Did you measure your alternator voltage as well? This is important. As per Kalahari Safari's post quoting Ctek's reply, the CTEk will have switched off if the battery voltage did in fact draw the charging voltage below 13.1V. If it did do this, then their solution makes sense.
But I very much doubt that this is what happened. It is very unlikely that your alternator is too small, old or faulty. My original Defender 60A alternator voltage dropped to 12.9V when hot, and this would have dropped out the CTEK charging circuit. My replacement alternator sorted this. Your alternator should not drop below 13.5V if in good nick. This could also of course happen (volt drop) if your wiring from the primary battery to your CTEK is too thin.
Looking at your wiring, all looks fine at the CTEK chargers - I disagree with HobieDave - your smartpass has been connected correctly. You do not need to connect stuff to the bottom right terminal - you can run it straight off your battery. I would not mess with the wiring before determining your actual fault. I do however agree with him that it would be better for your second aux battery to be in close proximity of the first one. It simplifies and reduces your wiring, and removes the battery from the hot engine bay - batteries hate heat.
I read the CTEK manual again, and learnt something - in my vehicle I actually only need the Smartpass, not both units, as my alternator is a smart alternator, and I do not need the solar controller. Also, something I did not know is that the Smartpass keeps the cranking battery topped up if the aux batteries are charged. A very handy feature, explaining why my starting battery does not lose any charge even if standing for a few weeks.
But more importantly in your case, it states that "The D250SA optimises the charge voltage by increasing the charge voltage at temperatures below 25°C/77°F and reducing it at temperatures higher than 25°C/77°F. The functions is always active." Unfortunately it does not give more details. I assume that it gets this temperature from the temperature sensor, and not from a temperature sensor on it's circuit board.
This is not good news, IMO. I would rather sacrifice some battery life in return for charging up the batteries at a faster rate and knowing that they are fully charged. This also partially explains the problems that I had in the past.
rises too high". It would be nice if they gave more details.
What would I do in your case?
1. Check the cable feed to your CTEK, and check the input voltage to your CTEK on a hot day with discharged batteries.
3. Relocate them if necessary.
Thanks for this Mikemi - sorry I am rejoining the thread quite late this evening!
I did constantly check out my alternator meter during my trip and I never saw it drop below 13.5v so it seems that an underperforming alternator is unlikely to be the issue. My main/cranking battery was replaced a year ago and looks like it is in good shape.
I also had my auxiliary batteries tested and one replaced before my trip so the issue is unlikely to be defective aux batteries.
I think my non-standard setup does need a thorough recheck but I remain convinced that temperature is an issue with a Ctek in normal African summer conditions and your reference to the 25C threshold in the manual seems to confirm this.
Your suggestion about a Cole Hersee solenoid is interesting - will look into it!
Thanks for the clear reference to the temp sensors. I have found the wires coming from these points but I still have to trace where they go in a very congested area.
In very hot ambient temperatures batteries don't seem to perform as well.
Ctek's - I had mine in 50C Kgalagadi temps two years ago and as far as I am aware it operated normally. It was only powering a single fridge off 220V and the alternator to lead crystal battery - no panels. We did not have hot beers!
Last edited by Paul Dold; 2019/04/08 at 11:10 PM.
We are dying to know this. Please revert once you've found where they are located.
My electronics knowledge is rather basic, but yes there are cables from the cranking/main battery to the Ctek unit at the back of the vehicle, from the Ctek unit to the adjacent aux battery and then also back to the additional aux battery in the engine bay. Not sure if this complex wiring system would contribute to charging problems? I am not sure what a temp sensor looks like - but have unsuccessfully searched for it.
I would think that your overly complex set up with cables running back and forth is partly where the problem lays, Voltage drop over the cables going back and forth and unknown diameter would also compound the problem. This is apart from the temp sensor location for the ctek probably hidden in a corner somewhere.
If i were in your shoes i would set up my system differently, The primary aux battery in the engine bay would run on a simple NL solenoid. The short cables between main and aux battery would lower the voltage loss. Power from this battery can be run to a distribution box at the rear for ancillary's like lights/small inverter etc.
The ctek and smart pass connect directly of the main battery via cable to its location in the rear and that will feed the secondary 105ah aux battery. Your pv panel can then be connected to the ctek to supplement the secondary battery as well when your standing in the sun. If the need exists you could add a second panel to your first one to give a bit of fat in your generation capacity.
NL spec sheets says "Average power draw of 2.5amps/12v is measured with a typical fridge-freezer temperature setting in an ambient temperature of 32 degrees at low-speed. Actual power consumptions may vary considerably with ambient temperature, thermostat settings and frequency of use. Power consumption will increase during periods of surplus available power (Turbo mode)"
Using this 2.5amps and adding another 80% extra draw due to climate takes you to a current draw of 4.5amps/hr so you should use approx 45amps for 10hours between usable PV sunlight. this should take your secondary aux battery to about a 55% soc before the panel starts working again. You will now have the other battery as spare capacity in the event of poor weather limiting generation during the day.
The other alternative is to put both batteries in the rear and run both in parallel of the ctek and simplify the wiring. Ultimately i think you should consider chatting to another installer.
E92 335i 430kw at the wheels!
Power from this battery can be run to a distribution box at the rear for ancillary's like lights/small inverter etc.
Would the long run to an inverter at the back not cause a high voltage drop ? Normally it is quite clear to keep the battery to inverter run below 1-1.5m. 12V amps is nearly 20 times the 220V amps.
Correct, if the alternator voltage in fact drops below 12.8V, causing the CTEK to switch off. That is why I asked for the alternator voltage. I would be very surprised if this was the case.
If however it was the case, then it would be very easy to wake up the alternator by shorting the input and output terminals on the CTEK thereby connecting the aux battery directly to the alternator.
I wouldn't as the Ctek is supposed to boost the voltage to 14.1V and by shortening the terminals you would only achieve a partial charge of the Aux batteries. Apart from potentially destroying some internals on the Ctek.
In the above scenario would you rather choose no charge, or un-boosted alternator charge?
Found the temperature sensor - it was coiled up between my second aux battery and the metal body of the vehicle, which is in a closed off box next to the back drawer system. So it was not being subjected to engine bay heat issues but could easily have registered temperatures higher than 25C in a 36C ambient temperature environment.
3) Running two batt of one ctek eg if the ctek reduce charging amps down to eg 8A, fridge is taking 4.5A, you have 3.5A effective charging, which are split between two batteries.
Im going to see if i can do a few test this weekend to see whats the impact on the charging rate on the ctek if you play around with the sensor temp..
Last edited by Hendrik du Toit; 2019/04/11 at 07:25 AM.
I have a CTEK 250. I have 2 batteries in my bakkie of around 200Ah. They run two 40l Engel fridges. I have been on 5 trips over the last 4 years where temps have been in the higher than average range. Two of which had temp. over 40'c for a week on end. Everything worked fine to the degree you would expect.
When temp gets high fridges struggle. A far greater load is put on all energie sources. At 39'c fridges rarely shut off.
The most important thing is to try and stay ahead, beacause once you fall behind the only answer is 220V.
100w solar panel is about half the size you need. So start there.
The installation looks very complicated and a bit unpractical. As faultfinding seem to be very difficult.
is not working properly could render a great setup useless.
Put everything close to each other. Cuts down on voltage drop, amount of connections and possible damage in unreachable places. Check the sensor for any damage and put it on the battery. If the sensor is not faulty then everything should work according to the specs you have given. I think the fault is somewhere in the installation. Loose wire or connetion or something like that.


We're happy to share the exciting news that Twin Beach Players, one of our nonprofit partners, is premiering their production of Barefoot in the Park this Friday, April 13th. The play, written by Neil Simon, will be running at the Boys & Girls Club performance venue in North Beach, Maryland until April 22nd.
Twin Beach Players is a nonprofit community theater, offering workshops (on creativity, improvisation, writing, and tech) and productions to artists and audiences within the Chesapeake Beach area.
As a recipient of our Community Building Blocks grant, members of Twin Beach Players were able to find materials and furniture for their stage set at the Forklift last week, including a vintage stove, farm sink, and metal cabinet.
If you check out the production, see if you can spot their Forklift finds! Show times are Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm, and Sundays at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available here.
We hope they break a leg!
We'd like to share the news of an upcoming panel with local activists and experts discussing Environmental Racism: How we got here and what's at stake today in the District and Prince George's. The event will take place from 2:30 – 4:00 pm on April 22nd, 2018 at the Prince George's African American Museum & Cultural Center, a great resource located just 5 minutes from the Forklift in North Brentwood, Maryland.
The event will be a panel discussion with Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Associate Professor at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, and Ms. Kari Fulton, a nationally recognized environmental reporter and now an activist and organizer on environmental justice issues in Prince George's County and D.C.
Through Monday, April 16th, the organizers (Prince George's County Maryland Chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice) are offering an early bird special to lock in the 15 registrations needed to ensure the event takes place. Get your ticket today to support a valuable local resource and learn about local racial justice history and evolution of current issues in our county. We hope to see you there!
Today and tomorrow, April 11th & 12th, 2018, modern and vintage courtyard items, including masonry & bricks, granite & marble counters, cast iron sinks, vintage and clawfoot bathtubs, wrought iron, security doors, window bars, and more are 40% off.
Please note: The sale does not include lumber or items inside the store, select specialty items, items from our consignment partners, or items listed online. Flash sales may not be combined with other sales or promotions. Items with missing or damaged price tags may not be sold.


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The 2008 Maine bear season found me back in Grand Lake Stream for my second chance at harvesting a black bruin. Last season despite my extreme measures of caliber selection and scent control, I still managed to leave the woods bearless. Returning this year with renewed vigor, I vowed to turn the tables on old Mr. Bear and finally fulfill my life long dream of harvesting my last of Maine's big 4.
Arriving at my final destination found me standing in the Grand Lake Stream town store gathering last minute supplies and drooling over hundreds of wet and dry fly patterns and an assortment of handsome handmade ash pack baskets. My eyes wandered over to the chart listing the number of bears harvested since the season opened. I noted few bears had been harvested and even fewer above 160 pounds. The guides explained that an unusually large crop of black berries and beechnuts had combined to create a smorgasbord that was keeping bears away from the baits. It became immediately apparent that taking a bear this season was to be no easy task. Never one to be discouraged, I ignored this data and decided that if it was to be my time I would indeed harvest a bear.
In the faded light of the second evening, my peripheral vision spotted the shape of a bear slowly creeping up my right hand side toward the bait. The stealth of the creature gave me pause as it silently navigated through a tangle of blow downs. As Mr. Bear entered a blind spot, I slowly raised my Browning (BAR) .30-'06 Springfield loaded with 220 grain core-locks and settled into a braced position. The bruin edged around the bait bucket causing my adrenaline to surge, heart to race and a euphoric feeling to wash over me. As the bear began feeding, the cross hairs of my Leupold 3x9 VXI settled behind the bear's forward shoulder. Unfortunately, the remainder of this story doesn't have timing on my side as legal hunting had ended 10 minutes before the bears appearance and the cambered round had been removed. In the dying light, I instead enjoyed watching the bear greedily gobble doughnuts, until the sound of my approaching ride encouraged the bear to sneak back into the woods as quietly as it had arrived.
1. Bear hunters need to be patient and wait for a good shot option to present itself. Bait sites typically offer hunters shot opportunities at 20 yards or much less. This tends to be an unusual hunting situation from most hunters so practice sessions at this yardage with your chosen firearm should be organized.
2. A firearm should be selected with sufficient knock down power. Maine guide favorites include the .30-'06 Springfield, .270 Winchester, .45-70, .444 Marlin, .500 Smith and Weston and a dozen other acceptable selections. No matter your caliber choice remember that shot placement is more important than caliber selection.
3. Low light situations often exist at bait sites so use quality optics or open sights. Test your sighting choice in your close range practice sessions in light conditions similar to those expected to be encountered at bait sites.
4. People have shot bear while smoking cigarettes and with little care for personal hygiene. My method of scent management is significantly more aggressive. My system includes making sure that body and clothes are washed in no scent soap. Boots, backpack and primary clothing layers when not worn are packed in garbage bags filled with pine or cedar branches. Properly matched cover scents are also employed. Don't use acorn or earth cover scent if you are sitting in a pine tree. Most importantly be consistent and do not get lazy.
5. Limit your movements while on stand. Pack to be comfortable by being properly prepared. Bringing water, cough drops, food, pee bottle and other necessities designed to make your long sit enjoyable. Have bug netting and a comfortable seat. There is noting worse then trying to remain motionless with mosquitoes drilling into your face and a wooden plank biting into your posterior. Camouflaged clothing matched to your surrounding will mask any small movements that you make.
6. Bring your GPS, map & compass and know how to navigate using both. Ask your guide where you will be hunting and what is in the immediate area for roads, streams, etc. Prepare for an emergency should one arise and understand how you will contact assistance should it be necessary.
7. Should you be fortunate enough to shoot a bear plan for extracting the animal and your role in the process.
8. Maine's weather in September can be fickle, during my 4 days of hunting temperatures ranged from 40-70 degrees with heavy rain and wind. To combat the worst of Mother Nature wear layered clothing matched to the anticipated weather conditions. Bring a winter hat despite the predicted weather as it takes up almost no space and is invaluable if you begin to get cold. A wide brimmed baseball hat is also helpful in either keeping the sun's glare or pouring rains off your face and out of your eyes.
9. All guides want you to be successful so listen carefully and be receptive to their ideas. If they want you to sit on a stand for 4 days so the bear learns not to fear your scent or that certain stands are better in different wind/weather conditions then don't second guess their advice.
10. Don't leave the stand until the time designated by your guide. If possible wait for the pick-up vehicle to arrive and scare away any bears in the area so that you don't accomplish this task while leaving. Best not to educate the bear that someone was at the stand site.
Driving back to central Maine over snaky route 6 and down mind numbing I95 gave me plenty of time for reflection. Pondering over the two years worth of bear hunting experiences had me comparing and contrasting the various hunting scenarios I had grown so accustomed to over the years. Sitting on a bait site had been an odd departure from what for me was considered usual and I relished every minute of it for the lessons learned. Sportsmen who view every time out in the woods as an educational opportunity greatly increase their chances of having a positive outdoor experience regardless of the final outcome. The ability to maintain a positive attitude despite adversity and level of success is tied to an understanding that anything worth achieving never comes without a serious investment of time and energy. Through persistence, consistency and patience your hunting successes will greatly improve as will your overall outdoor experience. If I know that on a hunt I tried my absolute best then I will leave satisfied even if not successful. A poor shot in the dark my look like a great option when your thoughts wander to going home bearless but true sportsman rises above. Be patient, your time will come.
Bear Hunt Taken to the Extreme (Part I) can be found HERE.
RO, I just wanted to say good job of respecting the laws. A lot of hunters would have made the shot and took the bear....10 minutes past legal hunting time. You did not. I admire that. Thanks for setting a good example.
Thanks KT. This is actually the 2nd year in a row for me that a bear has decided to visit the bait at an hour where seeing the cross hairs was a challenge. Though I still remain bearless, it is always better to go home empty handed then leave one in the woods wounded and in agony.
Do you know of anyone who hunts bear with a bow? I'd imagine it was quite common around 400-500 years ago. I'm sure your got to be a crack shot to do it though.
I had two clients at bear camp hunting with bows. Very cool stuff. One guy had a bear sneak in on him and stare at him the entire time he was feeding . . . so no chance to draw the bow. The other hunter fired a single arrow at the bear but miscalculated the distance and hit low, barely scraping hair from the bruin.
Even with a direct hit with an arrow I would be very cautious about following a large bear unless the client heard a death moan. Even then I would have a tight grip on my pistol going in!


text:
First of all, Friedrich Hayek isn't who many think he is. Everything which follows—the arguments for student loan debt forgiveness, the case for an anthropology of the common good, the digressions about outmoded political labels—all hinge on the notion that when people make the typical arguments from free market first principles, even their hero would have considered them zealots. The French philosopher Bruno Latour, in his book We Have Never Been Modern, argues that the theoretical division between nature and society is largely an arbitrary and erroneous one. Perhaps this essay should be titled "We Have Never Been Laissez-Faire." Because even the author of The Road to Serfdom recognized that a coherent vision of the common good exists antecedent to the character of markets or the demands of corporations.
Writing in The Claremont Review of Books, philosopher Edward Feser provides a corrective to the popular notion that Hayek believed in a sort of domino theory of free markets, in which any social interaction that is not monetized runs the risk of falling subject to creeping state totalitarianism:
[H]ayek never gave so silly an argument. Nor will one find in his work the chirpy optimism with which many libertarians and Reaganite conservatives ritualistically defend the market economy. Hayek's case for free enterprise doesn't fit any of the usual simplistic stereotypes. He not only explicitly and persistently rejected laissez-faire, but could write as eloquently about the moral downside of capitalism and the emotional attractions of socialism as any left-winger. In an era in which—young socialist chic notwithstanding—global capitalism appears to have swept all before it, it is the triumphalist defenders of the free market rather than its critics who have the most to learn from Hayek's cautious, nuanced apologia.
"Perhaps the most compelling argument against bilking people for cash is this: fuck schools. They don't deserve the money they're owed."
Hayek—a lapsed Catholic, Feser reminds us—formed his ideas within the crucible of an essentially Augustinian pessimism concerning the human mind's ability to discern perfectly and then act upon complex truths. Hence his fealty to a market-based pricing mechanism, markets being a more accurate reflection of complexity than, for instance, bureaucratic declaration. But that he advocated for a certain use of markets does not mean Hayek opposed government intervention in every form. In The Road to Serfdom, in fact, he argues in favor of regulation establishing social safety nets and safe working conditions. You can agree or disagree with Hayek on any number of issues, but you must concede that his thinking is more subtle, more nuanced than both his acolytes and detractors give him credit for. Still, his ideas aren't perfect. But those imperfections, it should be understood, don't have a left- or right-wing bias. They have an idolatry bias. As Freser writes in the conclusion to his essay on Hayek,
The problem is one of fetishizing capitalism, of making market imperatives the governing principles to which all other aspects of social order are subordinate. The irony is that this is a variation on the same basic error of which socialism is guilty—what Pope John Paul II called "economism," the reduction of human life to its economic aspect. Even F.A. Hayek, a far more subtle thinker than other defenders of the free economy, ultimately succumbed to this tendency. Too many modern conservatives have followed his lead. They have been so fixated on socialism and its economic irrationality that they have lost sight of other, ultimately more insidious, threats to Western civilization—including economism itself.
This "economism" percolates down to au currant issues such as the student loan crisis. And it really is a crisis. Says Robert Farrington in a recent article in Forbes,
It's no secret that student loan debt has grown out of control, and that there's no end in sight to this $1.5 trillion problem. After all, a Forbes analysis from this year showed that the average college graduate from the Class of 2017 left school with $28,650 in unpaid federal and private student loans. More than 44 million borrowers also owe their share, with more than 1.3 million owing six figures or more on their loans.
Most people, regardless of their ideologies or voting records, agree that crushing student loan debt is a problem. What they disagree about are solutions. Farrington, for instance, goes on in the same piece to criticize Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal to forgive student loan debt, because 1.) it doesn't include a mechanism to control the runaway costs of higher education, and 2.) it doesn't incentivize students to aim for careers in which they'd make the salary to be able to repay the loans without difficulty. Related to Farrington's concerns is Philip Klein's much more emotive take, namely, that student loan forgiveness would be "a slap in the face" to everyone who responsibly paid off his loans in full and on time. Between Farrington and Klein we see in general terms the spectrum of what passes for "conservative" critique of student loan debt forgiveness. And they are not entirely wrong. The problem is that, like most self-professed conservatives who couch their arguments in the language of liberal economic fetishization, they are right for the wrong reasons.
Perhaps the most compelling argument against bilking people for cash is this: fuck schools. They don't deserve the money they're owed. And Farrington is right that debt forgiveness without price controls would only be treating the symptoms. The cost of higher education has skyrocketed in the past few decades, and most of that is due to an intentional bloating of administrative staff. Heather MacDonald, acute critic of academe, describes this corruption in the pages of City Journal:
[C]ollege tuition is not an act of God, beyond human control. It is a result of decisions taken by colleges themselves—above all, decisions to bulk up their bureaucracies. Bureaucratic outlays rose at nearly twice the rate as teaching outlays from 1993 to 2007, according to the Goldwater Institute. From 1997 to 2012, colleges hired new administrators at twice the rate of any student-body increase, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found. Colleges inevitably claim that government mandates force this administrative bloat upon them. But the vast majority of administrative hires are voluntary: for every dollar in mandated bureaucratic spending from 1987 to 2011, public universities added an additional $2 in discretionary bureaucracy, and private universities added $3, according to economists Robert Martin and Carter Hill. Fiefdoms focused on diversity and student services grew at the fastest clip, in the name of fighting the campus oppression to which minority and female students are allegedly subjected.
By following the course of this resource grab and the billions of dollars being funneled into new administrative operations, one can discern the priority of these institutions. And it certainly isn't to strengthen the humanities or the liberal arts. The gutting of humanities and of hard science programs at the University of Tulsa is but the most recent example of an institution of so-called higher learning "reorganizing" itself to prioritize diversity bureaucrats over real education; it is happening all over the country. What is more, the programs being cut are the very ones which might provide students with the moral and cultural vocabulary to criticize the cravenness of the administrative power grab.
Higher education in America has all the tell-tale signs of a classic scam. Let's call the scam "credentialism." In many ways, what's happening here and now is similar to what happened in China in the Seventh Century after Emperor Yang Guang established the civil service exam. At first the exam seemed to be a reasonable way to introduce meritocracy into the kingdom. But, as the editors of n+1 explain in "Death by Degrees,"
As time went on, more and more people took—and passed—the exam's first round. Test prep academies proliferated. Imperial officials started to worry: there were now more degree-holders than there were positions, which threatened to create an underclass of young men with thwarted ambitions. When the Ming dynasty fell in 1644, their successors, the Qing, resolved to make the test more difficult. By the middle of the 19th century, 2 million people sat the exam, but just over 1 percent passed its first round; only 300 candidates—.016 percent—passed all three.
In other words, an entire market proliferated around the exams, and of course markets tend to grow. More tests, more takers, more unnecessary requirements for civil jobs. This is how credentialism takes hold. The editors of n+1 go on to write:
Jean Baudrillard once suggested an important correction to classical Marxism: exchange value is not, as Marx had it, a distortion of a commodity's underlying use value; use value, instead, is a fiction created by exchange value. In the same way, systems of accreditation do not assess merit; merit is a fiction created by systems of accreditation. Like the market for skin care products, the market for credentials is inexhaustible: as the bachelor's degree becomes democratized, the master's degree becomes mandatory for advancement. Our elaborate, expensive system of higher education is first and foremost a system of stratification, and only secondly—and very dimly—a system for imparting knowledge...As the credentialism compulsion seeps down the socioeconomic ladder, universities jack up fees and taxi drivers hire $200-an-hour SAT tutors for their children. The collective impact may be ruinous, but for individuals the outlays seem justified. As a consequence, college tuitions are nowhere near their limit; as long as access to the workforce is controlled by the bachelor's degree, students will pay more and more.
There is, to be sure, some overstatement here. The neurosurgeon who removes a tumor from one's brain knows what he is doing independent of the market function of the Harvard Medical school where he was educated. Nevertheless, it is true, in many cases, that what passes for merit is merely an effect of power structures. Nor is the credentialism scam unique to the academy. In a sense, it is a synecdoche for much of the American economy and the culture writ large.
And it is just here that we run up against one of the limitations of Hayek's market as price mechanism: the assumption that if people are paying the high cost of tuition, then that is what tuition must be worth. The market being too radically subjective to provide moral guidance, the Hayekian dismisses out of hand the notion that there might be objective truths beyond economism which are vital to human flourishing, even though Hayek himself certainly recognized their existence. Like all liberals, the Hayekian errs on the side of proceduralism. Yet to call "good" what people want and "bad" what they do not is to deal in a solipsistic nihilism. And in the process the language used to describe what people should want gets denuded.
Another problem with Hayek's price mechanism, particularly salient in the context of higher education, is that it discounts the outsized effects corporate interests have on society. For various historical reasons that would require another article altogether to explain, most people are unable to be entrepreneurs or to independently homestead. Rather, they rely on corporations in order to survive. But corporations require for growth the opposite of what humans require for our collective flourishing. As Jonathan McCormack observed in the spring issue of this journal,
Elite-driven advances of changing sexualities foster de-normed individuals that define themselves not by family, nation, religious affiliation, or tradition, but rather through self- creation according to the liberated individual will. With this groundwork in place, corporations can then gain control of the populace by dictating and manipulating multiform identities based on nothing more than appetites atomized from any larger cultural networks.
It is corporate interests, instead of the state or some other institution, that organize and direct society. The human person, then, is made to resemble the infinite flux and transience of capital. This over-reliance on corporate-underwritten visions of society, Freser notes,
entails an economic dependency of individuals on centralized authority, of a kind that is in some ways analogous to what Hayek warned of in his critique of central planning. As with socialism, conformity to the values of centralized authority becomes, in effect, a precondition of the very possibility of feeding oneself. By way of example, we may note that the political correctness Hayek would have despised is today more effectively and directly imposed on society by corporate Human Resources departments than by government.
In other words, if you want to live, be woke and rootless and have a bachelor's degree.
There is a kind of posturing that is prevalent among self-styled conservatives of a certain stripe. It consists of leaning into the logic of economism and, even as they try to argue against progressive policy, employing the grammar of the fetishist in their critiques. You see it used by Ben Shapiro, for example, but for shorthand let's just call it the Walshean Turn, after pundit Matt Walsh. Take the heart of Walsh's argument against Elizabeth Warren's student debt forgiveness plan:
All of the talk about "relief" and "forgiveness" obscures the point. The government cannot snap its mighty fingers and make the debt go away. That is not going to happen. No plan has been presented that would or could accomplish such a thing. Someone has to pay your debts. The debt you agreed to, while purchasing the product you wanted and will keep, has to be paid. The only question is this: who should pay it—you or someone else? I don't see how you could offer any sound argument for the latter. Even if you can convince me that the debt is "unfair" and "predatory" and you were "taken advantage of," it still seems clear that the fairest of the unfair remedies is for the person who took out the loan to pay it. Because if it's unfair that you have to pay your loans, it's certainly many times more unfair that I should have to pay your loans.
Walsh's argument is that there's a right and a wrong choice, but Senator Warren—damn her socialist heart—thinks the government should give citizens the chance to make the wrong one. But notice: Walsh presupposes that moral decisions are made by individuals in a sort of vacuum. He presupposes the same kind of atomization of the individual which economism not only fetishizes, but requires. He dismisses out of hand the notion that society should be structured towards the ends of the common good. But why should usury be valued more than jubilee? Was there ever any debate here? No. Meanwhile, Wash's Lockean notions of self, of freedom, and of the good are too anemic to answer big, difficult moral questions. The only good he can articulate is the upholding of contracts.
In the journal Postliberal Thought, Andrew Willard Jones comments insightfully on the recent Sohrab Ahmari-David French dustup:
Reaction to Ahmari has demonstrated that this debate is severely hampered by conservatives' nearly exclusive use of the language that late liberalism supplies. Focused on the distinctions between private morality, public governance and the proper overlap between the two, the debate has retained liberalism's most fundamental concepts and will not, therefore, bring us anything new. This is because, as is the case with all ideological systems, the construction of the language of late liberalism and the pressing of its conclusions are two aspects of the same endeavor. If we use their categories, we will find ourselves trapped within their conclusions. We must break the coherence of this idiom if we intend to resolve our internal fights and articulate a critique of the current regime without unwittingly reinforcing it. A brief attempt at the deconstruction of two basic liberal binaries might be, I hope, useful. They are: religious/secular and moral/political.
This is the root of the problem with the Walshean Turn. You cannot use the grammar of liberalism to critique the excesses endemic to liberalism. They share the same origins and one cannot see the other, as it were. Conservatives who call themselves "the real liberals" (should we call them Quillette conservatives?) fall victim to the ad infinitum regression of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. Hence libertarianism ("Well, the markets aren't quite free enough"). And progressivism ("Well, our notions of self aren't liberated enough"). And any number of offshoot sects of the Lockean core of liberalism.
Having invoked John Locke twice, I should explain why I've done so. In the past six months or so it has become fashionable to pay attention to illiberal conservatives[1], as if they had suddenly sprung fully formed from the pages of First Things overnight like toadstools. Matthew Continetti, prominent Beltway neoconservative, is representative of this tendency, as we can see from these words of his in The Washington Free Beacon:
Here is a group that I did not see coming. The Trump era has coincided with the formation of a coterie of writers who say that liberal modernity has become (or perhaps always was) inimical to human flourishing. One way to tell if you are reading a post- liberal is to see what they say about John Locke. If Locke is treated as an important and positive influence on the American founding, then you are dealing with just another American conservative. If Locke is identified as the font of the trans movement and same-sex marriage, then you may have encountered a post-liberal.
Although Continetti dismisses post-liberal critiques of Locke out of hand without actually addressing them, his characterization is accurate. What it boils down to is something that Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro and any random lefty campus agitator all share in common: Locke's notion that freedom and individual power are synonymous. Now, this is a complex historical claim which would require a separate book, certainly not an essay, to explore. Luckily for us, D.C. Schindler has done just that in his book Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty. In a nutshell, Schindler says that Locke obsessed over freedom of the will, but he also claimed that "the mind" is the driver of the will. I have written elsewhere that this is a bit like saying that a car decides where to go based on GPS. It is an infinite refraction of subjectivity, its purpose being that it enables one to avoid making any metaphysical claims.
In this Lockean conception of mind and will, what morality amounts to is whether or not an individual wants something. If he directs his will towards it, it is good. What we have here is a sort of psychological precursor to Hayek's pricing mechanism. Untethered to larger metaphysical claims, morality becomes a tug of war between wills. Objectivity perishes in the crossfire of solipsistic reasoning. Men and women are turned into toadies of ideology. In Schindler's words, "If freedom is conceived as power, then a basic form of the exercise of freedom in the world is the conversion of the world into money."
So post-liberal critiques of Locke matter because our whole social order is predicated upon ideas which, if he did not outright invent, Locke at least popularized. It might be better, therefore, to say that post-liberal conservatives are in actuality pre-liberal. After all, markets, like culture, haven't always been Lockean. Says John Milbank in Church Life Journal:
[W]hile the perennial presence of an acquisitive instinct is banally true, there is no real evidence of any pre-modern social inclination anywhere to organise an economy, much less a socio-political order, on the minimum basis of individualistic greed. To the contrary, as Karl Polanyi famously asserted, this has been almost universally avoided by embedding the economic in social goals of reciprocal human flourishing. It is only capitalist modernity that perversely does just the opposite: embed social and political pursuits in the economic realm, itself newly understood in terms of a mutual satisfying of essentially isolated egoistic needs.
This difference is the dividing line in political taxonomy. It is the most important question by far. Is it possible to serve the common good through rapacity and weaponizing radical individual will? There have always been conservatives who would answer in the negative. And we have never been laissez-faire.
[1] A strange term, no doubt, for isn't a conservative illiberal by definition? Of course. But then, ours is a thoroughly liberalized era, and the modifier illiberal serves to distinguish what might be called true conservatives from the neoconservative mainstream.
Scott Beauchamp is a contributing editor of The Agonist. His work has previously appeared in American Affairs, the Dublin Review of Books, and the Paris Review Daily, among other places.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Tom Hess CD and Music Reviews | Tom Hess Music Corporation \ Opus 2 Heavy Metal Pages Review - Hess Heavy Metal Pages
Heavy Metal Pages
www.hmpmag.pl
I expected equally great album after magnificent "Opus 1". This time we can listen to the Hess brothers' cooperation - Tom (guitars) and Scott (percussion). Here is also Mike Walsh on guitars and Mark Carozza on bass. The second one is Tom's ex-student and a graduate from prestigious Berklee College of Music. Almost five-year awaiting didn't go to waste, because "Opus 2" is as brilliant as its predecessor. The element linking both albums is almost identical covers, and actually photos of satin fabric. Its authoress is Tom's wife - Iwona. Composing process took three years, that's why it wasn't published in 2002, but two years later on. It's also interesting that many ideas were written while Tom stayed in Krakow and derived inspirations from Polish valleys.
As far as two new musicians are concerned, it's rather hard to state if they enriched Hess' music, but surely helped Tom and Mike in covering an artistic crossbar set enough high on the previous release. "Opus 2" is a well-though-out continuation of the debut. It's enough to play a single "Nexuses" to be convinced how enormous stratums of emotions are included in Hess' music and how expressive could be duet's guitar solos. Neoclassical tradition is preserved by such compositions like "Kingdoms" and my favorite "Through The Trials". Americans also stronger stresses a melancholy ("The Cynic, The Sad, And The Fallen") and romanticism ("What Could Have Been... And What Is Not..."). The latter one reminds me of Jason Becker's "Perpetual Burn". Moreover, I should write that "Opus 2" is of so-called brace structure, and it means that the first and the last track include the same leitmotiv. As it turns out, "Waves Of Far Reaching" is a composition that wasn't held on the debut.
I admit that the most original element of "Opus 2" is its ubiquitous movie dramatization. Apart from it, we have no problems in distinguishing both guitarists' styles, especially as there are shared solo parts exactly on time. It is surely helpful in picking out all the nuances. I guess that Tom's guitar was tuned a bit higher than Mike's to separate their parts effectively. Avoiding the projects like G3, it's necessary to write that two guitarists playing in dissimilar styles are rarity in contemporary music. Some people can consider Hess' music very complex, but every well-informed man knows that virtuosic music belongs to a niche subgenres, that's why this music is so wonderful and unusual. I think highly of Tom not only because of his beautiful tones, but also of his modesty that makes him a great man!
To find out more about Opus 2, hear samples of the tunes, and purchase, click here


text:
Home » Reducing sodium in meat and poultry
Reducing sodium in meat and poultry
Source: Saltworks
By Donna Berry
In mid-October, sodium reduction was thrust into the spotlight once again after the US Food and Drug Administration finalized 2016 draft guidance for voluntary sodium reduction targets for food producers. A few months earlier, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion released a Dietary Guidelines for Americans fact sheet on sodium to advise consumers on strategies to lower sodium intake. Processed meats, and the sandwiches, burgers and pizzas where they are used, were identified as sources of "a lot of sodium." It's time for meat and poultry processors to take action.
"Reducing sodium content is achievable but there are limits to stealth reduction using a simple strategy of using less salt," said Rajesh Potineni, vice president of research and development, Kerry Group, Beloit, Wis. "Put simply, formulators can't go beyond a 10% to 15% elimination of sodium chloride without running into significant taste, texture and shelf-life challenges and changes that consumers will notice and react to."
Cutting back
Suppliers provide assistance by offering a plethora of ingredient technologies to cut a little bit here and a little bit there, or making functional substitutions, while maintaining product quality and safety. These efforts are a significant step in creating a healthier food supply to help reverse the trend of diet-related chronic diseases, according to FDA. That's because too much sodium increases the risk for developing hypertension, thereby raising the risk for heart attacks and strokes.
While the sodium reduction guidance is voluntary, taking action is the right thing to do. Currently, on average, Americans 14 years and older consume 50% more than the recommended limit for sodium. When it comes to children aged 2 to 13 years, more than 95% exceed the recommended limits of sodium for their age groups. This could have profound impacts on later health outcomes.
The fact sheet instructs consumers to check labels and choose foods that are lower in sodium by looking at the Daily Value. It states that 5% DV or less is a low source of sodium and 20% DV or more is a high source. While it is nearly impossible for some meat and poultry products to reach very low numbers, as sodium is as much a performance ingredient as it is a flavor potentiator, it is possible to make ingredient swaps to make the labels more desirable.
The FDA's plan recognizes that successful sodium reduction needs to take place broadly across the overall food supply. In fact, the new FDA guidance is still above the Dietary Guidelines' recommended limit of 2,300 mg per day for those 14 and older. The targets in the guidance are designed to support decreasing average daily sodium intake by about 12% – from about 3,400 mg to 3,000 mg per day. This reduction is expected to result in tens of thousands of fewer cases of heart disease and stroke and billions saved in healthcare costs. The FDA believes these targets are feasible to achieve in two and a half years and cover both manufactured foods and foodservice.
Toolbox of ingredients
As Potineni stated, in most meat and poultry applications, you can only cut out so much sodium chloride before the product is negatively impacted. That's why formulators need to explore all ingredients that contribute sodium and make cuts and swaps where possible. One of the most common swaps is replacing sodium chloride with potassium chloride.
"Potassium chloride, which can now be labeled as potassium salt, is a good replacement for sodium chloride," said Tom Katen, senior technical services specialist, Cargill Salt, Minneapolis. "Larger sodium chloride swaps, up to 50%, are possible in more seasoned products, while blander applications, like deli poultry meat, might only allow for a 30% sodium chloride replacement."
Both beef jerky and pepperoni pizza topping contain high levels of sodium but are also packed with flavors and spices. This makes it possible to achieve as much as a 50% reduction in sodium using a combination of potassium salt and sodium chloride.
"Even at these high rates, consumers won't taste the potassium ion amidst all the other flavors in the product," Katen said. "This sodium reduction solution has the added benefit of increasing the product's potassium content, in this case, by nearly 300%."
Replacing a portion of the sodium chloride in the formula with potassium salt requires no changes to production processes. And because potassium salt has similar physical and functional properties to sodium chloride, it can be used as a 1:1 replacement making reformulation easy.
"Sometimes we can use formulation tricks to enable deeper sodium reductions," Katen said. "For example, in chicken nuggets, we've found we can use up to 100% potassium salt inside the nugget if we use real salt in the breading. The topical salt in the batter and breading delivers the flavor experience consumers expect and masks the off-notes from the potassium salt in the substrate. This approach enables brands to cut salt by as much as 50%, without impacting consumer likeability or processing yields."
Mark Zoske, founder and chief executive officer, SaltWorks, Woodinville, Wash., said, "Nothing can come close to the real taste of natural sea salt. The trace minerals in all-natural sea salt deliver subtle nuances of flavor, making it more flavorful and complex than refined salt. With premium sea salt, it is possible to use less of it without sacrificing taste."
SaltWorks recently launched two new grain sizes that elevate flavor, adhesion and functionality. They have a hollow, pyramid shape and soft texture that more easily adheres to food, allowing less salt to go to waste in the manufacturing process.
"Additionally, the razor-thin, feather-like nature causes them to instantly dissolve the moment they hit your tongue to achieve that salty, savory bite," Zoske said. "They work especially well in spice rubs, breading and batters, essentially anything that coats the meat since the three-dimensional shape allows them to 'stand up' on the surface of the food."
The pyramidal shape boasts several times the surface area of a standard grain of table salt. This also means less clumping.
"Flavor also plays a role in sodium reduction," Zoske said. "We offer a range of clean-label, all-natural infused flavored salts and cold-smoked salts to elevate the flavor of food."
Salt of the Earth, Israel, produces an umami liquid that is a propriety savory mix of high-quality sea salt and vegetable extracts. It is a clean-label flavor enhancer and sodium-reduction ingredient.
"Usual reductions in sodium are around 25% to 40%," said Tali Feingold, SaltWorks business unit director. "It works well in proteins and is labeled as a natural flavor. It is intended to be added to the liquid phase of the formulation."
Wixon, St. Francis, Wis., developed a reduced-sodium system specifically for the meat industry that can be customized to any species or processing format. It is a flavor modifier and sodium chloride replacer and labeled "potassium chloride, natural flavor."
"The system positively impacts flavor without compromising functionality and can generate up to a 50% reduction in sodium," said Ron Ratz, senior vice president. "Our technology enrobes a proprietary flavor modifier to the crystal structure fostering a significant reduction in the bitter aftertaste associated with potassium chloride while maintaining intended flavor and functionality supported by salt."
Terry Miesle, master flavorist, Sensient Flavors & Extracts, Hoffman Estates, Ill., said that sodium reduction tools designed to replace salty are often best used in breading or other surface applications that do not rely on salt for functions such as tenderizing and water binding. Sensient's solutions are labeled as "natural flavor" and have low usage levels compared to the salt they replace.
"By leveraging our fermentation, extraction and cooking expertise, Kerry has developed a toolbox of solutions that deliver salt and umami taste while reducing the amount of sodium in a product," Potineni said. "These solutions improve taste perception while rebalancing the overall eating experience."
Depending on the application, these solutions can reduce salt by up to 50%. They may be declared as "natural flavoring" or "yeast extract."
Keeping product safe
When reducing salt in meat and poultry, there's typically an increase in water activity. This impacts shelf life and food safety and makes the inclusion of an antimicrobial important. Traditional antimicrobials often contain sodium.
"Corbion offers a number of products to help manufacturers reduce sodium safely, sustainably and with minimal compromise on taste," said Garrett McCoy, senior manager of research, development and applications, Corbion, Lenexa, Kan. "Through these products, we are able to replace the antimicrobials that bring sodium into the formula with those that don't, address shelf-life and safety concerns that arise when overall salt level is reduced and add natural flavoring via cultured sugar, which helps to enhance savory notes such as salty, sweet and umami."
"Up to 100% sodium reduction as delivered by the antimicrobial ingredient may be achieved," McCoy said. "Our cultured sugar ingredient has been shown to maintain taste in 20%-reduced sodium meat products, enabling a front-of-pack claim to the nutritional benefits."
Potineni said, "Many processors are looking for alternatives to conventional liquid, sodium-based preservation solutions for meat and poultry. Reasons for this can include supply chain challenges, as well as targeting sodium reduction. When our partners are looking to reformulate, we can adjust the approach based on priorities for their product lines."
He identified two common approaches. One is to use the time to reformulate to clean label.
"With lactic acid prices approaching levels comparable to those of buffered vinegar, a customer can reformulate to clean label targeting benefits like no sodium, more supply security and comparable price bands and can often gain a consumer premium from reformulating to more natural solutions," Potineni said. "This can be done with potassium buffered vinegars."
"The other is to stick to conventional preservation, leveraging acetic acid-based technologies to reformulate for cost savings, targeting benefits like no sodium, comparable taste and shelf life," Potineni said. "Potassium salts can be leveraged here, too, to reduce sodium."
Michael Cropp, technical services associate, Kemin Food Technologies, North America, Des Moines, Iowa, said, "Many antimicrobials in meat are buffered closer to meat pH levels (above isoelectric point) to improve processing attributes while still ensuring microbial safety and shelf life. However, the buffering process typically includes sodium as a carrier. Utilizing potassium-based salts in place of sodium salts in various antimicrobials allows processors to ensure food quality and safety standards are met as well as nutritional guardrails."
The conventional ingredient would typically read "dry vinegar" or "buffered vinegar," regardless of whether or not sodium or potassium salt is utilized. Label declaration won't change, but nutritional sodium content levels would be lowered.
Managing water activity includes the addition of binders such as fibers, gums and phosphates. Innophos, Cranbury, NJ, offers a phosphate blend for meat and poultry marinades that assists with sodium reduction while effectively binding water and improving yield. Applications include everything from deli meats to hot dogs.
"Depending on the application, we have data showcasing anywhere from a 10% to 45% reduction in sodium," said Amr Shaheed, technical services and application development manager.
Potineni said that the industry is moving forward on FDA's guidance.
"Meat and poultry processors are quite interested in sodium reduction as this has been on their radar for some time now," he said. "They're also interested in clean-label solutions that reduce the number of chemical-sounding ingredients on their labels. Any sodium reduction solutions must maintain the protection of the food's safety while meeting goals of reducing sodium content."
Sodium under scrutiny in meat applications
Cargill reducing antibiotics in poultry
Focusing on food safety in the meat and poultry department


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Q: Switching View Controllers using MDCBottomNavigationBar on iOS I'm trying to create an iOS app that uses the Material Design library's bottom navigation feature. I can get a view controller with the bottom navigation bar to compile and display, but I'm unable to add other view controllers and switch between them when clicking the different tabs. I have everything simplified down to two files: One is my entry view controller with the bottom navigation stuff, and the other is just a dead simple view controller that I instantiate 3 times to use as the targets of the three tabs.
Currently, my specific error is:
Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'headerViewController does not have a parentViewController. Use [self addChildViewController:appBar.headerViewController]. This warning only appears in DEBUG builds'

As far as I can tell, this is related to my tab views. If I comment out the line that does self.viewControllers = [...] then it will load just fine, but not switch between view controllers.
I'm not married to this approach. If there is another way to accomplish this I'd love to know it. I have been unable to learn much from the docs, but if there is documentation for other tab-like Material Design features that works significantly similarly, I think that would point me in the right direction.
Here is my entry view controller. I used one of the examples as a base and heavily modified it.
    import Foundation
import MaterialComponents
import UIKit

class ICEBottomNavController: UITabBarController, MDCBottomNavigationBarDelegate
{
    let appBar = MDCAppBar()
    var colorScheme = MDCSemanticColorScheme()

    // Create a bottom navigation bar to add to a view.
    let bottomNavBar = MDCBottomNavigationBar()

    init()
    {
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
        initCommon()
    }

    @available(*, unavailable)
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder)
    {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        initCommon()
    }

    func initCommon()
    {
        self.title = "Bottom Navigation (Swift)"

        let statusVC = ICEChildBottomBarViewController( title: "Status", color: UIColor.orange )
        let eventsVC = ICEChildBottomBarViewController( title: "Events", color: UIColor.blue )
        let contactsVC = ICEChildBottomBarViewController( title: "Contacts", color: UIColor.cyan )

        self.viewControllers = [ statusVC, eventsVC, contactsVC ]

        self.addChildViewController( appBar.headerViewController )
        let color = UIColor(white: 0.2, alpha:1)
        appBar.headerViewController.headerView.backgroundColor = color
        appBar.navigationBar.tintColor = .white
        appBar.navigationBar.titleTextAttributes = [NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor : UIColor.white]

        //appBar.headerViewController.viewControllers

        commonBottomNavigationTypicalUseSwiftExampleInit()
    }

    func bottomNavigationBar(_ bottomNavigationBar: MDCBottomNavigationBar, didSelect item: UITabBarItem)
    {
        print( "did select item \(item.tag)" )

        self.selectedIndex = item.tag

        //self.viewControllers?[item.tag].addChildViewController( appBar.headerViewController )
        //self.selectedViewController = self.viewControllers?[item.tag]

//      self.viewControllers
    }

    func commonBottomNavigationTypicalUseSwiftExampleInit()
    {
        view.backgroundColor = .lightGray
        view.addSubview(bottomNavBar)

        // Always show bottom navigation bar item titles.
        bottomNavBar.titleVisibility = .always

        // Cluster and center the bottom navigation bar items.
        bottomNavBar.alignment = .centered

        // Add items to the bottom navigation bar.
        let tabBarItem1 = UITabBarItem( title: "Status",   image: nil, tag: 0 )
        let tabBarItem2 = UITabBarItem( title: "Events",   image: nil, tag: 1 )
        let tabBarItem3 = UITabBarItem( title: "Contacts", image: nil, tag: 2 )
        bottomNavBar.items = [ tabBarItem1, tabBarItem2, tabBarItem3 ]

        // Select a bottom navigation bar item.
        bottomNavBar.selectedItem = tabBarItem1;
        bottomNavBar.delegate = self
    }

    func layoutBottomNavBar()
    {
        let size = bottomNavBar.sizeThatFits(view.bounds.size)
        let bottomNavBarFrame = CGRect( x: 0,
                                        y: view.bounds.height - size.height,
                                        width: size.width,
                                        height: size.height )
        bottomNavBar.frame = bottomNavBarFrame
    }

    override func viewWillLayoutSubviews()
    {
        super.viewWillLayoutSubviews()
        layoutBottomNavBar()
    }

    #if swift(>=3.2)
    @available(iOS 11, *)
    override func viewSafeAreaInsetsDidChange()
    {
        super.viewSafeAreaInsetsDidChange()
        layoutBottomNavBar()
    }
    #endif

    override func viewDidLoad()
    {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        self.selectedIndex = 0

        appBar.addSubviewsToParent()

        // Theme the bottom navigation bar.
        MDCBottomNavigationBarColorThemer.applySemanticColorScheme(colorScheme, toBottomNavigation: bottomNavBar);

    }

    override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool)
    {
        super.viewWillAppear(animated)
        self.navigationController?.setNavigationBarHidden( true, animated: animated )
    }
}

// MARK: Catalog by convention
extension ICEBottomNavController
{
    class func catalogBreadcrumbs() -> [String] {
        return ["Bottom Navigation", "Bottom Navigation (Swift)"]
    }

    class func catalogIsPrimaryDemo() -> Bool {
        return false
    }

    func catalogShouldHideNavigation() -> Bool {
        return true
    }
}

And my simple view controllers that should be switched out by the tabs:
import Foundation
import MaterialComponents
import UIKit

class ICEChildBottomBarViewController: UIViewController
{
    //let appBar = MDCAppBar()
    //var colorScheme = MDCSemanticColorScheme()
    var color: UIColor?

    init( title: String, color: UIColor )
    {
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
        self.title = title
        self.color = color
    }

    @available(*, unavailable)
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder)
    {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
    }

    override func viewDidLoad()
    {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        view.backgroundColor = self.color

        //appBar.addSubviewsToParent()
    }

    override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool)
    {
        super.viewWillAppear(animated)
        self.navigationController?.setNavigationBarHidden( true, animated: animated )
    }
}

A: you can use this to switch the controller, the main code
class MaterialTabBarSimple: UITabBarController {
    let bottomNavBar = MDCBottomNavigationBar()
    // other code copy from Material doc
    override func viewDidLoad() {
       bottomNavBar = [ your tabBarItems ]
       bottomNavBar.delegate = self

       self.viewControllers = [ your controllers ]
    }
}
extension MaterialTabBarSimple: MDCBottomNavigationBarDelegate {
    func bottomNavigationBar(_ bottomNavigationBar: MDCBottomNavigationBar, didSelect item: UITabBarItem) {
        print("did select item \(item.tag)")
        self.selectedViewController = self.viewControllers![item.tag]
    }
}

A: This code works fine for me for making an MDCBottomNavBar and switching between viewcontrollers. But make sure you are using TabBarController.
import UIKit
import MaterialComponents

class TabBarController: UITabBarController, MDCBottomNavigationBarDelegate {

    let bottomNavBar = MDCBottomNavigationBar()

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        // Do any additional setup after loading the view.
    }

    override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool)
    {
        super.viewWillAppear(animated)
        self.navigationController?.setNavigationBarHidden( true, animated: animated )
    }

    //Initialize Bottom Bar
    init()
    {
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
        commonBottomNavigationTypicalUseSwiftExampleInit()
    }

    @available(*, unavailable)
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder)
    {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        commonBottomNavigationTypicalUseSwiftExampleInit()
    }

    // Bottom Bar Customization
    func commonBottomNavigationTypicalUseSwiftExampleInit()
    {
        view.backgroundColor = .lightGray
        view.addSubview(bottomNavBar)

        // Always show bottom navigation bar item titles.
        bottomNavBar.titleVisibility = .always

        // Cluster and center the bottom navigation bar items.
        bottomNavBar.alignment = .centered

        // Add items to the bottom navigation bar.
        let tabBarItem1 = UITabBarItem( title: "Status",   image: nil, tag: 0 )
        let tabBarItem2 = UITabBarItem( title: "Events",   image: nil, tag: 1 )
        let tabBarItem3 = UITabBarItem( title: "Contacts", image: nil, tag: 2 )
        bottomNavBar.items = [ tabBarItem1, tabBarItem2, tabBarItem3 ]

        // Select a bottom navigation bar item.
        bottomNavBar.selectedItem = tabBarItem1;
        bottomNavBar.delegate = self
    }

    func bottomNavigationBar(_ bottomNavigationBar: MDCBottomNavigationBar, didSelect item: UITabBarItem)
    {
        self.selectedIndex = item.tag
    }

    override func viewWillLayoutSubviews()
    {
        super.viewWillLayoutSubviews()
        layoutBottomNavBar()
    }

    #if swift(>=3.2)
    @available(iOS 11, *)
    override func viewSafeAreaInsetsDidChange()
    {
        super.viewSafeAreaInsetsDidChange()
        layoutBottomNavBar()
    }
    #endif

    // Setting Bottom Bar
    func layoutBottomNavBar()
    {
        let size = bottomNavBar.sizeThatFits(view.bounds.size)
        let bottomNavBarFrame = CGRect( x: 0,
                                        y: view.bounds.height - size.height,
                                        width: size.width,
                                        height: size.height )
        bottomNavBar.frame = bottomNavBarFrame
    }

}

A: Just create a regular navigation bar at the storyboard with the amount of items that you want. and then connect it to a controller like that one.
(here I used 3 items bottom bar. so as in the storyboard.)
//
//  TabViewController.swift
//  Test Navigation Bar
//
//  Created by ido cohen on 25/11/2018.
//  Copyright © 2018 IdoCohen. All rights reserved.
//

import UIKit
import MaterialComponents.MaterialBottomNavigation_ColorThemer

class TabViewController: UITabBarController, MDCBottomNavigationBarDelegate {
    var colorScheme = MDCSemanticColorScheme()
    let bottomNavBar = MDCBottomNavigationBar()
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        colorScheme.backgroundColor = .white
        view.backgroundColor = colorScheme.backgroundColor
        let tabBarItem1 = UITabBarItem(title: "Home", image: UIImage(named: "Home"), tag: 0)
        let tabBarItem2 = UITabBarItem(title: "Messages", image: UIImage(named: "Email"), tag: 1)
        let tabBarItem3 = UITabBarItem(title: "Favorites", image: UIImage(named: "Cake"), tag: 2)
        tabBarItem3.selectedImage = UIImage(named: "Favorite")
        bottomNavBar.items = [ tabBarItem1, tabBarItem2, tabBarItem3 ]

        bottomNavBar.selectedItem = tabBarItem1
        view.addSubview(bottomNavBar)
        bottomNavBar.delegate = self
        MDCBottomNavigationBarColorThemer.applySemanticColorScheme(colorScheme, toBottomNavigation: bottomNavBar)
    }

    func bottomNavigationBar(_ bottomNavigationBar: MDCBottomNavigationBar, didSelect item: UITabBarItem){
        guard let fromView = selectedViewController?.view, let toView = customizableViewControllers?[item.tag].view else {
            return
        }

        if fromView != toView {
            UIView.transition(from: fromView, to: toView, duration: 0.3, options: [.transitionCrossDissolve], completion: nil)
        }
        self.selectedIndex = item.tag
    }

    func layoutBottomNavBar() {
        let size = bottomNavBar.sizeThatFits(view.bounds.size)
        let bottomNavBarFrame = CGRect(x: 0,
                                       y: view.bounds.height - size.height,
                                       width: size.width,
                                       height: size.height)
        bottomNavBar.frame = bottomNavBarFrame
    }
    override func viewWillLayoutSubviews() {
        super.viewWillLayoutSubviews()
        layoutBottomNavBar()
    }
}

I also used a transition in this example for incase you would like to have one. if not just delete it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Marie Olaerts (being 'me' in the third person) grew up in a small village in a small country with a great liking for action movies, SF and thriller/ suspense, dreaming of how it would be like to be on a set, not visiting, but actually doing something useful. And so, that dream in the back of her mind she ended up at the Rits, a Belgian school for film making, where she graduated in 2007 as a professional bachelor (option camera/ cinematography) with the short film 'the blessing of Henry Mullin' as cinematographer.
Ever since then she is working on different sets in different functions, but her true passion lies with cinematography. There is still so much to learn and try, enough to fill a lifetime she is happy to discover, and her vision altered by a film-focussed life and the things she saw; she loves the light that seems just a bit off to add to the scene.
Meeting new people and education opened her horizon to a much greater rage of films, especially the Asian cinema, of which 'Hero' is her favourite. Though she hasn't had the chance to see as much films as she'd like, she's striving to correct that in the near future.
Movies she holds in high regard are: Hero, Alien, The Crow, Darkness (for the mood of the film), Musa, The game, The usual suspects, Bin Jip, Old Boy … The documentaries 'Long Gone' (http://www.longgonefilm.com/) and 'Peuple Migrateur' opened her eyes to the fact that this genre too can be beautiful to make and film-like to watch and Monty Python was like rediscovering the comedy genre all over again. Nothing beats 'The Holy Grail'.
Always having lived in the middle of nowhere; contact with nature is a necessity more then anything else and when she's not on set she likes to roam forests, meet with friends and go to class (she's been following Aikido since November 2007 and this has become a bit of a passion). Other then that, she likes to make photographs, read, draw and write.


We offer a full breakdown service for your boiler so should your gas boiler fail in between services you can rest assured you are in safe hands.
We have access to local and national boiler spares suppliers and can often get parts the very same day. If parts are not available we are able to source a large number of spares from a network of UK distributors on a next day basis.
For a number of specialist boiler spares we are able to order for delivery straight from the manufacturer.
Reminders- By email or letter, its up to you.
We will also send you a reminder email or letter once a year to remind you that your service is due on your boiler.
Our boiler engineers cover boiler servicing in East Sussex and Kent, but will travel further if required as we offer Specialised Services. Most of our customers are around Heathfield, Broad Oak, Uckfield, Hailsham, Battle, Mayfield, Maresfield and Eastbourne etc. Boiler servicing in Uckfield.


Mayra Albán, David Mauricio, . .
The student's dropout at the universities is a topic that has generated controversy in Higher Education Institutions. It has negative effects which cause problems in the social, academic and economic context of the students. One of the alternatives used to predict the dropout at the universities is the implementation of machine learning techniques such as decision trees, known as prediction models that use logical construction diagrams to characterize the behavior of students and identify early students that at in risk of leaving university. Based on a survey of 3162 students, it was possible to obtain 10 variables that have influence into the dropout, that's why, a CHAID decision tree model is proposed that presents the 97.95% of the accuracy in the prediction of the university students' dropout. The proposed prediction model allows the administrators of the universities developing strategies for effective intervention in order to establish actions that allow students finishing their university careers successful.
Prediction of college desertion, machine learning, decision trees, CHAID.
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text:
Ozan Özkural
Business & Philanthropy
TV Interviews / Lectures
Press Coverage / OpEd's
Ozan M. Özkural
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Tanto Capital Partners
Linkedin Twitter Youtube Instagram
About Ozan M.Ozkural
Focused on strategic business development, corporate governance, risk and asset management, with an overarching expertise on global geopolitics and ESG investing. A diligent and inspiring international leader with an increasingly prevalent international presence and world-class communication skills that is also dual citizen (British, Turkish). An intermediary for a shifting paradigm, in a non linear world where only the principals have a seat at the table, helping decipher the impact and direction of the disruption and change coming our way.
Ozan Ozkural was born in Turkey and raised in between Turkey and the United Kingdom, where he also obtained much of his academic education. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Management Studies from the University of Nottingham, and then subsequently was qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant by CIMA (ACMA/GCMA).
Having joined straight out of university to join the global management trainee programme of Unilever, Ozan Ozkural rose through the ranks quickly as a top percentile trainee, having been appointed as the business group finance manager of a major product category with a US$100m+ turnover by the age of 24.
Throughout his 3 years in Unilever, he took additional leadership roles in coordinating one of the largest strategic business restructuring initiatives of any firm in Europe and subsequently working as the factory finance manager for one of the key UK plants with over 700 workers as the member of the factory executive committee, at the same time working to get qualified as a chartered management accountant.
Investment Banking Career
In early 2005, Ozan Ozkural moved to one of the world's top bulge bracket investment banks of the time – Merrill Lynch – having joined as a senior analyst within the Global Structured Finance & Principal Investments team.
Ozan Ozkural was responsible for the origination, structuring, and principal investments across multiple asset classes and sectors – focusing predominantly on mezzanine financing, distressed debt, non-performing loan trading, private credit, securitisation, and warehouse financing opportunities across the globe, with a balance sheet of over US$8.5bn. Having been promoted within 5 months of joining, Ozan Ozkural originated, structured, and managed transactions of over US$ 7bn across Europe, Emerging Markets, US, and Asia.
When the 2008 global financial crisis hit, Ozan Ozkural was one of the very few people that remained in the team that was downsized from 62 strong across New York and London down to 4 within a year, and throughout 2008 worked to de-leverage the teams overall position by over US$8bn.
Ozan Ozkural subsequently joined the Emerging Markets Debt Capital Markets team internally as a Vice President in 2009, with responsibility for the origination of debt capital markets transactions within Central Eastern Europe, Middle East, Turkey, CIS, and Africa. In this capacity,
Ozan Ozkural originated and executed over US$30bn of bonds and high yield debt instruments, including sovereign, financial institution, and corporate issuers. He was the key banker in creating a new borrowing market for banks and corporates in Turkey, having worked very closely with one of the largest banks in the Country (Akbank) in taking them to global debt capital markets with a benchmark 5 year US$1bn 5 year issuance, which was the first ever non sovereign issuance from Turkey that led to a subsequent total private sector issuance of over US$48bn since then over the past 9 years. In 2011, in addition to the CEEMEA debt capital markets responsibilities Ozan Ozkural was tapped to run the structured finance origination business in the region.
Launching Tanto Capital Partners And More
In late 2014, Ozan Ozkural co founded and became the Managing Partner of Tanto Capital Partners, a private credit fund and a boutique advisory firm. Leading a team of ex bulge bracket senior Managing Directors, Ozan Ozkural has established the firm as a well recognised and growing brand in the illiquid and mezzanine finance as well as distressed debt businesses over the past five years, where he has also been appointed to the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Leadership Council in 2017. As of January 2020, Ozan Ozkural has also negotiated a key joint venture agreement between Tanto Capital Partners and SF Sentry – a San Francisco based leading blue-chip fund and family office with over 30 years track record – where Ozan Ozkural also holds a key leadership position focusing on the private credit space.
Ozan Ozkural was also the only finance executive selected, amongst 52 global leaders in finance, to meet with the then newly elected Argentinian President Mauricio Macri at the 2016 Davos World Economic Forum, which was publicised by the President. He has been a regular participant in the Davos World Economic Forum ever since, where he was also a panelist in the TechPark Davos FinTech forum. During 2017, Ozan Ozkural was asked to join the Foreign Policy Leadership Council of the Brookings Institution, often considered to be the most powerful in the World, on which he still serves. He has also become an increasingly prominent financial and geopolitical commentator, having become one of the very few finance executives interviewed by the legendary talk-show host Larry King in 2014, and is a regular contributor to Bloomberg & CNBC around the globe. Ozan Ozkural is also frequently interviewed and contributes to global written press, having been featured on the front page of the New York Times interviewed by the 3 times pulitzer prize winning journalist Eric Lipton in 2016, as well as a a number of UK, Turkish, and European magazines. He is a regular contributor to the Businessweek TR magazine, having penned more than a dozen of it's OpEd's over the past two years and focuses his philanthropic efforts on education, where he has been a regular guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School over the past 3 years as well as a member of the faculty at the Bahcesehir University School of Business and Political Science where he teaches a post-grad Business Strategy class.
Ozan Ozkural is also a member of YPO (previously Young Presidents Organisation, www.ypo.org)
An avid Shotokan Karate practitioner, as well as an award winning movie producer (www.IMDB.com), Ozan Ozkural invests in sports, education, and art in his free time.
© 2023 Ozan ÖZKURAL


No matter how much tempting a car may appear, it always entails heavy investment on your part. If you are planning to buy a car, you will have to be braced up to borrow a huge loan. Borrowing a huge loan can rob you off your peace of mind and will also burden you with a regular expense of interest. Most people do not like to pay so much extra and some people cannot even afford to go under such a huge debt. So is there any plausible way to cut down on the loan expense? Well yes, if you are game for a used car for sale in Foso, you can pretty much eliminate the expenses and hassles which come with a heavy loan.
Cars are expensive, no doubt but if you buy a second hand car, you can reduce that investment. Old cars come at a fraction of cost of the original cars. So, the decision to look for an old car will help save you that big investment which could have sunk you under a heavy debt is rewarding. With used cars, you will be able to manage on your own, without even taking a loan. Even if you do take a loan, the good thing is that loans for used cars are easier to procure since they are not very heavy. Marginal loans will help you to buy the car of your choice and won't put you under any major burden of interest and debt. CarXus is a good portal place where you can look for a used car dealer in Foso and where you can even sell car in Foso at your desired price.


Few composers have been gifted by ending their careers on its zenith surrounded by acknowledgement and wealth – why, Vivaldi is also not one of them. He was compelled to Vienna by his debts and a possibility, but he could come by neither money, nor enticing assignments, and abruptly he fell sick and died. Just like Mozart, he is buried in a nameless grave in one of Vienna's rebuilt districts, nonetheless, like Mozart, he is not completely dead. He is traveling the whole planet with his music, thereby constituting just satisfaction to this restless and ambitious soul for all of his fiascos through his life.


We have a reader named McCoy, and he maintains that he is "The Real McCoy" (accept no substitutes). Well, we believe him and he has some good tips, which we will pass along a little further down the way.
This goes back to a topic we wrote about a couple weeks ago. But it's an important topic, and becoming more immediate as the world goes increasingly gonzo about these new digital assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo. We are going gaga along with everybody else and of course — as usual — the situation will grow increasingly worse as other manufacturers join the fray.
Our Internet signal is strong in our office but not so good just 40 feet away. We bought a Google WiFi router, which certainly improved our wireless reception but not enough. So we called Google Store's customer service, which by the way, handles everything Google-related, even Gmail, and it's free. The tech guy was a native English speaker and first checked our connections to make sure no one else's WiFi signal was interfering with ours. All was clear there.
The next useful thing he did was introduce us — and now you — to a free app called "WiFi Analyzer," which works with Android, Apple and Windows 10. The app has a gauge and as we moved the phone around, the needle fluctuated through a range of green to gray. He agreed with the Real McCoy that something was causing a major disruption. He suggested we get a longer cord and experiment with moving the Google WiFi device around.
With a longer Ethernet cable, we were able to put the Google WiFi router in our living room by drilling a hole in the wall and snaking the cable through from the office. The office had our AT&T modem; the living room just had furniture. This improved things quite a bit. The closer your router is to the center of your house, apartment or business, the better the wireless reception. Google sells their router as one unit or a three pack, so you can place additional "points" wirelessly at some distance. (NOTE: Some people may blanch at drilling holes in their walls but it was easy, and Bob feels that walls are meant to have holes and it helps fulfill their purpose. Joy points out that if we had bought the three-pack in the first place, we could have placed the wired router in the office and two wireless points elsewhere.) It's $170 for a three-pack, $129 for a single.
There are several non-obvious obstacles that can prevent you from getting on the Internet wirelessly, not just having a lot of walls and other stuff in the way.
— Public enemy number one is "video senders." These are designed to beam your TV picture to another TV in the house. You may not have one but maybe your neighbor does. Baby monitors and security cameras constantly beaming out their signals are similarly obstructive.
— The microwave, at least while it's on. Also, wireless speakers and music players. These devices do battle with each other.
— Cordless phones, older Bluetooth devices, Christmas lights, power cables, mirrors, plaster board, old TVs, fish tanks, and chicken wire round out the list. Chicken wire? Well, you may not have chickens (on the other hand, maybe you do) but the wire mesh is often used to help plaster stick to walls.
Google's tech support was so awesome that it leads us to discuss the best tech support service we've ever encountered. The support guy from Google even emailed us a couple days later — on a Sunday night — to ask if we had any other problems. We're thinking of putting him on our Christmas list. The only other technical support we ever encountered as good as this is the one provided by Okidata, the printer company. They answer at any hour, every day, and always solve the problem. This is the reason we always buy Okidata printers. So listen up, you MBAs: tech support really is a profit center.
You can call Google on the phone, chat online, or have a video chat. In the video chat, you can see them but they don't see you. That way they can demonstrate a product right before your eyes. If you call 855-836-3987, they can route you to the right tech support person. If you lose this number, search on the phrase "Google Store customer service" from Google.com and it will come right up.
We even used their techs when we gave an old Google Chromecast device to our friend Frieda but had trouble setting it up. A quick call to Google tech support fixed it.
Start.Me is a free extension for your browser. It gives you a page on the web with everything organized– your favorite website links off to the left, with today's news on the right. In the middle are icons for all the most popular websites, organized under the categories "Social," "Shopping" and "Google Links." Under links, for example, you'll find YouTube, Gmail, Calendar, the Google Play store and others. The whole page is customizable. Get it at the website Start.me.
AirBNB, a free app for Android and iPhone/iPad, is now moving beyond places to stay. Click "Experiences," to find cooking classes, foodie tours, craft lessons, and music tours.
When we're typing in Microsoft Word on our Windows computers, we often lose sight of the cursor. We move the mouse around and still can't find it. If this happens to you, change your mouse settings. We did.
In the search box in Windows, type "Mouse Settings." (In Windows 10, there's one extra step: Click "Additional Mouse Options.") When "Mouse Properties" comes up, click the "Pointers" tab. Under "Scheme," choose "Windows Black Extra Large." Now look under "Customize," and find the words "Text Select." Click to highlight "Text Select." Then click "Browse" and choose something you find easy to see. We chose the extra large black arrow.
Which wifi analyzer is recommended? The first hit in the app store is $7.99. There are others though, and some are free. Most throw in the word "network" somewhere.


Old timers will answer, "Yes, yes it is" with the same confidence today that they had when it first became true back in 1969. If the record has been eclipsed since then, it's hard to say. In spite of efforts by a number of organizations, there really isn't a global pool height registry. Blame language barriers and the impossibility of keeping up with every new skyscraper being built in every country around the globe.
But soon the smartypantses among us will be able to counter with a definitive "No, no it's not." That's because a new skyscraper approaching completion is going to sport what will very likely be the world's highest indoor pool, taking yet another title away from Chicago.
The building in question is the Goldin Finance 117. And you're not surprised at all to learn that it is in China. The Tianjin tower, designed by P&T Group will have its pool on the 115th floor.
So what's on the other two floors at the top of the 1,957-foot-tall tower? Like the Hancock Center, a restaurant and observation deck.
I stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong recently, and its indoor pool is on the 118th floor. The building heights may be different, but by floor number, I think this one is already beat.