Business for Scotland has called for genuine cooperation between Westminster and Holyrood to support Scotland's key industries during the Brexit negotiations.
Commenting on today's Queen's Speech, Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, Chief Executive of Business for Scotland said: "We would like to see genuine cooperation between the government in Westminster and the UK devolved administrations for Scotland's key industries, including fishing and agriculture, and for the EU nationals Scotland wishes to retain as necessary contributors to our society.
"BfS has welcomed the commitment from the UK Government to focus on enhancing skills needed for the booming technology sector in the UK, with particular significance to Scotland to fill the 12,800 tech job opportunities Scotland is predicted to have annually, and the commitment to a Living Wage increase across the UK.
"However, we express concerns on comments made about the UK Government working with the devolved administrations across the UK to reach consensus on the best deal as the UK leaves the EU.
"While the Government claims to want to build a more united country, so far in the Brexit negotiations none of the devolved administrations has been consulted in the process; Scotland's devolved parliament wasn't even pre-warned about the triggering of Article 50.


Mbendera: Biometric voter registration is doubtful.
The Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has disclosed that it will not use the biometric voter registration in the 2019 general elections if the office of National Registration Bureau (NRB) fails to produce national identity cards for Malawians.
MEC chairperson Justice Maxon Mbendera said the office of the NRB has been delaying to issue the ID's that will help in identifying Malawians during the Biometric registration process.
"If at the office of National Registration Bureau things are not showing then we will have the normal registration we used to have in the past because we can't postpone elections, we will have the elections at the date that is already known to people in the year 2019," said Mbendera.
Earlier, some stakeholders warned MEC against implementing the biometric registration close to 2019 general elections arguing that the system cannot be effective if Malawians lack knowledge on how it works.
The international community also argued that the biometric system is complex therefore there should be civic education for the general public to avoid confusions.
Biometric system is considered to be one of the electoral reforms MEC has adopted to ensure they produce a more accurate and reliable voter register.
Biometric voter registration involves the use of biometric technology in voter registration.
Biometric technology is the use of computers, fingerprint scanners and digital cameras to capture the bio-data of voters. Fingerprints are unique to every individual and it is these unique features and other details that will be stored in the computer from which the voters register is produced.
kaya…. ndinayamba kulira nkale ine… kumangosankha olakwika….
Biometric or not.But Mbendela should go,uzikalilira kwanu.
a peter, ngati mukufika pa size ya mobile toilet what about biometric? dziko likukwera2 ili osaiwala.
Zayambika manong'onong'o. Funding other things does not take long.


text:
Hospital at the Viriginia Colony
The Buck vs. Bell decision opened the floodgate of eugenic sterilization. Prior to the trial, 18 states had statutes under which about 6,000 sterilizations had been performed. By 1935, 30 states had statutes, and more than 21,000 had been sterilized. Almost half of all eugenic sterilizations took place in California, where a vocal eugenics lobby was led by Paul Popenoe, E.S. Gosney, F.W. Hatch, and David Starr Jordan. In 1942, the Supreme Court struck down a law allowing the involuntary sterilization of criminals, but it never reversed the general concept of eugenic sterilization. Although eugenic sterilizations slowed after World War II, some continued into the 1970s, by which time an estimated 60,000 Americans had been sterilized.
david starr jordan,eugenic sterilization,involuntary sterilization,carrie buck,world war ii,gosney,popenoe,floodgate,eugenics,hatch,criminals,1970s,supreme court
15734. Amherst County Courthouse, Virginia
Paul Lombardo discusses the initial trial in Amherst County, Viriginia, which set the stage for taking the issue of eugenic sterilization to the Supreme Court.
12190. "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1), including journal cover and contents page (5)
"The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1), including journal cover and contents page (5)
Source: EA
12199. Carrie Buck, from "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1)
Carrie Buck, from "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1)
12195. F.W. Hatch, from "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1)
F.W. Hatch, from "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1)
12196. E.S. Gosney, from "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1)
E.S. Gosney, from "The Progress of Eugenical Sterilization," by Paul Popenoe, Journal of Heredity (vol. 25:1)
15759. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Buck vs. Bell case then went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. gave the majority opinion.
10255. Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court Decision
Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court Decision
15227. Holmes' statements at Buck vs. Bell, Paul Lombardo
Paul Lombardo talks about Oliver Wendell Holmes' support for eugenic sterilization was contrary to his record as a defender of civil liberties.
15731. Carrie Buck roadside marker
In May 2, 2002, the 75th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on Buck v. Bell, Virginia Governor Mark Warner publicly apologized for Virginia's past involvement in eugenics.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Flóra Ferenc (Nagyvárad, 1820. szeptember 24. – Nagyvárad, 1889. július 9.) nagyváradi kanonok.

Élete

1846. augusztus 24-én misés pappá szentelték; azután káplán volt és adminisztrátor, 1848-ban püspöki titkár és szentszéki jegyző; 1850-ben tasnádszántói, 1872-ben nagyszőlősi plébános és alesperes, 1874-ben nagyváradi szentszéki ülnök, 1876-ban tiszteletbeli, 1879-ben valóságos kanonok, 1883-ban csolti apát és püspöki főnevelőintézet vezetője.
Mint pesti kispap 1845-ben a Munkálatok számára fordítgatott, 1846-ban pedig ugyanott egy saját tanulmánya jelent meg Aranyszájú sz. János címen.

Források

 Schematismus Magno-Varadiensis 1884.
 Magyar Sion 1892. 48. l.

Magyar katolikus papok
Magyar újságírók
Nagyváradiak
1820-ban született személyek
1889-ben elhunyt személyek

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This is a community contributed profile. If you represent Twenty Six Digital, claim it.
We specialise in bringing brands to life online. We apply creative and technical excellence combined with strategy and imagination, to help our clients build better, more profitable businesses.


text:
Facts & Findings
Matteson DNA Project
Sitemap/Search
The Bowen Matteson House
Nearly all Mattesons in the United States can trace their heritage back to Henry and Hannah (Parsons) Matteson of Rhode Island. Some other common spellings of the Matteson surname are Mattison, Mathewson and Madison. Some of the towns in which our Matteson ancestors lived were: East Greenwich, West Greenwich, Exeter, Coventry, Warwick, and Providence Rhode Island, Bennington and Shaftsbury Vermont, and several places in New York State before spreading out all over America.
This website has provided free historical and genealogical information on the Matteson family since June 27, 2002 !
Click here to see where Henry Matteson is really buried.
Take a look around our website and make yourself at home, after all, you're family! Click here to follow us on Facebook.
MMH: "Amazing website! GREAT information, well presented. I taught Genealogy classes for many years and really appreciate this kind of thoughtful research and clear presentation of the results."
Recent Changes and Additions:
Matteson Genealogy Database: - 7/06/19
Another milestone has been reached! We now have over 70,000 individuals listed with over 139,349 source citations in our data file! You can still help to improve the database by sending us corrections and additions!
I have now upgraded to TNG v.12.1. It includes a fair number of bug fixes and tweaks to keep TNG compatible with newer versions of PHP, plus some nice upgrades to the DNA features.
Updated Database Scripts - 12/16/18
Updated the database scripts to the most recent version: v.12.0.3. Multiple minor upgrades includes dozens of enhancements, fixes and new features.
Database Change - 09/23/18
I've upgraded to TNG v.12.0.2 for multiple miscellanous and security updates.
I've switched to using OpenStreetMaps as Google Maps no longer worked after the API change.
Updated Database Scripts to v.12.0.1 to repair a security issue. - 06/26/18
My Web Host has switched me to a linux server
Finally at last MySQL has been updated to a current version. The databse is back online and I am reconsidering all of the available templates (there are 18 now) before making any further changes. - 06/03/18
Google Maps to start charging for their API on June 11, 2018 - 05/11/18
Pricing for Google's core products is changing to pay as you go. Maps in our database may become unavailable at any time. Details here:	Pricing for Maps, Routes, and Places
Contact Us | About | AUP | Privacy | Copyright | Site Map
Copyright © 2002-2019 matteson.us All Rights Reserved


text:
PCMag UK Software & Services Games PC Games
Crucible (for PC)
Generic and derivative shooting action
byTony Polanco Jun 04, 2020
Crucible contains elements from several popular online games, but ultimately fails to deliver a compelling experience of its own. Though a decent attempt by Amazon Game Studios at creating a multi-layered shooter, the game is too generic to wholeheartedly recommend.
Best DealFree
Amazon UK Free
Highly customizable characters
Alpha Hunters mode is a cool spin on battle royal gameplay
Weapons lack impact
No mini-map
No voice or text chat
Near-useless ping system
Crucible is the video game equivalent of chop suey. This free-to-play shooter blends elements from popular multiplayer titles, such as Fortnite and League of Legends, in an attempt to reach the widest possible audience. However, in its quest to satisfy everyone, Amazon Game Studios overlooked several basic shooter necessities, such as a mini-map, communication tools, and satisfying weapons. Crucible has solid character designs and cool customization features, but the PC game is ultimately a hollow and forgettable experience.
The Gameplay Essence
The sci-fi shooter features 10 selectable characters that are a mix of human and alien fighters. Thankfully, the characters' differences are more than skin deep, as each warrior has unique attacks and abilities. Some use conventional firearms (like assault rifles and pistols), while others wield wilder weaponry (flamethrowers, blades, and acid guns). As cliché as it sounds, there's a character for everyone.
The game takes place on an alien planet, Crucible, where two factions battle over a resource called Essence. There's no in-game explanation for why Essence is important, but in terms of gameplay, it's the primary method to level characters.
Crucible has a decidedly MOBA-like leveling system. Capturing Essence by downing foes and killing the local ecology unlocks abilities within a character's tech tree. Each tech tree branch contains multiple abilities, so there are many customization options. For example, you can equip fast-loading guns or a larger grenade supply. You select abilities prior to a match's start, so you needn't worry about fumbling through a menu in the heat of battle.
At the time of this writing, there are three available modes: Heart of the Hives, Harvester Command, and Alpha Hunters. Each type is lifted from another game.
Heart of the Hives is reminiscent of MOBAs like Heroes of the Storm or League of Legends. In this mode, two teams of four battle to claim the hearts that lie within monstrous plant-like creatures that attack with long tentacles and explosive projectiles. The first team to capture three hearts wins the match. Doing so isn't easy, as teams not only contend with the hive, but the opposing squad, too.
Harvest Command is Crucible's take on Domination matches found in games like Call of Duty, Halo, and practically every other competitive shooter. The object is to capture as many Essence Harvesters as possible, while fending off foes who share the same goal. Your team earns points for each Essence Harvester it claims, with the first team that amasses 100 points standing tall as the victor.
Alpha Hunters is designed for fans of the battle royale genre. Like Fortnite, Crucible tosses you into a fight to the death within an ever-shrinking map. Most battle royale games have maps that can host dozens of players, but Crucible's maps top out with eight teams of two. If your partner falls, you can team up with another solo player. That said, it's everyone for themselves when there are only three players left, since only original pairs can win as a team. The prospect of forming a tenuous alliance with a player you inevitably have to battle puts a unique (and welcome) spin on the battle royale formula.
The need to gather Essence is a common gameplay trait in each mode. As previously mentioned, Essence levels your character, which, in turn, unlocks new abilities. Leveling your characters as quickly as possible should be a priority, so you can avoid potentially lopsided battles with players who have unlocked more abilities than you. As a result, you must be mindful of both your main objective and how much Essence you've acquired
If you're new to competitive gaming, capturing enemy harvesters or hive hearts can be thrilling. That said, if you've played Domination (Harvest Command) or Capture the Flag (Heart of Hives) before these modes may bore you. Alpha Hunters' twist on the battle royale formula makes it the most compelling of the three modes. Unfortunately, Alpha Hunters lacks a hectic feel due to its map's relatively small maximum player count.
Maps and Communication Tools
Getting around the map isn't a problem, provided you have a nimble character. Sluggish characters (like the brutish Earl) have a harder time traversing the world. The main navigation issue, however, is the lack of a mini-map. Unless you know your way around the environment, you'll need to frequently stop and pull up the large map. Unfortunately, doing that leaves you vulnerable to attack from wildlife and other players. It's baffling how something as simple as a mini-map doesn't exist in a game with so large a world.
Worse, there are no in-game means to communicate with other players, either through voice or text chat. If you want to speak with other players, you must join the Crucible Discord server by clicking the associated tab in the game's main menu. I don't need to explain how cumbersome, let alone unintuitive, this communication method is. While this curbs toxic language during matches, it's just another point against the game. The included pinging system could have aided communication, but in its current state, the system only really works to identify health orbs floating across the map. It's supposed to ping enemies, but fails to accurately do so most of the time.
Weak Gunplay
Among Crucible's many issues, the most egregious is its gunplay. All the firearms, including the assault rifles, shotguns, or pistols, lack a sufficiently satisfying impact when fired. Their weak sounds FX don't help matters, either. Solid gunplay could have elevated Crucible into something decent. Sadly, shooting is the weakest link in an already flimsy chain. Crucible's melee combat fares a bit better, but only because the attacks feature cool animations.
Similar to Fortnite, Crucible has a season-based update structure. Each season has a Battle Pass that rewards players with new skins, emotes, and minor experience boosts. There are two ways to access Battle Pass content. The first is a free path where players can unlock content by completing daily challenges that level up the Battle Pass. Each subsequent level offer better loot and perks.
There are also weekly and seasonal challenges. However, you only access them by forking over real-world money ($9.99 for the full season). If you're really into Crucible and plan to stick with it for the long haul, then paying $10 for the Battle Pass is a great deal. Casual players, on the other hand, are better off with just unlocking the free content.
Visual Design and Specs
Crucible has a decidedly stylized graphical style that recalls a Pixar movie. Amazon Game Studios obviously spent considerable time ensuring that each character's personality came through in their design. The same isn't true of the map and the things dwelling within. Though there is certainly a great deal of environmental variety, nothing is visually impressive. Crucible is not a visual showcase of any sort.
To play Crucible on PC, you need (at a minimum) a computer packing an Intel i5-3570 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 15GB of storage space, and the Windows 10 operating system. These aren't taxing specs, so most moderate gaming rigs can run Crucible without trouble.
The game runs well on my gaming desktop, which has an Intel i7 4790 CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU. The frame rate fluctuated between 80 and 90 frames per second during matches, with graphics options set to High and the resolution set to 2715 by 1527 pixels.
There are numerous graphics options, including frame rate limit, brightness, contrast, and gamma correction. In the advanced graphics sub-menu, you can enable low or high texture quality, model quality, shading quality, post-processing quality, and more.
Crucible features Easy Anti-Cheat, which is a third-party DRM. It supports both mouse and keyboard inputs, as well as game controllers.
It's Nothing Special
In its attempt to appeal to the widest swath of players possible, Crucible ultimately fails to deliver a compelling experience. Aside from the colorful cast of characters who genuinely play differently from one another, this is a generic online shooter you'll forget the instant you step away from it.
As is the case with modern online games, Crucible will likely receive a slew of updates that aim to fix its underlying problems. That's all well and good, but hoping a game evolves into something worthwhile doesn't help its current state. If you're looking for an online shooter with originality, you're better off playing one of the games Crucible takes inspiration from, such as Fortnite, League of Leagues, of Call of Duty.
For more Steam game reviews and previews, check out PCMag's Steam Curator page.
Blizzard's Final Attempt to Keep World of Warcraft Online in China Fails
Inactive 'Lost Ark' Players Hit by Wave of Steam Game Bans
About Tony Polanco
Considering everyday life mundane, Tony prefers to spend most of his time absorbed in fictional worlds that stimulate his imagination. Tony is a geek through and through, and his love for comic books, science fiction, heavy metal, and video games knows no bounds. He uses his natural writing talent and communication skills to express to the world why it's awesome to live a geek-centric lifestyle. Tony is a former contributor to DualShockers and current executive editor for The Koalition.
More From Tony Polanco
Back 4 Blood (for PC)
Nine to Five (for PC)
WRC 10 FIA World Rally Championship (for PC)
Martha Is Dead (for PC)
Astria Ascending (for PC)


text:
Q: Can the changes of the ".disabled" modifier of SwiftUI be animated? I think that the View.disabled(_:) modifier changes the .foregroundColor of a View (besides enabling / disabling interactions with it). Could the color change be animated?
I know it's pretty easy to animate say .opacity changes with implicit animations (e.g.: .animation(.default)). However the same won't work with .disabled.
Please consider the following code:
import SwiftUI

struct SomeButton: View {

    @State var isDisabled = false
    @State var isHidden = false

    var body: some View {
        VStack(spacing: 30) {
            Spacer()
            Button(action: {}) {
                Image(systemName: "pencil.circle.fill")
                    .resizable()
            }
            .frame(width: 80, height: 80)

            .disabled(isDisabled)       //  Will not animate at all.
            .opacity(isHidden ? 0 : 1)  //  Will animate just fine.
            .animation(.default)        //  Set to use implicit animations.

            VStack(spacing: 10) {
                Button(action: {
                    self.isHidden.toggle()
                }) {
                    Text("Hide")
                }
                Button(action: {
                    self.isDisabled.toggle()
                }) {
                    Text("Disable")
                }
            }
            Spacer()
        }
    }
}

// MARK: - Preview

#if DEBUG
struct SomeButton_Previews: PreviewProvider {
    static var previews: some View {
        SomeButton()
    }
}
#endif

This produces the following result, which presents a smooth opacity transition:

... on the other hand the enabled / disabled color transition is binary. It doesn't look that good.
My current workaround is to change the opacity of a view based on its enabled/disabled state.
So for example if a view is disabled, the opacity is 0.6. If enabled, the opacity goes back to 1.0.
But it feels wrong. There must be another way.

A: The possible solution can be to combine with .colorMultipy, of course the disabled color should be experimentally fit, but this gives common effect animatable

.disabled(isDisabled)
.colorMultiply(isDisabled ?  //  animatable
      Color.gray /* to be selected to fit*/ : .white)
.animation(.default, value: isDisabled)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Convert qrs::QSourceColorizer::Type enum constant to a string.
Definition at line 1417 of file stringify.C.
Definition at line 1432 of file stringify.C.
Return all qrs::QSourceColorizer::Type member values as a vector.
Definition at line 1441 of file stringify.C.


Search OSTI.GOV for author "Sansone, Francesco"
Search OSTI.GOV for ORCID "0000-0003-0531-9865"
Search orcid.org for ORCID "0000-0003-0531-9865"
Search OSTI.GOV for author "Crowley, Peter B."
Search OSTI.GOV for ORCID "0000-0002-5365-0096"
Search orcid.org for ORCID "0000-0002-5365-0096"
Alex, Jimi M., Rennie, Martin L., Volpi, Stefano, Sansone, Francesco, Casnati, Alessandro, and Crowley, Peter B. Phosphonated Calixarene as a "Molecular Glue" for Protein Crystallization. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1021/acs.cgd.8b00092.
Alex, Jimi M., Rennie, Martin L., Volpi, Stefano, Sansone, Francesco, Casnati, Alessandro, & Crowley, Peter B. Phosphonated Calixarene as a "Molecular Glue" for Protein Crystallization. United States. doi:10.1021/acs.cgd.8b00092.
Alex, Jimi M., Rennie, Martin L., Volpi, Stefano, Sansone, Francesco, Casnati, Alessandro, and Crowley, Peter B. Tue . "Phosphonated Calixarene as a "Molecular Glue" for Protein Crystallization". United States. doi:10.1021/acs.cgd.8b00092.
Effect of detergent alkyl chain length on crystallization of a detergent-solubilized membrane protein : correlation of protein-detergent particle size and particle-particle interaction with crystallization of the photosynthetic reaction center from Rhodobacter Sphaeroides.
Journal Article Hfer, Nicole ; Aragao, David ; Lyons, Joseph A. ; ... - Cryst. Growth Des.


Yesterday afternoon a Belted Kingfisher was perched on the wire above the bridge on Bridge St. (Hwy 11) at Canal Rd. in Bradford. Not much open water so hopefully it will hang out for the Christmas count on Dec. 29.


text:
Aubrey Beardsley's Dog
Mychael Barratt
Aubrey Beardsley's Dog, Limited edition screenprint by contemporary artist Mychael Barratt
Aubrey Beardsley's Dog quantity
Mychael Barratt is a printmaker and painter born in Toronto, Canada and has been living and working in the UK since 1984. Mychael studied at Central St. Martin's School of Art in London and since graduating he became a Fellow and then President of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. Mychael's works are full of detail and humour and depict visual narratives, often confidently pilfering famous characters from art history. Maps have become increasingly prevalent in Mychael's work showing events from famous historical dates and themes showing his love of London and art history. His popular range of works featuring famous artists thought history and their pets, cleverly re-created in the original artist's style, allows the work to register with viewers and adds a humorous sense of déjá vu.
Edward Hopper's Dog – Nighthawks
Hockney's Dog – The Biggest Splash
Wes Anderson's Dog – Page Street
Cyril Power's Dog
Sybil Andrews' Dog
Wes Anderson's Dog – Walthamstow Stadium
Wes Anderson's Dog – Hoover Building
Anish Kapoor's Dog
Reasons to be Cheerful
Hockney's Dogs
Brief History of Love
Wes Anderson's Dog – Michelin Building
Life Imitating Art X
Greenwich Park – Spring, after Bruegel
Primrose Hill – Summer, after Bruegel
Picasso's Dog
The Serpentine – Autumn, after Bruegel
Picasso's Dog II
Picasso's Cat
Eric Ravilious's Dog


text:
Atomic renaissance
America's nuclear industry is about to embark on its biggest expansion in more than a generation. This will influence energy policy in the rest of the world
BriefingSep 8th 2007 edition
Illustration by Dettmer Otto
OVER the next few months America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expects to receive 12 applications to build new nuclear-power reactors at seven different sites. It is preparing to see plans for another 15 at 11 more locations next year. These will be the first full applications to build new nuclear plants in America for 30 years. If they are all successful, the number of reactors in the country will increase by roughly a third. The output of nuclear electricity would grow even more sharply—the new reactors would be more powerful than older ones. The new enthusiasm for building reactors means America's long-awaited "nuclear renaissance" is about to become reality.
Whether it is a leap forwards or a step backwards remains to be seen. Since the 1970s, far from being "too cheap to meter"—as it proponents once blithely claimed—nuclear power has proved too expensive to matter. The problem is finance: nuclear plants cost a lot to build but are relatively cheap to run, unlike gas-fired ones, for which the reverse is true. So to be profitable they must be built quickly, to minimise the period when no revenue is coming in and interest payments are piling up on construction loans. Yet America's previous generation of nuclear plants was plagued by safety scares, design revisions and time-consuming regulatory procedures, which resulted in ruinously protracted construction.
America's most recent nuclear plant, at Watts Bar in Tennessee, started operations in 1996. But it took 23 years to complete at a cost of $6.9 billion; a second reactor at the site has been under construction, on and off, since 1973. Another plant, at Shoreham in New York, was completed and tested, but never allowed to start commercial operations because of local opposition. By the time it was decommissioned, in 1994—21 years after construction had begun—the costs had exploded from $70m to $6 billion. The local utility was able to pass most of this bill on to its customers. Not all energy firms have been so lucky: in 1988 Public Service Company of New Hampshire became the first American utility to go bust since the Depression, thanks largely to the fallout from a much-delayed nuclear project.
Even when they were switched on, nuclear-power stations did not fulfil their promise. They were supposed to run almost constantly, but proved much less reliable. In the early 1970s, for example, the average nuclear plant produced power for under half the time. Since most utilities had planned to run them flat out to generate enough revenue to repay their debts, this poor performance led to further financial troubles. And, as anti-nuclear activists complain, all this happened despite the government's generous subsidies to help cover the costs of developing new designs and building prototypes.
As for safety...
What is worse, nuclear power has a spotty safety record. There have never been any catastrophic releases of radiation in Western countries. But one did occur in 1986 at Chernobyl, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine. America came perilously close to such a disaster in 1979, when a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania overheated and began to melt down. There have been lesser safety scares and scandals in many countries, including Britain, Germany and Sweden. In August an earthquake resulted in several small leaks of radioactive material from a nuclear reactor in Japan.
The next generation of nuclear plants is said to be very different. Firms which make them, such as America's General Electric and Westinghouse, and foreign manufacturers like France's AREVA, insist that such episodes will soon be a thing of the past. Their latest designs, they maintain, are simpler and safer than existing nuclear plants. That should make it easier to obtain operating permits, allow them to be built faster and be cheaper to run—and so much less risky financially. Meanwhile, contractors are said to be getting better at building them, the NRC better at regulating them and utilities better at running them. Although nuclear power's boosters welcome a smorgasbord of new subsidies that Congress has approved to nourish the industry, they say that in the long run even this will not be necessary because the industry will be able to move forward under its own nuclear-generated steam.
Consolidating reactors
America's utilities have certainly warmed to their existing nuclear-power plants now that they are running them more efficiently. In the 1970s, says Colette Lewiner, of Capgemini, a consultancy, even small municipally owned firms ordered nuclear reactors, imagining they would be no more complicated to operate than their existing power stations, except in so far as workers would need uranium to shovel into the furnace instead of coal. But they found that they had neither the expertise to maintain their new investments, nor the scale to absorb all the extra regulatory costs, nor the clout to secure fuel and parts at competitive prices. Many ended up putting their nuclear plants up for sale.
That allowed bigger firms to acquire reactors on the cheap, and thus to achieve economies of scale and to capitalise on their experience. These nuclear specialists have been able to speed up the refuelling process, keep shutdowns for maintenance to a minimum and so keep the reactors going more of the time. Last year the average nuclear reactor in America was in use 90% of the time. Better still, utilities have found ways to improve the non-nuclear parts of the power station, such as the steam turbines. These so-called "uprates" have increased America's nuclear capacity by almost 5,000MW since 1977, the equivalent of about five new nuclear reactors, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. At the same time, the NRC has agreed to extend the working life of about half of America's nuclear plants for an extra 20 years.
All this has turned nuclear-power plants into virtual mints—as long as the bill for construction has been paid down or written off. In most of America, the wholesale power price is closely linked to the price of natural gas, since gas-fired plants tend to provide the extra power required at times of peak demand. So the price of power has risen along with that of gas over the past few years, whereas the operating costs of nuclear plants have remained relatively stable. According to the Energy Information Administration, a government agency, the average wholesale power price in 2005 was 5 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh); the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, reckons that the average operating cost of America's nuclear plants was 1.7 cents per kWh that year. So their margins were almost 200%.
No wonder that utilities are rushing to the NRC with their plans for new reactors. But to get any of them off the ground they must not only persuade the NRC of the safety of their designs, but also convince potential creditors that there will be no repeat of the financial meltdowns of the 1970s and 1980s. They point to three reasons for optimism: changing conditions in the energy business, a streamlining of the NRC's process for obtaining permits and an overhaul of construction techniques.
Until recently coal-fired plants seemed to be safer investments. But nowadays most utilities expect—and in some cases are calling for—Congress to limit emissions of greenhouse gases in the near future to temper climate change. Coal-fired plants, which have a working life of 40 years or more, spew out globe-warming pollution, whereas nuclear ones produce almost no greenhouse gases at all. So coal is now subject to a massive "regulatory risk" of its own. Utilities are piling into green-generation technologies, such as wind turbines and solar panels. But for a constant source of clean power, they have few choices other than nuclear.
Meanwhile, to avoid the fiascos of the past the NRC has simplified its procedures. It used to require utilities to obtain two different licences, the first to build a nuclear plant and after that a second licence to start it up. Both applications involved lengthy reviews, which culminated in interminable public hearings. New reactors, like the one at Shoreham, could be finished at great expense and yet never secure an operating licence. So the NRC is combining the two stages: utilities can now apply for a single "combined construction and operating licence". Construction need not start—and for most bits of the plant is not allowed to—until the licence is issued.
To speed things up even more, the NRC is allowing firms selling nuclear reactors to get designs cleared in advance. That way, when a utility applies to build a reactor of an approved design, the NRC will only need to review the modifications that are unique to its site. Westinghouse has already got its AP-1000 model cleared; the NRC is in the process of certifying GE's latest design, called the ESBWR, and AREVA is about to submit an application for its new offering, the EPR.
By the same token, utilities can now ask the NRC to approve a location as suitable for a nuclear-power station before they go to the trouble and expense of applying for a combined licence. Four firms have asked for these "early site permits" and two have already received them. Another short cut involves submitting the environmental part of a combined licence before the part that deals with the design. UniStar, a joint venture between America's Constellation and Électricité de France (EDF), filed that sort of paperwork in July for a new reactor in Maryland.
The NRC has also made a point of asking utilities about their nuclear plans before any applications arrive. This is so it can be sure it will have enough staff to handle them—which is how it knows how many new plants are in the works. It is hiring about 200 new staff every year, and since most of the utilities contemplating nuclear plants are in the South, has set up a field office in Georgia to co-ordinate with them directly. It is even planning to suggest to Congress possible amendments to the relevant laws to reduce the hassle and uncertainty of licensing even more.
The process will still be time-consuming: the NRC reckons it will need two and a half years to review each application and a further year to conduct hearings on its conclusions. Certification of new reactor designs might take as long as four years: AREVA says its application for the EPR runs to 17,000 pages and fills a small bookcase. Nonetheless, the NRC aims to issue its first new licences at some point in 2011.
Obstreperous local authorities could still put a spanner in the works. It was opposition from county and state officials, for example, that finally did in the Shoreham plant. Although they have no explicit authority to block a new reactor, local officials can withhold permits to use the water from a river for cooling, for example, or refuse to co-operate on emergency planning. But utilities are hoping to avoid such pitfalls by locating their new reactors only in welcoming jurisdictions—preferably next door to existing ones. Locals in such places know that expanding existing nuclear facilities will bring more jobs and produce more tax revenue. Moreover, they have grown accustomed to having nuclear reactors nearby and do not find the idea particularly frightening. As Dale Klein, chairman of the NRC, puts it, the staff and management of nuclear plants, and local residents, all go to church together.
Fast builders
Utilities are also confident that they can build new reactors more quickly than before. Many have already placed orders for the parts that take a long time to build. They have also brought in partners that have completed nuclear projects on time and on budget in other countries. Westinghouse, for example, points to the exemplary record of its parent company, Toshiba, in Japan. Similarly, GE has teamed up with Hitachi, another respected Japanese nuclear contractor. AREVA, meanwhile, looks to the series of successful plants it has built in conjunction with EDF in France. All three vendors say they plan to save time and money by using as many identical parts as possible for the different nuclear plants they build in America—unlike the bespoke designs of the past. All this should reduce the time required for construction to four years, they say, which would allow the first new reactors to enter service in 2015 or 2016.
But bankers are still sceptical. They are worried that when the new designs and the NRC's new procedures are put to the test, hidden flaws will emerge. After all, the first of AREVA's EPR designs is under construction in Finland and is two years behind schedule and dramatically over budget. To avoid such nasty surprises, NRG Energy, a power-generation company that is applying to build two new reactors in Texas, has opted for one of GE's older and already-proven designs, even though GE insists that its ESBWR will be cheaper to build and to run. Other utilities are planning to build nuclear plants in the regulated markets of the South, in the hope that the regulators will allow them to pass any cost over-runs on to their customers.
Even so, says David Crane, NRG's boss, banks are simply not prepared to lend money to build nuclear plants in America without some extra surety. The Energy Policy Act, which Congress approved in 2005, is supposed to provide that. It offers four different types of subsidies for new reactors. First, it grants up to $2 billion in insurance against regulatory delays and lawsuits to the first six reactors to receive licences and start construction. Second, it extends an older law limiting a utility's liability to $10 billion in the event of a nuclear accident. Third, it provides a tax credit of 1.8 cents per kWh for the first 6,000MW generated by new plants. Fourth, and most importantly, it offers guarantees for an indeterminate amount of loans to fund new nuclear reactors and other types of power plant using "innovative" technology.
The scope of these loan guarantees is the subject of great controversy. Some politicians fear that the costs of the programme might balloon; others complain that the Department of Energy, which will administer it, is too stingy. Meanwhile, some financial experts argue that the rules, as drafted, would not allow issuing banks to repackage and sell on the loans in question, making them less attractive. There is also some debate about what proportion of a nuclear plant's debt should be covered: the act says up to 80% of the costs of construction, but that might be sufficient to cover the full amount borrowed, leaving banks with no risk at all. Until all this is settled, utility bosses insist, new nuclear plants will not get built.
Clearing up afterwards
The fate of America's nuclear waste, which the government has vowed to sequester for a million years, is another unresolved issue. In theory, the Department of Energy is in charge of looking after it all. It requires utilities to set aside a tenth of a cent for each kilowatt-hour of nuclear power they generate to help defray the costs of transporting nuclear waste to a safe repository and storing it there permanently. The only hitch is that no such repository yet exists.
Most countries with nuclear power have determined that the safest way to store their waste is underground, deep in the bedrock in air- and watertight containers. But no one has actually built such a facility. America has got as far as selecting a site for one, at Yucca Mountain, a ridge in the middle of a former nuclear-testing ground in Nevada. The Department of Energy is planning to submit an application to the NRC next year to build a repository there. The NRC, in turn, thinks the application will take about three years to review. Officials say the facility will be open for business in 2017.
But Harry Reid, a senator from Nevada, has vowed to derail the scheme. As it is, Congress has been cutting funding for the Yucca Mountain project, which was first proposed in 1978 and has since been the subject of several lawsuits. Now that Mr Reid has become Senate majority leader the odds of the repository ever getting built have diminished.
Meanwhile, nuclear waste continues to pile up in ponds and containers at nuclear plants around the country. The NRC monitors these and claims that they are safe for the foreseeable future. But Mr Klein, its chairman, tactfully hints that it would be prudent for the government to find a more permanent solution, especially since it is encouraging a dramatic expansion of nuclear power.
Nonetheless, Mr Klein believes that the expansion of nuclear energy is now in motion and is unlikely to be slowed down by concerns about what to do with the waste. The only thing that could stop a nuclear renaissance now, he suggests, is a serious accident at an existing plant. Unfortunately, it would not be the first.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Atomic renaissance"
More from Briefing
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Britain needs a post-Brexit foreign policy


I was in need of a new dip recipe to take to a neighbor get together and after a little searching I found this at Kraft Recipes. I wanted it to be a cold dip that could go with veggies since we are up to our eyeballs in cucumbers from our garden! Anyone want some cucumbers? When my parents mentioned that cucumber plants tend to run when they grow they weren't kiddin.
Mix all ingredients together except 1 tablespoon of green onions. Chill for several hours or until ready to serve. Top with that 1 tablespoon of green onions. Serve with crackers, vegetables, etc.
I have already made this twice now for get togethers and both groups loved it! People started eating it before I could even take a picture haha. Even someone who doesn't like peppers very much liked it - the red pepper flavor isn't too strong. Highly recommended especially in this summer heat and very easy to throw together. Let me know what you think!
Our adorable niece Abby turned 4 a couple months ago but we weren't all able to celebrate until a few weeks ago. Like the capris I made for her awhile back, I set out on another sewing adventure to make her a skirt!
I had found the fabrics back in the spring at a huge fabric warehouse here and knew they would be perfect for whatever I decided to make her next. Since my niece is a girly girl a decided on a simple toddler skirt and then I could make or buy some matching tops.
I found a great tutorial here on how to make a simple skirt and it helped me with measurements but I didn't want a double layer skirt especially with her living in Columbia... aka the armpit of the south. So I made it single layer with about 2/3 of the skirt in one fabric and about 1/3 of the skirt in the other.
Her waist is 21 so I cut the fabric 42 inches long and then I wanted the finished skirt to be about 11 inches long (4 of one fabric and 7 of the other) so I added seam allowances to both sides and to where I would be sewing the 2 fabrics together and cut my pieces the appropriate lengths.
First I sewed both fabric together long-ways.
Then I did decorative stitching at the suggestion of my mom and to also hold down the seam allowance on the inside.
Then I sewed the side to each other to make it a circle.
It's starting to look like a real skirt!
Then I did the hemming at the bottom and at the top. For the bottom I did 3/4 and turned that edge under 1/4 for a finished hem of 1/2. For the top I ironed down 1 1/4 and then turned under a 1/4 of that so that would be the casing for the elastic. Remember to leave an opening when you sew the top so that you can slide in your elastic. I mark my opening with pins so I don't forget to leave it open (2nd picture below).
After putting in the elastic you sew your elastic ends together at the desired length and then sew up the opening. I found that to be the hardest part since the skirt is all cinched up at that point so it can be hard to get it flat under your presser foot.
Then you can even out your elastic and you have a finish skirt!!
I used my silhouette heat transfer vinyl to add graphics to a white tee to match. And I also bought her a little pink tank top from target for a different look.
So the skirt sewing adventure was even easier than the capris and I had more fun making it since I'm a skirt kinda girl too. AND Abby had a very special 4th birthday celebration. I can't wait to go get some more fun fabric to make her another skirt!!


Kirby Bates Associates, is seeking Chief Nursing Officer candidates to serve as strategic leaders in key roles of patient care executive in hospitals throughout the United States for interim engagements. Interim CNOs provide senior level leadership that promotes professional and collaborative environments, establishes the patient care agenda within the hospital leadership team and fosters the development of nurse leaders ultimately resulting in achieving the hospital's agenda and mission.
Interim CNOs receive attractive compensation along with expenses covered by the hospital for temporary housing, transportation and regular travel home.
Successful track record as a CNO in varied hospital settings required.
Demonstrated success in promoting current evidence based standards of practice, skill in achieving concurrent cost and quality organizational agendas, and the creation of an engaged and competent workforce.
Expert organizational behaviors are expected including collaboration, public speaking, representing the hospital in various forums both internal and external, and fostering a culture of patient safety.
Proficiency in clinical and financial analytics along with knowledge of hospital information systems and electronic medical records.
Current RN licensure with the ability to apply for reciprocal licensure in multiple states.
Master's Degree in Nursing is required.
Nursing specialty certification and Magnet hospital experience strongly preferred.
Kirby Bates Associates, LLC, drives healthcare organizations to achieve high quality, cost-effective patient care through a comprehensive platform of proven services, including Executive Search, Interim Leadership, Leadership Coaching and Operations and Financial Consulting. We build long term relationships with clients and candidates to understand their unique culture and goals. These insights guide us to present effective solutions and achieve sustainable outcomes for our clients' executive, operational and clinical leadership teams. As former CNOs and COOs, we know firsthand the challenges facing healthcare leaders today, so we take a personal interest in solving our clients' challenges. We share your commitment to improve the delivery of patient care and the lives of everyone we touch.
Thank you for applying! We'll be in touch soon!


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Apple unveil iPad Air & more
Apple unveils its latest products and we've rounded up all the details.
Last night Apple made a variety of announcements regarding new products due to hit the market in the coming weeks.
Top of the list was the brand new iPad Air which is the thinnest and most powerful iPad to date. Built with the A7 chip, the iPad Air is 20% thinner and 28% lighter than the fourth generation iPad and boasts up to 10-hours of battery life.
iPad Mini with Retina display was unveiled alongside the iPad Air which is also built with the A7 chip. The product has up to four times the CPU and eight times the graphics performance on the current iPad Mini release.
Both products come with iOS7 and feature a FaceTime HD camera.
iPad Air will be available from Friday 1st November with a price range of £399 – £739. iPad Mini will be available later in November with a price range of £319 – £659.
In addition to the new iPads Apple announced an all new Mac Pro and all new MacBook Pro with Retina display.
The Mac Pro features the latest Intel Xeon processors with up to 12 cores, dual workstation-class GPUs, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory.
The all new MacBook Pro with Retina display will feature fourth generation Intel Core processors, the latest graphics, longer battery life, faster flash storage and next generations Wi-Fi.
Mac Pro will be available in December and priced starting at £2,499. MacBook Pro is available now with a starting price of £1,099.
In addition to all of these announcements, Apple also confirmed that iWork and iLife will now be free with every new Mac and iOS device. They have been updated to take full advantage of OS X Mavericks, which is available from the Mac App store for free now, and iOS7.
In this article:Apple, iPad Air, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro


The Fourth Element Tech T-Shirt is a crew neck classic fit t-shirt that offers a modern design that helps divers stay in the loop with this iconic design inspired by the more technical side of diving.
The Tech T-Shirt Hand-printed in the UK, this classic fit t-shirt has been responsibly sourced and tested for harmful substances.
Buy Fourth Element gear and Fourth Element clothing online in Canada from Dan's Dive Shop, the top stocking Fourth Element Dealer.


The most common laughing workouts are related to laughter yoga workouts. Laughter yoga was developed in 1995 by Madaria Kataria. It integrates extending, gentle breathing and simulated unconditional laughter. The laughter is efficient especially when practiced in groups. The idea of laughter yoga is catching on globally as people comprehend the benefits accumulated to it. If you can discover the practice of laughter yoga you can be able to get the very best out of laughing. So how are the exercises of yoga done?
Most notably, it's good to discover the benefits of laughter so about create your objectives when you sign up with the laughter yoga classes. There are a couple of benefits of laughing that have actually been socially and scientifically proven. Laughter is healthy and as they state; it is the best medication. First of all, laughter is the very best medication which reaches favorable blood sugar level and well balanced high blood pressure. Laughter is most certainly a fantastic tension reliever; it assists to develop a favorable outlook in life while minimizing stress and anxiety and stress. Among the advantages of laughter yoga is the aerobic workout it so helps in producing when you laugh. This is the number one factor it's being extensively included in various forms of exercise in aerobic classes. It helps in stomach, respiratory, intercostals, facial and measles enhancement while endorphins are being launched.
Laughter yoga develops a terrific playfulness or social awareness that offers a favorable outlook on life. It amazingly helps to lower wrinkles. In addition, laughter assists to provide you an edge in interaction and making buddies especially in your dating life. Getting yourself in the state of mind of laughing may not be an easy thing to do and as such allowing yourself to laugh unconditionally is the first step in this laughter workouts. A teacher or your group might develop different variations however the standard laughter yoga follows a particular line. The action begins with a clapping session generally called Chakra which will initiate the laughter session and a hearty laughter should then follow. The base focus on this particular exercise concentrates on the stomach.
The focus needs to now move from the stomach to the chest while maintaining a hearty laughter. It wouldn't appear ridiculous to cause an authentic hysterical laughter-after all you are in laughter workouts. Now you should produce a balanced laughter shifting from your abdomen to your chest and remember to let your laughter be truly maintained as much as you can. The next action is to shift focus from your lower body approximately the highest-the head. Lay your hands on the head and aim to relieve your stress through laughter. By now you should have gotten used to the process and its clearer why you have to work within a group.
From the head, the concentration shifts down to the stomach and lower to the feet; only this time the feet will carry out by themselves. You will now carry out the familiar workouts while stomping your feet. The next action is where by you bow down your upper body with the hands in a hanging position and wave your hands as you wail like a siren. Concentrate on each member of the group and keep eye contact. You need to then laugh while facing each other till each member is really laughing. Lift your hands up as you continue with your laughing.


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Invernomuto – MED T-1000
PINKSUMMER: We have never thought about your work in geographical terms before Black Med, the project you presented at Manifesta 12 in Palermo in 2018. Listening to Alessandra Di Maio and Iain Chambers, that you invited to give a lecture in Palermo, the first in the context of your project, we thought that ideas of place can be defined in several different ways, and that your soundscapes tend to define the place through the dislocation and the de-territorialization. Invernomuto landscapes are moveable, fluid, and changing. They are immaterial landscapes of diasporas: acoustic places, out of any border, for "anti-absence" they are transnational, transcultural. Opaque landscapes that seem to originate from spatial memes that fluctuate in time, ready to put the roots in the ears of those who pay attention to the back-sound. They are landscapes to listen to. They speak about exiles and resistance, about crossroads and hybridations, about sound correspondences and dissonants. In this way they can be defined as coral or not permitting to be flattened from a unique Euro-American vision of the place, meant mostly as nation. The link between music and geography, even if we look back, seems to us central in your work. Do your geographies evoke other epistemologies? Other stories, other cultures, other bodies, to quote Iain Chambers, that tend to be denied and refused by the visual and linguistic maps that we are so used to handling? Does it exist as a place for music?
INVERNOMUTO: We think that Black Med is a project that completes and expresses our interest in imageries that sound is able to generate. It has always been a subtext that brings together all of our work, but we think that with Black Med maybe a clearer idea emerges, even if the operation is still a work in progress and has to be defined, it's liquid, as you said – and therefore for many aspects still hard to catch. With this cycle the geographies you mention don't want to indulge a cartographic or a traditional geopolitical conception. On the contrary, the goal – to quote Chambers again – is to create "holes in the space and in time", to drill the maps, to avoid looking at the Mediterranean as a flat and bidimensional layer. Black Med tries to listen carefully, it forces the perimeter of Mare Nostrum to explore expanded geographies, made of people, objects, data, and capital movements. Music and sound are the media of this research. It doesn't exist a place of music, because it travels faster than you can get, and above all it does so without asking permission for transit.
PS: We've read that in 2006 some illegal residents of Latin America sang the USA national anthem in Spanish in the streets of California. They called it "nuestro hymno". George W. Bush, president at that time, intervened saying that the USA national anthem could only be sung in English. It can sound surprising, the higher charge of the state intervening to put the language as a central topic, different from the idea of nation. As if the language would coincide with the idea of nation. The Rasta refuse the first singular person of the creole Jamaican language "me", because they indent this as expression of servility. Instead they use "I", us is expressed with "I and I". This language has in it a series of I-words as I-vine that substitutes divine. When Rastafari was born in the '30s, 90% of the population in Jamaica was composed of slave's descendants, deported from Africa to guarantee the profitability of the Caraibic island meant to produce sugar for the British Empire. Is verbal language a divisive border marker? If we think with sound, not of sound as an object, does it produce another sense of belonging? Is sound a language? Are geophony, biophony and anthrophony languages as well?
IM: The languages of young or oppressed cultures have never coincides with the official languages. Slang was born for this reason. Jamaican Patois – or Verlan in Parisian banlieues – are traditionally jargon languages of the poorest classes of society, using it as a political necessity, an indispensable relexification that re-interprets a language, and that make it the one of oppressors. The important Rasta leader Count Ossie, in an interview for Swing Magazine in 1972, said: "We were fighting colonialism and oppression, but not with guns and bayonet, but WORDICALLY".
Black Med sound archive is continuously crossed by non-official languages: from Neapolitan dialect to Quran recitals and traditional songs of Salentinan Greece; from the wrong use of Auto-tune of Amazigh pop music to the different slangs of contemporary rap and trap. The languages are multiples and the contribution of technology applied to voice is not secondary, often it's desecrated and decomposed.
Parallelly, Google Translate is becoming more and more sophisticated.
PS: During the first Invernomuto solo show, Africa Addio, at Pinksummer in Genoa in 2015, you crowned with gold the postmodern and post-colonial moors, with very thin tissue used to wrap Sicilian oranges to be sent north. Your Black Med symbol, that moves from the "Africanist" theory of Alessandra Di Maio, is a Moorhead that you found already crowned. The Moorhead are presented as a crowned couple, man and woman, sometimes white, sometimes black, in the typical ceramic vases of Caltagirone. The moors in this folk are not slaves, but Arab conquerors that dominated Sicily until 1071, the year in which the Normans took the island. Just the head is left from "your" moor because the legend tells a moor was decapitated by his lover, a beautiful Sicilian gardener, who didn't want to let him go, so she decided to keep him with her in some way, transforming his crowned head as a vase for basil. A story about Mediterranean, sea in the middle, sea of fights and crisis and the suspended bridge between Europe and Africa. Alessandra Di Maio states that people's migrations are never accidental, they are always shaped and structured, the one about Black Atlantic of slaves' deportation in Africa and the current ones about Black Med?
IM: It's interesting to think about the King Moro series and tissues from Sicilian oranges today, that an agreement is being signed between Rome and Beijing, something that helps the exportation of those fresh citrus towards China, in the framework of a new hypothetical Silk Road.
Black Atlantic theory is shaped on African diaspora post-slavery, the one of Black Mediterranean on contemporary migrations. Black Med was born thanks to the texts by Alessandra Di Maio, so it was important to launch the project alongside Alessandra at Manifesta 12. We generally consider these theories important tools for our research; we started a special collaboration with Alessandra Di Maio. Her essay Those Are Lasers that Were Their Eyes – linked to this press release and online at palmwine.it – from this point of view is a sort of theoric extension of the exhibition.
PS: What are you going to present at Pinksummer?
IM: The exhibition will be presented as a unique installation, with ceramic robots and lasers. MED T-1000 is a grid, composed of eight modified "teste di moro". These heads no longer belong to "moors", and maybe we don't even have to state if they are good or bad: are they patrol of the Mediterranean coast or are they contemporary exotes? Are they missing people of the Mediterranean, arising again, looking for revenge?
Referring to T-1000 (Terminator Serie 1000, showed for the first time in Terminator 2, where the Terminator was able to become liquid) is formal, but also programmatic: Terminator payoff recites: "They would reshape the Future by changing the Past" – a sentence that breaks the cartesian conception of time and simultaneously works for us as a sort of Manifesto. Med T-1000 is a sculptural, bright installation elevated by sound. The sound is our refix of "L'Egitto Prima Delle Sabbie" song and album by Franco Battiato published in 1978, inspired and told by the Armenian master Georges Ivanovič Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff stated that he found a map, proof of a former culture in Egypt. In those times sand still hadn't transformed Northern Africa into what we now call the Sahara Desert, and the continent was the most flourish and civilized of this planet.
In the second room we will present two bidimensional works, produced parallely to Black Med research: a photograph shot in Marseille port, Corsica Linea (2019), with a PVC mirroring intervention – and MED T-800, a big collage composed of 42 postcards from different times, showing a variety of landscapes of the Mediterranean and of the places by this sea, being harassed by a T-800 cyborg from the first Terminator.
Those Are Lasers that Were Their Eyes
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
(W. Shakespeare, The Tempest)
Alessandra Di Maio
In September 2012, when the renowned Italian designer duo Dolce & Gabbana presented their Spring/Summer 2013 collection in Milan, their use in women's clothing and accessories of what was perceived by international audiences as blackamoor figurines caused extraordinary scandal. Particularly controversial were the earrings portraying highly stylized Moors' heads dangling from the ears of a few dozen models, none of whom were black. Journalists, artists, bloggers, and fashionistas were up in arms, especially in England and the United States, nations historically sensitive to racial discourse and representation of the black body. The Guardian compared the blackamoor jewels to Aunt Jemima dolls, noting how hard it was "not to be appalled by the transparent exoticism in sending the only black faces down the runway in the form of earrings."[1] The feminist blog Jezebel branded the objects "Mammy earrings." The Huffington Post affirmed that they reproduced "racially insensitive imagery" since the figures represented slavery, concluding "the design duo should have steered clear of anything that would profit from slave culture."[2] American hip hop artist Azealia Banks harshly commented on what she defined a racist collection, tweeting to the world that she would boycott Dolce & Gabbana. The magazine Refinery29.com described the collection as resting heavily "on the laurels of a long-lost colonial era, complete with all the cartoonish, debasing, subaltern imagery that would make even your politically incorrect Grandpa think twice."[3]
Although the controversy is easily understandable—there were indeed black heads hanging from the models' lobes on the Milan catwalk—there is a fair amount of historical inaccuracy revolving around these figurines. As Dolce & Gabbana explained in their runway press release and in their own self-defined "luxury magazine online" Swide, their earrings reference the Moor's head vases of Sicilian tradition, just as the rest of the collection portrays images from Sicilian folklore, like the highly decorated wheels of traditional carts and the puppets from Opera dei pupi. Behind all this, Elisa Della Barba explained on Swide, there is an ancient history and a specific legend.[4]
The notorious earrings reproduce the Moor head-shaped ceramic vases that have long decorated many Sicilian homes and can be easily found in souvenir shops all over the island—which happens to be the birthplace of Domenico Dolce, one half of the fashion brand. Specifically, the Moors represented on the vases cover a vast chromatic range: some are pitch black, others are white, off-white, or brown; all have Moorish facial features. To be sure, even the color variety was imitated in Dolce & Gabbana's earrings. But the pictures that surfaced on the Internet and in the main press outlets on the occasion of the fashion show were those of the black heads—what the English-speaking world refers to as "blackamoors", emphasizing blackness, in contrast to the most common Italian definition Mori, "Moors."
Whether the original vases, and by analogy the Moors' heads in the Dolce & Gabbana earrings, independently of the color, display exoticism perpetuating "racially insensitive imagery" is an intriguing and still largely overlooked subject of aesthetic inquiry. Indeed, some appear realistic, while others portray grotesquely stereotyped Moorish features. What remains certain, however, is that the history inscribed in the traditional vases that apparently inspired Dolce & Gabbana does not refer to early modern conceptions of either slavery or Western colonialism. In fact, in contrast to their Northern counterpart—namely, the blackamoor statuettes from the Venetian and Florentine traditions portraying servants of African descent—the Sicilian Moors' head ceramic vases refer to an older, pre-modern specific moment of history: the Arab domination of Sicily, widely acknowledged as the zenith of splendor for the island. In particular, they reference a Sicilian folktale, which, according to legend, dates back to the year 1000 AD. In order to contextualize the tale, it is necessary to go back to its historical background, through a brief flashback in Italian history.
Italy today is considered a Western country. It is part of the European Union, of the original G7—now G20—and a member state of NATO. In the contemporary discourse, it belongs to the North and the West of the world, as opposed to the Global South and the Orient. It is the country where, in the past years, a large number of migrants have landed from the four corners of the world, especially from Africa, in search of better life conditions. However, until the country was unified in one nation-state, in 1861, the territory comprising the peninsula and the two major islands of Sardinia and Sicily that today we call Italy was an ensemble of small independent states, including the Papal States, more often than not at war with one another. Sicily, geographically and culturally strategic, was one of those small states. Located at the center of the Mediterranean, the island was a magnet for conquerors across the centuries.
Arriving from present-day Tunisia, the Arabs conquered Sicily in 827 and remained in power for some two hundred and fifty years. In fact, the new conquerors were not usually addressed as Arabs, but instead as Moors. The "notoriously indeterminate" term "Moor" was adopted, more generally, by the Europeans to refer to both the Amazigh and Arabs from North Africa, often extending to peoples from other African countries, from what today we call the Middle East, and even places as far away as India.[5] The term did not imply a single culturally, ethnically, or racially bounded identity. It referred to dark-skinned people as well as to white people. Although habitually used as a synonym for Muslim, "Moor" actually transcended religious boundaries, encompassing a number of histories, geographies, and ideologies, all with their own cultural markers. Most importantly, the expression, coined by the Europeans to refer to the "other" who came from and through the Mediterranean basin, represented the intersection of European and non-European cultures.[6]
The Moors brought citrus cultivation, irrigation systems, sumptuous architecture, algebra, the Koran, majolica, and a rich culinary tradition to Sicily. The Sicilian pastry items known all over the world—cannoli, cassata, marzipan—date back to the Arab domination, which lasted unopposed until the Norman conquest in 1071. Until then, Sicily was an Arab emirate, and Palermo was its capital city. The Moors were not slaves, but conquerors. To use a modern terminology, they were not the subaltern, but the ruling class; not the colonial subjects, but the colonizers. They were the sovereigns, as the unfailing crown on the decorative heads makes clear.
The legend inscribed in the vases date back to the times of the Arab domination in Sicily. Art and legend have intertwined to the point that it becomes impossible to distinguish whether it was the legend that inspired art or, vice versa, the artifacts that prompted the legend. However, the story tells that in the year 1000, in the heart of the Kalsa, one of the Arab quarters of Palermo, lived a beautiful Sicilian young lady who spent her days cultivating plants and flowers on her terrace. Well-to-do young women were not allowed to go out on their own at those times, and occasion of social encounters were mediated by parents. But since the woman gardened on her balcony, her beauty was known to her neighbors, who said that her hair was as dark as the night and her eyes as blue as the sea in Palermo bay. One day, a young Moor who lived nearby was passing by and, mesmerized by the lush vegetation on the terrace, he took a glimpse and saw, among the flowers, the beautiful young lady. It was love at first sight. He approached, asked to be received, and declared his eternal love to her. Moved by his sweet words and the purity of his sentiments, she reciprocated. The love story continued passionately, until one day, some time later, the Moor told the woman that he was to leave Palermo to go back to his country, where his wife and children were waiting for him. The young woman, unaware that her beloved had a family in his original homeland, was heartbroken. Incensed by betrayal and dishonor, she planned a vendetta in consummate Medieval Sicilian style. She invited her lover over to spend their last night together, and when he finally fell asleep, she chopped off his head. In this way, her beloved would remain with her forever, as he had promised. And what better way to preserve his head than transforming it into a vase where to plant basil, the royal herb, as fitted the now beheaded conqueror? The plant in the man's head joined the others in the terrace, soon growing so lush and fragrant that the jealous neighbors had some ceramists in town make majolica vases shaped just like that—like the Moor's head.
Soon enough, in the ceramic tradition, the heads became two, one male and one female, representing the two lovers, and even today they are displayed in pairs in Sicilian homes. The male and female heads, usually exhibited one next to the other, are equally adorned with jewelry, ornamental fruit, boughs, wreaths of flowers and leaves, and sometimes turbans, in the typical bright colors of Sicilian tin-glazed majolica such as cobalt blue, antimony yellow, and copper green. With or without turbans, both heads are always crowned. The faces, regardless of the nuance of the complexion, share similar features, such as marked eyebrows and more or less plump lips. The man always flaunts a virile moustache and occasionally a goatee, whereas the woman is sometimes portrayed with blue eyes. Chromatically, however, the skin matches in every pair of Moors' heads: they may be light or dark skinned, but always equally so, symbolizing perennial communion and a shared destiny. The two vases, while dramatically staging an unhappily ending love story, represent the encounter of man and woman, the Orient and the West, the South and the North, Muslim and Christian, conqueror and conquered. It is no coincidence that this encounter symbolically takes place in the decorative arts of Sicily, a crucial Mediterranean crossroad across the centuries.
Slightly different versions of this story are spread all over the island, but the end always remains the same: the Moor is decapitated by the devoted, betrayed Sicilian woman, and his head becomes a blooming basil pot. The story is remarkable not only for its dramatic sequence and macabre theme, a combustion of love and death typical of the most consummate Sicilian style, but also because of the role played by the female protagonist: the seduced native woman takes agency and, acting upon her urge for revenge, suppresses the Moor who conquered her land as well as her heart. In many ways, this powerful Sicilian folktale is the exact opposite of the story of the most popular Moor in European letters, Othello, the Moor of Venice, who, blind with jealousy, kills the candid, innocent Desdemona. While Desdemona is a passive recipient of Othello's wrongs, the Sicilian heroine takes action against her lover's treacheries. There are good reasons to believe that the folktale might also have been the main source for Boccaccio's famous Lisabetta da Messina's novella in The Decameron, where the protagonist plants in her dead lover's head a basil plant which her tears grow strong and scented, until her brothers, responsible for the assassination, take it away, thus causing their sister's death.
Regardless of its literary echoes, this legend inspires the tradition of the ceramic Moor's heads, whether it antecedes their production, as is commonly believed, or follows it, as some artists critically affirm. The exchange between the legend and the decorative art tradition has appealed to artists and artisans across the years, who have re-signified the vases in new fashions. In recent years, for example, after a great number of "Moors" of all skin shades have arrived in Sicily through the Mediterranean Passage, some vases have assumed facial features characteristic, in the Western imagination, of people from what the West calls the Sub-Saharan African regions. More often than not, they are caricature-like features, inscribed in the century-old Western tradition of black bodies representation, the same that the detractors of Dolce & Gabbana's 2013 collection harshly criticize. On the other hand, some artists have engaged with the Moors' heads by interrogating their presence, their history, their gaze. Those proposed by Invernomuto look at the future − and in some cases at each other − with intense laser eyes. Their beaming gaze is inquisitive, timeless, prophetic. It intersect ours, and we all identify in the beheaded Moor's head as well as in that of the beheader.
[1] Sara Ilyas, "Did Dolce & Gabbana send racist earrings down the catwalk?," The Guardian, 26 September 2012.
[2] Julee Wilson, "Dolce & Gabbana black figurine earrings and dress, Are they racist?," The Huffington Post, 26 September 2012.
[3] Lexi Nisita, "Colonialist chic? No thanks, Dolce & Gabbana," Refinery29.com, 25 September 2012.
[4] Elisa Della Barba, "Moorish heads ceramics on the DG SS13 runway", posted on Swide, 23 September 2012.
[5] Michael Neill, "'Mulattos', 'Blacks', and 'Indian Moors': Othello and Early Modern Constructions of Human Difference", Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 49, n. 4 (Winter 1998), pp. 361-374.
[6] See Emily C. Bartels, Speaking of the Moor: From Alcazar to Othello (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 5.


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Auschwitz bookkeeper goes on trial in Germany
ReutersApril 21, 2015
A 93-year-old former bookkeeper at Auschwitz went on trial in Germany on Tuesday, accused by prosecutors of being an accessory in the murder of 300,000 people, though he was not involved in any actual killing at the notorious Nazi death camp.
The trial of Oskar Groening, who was 21 and by his own admission an enthusiastic Nazi when he was sent to work at Auschwitz in 1942, is significant because it may be one of the last big Holocaust trials. Seventy years after the end of World War Two very few suspected Nazi criminals are still alive.
The case is also unusual because Groening, unlike many of the other SS men and women who worked at concentration camps, has spoken openly about his time at Auschwitz in interviews, in part, he says, to counter Holocaust denial.
He has talked in detail about the horrible crimes he witnessed at the camp, but because he never killed anyone, he sees himself as legally innocent.
Groening's job at Auschwitz was to collect the belongings of deportees after they had arrived at the camp by train and already been put through a selection process that resulted in many being sent directly to the gas chambers.
He inspected their luggage, removing and counting any bank notes that were inside, and sending them on to SS offices in Berlin, where they helped to fund the Nazi war effort.
Thomas Walter, a lawyer for survivors who are plaintiffs in the case, told reporters before the start of the trial that the aim was to "give back some dignity which they lost forever in the gas chambers of Auschwitz."
Groening's lawyer Hans Holtermann says his client's actions did not go far enough to make him an accessory to murder and until recently the German justice system agreed with him.
Demjanjuk case decisive
In 1985, prosecutors in Frankfurt decided not to pursue the case against Groening and dozens of other concentration camp workers, saying there was no causal link between their actions and the killings that occurred around them. Only two years ago, they declined a new request to take up the case.
Prosecutors in Hanover disagreed, emboldened by the case of Ivan Demjanjuk, who in 2011 was convicted of being an accessory to mass murder despite there being no evidence of him having committed a specific crime during his time as a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp.
The charges against Groening relate to the period between May and July 1944 when 137 trains carrying roughly 425,000 Jews from Hungary arrived in Auschwitz.
At least 300,000 of them were sent straight to the gas chambers, the indictment says. Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
In an extensive interview with German magazine Der Spiegel in 2005, Groening said he felt "nothing" when he saw Jews being taken to the gas chamber.
"If you are convinced that the destruction of Judaism is necessary, then it no longer matters how the killing takes place," he said, describing his feelings as a young SS officer.
"At some point you are there and the only thing left is the feeling: I am part of this necessary thing. A horrible thing – but necessary," he told the magazine.
Hedy Bohm, an Auschwitz survivor from New York who is attending the trial, said she wanted to see Groening declared guilty but saw no need for him to go to jail at the age of 93.
"Those who commit crimes today must know they will be held responsible in the future," she said. "And never again will they be able to just plead 'I'm a cog in the machinery, I didn't kill'.".
Auschwitz Nazism Oscar Groening
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Q: E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) - but how do I find the meaningful error messages in APT's output? I have encountered various package management problems that cause APT commands to fail with output that ends with this line:
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Occasionally other error codes may appear such as 100 which means dpkg is not there, but 1 is the most common error code.
Unfortunately this error code tells me almost nothing about what actually caused the error or how I should solve it. Almost every package management issue I see, regardless of its cause or solution, produces the same error!
So, where will I find the useful part of the output, which I can search for online or ask questions about on Ask Ubuntu?

A: Apt logs it's actions sequentially, just like a human does.
Simply read the output line-by-line.
Here is a non-apt example. Read it line-by-line and you will see that it tells a story:
I am going to build a tower out of five blocks...
Clearing a working surface in the kitchen.
Kitchen: Put 7 dirty dishes from the counter into the dishwasher
Kitchen: Wiped the counter clean
Opening the box of blocks.
Warning: There are only three blocks in the box.
Build: Placed the first block.
Build: Placed the second block.
Build: Placed the third block.
Build: ERROR: Cannot keep building - ran out of blocks.
Closing the box of blocks.
ERROR (summary): Failed to complete the five-block tower.

Apt and dpkg logging works in exactly the same way - you read the story line-by-line. You see the package manager embark upon it's adventure: prepare, run subtasks, encounter non-fatal problems (Warnings), overcome adversity, etc.
Most of the output is routine, but you need it to mark apt's progress. That context is how you understand what was happening. It really is a story.
Error (1) is common. It's a summary error code, indicating that the problem occurred to a subtask ("some problem building"). Jump backward in the story to where that particular subtask occurred, and you will see the specific detail ("ran out of blocks").

A: In the complete output of sudo apt update or sudo apt upgrade or sudo apt install -f you should find some messages from dpkg about what actually went wrong.
These lines will start with dpkg: since that's the name of the program returning the error. The lines of output immediately preceding or following these lines are often the most helpful.

A few examples of the many possible errors you might see:
Setting up install-info (6.4.90.dfsg.1-1build1) ...
/usr/sbin/update-info-dir: 3: /etc/environment: $: not found
dpkg: error processing package install-info (--configure):
    subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127

This means that the post-installation script could not run. Shells use an exit status of 127 to mean "command not found," so a command called by the post-inst script was not found. The lines before the dpkg line give a hint as to the reason: there is something wrong with the /etc/environment file (which should set environment variables like PATH).
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
dpkg: error processing package runit (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of git-daemon-run:
 git-daemon-run depends on runit; however:
  Package runit is not configured yet.

The above error was caused by a bug in the runit package, which expected to find Upstart installed, although it had been succeeded by systemd as the default init system for Ubuntu. So, the message failed to connect to Upstart is the best hint, but we need the context to find out how this is causing the package management problem.
Unpacking libjline-java (from .../libjline-java_1.0-1_all.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libjline-java_1.0-1_all.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/java/jline.jar', which is also in package scala 2.9.2-400

This means there are package conflicts, perhaps caused by having a mixture of repository versions or third party repositories.

TL;DR
In any case where you see the error Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1), you need to look above for lines starting with dpkg: and the lines before and after them for useful clues to what went wrong. Try searching for these specific errors.
If you are asking a question here or on another support site, make sure you include the command you ran and the complete output, not just the summary error messages.


First, the Diocese of Pittsburgh joined the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. See picture here of the network charter being signed.
See this report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Episcopal diocese here joins anti-gay group.
Pittsburgh is the third diocese — joining Central Florida and Fort Worth — to join.
Diocesan Council, following the lead of Pittsburgh bishop Robert W. Duncan, Moderator of the Network, has voted to associate this diocese with an organization whose aim is to divide the Episcopal Church, USA, and to create a new fundamentalist church to replace it as the sole true representative of Anglicanism in the United States.
We re-affirm our solidarity with faithful Bishops, clergy and church members in North America who remain committed the historic faith and order of the church and have rejected unbiblical innovation. We offer our support and the full weight of our ministries and offices to those who are gathering in a "Network of Confessing Dioceses and Congregations" now being organized in North America. We regard this network as a hopeful sign of a faithful Anglican future in North America. We invite those who are committed to the preservation of historic Biblical faith and order, to join that work and its essential commitment to the Gospel.
We seek humbly to serve Christ as faithful Anglicans and to offer hope to those in North America devastated and disenfranchised by actions of the Episcopal Church, a Church of which we are a part. This recogntion by 14 Primates, representing 45 million Anglicans worldwide, gives us great encouragement and affirmation of our mission, and is a clear sign that the Anglican realignment in North America is moving forward.


If you own shares in HNI Corporation (NYSE:HNI) then it's worth thinking about how it contributes to the volatility of your portfolio, overall. In finance, Beta is a measure of volatility. Modern finance theory considers volatility to be a measure of risk, and there are two main types of price volatility. First, we have company specific volatility, which is the price gyrations of an individual stock. Holding at least 8 stocks can reduce this kind of risk across a portfolio. The second sort is caused by the natural volatility of markets, overall. For example, certain macroeconomic events will impact (virtually) all stocks on the market.
Zooming in on HNI, we see it has a five year beta of 1.29. This is above 1, so historically its share price has been influenced by the broader volatility of the stock market the market. Based on this history, investors should be aware that HNI are likely to rise strongly in times of greed, but sell off in times of fear. Many would argue that beta is useful in position sizing, but fundamental metrics such as revenue and earnings are more important overall. You can see HNI's revenue and earnings in the image below.
How does HNI's size impact its beta?
With a market capitalisation of US$1.7b, HNI is a small cap stock. However, it is big enough to catch the attention of professional investors. It has a relatively high beta, which is not unusual among small-cap stocks. Because it takes less capital to move the share price of a smaller company, actively traded small-cap stocks often have a higher beta that a similar large-cap stock.
Past Track Record: Has HNI been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of HNI's historicals for more clarity.
Other Interesting Stocks: It's worth checking to see how HNI measures up against other companies on valuation. You could start with this free list of prospective options.


text:
Asian woman randomly struck in head with rock in Queens
Credit: Yihung Hsieh's GoFundMe
NEW YORK - The NYPD is investigating after a 61-year-old Asian woman was struck in the head with a rock in Queens in what could be a hate crime.
Authorities say the incident happened on Friday, just after 8 a.m. on 89th Street in Jackson Heights.
According to reports, QuiYing Ma was outside of her apartment when 33-year-old Elisaul Perez approached her and smashed her in the head with a rock.
Ma was taken to Elmhurst Hospital where she is currently in critical condition. Her friends have set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for her medical expenses.
According to the GoFundMe page, Ma is originally from China, and while her husband also lives in the U.S., the rest of her family is in China.
While the motivation for the attack is still unknown, police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
Perez has been arrested and charged with first and second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Apple AirTag: Police warn of unwanted tracking after device found on car in Montgomery County