text:
Q: What does "pointer being freed was not allocated" mean exactly? I have trouble with a program where im trying to copy a string to a structs string variable in c. After copying the string im trying to free the temporary string variable which is copied to the structs string variable. But when i try to free the string the program turns on me and says that "pointer being freed was not allocated". I don't understand exactly what is going on.
char str[]="       ";           //temporary string to copy to structs string
str[3]=s;                       //putting a char s in middle
strcpy(matrix[i-1][j].c, str);  //copying the string
free(str);                      //freeing str that now is useless when copied

A: Only pointers returned by calls to malloc(), realloc() or calloc() can be passed to free() (dynamically allocated memory on the heap). From section 7.20.3.2 The free function of C99 standard:

The free function causes the space pointed to by ptr to be deallocated, that is, made
  available for further allocation. If ptr is a null pointer, no action occurs. Otherwise, if
  the argument does not match a pointer earlier returned by the calloc, malloc, or realloc function, or if the space has been deallocated by a call to free or realloc,
  the behavior is undefined.

In the posted code, str is not dynamically allocated but is allocated on the stack and is automatically released when it goes out of scope and does not need to be free()d.

A: It used free without using malloc. You can't release memory that hasn't been allocated.

A: Be careful.  This code shows confusion about two things:

*

*The difference between stack and heap memory

*The operation of strcpy
Point 1
This has already been answered in a way, but I'll expand a little:
The heap is where dynamic memory is given to your process.  When you call malloc (and related functions), memory is returned on the heap.  You must free this memory when you are done with it.
The stack is part of your process's running state.  It is where ordinary variables are stored.  When you call a function, its variables are pushed onto the stack and popped back off automatically when the function exits.  Your str variable is an example of something that is on the stack.
Point 2
I'd like to know what that c member of your matrix array is.  If it is a pointer, then you might be confused about what strcpy does.  The function only copies bytes of a string from one part of memory to another.  So the memory has to be available.
If c is a char array (with sufficient number of elements to hold the string), this is okay.  But if c is a pointer, you must have allocated memory for it already if you want to use strcpy.  There is an alternative function strdup which allocates enough memory for a string, copies it, and returns a pointer.  You are responsible for freeing that pointer when you no longer need it.

A: Your code doesn't allocate any memory for the string. It simply copies a string from one string to the memory used by another (a string of spaces).
Memory is allocated using functions like malloc(), realloc(), etc. and then freed with free(). Since this memory was not allocated that way, passing the address to free() results in the error.

A: You did not use malloc() to allocate space in the heap for str. Therefore, str is allocated on the stack and cannot be deallocated with free(), but will be deallocated when str goes out of scope, i.e. after the function containing the declaration returns.


text:
package com.greenpepper.document;

import com.greenpepper.Example;
import static com.greenpepper.util.ExampleUtil.contentOf;

/**
 *
Abstract AbstractTableFilter class.

 *
 * @author oaouattara
 * @version $Id: $Id
 */
public abstract class AbstractTableFilter implements ExampleFilter
{
    private final String[] keywords;

    /**
     *
Constructor for AbstractTableFilter.

     *
     * @param keywords a {@link java.lang.String} object.
     */
    protected AbstractTableFilter( String... keywords )
    {
        this.keywords = keywords;
    }

    /** {@inheritDoc} */
    public boolean canFilter( Example example )
    {
        for (String keyword : keywords)
        {
            if (keyword.equalsIgnoreCase( contentOf( example.at( 0, 0, 0 ) ) )) return true;
        }
        return false;
    }

    /** {@inheritDoc} */
    public Example filter( Example example )
    {
        if (!canFilter( example )) return example;
        return doFilter( example );
    }

    /**
     *
doFilter.

     *
     * @param example a {@link com.greenpepper.Example} object.
     * @return a {@link com.greenpepper.Example} object.
     */
    protected abstract Example doFilter( Example example );
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The Rap-50 electric cord reel is the smallest in the QuickWinder line of products. This rugged little guy is used in service trucks, garages, homes, RV's, by tradesman, hobbyist's, boaters, armed forces etc. The Rap-50 is being used to wrap electric cord, air hose, water hose, coax cable, rope, fiber optic cable, even Christmas tree lights!


text:
MICHAEL WHITE: Whatever happens next week will be dwarfed by what follows
PUBLISHED: 12:00 07 March 2019
Theresa May's Magic Carpet Ride. Image: Martin Ronson.
Michael White on the Brexit magic carpet ride with an unknown destination.
Where to start this week when we are once again spoiled for choice in the chaos that is Brexit? With Theresa May's £1.6 billion bung to struggling communities in Brexit-leaning towns? It has managed to offend everybody, including those Labour MPs whose support her second meaningful vote (MV2) needs on March 12. With attorney general Geoffrey 'Duke of Wellington' Cox's shuttle diplomacy in search of an Irish backstop fudge over which the Moggster faction blows frivolously hot and cold? I am very suspicious of the latest rash of "Mogg to back down" headlines. No one should trust hard Brexit plotters of the European Research Group any more than they should trust Team Corbyn to cleanse anti-Semitic poison from Labour's bloodstream.
Reporting on a third island of zealous intolerance, the Guardian reveals that UKIP's collapse has been reversed, its membership rising by 50% under the Islamophobic leadership of Gerard Batten. These are bad times which may get worse. We must keep our nerve as the resourceful Gina Miller is keeping hers. But back to her later.
What gave me pause for thought as the parliamentary Brexit battle halted for a few days was the opportunity cost of all this effort, the problems across Whitehall and town hall which are neglected, the challenges postponed. Two more innocent teenagers were stabbed to death last weekend – perhaps more by the time you read this. Evidence points to turf wars spread via ever-younger drugs mules from big cities to those small struggling communities May's bung is meant to help (over seven years, mind you).
Brexit-distracted ministers and officials offer a feeble response, the opposition no better. As for key players like London mayor Sadiq Khan and home secretary Sajid 'The Saj' Javid, they put their (doomed) party leadership manoeuvres ahead of good decision-making. Blaming austerity is too simplistic, but austerity doesn't help.
Health, housing, education, I could go on and so could you. A&E is struggling, despite a scarily mild winter. (Climate change makes other neglected challenges look trivial.) The housing benefit bill has doubled to £22 billion in 15 years of dysfunctional market failure. Schools have just revealed another sharp fall in foreign language uptake among Global Britain's young. Are we downhearted? Yes, but we find comfort where we can. A BBC survey reports a sharp fall in hostile feelings towards immigration – almost 50% now have a positive view, only 25% a negative one. It's come a bit late, but the change that has mostly occurred since the 2016 referendum when home secretary May decided it was all about immigration. Since when, EU immigration has dropped away, but it's still rising from the rest of the world. I hope Brussels-basher (and EU pensioner) Gerard Batten MEP can explain that to his new best friend Tommy Yaxley-Robinson, who may not do detail.
There again, nor does Boris Johnson, the thinking man's Gerard Batten. Yet, as Jane Merrick noted in The New European #132, the former foreign secretary (or was that interlude just a bad dream?) has quietly resurfaced ahead of Dominic 'Dover' Raab as the preferred choice of Tory inactivists to succeed May. It will happen, gossips claim, when the ERG forces her to resign in return for backing her MV2 deal, possibly MV3. Fortunately Boris needs Tory MPs to vote him into the final round, so the country may yet be spared this modern Nero. Anyone who votes for Boris knowing what we all now know deserves to get him. But the rest of us do not.
That said, few politicians on either side of the Brexit gulf have paid enough serious attention to the economics of leaving the EU and the nuts and bolts of our future trade relationship. It is much more fun to focus on the heady politics – 'sovereignty' over fish and immigration, that silly obsession with tariffs and autonomous law-making – which fires the imagination and/or indignation of so many voters. Their myopia mirrors those business leaders who are happy to blame Whitehall and Westminster (Brussels and Berlin too) for politics' collective failings without getting their own hands very grubby – or even to make prudent preparation for the looming accident of a car crash departure on March 29.
Excited by May's three-day, three-stage offer for votes on March 12th (MV2), 13th (no-deal) and 14th (a brief Article 50 extension), the media barely bothered with the government's assessment of just-in-case "current state of readiness" for a no-deal departure, slipped out the same evening. Whitehall doesn't come out of it too well, on track with just 60% of the most critical changes needed to keep lorries and planes moving, food and pharmaceuticals arriving at Dover (it's a port, Mr Raab). Liam Fox's trade department has only managed to roll over half a dozen of the EU's 60+ international agreements with third countries. Even the attempt is an implicit admission that much-trumpeted World Trade Organisation (WTO) arrangements are inferior to what we now have as an EU member state. Article XXIV of the GATT trade rules allows for (scary) tariff-free trade, but subject to EU agreement. Nor does it cover much-neglected non-tariff barriers, regulations and standards. Even Fox admits the trite ERG/WTO solution is no magic wand, though he is clearly tempted by it.
But government failings are more than matched by those of businesses and individual citizens, Whitehall's assessment warns. Far too many ignore official information campaigns and blithely assume that their own lives, business or holiday plans will be unaffected. They just don't think no-deal will happen, officials conclude before reminding us all – again – that even a relatively orderly no-deal Brexit might cost the economy between 6.3% and 9% of growth over 15 years. That's on top of "short-term disruptions" at ports and border choke points for people and goods. "Many businesses in the food supply industry are unprepared for a no-deal scenario." Ditto legal services, the car industry, chemicals and financial services, Britain's most successful global industry, strangely neglected by Team May. Vital to us all, the avalanche of 24/7 flows of cross-border data on our phones and laptops are also still at risk.
I wish I could assure you that MPs are looking to future trading arrangements. The sheer complexity of these negotiations with Brussels will rapidly explode the "let's get Brexit over with" school of wishful thinking. But when backbenchers finally got to debate future free trade agreements (FTAs) last month half a dozen Conservative MPs briefly turned up. That was far fewer than among Labour and SNP critics, fuelling the suspicion that the toxic illusions of 'immigration' and 'sovereignty' matter more to some people than trading realities.
The opposition had demanded a full debate on the need for greater transparency and accountability to parliament and people during inter-state negotiations, now that terms of trade have become a much bigger, more controversial part of our globalised world economy. They matter in ways that threaten environmental, health and other standards, including workers rights.
The US Congress and European parliament are increasingly flexing their muscles. Devolved Cardiff, Edinburgh and (if anyone is awake at Stormont) Belfast would like to have a say too. It dovetails with the global campaign for greater tax transparency to stem evasion and hot money flows in our foot-loose world.
The UK had been a leader of reform until its Brexit-focused attention wandered and suddenly it had to pull a bill on Monday because a cross-party alliance of MPs were using it to shine more light on shady corners of offshore Channel Islands. No.10 panicked.
In their February trade debate MPs were fobbed off with vague platitudes from Fox and bland reassurances that US health care giants which he so admires will not get their wicked way with the NHS. He also professed faux outrage that anyone dare suggest that a solo UK will be a "dwarf" in trade talks with the US, China, the EU and major emerging economies, India and Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico, Turkey and even clapped-out Russia.
Fearless Fox wants to maintain current trade levels with the EU while getting more trade with fast-growing everyone else. He even wants to join the new 11-nation Pacific partnership from which Trump's US withdrew, though some dwarfists suspect the Pacific 11 may prioritise talks with applicant states which are actually in Asia. To my pleasant surprise, Labour's trade spokesman, bearded Barry Gardiner, was much more probing and specific, as were the SNP's Stewart Hosie and Angus MacNeil. None of Fox's still-unsigned deals can remotely fill the 20%+ gap that could arise from loss of EU trade, they all agreed.
Regular readers know I am constantly in search of pro-Brexit speeches or articles that might persuade me it may not be so bad on the night. No, not from you, Boris. So it was with anticipation that I read Peter Lilley's piece on BrexitCentral, the blue collar website. In it the Thatcherite former trade secretary argued that self-inflicted EU policy errors have cost Britain £82 billion in lost trade since 1997. This is chiefly down to the ill-designed euro currency zone which has damaged eurozone economies even more, he says.
Since I shared many of his (and Gordon Brown's) prophetic warnings about the emerging single currency 20 years ago and think him smarter than the average Brexiteer, I wouldn't quarrel with his critique. Economic stagnation, high jobless rates and gilets jaunes social tensions are not getting better on the zone's Mediterranean flank. He's right to warn the looming recessionary problems are structural, not merely cyclical. Whatever president Macron angrily says about Brexit "anger mongers backed by fake news", Europe's troubles aren't just about us.
As so often with the Brexit debate what depressed me here was Lilley's cherry-picked arguments for his alternative strategy. In the mid-1990s the future eurozone and US economies were roughly the same size: but now the US is 30% bigger, largely thanks to "laggard" EU economic policies, while the rest of the world has boomed, he says.
Strange then that, despite dragging chains from the EU's single market and customs union rule book, Britain has managed to grow by 19% since the financial crisis of 2008, more than Germany and above the zone's average (13%). It has famously been a jobs magnet for 3.5 million EU citizens. Britain's trade with non-EU countries has been growing at a much faster rate too, Lilley says.
But hang on, Peter, if the economy has done well despite Europe, it again highlights the essentially political character of the Brexit project. There are further sleights of hand. There is much to admire in the restless, innovative US economic model, but it comes with a price tag which British – and European – voters usually reject: its deregulated labour markets, its doubtful food and environmental safety standards, its vestigial welfare safety net, its shocking poverty, violence and ill-health.
Europeans have explicitly rejected them in favour of greater social solidarity. What's more, America's 20 years of growth (ours too?) has been fuelled by soaring inequality and by – the Brexit bugbear – huge migrant inflows. Not to mention huge capital outflows to fund manufacturing in cheap labour countries, ravishing the Rust Belt states.
The backlash against it all arrived in the shape of Trump's election and his phoney MAGA rhetoric – Make America Great Again, or More Are Getting Arrested if you prefer. The populist and protectionist revolt is also visible across Europe. Over the long-term it will favour the left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the fireball New York congresswoman (or even Labour?), rather than the right, the contrarian Irish economist, David McWilliams, argued this week. Why? Because millennial voters favour strong state solutions over vapid MAGA slogans that disguise policy failure – and worse.
Yet Lilley and – in his trade debate speech – Liam Fox still seem drawn to the American route. Nothing wrong with chlorinated chicken, Doc Fox said on Sunday sofa television. This despite an explicit warning 24 hours earlier from Robert Lighthizer, Trump's hawkish trade rep, that Washington's opening bid will include an end to old-fashioned European food standards, access to NHS supply, hostility to parallel trade deals with "non-market economies"(ie China) and menacing talk about exchange rates. Canada can tell Lilley about its brutal trade arbitration battles with its giant neighbour. In fairness, Germany is now being bullied in similar ways over access for Huawei, its suspect tech giant. Moral: it's tough out there. Did anyone mention "dwarfs"?
If Geoffrey Cox can fudge the Irish backstop nonsense well enough to persuade Bill Cash's 'star chamber' committee of eight Brexit lawyers – a grim thought in itself – May's Withdrawal Agreement may get through on March 12. Then we will begin a crash course in these harsh negotiating realities, about which the likes of Peter Mandelson and ex-EU ambassador Ivan 'The Expert' Rogers have been warning us all since referendum day. May's ex-guru, ex-bearded Nick Timothy, complains that his former boss sees Brexit as "a problem to be solved" – not an opportunity. It's not hard to see why.
So we should all remember that speculation about what the Moggsters, vain and treacherous, will do in next week's votes, or whether Labour's pro-Brexit Caroline Flint will defy whatever whip Team Corbyn-McDonnell dares to impose, is important, but is still detail in the bigger picture: where are we heading – how are we getting there and why?
With Tony Blair and Brexit Flip Flop, Dan Hannan MEP, both urging rejection of May's "dreadful" terms – for opposing reasons – almost anything could still happen. Corbyn's grudging support for Refo 2 may swing events behind a May vs Remain ballot as the price for passing her terms. Conversely, the very thought may be enough to frighten the ERG into May's lobby. European heads of state, who have delegated most of the thinking to their negotiator, Michel Barnier, must think more imaginatively too if we are all to stay friends. That's what the tireless Gina Miller thinks too.
Her version of Bill Cash's legal committee has re-read Article 50 and interpreted clause 50(3) as obliging the EU Council of Ministers to extend Britain's withdrawal timetable beyond March 29 without waiting for a reluctant May to ask for it. Why? Because EU states are required "in full mutual respect to assist each other" against harm and self-harm like a chaotic Brexit. That must mean a longer extension than June, nine months or enough for a new public debate and even Refo 2. Far-fetched, but worth a try? Gina Miller thinks so.
Nick Timothy
Gina Miller
Barry Gardiner
European Research Group

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
RuGl
RuGl's debut album
Backers 161
RuGl has been playing since 2016 and we are now working on our debut album. To make that album a reality we now need your help!
This project has been successfully funded and is now executing.
Ragnheiður María
Gudlaug Helgadóttir
Mix & Master
Release!
RuGl is Ragnheiður María and Guðlaug Fríða. The name of the band is a mix of letters from our names, but it also means "nonsense" in Icelandic and is a good way to describe our mindset. We have both been playing our instruments for some years and the band has been active since start of 2016, when we took part in the Icelandic Battle of the Bands and managed to get to the finale! Since then we have played at Iceland Airwaves and various other gigs and festivals in Iceland.
We have been recording songs for our debut album for the past year. The recording process has been handled by Orri analog, who runs the studio Gufunesradíó. At the recording studio we got to know Orri's great working process, recording on tape, so everything is analog. We have now come to the point of production, which is why we need to ask for your help!
The release will be a four-song 12" vinyl record, pressed abroad, while the cover design and screen printing on covers and tote bags is done by us along with Álfrún Pálmadóttir, Ívar Glói and Sunna Axels.
We hope you check out the rewards in the sidebar and help us realise this dream!
Enjoy the music!


Do you love pictures? Would you like to preserve your photos in a creative scrapbook? Take this class! Using Photoshop, you will learn the basic skills and concepts of digital scrapbooking. You'll create at least 3 (probably more, depending on your speed) pages to begin your digital scrapbook. Each student should bring a flashdrive to class with 20 or more photos on it. This class will meet on two consecutive Monday evenings from 5:30-8:30 pm on April 8 and15 at Northwest Iowa Community College in Building B, Room 221, Section #64118. Students may bring their own computer or work on an NCC computer. The fee will be $69.


text:
NYCHA owes rent refunds to residents who suffered through 'historic cold' without heat, hot water: suit
By Stephen Rex Brown
Roughly 143,000 out of 175,000 housing units — or 323,098 residents — are potentially eligible to join the class action case. (Norman Y. Lono/for New York Daily News)
City Housing Authority tenants who went without heat or hot water last winter deserve rent refunds for all the days they spent shivering in their apartments, the Legal Aid Society charged in a lawsuit Thursday.
Roughly 143,000 out of 175,000 housing units — or 323,098 people — are potentially eligible to join the class action case. That's over 80% of public housing residents.
Damages could be as high as $20 million, according to Legal Aid estimates.
"This denial of heat and hot water was more than just 'staggering' and 'unacceptable,' NYCHA left tenants to fend for themselves," Legal Aid writes in the suit, referencing NYCHA officials' own descriptions of the awful winter.
"Many did so by layering on clothes and blankets and attempting to warm their homes via stoves and/or space heaters and boiling their own hot water."
The suit claims NYCHA sought to minimize the crisis by "cooking the books."
In one example, a NYCHA spokesperson said "97% of apartments had consistent heat." NYCHA was ultimately forced to admit that was not true, the suit said.
NYCHA also claimed the average heat and hot water outage from October 2017 to January was roughly two days. But Legal Aid says many tenants say they were without either for much longer periods. Some were freezing in their homes for over a week.
The suit was filed by A'Seelah Diamond, a tenant of Fiorentino Plaza in Brooklyn and Ruth Britt, who lives in the Patterson Houses in the Bronx.
Diamond, her husband and three kids between the ages of 2 and 11-years-old slept together under multiple comforters in December and January during heat outages, the suit alleges.
"I feel like they treat the tenants like they're less than human. It's just not fair," said Diamond, 31.
"I realized what a poor condition me and my family had to live in."
Mayor de Blasio has committed $200 million to upgrade boilers and heating systems at NYCHA buildings. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News)
From October 2017 to January, Britt was completely without heat, the suit said.
Lucy Newman, a Legal Aid attorney, believed the full scope of the heating crisis was not yet known.
"It was historic cold weather and these people suffered. NYCHA needs to pay for it," Newman said.
The "bomb cyclone" that blasted the East Coast with heavy snow and strong winds in January was one of the most powerful storms the region has seen.
Mayor de Blasio has committed $200 million to upgrade boilers and heating systems at NYCHA buildings. Gov. Cuomo has declared a state of emergency at the authority.
"Every dollar spent on a rent abatement would be one less dollar for staff and repairs that we need to restore and maintain heat service. That is ultimately what our residents need," NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said of the suit.
NYCHA chairwoman Shola Olatoye announced Tuesday she would resign after months of criticism for myriad problems at the authority, including the lack of heat.
Vernell Britt, 54, who has lived at the Redfern Houses in Far Rockaway her entire life, said it is "ridiculous" that she should pay her full $1,200 rent while enduring the brutal winter conditions.
"You thought it was warmer outside than it was inside the apartment. It was an ice box," she said, describing her apartment in January.
"We froze, we were sleeping in sweaters."
With Laura Dimon, Andy Mai
nycha
new york rent


text:
Home > Uncategorized > Banks Keep Closing Branches: Will That Make Managing Your Money Harder?
Banks Keep Closing Branches: Will That Make Managing Your Money Harder?
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October 14, 2016 • min read by Bob Sullivan 0 Comments
Many Americans still find themselves visiting a bank branch at least once in a while — to deposit a large check, for example. When big bucks are involved, dealing with a human being can be a nice security blanket.
But that may be about to change.
Banks are closing local branches at a slow but steady clip that seems bound to accelerate.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporations (FDIC) annual Summary of Deposit report shows that 8,000 U.S. bank branches have been shuttered since 2009 — about 8% of the total number of banks across the country. About 1,500 closed just last year, noted an analysis of the report by S&P Global.
There have been plenty of warnings. The drip-drip-drip of closings will become a flood soon, former Barclays (British bank) CEO Antony Jenkins predicted in a speech last year, when he warned of banks closing branches throughout the world.
"The number of branches and people employed in the financial services sector may decline by as much as 50% over the next 10 years," he said, according to Reuters.
This process might be accelerated in the wake of the Wells Fargo scandal, S&P Global noted. One key financial reason banks have branches is to entice customers who stop in with routine tasks to consider new products — to convince a customer cashing a check to refinance their home loan, for example — otherwise known as cross-selling. With cross-selling in the cross-hairs of regulators, more banks might decide the sales tactic isn't worth the trouble, and neither are branches or their employees.
"Regulators have said the San Francisco-based bank pressed retail employees too hard to make sales at a time when fewer customers are walking into branches," Tahir Ali and Kevin Dobbs wrote in their analysis of bank branch reduction. Banks may decide to redouble their digital initiatives instead, the report suggests.
Digital banking, and particularly mobile banking, is influencing branch closings. The Federal Reserve recently confirmed the meteoric rise of smartphone-based banking: As of the March 2016 report, 43% of all mobile phone users with a bank account had used mobile banking in the past 12 months, up from 33% in 2013.
And a report by Accenture suggests consumers have little loyalty to their bank branch around the corner: 81% of the about 4,000 people surveyed in 2015 said they would not switch banks if their primary branch was closed.
It's a delicate dance for banks, however, because many consumers still like have a human to bank with, at least occasionally. In an informal survey on my Facebook page, a large majority said they often visit banks.
"Last time was to deposit a check for more than $5,000 because my bank won't accept online deposits for over that amount," Eileen Williamson said, echoing a familiar refrain.
Other special situations merit a trip inside the bank, too, readers said.
"Had to get a cashier's check [for] my car tabs, [and] paperwork notarized to buy my leased car," Steve White said.
The demise of bank branches raises other concerns, too. While new banking products have improved matters for consumers who can't get traditional checking and savings accounts, the FDIC found that 7% of Americans are without access to banking services — a group referred to as the "unbanked." The study also noted that 19.9% are considered "underbanked," meaning they don't have access to some products, such as traditional credit or debit cards.
It's unclear how closing bank branches will harm the underbanked, but it's hard to see how it helps. A paper published by former MIT researcher Hoai-Luu Q. Nguyen in late 2014 found that branch closings has a severe impact on credit available to small businesses in the area, and minority areas suffer most.
"Closings are associated with a substantial and prolonged decline in credit supply to local small businesses," Nguyen wrote. "The number of new small business loans is 13% lower for several years after a closing … Second, the decline in lending is concentrated within low-income and high-minority tracts, indicating that closings are most disruptive in disadvantaged neighborhoods."
Notably, her research found only a temporary decline in mortgage lending related to branch closings.
But Nguyen warns that the real reason people like bank branches — to have relationships in place when important decisions must be made — is not just a quaint 20th Century relic.
"These results suggest that, even in crowded markets, closings can have large effects on local credit supply when lending is information-intensive and lender-specific relationships are difficult to replace. These dynamics are relatively less important in the mortgage market, where rates of securitization are very high and the process of loan approval has become largely automated," she said. "Small business lending, on the other hand, is an information-intensive market. If personnel-specific soft information is destroyed when a branch is closed, borrowers can face a prolonged decline in credit supply until they are able to build a relationship with a new lender. Similarly, low-income and minority borrowers may be particularly dependent on soft information and lender-specific relationships."
Your credit helps determine the terms and conditions you'll qualify for on a loan or new credit card. You can see where your credit currently stands by viewing two of your free credit scores, updated every 14 days, on Credit.com.
Image: Rafael Ramirez Lee
Bob Sullivan is author of the New York Times best-sellers Gotcha Capitalism and Stop Getting Ripped Off. His stories have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other publications. He has appeared as a consumer advocate and technology expert numerous times on NBC's TODAY show, NBC Nightly News, CNBC, NPR's Marketplace, Terry Gross' Fresh Air, and various other radio and TV outlets. He helped start MSNBC.com and wrote there for nearly 20 years, most of it penning the consumer advocacy column The Red Tape Chronicles. See more at www.bobsullivan.net. Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.


text:
Q: Replace special characters and white space in response I have a response with special characters that is coming from the back-end. Here is the response that if am getting form back-end.
Note: This response is coming from Dynamic stored procedure (PIVOT Table) form, so the response is having dynamic keys. Based on the parameters we are passing to the response the keys will be changed. We won't get same JSON keys every time. JSON response contains two columns, sometimes it contains 9 columns.

[
        {
    "Layer_Nbr": "4",
    "Barbican B [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": "1",
    "BESIM [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  1:47PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:10PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:11PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:17PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:18PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:26PM]": null
    },
    {
    "Layer_Nbr": "5",
    "Barbican B [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": null,
    "BESIM [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  1:47PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:10PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:11PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:17PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:18PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:26PM]": null
    },
    {
    "Layer_Nbr": "6",
    "Barbican B [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": null,
    "BESIM [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  1:47PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:10PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:11PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:17PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:18PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:26PM]": null
    },
    {
    "Layer_Nbr": "7",
    "Barbican B [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": "1",
    "BESIM [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  1:47PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:10PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:11PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:17PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:18PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:26PM]": "1"
    }
        ]

I am consuming that response through my service
getProgramCurvePivot(Key: number, ScenarioKey: number): Observable<any>  {
    return this._http.get(ENDPOINT + 'GetProgramCurvePivot/?id=' + Key + '&param1=' + ScenarioKey)
        .map((response: Response) =>
            <any>response.json())
        .catch((err) => { throw err; });
}

and I am subscribing to that response in programComponent
getProgramCurve() {
        this.Service.getProgramCurvePivot(this.Key, this.ScenarioKey)
            .subscribe(response => {
                this.programCurvedata = response;
            },
            error => {
                this.loggingService.sendToServerError(error);
            });
    }

I am trying to replace white spaces and special characters from the JSON response keys, since the kendo grid is not accepting the field headers with special characters and white spaces, thus throwing a warning as it is not valid Javascript identifier.
Can you help me how to replace the special characters and white spaces in the array (this.programCurvedata) when I am subscribing the response in my component?
I am using kendo grid ui angular in cell editing.
Here is my HTML code
<div class="col-lg-5 col-md-5 col-sm-5 col-xs-8" *ngIf="programCurvedata">
    <kendo-grid #grid [data]="programCurvedata" [resizable]="true"
    (cellClick)="cellClickHandler($event)"
    (cellClose)="cellCloseHandler($event)" >
        <kendo-grid-column *ngFor="let item of getProgramNameList();let index=index" width="23%"
        title="{{item}}" field="{{item}}">
            <ng-template kendoGridCellTemplate let-dataItem>
                <div> {{ dataItem[item] }}  </div>
            </ng-template>
        </kendo-grid-column>
    </kendo-grid>
</div>

 getProgramNameList() {
        if (this.programCurvedata.length) {
            const programList = Object.keys(this.programCurvedata[0]);
            programList.splice(0, 1);
            return programList;
        }
    }

A: This will strip out all non-alphanumeric characters, so more robust than just removing whitespace...

var data = [{
    "Layer_Nbr": "4",
    "Barbican B [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": "1",
    "BESIM [Dec 28 2017  2:47PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  1:47PM]": null,
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:10PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:11PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:17PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:18PM]": "1",
    "TPRET18 Ba [Dec 28 2017  2:26PM]": null
}];

// parse the object's properties - add one with a safer name and delete the old one
function makeObjectKeysSafe(obj) {
    Object.keys(obj).forEach(function(key) {
        var newKey = key.replace(/\W/g, "");
        obj[newKey] = obj[key];
        delete obj[key];
    });
}

data.forEach(function(o) { makeObjectKeysSafe(o); });

console.log(data);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Do You Download Your facebook Data?
I didn't download anything from Facebook.
Implement the keywords in the webpage and build backlink to your website.
Save some money to do PPC campaign. It make your site visible in the search engine.
Update the content on regular basis to have improvements in keywords.
Ranking in Google - Backlinks?
Both are important for ranking.
How to Increase More Traffic to the Website?
Share the blogs in social media sites to get more traffic.
I am using WordStream tool to get the targeted keywords for your website.
Tell me New SEO techniques?
Everyone follows the same technique. No new techniques has been implemented.
Is .CO Domain Good For SEO?
For any domain you can do SEO. Quality of work is important for SEO. Follow white hat seo to improve keyword rankings.
Thank you for sharing the best tool for keyword research.
backlink maker is cool with google?
Create backlink manually to get escape from Google. Don't use tool to create backlinks.
Can i do copy paste in forum posting?
Copy and paste the content is "Duplicate content". Google may pull down your ranking, if it found duplicates.
Chrome is my favorite browser.


Are you tired of looking at furniture redos? I feel that is all I have done lately and for those of you that are here for something else I apologize! It has been a very busy month for me. I have had so many custom orders and sales that I literally don't do much of anything else. My design services have taken off and it is hard to find time to schedule.
I know most of you are in the same routine. Do you have any words of wisdom to pass to me? I love being able to do what I love. Just trying to find a little groove.
I got to spend some time with my aunt and uncle from New Jersey on Tuesday. It wasn't enough time but I treasure it just the same. I am traveling to New York again in a few months so I plan to go to New Jersey and visit them and other family and friends.
The Barn Sale is creeping up and all the pieces that I have painted to go there I keep selling. So I will be buying more furniture in my future!!
This is a piece that I finished for the store. A corner hutch in a farmhouse style.
I love corner hutches! I would have kept it if I had a corner for it to go into!! It is such a space saver.
I well off to paint. I have a special order to get out! I will be showing you soon. I also have some crafts to share if I get the time to sit and write the post on them!!!!
Thanks for reading and being supportive!!
French Provincial furniture is the in thing. Every time I paint a piece of it I sell it quick, This was no exception. I don't know about all of you but it seems it gets harder and harder to find those great pieces. I think everyone is painting furniture these days!
If you have been around my blog long you know I don't like doing the same thing. It gets harder coming up with something different though. I knew I wanted to paint it black but that is sooooo boring. It sat painted black for a while.
Then my sister gave me an idea to paint the back in french script.
I chose "How Do I Love Thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning because well...it is my favorite!!
I painted the inside white so the writing stood out great.Almost too great. It needed toning down so I dry brushed over it.
It stayed in the store for literally 2 days when someone answered my craigslist ad and bought it!
The customer sent me a picture.
She change it up a bit and I love it. She tea stained it and painted the shelves black.
I love when customers send me a picture!
Like I said I am running crazy getting ready for Bella Rustica Barn Sale happening the end of Sept. Donna from Funky Junk Interiors will be a guest there! So excited she is one of my favorites!!!
She will be sharing her ideas about turning junk into fabulous home decor! Go visit the link and take down the directions and be there!!!
I wanted to share this new piece with you.
It was very old and primitive. I used my Purdy brush and the rest of my Annie Sloan sample from the Haven Conference to finish it. Quite the transformation!
I also added these adorable drawer pulls! Love stars!!
Do you think it needs anything else or should it stay this way?
Today the article in the Murfreesboro Post came out about the adorable store that I am in. My designs, art and furniture are all available here.
Lots of exciting things going on!!! Can't wait to share all of them with you!
As always thanks so much for following my blog! I appreciate all of you!!!!
Sometimes when sitting in my office I get so caught up in my thoughts and creativity that I often don't stop and look up.
We all need to take a break once and awhile to enjoy the beauty that surrounds us. That in itself can boost your talent to soar!
Nature and spirit go hand and hand for me. I feel it in my art and in my life. Today is a beautiful day in Tennessee. The sky is blue and there are many things to do. I have painted so much this week and today I will gather more things to sell.
I stopped for a minute to look out of my window and take in the sunny day. Then I was greeted by this little guy.
So my post today will wait so I can share this with you!
If you checked out my post Wednesday, I put a teaser of pictures. I know it was mean but it was fun!
I got some really cool stuff pickin' and I also got some things given to me. Funny when people know what you do they love to give you things. Does this happen yo you?
Well I got two adorable stools given to me from a client. I just love them. They had been left in a garage and were pretty banged up. There also was some paint dripped on them. I really wish I remembered to get a before picture so you could see the difference.
Here is what they look like now after I painted and distressed them.
I knew when she gave them to me that I was going to stencil some numbers on the top!
I also layered several coats of paint so that when I sanded it the opposite color would show through.
I love the way it looks so worn. It would look great as bar stools for a farmhouse kitchen or how about a little end table on the side of a bed or sofa?
Another great feature is that they are stackable! So a great space savor!
I am really into numbers right now. What are you doing to your furniture? Do you embellish in a certain way or just paint? I would love to know!
Well it has been crazy around here! Sold a bunch of things for the Grand Opening of the store, getting ready for a barn sale, painting signs and re-purposing anything I can get my little hands on! Exhausted but loving it! To add to the craziness my hard drive failed so that is why I couldn't post!
So today I went pickin'! Drove all over and found some really cool things. Even made a couple of pickin' friends! Now of course that means more work around here paintin'!
My husband hasn't thrown me out yet but he might after he sees what I brought into this house! I need another house just for my junk treasures.
I am going to share with you a peek of some of the things I got today. Yes it is somewhat of a tease. I am sorry. I want you to be surprised when I am all finished and it is for sale!
We could play a game of who guesses it right!
It is fun to play along so please do! Don't want it to be too serious around here!
My laptop got a virus and that is where I upload my pictures for my posts. Sorry I haven't been able to shoot them out! I decided to write a few lines of things I am feeling the last couple of weeks.
My mom told me when I was young, that if you can count your good friends on one hand you are lucky!
We all have our own definition of that. I feel very fortunate to have had some wonderful people in my life. I still have friends from kindergarten and believe me that is a long time and with my 30th reunion around the corner I got to thinking about friendship. I believe it is a two way street. It takes effort to keep a friendship. Some of the people I will see at the reunion I haven't seen in a long time but know it will take me back to a different time we shared. Some are still the friends I have today.
We all get busy and life changes things, but true friends find a way to keep it together. Recently, my long time friends have been going through a lot in their life. I think the only way you can help sometimes is to just listen and pray for them. Be there when they need you.
Some of my friends I haven't seen in a long time but as soon as the phone rings, it is just like yesterday and we can't stop sharing our stories! I have some friends that say the same things I do at the same time and them we laugh and smile because we know that's what friends do.
I feel it is a connection or bond that stays with you. It is renewed at different stages in your life.
Some of my newest friends are the people I have met in the blog world. I feel so lucky to have this other avenue. I would have never thought this possible but I really do cherish the friendships I have made here.
I cannot lie. I have had friends come and go. I have had friends hurt me too. I think God puts people in our life at certain times and we are there to help them or they are there to help us and then they are gone.
I work hard at friendship. It means a lot to me. I will do whatever it takes to help my friends. A good friend is a treasure and you should never take advantage of that. Sometimes they are the only person you can count on to get you through! Sometimes they are the only ones that understand you. It is selfless giving.
My friends have been an inspiration. Some have been like family. They make me laugh, and think, and challenge me to be a better person.
I remember a song I taught my girls in scouts.
"Make new friends and keep the old, one is glitter and the other gold!"
Friends are all gold to me! Thanks for being there. Thanks for being a friend in one capacity or another.
And if you are new here, I look forward to building a friendship with you too!
Annie Sloan paint should come with a warning! It is addictive. Although I still use other paints, I love the versatility this paint offers. Painting is quicker too!
Blackberry House will be celebrating the grand opening of the store on Thursday, August 9,2012. Polly had a soft opening to get a feel for what the customers are looking for. Apparently, what we have they love because it has been pretty successful without even advertising. The opening will be special with discounts, prizes and treats. Hope you all can make it!
I wanted to paint something new for the opening. This is the new addition to the store. French Provincial End Tables with marble tops.
Such pretty details. Polly got these for me the other night, I love the colors too. I painted it with Paloma and French Linen.
I left the marble as is because it was in such great shape. It needed paint though!
I have been on a french provincial kick lately. Can you blame me? Look at those legs! I dark waxed the details and it stands out more.
I wanted to show you my little helper. Actually he isn't little any longer. He is my faithful partner though!
Love's to watch me paint but hates the smell of the wax! Do you have a critter at your side? He does keep me company, though it is hard to keep him out of the pictures!
Well I didn't think I was going to make it. I have had so much going on and was shooting for Friday but that didn't work out. I was so bummed watching pics on Facebook of people picking and showing what the got at the sale. I couldn't take it any longer and decided to get up early and go this morning.
At first it seemed that it was just a bunch of junk. The junk I wasn't interested in. I started to think it would be all stuffed animals and children's clothing. I kept going. I know how these things work. There is usually a patch of goodness. You know, that one place where the angels are singing!
The weather was perfect. The drive in was heavy downpours but when we got there it was cloudy and breezy ...no rain!! I went with my friend Patti. So it was great company and so much fun! She got a lot of great things too!
I could have shopped all day. Lots of great stuff with good prices. I came home with a few things. Well maybe a little more than a few. It was hard to drive but so much fun to stuff everything in there!
BAD PICTURE!!! I didn't have any room to focus!!! Funny!


What do a disease-fighting epidemiologist (retired) and an up-and-coming social psychologist have in common? They're both fascinated by the unseen social problems hidden behind the word "inequality." Beyond the lack of access to money and power — what does inequality do to us as human beings?
Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson (TED Talk: How economic inequality harms societies) spent his career studying chronic health problems — with the growing realization that most health issues are caused, or worsened, by poverty and inequality. This awareness led him to co-found the Equality Trust and co-write the book The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone). Meanwhile, social psychologist Paul Piff (TED Talk: Does money make you mean?) studies the psychological effects of wealth — and what happens when you, say, rig a Monopoly game.
Paul Piff: Richard, maybe we could begin with a description of where you started, and some of your basic findings and how that converges with mine.
Richard Wilkinson: Well, I got into studying inequality from, really, studying health inequality, the huge social-class differences in death rates between rich and poor, between well-educated and badly educated, between people in rich and poor areas, and so on. In most of our countries, people in richer areas live anywhere from 5 to 12 or even 14 years longer than people in poor areas, and that's always seemed to me like the biggest human-rights abuse you could imagine, worse in a way than locking people up without trial. And people around the world were doing research on the causes of these health differences, and I focused particularly on income, trying to see if health was responsive to changes in income, and from there thinking that the death rates of the poor are more responsive to changes in income than the death rates of the rich were. I thought maybe countries with greater equality — with the rich less rich and the poor better off — would have better overall health. And I found that was much truer than I would have imagined. The relationships I looked at first, I'm talking about the mid-1980s, were much closer than I imagined. With each step up the inequality ladder, bigger income differences between rich and poor, the worse a country did in terms of life expectancy. Very striking relationships.
PP: Yours is some of the work that best shows how inequality shapes people's individual lives. It sheds light on how inequality shapes the very fundamental outcome of someone's life, like their health, the physical symptoms of a person's body. The broad agenda of my research, and it really dovetails with yours, is how inequality and differences in people's levels of wealth shape the mind, shape the way people see the world and behave towards one another. I'm a social psychologist, and I'm really interested in how status, inequality, stratification, shape the basic things people do, like their tendencies to feel compassion, their tendencies to cooperate with others. These are fundamental questions in psychology. What is it that drives people to band together versus prioritize themselves? One of the broader lessons we've been learning over the last 10 years of research is that, in lots of really interesting ways, a person's levels of wealth, and their status relative to others in their society, shape their tendencies to prioritize themselves, feel entitled, to cooperate versus behave in self-interested ways, across a variety of different domains of social life.
RW: Yes, it sounds like you got into the psycho-social effects of status and inequality from the beginning. But in health, we started off imagining that differences in rates of disease had entirely material causes. And then gradually it looked as if there were psycho-social factors mediated by chronic stress, which acted as general vulnerability factors in health — in a way looking like the effects of more rapid aging, making you more vulnerable to a whole range of diseases. But the most important stressers seem to be things to do with social relationships. For instance, friendship seems highly protective of health, and things to do with low social status are very damaging. The other part of that picture is that a difficult early childhood, stress in early life, seems to cast a long shadow forward. The picture of the importance of these psycho-social things is now really strong, so that in the rich, developed countries, psycho-social factors look like among the most important influencers in population health.
PP: I was curious, when you mentioned psycho-social factors, I just wanted to know a little bit more about the kinds of psycho-social factors you were referring to.
RW: Well, the biology of chronic stress, I suppose, is fairly similar across a wide range of mammals. And in human beings, we had always regarded classification by social class as simply a proxy for the real determinants of health that we saw, that we imagined were material factors — like diet and what you're working with and what you're exposed to at work and maybe housing, air pollution, things like that. But gradually, it started looking more and more like social status itself was a really important determinant of health, and that was really confirmed when we became aware of people doing work on non-human primates, macaques and baboons, looking at some of the psycho-social, the stress effects of social status in those animals, and seeing remarkable parallels between what came out of experiments in animals. You could manipulate social status by moving animals between groups, and you could give them the same material conditions and feed them the same diets, and you saw that the social status changes under those conditions had remarkably similar effects to what we were observing associated with social status in human beings. But I suppose I regard social status, ranking systems, as almost the opposite of issues to do with friendship. I think the fundamental issue is whether we fight each other for access to basic necessities, or whether we recognize each other's need and share access, and one is about status and power and the other is about friendship and reciprocity. Inequality pushes us away from the reciprocity towards competitive striving for personal, individual advantage, not recognizing the other's needs.
The fundamental issue is whether we fight each other for access to basic necessities, or whether we recognize each other's need and share access.
PP: Inequality gets reflected in a fraying, if you will, of the social bonds, of social cohesion. It leads to, in many ways, a dissolution of the trust that emergent groups and strong, cooperative groups rely on. One of the things that's striking to me, and you mentioned work in health and in health psychology, is that for many years, a lot of the research on health and inequality gave rise to this understanding that it's really the people who feel subjectively lower on the social ladder or who are objectively poorer, who experience all the negative outcomes, whether it's higher rates of obesity, or increased cardiovascular disease, or higher rates of depression.
Inequality is genuinely bad for those on the bottom, and there are a lot of really intuitive reasons to think about why that might be: They have less control over their own lives. They have less access to resources. They get less respect in the scene, in their social groups. But one of the emerging insights out of our work — and I think your work, Richard, also points to this — is that inequality isn't just bad for a certain subsection of the population. It's not just bad for the people on the bottom. It's actually bad for the group as a whole. In our work, we're finding that there are these really interesting social costs associated with wealth, in a sense. Wealth shapes behavior in some potentially counterintuitive but certainly pernicious ways and causes people to abandon certain kinds of ethics, to prioritize their own interests over the interests of other people, to behave in ways that are potentially less trustworthy, less honorable. They become more competitive, less compassionate, less moral in certain ways. And your work also suggests that there are costs associated with inequality that resound across all strata of society and not just among those on the bottom, and I wondered if you could say a little bit more about why that would be. Why is it that inequality is costly potentially for everyone and not just those on the receiving end?
RW: We find the biggest effects of inequality are lower down in the social ladder, but it looks to us as if the vast majority of the population is adversely affected by increases in inequality. Simply, people on the bottom of the social ladder are affected more than people further up. And I think that's because inequality changes the whole social milieu, if you like. It leads to more status competition, more status insecurity. Status becomes more important, you know. Some people are incredibly important, while some of the people at the bottom seem almost worthless — but we all become more worried about where we are. Think of this as an evolved sensitivity to social ranking systems — if we're in a social environment where rank is important, we are very sensitive to that. We know how to play games to do with status and how to be snobbish and so on, put people down, build ourselves up. But we also know how to develop friendships on the egalitarian basis of friendship. Those are two different ways in which people can come together, and I think the nature of the material differences between us tells us what kind of game we have to play in our society, whether it's about reciprocity, recognition of each other's needs, or whether it's everyone for themselves.
And ranking systems, I think your work shows that very clearly, ranking systems are about self-interest, and the sense of entitlement. Further up, it looks to me very much like the dominant baboon. He's able to see off the subordinates and can basically do what he likes, rather the way these people with big bonuses have been doing with the runaway top incomes. I've been interested in some papers showing that bullying in schools is much more common in unequal societies, because I think that, in a way, hierarchies, certainly in animals, are about bullying relationships. Ranking systems are rankings based on power, and the dominants can see off the subordinates, and whether that's a nice place to sit in the shade or whether that's eating first, the dominants have it. Although we don't have good measures of bullying amongst adults, internationally comparable measures, we do for bullying amongst children, and I think to see those bullying relationships coming out even amongst children among more unequal societies is quite remarkable.
PP: It would suggest that the markers, the effects, the consequences of inequality on the vigilance to status, the anxiety about status, the vying for status, that you see emerge in groups, in societies with increasing levels of inequality, is found not only among the adults, who have already formed an understanding of where they stand in relation to others, but it's also reflected in the behavior of children, suggesting that the signs of inequality, the manifestations of status anxiety and concern about where one stands in relation to others, emerges very, very young, and is something that people begin to carry around with them or that shapes a person's life very, very early on.
RW: I'm quite sure that's true. The very life influence is, I think, powerful and probably includes epigenetic effects, epigenetic responses, ways in which the early environment switches genes on and off, changes gene expression. So, brought up in one environment, you will develop differently than if you were brought up in another environment, and I think family relationships, whether you have a depressed parent or you have a lot of domestic conflict or parents too exhausted to have time for you, all of those things affect your development and lead to being less fully socially developed, compared to if you're brought up with parents who have a lot of time for you, get used to a lot of eye contact, interaction, handling, physical contact, all that kind of sharing develops you in a much more social way. So I think these things feed into, again, whether you are being prepared to live in a society where we have to fight for what we can get, learn not to trust others because we're all rivals, or whether we are being prepared for a world in which we will depend on reciprocity and cooperation, where empathy is important. And those are very different developmental trajectories, but I would imagine that you as a psychologist would know more about those kinds of developmental patterns.
PP: Yeah, and it's interesting that you bring that up. In our work and the work of sociologists and ethnographers studying different kinds of families and parenting patterns as a function of status and wealth, it yields this understanding that the values that children grow up with are often a function of their family's socioeconomic status. So for instance, the kinds of things that parents value and stress as being of value to their kids often vary as a function of income, often vary as a function of wealth. For instance, whether the family stresses personal achievement, the expression of your individual talents and desires, standing out from the pack — seems to be more a value of individuals in families of upper socioeconomic standing, relative to the values of families that emerge out of lower socioeconomic groups, which really stress the community, relating to others, valuing the well-being of others, and not standing out from the pack but rather fitting in. And it's interesting to think about how those values might play into the kinds of things you prioritize in your daily life, what kind of jobs you would go for, and also the emergence of exacerbating levels of inequality over time because of what one socio-economic group may or may not value relative to another socio-economic group.
RW: Yes, I agree those patterns are important. I should have said, behavioral outcomes like violence or teenage births or drug abuse. There's a paper by Sheri Johnson, who you may know, writing about what she calls the dominance behavioral system, showing that there are psychological responses to status differentiation. If you're in a status hierarchy, then there will be amongst some people a struggle to avoid subordination, or an acceptance of subordination, or a struggle for dominance, and those all contributing to a range of, I suppose, mental illnesses and personality disorders, and I think she mentions things in particular like depression and schizophrenia and antisocial personality issues, all perhaps exacerbated by issues to do with dominance and subordination in our societies.
PP: Yeah, and I think that work is really compelling. In your own book The Spirit Level you talk about not only these kinds of outcomes, for instance incarceration rates, but also various kinds of psycho-social outcomes or consequences of inequality and rising levels of inequality. For instance, we talked about social trust, and did you find, for instance, growing rates of depression in societies with greater levels of inequality?
RW: Other people have. It's not our work, but there are several papers showing that tendency, for depression to be more common in more unequal societies. There's another paper showing the same of schizophrenia, and I think Sheri has just completed a paper on psychotic symptoms, which seem more common in more unequal societies. So there are a number of ways in which issues to do with being better or worse than other people, superior or inferior, intrude on social relationships and affect us very deeply. It's extraordinarily destructive of good social relationships that are so essential to human wellbeing. We all know what we most enjoy is sitting around chatting and joking with friends we are at ease with. It's damaging to that kind of fellowship.
PP: Yeah. I absolutely agree with that. In our own work, when we ask people to reflect on those things in their lives that they found the most meaningful, people rarely point to individual achievements and the things that they did to outperform and outcompete others. Now, those things are important to well-being. It's important to think you have done things that are worthy and valued by others. But far more often, people refer to those episodes where they were embedded with a community, those experiences where they really connected with others, connected with loved ones, felt valued, trusting of others, felt like others were respecting of them, like they were actually reaching some deep connection with their social relationships. And I think that's a really important insight into what it is, both in terms of psychological values but even what the human nervous system, people's physiological systems, health systems are wired to value and prioritize. It's really social relations, cooperation, interdependence in many ways. And so social inequality and a constant vigilance towards status and anxiety about where you stand in relationship to others, which you would argue and I would agree is exacerbated in groups with lots of inequality — well then, those are the very things that undermine the social relationships, the trust, the embeddedness, those things that we as individuals care about deeply and that deeply and significantly contribute to our well-being and ultimately to our satisfaction with our lives.
when we ask people to reflect on things in their lives that they found the most meaningful, people rarely point to individual achievements and the things they did to outperform others.
RW: When societies become more fearful, less trusting, less empathetic, you see this more punitive approach to crime. I mean, that's why imprisonment is more common in more unequal societies, much more common. In unequal societies, perhaps 10 times as high a proportion of the population is imprisoned as in more equal societies. And that is not mainly more crime, it's mainly about longer sentences. And that is a sign of something going badly wrong with the quality of social relations.
PP: Right. Right. Yeah. As I think about it, this is just a caricature of the work in certain ways, or a generalization, but it's such an important point, and it makes sense that with inequality emerges an increased awareness and increased incidence of those things that separate people. So with increased inequality come increased markers of status. Your differences, the differences between people become ever salient, and with those factors, whether it's differences in material well-being, differences in the kinds of cars people drive or the homes they live in, the jobs they have, if those things become increasingly disparate in society, with growing inequality in society, then so too is the decline of trust, those things that you see as making you similar to other people or that are essential to forging relationships and forging independence, people's relationships become increasingly frayed. Trust will go down. Those perceived similarities between yourself and others will go down, and so too then would the other effects sort of ricochet and resound, like incarceration rates, and this is obviously patterns that emerge over time, over long periods of time, this isn't something that happens from A to B to C to D in seconds. It's really an unfolding cascade of effects, but I think it's a really compelling point to think about how all of this emerges out of the fraying of the social fabric that is a consequence of rising rates of social inequality.
Here's one of the questions that comes to my mind. I think you, Richard, have encountered criticism of your work or of related work, and I know a lot of our research and other research on the psycho-social effects of inequality has been met with criticism, and it brings to mind an interesting question: Why is it that some people have a resistance to discussing inequality? It's there, people are aware of it, but why is economic inequality such a controversial, intractable topic in conversation?
RW: I often think it's because people misunderstand some important causal connections. The common view I suppose is, if you're bright, you move up the social hierarchy, and if you're not, you move down, and people feel their position is a reflection of their ability, and we judge each other's ability by our position in the social hierarchy, and that's why it's so hurtful in a way. We take external wealth as an indication of social worth. But the causality, I think, goes mainly in the opposite direction, that differences in ability are much more of a result of the position in the social hierarchy in which you are born and brought up, with fewer opportunities or perhaps less education, a whole range of things like that. I don't know if you know the stereotype threat experiments, which show that being made to feel inferior in one way or another, how powerfully those affect performance. So rather than your position in the social hierarchy being a reflection of your innate ability, as we learn more about the malleability of the human brain in early life, it becomes clear that the causality is the other way around.
RW: And I think that's really crucial.
PP: I think that's really well put, and in American society, I think talking about inequality, as important as it is, it's an anxiety-provoking issue, and I've been thinking recently about the range of reasons, the myriad reasons why that might be the case, because certainly talking about an important issue is an important step towards being willing to make changes or take efforts toward rectifying whatever that issue might be, including the issue of economic inequality. And it seems to me like the issue of inequality, and certainly the issue of deservingness, comes up once you start talking about social mobility, which itself is sort of a hallmark of the American Dream. American society, in many ways, is built on this explicit idea that if you work hard, because of your individual talents and efforts you can rise in the ranks and attain those things we value so much as individuals. If we begin finding that social mobility isn't actually randomly distributed across society, that it's actually concentrated in a particular subgroup, and in particular it's concentrated among those who are already fairly high up in the hierarchy, well then, that could be a problem, because it suggests that this meritocracy, this society that we want to believe is really premised on individual deservingness where people get what they work for and get what they deserve, well, that's not the entire story, and that's a dissonant, threatening thing to accept.
RW: Yes, I remember we published some data suggesting that social mobility is lower in more unequal societies, and we published it when there was very little comparable international data on social mobility, but since then there have been several more demonstrations of that tendency toward lower social mobility in more unequal society using independent data, including one study by Alan Krueger, who is I think chair of Obama's economic advisory committee, and what inequality does is I suppose strengthen the ability of the wealthy to pass on their advantages to their children, but I also think it strengthens what I also call downward social prejudices. The prejudices, whether it's class or ethnicity or prejudices against women, prejudice against any weaker group, I think is strengthened by greater inequality, because inequality is about dominance and looking after yourself, often at other people's expense.
PP: Richard, you mentioned dominance hierarchies among non-human primates or even other mammalian species beyond primate societies or primate groups. So there is reason to think that dominance hierarchies, status, not necessarily social status per se, but dominance and stratification, are a part of life, are in certain ways a fundamental part of how mammals come to be in existing groups. In certain ways, dominant hierarchies can be efficient. They help coordinate action. They help coordinate group life. They help coordinate who does what. And so I don't know that we could eradicate them even if we wanted to, or that it would even be wise to argue for the eradication of inequality or dominance hierarchies.
RW: The sort of income differences we have in the United States and Britain are twice as big, and if you compare as we do the income going to the top and bottom 20% of the population, the gap between the top and bottom 20% is twice as big in countries like the United States and Britain as it is in some of the Scandinavian countries. And so there's no doubt where we can have societies with very different levels of inequality. But I think also it's worth remembering that throughout most of the human existence, prehistoric existence, as hunters and gatherers, you know, we typically lived in very egalitarian societies. I don't know if you know Christopher Boehm's recent book Moral Origins, and I think it's extraordinary. He's now put together electronically searchable data on I believe 200 hunting-and-gathering societies showing this pattern of remarkable equality. Inequality begins in these terms relatively recently with agriculture, the beginnings of agriculture, in the last few thousand years. And so I think it's clear human beings have lived in everything from the most egalitarian societies to the most hierarchical, and I don't think we should regard ourselves as fixed in any way. And indeed, if you think of our closest relatives, non-humans, chimps and bonobos, one, the chimp, is fairly hierarchical, and the bonobo much more egalitarian. The bonobos, I believe the females are smaller than the males, as often happens, but the females eat first, and their social structure is very different. I think it's important to recognize, as humans, our culture determines how we behave. But our evolved psychology means there are particular aspects of our environment that we are sensitive to, and again and again it seems to me this issue of friendship and reciprocity versus dominance and the pursuit of self-interest.
it's clear human beings have lived in everything from the most egalitarian societies to the most hierarchical, and I don't think we should regard ourselves as fixed in any way.
PP: Yeah. And I really like the point that you raised about human nature not being fixed and that people really are in many ways quite malleable and sensitive to changes in the external environment, changes in culture, and that the ways in which behavior emerges and manifests itself are really quite malleable. And in our work, if it's the case, as we've been finding, that wealthy people and less well-off people behave differently, well, it's also the case, as we've been finding, that, for instance, the empathy gap that we often document between those that have and those that don't, isn't in any way fixed. It's not the case at all that wealthy people are characteristically bad and that there's no way in any way to change their behavior to the positive ends of the spectrum –rather that little behavioral nudges, little reminders of more egalitarian social values, or little bursts of compassion, can have these really interesting and important effects, which would suggest that the effects of inequality, at least on a social, behavioral level aren't irreversible at all but are really rather quite sensitive to even subtle changes to people's environments and people's values.
RW: And in relation to that, what can you say about whether high-status people that you've shown behaving badly in a number of ways, whether they've been selected with those characteristics, or whether it's their high status that makes them in some ways more anti-social?
PP: So this is the question, it's a good question, is it one of causation versus correlation?
RW: Well, it's easy to imagine people who are out for themselves are dominant.
PP: There's reason to believe that that's at least in part what's going on. I know that there's other work outside of ours that suggests that people who value individual achievements more are going to be slightly more likely to rise in the ranks of an organization and potentially in groups. But it's also the case that we've been finding a bi-directional thing happening, such that self-interested people over time may be more likely to aggregate resources and become more dominant, although there's work on Machiavellianism and people who get demoted in groups which suggests that the antisocial people are not those who maintain positions of dominance and leadership but may be more likely to rise over time. But our work would suggest that there is also another arrow flowing from being dominant, being in a position of power, high status, and wealth, that actually causes you to be more entitled or to become more self-focused and self-interested, and in fact, in a lot of our studies, and this is work that's been shown in other laboratories, is that when you make people, even those who are actually in their real lives not all that high status at all, not that dominant at all, when you bring those people into the lab and make them feel, even temporarily, better off than others, or make them feel more powerful, or make them feel subjectively higher in status or higher in rank, all of a sudden they begin to behave as if they're actually wealthier or more high status. So this subjective perception of where you stand in relation to others, in particular feeling like you're better off than others, actually makes you more entitled, more prioritizing of your self-interest, and, in our studies, sometimes more unethical, more likely to even be willing to break the rules.
RW: Does your work suggest that high-stakes people treat everyone badly or just their subordinates badly?
PP: That may be part of what's going on. We often study the behavior of people towards strangers, so situations are absent cues about who the person is you might be helping, but by default, it might be that wealthier, higher-status individuals just naturally think that they're going to be interacting with someone who is a subordinate. So it might be in a lot of cases what we might be doing is measuring behavior of high-status individuals toward people that they presume or believe are lower in status. And in fact this is an issue we're exploring right now, it's not data that's out yet, but we're actually finding that although in general it's true that higher-status individuals are less socially engaged, less considerate of the needs of others, in general, when it comes to peers or particularly individuals that are even higher status than them, you see a slight reversal in their behavior. Whereas initially they were, say, more self-interested toward a subordinate, when it's a peer or someone who is in their social group, or someone that they hold in higher esteem than themselves, their values reverse a bit. They become a little bit more cooperative, a little bit more respectful, almost as if they're becoming a subordinate, taking on some of the characteristics of a slightly poorer person. They become more agreeable, more compassionate, more socially engaged, more socially considerate.


I smoked the Skull Crusher, and it felt like someone hit me over the head. This stick however was really awesome. Strong? Oh yea. But it had balance, smoothness and a great espresso sweetness. Really enjoyed this smoke! With more age, this could be box worthy. This is from the first release of this cigar which was from the exclusive available only at NHC.


Housewives surf the net more than anyone else, according to a study.
They are logging on more often and for longer than students, workers and even the unemployed, research has found.
The study by analyst TNS, which examined 27,500 people across 16 countries, found British housewives spend an average of 47 per cent of their 5.8 hours a day of spare time online. This was longer than their counterparts in any other country.
The report found Britons tend to spend 28 per cent of their leisure time on the net, rising to 32 per cent among those aged 18 to 24.
The most popular activity was browsing followed by banking and paying bills.


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Join us as we celebrate the best & brightest in histology at the Annual NSH Awards Ceremony and Celebration. The event bestows over $40,000 in scholarships and awards celebrating the value, leadership and influence of your peers in the histology profession. If you are interest in applying for one of these wonderful opportunities, please visit the awards and scholarships page on nsh.org. Deadline to apply is June 1st!
9:00pm – 11:00pm: Entertainment & Dancing arranged by the Missouri Society for Histotechnology Local Host Committee.
Congratulations to the 2017 award and scholarship winners!


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BriefingThe Americas
Colombia's Shaky Peace Deal Needs Biden's Support
Andrés García Trujillo Apr 13, 2021 October 17, 2022
Then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the presidential palace in Bogota, Colombia, June 18, 2014 (AP photo by Javier Galeano).
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BOGOTA, Colombia—In his last visit to Colombia as U.S. vice president in December 2016, Joe Biden praised then-President Juan Manuel Santos for the historic peace accord reached that year with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—the country's largest guerrilla group, better known as the FARC—which ended the longest-running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. More than four years later, the Andean nation is at risk of losing most of the security gains from the hard-won peace agreement, with violence escalating to levels last seen before the peace talks. Now that Biden is back in office as president, he must pay […]
By: Andrés García Trujillo
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Welcome Back, Otters: Could The River Otter Call Chicago's Loop Home?
By Marc Filippino
June 25, 2017, 9 a.m. CT
Katherine Nagasawa / WBEZ
David Jakubiak and his 6-year-old daughter, Anya, are fascinated by river otters.
Even if you're not an animal lover, it's easy to understand why they're drawn to this particular mammal. They're the epitome of adorable — as if someone crossed a dog with a heavily whiskered teddy bear and released it into the wild.
The Jakubiaks live close to the Brookfield Zoo, where they often visit the otters and their newborn pups. So they've had plenty of opportunities to see them in captivity. But they're also fairly certain they've seen muddy otter tracks at the nearby Salt Creek Trail. David says he's also heard rumors that more people have been reporting otter sightings in Chicago's Loop, near his office.
So he asked Curious City: Are otters actually settling in the main stem of the Chicago River?
To clarify, David wants to know if the increasing number of otter sightings means that otters are creating permanent dens and breeding in the bustling parts of the river that pass right through downtown Chicago.
If otters are settling along the urban stretches of the Chicago River, that's a big deal because 40 years ago, it would have been nearly impossible to find an otter in Illinois, nevermind Chicago. In the early 1980s, there were fewer than 100 North American river otters in the state. Thanks to a reintroduction program in the 1980s and 1990s and stricter environmental regulations, the population skyrocketed to nearly 20,000 by 2012.
Still, despite the increase in the otter population, David's question about whether any of these otters are actually building dens and having pups near the Merchandise Mart or the Riverwalk isn't easy to answer. It turns out, nobody knows — at least not yet. But it is something researchers in Chicago are trying to figure out. And one thing they do know is that in order for otters to thrive in the river downtown, they need clean water, access to food and the proper habitat.
The Urban Otter Project
Last year, the Cook County Forest Preserve and Chicago Zoological Society launched the Urban Otter Project to answer a question similar to the one David and Anya have: Do otters actually like being around Cook County and Chicago?
Wildlife biologist Chuck Rizzo, who is part of the project and has been tracking otters with transmitters, says the closest they've recorded otters settling to Chicago is a pond in Barrington.
But that doesn't mean it's impossible for otters to reach the main stem of the Chicago River downtown. They can travel pretty long distances, up to 20 miles in a day, during the summer months.
"They just get in the water and go," Rizzo says.
By tracking the otters, Rizzo and his colleagues hope to learn more about what kinds of habitats they prefer for breeding, how far they're willing to travel in order to find a suitable habitat and whether they're spreading diseases.
But tracking otters in the river downtown can be more difficult than tracking them in other waterways, Rizzo says. That's because cell phones and other telecommunication devices can actually interfere with the tracking system. Still, Rizzo says he thinks it's possible his team will eventually track an otter to the main stem. The river has more food sources than it did before, and as far as cleanliness goes, there's less industrial runoff and fewer people are dumping waste into the river, he says.
"People are more aware of the environment," Rizzo says. "People are taking proper care of the river, and the government is doing more now to let environments thrive."
Cleaner river, better habitat
The Chicago River was once heavily polluted and not the kind of waterway that animals like otters might call home. But there have been local efforts to clean up the river, and government regulations have also had an impact on improving the water quality, says Bob Bluett, a wildlife biologist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
"Before, there were only a few fish species [in the state] and the water wasn't very pleasant," Bluett says. "But that got better over time as regulations kicked into gear."
Specifically, Bluett says the Clean Water Act of 1972 "did wonders" for cutting down industrial and city waste and, as a result, it helped boost biodiversity in the river.
With more biodiversity comes more food sources for otters. According to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, 59 different species of fish have been collected from the Chicago area waterways system since 2000. And it's not just the type of fish that's increasing. The MWRD report says the total number of fish caught along the Chicago River has also spiked, and it credits water treatment operations decreasing the level of harmful substances like ammonia. Cleaner water means more fish. More fish means more food for otters.
Plus, cleaner water attracts other animals, like beavers, that will build and, eventually, abandon habitats otters will use later on.
"You really want to make sure that multiple habitats are healthy," says Claire Snyder, a conservation specialist at the nonprofit organization Friends of the Chicago River.
Snyder says clean water also attracts another key species: humans. In the past, she says people were put off by the river's polluted reputation. But as the river gets cleaner, more people are seeing the environment thrive and want to help with environment-related projects.
"People are coming to the river for recreation and they're like, 'Oh I saw an otter. What can I do to help the river out?'" Snyder says.
Projects aimed at things like habitat restoration both directly and indirectly benefit otters. And eventually it could encourage them to settle in the Chicago River, Snyder says.
And that would offer people like our question asker David a chance to finally spot an otter and get a little bit closer to nature, even in the midst of downtown Chicago.
Curious City's guide to otter spotting
So, since we know it's possible to spot an otter in the Chicago River, how do you do it? It's really quite simple. All you need to do is quit your job, set up camp and keep an unbroken focus on the Chicago River 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Seeing an otter is quite rare. They're fast, travel by water and don't really like humans all that much. But it's not impossible to catch a glimpse of one. Here are a few tips on how you might become an otter spotter and pointers on what you should do if one crosses your path.
Keep track of where otters were spotted: There have been anecdotal sightings around the North Branch, especially near Goose Island. There have also been a few sightings near the main stem, like by Wolf Point West, according to Snyder.
Go where the otters are: Andy Snider, the curator of herbs and aquatics for the Chicago Zoological Society, recommends looking near areas with a lot of water, like wetlands with multiple streams or creeks. "Somewhere where it's nice and natural and there are lots of food items available. If there is a wetland connected to another wetland, there is even a better chance because otters might be coming through there."
Don't get too close: There might be a situation where you actually see an otter. Resist the temptation of getting close to snap a picture or to pet it. "They have incredibly sharp teeth," Snider says. "I've helped to hand raise a baby otter and I know how they bite."
Did you really see an otter? So you think you've seen an otter, but how do you know for sure? People sometimes think they've seen an otter, but in reality they've only seen an animal that looks very similar to an otter. Rizzo, the biologist working on the Urban Otter Project, says he sometimes gets calls from people who describe their otter sightings and the details seem a little … off. "We ask them to describe it and sometimes people will say something like, 'We were swimming in the water and saw the body go under and then the tail slapped the water.' Well, that's what a beaver does."
That doesn't mean you shouldn't report your sighting to the Cook County Forest Preserves. If it's an actual sighting and a few other people see otters around the same area, Rizzo says the preserve will take them seriously. If you see an otter, you can call the preserve at 800-870-3666 or visit its website.
See them at the zoo: There are river otter exhibits at the Brookfield Zoo, the Lincoln Park Zoo and even a sea otter exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is probably your best bet of seeing an otter up close and personal.
More about our questioner:
David Jakubiak is the director of media relations at the Environmental Law and Policy Center. His office is located on Wacker Drive, and he often takes clients out to fish on the Chicago River. His work, combined with his constant exposure to the river, only fed the flames to his otter question.
David says he's happy to hear that the Chicago River could become home to otters and that he could have his own otter sighting sometime in the future. He said he hopes the city will continue to build a healthy, otter-friendly ecosystem and not revert to its reputation of having a dirty river.
David also says he's encouraged by the research from the Urban Otter Project. It's something he hopes continues as his daughter Anya gets older.
"If she decides [otters are] something she wants to pursue as she continues her education, maybe she can be a graduate student who works with Chuck on otters," David says. "Or maybe she will change her mind, 6-year-olds are allowed to do that. But it's a possibility and it would be pretty sweet."
Marc Filippino is a Chicago-based freelance reporter. Hit him up on Twitter @mfilippino.
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