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Bullying Can Kill
Bullying Can Kill May 21, 2007 12:48:33 GMT -5
Post by ocelot on May 21, 2007 12:48:33 GMT -5
Bullied girl takes her life
UPDATED: 2007-05-20 01:12:57 MST
Loved ones say constant tormenting to blame for teen's tragic death
By SARAH KENNEDY
EDITOR'S NOTE: As a rule, the Sun does not report on suicides. That policy is based on the fear any publicity might spur others to take such drastic action. When the family of 13-year-old Linda Cook contacted the Sun wishing to tell their daughter's tragic tale, we decided it was an important story worth sharing with other parents. Their message, and that of others who knew Linda, is that bullying can lead to more than tears.
Through all the torment of being called names, having her hair pulled and her lunch bag stolen, Linda Cook never uttered one bad word against her bullies.
Instead, the gentle 13-year-old did the only thing she believed would end the suffering -- she took her own life.
On Thursday afternoon, Linda rode the school bus home for the final time.
She sat in silence as kids took off their shoes and rubbed their dirty feet in her hair.
When it reached her stop, she snatched her stolen bag back from the bullies and ran off the school bus -- tripping and falling in the process -- while the cruel laughter of her tormenters followed her as she ran home.
She locked herself in her bedroom and hanged herself.
Her 11-year-old sister Michaela found her shortly after.
For two days, Linda, who was declared brain-dead upon arrival at Alberta Children's Hospital, was hooked to life support so that her family could donate her organs.
"We had to make a decision about what Linda would want," said her mother Vanessa.
"Now that her eyes have been donated, someone else can see... she had such beautiful eyes."
Yesterday, Linda was taken off life support with her heartbroken family surrounding her and wondering how it ever got to this point.
Although Linda didn't leave a note, Vanessa has no doubts the constant torment led her beloved daughter to take her life.
When the bullying began about a year ago at the Piitoyias Family School, a Native program run out of Colonel Walker community school in the southeast, Linda, who was taller and a bit heavier than other kids her age, did what all experts say to do -- she told the grown-ups in her life.
She told her mother, a school counsellor and even her bus driver and confidante Lori Kimmel, but the torment continued.
"They made fun of her hair and clothes," said Vanessa.
"She was a larger girl but she was healthy.
"She would tell me what was going on and we'd hug and kiss and I'd say her family loves her and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.
"I told her she could handle anything but I guess she couldn't ... I guess it was too much for her."
Michaela said when kids called her older sister fat, the two of them would just walk away.
"She always said I was over-protective of her, but I was OK with that," she said.
"We were never apart."
If the kids failed to see how special Linda was, those who loved her such as Kimmel -- her bus driver for the last year -- didn't.
"She had such a love inside of her and I couldn't understand why they were so mean," Kimmel said, choking back sobs.
"She never lost her kindness through all of this."
In fact, Kimmel was so touched by the young teen she would attend her school recitals just to show support.
Despite the inner turmoil, Linda continued volunteering at a local consignment store for needy people and kept watch over the younger neighbourhood kids when they were playing outside.
She went to church every Sunday and continued to share her recess snacks with the very people who made her life a living hell.
Vanessa said Linda had even been taking stilt-walking lessons and had planned to perform at a children's festival this summer.
It was because of those things that those around her thought she had a good handle on the bullying.
"I didn't think it was affecting Linda as much as it affects other kids because she was talking about it," said Kimmel.
Kimmel said she tried really hard to protect Linda.
She even kept the Grade 7 student on the bus with her until the bell rang some mornings so she wouldn't have to be in the school yard with the other kids.
"I went to the school to talk to them about Linda but it happens to so many kids -- it's just so overwhelming," she said.
"I don't totally blame the teachers because kids can be so sneaky."
Vanessa said she also doesn't hold the school responsible for her daughter's death.
"So many people tried to protect her but no one can be everywhere at all times," she said.
"Her school counsellor was so kind to her but I just wish more could have been done."
Both the school counsellor and Kimmel went to the hospital while Linda was still on life support.
"It broke my heart," said Kimmel.
"She never had the chance to have her first dance or her first love."
Grandma Elaine said the devastated family is telling Linda's story to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.
"The message needs to go out that this bullying has to stop," she said.
"Teachers just say let it go, well, you let it go and look what happens."
A memorial of the 13-year-old will be placed in Kimmel's bus as a constant reminder of the heartbreaking consequences of bullying.
"Whether kids feel it or not, they have to remember because maybe then it will help another child who is being bullied," she said.
Mother sad for tormentors
Mom doesn't blame kids for daughter's death
By NADIA MOHARIB, SUN MEDIA
The mother of a teen believed to have been driven to suicide by relentless bullies says she holds no anger towards her daughter's tormentors.
Yesterday, three days after her 13-year-old daughter Lynda Cook hung herself in her bedroom, Vanessa said she hopes people learn from the needless tragedy.
"I can't be angry, that's too heavy of a feeling," the mourning mother of three said.
"I can't blame the kids -- they need to learn from this."
Vanessa said schools play a role, but parents need to take a reality check, too.
Although it's too late for her daughter, Vanessa urges any parent who thinks their child may be a bully to talk to them.
"I want the message to go beyond the kids, beyond the school," she said.
"It's got to get to the parents."
Lynda, a Grade 7 student at Piitoyias Family School, a Native program at Colonel Walker community school, was bullied for about a year.
But she embraced life, despite the teasing.
Any plans for her future died Thursday when Lynda, after enduring name-calling on a school bus ride, went home and took her own life.
Calgary Board of Education spokesman Ted Flitton said crisis teams will be at the school tomorrow to help staff and students cope.
"This was dreadful, to say the least," he said. "My heart goes out to ... her family."
He said officials will try to identify any bullies involved.
The CBE has a comprehensive policy to try to prevent bullying and discipline for bullies ranges from suspension to expulsion, he said.
Staff and students are educated on the issue and resources are used to deal with bullying.
But Flitton, who noted children spend just 8% of their lives in school, said solutions go beyond the classroom.
"Certainly, we have a role and we are doing a heck of a lot of great work, but 92 per cent of the their lives is elsewhere, so how is it solely a school issue?" he asked.
Lynda's mom hopes the lesson behind her daughter's death will be to teach bullies how devastating their actions can be for their victims.
"I'm sad for them," she said of the bullies.
"I'm hurt for them because they didn't get to know Lynda."
Schoolmate describes darkness inside and how bullies 'destroyed' teen
Sam Smith knows the pain her friend and schoolmate Lynda Cook felt.
Just a few weeks ago, she says she, too, was bullied.
And just like Lynda, who took deadly actions to end the pain, she briefly considered the same final path of escape.
"I felt that darkness inside," she said, wiping back tears while recounting a day when a group of students threatened to choke her and pretended to stab her with a pencil.
"I felt all alone. They'll do anything to make you feel bad and it works," Smith said.
Friends and family who were mourning Lynda's death yesterday said they're trying to embrace the way she chose not to hate those who treated her with hatred.
Her stepfather, Jason Paul, said there are lessons to be taken from the way she lived.
"Despite all the sadness and fear and pain, she didn't turn it into anger," he said.
He said the actions of a few "took something beautiful and wrecked it," but like Lynda -- "a girl who wanted world peace," he added -- Paul refuses to resort to anger.
"I don't blame the children who took a piece of Lynda every day, every week," he said. "I'm not blaming the parents ... we're parents, too."
Like Lynda's mother, Vanessa, Paul hopes parents take a long hard look at their children's behaviour.
"We have a responsibility to protect our child from the world and to protect the world from our children," he said.
Sam, a Grade 8 student at the same school, hopes bullies learn how harsh their actions can be.
"They've took the strength, the joy, the love Lynda had and destroyed it," she said.
"They shouldn't be allowed to do that ... it shouldn't happen again."
This is such a sad story. I feel like crying just thinking about it.
Post by lapayin on May 21, 2007 16:37:06 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing this Leona. I too think this is about the saddest thing that could happen.
This young girl must have been in so much pain before her death.
It sounds like she did have so much love from her family and others - why could she not see that there was something to live for? Teenagers are so impressionable.
I think these kids who did the bullying should be held accountable. There is so little respect and tolerance in the world today for people who are "different" not "perfect" in the eyes of society. When in reality it's the ones who are not Stepford people who are the true treasures. It takes courage and strength to be "different" and it is something I personally admire.
This is exactly why I do not watch TV today and dislike American music. I think the "so called reality shows" as well as comedy shows, late night shows and rap just promote and encourage this type of behavior. I could not be happier with the backlash that is happening to people like Mel Gibson, Don Imus, Michael Richards etc and I hope that continues. It is not funny to degrade and ridicule.
I am outraged!!
I absolutely agree with everything you said. I basically only watch sports and documentaries on TV anymore. I read this story before work on Sunday and I could not get it out of my head. We, as a society, have to push for more respect for other fellow human beings. There is too little respect anymore and people are not being punished for disrespectful actions.
Post by achebeautiful on May 24, 2007 11:01:59 GMT -5
I know little to nothing about this newspaper, except this little EDITOR'S NOTE. I am encouraged by such thoughtful responsibility and action. They exercised their power to do something good, and I commend them for it.
Leona, this definately is a topic for the "F*ck Off Board"! I'm not sure even 'F*uck Off' describes it well enough.
This is very heartbreaking and sad.
Reminds me of the words to an old song by Three Dog Night called "Easy To Be Hard":
"How can people be so heartless?
How can people be so cruel?
Easy.....easy to be hard"
I hope these bullies feel tougher for their actions. They are cowards. It's easy to be bad.
Both main newspapers in Calgary I have found to take responsibility about what they report. The Sun is usually considered the inferior newspaper in Calgary, both both papers take alot of pride in their commitment to responsible and honest reporting.
I fully agree with what you said.
Well said Mark.


Back to school, wow. I cant believe we made it through the first day without a hitch. It's hard enough to juggle my daily work schedule, gym time and enough left over for a cup of coffee, but toss in my kid's schedule and I'm surprised I'm not lost!
Ill admit it, I'd be completely left in the dust without my phone though, and that's what makes tying it all together possible. Everything is at my fingertips and I can only suggest it to you as well, for staying up to date and involved in your daily routine.
From my morning alarms, to notes of what days I need to do what, I'd be a mess without it. I can't say how many times my phones reminders have saved me from forgetting to send P.E. clothes or to pack a lunch on certain days. Field trips, after school activities, and play dates are all at my fingertips, and able to stay on my mind.
If my phone didn't have a planner, calendar, a note taking app and an alarm, I'd still be in bed and I wouldn't know what day it is. I'm not kidding.
I'm surprised to see a lot of people still lugging around a day planner as well as a phone that is so out of touch with the times. As if a phone was ONLY for making phone calls? If you want to make a step forward, for your sanity, help is on the way. Take advantage of the limited time Buy One Get One promotion for the HTC one.
Getting one phone free is a big help in every way, if you have teens that you need to stay in touch with after school, or a significant other that also could use a step out of the dark, you'll be covered with everything you need and more to make hectic scheduling a little simpler.
Sprint, the Only National Carrier to Guarantee Unlimited Talk, Text and Data for Life.
Compensation was provided by Sprint via Glam Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Sprint.


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Home More Middle east Syria's Civil War : US-backed Syrian forces 'surround' ISIL in Raqqa
Syria's Civil War : US-backed Syrian forces 'surround' ISIL in Raqqa
The Syrian Democratic Forces say they have seized the last route to Raqqa, and now fully encircle the city.
The SDF have cleared nearly 20 square kilometres in and around Raqqa over the past week [Reuters]
US-backed fighters have seized the last road into Raqqa, and now say they have completely encircled the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) de facto capital in northern Syria.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) "have completely surrounded and besieged the Islamic militants inside al-Raqqa city from all sides," the group said in a statement released late on Thursday.
The Kurdish-led SDF had been advancing from the city's east after they seized a major stronghold in May, and from the west and north.
"South of the Euphrates river the SDF now control all high-speed routes into Raqqa," Joe Scrocca, spokesman for the US-led coalition, told the Associated Press.
Moving toward the Euphrates from the east "would completely encircle the city and has been the SDF plan from the start", Scrocca added.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said the SDF had seized villages across the river, moving through the Kasret al-Faraj area.
The Observatory described it as a "strategic" advance that completes the siege around Raqqa.
"IS has no other choice now but to surrender or fight to the end," said the Observatory director, Rami Abdelrahman, using a different acronym for the group.
Hours after the advances, ISIL fighters carried out a counter-attack on SDF forces east of the city, regaining control of sections of al-Sinaa and Mashalab neighborhoods, which were captured in the early days of the offensive, Abdelrahman said. He said there were casualties on both sides.
Thursday's development comes as Iraqi forces captured the ruins of the famous and hugely symbolic al-Nuri mosque in Mosul where the Islamic State group's leader first declared the "caliphate" nearly three years ago.
Nearly three years to the day, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made the "caliphate"announcement in an audio recording, before appearing for the first time in public at the mosque days later.
The declaration ushered in a period of gruesome violence and an attempt by the group to erase borders between the neighbouring states.
Scrocca said Syrian fighters have pushed their way from different axes, isolating the city since the campaign began on June 6.
The coalition has destroyed all the bridges over the river and the Syrian fighters are in control of the two dams, which are the only crossing points remaining, he said. He estimated that 2,500 ISIL fighters remain in the city.
Tightening the noose around Raqqa, the de-facto capital of ISIL since they seized it in July 2014, is another symbolic development in the coordinated fight against the group.
It effectively seals the territory and denies the fighters an escape route to their other stronghold in Deir ez Zor, south of Raqqa.
Speaking in Baghdad, coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon said ISIL fighters have been "abandoned" by their leadership as a "steady stream" of leaders attempted to escape the city, some "successfully".
He said in the last week, the SDF have cleared nearly 20 square kilometres of territory in and around Raqqa.
The advance toward Raqqa city began last year, as Kurdish-led forces fought to clear ISIL from rural parts of the province.
Backed by air strikes from the international coalition, the Syrian fighters captured the strategic town of Tabqa in May, and seized one of Syria's major dams that lies nearby.
The battle for Raqqa began in earnest on June 6, as the fighters moved in from east, west and north of Raqqa.
The fight on the southern front began later this month. Scrocca warned that the fight for Raqqa city would be lengthy.
"There is still much fighting to be done in the city," he said.
Source :Al Jazeera and news agencies.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Libraries, like any other organization, should be, well, organized. When it comes to scheduling, calendar coordination, and productivity, Microsoft Outlook is a handy all-in-one solution if everyone involved is on the same network. For the sake of consistency, many libraries and librarians try to use a software suite like Microsoft Office because all of its applications are designed to work together. However, if productivity software takes too big of a bite out of your budget, there are dandy free options available like Google, which brings us Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Gmail. Doodle is a fun and free little tool that can help coordinate schedules.
Besides being organized as an organization, librarians need to be organized in their academic pursuits. This is important for their personal productivity, of course, but it is also important in our role as teachers to our patrons so we may pass on the knowledge to them. Here is a SlideShare presentation detailing four cloud based productivity tools: Dropbox for file sharing, Evernote for brainstorming, and Zotero and Diigo for information management. My personal pick Diigo because it's the coolest and most powerful. However, as librarian looking to teach patron, I'd have to go with Zotero because it's free and still cool. If a patron is only working with databases and research papers, I'd choose RefWorks for its full service functionality when research and composing research papers. Here are some thoughts on the ones that interest me and I am learning more about to help my patrons with academic inclinations.
Diigo is a cloud-based information management tool that lets you do everything you've always wanted to do with the internet. Check out this introductory video. Diigo allows you to add interactive sticky notes and highlight web pages. Everything is saved in the cloud and is accessible from any web browser on any device. When you highlight a page, the highlights stay on that page for you anytime you visit that website, no matter how you're accessing it. It turns the entire internet into your personal textbook. You can add tags to the items you save for easy access later. You can capture and annotate clippings of screen shots. Also, not only can you save a snapshot of a webpage for offline access, but you can also mark them "read later" and access them from your mobile device with the Diigo Power Note for Android or Diigo offline reader for the iPhone. With this marvelous appe, you can download the pages when you have wifi and read them when you don't. Now the bad news; Diigo costs money. Unlimited use of everything it offers is $5 a month or $40 a year. Worth it if you use it a lot or can be reimbursed for the expense.
Zotero seems pretty cool, like a cross between Refworks and Diigo, but it does not have anywhere near the versatility and power of either one. It is, however, absolutely free.
EndNote and Refworks are database and citation power tools that save and file your research citation information and help you write works cited pages, in-text citations or footnotes with a couple of clicks. EndNote has the advantage of offering offline archiving of your data if you're willing to spend about $10 on the software. Both are subscription-based services, so you must be affiliated with a library or academic institution with a subscription. As mentioned earlier, Zotero offers close to the same functionality for no cost.
Tags: 23 things, Bokash, Diigo, EndNote, Google, Google Calendar, iPhone, librarian, libraries, LIS, RefWorks, SlideShare, web 2.0, Zotero. Bookmark the permalink.


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President Trump Congratulates Putin On Re-Election
President Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday for winning re-election, in a contest marred by ballot-box stuffing and forced voting. Trump's words drew an immediate rebuke from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a longtime Putin critic.
The congratulatory phone call came a day after the White House said no such message was anticipated. Officials noted on Monday that Putin's election to a fourth six-year term as president was not a surprise.
The Associated Press pointed to widespread reports of forced voting on Sunday, in an effort to show robust democratic support for Putin.
McCain was not impressed by the turnout, tweeting "That Putin had to work so hard to drive voter turnout shows the Russian people know his claim to power is a sham."
The Arizona Republican was dismayed by Trump's recognition of the Russian election results.
"An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections," McCain said in a statement. "By doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country's future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin's regime."
Trump and Putin have both expressed a desire for improved U.S.-Russian relations. But Trump has been hampered in pursuing such ties by suspicion that Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 presidential election, as well as by the ongoing investigation by Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller.
A White House spokeswoman said Russia's election interference did not come up during Tuesday's phone call. Neither did the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, England. The U.S. has joined the U.K., France and Germany in demanding answers about that incident from Moscow.
Trump told reporters after the call that he expects to meet with Putin "in the not too distant future," though press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there are no immediate plans for such a meeting.
The president said he wants to discuss Syria, Ukraine and North Korea with the Russian leader, as well as what he described as an "arms race" between their two countries.
"We had a very good call and I suspect that we will probably be meeting in the not too distant future to discuss the arms race which is getting out of control," Trump said.
Despite his cautionary tone, Trump said he is determined to maintain the United States' military superiority.
"We are spending $700 billion this year on our military and a lot of it is that we are going to remain stronger than any other nation in the world by far," he said. "We will never allow anybody to have anything even close to what we have."
Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


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Dive Into St. Lucie's Arts & Culture Scene
by VisitStLucie | Jan 9, 2017 | Arts and Culture, Highwaymen, Lincoln Park, Zora Neale Hurston
The arts are alive and well in St. Lucie. Home to artists of all stripes – from sculptors to painters, fiber artists to potters, writers and jewelry designers, visitors will be inspired with the array of talent in a colorful, small town atmosphere. And, there's some interesting history mixed in with it, too.
Famous and beloved African-American author Zora Neale Hurston lived, wrote, and taught school in Fort Pierce from 1957 to 1960. She wrote four books – possibly the most well-known is Their Eyes Were Watching God. But
that was not all – she also wrote plays, and short stories. Go on the self-guided the Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail which begins at the Zora library and includes three information kiosks and eight trail markers at places that were significant in her life.
The Florida Highwaymen are a group of African-American artists who made a living by selling their paintings from their cars in the 1950s. All 26 are members of the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Take yourself along the Highwaymen Heritage Trail, starting at the Seven Gables House in downtown Fort Pierce.
Also in downtown Fort Pierce, visitors won't want to miss the newly expanded A. E. Backus Museum and Gallery displaying the largest collection of A.E. Backus paintings, the artist known as "the dean of Florida landscapes." The gallery also features changing exhibitions. And don't miss the Underground Art Market in the old downtown area, too – it features works from budding and seasoned artists with studios and an art gallery.
Lovers of the performing arts should head to the restored 1923 Sunrise Theatre, now on the National Register of Historic Places and home to performances through April.
The St. Lucie County Regional History Center on Seaway Drive on South Hutchinson Island is a fascinating place inside and out with replica rooms, old tools, and even a separate house, the Gardner House, fully furnished in early 1900s style.
One of the newest initiatives going on in Downtown Fort Pierce is the establishment of the Peacock Arts District. The City as well as the community are working to revitalize this once significant part of town in an area (often frequented by peacocks) that had been left abandoned for many years. With the help of local artists, the refreshment of brick pavers and more, this area is beginning to thrive.
In the city of Port St. Lucie, look for the civic center on U.S. 1 at Walton Road. There, you'll find an art gallery inside the civic center.
Also, every other Wednesday at the Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens there are Jazz Jams performances led by the talented Fort Pierce Jazz and Blues Society.


Yesterday, finance and health ministers from the provinces and territories met with their federal counterparts to renegotiate the Health Accord. The meeting came on the 50 anniversary of our medicare; on December 19, 1966, parliament proclaimed the Health Care Act as the law, creating the single-payer health-care system we know today. While the federal government showed courage, vision, and prioritized the public's wellbeing half a century ago, sadly it appears the opposite has occurred at the present time.
It seems the federal Liberal government isn't willing to make serious and reasonable funding arrangements that Canadians and their health care system needs. Ultimately, the provinces and territories declined the federal offer of a Canadian Health Transfer (CHT) escalator being set at 3.5% (it is currently at 6%) and about $11 billion over 10 years for home care and mental health. For prospective, it is worth comparing this proposed spending on health care with the federal government's, "enthusiasm for investing in infrastructure projects. It has announced plans to spend $186 billion on infrastructure over the next 11 years." Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette told the CBC, "what has been tabled is a reduction in funding...a reduction of $51 billion...Minister Philpott will come to your microphone and camera and say we tabled $11billion... so today the situation is very simple minus 51 and plus 11, everybody who is listening understands the math of this - Canadians are losing."
Canada's Premiers have continued to call on Ottawa to boost funding on health to 25% (although an important caveat not included should be that this should be conditional on provinces not decreasing their health spending). If the provinces were to accept the Liberal government's offer of, "a locked-in 3.5 per cent annual increases then the federal share of health funding will actually decrease from about 23 per cent right now to possibly under 20 per cent." After the finance minister ultimatum of 3.5%, the federal government refused to accept a counter-offer from the provinces of growing the health escalator by 5.2% a year and for provincial commitments to spend on mutual priorities. The Ontario Financial Accountability Office has stated that 5.2% is the minimum transfer needed for Ontario to be able to continuing offering their current basket of public health care services. For the record the Council of Canadians has repeatedly called for a minimum of a 6% escalator and outlined the reason for this position. The Ontario government has stated that overall, "The current federal funding proposal is over $30 billion less than what the evidence shows is needed to maintain the sustainability of health care systems," other estimates put this figure at between $40-50 billion less than what is needed.
Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said it was the federal government who walked away from the table, not the provinces and territories. Essentially the federal government walked away from the wellbeing of the nation. The CBC notes that, "Without a deal, the health-transfer arrangement would likely revert to the Harper plan of at least three per cent a year." If nothing changes, this will occur on April 1, 2017.
When asked about what happens next, Morneau stated, "We don't have next steps to lay out for you." Further he wouldn't, "respond directly to questions of whether a failure to immediately deliver a Health Accord counts as a broken promise for the Liberals. But he did haul out the biggest numbers possible in front of the TV cameras..." While the federal government hasn't confirmed if they would negotiate with provinces individually, New Brunswick health minister, Cathy Rogers, indicated her province will seek a bilateral agreement. This would be a dangerous and short sighted path to head down that would jeopardize the equality between provinces for health services. Others, like P.E.I. Premier Wade MacLauchlan, have called for a first ministers' meeting and believes more work can be done to reach an agreement. Hopefully this can occur, but all parties need to be willing to the wellbeing of Canadians ahead of political games.
At the current junction, there will no doubt be a lot of spin in the coming days on why the negotiations failed. Below are some editorialized thoughts on the matter.
-Our public healthcare is as sustainable as we want it to be and remains the number one priority for Canadians. The proposal we have seen brought forward today by the federal government is both risky and irresponsible. Underfunding our healthcare will only lead to further erosion of the foundation of medicare and usher in increased privatization of our system.
- During the last election campaign, the Liberal platform promised, "only to work collaboratively with the provinces to negotiate a new health accord, including a long-term agreement on funding." So much for real change and sunny ways. The Trudeau government is fulfilling the Harper legacy of underfunding health care. Underfunding public healthcare is a choice and it ultimately speaks to the values of the government. It needs to be remembered that the figures and budget lines being proposed aren't just numbers, but the wellbeing of our families, friends, and communities.
-The provinces do need to come to the table and find areas where more accountability can be achieved. Far too often funding isn't tied to achieving evidence based standards to produce the best outcomes for patients. Certain provinces continue to turn a blind eye to violations of the Canadian Health Act. The federal government is within their right to demand accountability, and attach strings to funding. But, these strings needs to be negotiated and in place for the best outcomes of all patients - not political promises. As it stands the federal Liberal have given no indication of what these strings would be and if they include public delivery of care.
-The federal health minister spoke multiple times about 'health transformation' and 'efficiency', but these buzzwords serve little purpose. There are changes that need to be made to protect, strengthen, and expand our universal public health care, this much is true. Yet, these changes call for adequate and predictable long-term funding, along with a sincere willingness from all parties to put the public's health first.
-It is a major disappointment to see increased funding for home care and mental health used by the federal government in political gamesmanship. The narrative from the federal health and finance ministers is that the provinces have walked away from funding for these areas. This couldn't be further from the truth. What they walked away from was inadequate funding for the health care system as a whole. The false dichotomy created by the ministers only serves a political agenda, and not the public. Hopefully, Canadians will see through this intellectually dishonest framing of the issues. What is needed is robust funding for both the system as a whole and areas like home care and mental health.
-Further, the federal money being offered for home care and mental health needs to be examined. These two issues are indeed important, and for that reason should not be proposed with 'sunset funding'. Both areas need to see a real long term funding commitment, not just funding that fits with election cycles and campaign promisess. Additionally, as homecare and long-term care in a community setting fall outside of the Canada Health Act, there should be concerns that much of this funding could go towards for-profit care providers and how it could make it more difficult to bring homecare under the medicare umbrella. Simply shuffling people out of hospitals isn't the answer, and the evidence is clear that moving post-surgical wound care out of a hospital setting does not work. Further, details remain missing on what the earmarked $1 billion for home care infrastructure would entail. Lastly, there is no information on what mental health services would be included with this funding. Until more details are brought forward and there is transparency from the federal government on what they are proposing, all Canadians should be asking questions.
-Despite over 90% of Canadians being in favour of a national drug program (universal pharmacare) and the health accord representing the ideal time to set the framework to being the program, little was said by the federal government on this topic. At one point there seems to have been a proposal for $544 million over five years for prescription drug and "innovation" initiatives, however it is unclear what exactly that would entail. What is clear is that this is far from the universal pharmacare program Canadians have long been calling for. As it stands, we are the only nation with a universal health system that doesn't include prescription drugs; evidence shows us that Canadians are literally dying because they cannot afford their medication. We have written a ground breaking report on this topic which you can read about here.
-Finally, you have to wonder how serious the federal government was in the first place about having a successful renegotiation of the health accord. The Prime Ministers and the PMO seem to be taking a direct page out of the Harper government's playbook with unilateral declarations, reduced health funding, insufficient negotiations, and ultimatums. All Canadians should be concerned about what comes next.


text:
As Cuyahoga County heroin, fentanyl deaths skyrocket, officials say efforts to fight it fall short
Updated Jan 11, 2019; Posted Jun 09, 2016
By Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com
Cuyahoga County officials are calling for more money to combat a worsening heroin and fentanyl crisis.
(The Plain Dealer file photo)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County needs more money to combat a heroin and fentanyl crisis that has seen overdose deaths rise to historic levels and overloaded death investigators, officials said Thursday.
Cuyahoga County's top executive and medical examiner issued a joint statement announcing that the county had asked for increased funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services treat addicts and target dealers and importers of the deadly drugs.
The release does not specify how much the county is asking for.
The request comes in the wake of Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson's office logging 45 fatal overdoses attributed to either heroin or fentanyl in the month of May.
The total, the highest of any month this year, puts the county on pace to see nearly 500 people die from the drugs, doubling 2015 overdose numbers.
The rising number of deaths is a sign that the county's robust response to the crisis has fallen short, officials admitted.
"While our ongoing efforts to collaborate and cover all relevant aspects of our opioid problem have been worthy, it's obvious that new and more aggressive strategies are needed," Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish said.
The need for the increased efforts is born out in the details of May's overdose numbers, officials said.
Of the 45 people who took a fatal dose of heroin or fentanyl, 19 were residents of Cleveland, and 26 people lived in the suburbs.
Residents of Brecksville, Brook Park, Chagrin Falls, Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, Lakewood, Maple Heights, Mayfield, Mayfield Heights, Oakwood, Olmsted Township, Parma, Parma Heights and Strongsville in Cuyahoga County, and Aurora, Chesterland, Elyria, Newbury, North Ridgeville in other counties, died last month.
Fifteen people died in the month's final six days.
"As our most recent numbers bear out, we are in the midst of a worsening problem with deaths from heroin and fentanyl, which continue to rise at a rapid rate," Gilson said.
County officials are asking the federal government to:
Change Medicaid regulations that restrict drug addiction facilities to 16 beds and require pain management satisfaction surveys as part of doctor evaluations. The county said these regulations have a negative impact on clinics getting reimbursed for treating addicts and promote over-prescribing pain killers.
Increase access to naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses an opiate overdose and is a "crucial part" of the response to overdoses.
Issue grants for the Cuyahoga County court system to provide drug treatment as an alternate to prison or to inmates in the county's jails.
The county is also asking for more money and personnel for law enforcement task forces dedicated to heroin and fentanyl trafficking.
Both of Ohio's U.S. Senators and two Northeast Ohio representatives endorsed the request.
"With over 40 opioid-related deaths in Cuyahoga County in the last month alone, it is clear we aren't doing enough to curb addiction and treat those who need help," Sen. Sherrod Brown said in the release. "Our communities need real investment to tackle this problem."
U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat, called for Congress to use "all available resources" to combat the epidemic.
"Forty-five deaths in the month of May is nothing short of tragic. There is no time to waste," Fudge said.


Rafe is a distributed consensus protocol, which allows a collection of processes to maintain consistency even in the face of multiple node failure. The two main tenants of the protocol are leader election and log replication.
Supported by FreePlane, a great mind map editor. Supported by JSON Editor Online. Supported by HTML to MD. Written with StackEdit.


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using GRA.Domain.Model;
using GRA.Domain.Model.Filters;

namespace GRA.Domain.Repository
{
    public interface IDailyLiteracyTipImageRepository : IRepository<DailyLiteracyTipImage>
    {
        Task<int> CountAsync(DailyImageFilter filter);
        Task<ICollection<DailyLiteracyTipImage>> PageAsync(DailyImageFilter filter);
        Task UpdateSaveAsync(int userId, DailyLiteracyTipImage image, int newDay);
        new Task RemoveSaveAsync(int userId, int imageId);
        Task<DailyLiteracyTipImage> GetByDay(int dailyLiteracyTipId, int day);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
President Joe Biden plays golf at The Buccaneer in Christiansted, U.S. Virgin Islands, Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Biden makes 1st public appearances during St. Croix vacation
by: DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press
Posted: Dec 30, 2022 / 01:13 PM MST
CHRISTIANSTED, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) — After two days out of sight while vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands, President Joe Biden ventured out Friday for a round of golf and dinner with his wife and grandchildren.
Biden and grandson Hunter, 16, played on the 18-hole course at the Buccaneer Beach and Golf Resort in the town of Christiansted on St. Croix. The course features spectacular views of the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea and the island's coastline.
Later Friday, Biden and his wife, first lady Jill Biden, taped an interview that will air Saturday night on ABC's "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest." They also took Hunter and his sister, Natalie, out for dinner at one of the island's top restaurants.
When reporters outside the restaurant asked Biden about the 2024 presidential election, he joked, "There's an election coming up?" He went on to say that "2023 is going to be a good year."
Biden has said his intention is to seek reelection in 2024.
After spending Christmas at the White House, Biden arrived in St. Croix late Tuesday to spend time with family between holidays and to celebrate a new year.
Besides his grandchildren and wife, the president was accompanied to the island by his daughter Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein. Biden is staying in a home owned by friends Bill and Connie Neville.
He was scheduled to return to the White House on Jan. 2.
Bone-chilling temperatures hanging on into Wednesday
Battle Over Lisa Marie Presley's Will
Hollywood Celebrates Life of Cindy Williams
The Latest in Tyre Nichols Death, Another Officer …
An Inside Look to Rihanna's Comeback Superbowl Performance
Scientists Attempt to Bring Back Extinct Animals
Boeing Retires Revolutionary Jumbo Jet After 50 Years
President Biden Announces $292 Million Grant for …
Operation Underground Railroad Leaders Meet with …
Utah State and Tribal Leaders Promote H.B. 40 to …
As Temperatures Drop, Officials Work to Get Homeless …
Taylorsville Find Two People Shot Dead


This Booking Fee is non-refundable. The total amount of the deposit will be deducted from your final payment which is due prior to completion of your order.
Please GET IN TOUCH prior to paying your deposit, to confirm that we have space in the diary in the lead up to your big day.


Posted at 12:08h in Radio Show, RH says U Need 2 Know!
The BIG R&B show – THURSDAY PULL UP!!
Posted at 13:44h in RH says U Need 2 Know!
here's a classic R&B mix to ease you into 2014!
www.facebook.com/ronnieherel for more mixes parties in the next 12 months!
Posted at 13:45h in RH says U Need 2 Know!
time to let y'all know about something sweet n soulful on the horizon.
In his own words…The Idea behind the Soul Movement series has always been to patiently assemble the best of Slakah the Beatchilds production and marry them with fellow artists that he admires.
Watch out for collaborations with fellow Canadian soulsters Ayah and Glenn Lewis and be prepared for that trademark silky smooth production and vocals from the man himself.
In the meantime enjoy this slice of retro video niceness.
Posted at 16:09h in RH says U Need 2 Know!
Posted at 13:07h in Blog, RH says U Need 2 Know!
Jay James Picton is the most exciting singer to come outta Wales since the big man Sir Tom Jones. Yep i said it!!
JJ's silky vocals are about as soulful and engaging as it gets…And the talent doesn't end there as this budding director has himself created this "Battlecall" video from his "Heads Vs Hearts" mixtape…The video being Part 1 of a 3 part mini film.
Currently working with such musical heavyweights as Booker T Jones (legend) & James Poyser (Roots) to name but a few, what's in store is truly a mouthwatering musical prospect.
The debut album "Play It By Heart" will drop August 27th followed by the release of his incredible single "Long May They Roll" coming out September 10th.
Fresh from being released from the shackles of a major label, new independent label owner Tanya Lacey returns with a str8 up banger. Taken from the forthcoming E.P Head Chef which drops October 8th 2012, this is the 2nd single premiered on my R&B show last night.
Well here's the video folks.


text:
Home	AMERICAN BRAINWASH	The fallacies and evasions of the Green New Deal
The fallacies and evasions of the Green New Deal
by Patrice de Bergeracpas March 19, 2019
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
By Bryan Dyne and Barry Grey § 5 March 2019
AOC-genuine or counterfeit: that IS the question.
Last month, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, both Democrats, introduced a non-binding resolution in both houses of Congress calling for a "Green New Deal" to transition American energy production to non-carbon-based sources within 10 years. It is currently co-sponsored by 89 out of 235 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 11 out 47 in the Senate.
Alongside calls for the federal government to take action to halt and reverse climate change and other ongoing ecological threats, the document proposes a federal mobilization comparable to the New Deal of the 1930s, which "created the greatest middle class the United States has ever seen." It sees the present situation as an "historic opportunity" to secure for all people in the country the following: "clean air and water," "healthy food," a "sustainable environment," "high-quality health care," "affordable, safe and adequate housing," "economic security," and "a job with a family sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security."
The attempt to even raise such social and economic issues has provoked a backlash from politicians within both big business parties. Virtually the entire Republican Party has denounced it and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a vote in the Senate to force Democrats to publicly align with or dissociate themselves from the bill. The leader of the Democrats in Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has derisively referred to the resolution as a "green dream." Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has indicated the Democrats will vote "present" so as to evade the issue when it comes up for a vote.
Many Democratic supporters and co-sponsors of the Green New Deal have since backtracked, calling the proposal merely "aspirational." In the words of co-sponsor and Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Amy Klobuchar, it is at best "something that we need to move toward."
In other words, they have no intention of actually implementing it.
To be clear, it is a fiction that this proposal, even if it were adopted unanimously by both houses of Congress, would have any real impact on US domestic or foreign policy. Its non-binding status means that no lawmaker will in any way be beholden to working toward the resolution's stated goals.
Gabriel Zucman recently wrote: "What the data show is that wealth concentration in the United States has returned to the level of 1920. Forty percent of total household wealth belongs to the top 1 percent. About 20 percent belongs to the top 0.1 percent, which is about the same as the bottom 90 percent's wealth share."
The sweeping nature of the resolution, however, has generated understandable popular interest and support among workers and youth. The Green New Deal proposes "to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions," "to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people," and "to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States."
Ocasio-Cortez has raised some of the chief concerns of the bottom 90 percent of the income ladder in America, who comprise the working class. They face a daily struggle to survive and provide for their families, while the richest 10 percent, and especially the top 1 percent, 0.1 percent and 0.01 percent, monopolize an ever greater share of income and wealth.
It is all the more critical, therefore, to clarify the political character and historical context of the Green New Deal. Its basic, although unstated, premises are (1) that global warming can be halted and reversed on a national basis; (2) that the Democratic Party can be made to carry out such a program; and (3) that it can be achieved within the framework of the existing economic and political system.
Nationalism and the climate crisis
It is an established scientific fact that human-induced climate change has already cost billions of dollars and caused thousands of deaths, and is poised to inflict exponentially greater social misery if it is not immediately abated and reversed. Repeated studies have shown that it will require the coordination of the most advanced scientific and technical resources the world over in order to even begin to seriously reduce global warming. Such measures would require an international reorganization of the world's energy industry.
The Green New Deal resolution, however, neither calls for the cooperation of the nations of the world nor places any limits on the activities of the energy corporations. Quite the opposite, it insists on "making the United States the international leader on climate action" by calling for "investments to spur economic development [and] deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies." These investments would be allocated by means of "community grants, public banks, and other public financing." In other words, more public funds will be handed over to the US energy monopolies and other corporate interests, the same institutions that are responsible for climate change in the first place. Any measures ostensibly aimed at reducing climate change will have to be acceptable to corporations and banks and their wealthy shareholders.
Far from advancing an internationalist perspective, the Green New Deal resolution has a distinctly nationalist axis. It makes an unambiguous appeal to the national security agencies of the American state, first by citing as a model the "Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II," and, second, by arguing that climate change "constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States by impacting the economic, environmental and social stability of countries and communities around the world and acting as a threat multiplier."
The not-so-subtle suggestion here is that the adoption of the Green New Deal is an essential component of US imperialism's preparations for war against its rivals for world domination and necessary for the stability of US capitalism. It should not be forgotten that the "Government-led mobilization during World War II" included the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans and ended with the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"National security," a euphemism for the continued rule of the capitalist class and the pursuit of its global profit interests, is incompatible with any serious mobilization of resources to meet the social needs of working people, including a healthful and life-sustaining environment. Numerous national security think tank studies have stressed the need to drastically reduce so-called "entitlement" spending, i.e., funding for Social Security and Medicare, as well as spending for other social programs in order to carry out the military expansion and modernization necessary to prepare for war against the major rivals of American imperialism, in the first instance Russia and China.
The Democratic Party
Then there is the question of the Democratic Party. The notion that this party can serve as the vehicle for a serious effort to reverse climate change, or any other progressive social reform, is belied by its history and the social interests that control it.
Historically, the Democratic Party has served as the graveyard of progressive movements. From the populist movement at the turn of the 20th century, to the industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights movement and anti-war movement of the post-World War II period, mass movements for progressive social change have been contained, dissipated and betrayed by means of their subordination to this, the oldest capitalist party in the US.
No significant social reforms have been enacted in the US in more than 50 years. The Democrats long ago abandoned any program of social reform or any policies oriented to the social interests of the working class. Over the past half-century the Democratic Party has moved steadily and with increasing velocity to the right, seeking and largely succeeding in dislodging the Republicans as the favored party of Wall Street and the military/intelligence apparatus. On the basis of racial, gender and sexual politics—designed to deny the central class division of modern society—it has oriented itself to the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the middle class. In the last presidential election, Hillary Clinton won a majority of votes in affluent middle-class suburbs and among the richest layers of the population.
Democratic no less than Republican administrations have imposed austerity policies and prosecuted the decades-long social counterrevolution that continues today. Obama, whose election was hailed by the International Socialist Organization—one of the promoters of Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez today—as a "transformational" moment in American history, presided over the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, the imposition of wage cuts on auto workers and mass school closures, and the greatest redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top in US history. Under Obama, labor's share of the national income hit record lows, and he boasted of reducing non-defense, non-entitlement domestic spending to the lowest levels since the Eisenhower years in the 1950s. The talk of a "new New Deal" that attended his election proved to be a cruel deception.
It is difficult to say which of the two major big business parties is more reactionary. The Democrats are basing their opposition to Trump on demands for a more aggressive policy toward Russia and an escalation of war in the Middle East, while supporting his raising of the Pentagon budget to near-record levels. In every struggle of the working class they work in lockstep with the Republicans to deny the workers' demands, including the strikes by teachers for decent pay and the defense of public education, claiming "there is no money" for decent schools while they accelerate the privatization of the education system.
At the same time they glorify the CIA, FBI and the military and lead the campaign to censor the internet and suppress oppositional views. Their primary domestic focus is the right-wing #MeToo sex witch hunt, based on the denial of due process and the presumption of innocence, and the promotion of racial politics to divide the working class.
The references to the "New Deal" by Ocasio-Cortez and other promoters of the "Green New Deal" are grossly misleading. They rip this period of limited social reform out of its historical context and distort both its origins and its results. The New Deal was the response of a frightened ruling class to the threat of social revolution heightened by two factors: the global breakdown of capitalism in the Great Depression of the 1930s and the revolutionary impulse provided by the Russian Revolution and the existence of the Soviet Union. Roosevelt's reforms were not granted from on high by a benevolent ruling elite. They were extracted from a ruthless capitalist class by a semi-insurrectionary movement of the working class, in the form of a mass industrial union movement that was largely led by socialist-minded workers.
It came at a time when American capitalism was the rising and dominant industrial power in the world and the ruling class had massive economic reserves, even in the midst of the Depression. Even then, the reforms instituted never came close to overcoming economic inequality or securing the basic needs of the working class. The trade unions formed or consolidated out of the wave of sit-down strikes quickly made their peace with capitalism, signed on to the post-war Cold War and anti-socialist witch hunt and in the ensuing decades became junior partners with the corporations in imposing wage cuts, layoffs and the destruction of working conditions. This process was institutionalized through their alliance with the Democratic Party.
For the past 40 years, American capitalism has been in precipitous decline. It long ago dismantled much of its industrial base in order to become the world's leader in financial parasitism and criminality. Over this entire period, every social reform from the 1930s and 1960s has been under relentless attack as part of a social counterrevolution, presided over by both parties, against the working class, making the US the most unequal country of all the major economies. Donald Trump is the fascistic personification of the financial oligarchy and the noxious expression of the protracted decay of American democracy.
Where do the Democrats get their money? In last year's mid-term elections, the securities and investment industry gave 62 percent of its contributions to Democrats, continuing the trend from 2016, when Wall Street gave far more money to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump. The oil and gas industry, which has long given the bulk of its campaign bribes to Republicans, nevertheless handed out $6 million to Democratic candidates in 2018.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is worth an estimated $16 million and has high-end Wall Street connections via her husband's firm Financial Leasing Services. She led the successful 2015 campaign to end a forty-year ban on crude oil exports, opening up the world market to US companies. For his part, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, known as the "senator from Wall Street," has received $310,020 from the oil and gas industry throughout his political career.
Social inequality and capitalism
The entire social structure of the United States, and therefore its political system, is anchored in the vast concentration of wealth at the very top. Speaking of a return to "Gilded Age levels" of inequality, the economist Gabriel Zucman recently wrote: "What the data show is that wealth concentration in the United States has returned to the level of 1920. Forty percent of total household wealth belongs to the top 1 percent. About 20 percent belongs to the top 0.1 percent, which is about the same as the bottom 90 percent's wealth share."
This is part of an international process. Earlier this year the British charity Oxfam reported that in 2018, just 26 people controlled as much wealth as the 3.8 billion people who comprise the bottom half of the world's population.
No genuine social reform can be enacted today outside of a direct assault on social inequality and the entrenched wealth and power of the corporate-financial oligarchy. That includes the political parties it controls.
The other basic obstacle to resolving the climate crisis and all of the other social ills that plague humankind is the division of the increasingly integrated world economy between rival nation-states, which are the political forms through which the competing national cliques of capitalists fight for control of the world's resources, markets and sources of cheap labor. Climate change is a global problem and can be solved only through the systematic and intelligent mobilization of the resources and scientific and technological know-how of the entire planet.
The Green New Deal is not a program to address the urgent social needs of working people in the US. It is a hollow slogan and grab-bag of demands meant to divert the growing struggle of the working class into the dead end of the Democratic Party. The solution to climate change, along with social inequality, poverty and the growing threat of dictatorship and war, is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system, both in the US and internationally.
The financial oligarchs must be expropriated and their corporations and banks turned into public utilities under the democratic control of the working population. The social force capable of carrying out such a transformation is the working class. It must be mobilized and armed with a revolutionary socialist program to take political power and establish a workers' state, as part of the world socialist revolution.
The authors belong to wsws.org, a Trotkyist publication. They naturally recommend their party as the solution to the current crisis. While we agree with much of what they say in these columns (and that's why we publish them) we remain independent, non-sectarian leftists with no affiliation with any Trotkyist formation in the US or abroad.
George Eliason: Ukraine's Ecocide in Donbass, 1991 to post-Maidan 2019


text:
Q: Unhandled Exception type IOException in Class variables I have a class where I am populating variable values as below
public class JSONDBWriter{

  // JDBC driver name, database URL, Database credentials
  private static final String JDBC_DRIVER = ReadPropertiesFile("JDBC_DRIVER");
  private static final String DB_URL =  ReadPropertiesFile("DB_URL");
  private static final String USER =  ReadPropertiesFile("USER");
  private static final String PASS =  ReadPropertiesFile("PASS");

  public static void main(String[] args) {

However, Java compiler is giving error "Unhandled Exception type IOException"
My ReadPropertiesFile throws IOException.

A: Use static initializer.
public class JSONDBWriter {
    public static String driver;

   static {
        try{
            driver = //...
        } catch (IOException e){
            //
        }
    }
    //other methods
}

If you want your variables to be final, try something like below:
public class Test {

    public static final String test = getDataNoException();

    private static String getData() throws IOException {
        return "hello";
    }

    private static String getDataNoException() {
        try {
            return getData();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            return "no data";
        }
    }
    //other methods
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Morgan Sindall contracted for new Liverpool hotel
Morgan Sindall have been contracted to construct a new 17-storey hotel and 1,245-space multi-storey car park at Elm Grove site, Paddington Village, Liverpool at a cost of £40M.
The 130,000sq ft hotel is designed by the company, Ryder Architecture, while the car park has been designed by the company, KKA, with both developments scheduled to be built on land which is currently occupied by residential properties, though the council have purchased these through CPO powers in preparation for demolition.
The hotel will possess 221 bedrooms and face the Royal Liverpool Hospital as well as the Liverpool University Campus, with hotel features including meeting and co-working space, a gym, a restaurant, a bar, and a roof terrace all under the operation of Legacy Hotel and Resorts' brand, Accor Novotel.
Comparatively, the car park will be fitted with a combined heat and power energy centre.
The Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson stated: "This new hotel and the car park and energy centre are all vital to the completion of our Paddington Village site. They are crucial pieces of infrastructure needed to support all the amazing businesses that are flocking to this game-changing development."
Planning applications for the development were submitted in June with the next stages in the sites development already in the planning stages, consisting of a new build-to-rent scheme, commercial office space, and a development for the creative and scientific industries.
The Managing Director of Morgan Sindall Construction North West, Barry Roberts added: "This is a milestone moment for Paddington Village. The revised plans for the car park reflect the requirement that the development is set to have higher levels of interest and popularity than previously anticipated, partly driven by the excellent standard of building the area will boast, as evidenced by the plans for the hotel."
Morgan Sindall is also currently onsite constructing The Spine, a £35M northern headquarters for the Royal College of Physicians, as well as a cancer centre for Rutherford Diagnostics, delivered by Interserve, all of which is scheduled for completion in 2020.
The post Morgan Sindall contracted for new Liverpool hotel appeared first on UK Construction Online.


1. Send invitations to local and area dignitaries.
2. Send announcements and invitations to employees.
3. Distribute public service announcement to radio/TV.
5. Distribute media advisory to all news media.
6. Remind invited dignitaries about event via telephone.
7. Redistribute media advisory to all news media.
8. Make follow-up calls to local news media.
9. Distribute day-of-issuance news release.
10. Send letter to newspaper editor thanking community.
11. Send newspaper clips to area Corporate Communications manager.
Note: If you have any questions or need assistance with any of these items, please notify your Corporate Communications local contact.


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MOBILE — Brian Kane, co-owner of Fairhope Brewing Company, would love to sell bottled beer to-go from the brewery's tap room. But right now, he can't.
Instead, as part of the state's "three-tiered" system, the beer has to be sent through a distributor first. An old law that some believe is antiquated, the system puts independent distributors between manufacturers and retail sales.
Kane told members of the Alabama Alcohol Beverage Study Commission during a public hearing Thursday that he had no interest in becoming a major distributor, but wanted to be able to sell his product to visitors on-site.
Kane joined a flurry of speakers at Mobile's Government Plaza today to discuss tweaks to current Alabama laws concerning the three-tiered system. Most of the 18 speakers represented beer and wine manufacturers who favored some change to the current restrictions.
One was Dan Roberts, of the Alabama Brewers Guild. He told commissioners that while the guild supports the three-tier system, changes to the law are necessary. In a proposal he presented to the commission, Roberts said the guild supports off-premise sales and a certain level of self-distribution that would allow new breweries to get established.
"The current law doesn't account for new breweries," Roberts said.
The state currently requires a brewery or vineyard to sign on with a distributor as a requirement to sell beer statewide, commission co-Chairman Sen. Paul Sanford said after the meeting. He added that many brewers find the requirement to be a hardship because distributors may be reluctant to partner with a unproven client.
Cindy Monroe, a Chambers County farmer and prospective wine manufacturer, said there needs to be a level playing field for alcohol producers. She asked the commission to consider giving wineries the ability to self-distribute. As an example, she said the corn, grits or grapes she produces can be sold from her farm directly to retailers. If she were to produce wine with the grapes, which she plans to do next year, she would have to first go through a distributor.
"We just want to be treated fairly," she said.
Others believe the law should stay the way it is. Rebecca Maisel, general counsel for Mobile's Gulf Distributing Holdings, Inc., told the commission distributors are required to collect excise tax for their clients. She added that distributors want to help encourage growth for these small businesses.
Still, other speakers told commissioners they support current state alcohol laws because of the dangers associated with alcohol. Mary Zoghby, of the local Boys and Girls Clubs, told commissioners local distributors invest money in education young people on the dangers of drinking. Representatives from the Foundation for the Defense of Families and the Child Advocacy Center also spoke in favor of current regulations.
Updated at 2:23 to clarify state law regarding wineries.


Brianna Davis is a California native bound for the city of Boston, where she plans on majoring in Political Communication at Emerson College. In her spare time, she practices typography and frequents local museums. Brianna has been published in Aspiring Writers Society,Eskimo Pie, Story Shack, Poppy Road Review, and Cadence Collective. You can find some of her artwork on Instagram @steadystrokes.


text:
Measurement for everything
One of the most widely used screenplay programs in Hollywood has a new tool to help with gender equality and inclusion.
In an update announced Thursday, Final Draft — software that writers use to format scripts — said it will now include a proprietary "Inclusivity Analysis" feature, allowing filmmakers "to quickly assign and measure the ethnicity, gender, age, disability or any other definable trait of the characters," including race, the company said in a statement.
It also will enable users to determine if a project passes the Bechdel Test, measuring whether two female characters speak to each other about anything other than a man. The Final Draft tool, a free add-on, was developed in collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary's University, which has been at the forefront of studying the underrepresentation of women on screen.
Here is the full Melena Ryzik NYT story.
1. Shade.
2. Bryan Caplan reviews *Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero*.
3. Why did the great cathedrals take so long to build?
4. Ross Douthat on Trump's Fed pick (NYT). Endorses the idea of Ramesh Ponnuru, Karl Smith, Scott Sumner or David Beckworth.
5. "Contrary to popular accounts, this study finds that cross-national diffusion [of Google searches] is surprisingly rare—and seldom U.S. led—but occurs through a multichannel network with many different centers." And here is a picture.
My podcast with Julia Galef
Julia interviews me, definitely recommended.
*Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration*
That is the already-bestselling graphic novel by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, and I would just like to say it is a phenomenal achievement. It is a landmark in economic education, how to present economic ideas, and the integration of economic analysis and graphic visuals. I picked it up not knowing what to expect, and was blown away by the execution.
To be clear, I don't myself favor a policy of open borders, instead preferring lots more legal immigration done wisely. But that's not really the central issue here, as I think Caplan and Weinersmith are revolutionizing how to present economic (and other?) ideas. Furthermore, they do respond in detail to my main objections to the open borders idea, namely the cultural problems with so many foreigners coming to the United States (even if I am not convinced, but that is for another blog post). Even if you disagree with open borders, this book is one of the very best explainers of the gains from trade idea ever produced, and it will teach virtually anyone a truly significant amount about the immigration issue, as well as economic analytics more generally.
There is more actual substance in this book than in many a purely written tome.
It will be out in October, you can pre-order it here.
Is "the better car experience" the next big tech breakthrough?
That is the question I raise in my new Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Another reality of the contemporary automobile is that Tesla has managed to rethink the entire design. The dashboard and interior are reconfigured, the drive is electric, software is far more prominent and integrated into the design, voice recognition operates many systems, and there are self-driving features, too. Whether or not you think Tesla as a company will succeed, its design work has shown how much room there is for improvement.
You might object that cars have numerous negative features — but that's where there is much of the potential for major transformation. Cars cause a lot of air pollution, but electric cars (or maybe even hydrogen cars) are on their way, and they will lower noise pollution too, as hybrids already do.
Cars also create traffic congestion, but congestion pricing can ease this problem significantly, as it already has in Singapore. Congestion pricing used to be seen as politically impossible, but the Washington area recently instituted it for one major highway during rush hour. The toll is allowed to rise as high as $40, but on most days it is possible to drive to work for about $10 and home for well under $10, at speeds of at least 50 mph. Manhattan also will move to congestion pricing, for south of 60th Street in Midtown, and the practice will probably spread, both within New York and elsewhere, partly because many municipalities are strapped for cash. As for building new highways, transportation analyst Robert W. Poole Jr. argues in his new book that there is plenty of room for the private-sector toll concession model to grow, leading to more roads and easier commutes.
In other words, the two biggest problems with cars — pollution and traffic congestion — have gone from "impossible to solve" to the verge of manageability.
There is much more at the link, and here is the closer:
Right now there are about 281 million cars registered in the U.S., and they have pretty hefty price tags and demand many hours of time. The basic infrastructures and legal frameworks are already in place. So, despite the current obsessions with robots and gene editing, it should be evident that the biggest tangible changes from technology in the next 20 years are likely to come in a relatively mundane area of life — namely, life on the road.
Does the speed of production matter?
Patrick Collison has pointed out that past production often was very speedy, for instance the Empire State Building went up in 410 days, start to finish. These days, it took the government almost fifty years to open the 2nd Ave. subway line in NYC, with a lot of the speedy production being relegated to China.
But how important is speedy production? More generally, how should we think of the speed of production as a variable of import?
I can think of a few reasons why the speed of production might matter:
1. Because if you don't act now the status quo is terrible. (Often a factor in China, especially in earlier decades, or in earlier American history. They really did have to put up those bridges at Remagen very quickly.)
2. Nominal interest rates are high. You can think of the nominal rate as a rough measure of the opportunity cost of locked-up funds/resources.
3. Speed is a signal of urgency, and other positive qualities, but speed per se is not actually so valuable. Speedy institutions and societies, nonetheless, might be better at setting priorities and accepting trade-offs, big gains above and beyond the value of speed. Who wants a dawdler!? And perhaps the speedy are especially good at signaling, a valuable skill.
4. Patrick himself suggests: "speed matters because frontier people like it and will go to the places where speed is possible. It maximizes their comparative advantage. If your field ceases to support speed, you'll lose frontier people and stagnate." [In turn you might wonder if speed today simply has shifted into other areas, say payment companies and the like, and out of construction, rather than speed having declined per se? Amazon will try to shift to one day delivery, car production is speedier, Netflix gets you a movie more quickly, and so on.]
5. In a speedier world, recontracting happens more frequently. Quantity-based resource logjams are cleared up more quickly, and the more rapid contracting sends off price signals, to the general benefit of the market, on a more regular basis, leading to generally superior resource allocation for Hayekian reasons. For these reasons, perhaps the social value of speed is higher than the private value, thus implying we are underinvesting in production speed? There are positive external benefits to pushing more liquidity into those spot markets!
So how much should we be worried about the (possible) decline of speedy production? Should currently low nominal interest rates be taken to mean this simply isn't much of a problem?
Your thoughts would be most welcome.
Do Experts Listen to Other Experts?
Not so much:
Organizations in science and elsewhere often rely on committees of experts to make important decisions, such as evaluating early-stage projects and ideas. However, very little is known about how experts influence each others' opinions, and how that influence affects final evaluations. Here, we use a field experiment in scientific peer review to examine experts' susceptibility to the opinions of others. We recruited 277 faculty members at seven US medical schools to evaluate 47 early stage research proposals in biomedicine. In our experiment, evaluators: (1) completed independent reviews of research ideas, (2) received (artificial) scores attributed to anonymous "other reviewers" from the same or a different discipline, and (3) decided whether to update their initial scores. Evaluators did not meet in person and were not otherwise aware of each other. We find that, even in a completely anonymous setting and controlling for a range of career factors, women updated their scores 13% more often than men, while very highly cited "superstar" reviewers updated 24% less often than others. Women in male-dominated subfields were particularly likely to update, updating 8% more for every 10% decrease in subfield representation. Very low scores were particularly "sticky" and seldom updated upward, suggesting a possible source of conservatism in evaluation. These systematic differences in how world-class experts respond to external opinions can lead to substantial gender and status disparities in whose opinion ultimately matters in collective expert judgment.
That is from a new working paper by Misha Teplitskiy, Hardeep Ranu, Gary Gray, Michael Menietti, Eva Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani. For the pointer I thank the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Monday assorted links
1. A revision to the methods/assumptions, but democracy is still better for growth.
2. "[White] whale with harness could be Russian weapon, say Norwegian experts."
3. How the Thai government supported and promoted pad Thai.
4. Predicting high-risk opioid prescriptions before they are given.
5. "Gene Wolfe, an industrial engineer who helped devise the cooking process for Pringles, the stackable chip, and then turned to fantasy and science-fiction writing to craft intricate, philosophically rich novels that explored faith, war and distant planets, died April 14 in Peoria, Ill." Link here.
6. A brief survey on citizen science.
The Indian School of Public Policy
India is changing very rapidly and launching new programs and policies at breakneck pace–some reasonably well thought out, others not so well thought out. Historically, India has relied on a small cadre of IAS super-professionals–the basic structure goes back to Colonial times when a handful of Englishmen ruled the country–who are promoted internally and are expected to be generalists capable of handling any and all tasks. The quality of the IAS is unparalleled, of the 1 million people who typically write the Civil Services Exam the IAS accepts only about 180 candidates annually and there are less than 5000 IAS officers in total. But 5,000 generalists are not capable of running a country of over 1 billion people and and India's bureaucracy as a whole is widely regarded as being slow and of low quality. The quality of the bureaucracy must increase, deep experts in policy must be encouraged and brought in on a lateral basis and there needs to be greater circulation with and understanding of the private sector.
The Indian government has started to show significant interest in hiring people from outside the bureaucratic ranks. NITI Aayog, the in-house government think tank, which replaced the Planning Commission, has hired young graduates from the world's top universities as policy consultants. The Prime Minister Fellowship Scheme is an interesting initiative to attract young people to policymaking. A range of government departments and ministries do hire young, bright graduates in various disciplines to engage in research and advisory services. In fact, in a marked departure from tradition, the Indian government recently recruited 9 people working in the private sector into their joint secretary level (senior bureaucrats). Nine people doesn't sound like a lot but these are hires at the top of the pyramid and
[T]his is perhaps the first time that a large of group of experts with domain knowledge will enter the government through the lateral-entry process.
The demand for policy professionals is there. What about the supply? I am enthusiastic about The Indian School of Public Policy, India's newest policy school and the first to offer a post-graduate program in policy design and management. The ISPP has brought academics, policymakers and business professionals and philanthropists together to build a world-class policy school. I am an academic adviser to the school along with Arvind Panagariya, Shamika Ravi, Ajay Shah and others. The faculty includes Amitabh Mattoo, Dipankar Gupta, Parth J. Shah and Seema Chowdhry among others. Nandan Nilekani, Vallabh Bhansali and Jerry Rao are among the school's supporters.
The ISPP opens this year with a one-year postgraduate program in Policy, Design & Management. More information here.
Average annual change in total factor productivity between 1990 and 2014
Here are the estimates from Penn World Tables, only selected countries are presented:
Sri Lanka 2.48
China 2.40
Poland 1.70
Uruguay 1.61
Romania 1.61
Brazil -0.12
South Africa -0.53
Mexico -0.82
Ukraine -1.20
A few points. First, I still believe Sri Lanka is an undervalued development story, in spite of recent developments. Second, the economy of Poland is not discussed enough. Third, other sources confirm similar numbers for Mexico, arguably because misallocations of capital and labor have increased due to the growing size of the informal sector. Fourth, there are far too many other nations in the negative column.
Those numbers are reproduced in "Productivity in Emerging-Market Economies: Slowdown or Stagnation?", by José de Gregorio, in the new and interesting volume Facing Up To Low Productivity Growth, edited by Adam S. Posen and Jeromin Zettelmeyer.
From the comments, on work hours and spousal distribution
#3) If working long hours is bad, "overworked" in the author's language, then why would the author say that women are often "stuck" in limited roles or take a "back seat" to their husbands. Why not say that husbands most often bear the burden of overworking so that their wives can have a better work-life balance, even in cases where the wife has sufficient education to bear more overwork burdens? Conversely, if wives really are taking a "back seat" to their husbands, then it must be the case that workers *welcome the opportunity* to earn premiums by working longer hours. So, which is it, are husbands sacrificing home life for the benefit of their wives or do couples actually view higher "overwork" premiums as a welcome benefit?
Here is a logically coherent, self-consistent way of describing things: The percentage of women with advanced education has been steadily increasing. That liberalization, along with economic liberalization, has contributed to economic growth, especially for highly educated couples. Such couples are well enough off that, in many cases, both spouses don't even have to work full time to generate sufficient income. Many affluent wives prioritize work-life balance over pure financial returns. With such a large fraction of highly educated workers prioritizing work-life balance, firms find it necessary to increase "overwork" premiums to attract workers to fill the most time-demanding roles. The tax wedge between taxed office work and untaxed home production (own childcare and enjoyment of spending time with one's family) may also contribute to workers' prioritization of work-life balance over pure financial compensation.
That is from BC.
Sunday assorted links
by Tyler Cowen April 28, 2019 at 1:37 pm
1. Why do climbers climb (and fall)? (NYT)
2. Scott Sumner on who should be nominated to the Fed.
3. Houston high school institutes dress code for parents.
4. Whatever you think of the socialism discussion, should a Christian have and indeed display so much contempt for other human beings? (NYT)
5. Scientists read science fiction.
An Interview with the Retiring French Ambassador
An especially blunt and interesting interview with Gérard Araud, the French Ambassador, who is retiring (to America) from public life. Here's one bit:
I don't think that anything irreparable is happening in the U.S. I don't know what would have happened in France if Marine Le Pen had been elected, because our institutions are much weaker.
Let's look at the dogma of the previous period. For instance, free trade. It's over. Trump is doing it in his own way. Brutal, a bit primitive, but in a sense he's right. What he's doing with China should have been done, maybe in a different way, but should have been done before. Trump has felt Americans' fatigue, but [Barack] Obama also did. The role of the United States as a policeman of the world, it's over. Obama started, Trump really pursued it. You saw it in Ukraine. You are seeing it every day in Syria. People here faint when you discuss NATO, but when he said, "Why should we defend Montenegro?," it's a genuine question. I know that people at Brookings or the Atlantic Council will faint again, but really yes, why, why should you?
These are the questions which are being put on the table in a brutal and a bit primitive way by Trump, but they are real questions.
Here's another which reflects my own political arc watching the triumph and decline of more libertarian ideas. The tragedy is that the ideas worked as we said they would to make the world a much richer, more peaceful place but the ideas are being rejected anyway:
Bayoumy: Tell me about your memoirs.
Araud: My career had started with the election of [Ronald] Reagan, and my career is finishing with Trump. From Reagan to Trump you have, more or less, the neoliberal era—taxes were bad, borders were bad, and you have to trust the market. It's also the period of the triumphant West … that the West was in a sense doomed to win. That sooner or later all the world will march triumphantly, to the triumph of the market. And suddenly the election of Trump and the populist wave everywhere in the Western world is for me, and I may be wrong, but for me means that this period is over.
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs
TITUSS BURGESS doesn't like to travel and says he knows "zero" about South Africa, which would seem to make him an unlikely host for a 10-day tour of that nation, especially one that costs nearly $27,000 a head. But on a chill March night, the actor, best known for his role as Titus Andromedon on the Netflix series "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," patiently posed for selfies with travel journalists at a Manhattan wine bar to kick off Heritage Tours' new Spotlight Series of trips. The company describes the tours as "immersive small-group experiences enhanced by the presence of expert personalities and influencers."
…While Mr. MacMillan says that the hosts for his trips were chosen for their connection to the destinations, the link can seem tenuous. Courtney Reed, who played Princess Jasmine in Disney 's "Aladdin" on Broadway will be hosting a trip to Spain focused on wine, fashion and food. She's never been to Spain, but is "extra thrilled" about going. "I think my role is just to provide social ambience," she said. "I'm a very easygoing person and I can create extra flair just having fun and appreciating our surroundings. I'm like a cheerleader….We're going to have a blast!"
…Other travel companies are hitching their wagons to stars who don't merely gild the travel experience, but add bona fide knowledge or expertise. "There's only so much caviar and champagne you can give passengers, so we like to enrich their experience in an intelligent way," said Barbara Muckermann, chief marketing officer of Silversea Cruises. The cruise line, which has at least one expert lecturer on each of its ships, invited nine artists, writers and other creative types including authors Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer and Saroo Brierley to make appearances during its 133-day World Cruise 2019. Besides giving lectures, each is contributing to a commemorative anthology that Silversea line is creating for the passengers.
There is more at the link, by Kevin Doyle at the WSJ, via the excellent Samir Varma.
*The AI Does Not Hate You*
That is the new book by Tom Chivers, and the subtitle is Superintelligence, Rationality and the Race to Save the World. Here is one excerpt:
Overall, they have sparked a remarkable change. They've made the idea of AI as an existential risk mainstream; sensible, grown-up people are talking about it, not just fringe nerds on an email list. From my point of view, that's a good thing. I don't think AI is definitely going to destroy humanity. But nor do I think that it's so unlikely we can ignore it. There is a small but non-negligible probability that, when we look back on this era in the future, we'll think that Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom — and the SL4 email list, and LessWrong.com — have saved the world. If Paul Crowley is right and my children don't die of old age, but in a good way — if they and humanity reach the stars, with the help of a friendly superintelligence — that might, just plausibly, be because of the Rationalists.
There is also material covering Scott Alexander and Robin Hanson, among others. Due out in the UK in June.


text:
Biographical Sketch of Annie Monehan
written by Kim Viner
Biographical Sketch of Annie Monehan, written by Kim Viner. Included in Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920, .
Biography of Annie Monehan, 1845 - ?
By Kim Viner, independent historian, September 2017
Mrs. Annie Monehan was born in Ireland in 1845. Although not listed in all reports of the first women on the grand jury, in her very detailed 1889 personal remembrance of the jury, Mrs. Sarah Pease stated that she looked up the court record of the jury proceeding and found Mrs. Monehan as one of those who served. It is possible that this is the Anna Monnahan listed in the 1870 census as living in Laramie with her two-year-old daughter, Frances, in the household of John and Louisa Franz. In March 1870 she was called by Sheriff N.K. Boswell to serve on the first formal jury in the world to seat women. She served with five other women (and additional men) on the grand jury convened in Laramie, Wyoming Territory. No further information on Mrs. Monehan has been found
1870 U.S. Census at https://www.familysearch.org/
Laramie Boomerang "Women on the Jury" October 17, 1889, pg 1 at http://newspapers.wyo.gov/
Viner, Kim. Laramie Wyoming Women Made World History. Laramie, Wyoming: Laramie Plains Museum Association, 2015.


You may have noticed the sudden spurt of gold ornaments in the galleries this year, and in case you are wondering, yes, gold is one of the greatest trends that is going to dominate 2018. It was announced and confirmed by the fashion makers and designers early this year when gold was relaunched as the primary material in fashion shows. Now is a good time to add to your collection of earrings. Jewelers have already advanced their best foot in the game with the launch of some spectacular gold earrings by the very start of this year. Let's give you a glance of some of the finest specimen that met our eyes so far.
A very modern and chic specimen, this piece is an instant attention magnet. Designed by piecing together two fold over rings with a circular link, this earring set is the best thing to go with anything, cocktail dresses and party frocks. Big enough to garner attention and just the right size to sit smugly on the ears without hanging heavy from the lobes, this earring is just as gorgeous as it sounds. Clip backs allow easy wearing and taking off.
If you are looking for some new styles in danglers, then you have to take a look at this set. Crafted by linking multiple rings of different sizes and styles, this oval earring is quite an eyeful. Chandeliers from a distance, and swoon-worthy danglers up close, this is perhaps one of the most visually interesting danglers you will ever own. Made of plain and twisted oval wires, the cascading earrings is quite something.
The "interlocking style" is popular this year. You will see it in earrings, necklaces, bracelets and even in rings. The design motif is created once again by linking soft rectangles to create a cascading triangular trellis effect. It is a unique design which truly compliments the wearer.
Bold is the style this year. In big and bold earrings, consider this very stylish and bold triangular dangling earrings. Set with a pair of triangle within triangle studs, this one features several circular rings that are arranged in a seemingly random but very planned order that hang from the bottom of the triangles. The cascade ends with three triangle links that finish the arrangement.
A design concept to follow this year is asymmetry in earrings. Here is one that shows the onset of asymmetry through a fully symmetrical set of danglers. Designed with ornately designed boxes and circles that link with one another to create a perfectly calculated randomness, this earring is going to be an easy favorite among women who have a taste in modern jewelry with a special weakness for geometrical ones.


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