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Tag Archive | Acoustics
by rmjames
in Acoustics, Cultural Studies, Digital Media, Information, Internets, Noise, Philosophy, Sound and Surveillance, Sound Studies
Acousmatic Surveillance and Big Data
It's an all too familiar movie trope. A bug hidden in a flower jar. A figure in shadows crouched listening at a door. The tape recording that no one knew existed, revealed at the most decisive of moments. Even the abrupt disconnection of a phone call manages to arouse the suspicion that we are never as alone as we may think. And although surveillance derives its meaning the latin "vigilare" (to watch) and French "sur-" (over), its deep connotations of listening have all but obliterated that distinction.
Moving on from cybernetic games to modes of surveillance that work through composition and patterns. Here, Robin James challenges us to consider the unfamiliar resonances produced by our IP addresses, search histories, credit trails, and Facebook posts. How does the NSA transform our data footprints into the sweet, sweet, music of surveillance? Shhhhhhhh! Let's listen in. . . -AT
Kate Crawford has argued that there's a "big metaphor gap in how we describe algorithmic filtering." Specifically, its "emergent qualities" are particularly difficult to capture. This process, algorithmic dataveillance, finds and tracks dynamic patterns of relationships amongst otherwise unrelated material. I think that acoustics can fill the metaphor gap Crawford identifies. Because of its focus on identifying emergent patterns within a structure of data, rather than its cause or source, algorithmic dataveillance isn't panoptic, but acousmatic. Algorithmic dataveillance is acousmatic because it does not observe identifiable subjects, but ambient data environments, and it "listens" for harmonics to emerge as variously-combined data points fall into and out of phase/statistical correlation.
Dataveillance defines the form of surveillance that saturates our consumer information society. As this promotional Intel video explains, big data transcends the limits of human perception and cognition – it sees connections we cannot. And, as is the case with all superpowers, this is both a blessing and a curse. Although I appreciate emails from my local supermarket that remind me when my favorite bottle of wine is on sale, data profiling can have much more drastic and far-reaching effects. As Frank Pasquale has argued, big data can determine access to important resources like jobs and housing, often in ways that reinforce and deepen social inequities. Dataveillance is an increasingly prominent and powerful tool that determines many of our social relationships.
The term dataveillance was coined in 1988 by Roger Clarke, and refers to "the systematic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons." In this context, the person is the object of surveillance and data is the medium through which that surveillance occurs. Writing 20 years later, Michael Zimmer identifies a phase-shift in dataveillance that coincides with the increased popularity and dominance of "user-generated and user-driven Web technologies" (2008). These technologies, found today in big social media, "represent a new and powerful 'infrastructure of dataveillance,' which brings about a new kind of panoptic gaze of both users' online and even their offline activities" (Zimmer 2007). Metadataveillance and algorithmic filtering, however, are not variations on panopticism, but practices modeled—both historically/technologically and metaphorically—on acoustics.
In 2013, Edward Snowden's infamous leaks revealed the nuts and bolts of the National Security Administration's massive dataveillance program. They were collecting data records that, according to the Washington Post, included "e-mails, attachments, address books, calendars, files stored in the cloud, text or audio or video chats and 'metadata' that identify the locations, devices used and other information about a target." The most enduringly controversial aspect of NSA dataveillance programs has been the bulk collection of Americans' data and metadata—in other words, the "big data"-veillance programs.
Borrowed from thierry ehrmann @Flickr CC BY.
Instead of intercepting only the communications of known suspects, this big dataveillance collects everything from everyone and mines that data for patterns of suspicious behavior; patterns that are consistent with what algorithms have identified as, say, "terrorism." As Cory Doctorow writes in BoingBoing, "Since the start of the Snowden story in 2013, the NSA has stressed that while it may intercept nearly every Internet user's communications, it only 'targets' a small fraction of those, whose traffic patterns reveal some basis for suspicion." "Suspicion," here, is an emergent property of the dataset, a pattern or signal that becomes legible when you filter communication (meta)data through algorithms designed to hear that signal amidst all the noise.
Hearing a signal from amidst the noise, however, is not sufficient to consider surveillance acousmatic. "Panoptic" modes of listening and hearing, though epitomized by the universal and internalized gaze of the guards in the tower, might also be understood as the universal and internalized ear of the confessor. This is the ear that, for example, listens for conformity between bodily and vocal gender presentation. It is also the ear of audio scrobbling, which, as Calum Marsh has argued, is a confessional, panoptic music listening practice.
Therefore, when President Obama argued that "nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he was correct. But only insofar as nobody (human or AI) is "listening" in the panoptic sense. The NSA does not listen for the "confessions" of already-identified subjects. For example, this court order to Verizon doesn't demand recordings of the audio content of the calls, just the metadata. Again, the Washington Post explains:
The data doesn't include the speech in a phone call or words in an email, but includes almost everything else, including the model of the phone and the "to" and "from" lines in emails. By tracing metadata, investigators can pinpoint a suspect's location to specific floors of buildings. They can electronically map a person's contacts, and their contacts' contacts.
NSA dataveillance listens acousmatically because it hears the patterns of relationships that emerge from various combinations of data—e.g., which people talk and/or meet where and with what regularity. Instead of listening to identifiable subjects, the NSA identifies and tracks emergent properties that are statistically similar to already-identified patterns of "suspicious" behavior. Legally, the NSA is not required to identify a specific subject to surveil; instead they listen for patterns in the ambience. This type of observation is "acousmatic" in the sound studies sense because the sounds/patterns don't come from one identifiable cause; they are the emergent properties of an aggregate.
Borrowed from david @Flickr CC BY-NC.
Acousmatic listening is a particularly appropriate metaphor for NSA-style dataveillance because the emergent properties (or patterns) of metadata are comparable to harmonics or partials of sound, the resonant frequencies that emerge from a specific combination of primary tones and overtones. If data is like a sound's primary tone, metadata is its overtones. When two or more tones sound simultaneously, harmonics emerge whhen overtones vibrate with and against one another. In Western music theory, something sounds dissonant and/or out of tune when the harmonics don't vibrate synchronously or proportionally. Similarly, tones that are perfectly in tune sometimes create a consonant harmonic. The NSA is listening for harmonics. They seek metadata that statistically correlates to a pattern (such as "terrorism"), or is suspiciously out of correlation with a pattern (such as US "citizenship"). Instead of listening to identifiable sources of data, the NSA listens for correlations among data.
Both panopticism and acousmaticism are technologies that incite behavior and compel people to act in certain ways. However, they both use different methods, which, in turn, incite different behavioral outcomes. Panopticism maximizes efficiency and productivity by compelling conformity to a standard or norm. According to Michel Foucault, the outcome of panoptic surveillance is a society where everyone synchs to an "obligatory rhythm imposed from the outside" (151-2), such as the rhythmic divisions of the clock (150). In other words, panopticism transforms people into interchangeable cogs in an industrial machine. Methodologically, panopticism demands self-monitoring. Foucault emphasizes that panopticism functions most efficiently when the gaze is internalized, when one "assumes responsibility for the constraints of power" and "makes them play…upon himself" (202). Panopticism requires individuals to synchronize themselves with established compulsory patterns.
Acousmaticism, on the other hand, aims for dynamic attunement between subjects and institutions, an attunement that is monitored and maintained by a third party (in this example, the algorithm). For example, Facebook's News Feed algorithm facilitates the mutual adaptation of norms to subjects and subjects to norms. Facebook doesn't care what you like; instead it seeks to transform your online behavior into a form of efficient digital labor. In order to do this, Facebook must adjust, in part, to you. Methodologically, this dynamic attunement is not a practice of internalization, but unlike Foucault's panopticon, big dataveillance leverages outsourcing and distribution. There is so much data that no one individual—indeed, no one computer—can process it efficiently and intelligibly. The work of dataveillance is distributed across populations, networks, and institutions, and the surveilled "subject" emerges from that work (for example, Rob Horning's concept of the "data self"). Acousmaticism tunes into the rhythmic patterns that synch up with and amplify its cycles of social, political, and economic reproduction.
Sonic Boom! Borrowed from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center @Flickr CC BY.
Unlike panopticism, which uses disciplinary techniques to eliminate noise, acousmaticism uses biopolitical techniques to allow profitable signals to emerge as clearly and frictionlessly as possible amid all the noise (for more on the relation between sound and biopolitics, see my previous SO! essay). Acousmaticism and panopticism are analytically discrete, yet applied in concert. For example, certain tiers of the North Carolina state employee's health plan require so-called "obese" and tobacco-using members to commit to weight-loss and smoking-cessation programs. If these members are to remain eligible for their selected level of coverage, they must track and report their program-related activities (such as exercise). People who exhibit patterns of behavior that are statistically risky and unprofitable for the insurance company are subject to extra layers of surveillance and discipline. Here, acousmatic techniques regulate the distribution and intensity of panoptic surveillance. To use Nathan Jurgenson's turn of phrase, acousmaticism determines "for whom" the panoptic gaze matters. To be clear, acousmaticism does not replace panopticism; my claim is more modest. Acousmaticism is an accurate and productive metaphor for theorizing both the aims and methods of big dataveillance, which is, itself, one instrument in today's broader surveillance ensemble.
Featured image "Big Brother 13/365" by Dennis Skley CC BY-ND.
Robin James is Associate Professor of Philosophy at UNC Charlotte. She is author of two books: Resilience & Melancholy: pop music, feminism, and neoliberalism will be published by Zer0 books this fall, and The Conjectural Body: gender, race and the philosophy of music was published by Lexington Books in 2010. Her work on feminism, race, contemporary continental philosophy, pop music, and sound studies has appeared in The New Inquiry, Hypatia, differences, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. She is also a digital sound artist and musician. She blogs at its-her-factory.com and is a regular contributor to Cyborgology.
REWIND!…If you liked this post, check out:
"Cremation of the senses in friendly fire": on sound and biopolitics (via KMFDM & World War Z)–Robin James
The Dark Side of Game Audio: The Sounds of Mimetic Control and Affective Conditioning–Aaron Trammell
Listening to Whisperers: Performance, ASMR Community, and Fetish on YouTube–Joshua Hudelson
by sshorowitz
in Article, Digital Media, Documentary, Field Recording, Hearing the UnHeard, Listening, Noise, Silence, Sound, Sound Art, Sound Studies, Technology, The Body
The Better to Hear You With, My Dear: Size and the Acoustic World
Today the SO! Thursday stream inaugurates a four-part series entitled Hearing the UnHeard, which promises to blow your mind by way of your ears. Our Guest Editor is Seth Horowitz, a neuroscientist at NeuroPop and author of The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind (Bloomsbury, 2012), whose insightful work on brings us directly to the intersection of the sciences and the arts of sound.
That's where he'll be taking us in the coming weeks. Check out his general introduction just below, and his own contribution for the first piece in the series. — NV
Welcome to Hearing the UnHeard, a new series of articles on the world of sound beyond human hearing. We are embedded in a world of sound and vibration, but the limits of human hearing only let us hear a small piece of it. The quiet library screams with the ultrasonic pulsations of fluorescent lights and computer monitors. The soothing waves of a Hawaiian beach are drowned out by the thrumming infrasound of underground seismic activity near "dormant" volcanoes. Time, distance, and luck (and occasionally really good vibration isolation) separate us from explosive sounds of world-changing impacts between celestial bodies. And vast amounts of information, ranging from the songs of auroras to the sounds of dying neurons can be made accessible and understandable by translating them into human-perceivable sounds by data sonification.
Four articles will examine how this "unheard world" affects us. My first post below will explore how our environment and evolution have constrained what is audible, and what tools we use to bring the unheard into our perceptual realm. In a few weeks, sound artist China Blue will talk about her experiences recording the Vertical Gun, a NASA asteroid impact simulator which helps scientists understand the way in which big collisions have shaped our planet (and is very hard on audio gear). Next, Milton A. Garcés, founder and director of the Infrasound Laboratory of University of Hawaii at Manoa will talk about volcano infrasound, and how acoustic surveillance is used to warn about hazardous eruptions. And finally, Margaret A. Schedel, composer and Associate Professor of Music at Stonybrook University will help readers explore the world of data sonification, letting us listen in and get greater intellectual and emotional understanding of the world of information by converting it to sound.
— Guest Editor Seth Horowitz
Although light moves much faster than sound, hearing is your fastest sense, operating about 20 times faster than vision. Studies have shown that we think at the same "frame rate" as we see, about 1-4 events per second. But the real world moves much faster than this, and doesn't always place things important for survival conveniently in front of your field of view. Think about the last time you were driving when suddenly you heard the blast of a horn from the previously unseen truck in your blind spot.
Hearing also occurs prior to thinking, with the ear itself pre-processing sound. Your inner ear responds to changes in pressure that directly move tiny little hair cells, organized by frequency which then send signals about what frequency was detected (and at what amplitude) towards your brainstem, where things like location, amplitude, and even how important it may be to you are processed, long before they reach the cortex where you can think about it. And since hearing sets the tone for all later perceptions, our world is shaped by what we hear (Horowitz, 2012).
But we can't hear everything. Rather, what we hear is constrained by our biology, our psychology and our position in space and time. Sound is really about how the interaction between energy and matter fill space with vibrations. This makes the size, of the sender, the listener and the environment, one of the primary features that defines your acoustic world.
You've heard about how much better your dog's hearing is than yours. I'm sure you got a slight thrill when you thought you could actually hear the "ultrasonic" dog-training whistles that are supposed to be inaudible to humans (sorry, but every one I've tested puts out at least some energy in the upper range of human hearing, even if it does sound pretty thin). But it's not that dogs hear better. Actually, dogs and humans show about the same sensitivity to sound in terms of sound pressure, with human's most sensitive region from 1-4 kHz and dogs from about 2-8 kHz. The difference is a question of range and that is tied closely to size.
Most dogs, even big ones, are smaller than most humans and their auditory systems are scaled similarly. A big dog is about 100 pounds, much smaller than most adult humans. And since body parts tend to scale in a coordinated fashion, one of the first places to search for a link between size and frequency is the tympanum or ear drum, the earliest structure that responds to pressure information. An average dog's eardrum is about 50 mm2, whereas an average human's is about 60 mm2. In addition while a human's cochlea is spiral made of 2.5 turns that holds about 3500 inner hair cells, your dog's has 3.25 turns and about the same number of hair cells. In short: dogs probably have better high frequency hearing because their eardrums are better tuned to shorter wavelength sounds and their sensory hair cells are spread out over a longer distance, giving them a wider range.
Interest in the how hearing works in animals goes back centuries. Classical image of comparative ear anatomy from 1789 by Andreae Comparetti.
Then again, if hearing was just about size of the ear components, then you'd expect that yappy 5 pound Chihuahua to hear much higher frequencies than the lumbering 100 pound St. Bernard. Yet hearing sensitivity from the two ends of the dog spectrum don't vary by much. This is because there's a big difference between what the ear can mechanically detect and what the animal actually hears. Chihuahuas and St. Bernards are both breeds derived from a common wolf-like ancestor that probably didn't have as much variability as we've imposed on the domesticated dog, so their brains are still largely tuned to hear what a medium to large pseudo wolf-like animal should hear (Heffner, 1983).
But hearing is more than just detection of sound. It's also important to figure out where the sound is coming from. A sound's location is calculated in the superior olive – nuclei in the brainstem that compare the difference in time of arrival of low frequency sounds at your ears and the difference in amplitude between your ears (because your head gets in the way, making a sound "shadow" on the side of your head furthest from the sound) for higher frequency sounds. This means that animals with very large heads, like elephants, will be able to figure out the location of longer wavelength (lower pitched) sounds, but probably will have problems localizing high pitched sounds because the shorter frequencies will not even get to the other side of their heads at a useful level. On the other hand, smaller animals, which often have large external ears, are under greater selective pressure to localize higher pitched sounds, but have heads too small to pick up the very low infrasonic sounds that elephants use.
Audiograms (auditory sensitivity in air measured in dB SPL) by frequency of animals of different sizes showing the shift of maximum sensitivity to lower frequencies with increased size. Data replotted based on audiogram data by Sivian and White (1933). "On minimum audible sound fields." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 4: 288-321; ISO 1961; Heffner, H., & Masterton, B. (1980). "Hearing in glires: domestic rabbit, cotton rat, feral house mouse, and kangaroo rat." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 68, 1584-1599.; Heffner, R. S., & Heffner, H. E. (1982). "Hearing in the elephant: Absolute sensitivity, frequency discrimination, and sound localization." Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 96, 926-944.; Heffner H.E. (1983). "Hearing in large and small dogs: Absolute thresholds and size of the tympanic membrane." Behav. Neurosci. 97: 310-318. ; Jackson, L.L., et al.(1999). "Free-field audiogram of the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata)." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106: 3017-3023.
But you as a human are a fairly big mammal. If you look up "Body Size Species Richness Distribution" which shows the relative size of animals living in a given area, you'll find that humans are among the largest animals in North America (Brown and Nicoletto, 1991). And your hearing abilities scale well with other terrestrial mammals, so you can stop feeling bad about your dog hearing "better." But what if, by comic-book science or alternate evolution, you were much bigger or smaller? What would the world sound like? Imagine you were suddenly mouse-sized, scrambling along the floor of an office. While the usual chatter of humans would be almost completely inaudible, the world would be filled with a cacophony of ultrasonics. Fluorescent lights and computer monitors would scream in the 30-50 kHz range. Ultrasonic eddies would hiss loudly from air conditioning vents. Smartphones would not play music, but rather hum and squeal as their displays changed.
And if you were larger? For a human scaled up to elephantine dimensions, the sounds of the world would shift downward. While you could still hear (and possibly understand) human speech and music, the fine nuances from the upper frequency ranges would be lost, voices audible but mumbled and hard to localize. But you would gain the infrasonic world, the low rumbles of traffic noise and thrumming of heavy machinery taking on pitch, color and meaning. The seismic world of earthquakes and volcanoes would become part of your auditory tapestry. And you would hear greater distances as long wavelengths of low frequency sounds wrap around everything but the largest obstructions, letting you hear the foghorns miles distant as if they were bird calls nearby.
But these sounds are still in the realm of biological listeners, and the universe operates on scales far beyond that. The sounds from objects, large and small, have their own acoustic world, many beyond our ability to detect with the equipment evolution has provided. Weather phenomena, from gentle breezes to devastating tornadoes, blast throughout the infrasonic and ultrasonic ranges. Meteorites create infrasonic signatures through the upper atmosphere, trackable using a system devised to detect incoming ICBMs. Geophones, specialized low frequency microphones, pick up the sounds of extremely low frequency signals foretelling of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Beyond the earth, we translate electromagnetic frequencies into the audible range, letting us listen to the whistlers and hoppers that signal the flow of charged particles and lightning in the atmospheres of Earth and Jupiter, microwave signals of the remains of the Big Bang, and send listening devices on our spacecraft to let us hear the winds on Titan.
Here is a recording of whistlers recorded by the Van Allen Probes currently orbiting high in the upper atmosphere:
When the computer freezes or the phone battery dies, we complain about how much technology frustrates us and complicates our lives. But our audio technology is also the source of wonder, not only letting us talk to a friend around the world or listen to a podcast from astronauts orbiting the Earth, but letting us listen in on unheard worlds. Ultrasonic microphones let us listen in on bat echolocation and mouse songs, geophones let us wonder at elephants using infrasonic rumbles to communicate long distances and find water. And scientific translation tools let us shift the vibrations of the solar wind and aurora or even the patterns of pure math into human scaled songs of the greater universe. We are no longer constrained (or protected) by the ears that evolution has given us. Our auditory world has expanded into an acoustic ecology that contains the entire universe, and the implications of that remain wonderfully unclear.
Exhibit: Home Office
This is a recording made with standard stereo microphones of my home office. Aside from usual typing, mouse clicking and computer sounds, there are a couple of 3D printers running, some music playing, largely an environment you don't pay much attention to while you're working in it, yet acoustically very rich if you pay attention.
https://soundstudies.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/sonicoffice.wav
This sample was made by pitch shifting the frequencies of sonicoffice.wav down so that the ultrasonic moves into the normal human range and cuts off at about 1-2 kHz as if you were hearing with mouse ears. Sounds normally inaudible, like the squealing of the computer monitor cycling on kick in and the high pitched sound of the stepper motors from the 3D printer suddenly become much louder, while the familiar sounds are mostly gone.
https://soundstudies.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/mouseoffice.wav
This recording of the office was made with a Clarke Geophone, a seismic microphone used by geologists to pick up underground vibration. It's primary sensitivity is around 80 Hz, although it's range is from 0.1 Hz up to about 2 kHz. All you hear in this recording are very low frequency sounds and impacts (footsteps, keyboard strikes, vibration from printers, some fan vibration) that you usually ignore since your ears are not very well tuned to frequencies under 100 Hz.
https://soundstudies.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/infrasonicoffice.wav
Finally, this sample was made by pitch shifting the frequencies of infrasonicoffice.wav up as if you had grown to elephantine proportions. Footsteps and computer fan noises (usually almost indetectable at 60 Hz) become loud and tonal, and all the normal pitch of music and computer typing has disappeared aside from the bass. (WARNING: The fan noise is really annoying).
https://soundstudies.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/elephantoffice.wav
The point is: a space can sound radically different depending on the frequency ranges you hear. Different elements of the acoustic environment pop up depending on the type of recording instrument you use (ultrasonic microphone, regular microphones or geophones) or the size and sensitivity of your ears.
Spectrograms (plots of acoustic energy [color] over time [horizontal axis] by frequency band [vertical axis]) from a 90 second recording in the author's home office covering the auditory range from ultrasonic frequencies (>20 kHz top) to the sonic (20 Hz-20 kHz, middle) to the low frequency and infrasonic (<20 Hz).
Featured image by Flickr User Jaime Wong.
Seth S. Horowitz, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist whose work in comparative and human hearing, balance and sleep research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and NASA. He has taught classes in animal behavior, neuroethology, brain development, the biology of hearing, and the musical mind. As chief neuroscientist at NeuroPop, Inc., he applies basic research to real world auditory applications and works extensively on educational outreach with The Engine Institute, a non-profit devoted to exploring the intersection between science and the arts. His book The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind was released by Bloomsbury in September 2012.
REWIND! If you liked this post, check out …
Reproducing Traces of War: Listening to Gas Shell Bombardment, 1918– Brian Hanrahan
Learning to Listen Beyond Our Ears– Owen Marshall
This is Your Body on the Velvet Underground– Jacob Smith


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Graphic New York
Exiles on 12th Street, Episode One
Co-executive Editor, Public Seminar and Professor of History, The New School for Social Research
This is the first episode in Public Seminar's podcast, Exiles on 12th Street. If you like it, go to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe.
What does New York look like, feel like, sound like, smell like? In celebration of the city that Exiles on 12th Street calls home, the first episode of the podcast is dedicated to the stories of those who live here. Join us as we hit the streets to explore the glamour, grit, and grunge of graphic New York with biographer Chris Bonanos, radical counter-cartographer Lize Mogel, dedicated walker Matt Green, and writer and critic Luc Sante. Presented by historian Claire Potter, executive editor of Public Seminar.
Here are some links and references mentioned in this podcast:
As a biographer, Chris Bonanos is the author of Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous. He is also the senior editor of New York Magazine. The episode image was taken by Weegee at an opening night at the Metropolitan Opera in 1943. It is one of the most famous images of the twentieth century and the one that cemented Weegee's reputation. Forty-odd years later and Weegee's assistant came clean: he admitted that he and Weegee had gotten the disheveled woman drunk beforehand, then planted her at the scene.
Claire Potter notes the brownstone where James Baldwin wrote his first articles for The Nation. That former residence is located in Greenwich Village on 81 Horatio Street, and those writings can be read here.
Radical counter-cartographer Lize Mogel is the co-editor of An Atlas of Radical Cartography and has exhibited interdisciplinary work about political and social issues in South Korea, Pittsburgh, the U.A.E., and New York, among other international locations.
Matt Green, a former civil engineer, has spent the past seven years walking every block of New York's five boroughs. He is the subject of the recent documentary "The World Before Your Feet."
Claire mentions Nonstop Metropolis, a book by Rebecca Solnit and and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro that maps New York's many histories from many points of view, including that of writer and critic Luc Sante.
Sante is a writer and critic who authored Low Life, a nonfiction account of Lower Manhattan; Evidence, a documentation of crime in New York From the early and eerie 1900s; and The Factory of Facts, a memoir, among many additional books and interviews.
Sante gives Exiles producer Sarah Montague a guided tour of Tompkins Square Park. The park is located in Alphabet City, from Avenue A To Avenue B, East 7th Street To East 10th Street.
Kicking and Screaming: Stonewall at 50
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Presidential Pardons, and Separated Families
Keywords: Architecture, Cartography, Infrastructure, New York, Riots, Urbanism
Related Names: Christopher Bonanos, Weegee the Famous

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


SRINAGAR, May 16: Many ministers do not attend their offices in the Civil Secretariat here, while there are no nameplates outside offices of a number of bureaucrats and other officials, causing inconvenience to the visitors.
"There are no nameplates even after 10 days have passed since the Secretariat opened in Srinagar," sources told Early Times. "There is total chaos and confusion. We even don't know which bureaucrat is sitting in which room due to absence of name plates," the sources said.
The absence of nameplates is giving a tough time to the people inside the Secretariat. "It is puzzling why nameplates have not been installed outside offices of many bureaucrats," Ghulam Rasool, a resident of Pampore, said. "Government seems not interested in provide relief to the people," said Rasool while waiting outside the chamber of a minister. Since the 'Durbar' shifted to Srinagar from Jammu, most of the PDP-BJP ministers prefer not to stay in the Secretariat. "We visited the Secretariat twice about the health issues in our district, including lack of staff and shortage of medicines at the district hospital," said Mohammad Subhan, a resident of Ganderbal.
He was waiting along with a group of people outside the Health Minister's chamber in the Secretariat on Wednesday. "The officials said the minister is not here, so we have to return home without meeting the minister," he said.
Another delegation from Handwara had to return home from the Secretariat after the ministers they wanted to meet were not available. "We visited thrice in the last three days for redressal of sanitation problems, shortage of drinking water and health issues. Every time we have to return home as the concerned ministers are not available here," a group of residents said.
"Few ministers who come to the Secretariat come for mere formality. They stay for an hour and leave without meeting the people," said a security official, wishing anonymity.
Sources said most of the ministers remained available only on the first day when Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti received Guard of Honour after which she held a meeting with ministers.


When does a wrong become a right?
Danny Samsel has defeated the finest security systems in the world. Interpol wants him, the FBI wants him, the CIA wants him. He is a Master Thief - even the White House could not prevent him from liberating one of their paintings.
Now, after a year languishing on Kefalonia, he has turned his attention to his greatest adventure: the heist of the century. In the 19th century Lord Elgin stole pieces of the Parthenon and shipped them to England. In the 21st century Danny Samsel is going to steal them back. He has decided to return the Marbles to Greece.
His motives are not entirely altruistic: having enraged and estranged Kastania, his beautiful and extraordinary girlfriend, who just happens to be able to access and overcome any computer system, he wants her back in his life. She never left his heart. And he needs her help to steal the Marbles from the British Museum.
With help from old friends worldwide plus a few new, surprising ones, Danny and the Marbles endure a perilous journey across Europe to their Hellenic home. With dire, vicious interventions from Interpol and avaricious underworld art collectors, betrayal from a trusted friend, Danny conquers all obstacles with grit and humour. At great cost to himself and grievous loss to his accomplices, Danny rights an international wrong, settles a few other scores, foxes old foes, and guarantees the future of his chosen career.
Stealing the Marbles by E.J. Knapp introduces us to professional art thief Danny Samsel. Samsel is planning what may be the biggest heist of his career: he wants to steal the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum and return them to Greece. It is a fact that the Elgin Marbles were taken from the Parthenon in Greece in the 19th century by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and shipped to England. The Elgin Marbles are currently in the British Museum in London. For centuries the Greeks have wanted their national treasures returned.
Stealing the Marbles follows the formula of a classic crime novel. We know right from the start what Danny is planning to do and follow along as he sets his plan into motion. As Danny travels across Europe and even, briefly to the USA, Knapp does a good job establishing the setting and giving all the details that will set Danny's plan into motion. I felt the book started out slow, but that was basically because the details of the plan were being worked out. There is tension mounting as Danny realizes there is something else afoot that may affect him and his plans. Danny is a likeable character and I have hopes that Knapp will bring him and his cohorts back for another job soon.
If you are interested in joining the campaign to Send The Marbles Home, please check out Knapp's website.
I did have a few minor quibbles that won't deter from the story for most people, but did for me. First, using all the current techniques and technology available, forgeries in art can be found today. I can suspend disbelief, but just saying... My main problem was that I noticed when Knapp referred several times to blooming flowers, they were inevitably roses, irises, and lilies. (I flagged two pages after reading previous mentions, pg 99 and 122.) As a long-time gardener, generally, if you are talking about the roses, irises and lilies I know and am familiar with, you aren't going to have the irises blooming at the same time as the lilies and the roses. I know it's minor, but it was distracting to me.
Disclosure: I received this novel from the author through Goodreads.
"Maybe you could just hire somebody to steal them or something," I continued.
"There have been some problems of late. I thought it best you were protected on your journey, though of course, I saw no reason to alarm you as these...problems don't concern you."
Don't concern me?" I asked. "Dieter then?"


Happy National Hot Cocoa Day! Yep, that's actually a day (look it up if you don't believe me). To celebrate I finally recorded my new vegan hot chocolate recipe, which I've been perfecting over the last few weeks. I've experimented with different nut milks and flavors and this one is the richest and tastiest yet! Plus, it's free of gluten, soy and sugar and you can use all bulk ingredients. Enjoy!
Is it possible to make vegan french toast that is gluten-free, soy-free, sugar-free, salt-free and even oil-free? Absolutely! In fact, here are 3 recipes from different sources so you can choose one that sounds most appealing or based on ingredients you have on hand - you could even mix and match ingredients from each recipe. No matter how you do it you'll have a delicious breakfast in under 10 minutes and for less than $3 a serving.
I found this recipe while searching for a pasta and butternut squash dish. With a few modifications I made it vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, sugar-free, low in oil, and no added salt. It's a very hardy dish with flavors reminiscent of a dish you'd have for Thanksgiving, due to the thyme and nutmeg. You can play around with the seasonings to give it a taste suitable to your palette, but I think it's fantastic the way it is.
In a video I did on Easy, Cheap Vegan Meals I mentioned Chickpea "Tuna" Salad, which costs about $1.50 to make per serving. A reader named Lindsay asked if I could share the recipe, so I thought I might as well do a video too!


text:
Battle for key Yemeni port intensifies as world worries about Idlib
Yemen conflict, dubbed the 'forgotten war', is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe
Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 21:29
Michael Jansen
A Yemeni child stands among armed supporters of Houthi rebels during a gathering to mobilise more fighters into the Hodeidah battlefront, in Sanaa, Yemen, last week. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA
As the world's attention remains focused on a likely catastrophic humanitarian fallout from any Syrian army offensive against jihadis in Idlib province, Saudi Arabian and Emirati forces have renewed the existential battle against Houthi rebels for Hodeida, Yemen's key city and port.
Under pressure to avert a predicted humanitarian disaster, the Syrian army and its Russian and Iranian allies have deferred a major assault on Idlib.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is set to meet his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Monday in a fresh bid to agree on how to eliminate jihadi factions in Idlib and impose a ceasefire without causing massive civilian casualties.
Every military move in Syria is closely scrutinised. The Yemen conflict is dubbed the "forgotten war".
In Yemen, western-supported and armed Sunni Saudis and Emiratis had paused their offensive until the August 7th collapse of the UN effort to launch peace talks between the Riyadh-sponsored government and the Houthi rebels, who have modest Iranian support.
About 38,500 civilians have been displaced in Idlib; more than 30,000 have fled Hodeida, some to Yemen's capital Sanaa, others to a nearby inhospitable desert area. Syrian civilians in Idlib receive humanitarian assistance from UN and other agencies based across the border in Turkey. Aid for civilians in Yemen, where need is greater, is insufficient due to Saudi blockade of the ports. This makes the battle for Hodeida existential.
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Blocked main route
Last week, Emirati forces captured the sections of the highway connecting Hodeida city to the capital, Sanaa, and blocked the main route for supplies for the Houthis who control both main urban centres. The aim of the allies is to compel the Houthis, who refused to attend the UN-brokered talks, to negotiate.
If the Saudis and Emiratis were to capture Hodeida port, they could cut the flow of food and medicine to the Houthi-held north, where the majority of the 28 million Yemenis live. Some 80 per cent of aid and commercial goods for the country enters through Hodeida.
Any halt to imports could lead to famine in the region's poorest country, where 22 million depend on external aid and 8.4 million people are malnourished and on the brink of starvation.
While western governments have been preoccupied with Idlib, UN agencies have not forgotten Yemen. Humanitarian co-ordinator Lisa Grande said the Yemen crisis had deteriorated "dramatically" since the failure of the peace talks. "Hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance [in Hodeida] where families are absolutely terrified by the bombardment, shelling and air strikes."
"Parties to the conflict are obliged to do absolutely everything possible to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and ensure people have access to the aid they are entitled to and need to survive," she said.
Targeted aid workers
The World Food Programme (WFP) warned that shelling and aerial bombing in Hodeida province have targeted aid workers and facilities and called the situation "alarming". WFP said: "The conflict [is] threatening the continuity of humanitarian assistance to the city and surrounding areas where needs are among the highest in the country." During August, WFP provided food for 700,000 of the 900,000 residents in the province.
"The conflict has made Yemen a living hell for its children," said UN children's agency (Unicef) Yemen representative Meritxell Relano. She said more than 11 million children are threatened by food shortages, disease, displacement and access to essential social services.
"An estimated 1.8 million children are malnourished in the country – nearly 400,000 severely malnourished and they are fighting for their lives every day."
The Saudi-led war, launched in March 2015, has devastated the country and killed an unknown number of civilians. The UN stopped counting fatalities two years ago. Popular and parliamentary pressure on western governments to halt arms supplies to the Saudis and Emiratis has not disrupted deliveries.
Ethnic attacks leave several dead outside Ethiopia's capital
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Pussy Riot activist 'doing better' in Berlin after suspected poisoning
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Russian Orthodox Church warns of violence and schism over Ukraine


text:
Home > Faculty Scholarship > Articles > 152
Squeezing Daubert Out of the Picture
Richard D. Friedman, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow
In this essay, I will offer some thoughts on how we might reframe the issues governing the admissibility of expert evidence. My principal focus is not on any particular type of expert evidence but on broader questions: the extent to which we ought to rely on rulings of admissibility, the standards that should govern admissibility rulings, and the role of the trial and appellate courts in making those rulings. To some extent, I will concentrate on the context of criminal cases, but for the most part my conclusions apply in both civil and criminal litigation. Here are my conclusions: First, the standards for treatment of expert evidence should differ depending on the litigation context. Standards should be very lenient for criminal defendants, and tougher for prosecutors, with the standards for civil litigants somewhere in between. Second, more than has been the case, the test that carries the bite with respect to expert evidence should be one of sufficiency rather than of admissibility. Third, the model created by Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.' and General Electric Company v. Joiner, and extended by Kumho Tire Company, Ltd. v. Carmichael,' in which trial courts, reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard, act as gatekeeepers to prevent jurors from being bamboozled by unreliable evidence, is not a useful one. Reliability is an inappropriate, misleading standard for testing the admissibility of expert evidence. It does not reflect the way we should think about admissibility issues, and it ought to be discarded. Moreover, trial courts are not well positioned to sort the good from the bad. Where it is appropriate to exclude evidence, the decision usually should be made as a matter of law. This is because the difficulties that are most likely to warrant exclusion usually share either or both of these characteristics: (i) they are recurrent matters (including the behavior of repeat players) for which a consistent resolution across cases is appropriate; or (ii) they involve errors, particularly inferential errors, in the way the evidence is presented that make it affirmatively misleading. Fourth, in some settings, as a less restrictive alternative to exclusion, courts should admit expert evidence but explain to the jury factors limiting the weight that the jury should accord the evidence. I believe that we should be considerably more generous than we have been with respect to expert evidence offered by the defense, and the net effect of my suggestions would probably be greater generosity with respect to expert evidence offered in civil cases. With respect to the principal focus of this article, expert evidence offered by a prosecution, my overall aim is not to argue that we should be more or less generous than we have been. But I do believe we need to restructure the way we think about the admissibility of such evidence. Sometimes the courts should exclude such evidence as a matter of law because it is affirmatively misleading, or because exclusion will induce the presentation of better evidence. Sometimes the trial court should admit the evidence but comment adversely on it. Sometimes the court should deem the evidence admissible but nevertheless hold that the evidence taken as a whole does not support a verdict. But if none of these principles apply and the expert evidence has significant probative value the court should not exclude it on the ground that it is unreliable, and rarely if at all should the court exclude it on the mere ground that the jury is likely to over-value it. Thus, I am suggesting that Daubert be squeezed out of the picture by other approaches to the problem.
Friedman, Richard D. "Squeezing Daubert Out of the Picture." Seton Hall L. Rev. 33, no. 4 (2003): 1047-70.
Courts Commons, Evidence Commons


text:
SGA discusses Gun Forums and Wellness Week
By JAMES SCHARF | November 7, 2019
The Student Government Association (SGA) passed an act and a series of bills at their weekly meeting on Tuesday.
Freshman Class Senator Anthony Singleton proposed the Special Forum Bill, which would require SGA to create a public forum if enough students feel that an issue or topic needs to be discussed. Singleton believes this would help students voice their thoughts on subjects of their interest.
"It's a good first step if there's an issue or topic that a student feels needs to be discussed in a wider space or in front of the administration then they could send a proposal to us and we'll sponsor the event and come up with the space, the people we need invited," Singleton said. "We'll facilitate that."
Senior Class Senator Chase McAdams questioned why the bill was not included in SGA's bylaws. Executive Vice President Dean Chien stated that it was best to use this year as a trial period for the bill and then to leave it to next year's SGA to determine what to do.
"The internal affairs committee met on Saturday and found that since we had not done this before, we felt uncomfortable with writing that into the bylaws as a permanent fixture," Chien said.
Next year's SGA will be required to vote to incorporate the Special Forum Bill into its bylaws after reviewing its success.
SGA also passed the Gun Safety Forum Bill, sponsored by Senior Class President Pavan Patel. The bill's goal is to invite speakers to host an informative event about the steps the government is taking to protect people from gun violence. In response to Sophomore Class Senator Adelle Thompson's suggestion to have more representation, the bill was edited to invite two members of the Baltimore community.
"Adelle talked about having more representation on there, so to address that we have two people that are coming from Baltimore," Patel said. "The first is Dr. [Joseph] Sakran. He's going to talk about his experience as a gun violence survivor and his work as a trauma surgeon at Hopkins. The second person is Erricka Bridgeford, she's the co-founder of Baltimore Ceasefire."
The bill was also edited to include more diverse viewpoints by bringing in both Republicans and Democrats. Senior Class Senator Chanel Lee introduced a bill for Wellness Week. They were motivated to introduce the bill in response to campus-wide mental health concerns.
"Students have expressed on campus that there aren't enough programming events for mental health," Lee said.
Wellness Week will include hot chocolate, bracelet-making, a healing space at the Interfaith Center and breakfast. This year's operating costs were more expensive than in previous years. Although Wellness Week was originally planned for next week, it will need to be moved to the week after Thanksgiving due to budget-requesting restraints. Several SGA members expressed concerns with the choice to use Bon Appetit, the Hopkins Dining partner, as the supplier of food because of its high cost. Lee is optimistic about this year's Wellness Week given student feedback from previous years.
"In terms of reception, I believe that Wellness Week is very successful," Lee said.
SGA also considered voting to support the Maryland Fair Elections Fund Resolution, which would create a public fund to reduce the power of large donations in politics. Due to concerns regarding the bill's partisanship and its lack of relevance to the Hopkins community, SGA voted to delay voting on the bill.
The first motion was the Moderated Caucus Act, which sets a series of operating standards for SGA. The act confirms that SGA should send a monthly update email to the student body to inform students of their progress. It also adds a new speaking format to SGA meetings. Nathan Mudrak, the sophomore class president, emphasized that the act changes very little from past rules.
"This is voting on the entire rule set," Mudrak said. "That's talking about how the agenda minutes are distributed, technology, food and drink policy, SGA sending out a monthly email from the SGA account, the excused absence policy, conflict of interest form, and then required meetings. All that stuff is the same, except the moderated caucus rule set."
The Moderated Caucus Act will not have an effect on the student body.


text:
Q: How to implement addthis share with infinte scroll and masonry
i had implemented infinite scroll with masonry i got stucked in addthis share button not working when i scroll to next loading images the addthis button getting displayed but it is not sharing appropriate images.
if i remove following three lines from masonry function
 addthis.toolbox('.addthis_toolbox');

 addthis.counter('.addthis_counter');

 addthis.init();

i am only able see addthis share button on first list of images after i scroll to next list of images the addthis share gets hidden
Javascript Code

A: i had solved the solution by adding
addthis.counter('.addthis_counter');

and
 if (window.addthis) {
            window.addthis.ost = 0;
            window.addthis.ready();
  }

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Nicu Cojocaru (n. 12 februarie 1951, Vintilă Vodă, județul Buzău) este un fost deputat român în legislatura 2000-2004, ales în județul Arad pe listele PRM.

Legături externe
 Nicu Cojocaru la cdep.ro

Nașteri în 1951
Deputați români 2000-2004
Politicieni români din secolul al XXI-lea
Membri ai Partidului România Mare

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Thank you very much for me being your friend. I hope we can exchange ideas and information on environmental projects that we are going to implement and install.
Victor we are happy that you will be joining us this year at the NC State Summit!


Celebrate the15th year anniversary of Fabfilter with us! In the period of 15th to the 30th of April the Fabfilter products are offered 40% cheaper.
ID: 427425 © 1996–2019 Thomann GmbH Thomann loves you, because you rock!


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text:
package common;

import java.sql.Timestamp;

public class User {

    private String login;
    private String name;
    private String email;
    private Timestamp created;

    public User() {
    }

    public User(String login, String name, String email, Timestamp created) {
        this.login = login;
        this.name = name;
        this.email = email;
        this.created = created;
    }

    public void setLogin(String login) {
        this.login = login;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public void setEmail(String email) {
        this.email = email;
    }

    public void setCreated(Timestamp created) {
        this.created = created;
    }

    public String getLogin() {
        return login;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public String getEmail() {
        return email;
    }

    public Timestamp getCreated() {
        return created;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "User{" +
                "login='" + login + '\'' +
                ", name='" + name + '\'' +
                ", email='" + email + '\'' +
                ", created=" + created +
                '}';
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
import json
import urllib.parse
import os

import pytest

FAKE_RESPONSES = {
    '/users/reupen': 'users/reupen.json',
    '/users/reupen/repos': 'users/reupen/repos.json',
    '/repos/reupen/columns_ui': 'repos/reupen/columns_ui.json',
    '/repos/reupen/columns_ui/branches':
        'repos/reupen/columns_ui/branches.json'
}

class MockResponse:
    def __init__(self, content, status_code=200, headers=None):
        self._content = content
        self.headers = headers if headers is not None else {}
        self.status = status_code

    async def json(self):
        return self._content

    async def __aexit__(self, exc_type, exc_val, exc_tb):
        pass

    async def __aenter__(self):
        return self

def get_mock(session, url, headers=None, params=None):
    headers = headers if headers is not None else {}
    params = params if params is not None else {}

    url_parts = urllib.parse.urlsplit(url)
    assert url_parts.path in FAKE_RESPONSES

    path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..', 'mock_data',
                        FAKE_RESPONSES[url_parts.path])

    with open(path) as f:
        data = json.load(f)

    return MockResponse(data)

@pytest.fixture(autouse=True)
def fake_response(monkeypatch):
    monkeypatch.setattr("aiohttp.ClientSession.get", get_mock)