  de ordenamiento Quicksort  para que utilice el metodo privado mediana  como pivot. Hasta ahora tengo el metodo privado mediana agradeceria mucho si me ayudan con el resto
Por si acaso no me entienden les dejo el enunciado del ejercicio en cuestion
Dentro de la clase Ordenamiento.java, escriba una función privada que permita
recibir 3 variables enteras y retorne la mediana de ellas. La mediana es el número
que está en la mitad de la lista, si la lista está ordenada.
6. Modifique esta implementación de QuickSort de la clase Ordenamiento.java para que
utilice la mediana de 3 como pivot. Debe utilizar la función creada en el ejercicio
previo, con los parámetros: primer elemento, último elemento y elemento de la
mitad del array desordenado.
public class Ordenamiento {

    private int[] numbers;
    private int[] helper;
    private int number;

public void quickSort(int[] vector) {
        // Check for empty or null array
        if (vector == null || vector.length == 0) {
            return;
        }
        this.numbers = vector;
        number = vector.length;
        quicksort(0, number - 1);
    }

    private void quicksort(int low, int high) {
        int i = low, j = high;
        //Toma el pivot directamente de la mitad de la lista
        //Como ejercicio propuesto, queda que adapte el codigo para que use la mediana de tres
        int pivot = numbers[low + (high - low) / 2];

        // Divide into two lists
        while (i <= j) {
            // If the current value from the left list is smaller then the pivot
            // element then get the next element from the left list
            while (numbers[i] < pivot) {
                i++;
            }
            // If the current value from the right list is larger then the pivot
            // element then get the next element from the right list
            while (numbers[j] > pivot) {
                j--;
            }

            // If we have found a values in the left list which is larger then
            // the pivot element and if we have found a value in the right list
            // which is smaller then the pivot element then we exchange the
            // values.
            // As we are done we can increase i and j
            if (i <= j) {
                exchange(i, j);
                i++;
                j--;
            }
        }
        // Recursion
        if (low < j) {
            quicksort(low, j);
        }
        if (i < high) {
            quicksort(i, high);
        }
    }
    private int mediana(int primer, int mitad, int ultimo){
   int aux;
    int a=primer, b=mitad, c=ultimo;

        if(a>b) {
            if(a>c) {
                if(b>c) {

                primer=c;
                mitad=b;
                ultimo=a;
                }else {
                primer=a;
                mitad=c;
                ultimo=b;
                }
            }else {
                primer=b;
                mitad=a;
                ultimo=c;
            }
        }else {
            if(b>c) {
                if(a>c) {
                primer=c;
                mitad=a;
                ultimo=b;

                }else {
                primer=a;
                mitad=c;
                ultimo=b;

                }
            }else {
                primer=a;
                mitad=b;
                ultimo=c;
            }
        }
    return mitad;
    }
}

A: Lo primero que necesitas es optimizar la función mediana. Tienes creada un montón de líneas de código que pueden simplificarse notablemente. Como bien se menciona, la mediana es el valor intermedio entre los tres números de la entrada, por tanto:

*

*Si el primer número es mayor que el segundo y el primer número es mayor que el último, entonces la mediana es el primer número.

*Si el segundo número es mayor que el primero y el segundo número es mayor que el último, entonces la mediana es el segundo número.

*Si no se cumple ninguno de los anteriores, la mediana es el tercer número.

Esto traducido a código, quedaría:
 private int mediana(int primer, int mitad, int ultimo) {
        if (primer >= mitad && primer <= ultimo) {
            return primer;
        } else if (mitad >= primer && mitad <= ultimo) {
            return mitad;
        } else {
            return ultimo;
        }
    }

La mediana en quicksort se usa para optimizar la selección del pivote. En la implementación que adjuntas, seleccionas el pivote siempre tomando el valor del centro del array. Esto puede mejorarse utilizando la mediana para seleccionar un mejor pivote.
La idea es considerar 3 candidatos a pivotes:

*

*El elemento del inicio de la lista: numbers[low]

*El elemento del centro de la lista: numbers[center]

*El último elemento de la lista:  numbers[high]
La mediana entre estos tres elementos será el mejor pivote para el ordenamiento y el que dará un mejor desempeño. Calculamos entonces el mejor pivote usando la función implementada como:
 int center = low + (high - low) / 2;
 int pivot = mediana( numbers[low], numbers[center], numbers[high]);

Con esta pequeña modificación ya tienes la mediana adaptada al algoritmo. Tu clase Ordenamiento de manera íntegra se vería:
public class Ordenamiento {
    private int[] numbers;
    private int[] helper;
    private int number;

    public void quickSort(int[] vector) {
        // Check for empty or null array
        if (vector == null || vector.length == 0) {
            return;
        }
        this.numbers = vector;
        number = vector.length;
        quicksort( 0, number - 1 );
    }

    private void quicksort(int low, int high) {
        int i = low, j = high;
        // Código adaptado para que use la mediana de tres
        int center = low + (high - low) / 2;
        int pivot = mediana( numbers[low], numbers[center], numbers[high]);

        // Divide into two lists
        while (i <= j) {
            // If the current value from the left list is smaller then the pivot
            // element then get the next element from the left list
            while (numbers[i] < pivot) {
                i++;
            }
            // If the current value from the right list is larger then the pivot
            // element then get the next element from the right list
            while (numbers[j] > pivot) {
                j--;
            }

            // If we have found a values in the left list which is larger then
            // the pivot element and if we have found a value in the right list
            // which is smaller then the pivot element then we exchange the
            // values.
            // As we are done we can increase i and j
            if (i <= j) {
                exchange( i, j );
                i++;
                j--;
            }
        }
        // Recursion
        if (low < j) {
            quicksort( low, j );
        }
        if (i < high) {
            quicksort( i, high );
        }
    }

    private void exchange(int i, int j) {
        int temp = this.numbers[i];
        this.numbers[i] = this.numbers[j];
        this.numbers[j] = temp;
    }

    private int mediana(int primer, int mitad, int ultimo) {
        if (primer >= mitad && primer <= ultimo) {
            return primer;
        } else if (mitad >= primer && mitad <= ultimo) {
            return mitad;
        } else {
            return ultimo;
        }
    }
}

Como última observación cabe notar, que usualmente las implementaciones con la mediana lo que hacen es modificar el array original tomando el primer elemento, el del centro y el último y los colocan en orden. Es decir, al inicio ponen el menor de los 3, al final ponen el mayor de los 3, y en el medio pues la mediana. De esta manera siempre están tomando como pivote el elemento del centro, pero como hacen estas modificaciones antes, siempre están asegurándose que en el medio esté la mediana. Dado que la orden del ejercicio decía de manera explícita las instrucciones para la función mediana, descarté esta forma de hacerlo, pero es la que te encontrarás en muchos lugares.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Meditation apps are all the rage, and for all the right reasons. Packed with interesting and interactive features, these tools bring meditation into your daily life – and most of them are designed especially for people who are always on the run. You can rely on these tools to learn meditation, bust stress, sleep better, deal with difficult emotions, and oh, so much more! Here's our selection of the best stress relief apps out there.
Headspace offers a variety of packs with beautiful guided meditations. This app help you find peace in the midst of different kinds of situations. It's a handy tool to deal with difficult states like anxiety, grief, depression, and anger. The free Basics pack caters to beginners, and a host of other packs help further deepen your meditation.
Next on the list of stress management apps is Sattva. Here, you'll find a host of authentic chants and mantras by Sanskrit scholars like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. There's a great collection of meditation music, themes based on moods and times of the day, and playlists. You can track your mood and heart rate with this app, and also connect with other meditators. It's priced at $12.99 per month.
The Mindfulness App offers free features as well as a premium subscription. For free, you can take a great 5-day introduction course to mindfulness, track your progress, get helpful reminders and notices, and also listen to calming sounds. And the premium subscription provides you with over 200 guided meditations. You'll find lots of themes like focus, stress relief, and sleep.
Free of cost and also from ads, Calm is quite remarkable and has a wide user base. It has plenty of interesting features: there are bedtime stories for adults to help you fall into deep sleep, audio meditation classes, a daily 10-minute guided meditation tool, and the Breathe Bubble that helps you relax in just 30 seconds.
Priced at 2,99$, Buddhify is among the best meditation apps. It provides you with wonderful guided meditations by mindfulness teachers. Categorised under various themes like Going To Sleep, Growing Wisdom, and Calming Down, these guided meditations are designed to help you meditate in any situation. What's more, there's a whole separate section for children.
Smiling Mind is a free app developed by a not-for-profit organisation in Australia. Many educators and psychologists developed this app, which contains programs for children from the age of 7 to 18, adults, mindfulness in education, and more. These programs help deal with the difficulties in life and experience true peace.
Stop, Breathe & Think is one of the most popular stress relief apps. It offers 80 premium activities and over 30 free ones. And it's not just limited to meditation, but also includes other themes like yoga and acupressure. The app helps you pause from your daily life, breathe mindfully, and return to your day feeling calm and refreshed.
For those who suffer from anxiety and sleeping troubles, or just generally find it difficult to relax, this app is gold. It's completely focused on helping your mind wind down. You can choose from mindfulness meditations, life coaching, stories, and nature sounds, and music. All of these stress-busting tools have been created by life coaches as well as therapists. What's more, you can even have your very own 'Gratitude Journal' with this app!
Insight Timer is a free meditation app that helps you drift into a peaceful state in just a matter of minutes. Choose from incredibly soothing bells and ambient nature sounds for your meditation sessions. You can track your progress with the Timer and stats. It also lets you store your own custom presets for meditation sessions.
Last up is Let's Meditate, a free meditation app where you can attend online meditation sessions held by certified trainers from around the globe. There are courses especially designed for people at different stages, like beginners and experienced. It teaches you how to relax your body and mind, as well as cleanse and rejuvenate them.
Which one of these meditation apps do you find most interesting? Let us know!
Om Mantra Chanting: What Is It? Why Do It? And How?


I was digging through my stash of pictures and came across this picture, of Dickie Carroll, driving my '40 coupe, looking over towards me, driving his '34 roadster. I ran it as the lead photo on the web site for a while.
This was my very first trip to the NSRA Street Rod Nationals (back when they knew that street rods were 1948 and older), and at each gas stop on the way down to Lou'vul, Dickie asked me if he could drive my '40. I kept telling him no, but wouldn't say any more than that. For me…I wanted to be the guy that put 100% of the mile TO Lou'vul on my '40, so that when I said "I Drove", I was 100% true.
Part of the significance for me is that Dickie is the guy that has been my main hot rod mentor. He helped me set up the chassis on the '40, and helped guide me as I got the thing going. Also…it does document that I have driven his '34 roadster in my "Stroker McGurk" cap, as a salute to Tom Medley!
Hope you all enjoy the picture!


text:
Book-TV Update
We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys. The Difference Engine
Born April 14, 1954
B. Sterling
Each weekend I try to view selected portions of C-SPAN's Book-TV, forty-eight straight hours of recorded author readings of nonfiction now hitting the shelves, and sometimes six- or eight-hour segments covering book festivals around the US. C-SPAN, by the way, is supported by most cable and satellite TV providers, so check your listings. You can also view at any time any reading at Book-TV's Web site. And if you do wish to tune in, you can view, download, and print a copy of the weekend's schedule off the Web site. Please find below two presentations that recently piqued my interest.
Maureen Dowd. The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics. New York: Twelve, 2016.
I've viewed both of these presentations, one held at the Miami Book Fair and the other at the Tucson Festival of Books. In the first one, shortly after the 2016 election of our forty-fifth president, she speaks directly to her book, how, after covering 45 for over thirty years, she's arrived at some conclusions as to how he won the election. In the second video, she is questioned by host, Peter Slen, of C-SPAN's Book-TV, a fine interviewer, who speaks to her about not only the book but her entire career. In both events the New York Times columnist from Washington, DC, is quite candid and astute in her assessment of President 45. She says we're in for quite a ride. Tune into to one or both talks to find out why!
Maureen Dowd at the Miami Book Fair
Maureen Dowd at the Tucson Festival of Books


Pender County Utilities is aware of at least one company (American Water Resources) that offers service line warranty programs, but there are several others who offer this program as well. These companies will independently contact Water Department customers to offer their warranty program for a fee.
The warranty program is much like insurance. For a monthly fee, the company will cover certain qualified repairs for water service lines. Service lines are only a portion of the private plumbing line. They are neither owned nor maintained by Pender County Utilities. The homeowner is responsible for any damage or failure in the service line. Customer responsibility begins at the customer side of the water meter. Pender County Utilities does not provide public sewer service to residential customers.
Pender County Utilities does not endorse any of these companies, because the service line is private plumbing. Like with any insurance or warranty program, individuals should do their due diligence to learn what is and is not covered and what exceptions apply in order to make the best decision for their situation.
Who is American Water Resources, and do you need their water and sewer pipe warranty?


text:
Q: Swift for-in loop error as type String doesn't conform to protocol IntervalType I am working on a Swift iOS application. I am getting the compile error in for-in loop. Please check the code below, not sure why is this error throwing here?
var listDict : Dictionary = ["Insurance":"home", "Saving":"MutualFund"]
for valueName in listDict {

    switch valueName {

        case "Insurance":
            println("My insurance mname")
        default:
            println("Defualt")
    }
}

and compile error I got is,
Type String doesn't conform to protocol IntervalType

A: valueName is a tuple, you therefore need to access one of its elements - either the key or value in this case. Taking your example:
for valueName in listDict {
    switch valueName.0 {
    case "Insurance":
        print("Value = \(valueName.1)")
    default:
        print("Defualt")
    }
}

Or, which I personally think is more readable:
for (key, value) in listDict {
    switch key {
        case "Insurance":
            println("Value = \(value)")
        default:
            println("Default")
    }
}

A: Try this
var listDict : Dictionary = ["Insurance":"home", "Saving":"MutualFund"]
for valueName in listDict.keys {

    switch valueName {

    case "Insurance":
       println("My insurance mname")
    default:
       println("Defualt")
   }

}

Here you will traverse through  all keys of your dictionary, which you intend to do according to your case statement.
in your code, you're trying to traverse key:value pairs. I suspect, error arise once compiler reaches case - it is trying to compare String to Tuple, which is not known how to do.

A: As pointed out already, the structure you should expect is a tuple.
You can easily check what is the type of a variable (if not explicitly stated) by clicking on the "Quick help" in your Xcode project.

As you can see the type of valueName is (String, String).


text:
Carl Thomas
Carl William Thomas, age 85 of Loretto, Minnesota passed away on Tuesday, April 27, 2021. He was born March 6, 1936 to Jacob and Anna (Schuler) Thomas in Medina, Minnesota.
Carl was a loving father, grandfather and great grandfather. Carl grew up in Loretto and lived his entire life there. He attended Orono High School and graduated in 1954. From 1962 until 1966 he served in the Army until his Honorable Discharge from the Reserves.
Carl started his career as a mechanic working for himself. He was united in marriage to Delzetta Marie Kaiser on November 24, 1967 at Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Loretto. Carl went onto work for the Hennepin County Parks as an automobile mechanic until his retirement.
Carl loved to spend time with family and friends. He always had time for a game of cards, especially cribbage. He enjoyed trapshooting and was on a team at the Delano Sportsman Club for almost 30 years. In his free time, he worked on a variety of old machinery and was sought out by friends for advice on their equipment. He loved to spend time in the outdoors camping, fishing, and hunting.
Carl was preceded in death by his wife Delzetta; parents Jacob and Anna Thomas; brothers Jacob (Lorraine) Thomas, Ken Thomas, Norman Thomas and a sister Mary Ann Bouley. He is survived by his children Patty (Porsche) Chandler, Cathy (Bill) Bogart, Mike (Barb) Chandler, Christopher (Jill) Thomas, Andrea (Kevin) Dietrich, Mary Jo (Darin) Braun; 17 grandchildren- Fr. Nathan LaLiberte, Alex LaLiberte, Molly Chandler, Evan Chandler, Mathew Thomas, Abby Thomas, Cody Thomas, Halle Thomas, Anna Peters, William Dietrich, Grace Dietrich, Lillian Dietrich, Henry Dietrich, Sophia Braun, Andrew Braun, Hannah Braun, and Meghan Braun; 2 great grandchildren- Asher and Poppy.
Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 1, 2021 at Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Loretto. Visitation will take place from 4 to 8 p.m. on Friday at the Iten Funeral Home in Delano, Minnesota. Interment will be in the church cemetery.
The Mass will be live streamed on the Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church youtube page, through the link provided below: