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Tag: Information Technology Act
Human Rights Supreme Court of India
Intermediary liability – Has the Supreme Court missed an opportunity?
No Comments on Intermediary liability – Has the Supreme Court missed an opportunity?
A lot has been written about the striking down of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 ("IT Act") since the Supreme Court's verdict on March 24, and rightly so because, as Saikrishna Rajagopal – my senior in the profession – has put it, the provision was crying to be struck down given its draconian language and scope. While vagueness and unreasonableness were writ large on it, the other provision of the IT Act that was read down – Section 79(3)(b), whose constitutionality was challenged solely by the Internet and Mobile Association of India ("IAMAI") in W.P. (C). 758/2014 in the same batch of petitions – required and still requires attention to nuance.
Not directly permissible under Section 66A? Should not be permitted indirectly under Section 79(3)
This provision, which applies to intermediaries, prior to being read down by the Court earlier this week, used intermediaries as buffers or proxies to impose content restrictions, whose nature and degree were constitutionally impermissible under Articles 19(2) and (6). The argument therefore, that had to be made on behalf of the intermediaries was that, if the nature of a direct restriction on an Internet user's speech and expression through Section 66A is beyond the pale of Article 19(2) according to the Court, it stands to reason that similar restrictions imposed on a user indirectly through limitations on the content that an intermediary could host, is equally ultra vires Article 19(2). Simply stated, what was not directly permissible under Section 66A, could not be permitted indirectly through Section 79(3)(b) when viewed through the prism of Article 19(2) since the direct and immediate consequence of the restrictions under the latter too was the abridgment of rights under Article 19(1)(a).
To understand this proposition, let's have a look at a few relevant provisions of the IT Act. The Act defines intermediaries as follows:
"Intermediary" with respect to any particular electronic records, means any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web hosting service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online-auction sites, online market places and cyber cafes.
From the definition, it is clear that the services provided by intermediaries are critical to the use of the Internet, which as the Court rightly recognised in the judgment, has become a "market place of ideas". The Internet has evolved to become the medium of choice for the expression of social, cultural, and political views outside of the mainstream media. Therefore, intermediaries who facilitate the use of the Internet must be treated as being integral to its ecosystem. Importantly, the Internet as we know it today is increasingly driven by content generated by users. The quantum and scale of such user-generated content has become monumental.
Sample these numbers- almost 360,000 tweets are published on Twitter, 30,000 edits are made to Wikipedia, Facebook users share 684,478 pieces of content and more than 100 hours of video are added to YouTube, all inside a minute. Given these numbers, it is practically impossible for intermediaries to pre-screen content or exercise any kind of ex ante editorial control. This also means that intermediaries cannot vouch for or take responsibility for the legality of the content being uploaded or transmitted or published on their platforms. And yet, in 2004, no less than the Chief Executive Officer of Baazee.com was arrested for an offer made by a user on that portal to sell an obscene video clip.
To address such instances and so that intermediaries are not held liable for the content created or published by their users, the definition of "intermediary" was amended through the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 to arrive at the current version of the definition. Importantly, Section 79 of the Act, which deals with immunity to intermediaries from liability for user-generated content, was amended to read as follows:
The unreasonableness of 'actual knowledge'
The provision challenged by IAMAI was Section 79(3)(b), which has two limbs. The first limb relates to a takedown notice issued by a private individual or party, whereas the second envisages a "takedown notice" issued by a government or its authorised agency. Both these limbs give rise to different but equally grave concerns.
The first limb uses the term 'actual knowledge', which, although borrowed from the EU Directive on E-Commerce 2000/31/EC dated June 8, 2000, has not been defined in the Indian statute. The legal and operational challenges with the use of the term 'actual knowledge' are clinically captured in a study undertaken in the European Union, which was brought to my attention by Rohit Bhat, a Supreme Court advocate, and which was placed before the Court. It notes that the term has been interpreted in quite a few jurisdictions to mean that intermediaries are expected to sit in judgment over the legality or unlawfulness of content impugned in a takedown notice. Clearly, in most instances, it is beyond the wherewithal of intermediaries to evaluate the legality of content. This establishes the unreasonableness of this mandate. Acknowledging the validity of this concern, the Supreme Court read down 'actual knowledge' to mean that there had to be a court order directing the intermediary to expeditiously remove or disable access to the impugned content.
The Article 19(2) limitation on the executive's power to order takedown of content
The second limb of Section 79(3)(b) suffers from the vesting of curial powers in the executive to determine the illegality of content. Importantly, the use of the term "unlawful" in Section 79(3)(b) enlarges the scope of restrictions to beyond the specific categories identified in Article 19(2). In response to this concern, the Court drew parity between the central government's power to block content under Section 69A and the executive's power to direct the takedown of content under Section 79(3)(b) and implicitly noted that the limitation of Article 19(2) applied to the executive's power under both Sections 69A and 79(3)(b). This is perhaps the most positive outcome on the issue of intermediary liability because by reading in Article 19(2) to restrictions imposed on intermediaries under Sections 69A and 79(3)(b), the Court has accepted the argument of the intermediaries that the test to be applied to any law is whether it directly impacts free speech, regardless of who such restrictions may be applied through, which was done through intermediaries in this case. Importantly, even if such restrictions are imposed in return for immunity to intermediaries under Section 79(1), such perceived largesse to intermediaries does not legitimise the transgression of the boundaries set by Article 19(2). This, the Court recognised with abundant clarity.
The problem of executive competence to issue takedown notices without effective appeal
Having said that, although the Court limited the scope of the application of Section 79(3)(b) by the executive to the categories under Article 19(2), the fundamental question of the executive's constitutional competence to direct such takedown was not addressed, perhaps because the Court was already convinced of such competence under Section 69A. Even if that be the case, the de minimis procedural safeguards provided for under Section 69A and the blocking rules made under that provision, or under Sections 95 and 96 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 ought to have been applied to Section 79(3)(b) as well, since there is no opportunity for a hearing either for the intermediary or for the creator of the content prior to the issuance of such a notice, nor is there a provision for appeal under the Act from an executive notification directing takedown (except for a writ petition). Having duly taken note in detail of the procedure laid down for blocking under Section 69A, the Court ought to have applied the same yardstick and due process to Section 79(3)(b).
Section 79 was designed as a safe harbour provision – one that protected Internet service providers from the consequences of their users' actions. The March 24 judgment has made this safe harbour more meaningful.
Critically, in its analysis of Section 66A, having recognised the reader's right to receive information or content, the Court ought to have taken note of the adverse effect of an executive takedown notice, albeit within the metes and bounds of Article 19(2), on the right of the Internet audience to receive content. Had these concerns been addressed, the judgment would have been far more comprehensive as far as Section 79(3)(b) is concerned and importantly, it would have made India a much more attractive destination for investments by intermediaries given the potential of the internet economy and e-commerce.
No discussion on Rules 3(2)(b) and 3(2)(f) of the Intermediaries Guidelines
Apart from Section 79(3)(b), the IAMAI, along with MouthShut.com, also challenged the Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules. Specifically, Rule 3 was challenged since Rules 3(2)(b) and 3(2)(f) are near identical in their language to the various limbs of Section 66A, and Rule 3(4) prescribes the procedure for takedown mandated by Section 79(3)(b). To the extent that the Court has read down Rule 3(4) in the same manner and to the same extent as it did with Section 79(3)(b), it attracts the same pros and cons. As regards Rules 3(2)(b) and 3(2)(f), the Court could have struck them down for the very same reasons it has struck down Section 66A. However, there is no discussion on the content-related restrictions imposed by these sub-Rules despite them being extracted in Para 112 of the judgment. That said, since Section 66A has been struck down and since Section 79(3)(b) and Rule 3(4) have been encumbered by Article 19(2), effectively Rules 3(2)(b) and 3(2)(f) have also lost their potency.
Thus, although the Court has addressed some of the primary concerns of intermediaries relating to Section 79(3)(b) and made more meaningful the immunity granted to them under Section 79(1), the Court could have dealt with the other equally important concerns which have a concrete and critical bearing on the intermediary liability regime in India. Perhaps, the egregious language and consequence of Section 66A drew the Court's attention much more than the layered issues posed by Section 79(3)(b) and the Intermediary Rules. After all, out of 122 pages of the judgment, 109 pages have been devoted to Section 66A and a like provision of the Kerala State Police Act. Only paragraphs 112 to 118 deal with the issue of intermediary liability. Paragraph 119 contains the Court's conclusion.
This is not to deny that the judgment is a welcome one and is expected to further the democratisation of the Internet in a tangible manner. However, given the opportunity that these writ petitions represented in undertaking a comprehensive overhaul of the IT Act on a range of related issues, each of which has a critical bearing on freedom of speech and expression on the Internet, it appears that the Supreme Court has passed up a wonderful opportunity. One wonders whether such an opportunity will present itself again.
J. Sai Deepak, an engineer-turned-litigator, is a Senior Associate in the litigation team of Saikrishna & Associates. He is @jsaideepak on Twitter and the founder of "The Demanding Mistress" blawg. He was part of the team that represented a consortium of Internet intermediaries, namely the Internet and Mobile Association of India, in the Supreme Court of India in W.P.(C) 758/2014 which challenged Section 79(3)(b) and the Intermediary rules. Saikrishna Rajagopal of Saikrishna & Associates argued the petition. All opinions expressed above are academic and those of J. Sai Deepak.
Tags censorship, freedom of speech and expression, Information Technology Act, intermediary liability, Section 66A of the IT Act
No Comments on On Shreya Singhal: Section 66A is too broad, vague, and will chill free speech
In the second half of December 2014, the Supreme Court began to hear a series of challenges to various provisions of the Information Technology Act of 2008 ("IT Act"). Hearings will commence again when the Court reopens in January after the winter break. The batch of petitions, clubbed under Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, impugn – inter alia – the constitutional validity of Section 66A of the IT Act.
Section 66A has attained a degree of notoriety in recent times, having been used to arrest people for posting (and liking) Facebook comments, for critical political speech, and so on. Section 66A is largely borrowed from the English Communications Act (the scope of which has been severely curtailed after allegations of abuse), and was originally intended to tackle spam and online harassment. It hardly bears repeating that its implementation has gone far beyond its objective. Beyond poor implementation, however, there is a strong case for the Court to hold at least part of Section 66A unconstitutional, on the ground that it violates the freedom of speech guarantee under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
Among other things, Section 66A criminalises the sending, by a computer resource or a communication device, any information that is "grossly offensive" or has a "menacing character" (S. 66A(a)), as well as the sending of "any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience." The components of the offence, therefore, include online speech that is "grossly offensive", "menacing", or causes "annoyance" or "inconvenience".
Legitimate restrictions permitted on the fundamental right in Article 19(1)(a)
The State's authority to legitimately restrict speech can be sourced to Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which allows for the State to impose, by law, "reasonable restrictions on the freedom of speech in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence." S. 66A's restrictions might be connected with three of these concepts: public order, decency or morality, and defamation.
In a series of cases, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the connection between "public order" and a free speech restriction ought to be proximate, like that of a "spark in a powder keg", and not far-fetched or remote. Clearly, while certain forms of offensive or menacing speech might, at some point, lead to a public order disturbance, the connection is anything but proximate. Similarly, the "decency and morality" prong has been invoked to deal with cases of obscenity, where the offending work appeals solely to the prurient interest, as seen from the point of view of the reasonable, strong-minded person. And lastly, the ingredients of defamation are highly specific, and much narrower than causing offence or annoyance – they are limited to lowering the reputation of the plaintiff in society (subject to certain defences).
Over-breadth and disproportionate restrictions
I t is therefore clear that certain terms of Section 66A suffer from the vice of "overbreadth", that is, they authorise the restriction of expression that the government is entitled to prohibit, as well as that which it is not. In Chintaman Rao v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the Supreme Court, while striking down certain restrictions on agricultural labour under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, held that "the law even to the extent that it could be said to authorize the imposition of restrictions in regard to agricultural labour cannot be held valid because the language employed is wide enough to cover restrictions both within and without the limits of constitutionally permissible legislative action affecting the right. So long as the possibility of its being applied for purposes not sanctioned by the Constitution cannot be ruled out, it must be held to be wholly void." In other words, as far as fundamental rights are concerned, over-breadth is constitutionally fatal to a statute. This conclusion is further buttressed by the fact that in State of Madras v. V.G. Row, the Supreme Court also held that a "reasonable restriction" under Articles 19(2) to (6) would have to satisfy the requirements of proportionality: "the nature of the right alleged to have been infringed, the underlying purpose of the restrictions imposed, the extent and urgency of the evil sought to be remedied thereby, the disproportion of the imposition, the prevailing conditions at the time, should all enter into the judicial verdict." Proportionality and over-breadth are closely linked: if a statute proscribes conduct that is much broader than what is permitted under Article 19(2), on the ground that there is some – tenuous – connection between the two, there is good reason to argue that the restriction is disproportionate.
Vagueness
In addition to over-breadth, the provisions of Section 66A suffer from an additional problem: that of vagueness. "Menacing", "annoyance", "inconvenience" and "grossly offensive" are all highly subjective, and open to numerous varying interpretations depending upon individual and diverse standpoints. Their scope and boundary are both large and ill defined. Consequently, they create a zone of uncertainty for Internet users. What kind of speech might land you in trouble? It is hard to tell.
Vagueness is constitutionally problematic. In Kartar Singh v. State of Punjab, the Supreme Court – citing American precedent – observed that "it is the basic principle of legal jurisprudence that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined. Vague laws offend several important values… laws should give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning. Such a law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen and also judges for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application." Thus, the twin problems of uncertainty and impermissible delegation to the executive, are inextricably connected with vague statutes.
Image is from Tyler Menezes' photostream on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Vague and over-broad statutes are especially problematic when it comes to free speech, because of the chilling effect that they cast upon speech. As the Court put it in Kartar Singh, "uncertain and undefined words deployed inevitably lead citizens to "steer far wider of the unlawful zone … than if the boundaries of the forbidden areas were clearly marked"." When faced with uncertain, speech-restricting statutes, citizens are likely to self-censor, in order to ensure that they steer well clear of the prohibited line.
In the Shreya Singhal petitions, the Supreme Court will be faced with the choice of striking down Section 66A, or reading it down and (perhaps) issuing guidelines aimed at checking abuse. There is no doubt that the objectives of preventing scam and protecting Internet users against cyber-harassment and online bullying are important. But there are other parts of Section 66 that can be used to curtail such activities. If the Court is not minded to strike down Section 66A in its entirety, it ought to at least sever the words that have the greatest and most unbounded catchment area, and are most prone to abuse, and excise them from the statute.
(Gautam Bhatia blogs at Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy.)
Tags censorship, chilling effect, Constitution of India, constitutional law, constitutionality, freedom of speech and expression, fundamental rights, gautam bhatia supreme court of india, Information Technology Act, Internet, Section 66A of the IT Act, Supreme Court of India
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The Impact of Pop Art in Art Culture Today
by Mariama Bah, age 12
Pop art is art that is bright, fun, and different. Instead of art about mortality or history, pop art is about everyday life. Television sets, newspapers, and movie theaters were themes in pop art.
There is a fine line between fine art and popular culture. Pop artists were looking to cross that line to create something different. The artists used mechanically made prints as their medium. Pop art emerged in the 1950s, where positivity and optimism flourished in post-war America and Britain. But in the 1960s, the popular culture shifted to appeal to teenagers and young adults who were more interested in music and fashion. The mainstream culture was filled with actors, musicians, and artists from different social classes; they were the social elite at the time. As a result, pop artists also changed their focus to the popular culture by using common images of the time.
Pop art originated in the 1950s in post-war Britain. British artists such as Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Alan Jones all influenced pop art to become what it is today. In the 1960s, pop art made its way to America, focusing on technology and mass production. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were American artists who made iconic pieces of pop art.
In 1962, Andy Warhol made Campbell's Soup Canned Tomato. Campbell's Soup Canned Tomato was a silks-screened can of Campbell's tomato soup, which showed the art world something they've never seen before. In 1967, David Hockney made A Bigger Splash, which consisted of a pool next to the house, with a diving board, and a big splash in the water. Peter Blake created the famous pop art collage, which was the album cover for the Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1963, Roy Lichtenstein made Wham!. Wham! was a comic book style painting. On the left side of the painting, there is in American fighter plane shooting a missile. The pilot is saying "I pressed the fire control... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky…" and on the right side, in big lettering, is the word 'Whaam!.' Whaam! became his most popular work and a major milestone American Art
Just like pop culture, things change, and pop art faded away. However, the movement and the art will always be a part of art history.
[Source: Art That Changed the World]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Two of Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard's top administrative officials are preparing to step down for jobs in the private sector, so he's tapped two others to replace them.
Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Nick Weber and Indianapolis Local Public Improvement Bond Bank Executive Director Kevin Taylor both on Friday morning revealed their plans to leave Ballard's team March 19th.
Weber will be replaced by Michael Huber, who has served as Ballard's director of enterprise development. Taylor will be replaced by Deron Kintner, the Bond Bank's deputy director and general counsel.
Before joining Ballard's administration in January 2008, Weber was a press secretary and campaign manager for Sen. Richard Lugar. Earlier in his career, he was a spokesman for former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith.
As Deputy Mayor, Weber said he was proud to have helped Ballard seal the city's recent deal with Dow AgroSciences. The company last week announced it will invest $340 million to expand its research and development capacity here and add 577 new jobs. Weber's accomplishments also included spearheading a realignment of city economic development and work force development resources for greater efficiency.
Weber's next job will be with Indianapolis-based law firm Baker and Daniels LLC's consulting arm, where he said he'll be engaged in government relations, strategic communications and economic development.
City Securities Corp., the state's largest and oldest investment firm, lured Taylor away from the Bond Bank. Taylor's next job will be as City Securities' executive vice president, heading up its municipal finance group.
Like Weber, Taylor also joined Ballard's administration in its earliest days. Before managing the city's Bond Bank, he had jobs related to municipal credit with Standard and Poor's Corp. in New York City, Prudential Securities and AIG's Global Investment Group.
Taylor helped steer Indianapolis through the recession's credit crisis. Amid the turbulence, Taylor said, the Bond Bank reduced its exposure to variable-rate debt by 92 percent.
Taylor added he's particularly proud of the city's recent $640 million 30-year bond issue in support of the Indianapolis Health and Hospital Corporation. Taylor said the debt will cost about $356 million less than was authorized by voters.
"This is a real dynamic time for public finance nationwide," Taylor said.
The Bond Bank's board will meet Monday to consider approval of Kintner as Taylor's replacement.


Devon, Somerset and Torbay Trading Standards Service is keeping a close eye on social media buying-and-selling groups in the lead up to Christmas in a bid to stem the sale of fake goods online.
Local law-abiding buying-and-selling groups are encouraged to work with Trading Standards and sign up to a five-point 'fake-free' pledge.
They will then be entitled to display a Real Deal logo, a visual assurance to shoppers and traders that their group is a 'fake-free' shopping zone.
It's part of the Real Deal Online programme, a nationwide initiative aimed at protecting local consumers and small businesses from the harm caused by the pernicious trade in fake goods.
From now until Christmas, Trading Standards Officers will be identifying buying-and-selling groups in communities across Devon, Somerset and Torbay.
They will contact the administrators of each group to make them aware of their legal responsibilities in not promoting the sale of counterfeit goods and other illicit products and they will invite them to follow the Real Deal Online Code of Practice.
Those who sign up will be invited to work closely with Trading Standards to help identify and stamp out any illicit or illegal trade they encounter.
To date they have contacted 56 administrators who cover 25 of the largest buying-and-selling Facebook Groups. Collectively these groups have over 460,000 members.
The Code of Practice asks group administrators to welcome Trading Standards Officers as members of the group and to agree to the five simple steps.
To ban the sale of counterfeit and other illicit goods within their group and act on information they receive that goods on their site are illegal.
To notify Trading Standards if they suspect that illegal goods are being sold within the group and to exclude the sellers from trading.
Each group is also asked to highlight warnings and advice notices from Trading Standards and to ensure that all members of the group are aware of its 'fake-free' policy.
The initiative is an extension of the Real Deal campaign which has been in place at 'physical' markets and car boot sales for nearly 10 years. Almost 500 markets across the UK have signed up to the voluntary Real Deal Charter.
Sharon Anderson, Group Manager, Devon, Somerset and Torbay Trading Standards Service, said: "Online and social media marketplaces are not uniformly regulated, and they can offer easy opportunities for those who wish to stay below the radar and trade illegally.


Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg. The city was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Kaiser, until 1918.Around the city there are a series of interconnected lakes and cultural landmarks, in particular the parks and palaces of Sanssouci, the largest World Heritage Site in Germany. The Potsdam Conference, the major post-World War II conference between the victorious Allies, was held at another palace in the area, the Cecilienhof.


The FbF mobileMatch iOS application only works in combination with the FbF mobileOne external fingerprint scanning accessory sold by Fulcrum Biometrics, LLC and other approved resellers. This is a real fingerprint collection application that will only work when an accessory is detected by the application and it is not a toy. Please do not download this application unless you have already purchased the FbF mobileOne fingerprint device. This application will NOT work without the mobileOne accessory.
The FbF mobileOne accessory is approved for use with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The FbF mobileOne accessory contains an FBI approved fingerprint scanner that provides FIPS-201 and PIV certified fingerprint images to an iOS device. These are REAL fingerprint images that meet the highest standards of law enforcement and commercial identification. This application will allow users of the mobileOne application to capture 500 dpi, high-resolution fingerprint images. Additionally, users will be able to save the scanned images to the iOS device, send the images via email, or post the images to an FTP server.
Note: This application will not work until you pair your iOS device with FbF mobileOne fingerprint scanner (Cradle or QuickDock) and connection to FbF bioServer. Please contact info (at) fulcrumbiometrics.com or call 1-800.348.3687 x110 to learn more.
Please contact us using our online form or call 1-800.348.3687 x110 to learn more.
Click on the App Store icon below to visit the App in the iTunes App Store.


Cough is a mechanism by which the body is able to throw away unwanted particles that have entered the throat and the lungs. One may experience intermittent bouts of coughing any time during the day, and is considered to be a protective response of the body that drives away all the undesirable debris from the respiratory system. However, coughing frequently everyday during nighttime is not normal and demands prompt medical attention. Be it children or adults, persistent night coughing gives a feeling of chest discomfort and disrupts a good night's sleep.
The gas exchange which takes place between pulmonary capillaries and alveoli is termed as pulmonary gas exchange.
Movement of gas within pulmonary capillaries, towards peripheral capillaries and back to lungs is referred to as gas transport.
The exchange of gases between tissues and tissue capillaries is referred to as peripheral gas exchange.
The facts presented in this article give us a rough idea of the anatomy and functioning of the respiratory system.
The information about different organs in the respiratory system should allow you to understand their structure and functions in a better manner.
The left lung is divided into 2 lobes (superior and inferior) while the right lung into 3 (superior, inferior and middle).
Each lung possesses a triangular organ called hilum; blood vessels, nerves, lymphatics and bronchi pass through the hilum.
AlveoliThe alveoli are sac-shaped bodies present inside the lungs, at the tip of alveolar ducts.
The alveoli function like an interface for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between lungs and capillaries.
Epiglottis, thyroid and cricoid are the three important cartilages of larynx; other cartilages present inside the larynx are corniculate, arytenoid and cuneiform.
Lung compliance can be classified into two types: static compliance and dynamic compliance.
The former represents pulmonary compliance during periods without gas flow, such as during an inspiratory pause.
This is a highly-contagious and common health problem. It is a viral infection which is characterized by the upper respiratory system inflammation. There are several agents which are responsible for this infection. The most common among them are the parainfluenza virus, Bordetella bronchiseptica, and mycoplasma. The former is an airborne virus which is present in almost every dog. This infection usually spreads from one dog to another, especially in a place like a dog show or a kennel. The infection that is present in the lungs of the dog is released into the air when the infected dog coughs or sneezes. If another dog is present nearby, then that dog becomes infected as well. Some of the major kennel cough symptoms are as follows. However, do not worry as there is a vaccine for this illness.
Viral infections affecting the upper respiratory tract such as common cold and seasonal flu too can trigger barking cough in adults at night. In addition to night cough, these medical conditions are typically marked by sore throat, fever and body aches. Even after the viral infection associated with common cold has gone away, the patient may continue to experience dry cough that aggravates during nighttime and may last for quite a few weeks.
Coughing at night could also suggest that the heart is not functioning properly. To be precise, it might indicate the presence of congestive heart failure (CHF). People with CHF suffer from mucus producing cough. The mucus that is coughed up during heart problems is pinkish in color. Besides coughing up mucus, the patient may complain about trouble breathing, racing or pounding heart.
Lung infections that include bronchitis or pneumonia can also be responsible for causing night cough. Bronchitis, a viral infection, typically brings swelling of the bronchi, tubes that transport air to and from the lungs. The inflammation narrows the air passages, making it difficult to breathe properly. Occurrence of dry or phlegm producing cough will depend on how far the infection has affected the respiratory tract. In case the colonization of the virus remains restricted to the lower respiratory tract, persistent dry cough is the likely outcome. Mucus generating cough lasting for a minimum period of 3 months point towards chronic bronchitis. People affected with interstitial lung diseases and other conditions like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, bronchiectasis and tuberculosis also tend to cough incessantly at night.
Dry cough is best treated with the help of home remedies that are effective and safe as well. Natural ingredients are to be used for these remedies. They provide long term relief and also prevent it from reoccurring. The above treatment and remedies should be followed as soon as dry cough is developed. If it is persistent or chronic, medical assistance should be sought for it, and once it has been cured, make sure you take appropriate measures to prevent it from recurring.
Oropharynx: It is located between the soft palate and upper part of epiglottis.
Laryngopharynx: This part of the pharynx is located below the epiglottis.
It opens into the esophagus and larynx.
EpiglottisIt is a flap-like structure (epiglottis) which prevents food or water from entering the trachea at the time of swallowing.
Respiratory issues such as common cold, seasonal flu and sinus infection are commonly accompanied by postnasal drip, a condition in which abnormally high secretion of mucus in the nasal activity (nostrils) that eventually travels down to the throat. The excess mucus build up gives a feeling of lump in the throat. People with post nasal drip cough frequently, especially at night, which actually helps to remove mucus and clear the throat.
Exposure to allergens, which can be air borne particles such as dust and pet dander during nighttime can also lead to sudden bouts of coughing. The immune system considers allergens as harmful substances, and so when they are inhaled, they irritate the respiratory tract. The irritation causes accumulation of mucus in the respiratory tract. To get rid of this mucus buildup, the person may excessively cough temporarily. Apart from forceful coughing, contact with allergens can also cause itchy watery eyes and congested nose.
Consuming foods at night that you are allergic to can also cause persistent cough.
For instance, many have the habit of drinking milk before retiring to bed.
However, if they are allergic to dairy products, they may cough persistently throughout the night.
Cstat stands for static compliance. VT stands for tidal volume and Pplat stands for plateau pressure that is measured at the end of inhalation and prior to exhalation using an inspiratory hold maneuver. PEEP stands for positive end expiratory pressure.
One can also get considerable relief from a bad, noisy cough that keeps everyone awake, by gargling several times with warm salt water.
Mix half a teaspoon of salt properly into a cup of warm water and then gargle to reduce cough.
Research has show that honey is an effective approach towards decreasing frequent bouts of cough that happen at night.
Honey is completely safe and is often prescribed for children having coughing fits.
A single dose, as recommended by the doctor, before bedtime can provide immense relief from persistent cough, and allow the child to sleep happily.
Excess mucus production is often responsible for causing chest congestion and persistent cough. Steam inhalation provides an easy way to reduce mucus build up and improve cough. This simple home remedy liquifies the mucus, which facilitates mucus drainage from the lungs.
Massaging a chest rub in which eucalyptus is an active ingredient can provide relief for many hours. Keeping indoors clean, free from dust mites and other allergens can also stop episodes of nighttime coughing. In case the aforementioned remedies provide temporary relief, with night cough resuming again, then it is indicative of a serious health issue, and so the first priority should be to consult a competent doctor and take the necessary treatment as per the diagnosis.
Tessalon Perles (Benzonatate) is a drug that is prescribed for people suffering from persistent coughing at night. This oral medication can suppress and even stop cough caused due to allergies and colds. Tessalon Perles is a great remedy for chronic dry cough. This drug has been very effective to relieve cough, however, consultation with a doctor is essential before taking this medicine. This is because the drug is not suitable for certain medical conditions like asthma. Even pregnant women and children less than 10 years old are advised to stay away from this drug.
Asthma patients may get relief from cough and breathing problems by inhaling corticosteroids. On the other hand, people suffering from bronchitis are able to effectively manage their symptoms with broncho-dilators, medications that help to dilate airways and ease breathing.
Antihistamines may also help to relieve an allergic cough. When a person is exposed to an allergen, the body cells secrete a chemical known as histamine, which is responsible for causing bothersome symptoms. Taking prescription antihistamine such as Benadryl and 'Robitussin Allergy and Cough Syrup' is effective to stop the release of histamines, thereby helping to reduce or prevent allergy symptoms.
Trachea lies to the anterior side of the esophagus; it is tubular in shape with a diameter of 1 inch. and length of 4.25 inch.
Its length spans between the 6th cervical and 5th thoracic vertebrae.
Chronic bronchitis is primarily caused by cigarette smoking, bacterial or viral infections, and air pollution, and long-term fume inhalation. It can also appear as a symptom of asthma, tuberculosis, sinusitis and pulmonary emphysema. Is chronic bronchitis contagious? No. If you have chronic bronchitis, people around you, will not get infected. But you can get chronic bronchitis, if people around you smoke, and you end up inhaling a lot of second-hand smoke. As estimated 9.9 million Americans have been diagnosed, with chronic bronchitis.
This procedure prescribed by many doctors works like a magic wand to stop coughing. You will notice the difference within minutes. Vicks VapoRub when used this way can stop coughing fits within 5-7 minutes, thus allowing the patient to have a good night's sleep. People experiencing persistent bouts of cough at night have found relief for quite some time after covering feet soles with Vicks VapoRub.
Cough and congestion is caused due to common cold, the symptoms should clear within 1-2 days. If not, then the underlying cause may be severe.
Is recommended to take prescription medicines to treat other accompanying symptoms like fever, headache, body ache, pain of any kind, etc.
Antibiotics are required to treat bacterial bronchitis and bacterial pneumonia.
However, antibiotics prove ineffective against viral infections.


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text:
North Africa\
From North to South Africa: Echoes of an Uprising
Published in North Africa
By Na'eem Jeenah
The revolutionary fervor that swept across North Africa and the Middle East is leaving discernible imprints on the political and social landscape of South Africa. For many South Africans, the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings gave new hope for the possibilities of what could be achieved through mass action.
For a people who had engaged in a long struggle for justice and freedom , but who had subsequently become largely demobilised, the idea of a despotic government being toppled through people's power had become a distant idea tinged with the kind of romanticism that suggests it could not be replicated. That changed when other peoples on our continent,took to the streets, faced down the might of brutal security services and armed forces, and succeeded in forcing out their dictators. In South Africa, activist organizations, think tanks, and even businesses hosted events to discuss the events, and a protest was held outside the Egyptian embassy, with protesters shouting 'irhal' (Leave) as Husni Mubarak was still trying to cling to power.
As happened in other parts of the world, protesters in the small South African town of Ermelo, demonstrating at the same time as their Egyptian counterparts, began referring to the site of their protests as 'Tahrir Square'. The Ermelo protests represented one of a plethora of 'service delivery' actions throughout the country. Thousands of such protests take place every year in South Africa, with people from poor, deprived communities demonstrating against their lack of or inadequate housing, electricity, water, jobs, and so forth. At the beginning of 2011, calls for global solidarity grew in light of the universality of the complaint against service delivery- joined especially by people in the north of our continent - of people demanding more equitable socio-economic conditions, opposing corruption, and insisting that the government fulfilled its responsibilities to those who had been, and remain, the most marginalised in our society. These were people who had believed the ruling African National Congress' (ANC) promise of a 'better life for all' but became disillusioned when the ANC failed to deliver on its promises. That failure had resulted in a lack and weakness in the delivery of services such as electricity, water, and housing, as well as jobs to poor people, resulting in daily 'service delivery protests' taking place all over the country. In Ermelo, these service delivery protesters, who often face the force of the South African police, took heart and courage from those they now viewed as their fellow travelers in Egypt and Tunisia. It was as if a certain energy had begun flowing from north to south across Africa, spreading and hoping to awaken the masses of oppressed and exploited people on the continent. The uprisings also began a debate in South Africa - not yet exhausted - about whether South Africa was moving towards its 'Tunisia moment', if it did not properly address the huge challenges of poverty, inequality and lack of service delivery.
In what many in southern Africa are referring to contagion from North Africa, normally calm Malawi erupted in protests at the end of July, leaving 18 people dead, and much destruction of property. Analysts and observers in the region, and Malawian activists themselves, have been referring to these events as being part of the wave of the wave of uprisings in the north. The protests came in the wake of attempts by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party to have President Mutharika's brother succeed him when his term ends in 2014, rising unemployment, and a host of other socio-economic grievances.
When civil strife broke out in Libya a few months ago, the debates took a new turn. South Africa, a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, supported Resolution 1973, which called on member states to implement a no-fly zone over Libya - ostensibly to protect civilians. However, within three days, the South African government explained that it did not support the manner in which the resolution was being implemented. After NATO began providing one side in the war with air cover, bombed the country, and even tried to assassinate Gaddafi, public opinion turned against the South African government's position, and even the ruling party's youth league publicly attacked the president for the UN vote. 'South Africa voted in favour of imperialists,' said Julius Malema, president of the ANC Youth League, calling NAT action 'killing of fellow Africans imposed by our former masters.' The NATO mission had become an imperialist war whose prize was the country's oil and natural gas, and was viewed in a different category to Tunisia and Egypt.
The situation in Libya was also of concern to many South Africans. Unlike Ben Ali's Tunisia and Mubarak's Egypt, Gaddafi's Libya had made its commitment to Africa and the African Union clear - in rhetoric, involvement, and financial support. When the International Criminal Court issued its warrant of arrest for Gaddafi, not only did it undermine the possibility of a political settlement, but it also confirmed the suspicions of many Africans that Africans are particular targets for international justice.
Whatever the outcome in Libya - and there are many indications that it will result in an entrenchment of imperial, especially European, power - the effects of Tunisia and Egypt will be long-lasting in the southern part of Africa. Not only people demanding better services in South Africa, but also those demanding an end to the absolute (and brutal) monarchy in Swaziland, and those demanding an end to Mugabe's tyranny in Zimbabwe have been inspired by our comrades in the north. And while the immediate effects of the courage and determination from the north might seem somewhat muted here, the long-term effects could very well bring down one or two dictatorships down south as well.
* Na'eem Jeenah is the executive director of the Johannesburg based, Afro Middle East Centre
** This article was first published on the Al-Akhbar English ://english.al-akhbar.com/content/north-south-africa-echoes-uprising" >website
Teaching Palestine in South Africa
Haftar's march on Tripoli
South Africa-Saudi Arabia relations and the arms sales factor
More in this category: Shadow Armies: The unseen, but real US war in Africa »


text:
In robotics motion planning, the dynamic window approach is an online collision avoidance strategy for mobile robots developed by Dieter Fox, Wolfram Burgard, and Sebastian Thrun in 1997. Unlike other avoidance methods, the dynamic window approach is derived directly from the dynamics of the robot, and is especially designed to deal with the constraints imposed by limited velocities and accelerations of the robot.

It consists of two main components, first generating a valid search space, and second selecting an optimal solution in the search space.
In  Fox et al. the search space is restricted to safe circular trajectories that can be reached within a short time interval and are free from collisions. The optimization goal is to select a heading and velocity that brings the robot to the goal with the maximum clearance from any obstacle.

References

External links
 Dynamic Window Approach pseudo-code and explanation

Robot control
1997 in robotics

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
How to Build and Hire a Marketing Team
Marketing, Marketing team, news
How to Build and Hire a Marketing Team Struggling to get the word out about your brand's product or service without breaking your cashflow? Stuck between that proverbial rock and a hard place and unsure how to grow your market share while boosting profitability? The...
Customer Acquisition Strategy for Startups
Customer Acquistion, Marketing, news
Customer Acquisition Strategy for Startups As a brand, you face a number of significant challenges. One of the most pressing, of course, is the need to get your business up and running. You need a product or service defined and ready to go. You also need a customer...
Marketing Plan Template: A Complete Guide to Create ROI
Marketing, news
Marketing Plan Template: A Complete Guide to Create ROI You've done the legwork. You've proven to the powers that be how invaluable content marketing is to the organization's survival in today's world. There's just one problem: now you have to write a marketing plan...
Knowing What You Need Is Not As Easy As UNDERSTANDING What You Need- So ask an Expert
Digital Marketing, Marketing, news
Knowing What You Need Is Not As Easy As UNDERSTANDING What You Need- So ask an Expert Once a client's decision to undertake an advertising campaign has been made, it is time for them to decide whom to use to create, manage, and implement the final product. When...
Talent and Budgets is the Key for Performance
Marketing team, news, Vlog
Talent and Budgets is the Key for Performance Many marketing teams stress when contemplating the scope of high-quality video production (that will actually perform). Videos are a necessary component in most content marketing strategies. By 2021, 82% of consumer...
Why Video Plays a Crucial Role in Your Digital Marketing Strategy
Marketing, news, Video marketing
Why Video Plays a Crucial Role in Your Digital Marketing Strategy Don't think you need a video marketing strategy? The truth is that people have been using video in their marketing strategies for years, but they're only starting to realize the benefits of this form of...
Why You Need a Customer Journey Map
What is Digital Marketing in 2023?
Webinar: Data to Creative Performance
Organic Search Marketing can get a Lift from Paid Ads
Why hiring a "Media" company won't help your marketing
Customer Acquistion
Startup marketing
Webinar Clip
Webinar Post Sign Up


Your user name is your membership number in four digits as it is shown on all your CAM invoices to the right of SEQUENCE. If your number is less than four digits (i.e., 33), add zeroes to the beginning, e.g., 0033.
Your password is your name exactly as it appears in the online membership directory beside CONTACT – upper and lower case with punctuation as shown.


text:
country of citizenship: United States of America
occupation: anthropologist, university teacher
Donald Symons (born 1942) is an American anthropologist best known as one of the founders of evolutionary psychology, and for pioneering the study of human sexuality from an evolutionary perspective. He is one of the most cited researchers in contemporary sex research. His work is referenced by scientists investigating an extremely diverse range of sexual phenomena. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker describes Symons' The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1979) as a "groundbreaking book" and "a landmark in its synthesis of evolutionary biology, anthropology, physiology, psychology, fiction, and cultural analysis, written with a combination of rigor and wit. It was a model for all subsequent books that apply evolution to human affairs, particularly mine." Symons is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent work, with Catherine Salmon, is Warrior Lovers, an evolutionary analysis of slash fiction. Source: Wikipedia (en)
Human - wd:Q174568


What is the cheapest way to get from Croydon to Silverstone?
The cheapest way to get from Croydon to Silverstone is to drive which costs £13 - £19 and takes 1h 37m.
What is the fastest way to get from Croydon to Silverstone?
The quickest way to get from Croydon to Silverstone is to train and taxi which costs £50 - £95 and takes 1h 27m.
How far is it from Croydon to Silverstone?
The distance between Croydon and Silverstone is 63 miles. The road distance is 78.8 miles.
How do I travel from Croydon to Silverstone without a car?
The best way to get from Croydon to Silverstone without a car is to train and taxi which takes 1h 27m and costs £50 - £95.
How long does it take to get from Croydon to Silverstone?
It takes approximately 1h 27m to get from Croydon to Silverstone, including transfers.
Can I drive from Croydon to Silverstone?
Yes, the driving distance between Croydon to Silverstone is 79 miles. It takes approximately 1h 37m to drive from Croydon to Silverstone.
Where can I stay near Silverstone?
There are 434+ hotels available in Silverstone. Prices start at £52 per night.
What companies run services between Croydon, England and Silverstone, England?
There is no direct connection from Croydon to Silverstone. However, you can take the train to London Victoria, take the walk to Victoria station, take the subway to Euston station, take the walk to London Euston, take the train to Milton Keynes Central, then take the taxi to Silverstone. Alternatively, you can take a vehicle from Croydon to Silverstone via London Victoria, Victoria station, Euston station, London Euston, Milton Keynes Central, Central station, and Central Milton Keynes, The Point in around 3h 7m.
Discover how to get to attractions and hotels near Silverstone.
Towcester Racecourse is a horse racing course at Towcester (pronounced "Toe-ster") in Northamptonshire, England. Recently rebuilt, it hosts National Hunt Rules race meetings (over jumps) in the Winter months. It is situated on the Easton Neston estate.
Stoke Bruerne is a small village and civil parish in South Northamptonshire, England about 10 mi north of Milton Keynes and 7 mi south of Northampton. The civil parish population at the 2011 Census was 373.
Rome2rio makes travelling from Croydon to Silverstone easy.
Rome2rio is a door-to-door travel information and booking engine, helping you get to and from any location in the world. Find all the transport options for your trip from Croydon to Silverstone right here. Rome2rio displays up to date schedules, route maps, journey times and estimated fares from relevant transport operators, ensuring you can make an informed decision about which option will suit you best. Rome2rio also offers online bookings for selected operators, making reservations easy and straightforward.


text:
Q: Overlaying, resizing and repositioning an image Hey there I am developing an android app to add filters i am first getting the images from gallery and camera the i am overlaying another image in same image view but the problem is this that the image i overlayed is of fixed size. I want to resize and reposition it during run time. Watch this video for reference
https://youtu.be/kGbvO--RDwU
I just need your suggestions. I have overlayed the image perfectly. Now i just need to resize, repostion or rotate that image on run time

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


At AquaVolo our goal is to design training tools that work with the body to create awareness, improve technique, and build strength. Our newest product—HeadLiner—does this by encouraging the swimmer to retain a stable head position throughout the stroke and develop quick and low—almost invisible— breaths by improving the timing of inhale.
The most common breathing-related mistakes are turning the head too slowly or too late, lifting the head up, turning the head back too slowly, and pulling the head too far back out of alignment. To help swimmers learn how to keep their head stable throughout the stroke and to develop quick and low breaths by improving the timing of the inhale, we designed a new product that we call HeadLiner.
Because HeadLiner is symmetrical, it increases the air pocket on each side of the head equally by slightly enhancing the bow wave during the swim. The increased air pockets make it easier to breath to the side. (As you can see in the image below, the bow wave is in front of the HeadLiner and there is an air pocket below the water.) Since the only thing that holds the HeadLiner against the head is the steady oncoming flow of water, each breath to the side must be fast and low. Any delay in the timing of inhale will disturb the oncoming flow of water and make the HeadLiner fall off. This instantaneous feedback teaches the swimmer how to improve timing of inhaling and develope fast and low breaths.
HeadLiner helps improve technique and create awareness by encouraging the swimmer to retain a stable head throughout the stroke, improve timing of the inhale, and develop quick and low breaths.


Having and being able to use cordage, AKA fibers, string, twine, or rope, comes in as #5 in the Five C's of Survival. Here, I am showing natural fibers and I show JUST a few examples on how to render and utilize the fibers into servicable twine or rope.
And then I am showing manufactured fibers/rope and I show how versitle and vast the uses that can be created with the knowledge of how to manipulate cordage.


Discover capabilities of the Marqeta platform by exploring developer guides and API reference documentation.
Issue cards, fund accounts, manage payments, and more.
View filterable, curated production data and personalized insights.
Experiment with Core API endpoints in a shared developer sandbox.
Discover cards and their role in the payments ecosystem. Learn how to define the behaviors of the card object on the Marqeta platform.
Explore the key concepts of Just-in-Time (JIT) Funding, including Managed and Gateway JIT Funding configurations.
Follow a hands-on tutorial that guides you through the creation and management of authorization and velocity controls.


Boudicca is one of the few labels that believes in something beyond the joy of seeing lovely clothes, and its shows are always intense, out-there spectacles—this one featured dark, defiant stomping through black cinders. But though designers Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby might flinch to hear it, it is simply the bold sophistication of their work that sets them head and shoulders above anyone else in London.
For spring, tailoring was razored to the ribs and strong in the shoulder. Voluminous white blouses had dramatic collars and asymmetric swagger. Chiffon dresses came devised with trailing scarves and panels of overlapping pleats that refused to obey the logic of a hemline. These are obsessions the couple has always harbored, and in their own Goth-minded way, they admitted this collection was a step toward consolidating the rock-solid identity the label needs in order to reach new markets. "It was about the ghost of autumn 2004 haunting summer 2005," Broach said. Strip away the complex, tied-on extras, and underneath there's a collection of extraordinary pieces that, on a rail, will hold their own next to anything in Boudicca's home town—and beyond.


text:
boost::random::mt19937 randomNb::rng;

randomNb::randomNb(){
	randomNb::rng.seed(time(NULL));
}

double randomNb::sampleCauchy(double c){
	cauchy_distribution <> nd(c, 1);
	return nd(randomNb::rng);
}

double randomNb::sampleChiSqr(int c){
	chi_squared_distribution <> nd(c);
	return nd(randomNb::rng);
}

double randomNb::sampleUniform(double c){
	uniform_real_distribution <> nd(0, 1);
  return nd(randomNb::rng);
}

double randomNb::varCovRg(double c){
	if (c == 0){
		return randomNb::sampleCauchy(c);
	}
	else{
		return randomNb::sampleChiSqr(c);
	}
}

double double_multivariateNormal_density(const MatrixXd &x,
	const MatrixXd &Mu, const MatrixXd &Sigma){
	double expTerm, o;
	using namespace std;
	MatrixXd err;
	err = (x - Mu);
	err*=Sigma.inverse();
	err *=(x - Mu).transpose();
	expTerm = exp(err(0));
	o = 1/sqrt(pow(2*M_PI, Mu.rows())*Sigma.determinant());
	return o*expTerm;
}

VectorXd multivariateNormal_density(const MatrixXd &x,
									const MatrixXd &Mu, const MatrixXd &Sigma){
	if ( x.rows() != Mu.rows()){
		std::cerr << "FROM multivariateNormal_density." << std::endl;
		std::cerr << "ERROR: X_ROWS != MU_ROWS." << std::endl;
	}
	VectorXd res;
	int T = x.rows();
	res.setZero(T);
	for(int i = 0; i<x.rows(); i++){
		res(i) = double_multivariateNormal_density(x.row(i),
												   Mu.row(i),
												   Sigma);
	}
	return res;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Because this is an era of when suicide is such a part of the cultural conversation, we need to be prepared to engage with it in a serious way.
The article I linked to above is for parents who kids are watching or who have watched the popular show "13 Reasons" – but in general, I think that the show is not appropriate for any audience. It glorifies suicide and turns into a hero a teenage girl who is in serious need of help and yet instead chooses to take her own life and communicate it in a vengeful vindictive way.
Suicide is a complicated issue, biblically and psychologically. I strongly recommend you check out this sermon on suicide I posted a few weeks back. I think it will be very helpful to anyone. All of us have thought about it, and all of us know someone who has taken their life… and others who likely will in the future.
However, I think what would be most valuable to many is just simple, practical guidelines for what to do when someone we know threatens suicide.
Typically, based on statistics, it would seem to be perfectly safe to go with #2., right?
Obviously, people threaten or hint at committing suicide all the time without actually doing it. There are many reasons why someone might even threaten without any intention of doing it.
Rarely do otherwise rational people become disconnected enough from reality to go through with suicide. The disconnection may not be what you think, but it is there when someone actually comes to the point of being willing to take his or her own life.
So, let's examine option #2. Anyone who can become delusional – who can experience a psychotic break from reality – can do things that are dangerous to themselves and others. They might get in a plane attempt to vanish without warning, or have an affair, commit suicide. Even in those cases, the chances are low, right?
However, not taking it seriously can leave us with a dead or devastated friend… and we should not be willing to take that risk for a lot of reasons… one of which is that we do not want to carry the burden of our decision to not take them seriously after they are dead.
So, even if our odds of being ok not taking such a threat seriously are kind of good, the cost of being wrong is unacceptable.
Which leaves us option 1.
Speak to a friend or family member and make sure she or he knows that if you suspect that they are a danger to themselves, then you are going to contact the police and send them to your friend to check on them and verify that they are safe.
It is also possible to send a family member who lives with them to check on them and keep a watch over them until they are safe. If that is not an option, then the police are the best option.
If the police do not think they are safe, they should take your friend to a hospital. Your friend needs to know that you will always, without hesitation, contact professionals and police if you suspect that this person is a threat to themselves. This is in an effort to protect your friend; and an effort to protect yourself from the regret that doing nothing can create.
So, she needs to make sure that if she is going to threaten or hint at suicide, that your love for her and desire for her best will motivate you to take her seriously.
If you are going to take her seriously, you have no choice to contact the professionals and/or get the police involved ASAP.
It is incumbent upon us to communicate this boundary with anyone who threatens or hints at suicide. Make sure they know that this is how you will respond to such things – that you will contact a professional and/or the police.
This kind of boundary will help you know that when the friend speaks of suicide, they are serious, since they know what your response will be. If, by some chance, they use the threat of suicide as a manipulative tool, this will put a stop to it.
If they are serious, you may save their life by refusing to keep their suicidal ideas secret. If they are serious, then even if they are going to be angry at you for telling, when they are healthy again, they will recognize that you have done what a good friend would do.
If they are not serious about suicide, they probably are serious about getting help or attention or something – and you will have helped them in that way, too. They will know you are a friend who listens and takes them seriously.
The cure for real suicidal ideation is hope. People who care can go a long way toward giving us hope. People who love us even more than they care if we are happy with them right now, give us solid hope. They give us some space to grow.
We all deeply desire to be heard and known. Giving people, whether seriously suicidal or not, other options for being heard, cared about, valued, is quite a gift. Help them understand that they are treasure and you can help them live an abundant life as the treasure they are!


text:
Articles published in December, 2014
What if we abolished Christmas?
One possibility is that the economy would be just fine. This is the classic view of macroeconomics, writes Tim Harford
In 1939, Lew Hahn, the head of the Retail Dry Goods Association in the US, noticed something that gave him cause for concern: Thanksgiving would fall on November 30 that year, the latest possible date. Since it was thought poor form to start hawking Yuletide goodies before Thanksgiving was over, this would mean a brief Christmas spending season.
Hahn was concerned that consumers would spend less, damaging an already weak economy, to say nothing of the prosperity of the members of the Retail Dry Goods Association. And so he had a word with the secretary of commerce, Harry Hopkins, who had a word with President Franklin D Roosevelt, who had a word with the nation. He explained that as Thanksgiving was a federal holiday it was the president's job to select the date — and he was choosing November 23 instead.
The move was controversial. Alfred Landon, the Republican who had been defeated by Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1936, compared FDR's high-handedness to that of Adolf Hitler, thus beginning a hallowed tradition in US political commentary. For a couple of years, half the country celebrated on the old Thanksgiving date while the other half marked the new "Franksgiving" instead; a couple of states sat on the fence and made both days a holiday.
All this raises a deeper question: what are the macroeconomic consequences of Christmas? The answer depends on your politics. Economic conservatives, from Rick Santorum to Alf Landon to George Osborne, believe Christmas has little effect on the health of the economy; liberals, from Ed Balls to Franklin Roosevelt to Paul Krugman, believe Christmas is macroeconomically invaluable.
I should emphasise that I am making assumptions here. I have not approached any of these people to ask their opinions about Christmas. But the views I am speculating that they hold seem a logical extension of their views on government stimulus spending.
Allow me to explain. Imagine that this Christmas day, the Queen, the Pope and even Oprah Winfrey announced that Christmas would be a purely religious occasion from 2015 onwards. There would be no presents and no feasting. If people respected this declaration, about $75bn-$100bn of extra consumer spending in the US alone would simply not materialise next December. What then?
One possibility is that the economy would be just fine. This is the classical view of macroeconomics: nothing significant would change after the abolition of Christmas. We would retain the same labour force and the same skills, the same factories and the same power stations, the same financial sector and the same logistics networks. The capacity of the economy to produce goods and services would be undiminished, and after a period of adjustment, during which tinsel factories would be retooled and Christmas tree plantations replanted, all would be well.
What would replace nearly $100bn of seasonal consumer spending? Nothing noticeable, but the replacement would happen just the same. The productive capacity freed up by the disappearance of Christmas could be turned to other uses; prices would fall just enough to tempt us to spend our money at other times of the year. Indeed, cancelling Christmas might even provide a modest boost to our prosperity in the longer term, as bunching up all that spending into a few short weeks strains factories and supply chains. Smoothing out our spending would be more efficient.
This classical view of how the economy works is also the view taken by Mr Osborne, the UK chancellor, and by Republicans in the US. Their view is that government stimulus spending does not work; cut it back, they argue, and the economy would adjust as the private sector took up the slack.
On the other side of the debate stands Mr Balls, the UK's shadow chancellor, as well as American stimulus proponents such as Mr Krugman and Lawrence Summers. Mr Krugman once commented that panic about an attack from aliens would help the economy because it would get the government spending money again. Since aliens are not available, Santa Claus will have to do.
This Keynesian view of how the economy works differs from the classical view in one crucial way: it argues that supply does not always and automatically create demand. When Christmas is abolished (or a financial crisis devastates people's confidence and their spending power), consumers will plan to spend less. And if consumers plan to spend less, price adjustments may not induce them to change their minds; the price adjustments may not even happen. If Christmas spending disappears, it may take many years for the economy to replace it. Those factories will still be there and the workers will remain available — but they will stand idle.
Who is right? I should confess a bias. I am sceptical about the efficiency of many government spending programmes and of many Christmas purchase decisions. In both cases, too much attention is lavished on appearances and too little on what the recipient might truly want. In the long run, then, I should hope both for a smaller state and for a smaller Christmas.
But that is a matter for the ghost of Christmas yet to come. Despite my own biases, I have to acknowledge that this Christmas interest rates are still close to zero. Until that changes, the liberals will have the better of the argument. Stimulus spending remains effective, regardless of whether the stimulus comes from the Treasury — or from the North Pole.
Written for and first published at ft.com.
24th of December, 2014 • Other Writing • Comments off
You really, really, shouldn't have . . .
There is a vast discrepancy between how we see the world when giving gifts and when receiving them
The Harford girls have given Father Christmas two very different challenges this year. Miss Harford Senior typed a charming yet professional letter, illustrated with clip art, specifying a number of expensive gifts that would be greatly appreciated. Miss Harford Junior hand-wrote a short note saying that she had tried to be good this year and would like a surprise.
The girls raise two questions. Are surprise gifts better than something specifically requested on a wish list? Are expensive gifts a good way to express affection?
Father Christmas might seek guidance from a set of studies conducted by Gabrielle Adams and Francis Flynn of Stanford, and Harvard's Francesca Gino.
Gino and Flynn surveyed married people, asking some to reflect on wedding gifts they had received, and others to think about wedding gifts they had given. Gift givers assumed that gifts chosen spontaneously would be just as welcome as those chosen from a wedding registry. Recipients felt otherwise: they preferred the gifts that had been on the wedding list. Such lists seem charmless but they work.
Gino and Flynn found similar results from a survey about birthday presents: again, givers thought that gifts they'd chosen themselves were more appreciated but recipients preferred the gifts that they'd specifically asked for. The lesson: you might feel that it's awkward and unnecessary to ask what gift would be welcome but the recipient of the gift sees things differently and would prefer that you asked rather than guessed.
Gino and Flynn conducted a third study in which people created wish lists. Other participants were asked to choose an item on the list to be sent as a gift; a third group were asked to peruse the wish list but then to choose some other present of equivalent value. It's not surprising to discover that recipients preferred the items from their wish list — but what's remarkable is that they felt the wishlist gifts were more "personal" and "thoughtful". We think that picking an item from a wish list is lazy and impersonal but the person receiving that item doesn't see it that way at all.
For good measure, a fourth study by Gino and Flynn found there was one thing people appreciated even more than an item from their own wish lists: money.
There's more. Adams and Flynn surveyed newly engaged couples about engagement rings. The givers assumed that more expensive rings were more appreciated. The recipients felt differently. A similar result came from asking people to think about a particular birthday present they had received or given: recipients were just as happy with inexpensive gifts, to the surprise of givers.
In short, there is a vast discrepancy between how we see the world when giving gifts and when receiving them. The gift giver imagines that the ideal present is expensive and surprising; the recipient doesn't care about the money and would rather have a present they'd already selected. We should spend less than we think, and we should ask more questions before we buy.
All of this makes good sense in light of "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas", a scholarly piece of research conducted by Joel Waldfogel and published in a leading academic journal, the American Economic Review. It celebrates its 21st birthday this month. (Congratulations, Joel.)
Waldfogel's work on Christmas is well known to readers of this column but here is a quick summary for those who have forgotten. After surveying his students about gifts they had received over the holiday season, he found that most gifts were poorly chosen relative to what the students would have selected themselves. Gifts from friends and lovers tended to be better chosen than gifts from elderly relatives but, on average, the waste attributable to poorly chosen seasonal gifts was between 15 and 20 per cent of the purchase price of the gift — that's well over $10bn wasted in the US alone every Christmas. This is a vast squandering of time, energy and valuable raw materials.
The usual response to this is that economists have, yet again, failed to appreciate the true meaning of Christmas. But to me this simply suggests that economists have managed to acquire a toxic brand in matters of human relations.
Were a priest to counsel against materialism at Christmas, nobody would accuse him or her of missing the point; the same message from an economist seems foolish and emotionally stunted.
Coupled with the findings from Adams, Flynn and Gino, the conclusion is plain: there is no need to stop buying Christmas presents but we should spend less and pay more attention to what the recipients might actually want.
So what should Father Christmas conclude when faced with my daughters' letters? Miss Harford Senior is wise to specify exactly what she wants and Father Christmas should take heed.
Miss Harford Junior is taking a risk asking for a surprise — but at least Father Christmas knows that the last thing he should do to compensate for his ignorance is desperately spend more money.
Tim Harford's latest book, "The Undercover Economist Strikes Back", makes a superb seasonal gift.
21st of December, 2014 • Undercover Economist • Comments off
Women (still) don't win prizes
'Something about the culture of UK schools is nudging young women away from economics'
It's no secret that women have long faced an uphill battle both to achieve success and be recognised for that success. The Nobel Prizes tell the story as well as anything: 860 people have been awarded prizes (including the unofficial Nobel Memorial Prize in economics) but only 5 per cent of them were women. The imbalance is worse still in stereotypically male subjects: only six Nobels for physics or chemistry have been awarded to women, fewer than 2 per cent of the total. Marie Curie won two of them; her daughter Irène won another.
Economics is another subject with a masculine reputation. It does not seem to be a happier hunting ground. The economics prize in memory of Alfred Nobel was launched in 1969 but it wasn't until 2009 that Elinor Ostrom became the only woman so far to win it. "I won't be the last," was her characteristically practical comment.
Ostrom won the Nobel in economics despite not being an economist — her application to study for a PhD was turned away by UCLA's economics department because she didn't have the maths. "I had been advised as a girl against taking any courses beyond algebra and geometry in high school," she commented. This particular piece of sexism ultimately worked in her favour: she became a political scientist instead and ended up approaching economic problems from a fresh perspective.
Curie faced a more immediate form of discrimination: in 1903 the Nobel physics committee planned to award the prize to her husband Pierre and to Henri Becquerel, overlooking Marie's central role in studying radiation. Pierre insisted that his wife should receive the credit that she deserved. Not every husband of a brilliant wife has been quite so enlightened.
The two stories show the range of possibilities for discrimination to occur. Ostrom's career path was shaped by negative stereotypes more than 60 years before she eventually won her prize; Curie nearly had the prize snatched away at the moment of triumph.
These are old wounds, and we have made a great deal of progress since then. But gender imbalances remain. In the US, the National Science Foundation's survey of earned doctorates is not a bad place to look for the state of play. In 2012 women earned 46 per cent of all doctorates, up from 32 per cent three decades earlier. No great cause for alarm there. And women heavily outnumber men in social sciences such as psychology, sociology and anthropology.
Yet economics is a different beast: more than two-thirds of economics doctorates are awarded to men. (There is a similar story to tell in physics, chemistry, computing and engineering.) Since nobody under the age of 50 has won the Nobel Prize in economics, one can expect this imbalance in economics PhDs today to ripple through the upper echelons of the profession for many years to come.
There are also hopeful signs. The proportion of economics doctorates earned by women has been growing. The John Bates Clark medal, a prestigious award for economists under the age of 40, was exclusively male until Susan Athey won in 2007, but two other women have won the award since then. That is a sharp shift.
Is the lesson that all we need to do to attract more women to economics is wait? That is doubtful. In the UK, the proportion of undergraduate economists who are women is 27 per cent and falling. This isn't a problem that will fix itself. So what can be done? The answer to that question depends on where we think the source of the imbalance lies — are we facing Marie Curie's problem, or Lin Ostrom's, or something else?
The school environment seems as significant today as it was for Ostrom. A recent study by Mirco Tonin and Jackie Wahba of the University of Southampton examines enrolment in undergraduate economics degrees in the UK. The gender imbalance in successful applicants is much more pronounced among UK applicants than those applying to UK universities from overseas. That suggests that something about the culture of UK schools is nudging young women away from economics.
. . .
That something may well be mathematics. This subject, a vital foundation for economics, is studied by more boys than girls at A-Level. Such a gender gap in advanced high-school mathematics disappeared in the United States 20 years ago.
As for women who already have their PhDs and are looking for careers in academia, the situation in the US is not entirely encouraging. A recent detailed study by a team of economists and psychologists (Stephen Ceci, Donna Ginther, Shulamit Kahn and Wendy Williams) looked at women in US academic sciences and concluded that while "gender discrimination was an important cause of women's under-representation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women's under-representation". The playing field, they suggest, is much more level than it once was; a modern Marie Curie wouldn't need her husband to fight her corner.
But Ceci and colleagues note an exception — one maths-intensive subject at which well-qualified and productive women somehow find it hard to win academic promotions. It's economics. For some reason, the dismal science remains heavy with the scent of testosterone.
The Christmas card network
'It is not clear new technologies are expanding our number of genuine friends'
Is the Christmas card obsolete? I suppose the answer depends on what function you think the Christmas card is intended to serve, if any at all. Surely it is no longer intended to convey information. Email and social networks do a more efficient job, and including a Christmas newsletter or family photograph (I do both) will earn you only scorn from any self-respecting British snob.
Some believe that the Christmas card list, where we keep track of old favours and slights, is a sort of passive-aggressive vendetta. There is truth in this. Late in 1974, two sociologists, Phillip Kunz and Michael Woolcott, posted more than 500 Christmas cards to people they did not know. Some of them were "high status" cards, using expensive materials and signed "Dr and Mrs Phillip Kunz". Others were from "Phillip and Joyce Kunz" or used cheaper stationery or both.
The Kunz family received, along with a complaint from the police, some rather touching replies: "Dear Joyce and Phil, Received your Christmas card and was good to hear from you. I will have to do some explaining to you. Your last name did not register at first . . . Please forgive me for being so stupid for not knowing your last name. We are fine and hope you are well. We miss your father. They were such grand friends."
But what is most striking is that more than 100 strangers felt obliged to send a signed card in response. That is the power of reciprocity. (Response rates were particularly high if "Dr Kunz" had written on a fancy card to a working-class household. That is the power of status.)
If this is what Christmas cards are all about — mindless reciprocal obligation coupled with some social climbing — then I think we can all agree on two things: we could do without them; and we'll never be rid of them. Thomas Schelling, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics, once advocated a bankruptcy procedure — wiping clean the list of people to whom we "owe" a Christmas card. If only.
But perhaps the Christmas card also serves other purposes. Consider the exchange, "How do you do?", "How do you do?" This is phatic communication. It conveys no detailed information but it acknowledges others and implies that there is nothing much to report. "I'm OK, and you're OK, and lines of communication are open if that changes."
A Facebook "poke" could achieve the same thing at much lower cost. But perhaps the expense and the hassle is part of the point. If someone invites you for dinner and you say "thank you" as you leave, you may still wish to follow up with a thank-you note to show that you have enough invested in the relationship to take the trouble. If relationships weren't hard work, they would not be relationships.
There's a thing called the "social brain" hypothesis: it states that humans evolved large and energy-intensive brains not to do hard sums or design clever tools but because they needed them to navigate the complexities of dealing with other people. Back in 1992, Robin Dunbar — an anthropologist and psychologist now based at the University of Oxford — published a fascinating addendum to that idea. Dunbar had been looking at the social group size and the brain size of different primates, and found that primate species with larger neocortices had grooming relationships with larger social groups. Extrapolating to humans, he produced what has become known as Dunbar's Number. If our brains are any guide, we're built to handle a social network of about 150 people.
Dunbar's Number is both more uncertain and more complex than popular presentations would have you believe. Dunbar himself argues that social networks are nested, following rough powers of three: five people to whom we might turn for substantial emotional or financial support in a moment of true crisis; 15 intimate friends; 50 friends; 150 rather casual friends, and so on.
Social networking tools let us reach more people, more quickly, and in some detail if we so choose. I can reach 90,000 followers on Twitter but — how can I put this tactfully? — they are not my friends. These new technologies are a great convenience but it is not clear that they are allowing us to expand the number of genuine friends that we have. A recent study by Bruno Gonçalves, Nicola Perra and Alessandro Vespignani examined 25 million conversations between Twitter users, and found that the network with whom people might actually have several reciprocal conversations was between 100 and 200 — Dunbar's number again. As for close friends, women engage in two-way communication with around six people on Facebook; men with just four.
Much like primate grooming, a Christmas card requires effort, time and expense. An up-to-date Christmas list requires some thought about who matters to you, for reasons noble or ignoble. And a few years ago, two researchers carefully examined how big Christmas cards lists tended to be, once allowing for the fact that a single card could reach several members of a household. The researchers were Russell Hill and Robin Dunbar. And the number of people reached by a typical British Christmas card list? 154.
9th of December, 2014 • Undercover Economist • Comments off
Learn from the losers
Kickended is important. It reminds us that the world is biased in systematic ways
Can there be an easier way to raise some cash than through Kickstarter? The crowdfunding website enjoyed a breakthrough moment in 2012 when the Pebble, an early smartwatch, raised over $10m. But then a few months ago, a mere picnic cooler raised an extraordinary $13m. Admittedly, the Coolest cooler is the Swiss army knife of cool boxes. It has a built-in USB charger, cocktail blender and loudspeakers. The thundering herd of financial backers for this project made it the biggest Kickstarter campaign to date, as well as being a sure sign that end times are upon us.
And who could forget this summer's Kickstarter appeal from a fellow by the name of Zack "Danger" Brown? Brown turned to Kickstarter for $10 to make some potato salad; and he raised $55,492 in what must be one of history's most lucrative expressions of hipster irony.
I'm sure I'm not the only person to ponder launching an exciting project on Kickstarter before settling back to count the money. Dean Augustin may have had the same idea back in 2011; he sought $12,000 to produce a documentary about John F Kennedy. Jonathan Reiter's "BizzFit" looked to raise $35,000 to create an algorithmic matching service for employers and employees. This October, two brothers in Syracuse, New York, launched a Kickstarter campaign in the hope of being paid $400 to film themselves terrifying their neighbours at Halloween. These disparate campaigns have one thing in common: they received not a single penny of support. Not one of these people was able to persuade friends, colleagues or even their parents to kick in so much as a cent.
My inspiration for these tales of Kickstarter failure is Silvio Lorusso, an artist and designer based in Venice. Lorusso's website, Kickended, searches Kickstarter for all the projects that have received absolutely no funding. (There are plenty: about 10 per cent of Kickstarter projects go nowhere at all, and only 40 per cent raise enough money to hit their funding targets.)
Kickended performs an important service. It reminds us that what we see around us is not representative of the world; it is biased in systematic ways. Normally, when we talk of bias we think of a conscious ideological slant. But many biases are simple and unconscious. I have never read a media report or blog post about a typical, representative Kickstarter campaign – but I heard a lot about the Pebble watch, the Coolest cooler and potato salad. If I didn't know better, I might form unrealistic expectations about what running a Kickstarter campaign might achieve.
This isn't just about Kickstarter. Such bias is everywhere. Most of the books people read are bestsellers – but most books are not bestsellers. And most book projects do not become books at all. There's a similar story to tell about music, films and business ventures in general.
Academic papers are more likely to be published if they find new, interesting and positive results. If an individual researcher retained only the striking data points, we would call it fraud. But when an academic community as a whole retains only the striking results, we call it "publication bias" and we have tremendous difficulty in preventing it. Its impact on our understanding of the truth may be no less serious.
Now let's think about the fact that the average London bus has only 17 people riding on it. How could that possibly be? Whenever I get on a bus, it's packed. But consider a bus that runs into London with 68 people at rush hour, then makes three journeys empty. Every single passenger has witnessed a crammed bus, but the average occupancy was 17. Nobody has ever been a passenger on a bus with no passengers but such buses exist. Most people ride the trains when they are full and go to the shops when they are busy. A restaurant may seem popular to its typical customers because it is buzzing when they are there; to the owners and staff, things may look very different.
In 1943, the American statistician Abraham Wald was asked to advise the US air force on how to reinforce their planes. Only a limited weight of armour plating was feasible, and the proposal on the table was to reinforce the wings, the centre of the fuselage, and the tail. Why? Because bombers were returning from missions riddled with bullet holes in those areas.
Wald explained that this would be a mistake. What the air force had discovered was that when planes were hit in the wings, tail or central fuselage, they made it home. Where, asked Wald, were the planes that had been hit in other areas? They never returned. Wald suggested reinforcing the planes wherever the surviving planes had been unscathed instead.
It's natural to look at life's winners – often they become winners in the first place because they're interesting to look at. That's why Kickended gives us an important lesson. If we don't look at life's losers too, we may end up putting our time, money, attention or even armour plating in entirely the wrong place.
2nd of December, 2014 • Undercover Economist • Comments off


text:
Analyst: 'Whale' spenders aren't as crucial to F2P mobile games as they once were
September 10, 2018 | By Alissa McAloon
More: Smartphone/Tablet, Business/Marketing
Mobile game developers are likely familiar with the concept of whale spenders, or a small percentage of players that spend significantly more on free-to-play games than your average player, but data from DeltaDNA suggests that the spending scales are starting to tip more towards casual players.
The short report takes a look at data gathered from 800 million unique users across 2500 games collected since January 2016 to look at how per-player spending habits have changed across years, regions, and genres.
Data like this can be useful for game devs that want to keep an eye on trends in the industry, but it is worth keeping in mind that the data provided by DeltaDNA, which operates its own app analytics service, only represents a snapshot of part of the mobile games business versus the industry in its entirety.
DeltaDNA says that, according to its data, the percentages of paying players per game has increased to 4.02 percent in North America and to 2.43 percent in Europe, as illustrated by the graph below.
The firm says that this growth in the number of players shelling out cash in free-to-play mobile games is leading to a greater number of casual spenders and, in turn, creating a more balanced monetization spread.
The full report on the company's site also offers a look at how average revenue per daily active user has changed in puzzle, action, strategy, and casino genres since 2016 as well.
TEQUILA WORKS — Madrid, Spain
326173 newswire /view/news/326173/Analyst_Whale_spenders_arent_as_crucial_to_F2P_mobile_games_as_they_once_were.php Loading Comments


From Freud to poetry, from caves to sky-scrapper apartments - what motivates/moves you to do the things you do - is that two wheeled device just a means of transportation?
Yhe only week link is the intake coupler which on a stock bike is just something to replace regularly - lol - every 5000 miles would be safe, otherwise just change the oil regularly and keep bolts tight and stuff adjusted right - and she'll keep going forever.
Hey guys, and gals, as the case may be.
Ezblast, I have also been reading a lot of your posts..inspirational, for sure.
With regards to the intake coupler, I'm surprised someone hasn't fabbed one up out of silicone, or something like that..have you heard of alternatives to the OEM version?
Just wanted to drop in and say that this forum helped my decision in getting my first motorcycle! A 2003 Buell Blast with V&H exhaust and only ~1.5k miles on it Pretty happy with her so far! Experienced some backfire the other day and now she is dying on idle, but it should be covered with the dealerships 60 day in house warranty. If not, then I have no problem getting down and dirty and wrenching it myself!
You'll like her and here both!
As EZ says - replace the manifold coupler (das boot)...should fix those problems right away.
If the dealership says the carb needs cleaning or rebuilding, RUN ! they have no idea what they are doing! It doesn't need either.
If they want to charge you for anything WAIT and ask here first.
At 1500 miles the bike is still brand new and should need nothing in the way of repairs (except maybe the boot). It may need to be rejetted, for the exhaust (which is a modification, not a repair).
I hope you enjoy your Blast as much as we enjoy ours!
Hello all new blast owner here, just wanted to introduce myself. Picked up an 02 blast with 3300 miles last week to keep me riding on an american bike till my 05 Sportster motor is rebuilt. I always wanted a blast to mess with and so far I can see it is a blank canvas. Thanks for all the posts on how to hop the Thumper motor up.
Well, my Blast is no longer mine. A dying friend gave me a PC800 to go with my Concours and the Blast was having ethanol issues. I got it running again just in time for my buddy's wife to get her license.
So thumper is now rolling under a beautiful woman who has learned to ride it like she stole it, which she basically did. She is keeping the faith and I sometimes visit, riding along with them. Roll on Thor.
Sad news and good news. Bye bye Rainman.
Hello fellow blast owners! Just registered to the forum and thought I would say hello!
If you don't get an answer to a question in a timely fashion, feel free to PM me. Just click the profile link and look for the message option.