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Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire by Ken Auletta
Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended)
Ken Auletta's recent biography, Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire, presents multiple dimensions of a complicated personality. While repetitive at times, and less lively than the subject, Media Man offers readers glimpses of the creativity, passion, and character of Ted Turner. With more ups and downs than a roller coaster, Turner copes with a topsy turvey world by moving forward at every juncture. Here's an excerpt, all of Chapter 5, "A Billionaire Jeremiah," pp. 82-87:
With McGuirk running Turner Broadcasting day to day, Turner had more time. And, with Time Warner's stock price soaring—Turner's shares doubled in value the first year—he also had more money. Turner would forge a new identity for himself as a philanthropist. "I want to be the Jimmy Cricket for America," he said.
In September of 1997, he was to be honored by the United Nations Association-USA, and he had the idea of giving a billion dollars—then a third of his wealth—to the UN. The Turners were flying to New York on their private plane when Ted told his wife what he planned. "I was extremely moved," Jane Fonda said, adding that she told her husband, "Don't you think you should talk to your lawyers first?" He did, and learned that he could not make the gift directly to the UN.
The next day, as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recalled, Turner walked into Annan's office and blurted, "Hi, Kofi. I'm going to give you a billion dollars."
"I thought it was a joke," Annan said, shaking his head in wonderment.
That night, Turner announced that he would give a hundred million dollars a year for ten years to support UN programs such as those that eliminate land mines, provide medicine for children, and ease the plight of refugees. He hired former senator Tim Wirth, who eventually recruited a staff of thirty-two to oversee the effort. Turner's only condition was that his money be used only minimally for administrative overhead. Annan remembers that Turner also said, "All of you billionaires out there, watch out. I'm coming after you."
He did, trying to shame fellow billionaires to part with their wealth. The Forbes list of the four hundred wealthiest Americans, he told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, was "destroying our country," because "these new super-rich won't loosen up their wads because they're afraid they'll reduce their net worth and [wind up lower] on the list. That's their Super Bowl." He did succeed in spurring others to give, including Bill Gates, who has since given away an astonishing twenty-five billion dollars, a good deal of it to improve world health and curb the population explosion. "This has had a real impact on other donors," Annan said. "He broke the mold."
Turner has written his own version of the Ten Commandments, which he keeps on typed cards in his wallet. Without prompting, he will read from a list that includes these vows: "I promise to care for planet earth and all living things thereon"; "I promise to treat all persons everywhere with dignity, respect, and friendliness"; "I promise to have no more than one or two children"; "I reject the use of force"; "I support the United Nations."
Turner is easily moved to tears. He said of a 1996 TNT documentary on Martin Luther King, Trumpet of Conscience, which plays "Amazing Grace" throughout and feels more like a sermon than a biography, "It changed my life by watching it so many times. It helped motivate me to turn my life to service." Turner, who calls himself a "bleeding heart," sobbed openly when Princess Diana was killed. On a trip to China in October of 1999, with Fonda reading and CNN's Eason Jordan working, Turner put on his headphones and popped in the videotape of a popular Warner Bros. cartoon movie, The Iron Giant, the story of a friendship between a young boy and a metallic being from outer space who, to spare people from a nuclear attack aimed at him, sacrifices himself for the sake of the planet. Jordan remembers looking over at his boss. "Tears were streaming down his face," he said. "I never saw anybody cry like that in my life." As the credits rolled, Turner called out, "That's the saddest thing I've ever seen!"
Turner's reaction to this cartoon is related to his alarm over the proliferation and inadequate control of nuclear weapons. He is aghast, he said, that over the past half-century fifty thousand American soldiers on nuclear duty have been reprimanded for drinking or drug use, increasing the danger of accidental war. The United States and Russia still had some seven thousand nuclear weapons targeted at each other, and Turner is terrified that these—along with chemical and biological weapons—could fall into the wrong hands. He dismissed the George W. Bush administration's effort to build an antimissile defense system as madness; the technology won't work, he asserted, and, in any case, it won't prevent weapons of mass destruction from being delivered by car, by ship, or in a suitcase. All of these dangers "are off the radar screen," he said in early 2001. "We have a huge job. Probably ninety-five percent of the U.S. population doesn't know about it." And only a handful of senators do. Thus, Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative, and his $250 million, five-year funding pledge to curb the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. To co-chair it, he decided that he needed someone with standing among leading Democrats and Republicans in the United States, as well as someone with broad experience. He turned to a fellow Georgian, former senator Sam Nunn, who once chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee; a moderate Democrat, he had the ear of the establishment. Although Nunn's caution gave Turner pause, he bowed to Nunn's insistence that he be granted a free hand.
This Nuclear Threat Initiative came three years later and was not linked to Turner's UN pledge. It would, Nunn said, more than double the sum spent on curbing nuclear weapons by all the world's foundations. The task is enormous. To cite one example, Nunn said there are one hundred Russian attack submarines with nuclear reactors "just sitting there" unsecured, and Russia lacks the resources to secure them. Before educating the public, Nunn had to educate Turner and slow him down. "Ted is much more an individual who believes that the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons is achievable," said Nunn, a deliberate and nonflamboyant man whose white button-down shirts and plain ties match his personality. "I see so many things that have to be done in terms of trust and verification and transparency and stability and security before you can have a national discussion about the elimination of these weapons." Nunn advised Turner to allow him to recruit military and other leaders who don't share Turner's abolitionist views. The committee held seminars and ordered a comprehensive study to explore how it can most effectively impact these issues. Nunn said he is a Turner fan: "When he gets behind something, people know it's serious, and it's going to have the energy and resources." Most days, Turner was a fan of the cautious Nunn; some days, he worried that Nunn was fencing him in.
By any measure, Turner's philanthropic activities were extraordinary. The Turner Foundation, which he controls, awarded fifty million dollars in 2000 to environmental causes. A serious environmentalist, Turner can name every species of bird and animal on his ranches, and during the oil embargo of 1973, he sold his Cadillac and switched to more fuel-efficient cars; recently, he exchanged his Ford Taurus for a hybrid electric-and-gas Toyota Prius, which averages about fifty miles a gallon. In December of 2000, to solve a long-running dispute between what the United States owed the UN and what Congress was willing to pay, Turner joined Richard C. Holbrooke, then the American ambassador to the UN, to shape an extraordinary compromise: Turner would contribute the thirty-four-million-dollar difference, and the UN would adjust its future dues formula.
Unapologetically, Turner calls himself "a do-gooder." He says so in a loud voice, and it gets louder as he gets excited. Turner is uninhibited and is usually blissfully unaware of others; and he is hard of hearing and is too vain to use a hearing aid. "Half the people alive today are already living in what we would consider intolerable conditions," he declares. "One-sixth don't have access to clean drinking water; one-fifth live on less than a dollar a day; half the women in the world don't have equal rights with men; the forests are shrinking; the temperature's rising, and the oceans are rising, because of the melting of the ice cap." He sounds like a billionaire Jeremiah. In a hundred years, he believes, New York will be under water and it will be "so hot the trees are going to die." He continues, "It will be the biggest catastrophe the world has ever seen—unless we have nuclear war." He was outraged that the United States and others don't do more to alleviate these horrors and to combat the defense and foreign policies of George W Bush. "The new administration attempts to make enemies out of the Russians, the North Koreans, and the Chinese to justify the gigantic military buildup it wants to make in peacetime," he said. "The economy of North Korea is smaller than the economy of Detroit! What threat does North Korea pose to us?" And he is outraged by the world's exploding population; although he has five children, he once declared, "If I was doing it over again I wouldn't have had that many, but I can't shoot them now that they're here."
Auletta reveals Ted Turner with a journalist's touch: we have the stories, some of the facts, and limited perspective. Media Man leaves readers wondering about Turner and wanting to understand more about the man. It's a good start, but there's more to the story.
Steve Hopkins, February 25, 2005
Buy Media Man at amazon.com
ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC
in the March 2005 issue of Executive Times
URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Media Man.htm


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Q: Ontology using description logic I wonder how can we make an ontology using Description logic syntax (A-box, T-box) for a staff of a university? What classes, objects, relations, parents, siblings, constraints and interrelationships among them we can make?
I made the below class diagram but not sure if anything else could be added to it.

A: UML class diagrams can be translated to TBoxes and object diagrams to ABoxes. See for instance https://henrietteharmse.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/uml-class-diagram-to-owl-and-sroiq-reference.pdf.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Category: Methods
Methods, Replications, Social	 January 11, 2019
Researchers Tried To Explore Why "Stereotype Threat" Harms Performance, But Found It Didn't Harm Performance At All
Is stereotype threat too context-dependent to matter all that much?
Stereotype threat is a very evocative, disturbing idea: Imagine if simply being reminded that you are a member of a disadvantaged group, and that stereotypes hold that members of your group are bad at certain tasks, led to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which you performed worse on such tasks than you would otherwise.
That's been the claim of stereotype threat researchers since the concept was first introduced in the mid-1990s, and it's spread far and wide. But as seems to be the case with so many strong psychological claims of late, in recent years the picture has gotten a bit murkier. "A recent review suggested that stereotype threat has a robust but small-to-medium sized effect on performance," wrote Alex Fradera here at the BPS Research Digest in 2017, "but a meta-analysis suggests that publication bias may be a problem in this literature, inflating the apparent size of the effect." Adding to the confusion are some results which seem to run exactly opposite to what the theory would suspect, like the one Fradera was reporting on: In that study, female chess players were found to have performed better, not worse, against male opponents, which isn't what the theory would have predicted.
Now, another study is poised to complicate things yet further. In a paper to be published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, and available as a preprint, a team led by Charlotte Pennington of UWE Bristol recruited female participants to test two mechanisms (reduced effort and working memory disruption) that have been offered to explain the supposed adverse performance effects of gender-related stereotype threat. They also compared different ways of inducing stereotype threat. Interesting questions, you might think, but in all cases the researchers came up empty.
Continue reading "Researchers Tried To Explore Why "Stereotype Threat" Harms Performance, But Found It Didn't Harm Performance At All" →
guest blogger, Methods	 December 10, 2018 January 2, 2019
Psychology research is still fixated on a tiny fraction of humans – here's how to fix that
Nearly 95 per cent of participant samples in a leading psychology journal were from Western countries
By guest blogger Jesse Singal
For a long time, some psychologists have understood that their field has an issue with WEIRDness. That is, psychology experiments disproportionately involve participants who are Western, Educated, and hail from Industrialised, Rich Democracies, which means many findings may not generalise to other populations, such as, say, rural Samoan villagers.
In a new paper in PNAS, a team of researchers led by Mostafa Salari Rad decided to zoom in on a leading psychology journal to better understand the field's WEIRD problem, evaluate whether things are improving, and come up with some possible changes in practice that could help spur things along.
Continue reading "Psychology research is still fixated on a tiny fraction of humans – here's how to fix that" →
guest blogger, Methods, Social	 December 5, 2018 December 6, 2018
Psychology's favourite tool for measuring implicit bias is still mired in controversy
A new review aims to move on from past controversies surrounding the implicit association test, but experts can't even agree on what they're arguing about
It has been a long and bumpy road for the implicit association test (IAT), the reaction-time-based psychological instrument whose co-creators, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald — among others in their orbit — claimed measures test-takers' levels of unconscious social biases and their propensity to act in a biased and discriminatory manner, be that via racism, sexism, ageism, or some other category, depending on the context. The test's advocates claimed this was a revelatory development, not least because the IAT supposedly measures aspects of an individual's bias even beyond what that individual was consciously aware of themselves.
As I explained in a lengthy feature published on New York Magazine's website last year, many doubts have emerged about these claims, ranging from the question of what the IAT is really measuring (as in, can a reaction-time difference measured in milliseconds really be considered, on its face, evidence of real-world-relevant bias?) to the algorithms used to generate scores to, perhaps most importantly (given that the IAT has become a mainstay of a wide variety of diversity training and educational programmes), whether the test really does predict real-world behaviour.
On that last key point, there is surprising agreement. In 2015 Greenwald, Banaji, and their coauthor Brian Nosek stated that the psychometric issues associated with various IATs "render them problematic to use to classify persons as likely to engage in discrimination". Indeed, these days IAT evangelist and critic alike mostly agree that the test is too noisy to usefully and accurately gauge people's likelihood of engaging in discrimination — a finding supported by a series of meta-analyses showing unimpressive correlations between IAT scores and behavioral outcomes (mostly in labs). Race IAT scores appear to account for only about 1 per cent of the variance in measured behavioural outcomes, reports an important meta-analysis available in preprint, co-authored by Nosek. (That meta-analysis also looked at IAT-based interventions, finding that while implicit bias as measured by the IAT "is malleable… changing implicit bias does not necessarily lead to changes in explicit bias or behavior.")
So where does this leave the IAT? In a new paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science called "The IAT Is Dead, Long Live The Iat: Context-Sensitive Measures of Implicit Attitudes Are Indispensable to Social and Political Psychology", John Jost, a social psychologist at New York University and a leading IAT researcher, seeks to draw a clear line between the "dead" diagnostic-version of the IAT, and what he sees as the test's real-world version – a sensitive, context-specific measure that shouldn't be used for diagnostic purposes, but which has potential in various research and educational contexts.
Does this represent a constructive manifesto for the future of this controversial psychological tool? Unfortunately, I don't think it does – rather, it contains many confusions, false claims, and strawman arguments (as well as a misrepresentation of my own work). Perhaps most frustrating, Jost joins a lengthening line of IAT researchers who, when faced with the fact that the IAT appears to have been overhyped for a long time by its creators, most enthusiastic proponents, and by journalists, responds with an endless variety of counterclaims that don't quite address the core issue itself, or which pretend those initial claims were never made in the first place.
Continue reading "Psychology's favourite tool for measuring implicit bias is still mired in controversy" →
Methods, Replications	 November 30, 2018 November 30, 2018
It's getting increasingly difficult for psychology's replication-crisis sceptics to explain away failed replications
The Many Labs 2 project managed to successfully replicate only half of 28 previously published significant effects
Replicating a study isn't easy. Just knowing how the original was conducted isn't enough. Just having access to a sample of experimental participants isn't enough. As psychological researchers have known for a long time, all sorts of subtle cues can affect how individuals respond in experimental settings. A failure to replicate, then, doesn't always mean that the effect being studied isn't there – it can simply mean the new study was conducted a bit differently.
Many Labs 2, a project of the Center for Open Science at the University of Virginia, embarked on one of the most ambitious replication efforts in psychology yet – and did so in a way designed to address these sorts of critiques, which have in some cases hampered past efforts. The resultant paper, a preprint of which can be viewed here, is lead-authored by Richard A. Klein of the Université Grenoble Alpes. Klein and his very, very large team – it takes almost four pages of the preprint just to list all the contributors – "conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings with protocols that were peer-reviewed in advance to examine variation in effect magnitudes across sample and setting."
Continue reading "It's getting increasingly difficult for psychology's replication-crisis sceptics to explain away failed replications" →
Educational, guest blogger, Methods, Textbooks	 October 16, 2018 October 17, 2018
Many undergrad psych textbooks do a poor job of describing science and exploring psychology's place in it
By guest blogger Tomasz Witkowski
Psychology as a scientific field enjoys a tremendous level of popularity throughout society, a fascination that could even be described as religious. This is likely the reason why it is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in European and American universities. At the same time, it is not uncommon to encounter the firm opinion that psychology in no way qualifies for consideration as a science. Such extremely critical opinions about psychology are often borrowed from authorities – after all, it was none other than the renowned physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman who, in a famous interview in 1974, compared the social sciences and psychology in particular to a cargo cult. Scepticism toward psychological science can also arise following encounters with the commonplace simplifications and myths spread by pop-psychology, or as a product of a failure to understand what science is and how it solves its dilemmas.
According to William O'Donohue and Brendan Willis of the University of Nevada, these issues are further compounded by undergraduate psychology textbooks. Writing recently in Archives of Scientific Psychology, they argue that "[a] lack of clarity and accuracy in [psych textbooks] in describing what science is and psychology's relationship to science are at the heart of these issues." The authors based their conclusions on a review of 30 US and UK undergraduate psychology textbooks, most updated in the last few years (general texts and others covering abnormal, social and cognitive psych), in which they looked for 18 key contemporary issues in philosophy of science.
Continue reading "Many undergrad psych textbooks do a poor job of describing science and exploring psychology's place in it" →
Methods, Personality	 September 25, 2018 September 27, 2018
The in-vogue psychological construct "Grit" is an example of redundant labelling in personality psychology, claims new paper
By Christian Jarrett
Part of the strength of the widely endorsed Big Five model of personality is its efficient explanatory power – in the traits of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, it removes the redundancy of more fine-grained approaches and manages to capture the most meaningful variance in our habits of thought and behaviour.
So what to make then of the popular proposal that what marks out high achievers from the rest is that they rank highly on another trait labelled as "Grit"?
Is the recognition of Grit, and the development of a scale to measure it, a breakthrough in our understanding of the psychology of success? Or is it a reinvention of the wheel, a redundant addition to the taxonomy of personality psychology?
In 2016, the US-based authors of a meta-analysis on the topic concluded "that Grit as currently measured is simply a repackaging of Conscientiousness". Now a different research team, based in Germany and Switzerland, has taken a more intricate look at the links between Grit and Conscientiousness, this time including a focus on their respective facets (or sub-traits). Writing in the European Journal of Personality, Fabian Schmidt and his colleagues conclude that "Grit represents yet another contribution to the common problem of redundant labelling of constructs in personality psychology."
Continue reading "The in-vogue psychological construct "Grit" is an example of redundant labelling in personality psychology, claims new paper" →
guest blogger, Methods, Replications	 July 12, 2018 July 12, 2018
Philosophise this – psychology research by philosophers is robust and replicates better than other areas of psychology
Experimental philosophy or X-Phi takes the tools of contemporary psychology and applies them to unravelling how people think about major topics from Western philosophy
By guest blogger Dan Jones
Amid all the talk of a "replication crisis" in psychology, here's a rare good news story – a new project has found that a sub-field of the discipline, known as "experimental philosophy" or X-phi, is producing results that are impressively robust.
The current crisis in psychology was largely precipitated by a mass replication attempt published by the Open Science Collaboration (OSC) project in 2015. Of 100 previously published significant findings, only 39 per cent replicated unambiguously, rising to 47 per cent on more relaxed criteria.
Now a paper in Review of Philosophy and Psychology has trained the replicability lens on the burgeoning field of experimental philosophy. Born roughly 15 years ago, X-Phi takes the tools of contemporary psychology and applies them to unravelling how people think about many of the major topics of Western philosophy, from the metaphysics of free will and the nature of the self, to morality and the problem of consciousness.
Continue reading "Philosophise this – psychology research by philosophers is robust and replicates better than other areas of psychology" →
Methods, Social	 July 10, 2018 July 10, 2018
After analysing the field's leading journal, a psychologist asks: Is social psychology still the science of behaviour?
By Alex Fradera
Part of my role at the Digest involves sifting through journals looking for research worth covering, and I've sensed that modern social psychology generates plenty of studies based on questionnaire data, but far fewer that investigate the kind of tangible behavioural outcomes illuminated by the field's classics, from Asch's conformity experiments to Milgram's research on obedience to authority. A new paper in Social Psychological Bulletin examines this apparent change systematically. Based on his findings, Dariusz Doliński at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Poland asks the bleak question: is psychology still a science of behaviour?
Continue reading "After analysing the field's leading journal, a psychologist asks: Is social psychology still the science of behaviour?" →
Methods, Morality	 June 21, 2018 July 2, 2018
Psychology's favourite moral thought experiment doesn't predict real-world behaviour
Would you wilfully hurt or kill one person so as to save multiple others? That's the dilemma at the heart of moral psychology's favourite thought experiment and its derivatives. In the classic case, you must decide whether or not to pull a lever to divert a runaway mining trolley so that it avoids killing five people and instead kills a single individual on another line. A popular theory in the field states that, to many of us, so abhorrent is the notion of deliberately harming someone that our "deontological" instincts deter us from pulling the lever; on the other hand, the more we intellectualise the problem with cool detachment, the more likely we will make a utilitarian or consequentialist judgment and divert the trolley.
Armed with thought experiments of this kind, psychologists have examined all manner of individual and circumstantial factors that influence the likelihood of people making deontological vs. utilitarian moral decisions. However, there's a fatal (excuse the pun) problem. A striking new paper in Psychological Science finds that our answers to the thought experiments don't match up with our real-world moral decisions.
Continue reading "Psychology's favourite moral thought experiment doesn't predict real-world behaviour" →
Feature, guest blogger, Health, Methods, Twitter	 April 23, 2018 April 26, 2018
Are tweets a goldmine for psychologists or just a lot of noise? Researchers clash over the meaning of social media data
By guest blogger Jon Brock
Johannes Eichstaedt was sitting in a coffee shop by Lake Atitlan in Guatemala when he received a slack about a tweet about a preprint. In 2015, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist and his colleagues published a headline-grabbing article linking heart disease to the language used on Twitter. They'd found that tweets emanating from US counties with high rates of heart disease mortality tended to exhibit high levels of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, disengagement, aggression, and hate. The study, published in Psychological Science, has proven influential, already accruing over 170 citations. But three years later, the preprint authors Nick Brown and James Coyne from the University of Groningen claimed to have identified "numerous conceptual and methodological limitations". Within the month, Eichstaedt and his colleagues issued a riposte, publishing their own preprint that claims further evidence to support their original conclusions.
As recent revelations surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have highlighted, corporations and political organisations attach a high value to social media data. But, Eichstaedt argues, that same data also offers rich insights into psychological health and well-being. With appropriate ethical oversight, social media analytics could promote population health and perhaps even save lives. That at least is its promise. But with big data come new challenges – as Eichstaedt's "debate" with Brown and Coyne illustrates.
Continue reading "Are tweets a goldmine for psychologists or just a lot of noise? Researchers clash over the meaning of social media data" →

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Du-par's is located at the very nice Southpoint mall in Durham. The restaurant is pretty comfortable and has a western decor.
Service was good but unremarkable and a bit slow. They could do with a bit more staff.
I had buffalo meat-loaf. The meat-loaf was served with parmesan mash potatoes and pecan green beans. While the mash potatoes were good, the meat-loaf was too salty and had too much pepper in it. I couldn't taste the meat… Additionnally the green beans were cold and the gravy was far too salty. It's pretty hard for a restaurant to mess up meat-loaf but they successfully did it. In one word: a disaster.
Around $20, including drinks (beer) and tip. Considering the food, Firebirds can't be a good value for money. It's a place that I will definitely avoid.


I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment at the proposal to remove the signs expressing a Welcome to Refugees In our townships. Your readers may or may not know, that there are two active groups within the shire who advocate on behalf of refugees in our community and in the broader socio-political context. The Bega Valley Rural Australians for Refugees and the Social Justice Advocates. It seems like a knee jerk reaction and an expression of ignorance by Councillor Nadin to be making a proposal to remove the signs from the shire, without first consulting with people from these two groups, people who have direct contact with refugee families and the issues that they face. I convene the local Bega Valley Rural Australians for Refugees group. We meet monthly and would welcome the opportunity to discuss how council could live more fully into its commitment to being a Welcome Town for Refugees. Education and modelling of support for diversity and tolerance are key to eliminating racism and ignorance in our community. I do not support Cr Nadin's motion, it seems like the lazy way out. My mum had a stroke in July 2015. She became paralysed on her right side, incontinent and unable to talk - except for 'yes', which often meant 'no'. She could cry. I can't fault the nursing home, but during the 1575 occasions I visited her I realised there are limits to medicine. Pain, suffering and agony. By April 2018, Mum had learned to say "I die". I heard this for 88 visits, usually for the whole time, even while she ate. Mum is free of her three-year ordeal, freed from the horror, but I have the memory of it. I intend in every future election to give my first vote to any voluntary assisted dying party. I could not save my mum, but I can contribute to a future when others can be spared a terrible life. I would like to thank Denise Dion for correcting her reporting of my comments at the Australian Conservation Foundation federal candidates' forum at Merimbula in the online version of the article. For those who have not seen this, and to expand for those who have, the actual words I used were "Humans are contributing to climate change. There is no denying that, but the issue is to what extent, and what are we going to do. It is a balance, and the problems we have in the climate change debate is that we have two extremes; you are at this end or you at that end. "I have heard people in here automatically define me as a climate-change denier. I am not, but the debate and the discussion is complex and at the present moment we are not solving it and we are not progressing because people are being pushed into one extreme or the other and unless we listen we will never solve any problems, this being one of them." Richard Ackland, The Saturday Paper's "Gadfly", points out that then-Treasurer Scott Morrison scrapped the special income discount for superannuated public servants in 2015, resulting in "a couple of hundred thousand souls losing their Commonwealth pensions", and "in 2014, as social security minister, reduced the aged pension assets test, thereby cutting eligibility for 91,000 part pensioners and reducing the part pension for another 250,000". As well, "he also increased the threshold for full pensioners thereby in total wiping $ 2.4billion from the pockets of the frail, elderly and retired". This should be noted when we have howls of rage from those who have paid no tax because they stand to lose a "refund" from the tax office.
Mitchies Jetty was the scene of a baptism as people from Eden Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship joined those from Sapphire Life Church on Sunday afternoon.
I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment at the proposal to remove the signs expressing a Welcome to Refugees In our townships.
Your readers may or may not know, that there are two active groups within the shire who advocate on behalf of refugees in our community and in the broader socio-political context. The Bega Valley Rural Australians for Refugees and the Social Justice Advocates.
It seems like a knee jerk reaction and an expression of ignorance by Councillor Nadin to be making a proposal to remove the signs from the shire, without first consulting with people from these two groups, people who have direct contact with refugee families and the issues that they face.
I convene the local Bega Valley Rural Australians for Refugees group. We meet monthly and would welcome the opportunity to discuss how council could live more fully into its commitment to being a Welcome Town for Refugees.
Education and modelling of support for diversity and tolerance are key to eliminating racism and ignorance in our community.
I do not support Cr Nadin's motion, it seems like the lazy way out.
My mum had a stroke in July 2015. She became paralysed on her right side, incontinent and unable to talk - except for 'yes', which often meant 'no'. She could cry.
I can't fault the nursing home, but during the 1575 occasions I visited her I realised there are limits to medicine. Pain, suffering and agony. By April 2018, Mum had learned to say "I die". I heard this for 88 visits, usually for the whole time, even while she ate.
Mum is free of her three-year ordeal, freed from the horror, but I have the memory of it. I intend in every future election to give my first vote to any voluntary assisted dying party. I could not save my mum, but I can contribute to a future when others can be spared a terrible life.
I would like to thank Denise Dion for correcting her reporting of my comments at the Australian Conservation Foundation federal candidates' forum at Merimbula in the online version of the article.
For those who have not seen this, and to expand for those who have, the actual words I used were "Humans are contributing to climate change. There is no denying that, but the issue is to what extent, and what are we going to do. It is a balance, and the problems we have in the climate change debate is that we have two extremes; you are at this end or you at that end.
Richard Ackland, The Saturday Paper's "Gadfly", points out that then-Treasurer Scott Morrison scrapped the special income discount for superannuated public servants in 2015, resulting in "a couple of hundred thousand souls losing their Commonwealth pensions", and "in 2014, as social security minister, reduced the aged pension assets test, thereby cutting eligibility for 91,000 part pensioners and reducing the part pension for another 250,000". As well, "he also increased the threshold for full pensioners thereby in total wiping $ 2.4billion from the pockets of the frail, elderly and retired".
This should be noted when we have howls of rage from those who have paid no tax because they stand to lose a "refund" from the tax office.
Discuss "Letters: Refugee sign removal would be 'knee jerk' reaction"


As common as the domestic cat is today in North America, it can be hard to believe that the creature was once unheard of here. The cats that we all know and love were imported to North America as European explorers and settlers came over. However, there are a few cats that are native to North America including the cougar, the Canadian Lynx, the jaguar, and the bobcat. Each of these powerful hunters held a place of significance in Native American culture. With recent discoveries, bobcats may have had more significance than anyone has ever known!
Bobcats are one of the smaller wild cats, weighing around 11 – 30 pounds (5 – 13.6 kg). The name bobcat comes from their short tail which looks as if it had been "bobbed." Quite often people mistake the bobcat for a lynx. The two cats are similar in color, body proportions, and both a ruff of fur around their faces. One main difference is that the tip of a lynx's tail is black all the way around and bobcat's tail is black on top and white on the bottom. Scientifically, the bobcat is sometimes categorized as a variety of lynx and other times it is not.
The bobcat is a solitary hunter. Their diet consists mostly of rabbit, but can include rodents, bats, beaver, deer, and more. At one time, it is believed that the bobcat was common all throughout North America. However, the hunting of these cats for their pelts pushed them out of the mid-western United States.
Archeologists are still learning quite a bit about the Native American people, their culture, and how they lived. In the 1980's an ancient Native American burial ground in Illinois was excavated in a hurry to keep the artifacts from being destroyed in a highway project that was scheduled to come through the area. It was a burial ground belonging to the Hopewell people, a complex people whose territory stretched from Illinois to Florida. Among the things found were various bones from human skeletons (both adult and child) as well as one animal that was labeled as a dog. The dog was wearing a collar made of bear teeth and shells. The Hopewell people were known to keep dogs as pets.
Recently, a zooarchaeologist and P.H.D. student, Angela Perri, was reexamining the artifacts found in the Hopewell burial mounds for her study on ancient dog burials. Looking at the teeth of the "dog" skeleton, she knew right away that this was not a dog – it was a cat. She compared the skeleton to those of known wild cats that are native to North America and it was a match to a young bobcat. The bobcat was probably 5-7 months of age.
Perri's find was a very important one. The bobcat did not appear to have been a sacrifice, but rather it was gently placed in its grave with it's paws together. It appeared that not only was this bobcat placed in mound reserved for humans (dogs were buried elsewhere), but it was done in a ritual way. This is the first recorded example of a cat being buried with Native Americans. It is still not known why the Hopewell people chose to bury this bobcat this way. Due to financial issues affecting museums in Illinois, the research may never be completed.
The Hopewell people were not the only Native Americans to interact with bobcats. Bobcats have a role in Native American legends and mythology. Often the term "bobcat" is used interchangeably with "lynx." The bobcat is compared to the coyote. They represent opposite sides of the same coin in Native American lore. Bobcats represent fog while coyotes represent wind. Bobcats were revered for their hunting skills and ability to see in the dark. Some believed that bobcats could see the real person behind the mask.
An Apache legend shows a bobcat outwiting a cocky coyote. The coyote wants to play a game with the bobcat in which they scratch each other's backs to see who scratches harder. The bobcat retracts his claws and convinces the coyote that it wouldn't be a fair game because his claws are so short. Of course, the coyote sees this as an easy win and wants to play even more. They coyote first scratches the back of the bobcat who pretends to be in great pain. When the coyote turns his back for the bobcat, the bobcat extends his claws and easily rips through the coyote's flesh to win the game.
The Blackfoot people have a legend about how the bobcat got its look. They say that an old man fell asleep after having roasted some prairie dogs to eat. He had told his nose that he had to wake him up if anyone tried to steal his food. As a bobcat approached the food on the fire, the old man's nose tried to wake him up, but he wouldn't wake. The bobcat ate all of the food. When the old man woke up and saw his food gone, he was angry at his nose for not waking him and he hunted down the bobcat. As a punishment for stealing his food, the old man pulled off the bobcat's tail, flattened his face, and stretched out his body.
The Shawnee people say the bobcat got his spots after being tricked by a rabbit. The bobcat was hunting a rabbit that ran up a tree. The rabbit convinces the bobcat to build a fire to smoke him out of the tree. While building the fire, the bobcat is burned and the embers scatter across his body leaving all of the spots.
We have a kupple bobcat furmilies dat live in da woods behind our pawrtment. They be weally sweet and seem to watch over all of us livin' here. One of our neighbors used to feed one of them and wuld always tell mommy dat one of mommys kitties was at hers house and she gave them milk and stuffs. Mommy kuld never make hers unnewstand dat she was feedin' a bobcat and no mommys cat.
I really enjoy your research articles, Robin. It would seem cats had to play a big role in human lives at some point in our time.
Very interesting post. I love cats of all sizes, it is a nice thought to think they were respected by the Indians enough for such a good burial.
I've always thought Bobcats were so interesting! They truly are beautiful to look at!
Many, many years ago, my human's brother was out on a hike… and he brought home a tiny bobcat kitten that he had found, nearly drowned, in a stream! It was a cute and fascinating little guy, with a funny voice, and the sharpest, fiercest kitten claws you can imagine! After a couple of days of asking around, he found a home at a refuge called Wildlife Waystation, found a girlfriend there and eventually they went to a zoo in Germany. He couldn't go back in the wild because he was WAY too human friendly! Maybe the bobcat buried by the Native Americans was a special friend.
Cool bobcat legends! I hope they get financing to finish that research.
They are sure amazing and we enjoyed your low down on those incredible cats!


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Regrets Over Anti-Obama "Holocaust" Email
October 27, 2008 / 3:31 PM / CBS/AP
A former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice apologized Monday for signing an e-mail to Jewish voters that likened a vote for Barack Obama to ignoring warning signals that led up to the Holocaust.
Sandra Schultz Newman called the e-mail, written by a Republican consultant, misguided and said she regrets she did not carefully review the final draft before it was released.
"Some of the language was inappropriate and intemperate," Newman wrote in an e-mail statement Monday. "I apologize to anyone who was offended by this misguided e-mail."
The e-mail sent Thursday to 75,000 Jewish voters in Pennsylvania warns "Fellow Jewish Voters" of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors and touts McCain's qualifications over those of Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate.
Republicans quickly disavowed the e-mail and said they fired the campaign consultant who wrote it. A campaign spokesman for Republican presidential nominee John McCain also repudiated it.
In Monday's statement, Schultz said the original e-mail was drafted by "a worker for the McCain campaign." Asked by a reporter later in the day to identify the worker, Schultz said she was referring to Bryan Rudnick, the fired consultant.
"I believe Bryan was let go before it was approved,'' she said in response to a query from The Associated Press. ``I was not involved in hiring Bryan and so I am not sure for whom he worked.''
A spokesman for the state GOP confirmed that Rudnick was employed by the state party.
"He was our employee and we let him go" on Friday, said the spokesman, Mike Barley.
Rudnick has told the AP that he had authorization from party officials to send the e-mail. He said he was fired Friday morning over "discrepancies with strategy and logistics," and that the e-mail was not mentioned when he was let go.
A copy of the e-mail provided by Democratic officials says it was "Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA - Victory 2008." The signatures of Schultz and two other McCain supporters were on the message.
Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., criticized the e-mail as part of a smear campaign that was among the worst he had seen in his state.
Newman also has been involved in the state Republican Party's civil lawsuit against the community-activist group ACORN and Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, the state's top election official.
A hearing in state Commonwealth Court is scheduled for Wednesday on the suit, in which the GOP accuses ACORN of fostering voter-registration fraud. State officials say the county-run election system has built-in safeguards to prevent fraudulent ballots from being cast. Democratic leaders say the allegations are simply demagoguery.
First published on October 27, 2008 / 3:31 PM


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Join us on the monthly In Context War Report on Monday, July 28, 2014 at noon as we discuss the reopening of Russia's intelligence and surveillance center in Cuba, U.S. capacity to defeat China in a Pacific war and the role of Islamic sects in the global wars.
Broadcasts on WPKN 89.5 FM and streams at wpkn.org on the 4th Monday of the month from noon to 1pm. Audio archive available at this site, wpkn.org and radio4all. Programs podcast via radio4all and iTunes. Email comments and queries welcome at ken@mdrtalk.org. Website: incontextreport.com.


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The diffusion of medical technology: a "prisoner's dilemma" trap?
Socioecon Plann Sci. 1986;20(2):69-74. doi: 10.1016/0038-0121(86)90029-7.
Y Benjamini, A Gafni
Medical technology diffusion and its effect on the modern hospital and on the rising costs of medical care is an issue which receives considerable attention from economists and policy analysts. In this paper a different approach is used to understand this phenomenon. We present the decision of a single hospital, whether or not to adopt an advanced technology system, using the concept of a noncooperative, nonzero sum game. Such presentation provides us with more insight on the conflict in which hospitals find themselves; the "catch" which pushes them to purchase more and more sophisticated and expensive technology in the hope that they will be able to successfully compete with other hospitals. The situation is further complicated by the existence of another "hidden" player--society, whose goals may differ from those of any individual hospital and even from the collective interests of the hospital sector. Possible conflicts that may exist and suggested solutions for each participant are presented and their policy implication are discussed.
Communication*
Diffusion of Innovation*
Game Theory*
Hospital Planning*
Medical Laboratory Science / economics*
Models, Theoretical


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In Pictures: Best of CES 2014
34 Photos John Cox (Network World)
Here's what grabbed our attention at the sprawling CES 2014 gadget show in Las Vegas
CES 2014 The annual Consumer Electronics Show, Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas, offers as usual a tidal wave of products. They range from jaw-droppingly awesome to head-slappingly dumb. Here's our admittedly subjective list of "The Best of CES 2014," including several CES Innovations award-winners, for previously announced products
Linksys WRT1900AC Dual Band Wi-Fi Router Belkin's Linksys brand announced an impressive 802.11ac wireless router: dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 128 Mbytes, flash, four removable antennas (instead of the standard three), one eSata/USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, gigabit WAN port, 4 Gigabit LAN ports. Data rates of 1.3 Gbps in the 5 GHz band (for 11ac) and up to 600 Mbps in the 2.4 band (for 11n); Linksys Smart Wi-Fi, which lets users remotely access the router from a browser or mobile app; open source firmware based on work with the OpenWRT community. The price is impressive, too: MSRP of $300. Due to ship in Spring 2014.
f201 Car Camcorder from VistaQuest (licensed to HP) The Car Camcorder mounts easily on your windshield to continuously record the road ahead or behind you, with a 120-degree lens. Includes emergency collision sensor that stores and locks video when it detects a collision; motion sensor triggers the cam when it detects someone snooping outside the car; built in GPS lets the cam, and the car, be tracked; and it alerts you when you're approaching a police speed camera.
NVIDA Tegra K1 mobile system-on-chip NVIDIA's new mobile SOC combines the vendor's advanced Kepler GPU (apparently dropping the Tegra's previous variant for the desktop GPU architecture) with 192 cores, with the symmetric multi-processing NVIDIA 4-Plus-1 CPU, which incorporates a quadcore ARM Cortex A12 with a separate "battery-saver core." The K1's four cores can be pulled into different configurations based on the processing loads. The 32-bit version is due out in mid-2014, with a 64-bit version later in the year, or about 12 months after Apple unveiled the first 64-bit mobile SOC. NVIDIA is flogging the new chip for everything from smartphones to gaming consoles.
Kolibree Connected Toothbrush The Best Product for brushing your teeth if you don't how. The French company's electric toothbrush connects via Bluetooth (what else?) to an iOS or Android smartphone running Kolibree's app. The app records every brushing and the stored data reveals, you know, patterns so you can improve your brushing. They're looking for crowdfunding via Kickstarter during Q2 2014, for $99 or $200 depending on the model you want. The plan is to ship in Q3 to contributors.
Freescale Warp (wearable reference platform) If you're a do-it-yourself and you've been longing to craft your own wearable computer, now you can. Freescale's Warp is a small uncased computer, about the size of a dime, analogous to the credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi. Warp is designed for developing, prototyping and testing things that you can attach the word "smart" to: watches, glasses, pedometers, heart rate monitors, etc. You pay for smarts in small packages: Warp is $149.
ASUS Transformer Book Trio TX201LA The more they do, the longer the name gets. The ASUS Transformer Book Trio claims to be "the first 3-in-1, 11.6-inch dual OS Windows 8/Android hybrid laptop with a dock powered by a 4th generation Intel Core i7 processor" with a 1920 x 1080 IPS display. The Core runs Windows 8 and a second processor, an Intel Atom, runs Android and Android mobile apps. The idea of combining Windows and Android apps on a single display is certainly innovative. The question is how many people see that as the main job for which they want to "hire" the device? (This is a CES Innovations award winner.)
Parrot Jumping Sumo Drone-maker Parrot announced Jumping Sumo, a land-based robot drone, intended as a toy. It has a Wi-Fi radio, rolling around on oversized wheels until you command it to "jump" and it jumps, up to 35 inches in a single bound. There's a built-in camera, which can stream live video back to the controller...a feature that frankly creeps us out. It will be avialable later in 2014, and pricing wasn't announced.
HP Pro X2 410 hybrid laptab Officially, HP consider the Pro X2 410 as a Windows 8.1 laptop PC that is also, when you unhook the keyboard, a tablet. Which is pretty much what the Windows ecosystem has been trying to sell for over a year. Perhaps HP figures that 8.1 is such an improvement, buyers will do what they haven't done much of so far, namely, buy. The 410 has an 11.6-inch screen, with 1366 x 768-pixel resolution, over 12 hours of battery life, a 2-megapixel front camera, and a back camera. The keyboard incorporates a battery back and USB and HDMI ports. You can chose among Intel's low-power Core Y-series Haswell processors. When release later this year, it will be priced at under $900.
LaCie Fuel wireless hard drive Admit: you know you need a Terabyte of external storage for your iPhone or iPad. So does LaCie, which has announced the Fuel wireless hard drive to give it to you, for $199. Think of it: you can store over 500 movies or "thousands of photos, songs, and documents" according to the company, now a unit of Seagate. The drive has a built-in Wi-Fi radio (which can also serve as a router for a wireless network), for access by your iOS device, or via a USB 3.0 cable, by your Mac. The drive's battery runs 10 hours on a single charge. It's AirPlay compatible
Sharp Acquos 4K Ultra HD LED TV Pixel lovers of the world, unite. Sharp is just one vendor that announced new HD TVs at CES. Sharp will offer four classes of HD TVs this year, but the 4K Ultra HD (shown here) is the Mount Everest-like high-end, available in 60- and 70-inch displays, priced at $5,000 and $6,000. Both models feature Sharp's reworked SmartCentral 3 smart TV software, and boast 2160p-resolution, 120hz, THX 4K-certification, 35-watt duobass audio system, four HDMI 2.0 ports, and active 3D.
Toshiba Tecra and Satellite Ultra HD 4K laptops Speaking of Ultra HD 4K, Toshiba revealed two laptops outfitted with 15.6-inch diagonal highhigh resolution screens. Both models feature native 3840 x 2160 resolution at 282 PPI. The Tecra W50 is billed as a "mobile workstation" aimed at the likes of engineers and 3D designers; the Satellite P50t at professional photographers, graphic designers and "4K movie enthusiasts." The higher-end Tecra weighs in at less than six pounds, and runs the NVIDIA Quadro K2100M GPU with 2 Gbytes dedicated video memory. The Satellite features a touch screen. Both have fourth-generation Intel Core processors. They will ship in mid-2014; pricing was not announced.
Toshiba Chromebook Toshiba jumped into the Chromebook craze with a biggish splash: it's first Chromebook, running Google's Chrome OS, and sporting a larger-than-usual (for Chromebooks) 13-inch diagonal screen, with 1366 by 768 pixels. It's 0.8-inches thick, weighs 3.3 lbs. It's fitted with Intel's Haswell-based Celeron processor, 2 Gbytes of RAM, 16-Gyte solid-state drive, two USB 3.0 ports, full-size HDMI port, Bluetooth and 2x2 802.11n. Included is 100 Gybes of free Google Drive storage. The vendor promises up to 9 hours of battery life. It ships February 16, for $280.
Brunton Hydrogen Reactor At CES, nothing is sexier than "high science." That's how Brunton markets its Hydrogen Reactor, a CES Innovations award winner. You plug in the Hydrocore fuel cylinder (about $20 each), which is the hydrogen part of this, and the Reactor sucks oxygen out of the air (at least that's free) and the fuel-cell reaction creates electricity which is passed along via USB port to whatever you've got on the other end of the cable: smartphones, tablets, rechargeable lights, portable game consoles, to name just a few. Each fuel cylinder has "more power than a fistful of AA batteries," according to Brunton. Price: $170. Priceless: impressing the impressionable.
Toyota iRoad Personal Mobility Device The iRoad is a…well, an electric powered, enclosed three-wheeled thing that allegedly can carry two people. It's appearing for the first time at CES this year, though Toyota first revealed it in 2012 and has been testing it as a ride-sharing vehicle. The iRoad thingy weighs about 660 pounds, and its dual two-kilowatt motors can reach nearly 30mph for up to about 31 miles on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery. In a CES test drive, PC World's Melissa Riofrio found it very nimble, fun to drive, and very stable, despite the rather dramatic way the vehicle leans into curves.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 602A chipset The 602A is a version Qualcomm's Snapdragon system-on-chip that's specifically designed for embedding in a vehicle: quad-core Krait CPU, Adreno 320 GPU, Hexagon Digital Signal Processing chip, integrated baseband processing and other audio, video and communication cores to do lots of stuff. It integrates Qualcomm's silicon for 3G/4G-LTE, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE 4.0 for connectivity anywhere. Qualcomm's promo video shows carloads of folks deeply thrilled to access "online services on-the-go" (shown: booking a restaurant table from your car's dashboard touchscreen), and enjoying driver recognition and personalization, mobile device content sharing, and streaming video on demand. Watch the drivers looking at the screen instead of the street.
Tarsier MoveEye First unveiled at IDG's DEMO conference in October 2012, Tarsier's MoveEye technology – packaged as a pair of eyeglasses - lets users reach out and manipulate icons, windows or images on a screen as if they're floating in the air. The initial work has been in 2D but at CES the tiny St. Paul, Minn., startup is demonstrating an improved 3D interface for MoveEye. The glasses have a built-in pair of stereoscopic cameras, sensors to detect the viewer's eye movements, and Wi-Fi to talk to the media box. By taking the user's perspective, unlike, say, Microsoft Kinect, which watches the user and interprets his movements, MoveEye can be very precise in capturing hand and finger gestures through Tarsier's algorithms and software.
Kirk H&J Corporation iNPOFi Foldable Mobile Wireless Charger, a CES Innovations award-winner The latest variant of the vendor's charging product line is a foldable or rollable charger with a 5000 mAh battery. As with previous products, Foldable MWC emits no, zero, nada radiation, and has "90 percent power transfer efficiency" to speed recharging a mobile device. It only charges devices that are "compatible" and recognizes them automatically. When rolled, you can use it as a 40-Lumens LED flashlight. But the company doesn't say when it will ship or how much it will cost.
Pebble Steel smartwatch Pebble, one of the pioneers in the still-being-born smartwatch market, unveiled Pebble Steel, a "premium" smartwatch, in two models, that's thinner and slightly smaller than the original, and announced the launch of an app store, with app categories for Daily, Remotes, Games, Notifications, Tools & Utilities, Fitness, Watchfaces. You can choose either a Black Matte or Brushed Stainless model, both of which come with two watchbands: metal and leather. Like the prior model, they talk to either iOS or Android smartphones over Bluetooth. For Steel, Pebble added Corning Gorilla Glass to protect the watch's e-paper display, a body of "CNC-machined" stainless steel, and an LED to show charging status. It will ship Jan. 28, both models priced at $249.
Huawei Technologies Ascend Mate 2 4G, smartphone The "2" indicates this is an improved version of the original Ascend Mate, with its humongous 6.1-inch diagonal screen. The Chinese smartphone maker kept the screen size but added a 1.6 GHz quad-core processor (outside China, the phone uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon MSM892), a more power-efficient screen, and a massive 4050mAh battery which the company says will run from nearly two to over three days. Also: 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, support for 4G. No word on pricing or shipping.
Intel - Edison, chip for wearables As part of its push into wearable computers, Intel unveiled Edison, a new chip made on a 22-nanometer process – the board is about the size of an SD card -- and based on Intel's very low-power Quark processor. It has integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless networking. At CES, the company is showing Edison used in baby garments that are part of Rest Devices' Mimo Baby product line, to track an infant's heart rate, temperature, activity level and body position. Edison will be released in June or July 2014 to developers and do-it-yourselfers. Pricing wasn't announced.
Samsung - Galaxy NotePro and Galaxy TabPro, Android tablets Samsung unveiled three different screen sizes of the new Galaxy TabPro, 8.4-, 10.1- and 12.1-inch models, and a 12.2-inch Galaxy NotePro. The main difference: the large-format NotePro works with Samsung's S-Pen, the TabPro models don't. All four have multiple, layered pop-up windows for multitasking and the two 12.2-inch models feature a new four-pane multiwindow capability for multi-tasking. They run Android 4.4 Kit and you can chose various wireless connectivity options. The biggest models also 2560 x 1600 resolutions, 3GB RAM, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, USB 3.0. They'll ship in Q1 2014, but no word on pricing.
Sony - Experia Z1S, waterproof smartphone Sony's new Experia smarphone is the 5-inch, full HD screen Z1S, fully waterproof, running Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), and sporting a rear-facing 20.7 megapixel camera. It's powered by a quad-core 2.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, with 2GB of RAM and a 3,000mAh battery pack. It ships with 32GB of storage and a microSD expansion slot. Avaiable via T-Mobile starting Jan. 13 for pre-orders; $603 upfront of zero down, $22 per month for 24 months.
Tobii -- EyeMobile, a CES Innovations award-winner Tobii Technology EyeMobile, unveiled in September, combines an infrared-based eye tracker with a lightweight stand, into which you plug any Windows 8/8.1 tablet. The software creates an overlay on the Windows UI, providing eye gestures and movements that are the equivalents of finger touches to the screen. The result: hands-free interaction with a Windows touchscreen. EyeMobile now runs version 2.5.0 of Tobii Gaze Interaction Software, which added support for Windows 8.1 and performance and other improvements. The price tag is steep: the hardware and software is $2,345; a package deal including a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 is $3,245.
Asus -- VivoTab Note 8, Windows tablet Asus' entry in the 8-inch Windows tablet race is the VivoTab Note 8: IPS display with 1280 by 800 pixels, 1.86-GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3740 processor, 2GB of memory, up to 64GB of storage along with a microSD card slot for the same amount. There's a 5-megapixel rear camera and a high-definition front-facing camera. It also comes with the Wacom digitizer and stylus, which can handle up to 1,000 pressure levels. Ships in March or April; prices start at $299 for the 32GB model and $349 for the 64GB model.
Polaroid Socialmatic camera Still snapping after all these years, Polaroid showed off a new Android-powered camera it calls the Socialmatic. The 14MP shooter boasts both a high degree of social integration – as the name suggests – as well as Polaroid's classic instant printing ability. Look for it to hit the shelves this fall.
Epson DS-560 sheetfeed scanner Epson's first wireless sheetfeed scanner has more than just that going for it – it allows users to scan documents directly to various cloud services, including Google Docs and Evernote, as well as scan directly to each other's mobile phones. It'll cost $450 when it's released in March.
Technogym -- Google Glass controlled treadmill Another first for Android and Google: the "first Google glass controlled treadmill," previewed at CES by the Italian-based Technogym. Climb aboard, slap on your Google Glass thingy and you can interact with the treadmill's integrated Android tablet, not to mention Technogym's "mywellness cloud," which is part of the "Technogym Ecosystem," which has its own app store. And you know what all that means: personalized training with feedback and progress tracking data and "favorite entertainment options." For the tablet, Technogym created its own software platform, dubbed UNITY, with APIs for third-party apps and devices. No word on shipping or pricing.
GlassUp, eyeglass display for incoming emails, texts, etc The idea is simple but hard to do, apparently: GlassUp's eyeglasses use Bluetooth to link with your mobile phone, and a phone-based app for a read-only display incoming text on the eyeglass lenses: emails, messages, tweets, etc. That's different from Google Glass which makes you look up and away. But GlassUp has a way to go, says The Verge's Ellis Hamburger, who tried out a prototype at CES. It projects "tiny green lettering" that "was difficult, if not impossible to read…skewed and nearly illegible," he writes. Due in summer 2014, priced at $399.
VIEVU-- LE3 wearable camera VIEVU improved its law-enforcement-targeted wearable camera. The LE3 offers HD or Widescren SD video resolution, supports H.264 video compression, 16GB internal storage, up to 5 hours recording and 12 hours of video storage, sliding lens cover that also acts as the on/off switch, improved security, image quality and low light performance. All in a waterproof package the size of a pager, weighing just 2.8 ounces. Available now, priced at $899, including the Veripatrol secure file management system.
ZTE -- Projector Hotspot ZTE combined a portable projector and a Wi-Fi hotspot in the…yes, Projector HotSpot. The Android-powered box is 4.7 x 4.7 x 1.1 inches, and offers up to eight Wi-Fi client connections via the built-in 802.11n radio. It has one HDMI port, Bluetooth, a headset jack, and a USB port that can take a cellular/LTE radio dongle. It projects images up to 120 inches. There's a 800 x 480 pixels WVGA 4-inch capacitive touchscreen. Ships sometime in 2014; pricing hasn't been announced.
Elmo -- BOXi T-200, HD LED video projector The T-200 is a small, lightweight (4 x 6 inches, 10. 6 ounces) DLP projector, with 1280 x 800 (WXGA) resolution, and brightness of 150 lumens with a long-life LED lamp. It can project images up to 68 inches diagonally. It has a single full-size HDMI port, a 1 watt mono speaker, and a mini-stereo output jack for sending sound through an audio system, speakers, or headphones. Pricetag is $429. Art Feierman, writing at ProjectorReviews.com, says it's "enough to do some serious things and do them reasonably well as long as the environment and projected size are reasonable." It lacks a USB or SD port.
QuantuMDx -- Q-POC, handheld DNA analyzer This UK-based startup has developed a set of technologies, being packaged into a handheld device, that can extract DNA from a patient's fluid sample and run a series of diagnostics to detect and identify various diseases, in less than 20 minutes, right beside the patient. QuantuMDx is working with partners to develop companion diagnostics in the form of disposable cartridges. Q-POC is still in development, and due out in 2015. It's aimed at professional healthcare workers in both developed and developing countries, but the approach could be the basis of a new level of low-cost self-care or at least self-diagnosis.
Nuance -- Dragon Mobile Assistant, for wearable devices Nuance is showing a port of its Dragon Mobile Assistant to Omate's Android-based TrueSmart watch, finally letting you do more with the less of a smartwatch. You simply talk to your watch, and Dragon turns your words into inputs to make calls, send emails, create a text message, manage your calendar, search the web and much more. The Omate device is different from most smartwatches because it doesn't need a separate smartphone: It can make cellular calls and Wi-Fi connections on its own.
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Никола́й Миха́йлович Люби́мов (1912—1992) — советский переводчик, главным образом с французского и испанского языков. Автор многотомных мемуаров.

Биография
Родился  года в Москве. Внук вологодского губернатора М. Н. Кормилицына (1835—1892), правнук рязанского губернатора Н. А. Болдарева (1826—1904). Другой его дед, сын псаломщика Калужской губернии Михаил Ермиевич Любимов (1847—1893), более двадцати лет проработал сельским учителем в Кобринском уезде Гродненской губернии. Отец, Михаил Михайлович Любимов (?—1914), в 1911 году женился на Елене Михайловне Кормилицыной.

Детство и юность провёл в райцентре Перемышль, где в 1930 году окончил среднюю школу. После окончания Института Новых языков в Москве принят в издательство Academia.

В начале 1930-х арестован и отбыл три года в ссылке в Архангельске. Затем работал переводчиком художественной литературы по заказам различных издательств. С 1942 года — член Союза писателей СССР.

Любимов перевёл более двух десятков крупных романов и пьес. Редактировал собрания сочинений Гюго, А. Доде, Мериме, издававшиеся в «Библиотеке "Огонёк"». Автор вступительных статей к сборникам сочинений И. А. Бунина, С. Н. Сергеева-Ценского.

В журналах «Новый мир», «Литературная Армения» печатались воспоминания Любимова о Э.Багрицком, Т. Л. Щепкиной-Куперник и других.

Семья
 1-я жена — Любимова (Кессель) Маргарита Романовна, переводчик
 дочь — Любимова Елена Николаевна (1941—2001)
 сын — Любимов, Борис Николаевич (р. 1947), театровед
 2-я жена — Любимова Галина Владимировна (1928—1983)
 дочь — Любимова Анна Николаевна (р.1961)
 3-я жена (вдова) — Жигур Зельма Яновна (р.1927)

С конца 1950-х годов Н. М. Любимов жил в писательских кооперативах у метро «Аэропорт»: сначала в ЖСК «Московский писатель» (д. № 4 по улице Черняховского), затем в ЖСК «Советский писатель» (д. № 29 по Красноармейской улице).

Список основных переводов Н. М. Любимова
 Джованни Бокаччо — «Декамерон»;
 Мигель Сервантес — «Хитроумный идальго Дон Кихот Ламанчский» (1953—1954), «Странствия Персилеса и Сихизмунды»;
 Франсуа Рабле — «Гаргантюа и Пантагрюэль» (1961);
 Мольер — «Брак поневоле», «Мещанин во дворянстве» (1953);
 Бомарше — «Драматическая трилогия»;
 Проспер Мериме — «Небо и ад», «Случайность» (пьесы), «Хроника царствования Карла IX» (1963);
 Стендаль — «Красное и чёрное»;
 Гюстав Флобер — «Госпожа Бовари» (1958);
 Эжен Скриб — «Лестница славы»;
 Ги де Мопассан — «Милый друг» (1956);
 Альфонс Доде — «Тартарен из Тараскона» (1957), «Короли в изгнании», «Сафо»;
 Анатоль Франс — «Рабле» (монография);
 Шарль де Костер — «Легенда об Уленшпигеле» (1961);
 Морис Метерлинк — «Синяя птица», «Обручение», «Монна Ванна» (все — 1958);
 Марсель Пруст — цикл «В поисках утраченного времени» (тома I—VI, 1973—1992);
 Ромен Роллан — «Дантон»;
 Фридрих Шиллер — «Коварство и любовь»;
 Наири Зарьян — «Давид Сасунский».

Оригинальные сочинения
 «Былое лето» (из воспоминаний зрителя);
 «Перевод — искусство», M., «Советская Россия», 1982 pdf;
 «Несгораемые слова», М., «Художественная литература», 1983. Книга очерков об искусстве А. А. Фета, А. К. Толстого, К. Я. Случевского, В. Г. Короленко, И. А. Бунина, С. Н. Сергеева -Ценского, Э. Г. Багрицкого, Б. Л. Пастернака; во втором издании очерки дополнены: И. С. Тургенев, Н. С. Лесков, Сергей Клычков;
 «Лингвистические мемуары»;
 «Неувядаемый цвет» — книга воспоминаний, отрывки печатались в журналах — «Дружба народов» 1992 № 7, 1993 № 6, 7; «Москва» 1993, № 6, 7. Полностью опубликована в 3-х томах издательством «Языки славянской культуры» в 2000, 2004, 2007 гг.

Награды и премии
 Государственная премия СССР (1978) — за художественный перевод, участие в разработке и осуществлении научных принципов издания 200-томной «Библиотеки всемирной литературы»

Примечания

Литература

 Пузиков А. И. Будни и праздники: из записок главного редактора. М., 1994;
 Рассадин С. Б. Советская литература. Побежденные победители. М., 2006.

Ссылки
 Из письма вдовы Любимова — Жигур З. Я.
 Шмелева Е. Я. Заоблачная почвенность (Н. М. Любимов. Неувядаемый цвет. Книга воспоминаний)
 Алексей Мельников. «Марсель ПРУСТ из ПЕРЕМЫШЛЯ» http://nkontinent.com/marsel-prust-iz-peremyshlya/

Русские писатели XX века
Переводчики прозы и драматургии на русский язык
Члены Союза писателей СССР
Мемуаристы России
Репрессированные в СССР
Выпускники Московского лингвистического университета
Переводчики с французского языка
Жители Дома писательского кооператива (ЖСК «Московский писатель»)
Жители ЖСК «Советский писатель»

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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HDPE Solves Earthquake Damage Problem In Washington State
July 8, 2002 January 15, 2018 by Drew Wilson
Posted in Articles & Job Stories
Olympia, WA, is not the ideal setting for a major construction project. The city is located on the shores of South Puget Sound, with the rugged Olympic Mountains rising in the distance across Capital Lake and the dome of Washington State's capitol soaring above the town. However, when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck Olympia and the greater Puget Sound on Feb. 28, 2001, a good portion of the city quickly became a construction site.
Today, the scarred and collapsed roadway along Deschutes Parkway is the only remaining evidence of the earthquake that rocked the city a little over a year ago.
The quake tore up much of the 1.6-mile roadway that had been constructed over fill material, which rests atop various layers of soil. From top to bottom, the layers include 17 feet of mixed fill, 10 feet of water-soaked sand, eight feet of peat and 35 feet of unstable sand, which is constantly in contact with groundwater under pressure. The earthquake's motion caused the various layers of soil to mix together, making the road buckle, separate and drop.
Unfortunately, this was not the first earthquake damage to occur here. This same area sustained damages during a 1965 earthquake and more recently in 1996, when a landslide broke two main sewer lines that carry wastewater for the town of Tumwater to a treatment plant in downtown Olympia.
To correct the problems, the Washington Department of Transportation awarded a contract to the Sumner, WA-based RCI Construction Group. The contract called for completely rebuilding the concrete roadway that had been closed following the quake and to carry out several storm water and wastewater installations.
Washington State DOT Project Engineer Troy Cowan said RCI was responsible for virtually all of the pipe work on the project. "This included a new 1.6 mile storm water system which runs the entire length of Deschutes Parkway."
According to Cowan, the system is basically made up of corrugated polyethylene pipe and ductile iron pipe, most of which is 12 inches in diameter and installed through open cut. The installed system will collect and treat storm water runoff for quality with multiple Stormceptors before it is released into nearby Capital Lake.
RCI's contract also covered the open cut construction of 6,781 feet of parallel 20- and 22-inch HDPE to complete a sewer force main that runs from Interstate 5 to the LOTT pump station on the west side of Deschutes Parkway.
In addition, RCI's contract also covers the installation of 10 culverts at the north end of the project to convey runoff from the hillside and to drain the toe of the hill out to the lake.
As noted by Cowan, several things make the culvert installations somewhat different. First, the lake level had to be lowered four feet to facilitate the installation. Also, because of the likelihood of a future earthquake, the DOT elected to use 1,992 feet of 20 and 26-inch HDPE in the culvert construction.
Commenting on the selection of HDPE for the project, Zack Smith of Maskell-Robbins (MR), Mountainlake, WA, a distributor and fittings fabricator of HDPE pipe as well as one of the largest distributor of McElroy fusion equipment in the United States, said Olympia needed a pipe that could withstand the unstable ground conditions anticipated in this area.
Smith noted that since the area is at sea level and groundwater is always in constant contact with the pipe, it is essential that the pipe doesn't leak.
"The toughness of HDPE and its ability to withstand tremendous force has been proven by its surviving major earthquakes such as those that occurred in Kobe, Japan in 1995," Smith said.
HDPE is currently used in 90 percent of all gas distribution pipelines and is rapidly gaining acceptance in water and wastewater applications worldwide. Japan is also installing HDPE for the majority of its water infrastructure and HDPE plays a prominent role in water distribution in the United Kingdom as well. In 2000, an analysis carried out by Corporate Development Consultants (CDC) on the type of pipe installed by water companies in the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany indicated that the majority of the pipe installed below 12 inches in diameter is HDPE.
Moreover, HDPE usage in European water distribution systems is more for water conservation than tough soil conditions. Recent studies by the University of East London confirm that PVC and iron pipe failures are common. Another study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe estimates the cost of leaks in terms of potable water alone for the entire region at approximately $10 billion a year
With growing concerns of water shortages in many parts of the U.S., utilities, regulatory agencies, and conservationists are reviewing distribution systems and evaluating leaks. They're finding that future repair costs will be staggering.
"We're seeing HDPE being used in the Northwestern states mainly because of the tough soil conditions," said Smith. "At other locations it is being implemented as a water conservation tool because of its leak-proof qualities."
According to a recent Community Water System Survey, water utilities self reported that leak rates averaged 13 percent. Many in the industry feel this number is wildly optimistic, and say 20 or 40 percent is likely the norm.
Figures from yet another study by the International Water Supply Association show 20 to 30percent of the water that has been purified for human consumption never reaches its intended destination. This, coupled with the ongoing expense of patching old and failing infrastructure is making it tough for water companies to operate economically.
"When replacing or rehabilitating forced water mains, municipalities strongly stipulate that they not leak," said Gerry Baker, a project manager and estimator with RCI. "The fact that this project is in an active fault zone and in liquefied soils, makes it even more crucial that the pipe not come apart at the joint."
He noted that the main reason HDPE doesn't leak at the joint is the manner in which the pipe is joined. "The pipe is heat fused together and actually has no joint. The joint is the primary point for leaks in most pipeline system."
Unlike steel and iron pipe, which is damaged by corrosion, HDPE is corrosion resistant. "On this particular project," he said, "the wastewater pipeline is being fused together with McElroy TracStar 500 and TracStar 900 fusion machines."
The TracStar 500 is a self-contained, self-propelled, all-terrain hydraulic fusion machine that will butt fuse all pipe sizes from 6-inch IPS to 18-inch DIPS.(180 mm – 500 mm) The Coach fusion control system controls the hydraulics, heater temperature, and allows for on-machine operation or remote operation. The system is programmable for multiple pressure set points and performs pressure calculations, with drag compensation and more. An integral data-logging feature is standard, and automatic fusion is available as an optional feature. The machine also incorporates McElroy's patented Centerline Guidance System. It fits in a standard long box truck bed for easy transport. The carriage may be easily removed for in-ditch use. Power is provided by a liquid cooled diesel engine.
The TracStar 900 is a self-contained, self-propelled, all-terrain hydraulic fusion machine to butt fuse pipe 12-inch IPS to 36-inch OD. It too is equipped with Coach fusion control system controls the hydraulics, heater temperature, and allows for remote operation. The system is programmable for fusion pressure, drag compensation and more. The rubber-tracked unit is powered by a liquid cooled diesel engine. A wireless remote provides full control of the TracStar 900 for precision placement, and optimum visibility on the job site.
The toughness of HDPE and its ability to withstand tremendous force has been proven by its surviving major earthquakes
Zack Smith
Over the course of the project, the two machines will be used to fuse three different sizes of pipe at several locations. Because of the various work locations, several different staging areas were required for the mobile fusion equipment to be able to track back and forth between these locations without the use of heavy transportation equipment.
"Many times over the course of a job a fusion machine and its generator have to be loaded, transported a short distance and then unloaded," Smith said. "This can take a lot of time and require at least three employees to operate the equipment needed to make the respective moves.
A big advantage of the TracStar machine is the savings realized in transport time. The fusion operator can simply drive the TracStar to the next fusion staging area."
Another benefit of the TracStar is its off-carriage capabilities.
"For crews installing the culverts, the lake surrounding the area had to be drained about four feet to provide access where the work was to take place," he explained. "This allowed the carriage of the fusion machine to be removed and lowered into the culvert and the HDPE fused in the ditch."
At the same time, the city was able to take advantage of the lower water level to rid the lake of Eurasian milfoil – a rapidly growing plant that depletes oxygen from the water and is detrimental to the fish population.
Auger Bores
Two auger bores were carried on the project by Northwest Boring of Woodenville, WA, to allow pipe work being installed to pass under existing railroad tracks. At these locations, Cowan said crews would install a single 54-inch diameter steel casing to house the two HDPE pipelines.
For Northwest Boring, unexpected challenges began cropping up almost as soon as the work began. When the railroad was constructed in the early 1900s the difficult soil conditions were taken into consideration and pilings were driven into the ground to support the tracks. Northwest Boring was unaware of the obstructions until they began the bores.
"We had to do a lot of chainsaw work to remove the old piling logs but we were ultimately able to complete all the bores on time," said Don Gonzales, president of Northwest Boring.
As to the project's completion, DOT's Cowan said that while the project was not due to be completed until December 20, crews are currently running ahead of schedule.
Increase Productivity and Decrease Cost when Fusing HDPE Pipe
Tags: TracStar 500, TracStar 900, Underground / Construction


This Giving Tuesday you can help launch tribal-led ecotourism in the Amazon to help protect one of the world's most vulnerable tribes as well as the rainforest they call home.
The Waorani (also called Waodani, Huaorani) live on some of the most biologically rich land in the world, as well as one of the most oil rich parcels in the Amazon.
Since their first sustained contact with the modern world in the 1950s, they've been subjected to a variety of outside interests that have led to a dependent relationship on Big Oil, missionaries and non-profits. A new generation of Waorani desire to take their future – and their globally important lands – into their own hands via the development of tribal-run enterprises, with ecotourism at the forefront.
Waorani men constructing an ecolodge on their traditional Amazonian territory.
Wao leadership has invited I am Wilderness LLC – the company behind The Green Gatsby – to help develop a series of web products to promote their products and their culture to English-speaking audiences. As a formal tribal partner, I am Wilderness will build a Wao ecotourism marketing website, an online Wao/English/Spanish dictionary, and a cultural exchange site featuring a video library of Waorani cultural practices.
To fund this, we are seeking $25,000 USD to support travel from the US and within remote Amazonian tribal lands, four months of web development, stipends for Waorani to work on dictionary and cultural documentation projects, camera equipment, and web hosting/development costs.
Arlo Hemphill of The Green Gatsby at work with Waorani.


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Cell Phones to Screen for Cancer Cells
Nicholas Genes Diagnostics
A tipster sent us this report about a cell phone that can diagnose breast cancer, via an (infrared) camera:
By installing new software and adding a basic infrared camera, a mobile phone could be transformed into a highly-effective diagnostic tool, offering far more accurate results than the self-checks many women do themselves, the Haaretz Daily reported.
Dr Nitzan Yaniv, who developed the technology, said the results of the scan could be immediately transferred to a medical laboratory for analysis, which could determine whether further checks were necessary.
The infrared camera uses two techniques, both of which have proven effective in diagnosing breast cancer: one which analyzes temperature differences in different parts of the breast, while the other analyses oxygen flow to areas of the breast.
Imagine — mobile phones diagnosing one form of cancer, even as they cause another!
Kidding aside, we're all for putting medical technology in the hands of patients. But after witnessing so much grief and alarm over mammography results (operated by experienced techs, interpreted by trained radiologists, and performed under the best of conditions) — we wonder if these phones will do more harm than good.
Especially when this guy starts offering mammography services.
Nicholas Genes
Nicholas Genes, MD, PhD, has been with Medgadget since almost the beginning. He's now Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai, where in addition to patient care and teaching responsibilities, he studies EHR usability and physician uses of social media. Dr. Genes serves on the editorial boards of Emergency Physicians Monthly and Emergency Medicine Practice. More about Nick: http://nickgenes.com


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New Music Blog
Music of Alex Davis
"Not your average piano bar man, Alex Davis holds a degree in music composition from the University of South Carolina, has worked live sound and as a recording engineer, and has been part of the indie/jazz outfit Passing Worth and the more prog-sounding Miles to Go. Davis has developed an individual style both in his own songwriting and covers of popular hits, both of which he plays at solo outings."
— Kevin Oliver, Free Times (Columbia, SC)
I wrote this song at the beginning of January and submitted it to NPR's Tiny Desk Contest.
Shot by Taylor Young, Carley's Ristorante & Piano Bar (Harrisburg, PA)
"Everyone loved you! Let me know when you want to line up a band date for a weekend!
— Phil Kominski, Villain & Saint (Bethesda, MD)
Songwriter - Composer - Piano/Vocalist
Alex's bands, Passing Worth (indie/jazz/soul/pop), Miles to Go (rock) and solo performance are tied together by his classically trained voice and love of the keyboard.
Passing Worth
INDIE/JAZZ/SOUL
Passing Worth (Columbia, SC) just released it's debut album, Getting Over You. Alex writes and leads the band on piano-vocals. Visit PassingWorth.com for show dates, albums, and merchandise.
Getting Over You by Passing Worth
ROCK/POP/PROGRESSIVE
Miles to Go (Columbia, SC) released their first album Gypsy in 2013 and are in production on their second album Perspective. Alex writes and leads on piano-vocals. Visit milestogoband.com.
Gypsy by Miles to Go
RIOT SCENE PICTURES
Alex has been scoring projects with Riot Scene Pictures (Baltimore, MD) since 2006. Most recent is Baltimore based series RISE. Past projects include feature films, Broken Dreams (2006), Savage Summer (2007), and Disparity (2011). Short films include, Joker (2008) The Source (2009) and Mistletoe'd (2015).
Alex's choral works have been performed in Europe and the United States. Above is the world premier of his piece, Peter Wept. The text is by Mississippi poet and friend, Terry Minchow-Proffitt.
Alex Davis
Let the tinkering begin! Here's the first little action repair on the new-to-me Wurlitzer grand. :) @ Greenville, N… https://t.co/wYHQEUZGiV
Bringing this bad boy out to Space Hall tonight at Tapps to send two wonderful people off to their next chapter! Is… https://t.co/3GArVz1nJl
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