Amidst the heated exchanges that have made up this debate, one common assumption of virtually all participants has been largely overlooked. All seem to agree that American students are ignorant of the particular subject matter of the course. Americans do not know American history; Americans do not know about the world; Americans do not know about the values and ideas that have made Western civilization significant.
There is, however, some evidence that this assumption of ignorance may not be valid. In June 1989, Professor Michael Frisch of SUNY Buffalo published the results of an informal survey he had been taking for some years in his introductory survey of American history course on the first day of class.6 He asked his students to write down, without undue reflection, the first ten names they thought of concerning the period covered by the course. He then repeated the request, but this time telling students to exclude figures in public life. The survey was anonymous. The answers to the first question showed a very limited number of names drawn almost exclusively from political and military figures involved in epochal events. Given the way American history is taught in grade schools and high schools, this is not surprising.7 But the answers to the second question were also limited, and seemed to reflect not so much what students had learned in school as their popular culture, with individuals such as Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, John Wilkes Booth, Pocahontas, and Daniel Boone appearing. Frisch argued, among other points, that these surveys are evidence of what students know, rather than what they do not know—the founding myths of our national culture.
Frisch's results from SUNY Buffalo have been corroborated by at least one other survey, taken by Wilbur Zelinsky at Penn State University. Both, however, offer somewhat limited perspectives on the preparation of American students. Both were taken at schools in the middle Atlantic states, and it seems possible that, for example, even though local figures did not receive mention, the emphasis on the Revolution and the Civil War was the result of that geographic location. Both also only considered American history, and those who teach the history of other parts of the world may justifiably wonder if there is a difference between students' familiarity with their subject matter and American history.
During the 1991–92 academic year, I surveyed students entering the American, Western, and world civilization classes taught by the Department of History of the University of Utah. The basic format of the Frisch questionnaire was employed, although a third question was added, asking students to list the ten events that they connected with the subject and period of the class. The survey was administered as the first order of business on the first day of class, preceding even passing out the syllabus. While the questionnaire is a relatively blunt instrument and concerns only a part of what we expect students to learn in history classes, the results provide us with some further material by which to judge the validity of Frisch's results and to extend our conclusions beyond the eastern United States and American history.
The University of Utah, located in Salt Lake City, is the principal campus of a multiple-campus state system of higher education in the state of Utah. An open-admission university, it had a total of 19,907 undergraduate students in 1990–91, the most recent year for which data is available. Certain high school classes are required for admission to the university, the most relevant for our purposes being one year of American history. Much of the student body is drawn from within the state: eighty-two percent of the 1990–91 entering class were residents of Utah. While the University of Utah is not affiliated in any way with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is headquartered in Utah, a significant proportion of the student body is Mormon; in a sample analysis of undergraduates carried out in autumn 1987, fifty-seven percent of the respondents indicated that they were members of the LDS church.
The classes surveyed were History 170 (American Civilization), History 101 (Western Civilization to 1300), History 102 (Western Civilization since 1300), and History 105 (World Civilization). These classes are taught in several different formats, from smaller sections of 40–60 students to large lecture sections of 100 or 200 students. The large lectures in these latter sections are supplemented by weekly discussions taught by graduate teaching assistants. The Western civilization classes (History 101–102) are required of all history majors, and the world civilization class (History 105) can fulfill a history major requirement; a separate two-quarter sequence in American history, however, is required of history majors, and the American civilization course (History 170) should not include any students who have declared a history major. All of these courses can fulfill graduation requirements for non-history majors: American civilization meets a Utah State Legislature-mandated American institutions requirement for all graduates of the university, and Western civilization and world civilization fulfill liberal education distribution requirements in the humanities for undergraduates not majoring in the humanities or fine arts.
The rank-ordered results of the survey are presented in Tables 1 through 4. Responses were listed until a significant drop-off occurred in the number of students listing the name. Only Table 1, on the American civilization class, gives responses to Question 2, and this is largely illustrative: in all classes, responses to this question were very diverse and students had difficulty in responding at all.
The answers to Question 1 in the American civilization course seem to confirm Frisch's results at SUNY Buffalo. The figures named were largely canonical ones drawn from the founding events of the Republic, the Revolution, and the Civil War. Contemporary figures, such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Martin Luther King, Jr., also appeared. Christopher Columbus was the only prerevolutionary person even to be named in the survey; except for this stock figure out of the traditional American narrative, colonial history does not exist in the memories of these students. With the exception of Lewis and Clark, all of the figures named were from east of the Mississippi River and earned their place in American history by actions carried out in the East. Those most frequently named were also male; Betsy Ross and Susan B. Anthony did appear on some responses, but only rarely. One final point should be made in the light of the religious and regional backgrounds of Utah students: while Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, appeared occasionally in the SUNY Buffalo lists, he was not mentioned by a single respondent in this survey. American history, in this survey, is largely male, white, eastern, and revolves around the Revolution and the Civil War.
The responses to Question 3 provide further support for this characterization. Wars, especially recent wars, entered the picture. The two world wars were most often mentioned, and Vietnam, the Great Depression, and the Korean War also found their way onto the list, but five of the first nine events had to do with the founding of the Republic or the Civil War. The discovery of America again was the only prerevolutionary event mentioned, and the industrial revolution lagged far behind the other events. It is not clear why the world wars, Vietnam, and the Korean War figured so prominently, especially since the individuals one might associate with these events—Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson—were only rarely mentioned, if at all, in the responses to the first question. One possibility, of course, is that these were the wars in which the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents of these students participated and that they therefore would have heard about informally. It is again striking how little of Western history is reflected in this listing (the settlement of Utah was never mentioned) and how little Mormon history appears.
One might suppose that the responses to the second question would fill in this gap: eliminating figures in public life could have opened the way for bringing into the picture those who settled the West, even the ancestors of these students. Utah is, after all, a state in which it is difficult to travel very far without bumping into a relic of Butch Cassidy, Brigham Young, or some other figure in the westward expansion of the United States. The victims of that expansion, American Indians, were most often named, but in very small numbers, and the confusion of memories of the respondents is apparent in the other names that appear on the list: Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, among others, hardly qualify as not being in public life. Father Escalante does appear, as did "myself" and "my ancestors," but appearing on this list did not require many mentions: each of these names appeared only twice. When able to respond, then, Utah students showed the same ambivalence about the boundary between public and private life that Frisch's students in Buffalo also exhibited; but most often, in fact, Utah students were unable even to respond to this question.
The survey results from the two-quarter Western civilization course, which breaks at 1300 A.D., are given in Tables 2 and 3. The responses to Question 1 in these classes seem to reflect the same version of the past found in the American civilization course, one overwhelmingly peopled by white males in which the significant events were primarily those concerning states. The results from the ancient and medieval section of Western civilization suggest that this period is remembered both for great political events and for intellectual achievement: at least half of the ten most frequent names are those of intellectual figures. But in responding to Question 3, these students returned to an emphasis on political events, with the Roman Empire drawing considerably more notice than the birth of Jesus Christ. Cleopatra was the only woman to receive notice. The rooting of students' version of "Western civilization to 1300" in the ancient period is suggested by the appearance of only one figure (Napoleon) and only one event (the Crusades) from outside this period. The responses from the second part of the course (covering history since 1300) show much more emphasis on political events, with only Martin Luther and Leonardo da Vinci, and the Reformation and the Renaissance, breaking the list of European and American discoverers, rulers, and events. American history has a significant, but not overpowering, place in Western civilization, but it is worth noting that the most frequently mentioned figure in Western civilization since 1300 was the discoverer of America.
The results from the world civilization class (Table 4) are similar. Indeed, there is striking overlap between the results from the Western civilization class and those in the world civilization class: Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Napoleon, Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Henry VIII are the stuff of not only Western civilization but also world civilization. The world wars, the French Revolution, Vietnam, and the American Civil War hold similar positions of preeminence. No women appear on the list; Gandhi is the only nonwesterner to be mentioned. Wars were seven of the eleven most frequently mentioned events. No events occurred in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa, and only the Vietnam War occurred in Asia.
In both the Western civilization classes and in world civilization, the confusion about who or what was an appropriate answer to the second question persisted and was in fact even stronger than in the American civilization class. It is impossible to present any ranked listing of responses to this question: no figures were mentioned more than four times, and most figures were named only once. Those who were listed tended to be similar to the responses to the first question. Thus, in answering this question, students either left it blank or did not recognize the distinction between public and nonpublic. As in the American civilization class, students in Western and world civilization seem unable to connect the notion of "history" with anyone outside of public life.
The results of this survey suggest that students in Utah are no more tabula rasa than those in Buffalo or State College. Both in American history and in Western and world civilization, they have a version of the subject already in mind before they enter the classroom. The origins of these versions of the past may lie, as Frisch hypothesizes, in popular culture rather than in formal instruction in history. But whatever its basis this version of the past has particular characteristics that it is important for the historical profession to notice. It is a past that is limited to certain places: world civilization largely took place in Europe and North America; Western civilization occurred in ancient Greece and Rome and, later, in the United States and its West European allies; American history took place in the East. It is also a past with limited scope. Marked by great events like wars and revolutions, and peopled by the males who participated in such events, it rarely includes individuals like these students or events that occur to them. "History" is distant, it is something that happens out there to other people. This is of course most striking in the American history results: it is difficult to believe that virtually all of these students were unaware of many events in the history of the settlement of Utah or in the history of Mormonism, but such events were not considered appropriate responses when asked about "history." The same distancing from the past marks the results from the other classes as well.
Extending the basis of speculation about the historical memories of students to the western United States thus underscores Michael Frisch's reading of his students. The "subsurface reefs of cultural memory" in American students are, indeed, massive, and even outside of American history seem to consist largely of the Eurocentric pantheon enshrined by critics such as E. D. Hirsch. Such conclusions give pause to those who have sought to broaden the historical vision of their students. Yet my reading of these data also suggests a more troubling conclusion, for if our students do not include people such as themselves—in social, religious, or even regional background—in the story of the past, it is not surprising that the study of the past seems irrelevant to them.
1. Lynne V. Cheney, American Memory (Washington, 1987); Diane Ravitch and Chester E. Finn, Jr., What Do Our Seventeen-Year-Olds Know? (New York: Harper and Row, 1987); Diane Ravitch, "Decline and Fall of Teaching History," New York Times Magazine, November 17, 1985, 50–57.
2. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
3. See, however, the exchange between Michael Frisch on the one hand and Diane Ravitch and Stephen Thernstrom on the other in The Journal of American History 76 (1989), 672–674.
4. William H. McNeill, "Beyond Western Civilization: Rebuilding the Survey," The History Teacher 10 (1977), 509–548.
5. See Carolyn J. Mooney, "Sweeping Curricular Change Is Under Way at Stanford as University Phases Out Its 'Western Culture' Program," The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 14, 1988, A1, A11–A13; and William J. Bennett, "Why the West?," National Review, May 27, 1988, 37–39.
6. Michael Frisch, "American History and the Structures of Collective Memory: A Modest Exercise in Empirical Iconography," Journal of American History 75 (1989), 1130–1155.
7. Some indication of this can be gained from Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979).
James R. Lehning is associate professor of history at the University of Utah. Prepared with the assistance of the Thomas W. Dee II Council of the University of Utah.


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13 Inspiring Examples of Young Environmentalists Making a Difference
When we were young, it was easy to think that we'd have to wait until we're older to make a difference since most of our role models were adults. As young environmental activist Ta'Kaiya Blaney said, "I always wanted to make a difference, but it was always along the lines of…when I grow up. It's sad that it has to be this way but I realize I don't have time to grow up before I want to make a change."
It's true – young students don't need to wait until they're older to make a difference. They can make real change now. Sometimes they just need to know it's possible.
Here are 13 inspiring stories that show what's possible when young environmentalists take action.
16-Year-Old Activist Reduces E-Waste at Home and Abroad
By the age of 16, Alex Lin had already influenced significant changes to reduce e-waste. After reading about e-waste in a Wall Street Journal article, he decided to take action.
Along with his community service team, Alex has overseen the recycling of 300,000 pounds of e-waste. They also successfully lobbied the Rhode Island state legislature to pass a bill in 2006 banning the dumping of e-waste. This bill paved the way for the producer responsibility bill, which passed in 2008, that puts more responsibility on electronic manufacturers.
The community service team's work has gone global. They've helped establish similar teams in countries such as the Philippines, Mexico, and Kenya to reduce local e-waste.
High School Students Transform a Food Desert into a "Greenbelt"
In Houston, Texas, the East End serves some of the poorest students in the district and was known for being a "food desert." Twenty local high school and college students have become "Green Ambassadors" since the program began three years ago. They have been trained and certified through Project Learning Tree's early childhood and PreK-8 environmental outdoor education, and are among the first high schoolers to do so. These young leaders use their new knowledge and skills to transform their community.
Their goal is to provide more than 100,000 residents with fresh, natural foods. Their urban gardens will also be home to local wildlife and pollinators. They're doing it by planting one fruit tree and one community garden at a time, linking their schools and neighborhoods to form a Houston East End Greenbelt.
In the fall of 2016, Furr High School won a $10 million grant through a new national contest sponsored by Lauren Powell Jobs to continue their work.
17-Year-Old Halts Plans for Solid-Waste Incinerator to be Built in Her Neighborhood
Growing up in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore, many friends and family members of Destiny Watford suffered from asthma. She saw a link between the high rates of asthma and the air pollution from a local medical-waste incinerator, the coal pier, and several medical plants in the area.
When she was 17, a new solid-waste incinerator was scheduled to be built close to her high school. Destiny and a few other young people from her neighborhood pressured local officials to stop the project to prevent further air pollution from devastating their neighborhood. After three years of fighting, state regulators pulled the project's permit in March 2016, halting the project.
Destiny's work earned her the Goldman Environmental Prize for bringing attention to the consequences of environmental inequities. Now a college student, Destiny works for an organization called Free Your Voice and is working to reinstate air quality monitors in Curtis Bay.
Student Sustainability Group Leads Reforestation Effort
The "Students for Sustainability" club at Port Townsend High School in Washington State has helped reforest two local habitats. After learning about the state of their local watersheds, the high school students wanted to help improve the habitat for wildlife and water quality. To plan their reforestation efforts, they partnered with the Jefferson Land Trust and the Northwest Watershed Institute.
The students served as crew leaders for the Northwest Watershed Institute's Plant-a-Thon events. Students from kindergarten through 8th grade plant several thousand trees during the event. To date, they've planted over 7,000 trees!
Young Environmental Activist, Speaker, and Singer Goes Viral, Influences Leaders
Fourteen-year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney from the Tla'amin First Nation in British Columbia has cared about the environment as long as she can remember. She's been singing since the age of four, and her songs about the environment have already gone viral. She has given speeches around the world, including Rio+20, TUNZA UN children and youth conference, the ONECA conference, and TEDxSFU. This young activist and singer is showing the world that the voices of youth deserve to be heard.
8-Year-Old Takes on Fast Food Chains to Save North Carolina Forests
When Cole Rasenberger was in second grade, he was assigned a homework project to write a letter to a local official on an environmental issue. While researching potential topics, he discovered the Dogwood Alliance's website and learned that thousands of acres of North Carolina's coastal forests are being destroyed daily, endangering local animals and plants.
Instead of just writing a letter, 8-year-old Cole wanted to take on the paper packaging industry. He partnered with Dogwood Alliance and organized his elementary school to sign postcards to ask McDonald's to use recycled packaging. A few months and 2,500 handmade signed postcards later, McDonald's decided to use more post-recyclable fiber, including 100% recycled fibers in their bags.
This win motivated Cole to do more, and he was ready to take on KFC. He partnered with seven schools, got the attention of media venues, and hand delivered over 6,000 postcards to KFC's headquarters. It took several years before KFC agreed to use more recycled paper in its packaging, but Cole and the Dogwood Alliance didn't give up.
Baltimore High School Students Help Transform Dumping Site into Reclaimed Wetlands
Students from Ben Franklin High School in Baltimore, Md., are taking action to restore one of the more polluted areas of the city. In partnership with the Baltimore Aquarium and the Shores of Baltimore Land Trust, students are helping to transform Masonville Cove. This site was known for illegal industrial dumping and is now a model environmental education center and bird sanctuary on 54 acres of reclaimed wetlands.
Students planted 3,000 trees and bushes on the site, constructed a native wetland pond, raise and transplant bay grass, and "planted" oysters in underwater cages to help filter the water.
11-Year-Old Uses Art to Raise Money for Gulf Coast Relief Efforts
As a bird-lover, 11-year-old Olivia Bouler wanted to take action after seeing the effects of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. She partnered with the Audubon Society to sell over 500 paintings and sketches of bird species most affected by the spill. She raised over $200,000 for Gulf Coast relief efforts and released a book of her work to support Audubon's conversation mission.
Earth Team Reduces Waste, Trash Removal Costs Through School-Wide Project
St. Michael School middle school students in Livermore, Ca., were eager to address the issue of waste on campus. After receiving a GreenWorks grant from Project Learning Tree, they were able to implement a school-wide recycling program. They started by conducting a waste audit and established a plan to recycle different types of materials.
The students took the lead in designing posters, translating information into Spanish for the local Hispanic community, re-sorting trash as needed, and writing tips for students to take home to their families. In just one year, they reduced our trash removal costs by $1,200 and diverted about 40% of their waste from the landfill to composting and recycling centers.
Eighth-Graders Use Drones to Map Jersey City's Trees
Ryan Nitschke, Samantha Cuevas, Dianna Carreon, Fritz Perera, and Daniel Rivera, eighth-graders at School 28 in Jersey City, have designed a project to use drones to map the city's trees. Team D.R.O.N.E. (Drones Recording Our Natural Environment) pitched their project to classmates, teachers, and sponsors, and won $10,000 to implement their project through the national Lexus Eco Challenge.
The students attach 360-degree-angle cameras to drones to capture images and collect data on Jersey City's trees. They are sharing their data with local organizations to help monitor the health of local trees and to identify ideal locations to plant new trees. They are currently in the second round of collecting data, to be completed in February 2017.
Students Convert Bus to Run on Biodiesel to Reduce Emissions
A few dozen high school students at City Academy in Salt Lake City, Utah, converted their school bus to run on biodiesel. Students started discussing alternative fuels while studying global warming and pollution. That's when they came up with the idea of making their own biodiesel fuel from used vegetable oil for our school bus to reduce their school's CO2 emissions. They received a start-up grant from Toshiba and a GreenWorks grant from Project Learning Tree to work on the project.
Their first year, the bus ran over 3,000 miles on fuel from used vegetable oil collected from a local restaurant. They were invited to present their project at a Green Ambassadors conference in Los Angeles. And yes, they took their biodiesel-fueled bus to get there!
Young Science Students Organize Local Environmental Conference
Under the guidance of science teacher Jane Orbuch, three high school students at San Lorenzo Valley High in California organized a local environmental conference. Science students Julianna Manseau, Kate Ussat, and Haile Davis set up the speakers, publicized the event, and worked with school personnel.
Both students and adults attended the conference, which featured presentations on their local watershed, ecosystem restoration, and the impact of regional droughts and higher temperatures. Sharing knowledge in these areas is a critical first step to making change, and these students are well on their way.
Young Climate Activist Influences Local and National Change
Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced 'Shoe-Tez-Caht') Martinez has been on the front lines of the youth-led environmental movement since the age of six when he began speaking around the world at venues such as the Rio+20 United Nations Summit and addressing the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York.
Currently the Youth Director of Earth Guardians, he has brought a lawsuit against the Obama administration for "their failure to protect the atmosphere and their future." He has also worked locally to eliminate pesticide use in parks, contain coal ash, and stop fracking. He has received many awards for his activism, and was the youngest member of President Obama's youth council.
Do you know of any other young environmentalists doing great work? Please share in the comments!
Rebecca Reynandez
Rebecca Reynandez is a Marketing and Communications Consultant and Principal of Spring Media Strategies, LLC. She has worked with nonprofits for the past 10 years and currently focuses on working with environmental organizations. She is based in Minneapolis, MN.
California, Community-Based Service Learning, Elementary (3-5), Elementary (K-2), GreenSchools, High School (9-12), Maryland, Middle (6-8), New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Student Stories, Teacher Stories, Texas, Utah, Washington
2 comments on "13 Inspiring Examples of Young Environmentalists Making a Difference"
Cindy Friday Beeman says:
Great stories! They pair up with a section of our new ELA series Wonders. In fact, Alex Lin is also in our story "Everyday Heroes".
Cynthia Rubendall says:
While some people continually complain and criticize the youth in our country, I am always impressed and amazed. Thank you for the fantastic stories. I am sure there are many more to come.
"Students for Sustainability" are working to reduce the carbon footprint of their high school and community in Washington State. In a relatively short amount of time, they've already revitalized local reforestation efforts.
Raising Salmon in the Classroom
Raising salmon in your classroom is a truly unique learning experience. Seventh grade students in Michigan raised and released salmon as part of a year-long project.
Student Service-Learning Projects, Year-End Roundup
Exploring Mars while recycling on Earth, composting in the classroom, creating a wildlife garden. These are some highlights from service-learning projects funded by GreenWorks! grants.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Most of us live life wearing a mask, presenting ourselves to the world as someone we are not.
We are not born with masks. No we are born pure, mask-less, innocent and total love.
Then as grow and learn we start to add layers to ourselves.
As a child we accept what our parents teach us as the truth. We take on the layers of who we are, who we could be, what we should be doing, how we should be behaving and what we think is possible for us.
I know a lady who told her kids that olives were chocolates and until they were about 6, they believed her!
As we continue to grow we subconsciously look for evidence to support our beliefs.
So events happen and we give them a meaning based on the beliefs we have taken on which in turn strengthens those beliefs.
When we get a little bit older, start to take on the beliefs of our friends and other people around us. The layers of masks are added on as events occur in our life.
This is a cycle that repeats itself. Your parents were taught by their parents, your grandparents were taught by their parents and so on.
Much of what we believe to be true isn't even actually ours or even our parents.
They are beliefs that go back for generations!
Have you heard the story of the lady who used to cut of then end of the leg of lamb before she put it on the tray to go into the oven?
It was something she had always done. Her son asked her why she did that.
"I'm not sure it's just what my mum taught me to do. Let's go ask her". So they asked the boys grandmother.
"Great-grandma. Why did you teach grandma to cut off the end of the lamb before you put it into the oven?" the little boy asked.
So we put on multiple masks, thinking that these things represent who we really are.
We take on the conditioning of our parents and society as the truth.
We conform to fit in. Of course, it's how we can be accepted and loved right?
We end up losing ourselves along the way. Not really knowing who we are.
Thinking we do, yet there is a niggly part of us wondering if we are capable of more?
What would happen if you took of your mask and danced around the ballroom with out it?
It seems impossible at first, but when you stop to ask yourself questions such as "who am I really?" "What is life all about" and "why am I here?" some pretty deep questions by all accounts, the layers start to fall away, the masks (yes there are multiple masks we wear) start to come off and more and more you feel a sense of peace and true belonging.
It may seem scary at first because you are bucking the trend. Stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something different to everyone else. You may even think you are alone. Wonder if you will be rejected.
But as you swirl and twirl across the dancefloor of life you will begin to notice other people who are just like you. They have chosen to take off their masks too! You also notice other people wanting to take off their masks yet are not sure how and you show them the way.
Take it slowly at first. All you need to do is start to look at the beliefs you hold and ask yourself why you have them?
Ask yourself if something else could be possible for you?
Play with it and have fun. Especially when you find yourself staunchly defending something, stop yourself in the moment and ask why?
That is how you will get awareness of yourself. Awareness creates possibilities and allows you to start taking off your masks.
Living without your mask on means living a liberated life. One that is much lighter than a life lived being weighed down by the masks of who think think we should be. Not who we really are!
Who are we really? LOVE!
Time Management is BS Want to make the world a better place?


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The American Dream Ten Years After
COVID-19 Memos
Gen Z/Millennials don't relate to the traditional notions of the American Dream as much: Just half of Gen Z/Millennials (54%) say living in freedom is a top factor of the American Dream vs (83%) of Seniors 65+, and less than half (43%) of Gen Z/Millennials say owning a home vs (61%) of Seniors 65+. And despite the enormous economic dislocation of younger people in the pandemic, (50%) of Gen Z/Millennials say being financially secure is a top factor vs (77%) of Seniors 65+.
New Values and a New Reality: Perhaps the difference between our nation's youth and elders comes from a mix of reality in attaining The American Dream, matched with rising new values for our nation's youth: Nearly half (46%) of Gen Z/Millennials say the American Dream is not attainable and nearly a third of Gen Z/Millennials (28%) say the pandemic has made them rethink empathy and community as part of the American Dream.
The pandemic has created new obstacles to the dream, especially for our kids: Nearly 4 in 10 (37%) parents say the pandemic has made access to education more complicated, and (34%) of parents say it has made it challenging for kids to get ahead. (62%) of parents today say the pandemic will have a lasting impact on today's young children.
Pandemic Parents: Amid unprecedented school closures, something parents in 2009 were not faced with, today's parents in crisis have new concerns, 44% fear their kids are missing out on learning due to stay-home orders. This is at a time when getting ahead means, even more, today 50% of parents say children doing better than parents is a top factor of the American dream vs 23% of parents who said this in 2009.
Top factors of the American Dream today:
Living in freedom (69%) – 54% Gen Z/Millennials vs 83% Seniors 65+
Being financially secure (65%)
Having a good job (56%)
Owning a home (55%)
Democracy (52%)
Getting a decent education (50%)
Children do better than parents (43%)
How attainable is the American Dream of homeownership today?
(66%) somewhat/very attainable
(34%) not at all/not very attainable
Which of the following statements do you agree with about how the pandemic has changed the American Dream?
Made living in freedom a thing of the past (25%)
Made democracy look bad (21%)
Reinforced shared national values (19%)
Revitalized our national sense of patriotism (19%)
Made the American Dream a thing of the past (19%)
Made homeownership a thing of the past (13%)
Pandemic has not changed the American Dream (18%)
Matthew Feider


Are you, one of those people who work around 40 sometimes 50 hours per week? Getting just a little bit of rest on the weekend in between social engagements, only to then find yourself back on Monday morning wondering what happened?
Do you feel like there is not enough time in a day? Like you are constantly on a deadline to arrive on time, complete on time and sit down sometimes wondering what the point is?
All this stress for just a 2 or 3 weeks holiday a year, upon which you invariably get sick as your body collapses?
When was the last time that you woke up in the morning without having to charge off somewhere grabbing a quick coffee as you go?
Modern day statistics show increased levels of suffering from stress, insomnia, anxiety, depression, cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes just to name a few. Diabetes and obesity being shown as a precursor to many other forms of illness and disease.
…your internal well being is paramount.
A LOT OF THE ABOVE mentioned disease and illnesses have become more commonly reported in the mainstream media in the past 20 years. If we travel back in time a generation or two, a lot of them were not even on our radar.
A brief history lesson shows to us that in the early 70's the food processing companies starting adding sugar (high fructose corn syrup) to all of our processed food.
From this moment a significant change in our body and consequently our WELL BEING started to occur.
Now I'm not here to lecture you on the vagaries of sugar, you are smart enough to know this already. But it is just important to acknowledge that the Nutrition Industry has only really started to establish it's self over the past 20 years, as the wheels started to fall of our personal health so to speak.
How much bottled water do you buy? There are in many parts of the modern world still with questions about the quality of their drinking water: Di hydrogen Monoxide, Fluoride, chlorine, mercury being the common protagonists.
CHEMICAL PRODUCT, pesticides, transgenic fats ,sugar, salt just to name a few of the excesses in our food today. Only now are companies and authorities stepping up and taking action. Sugar taxing for example.
There are of course many published reports offering many opinions as to why external influences are affecting the quality of our health. What are we doing to our own bodies internally to cause us pain and disease? Our internal health is directly affected by the situations that we put ourselves in.
We are constantly demanding too much of our nervous system. High levels or cortisol are produced during stressful events, be it at work, toxic relationships, negativity, insomnia and the list goes on. We tend to walk through our modern lives under an enormous mental and physical pressure. Inevitably we become addicted to this lifestyle and the drama without realizing.
Maybe it's time to have a break?
How can yoga help with any of this?
Simply put yoga makes you more aware.
The yoga community in general is a very healthy, good influence. Of course there are the extremists re food, but in general it is a good place to start any mind, body and spirit rehabilitation.
There is a certain LAW OF NATURE that dictates that whatever has been created can be recreated. So whatever state that it might find itself in, a living organism will always return to its natural state of equilibrium.
We all need a bit of a push sometimes to get us started with any new good habits. Making any real sustainable change needs a bit of effort. But together, with a consistent approach, support, love and good influences big things will come.
A 22 day Yoga Retreat in beautiful Bali may get you back on track, and provide a foundation from which to build a much more, positive, happy and balanced life.
Once you become more aware of what you are actually eating and make the changes to reduce food stuffs that have ZERO NUTRITIONAL VALUE you will very quickly realize and experience the benefits to your mind body spirit.
These benefits will be felt even without a yoga program, but the yoga provides you with the physical, mental, spiritual side of things. YOGA WILL ASSIST YOU in a complete detox mentally and physically.
During any detoxification process a lot of things will rise to the surface. This is normal. During your yoga practice your breathing patterns will change from the more common western style of breathing, being shallow and short, to a more calm diaphragmatic breathing using your full lung capacity.
Correct breathing patterns benefit the central nervous system from operating in fight and flight mode, to a more calm centered disposition.
🔴Helps to regulate your heart rate.
🔵Will calm you down during an intense moment.
🔴Improve your concentration and focus.
If you did EVER DECIDE to join our YogaFXYoga Alliance Registered RYT 200 Hours Yoga Teacher Training in Seminyak you will start a daily yoga practice.
Throughout your DAILY YOGA PRACTICE your body warms up from the inside. Muscles, joints tendons, ligaments all become more supple and flexible.
Your blood is thinned reducing vascular tension in your major arteries, thus reducing your blood pressure. The detoxification process has begun evident by sweating through your largest organ the skin.
It is during your 20 days of your correct nutrition and daily yoga exercise that your body will naturally build more lean muscle and naturally lose excess body fat.
Any detox program that you might commence does not have to be extreme. In fact avoid doing anything too extreme in such a short space of time. It is not good for your system, and the side effects can really be quite annoying.
A lot of students actually take a "before and after pic" before they arrive, So that they can see their transformation when they can get home.
Are you planning a bit of a detox?
If so then please start the process 1 week before you arrive. Slowly start to cut out anything white (breads, rice, and pasta), tea, coffee alcohol, soft drinks, candy and the other colorful brightly packaged items on your supermarket middle shelves.
WE RECOMMEND that you exclude one or two food and drink categories per day for each of the 7 days before you arrive. This will stop the intense sugar cravings and your body will adjust in a more harmonious way.
Start eating more fresh vegetables, eggs, meat, fish and chicken, or other protein providers if vegetarian-vegan. Start drinking much more water, as in the first few days you will lose a lot of your bloated feeling and excess fluid.
Your Bali Yoga Retreat along with your Hatha Yoga 200 Hours Teacher Training, is the perfect opportunity to start the process of becoming a better version of yourself. After 20 days you will lose your bad habits and will have formed positive new ones. You will find balance and harmony from the inside out, and will take away with you the skills that we teach you to continue on your path.
If you were always sick before, always tired, maybe moody or unhappy, you will have at the very least given yourself just a glimpse of how really quite easy it is to be a better self.
you will have made some new life long friends from all over the world.
It is been proven scientifically, that 20 days is the period of time that your brain needs to create new neuronal connection. That means that your new life routines all come to you in the most natural of ways. You will have new ways to nourish yourself, a new healthy body, a strong mind, and a new vision of yourself and your future.
Don't try to be perfect maybe just a little bit better everyday !
Your Best is Yet To Come !
Previous articleYogaFX Why 96% Of The World Do Not Practice Yoga ?


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Cara Small Ganassi
admintayyab April 13, 2022 3 Comments Cara Small GanassiCara Small Ganassi ageCara Small Ganassi biographyCara Small Ganassi life
Chip and Cara Small Ganassi are an American racing couple from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were married in 1995 and have a daughter named Tessa, who has appeared in the Indianapolis 500 qualifying draw. They are former vice-presidents of the FRG Group, a real estate and transportation company. They later divorced in 2004. Cara has since returned to the family business. While they are divorced, their daughter is still active in the racing world.
Cara Small Ganassi is the wife of former NASCAR champion Chip and mother of Tessa, who is 23 years old. She first met Chip when she was five years old and wrote him a letter. The couple met when she was five years old and later married. They have two other children, Floyd Robert and Chip N. Ganassi. Chip and Cara have two other children. As a sports fan, Cara Small Ganassi is a big supporter of NASCAR.
Her father, Chip, is an extremely successful businessman. He was born on May 24, 1958, and is 63 years old. His wife Cara, or Cara Small Ganassi, is also involved in the racing community. She rallies with the drivers' wives in the CARA organization to raise money for auto safety research. Their children are both successful in their own fields, and Cara Small Ganassi is his daughter. She lives in Pittsburgh.
Chip and Cara Small Ganassi have a beautiful daughter, Tessa. She is a professional tennis player, and she and Chip are also parents of Tessa. Tessa was five when she wrote a letter to her father to thank him for all the opportunities she had. The two are married in Pittsburgh, S.J., and Tessa is 23 years old. Her daughter, Tessa, has a net worth of $ 20 million.
Chip N Ganassi's wife, Cara Small Ganassi, has been a devoted mother for the past few years. Cara Small Ganassi is a successful businesswoman and a NASCAR fan. She has a blog called "Particia A.," and has written several books and non-fiction works. The couple has a daughter, Tessa, and two grandchildren. She has also had a career as a race car driver, but now focuses on her family.
Although she is now retired from professional racing, Cara Small Ganassi has been a successful businesswoman for years. She grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and has a new farm in South Carolina. Her business has expanded into the international racing scene. She has made the city into an economic powerhouse. During her career, she has accumulated millions of dollars. In fact, she was the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500. She is also the only woman to win the Indianapolis 500 in three years.
Cara Small is related to Chip N Ganassi, Floyd Robert Ganassi, and Douglas Peter Small. She has a love of fruit and is a certified organic nut. She grows figs in USDA zones three to eleven, making them a very useful food for home and garden. If you haven't tried figs yet, it's time to start. These berries are also edible and are perfect for salads.
Daddy Ganassi posted a letter to his daughter Tessa in 2011. Her father's company was in transportation and real estate, so he had to learn about the business himself. Before she became a successful entrepreneur, she competed as an amateur racer until 1981. She even became a regional champion. However, it was her love for fruits that paved the way for her professional career. She also cultivated the famous papaya tree, which grew in a USDA zone 10 gardens.
Error X Blueberry
When she was a teenager, Ganassi attended the Bob Bondurant Driving School, where she won her first auto race at age 18. In 1982, she joined the Pat Patrick team and began her career in CART racing. She qualified with a top speed of 197 mph and competed in the Indianapolis 500 five times. In 1984, she finished eighth. After this, she has voted Most Improved Driver and won the Kodak Copies 500 twice.
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Enjoy a full one week trip to the best parts of California. Embrace every moment of your trip to the beautiful valley of California. Explore the Yosemite national park and a lot of other world-famous attractions including an exclusive trip to Disney Land. Also get a chance to explore Hoover Dam, Botanical Gardens, West Rim, Skywalk, PCH1, El Capitan, San Francisco, Barstow Outlets, Chocolate Factory, Cactus Garden, Disneyworld, Universal Studios, Sea World, Desert Hills Premium Outlets, and more.
Fly from home to Las Vegas. The tour guide will pick you up from the airport at 01:30 pm. Guests are requested to report at one of the two following terminals.
Option 1: West Rim of Grand Canyon: We will visit the west rim of Grand Canyon. The famous Eagle Point landmark. We will also visit the manmade wonder of the place, the famous skywalk (optional). Guests can take pictures of the place. After that, we will go to Guano Point to have a breathtaking view of the Grand Canyon. Guests can also take the Helicopter Tour (self-expense) to have a better look at the Canyon.
Option 2: South Rim of Grand Canyon: Today we will explore the South Rim of the Canyon. We will go the Mather Viewpoint to have the stunning view of Grand Canyon. The South Rim is the most visited location of the Canyon. On our way back, we will visit the Hoover Dam.
Option 3: Antelope Canyon: we will visit the famous Glen Canyon Dam direct after the Hoover Dam. Then we will visit the Antelope Canyon, known commonly as the World's Photographer's Ultimate Destination. After that, we will go to horseshoe bend. By evening, we will return to Las Vegas.
Option 4: You can spend the entire day in Vegas city on your own. No transportation will be provided.
We will head to the famous M&M Chocolate factory in the morning. Guests can learn the process of making chocolate and will also taste free samples of chocolate. From there, we will visit the Cactus Garden. Here, guests can see and take pictures of hundreds of different cactus plants collected from different areas of the country. After lunch, we will head to Barstow outlet. We will return to Los Angeles by evening.
Hotel: Best Western Plus, or Quality Inn, or Lincoln Hotel or Similar.
We will head to Solvang early morning. Solvang is a city located along the California golden Pacific coast. Guests will be able to enjoy a special drink of the gourmet European coffee and have a world-famous Danish cookie. After lunch, we will head north to the famous California PCH #1. There, we will head to the "science and technology capital" - Silicon Valley. Visit the landmark apple company. By evening, we will head to San Francisco.
We will have an in-depth tour of San Francisco city. We will visit different attractions such as: Cable Car, Lombard Street, City Hall, St. Mary's Cathedral, and Chinatown. After the city tour, we will visit the Fisherman's Wharf - Pier 39. Guests can enjoy the delicious local seafood and take the famous boat ride (Optional). This SF bay boat ride will provide the scenic views of the SF City. Along with SF city, guests will also see the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge.
Early morning departure to the Yosemite national park. Yosemite Park is famous for its colossal granite rocks, spectacular waterfalls, and glacier formed U-Shaped valley. We will visit the Yosemite waterfall. After that, we will also go to see the El Capitan and Tunnel View Point. After the lunch, we will travel to the famous California Central Valley. By evening, we will head back to Los Angeles.
Paid pickup service is available from 10:30 AM to 10:30 PM. $50 for 1 or 2 persons and $10 per additional person will be charged.
It's good to visit California every time. The state gives such positive vibes every time I am there. It is a beautiful state and especially Las Vegas is a dream city to tour.
We had a week's time to start studying for our annual exams and as a fun we booked this tour and visited the places. The accommodation was good and so was the entire tour. The places we saw were exceptionally good, while our guide and driver the best.
This is the most amazing tour I have been with. Such a wonderful tour with so much to offer. You can literally visit any place you want to. The best thing is that they don't bind you to stick with them, you can plan on your own as well. Such a wonderful experience.
Amazing tour. I literally have no words to define how great this experience was. I mean you can visit the Disney land and Yosemite Park in the same tour. Totally a dream tour for me.
7 day tour was fascinating to get out from the regular chores of office and schedule. All the places from Las Vegas to Grand Canyon, Hoover dam and the San Francisco tour were amazing. The operators took good responsibility and this was apparent in each aspect.
This trip was fabulous. The tour guide was loving, calm, and caring. The attractions were impressive. We recommend this trip for everyone. We had no problem on our tour, the sights we saw, especially Niagara Falls were mind blowing. I went on this tour as part of our honeymoon rendezvous. I and my wife had the most romantic time ever. Golden Bus Tours offered amazingly affordable rates and tour was well guided. We had a lovely time soaking in the extraordinary beauty and power of the falls and riding in the sensations of thousands island. Highly recommended tour for everyone.
It is a good tour with all the good attractions and landmark places. You can explore a lot in this seven day tour. What I thought was that their fee is a bit higher that it should be. Apart from that, it is a wonderful tour.
This was the first time I am out all alone. My husband was very busy to join me and so I have planned a trip to take a break from my schedule. As I was alone, I got this Golden bus tours for 7 days and I was not disappointed. The places of visit were worthy and I visited almost all the important places in this tour, than I had imagined. In fact, I had visited so many places in this 7 day tour that many had not visited even after staying in the U.S. for 3 to 4 years. For me this was the right and best experience.
Who goes to Las Vegas and does not have a time of his/her life, except for the people who lose money by gambling in the casinos. I feel for you! My wife accompanied me in this tour, we both had a really good time, we visited Grand Canyon, it was nice to have witness a remarkable view like that. Everything was on point. Good work!
There is not much to point out in this tour. The attractions are good. It is just overly price tour. I mean last time I went on my own, it cost me less than half of what I paid in this tour. It is extremely overpriced.


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Home Imperial Porcelain & Glass Biscuit Porcelain Busts of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna
Biscuit Porcelain Busts of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna
Léopold Bernstamm
reference number: PG_040
impressed SEVRES within a rectangle; incised OH.-97 and incised L. BERNSTAMM, 1897
Categories: Imperial Porcelain & Glass, Romanov Imperial Antiques Tags: French, Nicholas II, porcelain, Romanovs
Fabergé: From St Petersburg to Sandringham, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 14 October 2017 – 11 February 2018
I. Collins, Fabergé: From St Petersburg to Sandringham, p. 54
Portrait busts of Tsar Nicholas II wearing colonel's uniform of the Life-Guard Preobrazhensky regiment and Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna.
Léopold Bernstamm started received the commission and started working on it in 1895. In his diary, of September 2oth and 21st, 1895, Nicholas II wrote: "… after breakfast spent more than an hour sitting for Bernstamm… Thursday 21, September. Sat for the sculptor again" (Diaries of Nicholas II, 1991, pp. 103-104). "At the beginning of 1896, the sculptor was invited to Tsarskoe Selo, where he completed busts of several members of the Tsar's family in less than three weeks… marble busts of the royal couple served as an excellent model for mass-produced works and for a long time had the sovereign's approval" (D. Severukhin, Lubimiy sculptor gosudarya // Nevskiy archive, 1, 1993, p. 252). The following year the newly crowned couple together with their ten-month-old daughter Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna made a trip to France. The Imperial family arrived in Cherbourg on September 5th and then accompanied by French president Felix Faure went to Paris. Four days of the official visit were celebrated as "The Russian week" culminating with festivities in Chalon. During the royal voyage, Nicholas and Alexandra visited the famous Sèvres porcelain factory where they were presented with porcelain bisque sculptures of other Romanovs.
The Library of Nicholas II, State Hermitage, St Petersburg
An identical bust of Nicholas II is in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (ЭРСк-236).
Portrait of a Young Girl
Imperial Porcelain Factory
Horse Guard Regiment Porcelain Military Plate
3rd Infantry Division Military Plate
Life-Guard Pavlovsky Regiment Military Plate


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Q: Why isn't my Reducer reading in a file? I've got a method that creates a hashtable from a .txt file, and uses that hashtable to assign values to words in the Value passed to the Reducer. Here is how I am attempting to do it:
@Override
public void setup(Context context) throws IOException {
    Path pt = new Path("hdfs:/user/jk/sentiwords.txt");
    FileSystem fs = FileSystem.get(new Configuration());
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fs.open(pt)));
    String line = br.readLine();
    while (line!=null) {
        String[] split =  line.split("\t");
        String word = split[0].substring(0, split[0].length() - 2);
        double score = Double.parseDouble(split[1]);
        int hashCode = word.hashCode();
        sentiTable.put(hashCode, score);
        line = br.readLine();
        System.out.println("Success");
    }
}

It is then used in this method, which is called on each Value in the key/value pair:
public double analyzeString(String str) {
    double stringScore = 0.0;
    String[] strArr = str.replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z ]", "").toLowerCase().split(" ");
    for (String segment: strArr) {
        int hashedSeg = segment.hashCode();

        if (sentiTable.containsKey(hashedSeg)) {
            double value = (double) sentiTable.get(hashedSeg);
            stringScore += value;
        }
    }
    return stringScore;
}

Ideally, this ought to return a number between -1 and 1. In reality, it always returns 0.
Edit:
I should note that sentiTable is created in the class level.

A: Getting 0 as a result probably means that nothing is being read from this file. I see two things that might have gone wrong:

*

*Wrong path: I think that hdfs paths should start with hdfs://..., instead of hdfs:/....

*Wrong imports for Path and FileSystem. Make sure that you import the ones provided by Hadoop.
You can always print a message in the setup method to see if the file has been found.
Extra: You might want to reconsider your containment checks, as many collisions are expected when using the hashCode of Strings in big data.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Fire can prompt damages in our homes or organizations and this might be because of the fire itself or the smoke. It is therefore normally important to ensure that you do fire and smoke restoration in your houses and also in your businesses so that you may be able to get back the home or the business to its initial appearance before the fire or smoke occurred. The damage that is regularly caused by fire may prompt our homes being signed while the damage caused by the smoke prompts our homes having soot and an awful appearance. It will be important to therefore call for water and fire restoration services so that they may be able to come and take care of your home or the business and make it have a good appearance as it had before the incident.
Damages that are normally caused by storms, floods, and hurricanes are normally very devastating and normally lead to loss of so much property. This calls for incite movement and it is basic to deal with a storm damage restoration expert who will be prepared to ensure that your property and your homes and associations can be restored back to the way they were before the event. Such kind of capacity will similarly help you to have the ability to safeguard some of your property with the objective that you don't lose everything in the midst of such occasions. At the point when all is said in done, ensure that you select a specialist association to supervise disaster recovery since they will have the principal experience to have the ability to help you to come back to your hidden position before the calamity happened.


Vocal Trump supporters and social media personalities and sisters Diamond and Silk — whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson — testified under oath before lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, in a hearing about the alleged filtering practices of social media platforms that quickly descended into impassioned and inconsistent statements.
"Facebook censored our free speech!" Diamond declared loudly at one point.
Throughout most of the hearing, Republicans prompted Diamond and Silk to explain how they believe Facebook censored and victimized them, while Democrats pointed out inconsistencies in their testimony and wondered why they were even holding the hearing in the first place.
"This is a stupid and ridiculous hearing," Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said, noting that the First Amendment is about protecting free speech against government intervention, not ensuring individual free speech from businesses.
"Whey are we having a hearing about regulating content?" Lieu said. "It's unconstitutional to begin with."
The focus of the hearing was supposed to be what metrics social media platforms use to filter content, while the social media stars accuse Facebook and others of censoring their content and diminishing its reach. The duo have previously claimed unfair censorship after Facebook reportedly deemed their content to be "unsafe to the community" and blocked their page.
But the duo offered inaccurate testimony under oath Thursday, something that was pointed out far and wide on Twitter. In her testimony, Diamond claimed they have "never been paid by the Trump campaign."
Federal Election Commission records, however, say otherwise. A November 2016 receipt shows the Trump campaign paid them more than $1,200 for "field consulting."
When Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries brought up the FEC filing, the duo called the reports that they had been paid "fake news." Silk suggested the Trump campaign may have made a mistake in recording the payment, and said Lara Trump, Mr. Trump's daughter-in-law, reimbursed them when they traveled for a Trump campaign tour.
After the hearing, Bradley Crate, treasurer for Mr. Trump's campaign, released a statement saying the issue is "merely one of semantics."
"The issue regarding Diamond and Silk is merely one of semantics, resulting from a reasonable misunderstanding of the campaign's reporting obligations," Crate said. "The campaign's payment to Diamond and Silk for field consulting was based on an invoice they submitted reflecting their costs for air travel to a campaign event. The invoice was not supported by accompanying receipts, so as a technical matter, could not be reported as a reimbursement even though its purpose was to make them whole for their out-of-pocket costs."
The self-proclaimed "most outspoken and loyal" Trump supporters have gained an online following for their debriefs on politics, the Trump administration and news of the day on their Youtube channel and on Facebook and Twitter. Mr. Trump invited the internet stars to attend a few of his rallies during the 2016 campaign and were photographed in the Oval Office standing beside the president.
"Subtle and slowly Facebook used one mechanism at a time to diminish reach by restricting our page so that our 1.2 million followers would not see our content, thus silencing our conservative voices," Diamond and Silk said in their testimony. "When we reached out to Facebook for an explanation, they gave us the run around."
But Ari Waldman, director of the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School, said Facebook's decision to change its algorithm so people see more posts from family and friends than news and other organizations affected far more than just Diamond and Silk, and gave examples of left-leaning groups and individuals having their posts censored.
"The result is that a lot of content gets filtered out, but no more so from the right than from the left," Waldman said.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called the hearing with the two social media stars is a "spectacle" that shouldn't be taking place when the committee should be investigating more important issues.
Nadler, later in the hearing, said "no pattern has been established" that conservatives are being unfairly targeted.
Diamond and Silk were a focus for some Republicans when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress earlier this month.
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, read a message from one of his constituents in one of those hearings, saying, "Why is Facebook censoring conservative bloggers such as Diamond and Silk? Facebook called them 'unsafe' to the community. That is ludicrous. They hold conservative views. That isn't unsafe."


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Howard Dean: Greeks are Trusted Allies and Friends
December 31st, 2003 Community 0 comments 2264
WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 23-The frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Howard Dean, in interview to Greek daily "Ta Nea" and its correspondent in Washington D.C., Athanasios Ellis, gave his positions on a range of Hellenic issues – including U.S.-Greece bilateral relations, Cyprus settlement efforts, the Athens Olympics, and the fight against terrorism in Greece.
Prominent members of the Greek-American community in Washington, D.C., Michael Angelakis and Anna Lea, are working with Governor Dean and spearheading efforts to coordinate members of the national Greek-American community to support the Dean campaign.
US-GREEK RELATIONS
Q. How would you describe the present state of bilateral relations between the US and Greece?
I consider the Greeks trusted allies and friends, and our partnership can continue to help further our mutual economic and political interests. Greece is a key founding member of NATO and the Atlantic Alliance. Greece is a significant economic engine in the Balkans and plays a key role on issues important to the US in this troubled region. Greece is also appreciated as a valued ally of the United States in the fight against global terrorism.
Should the US and the international community allow Turkey and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to continue to defy them by not solving the Cyprus problem?
I am optimistic that with continued international and American support, the Cyprus issue can be resolved relatively soon. To help accomplish this, my administration will consider this issue as a foreign policy priority and will assist to bring about a just and viable solution.
Resolution of the Cyprus issue is important to the US, especially because both Greece and Turkey are members of NATO. The Europeans also recognize the centrality of the issue, and expect Turkey to resolve the issue before it can gain entry into the EU. This is important for the West because, under the right conditions, Turkey's entry into the EU would also help cement democratic ideals in the Middle East. Cyprus is also important from a security standpoint — its location in the eastern Mediterranean can give it a strategic role in the reconstruction of Iraq and for trade between the Middle East and Europe. Resolution of this issue would also free up valuable resources, which could be used for other pressing humanitarian concerns. Finally, by exercising leadership in finding a solution to this dispute the US can in the process rebuild a number of relationships damaged by this administration's foreign policy.
Q. Can Turkey start accession talks with the European Union while still occupying one third of Cyprus, an EU member state?
This is a question for the European Union and Turkey to consider.
GRECO-TURKISH RELATIONS
Q.- Turkey disputes the status quo in the Aegean Sea. As a politician who believes deeply in the rule of law how do you view the Greek proposal to take the issue of delimitation of the continental shelf of the Aegean to the International Court of Justice?
Ideally, with the assistance of the international community, these two NATO allies should be able to resolve this dispute.
Q.- Given its membership in the EU and NATO, as well as its recent strong economic performance, can Greece act as the main force of stability and growth in the Balkans?
Just as Greece recently distinguished itself when Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis served as President of the European Council, Greece has proven itself as a force for stability and growth in the Balkans. Greece, for example, played a very important role in bringing a new regime to Serbia. And Greece's economic ties to the Balkans have been the dominant force fueling development in the region. It is because of this strong regional role that the city of Thessaloniki in northern Greece was chosen as the headquarters for the European Agency for Reconstruction of the Balkans.
Q.- In less than a year Greece will host the 2004 Olympics. How should Americans view the return of the Games to their birthplace, and does this offer an opportunity for the games to step back from their over-commercialization and return to their original human spirit?
My best wishes to Greece — the birthplace of the ancient and modern games — for a successful Olympics I hope that Greece can serve as an example for other countries aspiring to host the Games in the future. The 2004 Games present a chance to once again reflect on shared human ideals in a time of uncertainty.
Q.- As Greece prepares for the Games on the security front, and Greek authorities work closely with the US and other major countries (Britain, Germany, Israel, etc), how do you assess Greece's performance in combating terrorism given its success in capturing the domestic terrorist organization "17 November"?
Security, of course, is always a concern and I urge Greece do everything in its power to ensure a safe and secure Olympic Games. I was pleased to hear that Greece has budgeted nearly a billion dollars towards security services and infrastructure. I believe that the US and the international community should work closely with Greece to preserve the security and integrity of these Games.
q.- How influential is the Greek American community?
Greek Americans are good, solid Americans. They are patriotic and hardworking and stress the importance of family and education. Their influence extends beyond the Greek community and sets an example for all Americans.
Q.- Why did President Bush insist on going to war in Iraq and was his decision justified?
I don't know why the President went to war, but I am certain that that decision was not justified. There is also no doubt that a sovereign state has a right to fight a preventive war against an imminent threat to its vital national security interests. But for more than a year, I have been stating that the situation in Iraq did not come close to meeting this criterion.
Q.- Did the war in Iraq take away resources and attention from the war on terrorism?
After the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 awoke America to the danger of terrorism, making Americans more secure should have been our nation's top priority. Instead, after some initially positive steps, the Bush Administration abandoned the war on terror for other misplaced priorities. It chose a domestic agenda of tax cuts for a few wealthy Americans and a foreign policy focused solely on Iraq. Almost two years later, the President has turned the largest budget surplus in history into the largest budget deficit, and much of the work necessary to protect us from the threat posed by terrorists remains undone. As a result, all Americans, at home and abroad, are less secure today — economically, politically, and strategically.
Q.- Was the decision to sidestep the UN the correct one? And given the present reluctance of other countries to contribute troops and funds to the rebuilding of Iraq, is it time for the UN to be given more control over the situation in Iraq?
While I would never delegate the decision to use US troops to the UN, in this instance, there was no justification for the foreign policy of this administration and the sidestepping of the UN. And since last May, I have repeatedly called for the internationalization of the reconstruction effort in Iraq and increasing the role of our friends and allies and the United Nations and NATO in the stabilization and reconstruction process.
Q.- The Iraq war divided the US from many of its traditional allies in Europe and most of European public opinion. How concerned are you about the present state of relations between the US and Europe, and what would you do to repair them?
I am deeply concerned about the state of US relationships with its traditional friends and allies. For almost 60 years we have worked cooperatively with European nations to build a better and more peaceful world. This valuable work is now at risk. Instead of the humility we were promised, this administration has acted with unparalleled petulance and arrogance. President Bush has alienated our friends and allies and weakened our national security in the process — with no apparent upside.
A little over a decade ago, the Berlin Wall came down and America didn't fire a shot. There are three reasons that happened. The first was that we had a strong military. The second was that the Atlantic Alliance held steadfast in support of democratic values. The third was that most of the people on the other side of the Iron Curtain wanted to be like America, and they wanted to be like Americans. We had strong ideals that the world believed in and respected. And in only two and a half years — this president's time in Washington — you would be hard-pressed to find a majority in any country in the world that wanted to be like us anymore. If you make me the president of the United States, I will restore the honor and dignity and the respect for this country that we deserve in the world.
DOMESTIC POLICIES
Q.- Finally, what would be the domestic economic and social priorities of a Dean Presidency?
In 2002 I began to travel the country in the usual way one does when seeking the Presidency. I wanted to raise the issues of health care and early childhood development. I wanted to balance the budget to bring financial stability and jobs back to America. Most importantly, I have wanted my party to stand up for what we believe in again.
But something changed along the way as I listened to Americans around this country. Everywhere I've gone, I've heard a fundamental distrust of a government that people feel more and more disconnected from. People are concerned that something is wrong with our democracy when there are 33 lobbyists for every Congressman in Washington and oil companies write our energy policy, pharmaceutical companies draft our Medicare policy and Halliburton receives a no-bid contract in Iraq worth up to $7 billion.
It is a government of, by, and for the special interests, and the American people are becoming less and less important to our lawmakers. This is not the way America is supposed to work.
I am running for president because I believe democracy itself is at stake in this election. I stand with the millions of Americans who are fed up with being shut out of the political process, who believe that the special interests have no business making the decisions which affect us all, and who want to restore the democracy our founders envisioned. My domestic economic and social priorities — to balance the budget, fund a public education system that gives opportunity to all students and bring health care to every man, woman and child in this country — can and will be achieved, because my campaign is based on ridding Washington of the politics of money, and bringing back the power of the people.
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Meeting of Archbishop Elpidophoros with President Trump
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By John Athanasatos This past Sunday...
Elpidophoros with the young campers at Camp Saint Paul


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Impact, Inequalities, Natural Environments, Social and Physical Environment, wellbeing
Edinburgh Science Festival Event 2017: Why Places Matter for Mental Health and Wellbeing
Aug 31, 2017 pearcej1	Leave a comment
The important influence of the places in which we live, work and play on our mental health and wellbeing was the topic of a recent lively discussion at the Edinburgh Science Festival 2017 organized through Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH).
The event was chaired by Professor Jamie Pearce, (from School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh and CRESH) and, in his introduction, he emphasised the policy-relevance of the event as evidenced by the Scottish Government's newly released Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027. The Strategy details how institutions, services and organisations will work together to enhance mental health in Scotland. Especially relevant for this discussion was the acknowledgement on P8 of the report that 'Working to improve mental health care is not just the preserve of the NHS or the health portfolio. We will be working not only across the Scottish Government, but also across the wider public services to harness the broadest range of opportunities to improve the population's mental health…'. It is therefore acknowledged that promoting good mental health and wellbeing is not only about medical care, but also involves action to improve the 'wider determinants' of mental health – especially how conditions in the places where we live, work, learn and play can affect mental health and wellbeing.
We were therefore interested to explore how academic research contributes to our understanding of how places affect wellbeing. Our main aim was to exchange ideas with our audience of over 70 people, representing a range of views from those living in the communities in and around Edinburgh. Several participants also reported on knowledge and experience gained in their professional lives, including medical practitioners, public health specialists, leaders in independent organisations whose mission relates to mental health and wellbeing (such as Support in Mind, and the Cyrenians), urban planners and architects and social service providers.
The event started with a series of comments from a panel of academic researchers representing a variety of social science disciplines, who introduced ideas from academic research that may help to frame thinking on these issues.
Professor Sarah Curtis (Professor Emeritus at Durham University) used her own experience of volunteering in the Edible Garden project at the Botanic Gardens to illustrate ideas from Health Geography about Therapeutic Landscapes, originally put forward by Wil Gesler (e.g. in his book on Healing Places). This conceptual framework suggests we can think of places in terms of: material and physical landscapes (agreeable and relaxing green spaces, water spaces and built environments), social landscapes (supportive social relationships and community processes) and symbolic landscapes (features of our environment that stand for beliefs, principles and memories that are important for us). All of these dimensions of places, experienced in the different settings where we spend our lives, can be important for creating and maintaining our sense of mental wellbeing. These features of landscapes, the ways they change, and how different groups of people experience them over time, have been studied extensively by health geographers (e.g. reviewed by Sarah Curtis in her book Space, Place and Mental Health).
Professor Steve Platt (Professor Emeritus at University of Edinburgh) then presented ideas from research in Sociology and Health Policy about what we might consider the 'reverse' of therapeutic landscapes; focussing on factors that are associated with risk of suicide and why suicide matters for suicide prevention. He used the example of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which has been a 'magnet' for people intent on taking their own lives. He described the public controversies surrounding action to alter the architectural form of the bridge in order to install protective structures to reduce the suicide risk. He also underlined the evidence for socio-economic deprivation as a risk factor for suicide, with the risk of suicide being 2-3 times higher in the local areas in Scotland ranked among the worst 10% for social deprivation, as compared with populations living in areas ranked in the least deprived areas. He went on to elaborate further on the idea of suicidogenic contexts combining various dimensions that may be cultural, socio-economic, political, historical, as well as including built infrastructures and other aspects of the physical environment.
The significance for wellbeing of green space, viewed from a Landscape Architecture perspective, was introduced by Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Director of the OPENspace Centre at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art. She underlined that, since stress is a major problem for society and is associated with physiological as well as mental illness, researchers at OPENspace, together with their colleagues from around the world, are exploring how attractive and accessible green spaces can have beneficial 'restorative' effects on our mental state and help us to cope better with stress. Studies using biomarkers (that measure the functioning of psychoneuroendochrine systems in the human body) show that our mental and physical states are linked, which helps to explain why environments that help to restore mental wellbeing are also helpful for our physical health. Good access to green and natural spaces in the residential environment is associated with lower levels of stress as shown by these biomarkers, as well as from self-reports of stress among people out of work and living in urban poverty. Attractive green spaces are often also places where we enjoy supportive social relationships and healthy physical exercise. Conversely, when there is a shortage of green space in the urban environment, this appears to be associated with feelings of loneliness and lack of social support. Professor Ward Thompson has published research exploring these relationships in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Findings such as these help to strengthen the case for providing and maintaining access to healthy green spaces, such as public parks and gardens, allotments, and public rights of way in the countryside.
Dr Niamh Shortt (School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh) leads research at CRESH relating to how aspects of consumption and retail environments are significant for behaviours linked to mental health and wellbeing. She focused her talk especially on issues associated with alcohol consumption and unhealthy drinking, which can be closely linked to mental distress and mental health conditions. While lower income groups report consuming the same, or less, alcohol on average than higher income groups, they suffer more from alcohol related harm. This has been called the 'Alcohol Harm Paradox'. Dr Shortt presented findings from research she is leading which show that risks of unhealthy alcohol use are not only associated with individual level characteristics, but can also be influenced by the social and commercial environment. Access to and advertising of retail outlets selling alcohol is not currently controlled to the same extent as for tobacco sales, yet research is showing that there the ways people drink may be influenced by the organization and availability of alcohol retailing in their neighbourhood, and that this is especially important for those living in poorer areas who may be most reliant on their local retail facilities. This research demonstrates the importance for wellbeing of work of retail planning and licensing systems.
As the discussion widened to include the audience at this event, a number of other thoughtful and important points were made. We heard from a number of representatives of relevant non-academic organizations, explaining how actions to promote mental wellbeing and to prevent and treat mental illness may draw upon research, and also contributes to knowledge about 'what works' to promote wellbeing.
Dr Margaret Douglas, Consultant in Public Health Medicine for NHS Lothian, underlined concerns about the unequal impacts of places on both health for different groups in Scottish society. She highlighted links between physical and mental health. The geographical variations in mental health and wellbeing, and inequalities between rich and poor areas, are a major issue for public health in Scotland, as in other countries, so research is important to help to identify the places where health disadvantage is most concentrated and needs for mental health care are greatest. This said, not all of the people most at risk of poor mental wellbeing and mental illness live in the poorest areas, so that there is also a need for information on the social and geographical pattern of mental health problems across the whole of Scotland. Dr Douglas particularly noted the range of aspects of the environment that are important for health. Her comments drew attention to the range of partners who need to collaborate to address actions to improve the various environmental factors that are beneficial for wellbeing and can help to prevent mental health problems. The Scottish Health and Inequalities Impact Assessment Network has produced documents summarising evidence on several aspects of the environment including community venues, greenspace, transport and housing.
These comments were reinforced by Johnny Cadell, from Architecture and Design Scotland, who underlined the significance of Scottish Government architecture policy (Creating Places), Scottish Planning Policy and the Place Standard, which promote healthy environments across Scotland. The Place Standard is a joint initiative between Scottish Government, Health Scotland and Architecture & Design Scotland. The discussion highlighted the strong interest in how good urban design can benefit mental health. We noted that there is very good potential for the transfer of knowledge from research into policy and practice, and this is gaining momentum through collaboration between researchers and government agencies promoting various initiatives, such as work by the Design Council entitled 'Active by Design' and, in Scotland, initiatives such as 'Good Places Better Health', 'Go Well in Glasgow' and, most recently, the development of the 'Place Standard Tool' to guide local development. Increasingly, Health Impact Assessment is being applied to interventions outside the medical sector, to ensure that health impacts of new urban developments are considered at the planning stage. The Place Standard brings together commitments in architecture policy (Creating Places) to produce a tool linking spatial design with the health/wellbeing agenda and the commitment in Good Places Better Health to produce a 'Neighbourhood Quality Standard'. Those involved in Good Places Better Health and Go Well were closely involved in the design of the new tool.
Frances Simpson, from Support in Mind, helpfully drew attention to the fact that a good deal of research is currently focussed on more urban communities, but that it is also important to understand the experience of the rural communities in Scotland. Among a range of activities promoted by Support in Mind is a project that is currently collecting valuable information on what it is like living with mental ill-health in rural Scotland. Communities in rural areas may benefit from greater proximity to extensive green spaces than those living in cities, but there are other issues such as social isolation and exclusion, and problems of access to the right kinds of mental health services, which need to be considered in rural settings. These points resonate with an article recently published by Hester Parr and Chris Philo in The Geographer magazine reporting research involving participants in rural areas.
Hugo Whitaker, from the charitable organization Cyrenians, also pointed out that recovering from mental illness can be a long process and that access to supportive environments over time can be very helpful to restoring mental wellbeing. He provided examples (including 2 film clips) of how community gardens and healthy activities organised in grounds that are part of NHS estates can help to restore and maintain good health.
A number of useful film clips have also been published by the Green Exercise Partnership to help spread the word about this kind of activity (see example film here), as well as recordings of individual accounts from the perspective of those involved in design and planning (here) and stories of patient users' experiences: (here).
Also relevant to this debate is the Our Natural Health Service action programme. It shows how "high quality local greenspace, supportive nature-based projects, and better links between health and social care practitioners and the environment sector, can be part of the solution to many of Scotland's health issues." NHS Lothians's report 'Health Promoting Health Service: Action in Secondary Care Settings' issued by the Chief Medical Officer in October 2015 includes targets on "current use and improved plans of the outdoor estate for physical activity (green exercise and active travel) for staff, patients and the local community" as well as targets for staff health and wellbeing.
The debate included further comments from a number of other members of the audience. Points made by the panel about long term effects were picked up on by a retired General Practitioner who practised in one of the most deprived areas in Scotland. He commented that deprivation was transmitted across generations and that the conditions causing mental health problems in one generation would resurface in the next generation who were also treated in his surgery. Research reporting on the environmental experiences of people at different life stages was considered. For example, experiences of adolescents were commented on and it was pointed out that mental health problems can become apparent relatively early in life, and that young people have relatively little control over the social and physical environment, so it is important for their voices to be heard in environmental planning processes. Aspects of the environment that are beneficial for wellbeing of young people vary from those which are important for adults, so their experience needs to be taken into consideration.
Individuals with different characteristics may react quite variably a given environment and research can help to improve understanding of how places interacting with personal characteristics relate to mental wellbeing. It was noted, for example, that people vary in terms of cognitive and physical abilities and that making public spaces well adapted and inclusive for people with a range of abilities can help to promote mental wellbeing for all ability groups.
Other comments underlined the importance of a sense of autonomy and freedom to exercise independence and choice in the way we interact with our environment. It was noted that it was not only the visual aspect of the environment that was important, and that it was important for architects and others designing the environment to be sensitive to aspects such as noise levels and ambient temperature which can also affect one's sense of wellbeing in a particular setting.
Overall, this event clearly demonstrated the breadth of interest in the question of why places matter for mental health and wellbeing. The panel were very grateful to the audience for engaging in the discussion and making such thoughtful comments and to SciFest for organizing the event. We felt this was a good example of how academic researchers and others with relevant ideas and experiences can join together to 'co-produce' our understanding of the research agenda and how research can help to inform action. We hope to be able to keep in touch with participants, via the CRESH webpages and blog, in order to share future research findings and knowledge of what is important for our wellbeing in the places where we live.
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Q: How can I change SOAP Namespaces in PHP to match a WSDL? I am currently working on a project for the company that I work for. The project will need to make a SOAP request to another company (by means of PHP). I have the SoapClient in my PHP code communicating with the SOAP server of the other company, but all I get is "INVALID XML." After examining their WSDL and the response I notice that their namespaces are different. I need to change my namespaces to match theirs.
For example: The tags in my request show "ns1." and "env.", but theirs show "soap."
How can I change this?
Here is an example of my code, the request that is sent out and the response that is received.
---------------- CODE ----------------

  $client = new SoapClient("http://ws.example.com/test/test.asmx?WSDL", array('soap_version'=>SOAP_1_2, 'trace' => 1));

  $result = $client->TestFunction(array('Packet'=>'<Email>test@example.com</Email><Password>examplepassword</Password>'));

  $sessionid = $result->TestFunctionResult;

  print $sessionid;

  echo "REQUEST HEADER:\n" . htmlentities($client->__getLastRequestHeaders()) . "\n";

  echo "REQUEST:\n" . htmlentities($client->__getLastRequest()) . "\n";

  echo "RESPONSE HEADER:\n" . htmlentities($client->__getLastResponseHeaders()) . "\n";

  echo "RESPONSE:\n" . htmlentities($client->__getLastResponse()) . "\n";

------------ REQUEST SENT -------------

POST /test/test.asmx HTTP/1.1
Host: ws.example.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: PHP-SOAP/5.3.4
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8; action="http://ws.example.com/test/TestFunction"
Content-Length: 352

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:ns1="http://ws.example.com/resumes/">
  <env:Body>
    <ns1:TestFunction>
      <ns1:Packet>
        <Email>test@example.com</Email>
        <Password>examplepassword</Password>
      </ns1:Packet>
    </ns1:TestFunction>
  </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

---------- RESPONSE RECEIVED ----------

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Length: 450
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-PBY: BEARWS2
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:33:51 GMT
Connection: close

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <soap:Body>
    <TestFunctionResponse xmlns="http://ws.example.com/test/">
      <TestFunctionResult>
        <Packet>
          <Error>Invalid XML</Error>
        </Packet>
      </TestFunctionResult>
    </TestFunctionResponse>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

How can I get around this problem?

A: The prefix names are irrelevant. They are not the cause of your problem. It looks like you have a mismatched tag here:
<ns1:TestFunciton>
    <ns1:Packet>
        <Email>test@example.com</Email>
        <Password>examplepassword</Password>
    </ns1:Packet>
</ns1:TestFunction>

Note the misspelling of TestFunciton.

A: I wonder why you insert XML tags as values of "Packet". If done correctly (sorry that I cannot check it myself at this time), the SoapClient should escape these as entities, which would destroy your request. Additionally I wonder why your request dump does not show this more correctly, but I assume this might be due to the fact that you were editing stuff instead of copy&paste.
If done correctly, I'd presume, your request should look like this:
$client->TestFunction(
    array(
        'Packet'=> array(
            'Email' => 'test@example.com',
            'Password' => 'examplepassword',
        )
    )
);


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The NFL Could Expand Playoffs to Fourteen Teams
Two new wild cards could be added to the NFL playoffs.
By Michael Perry Jan 7, 2014, 7:18am EST
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According to multiple reports circulating the internet Monday afternoon, the NFL is leaning towards a 14 team playoff format to replace the current 12 team format.
As it stands now, each conference is broken down into four divisions, with each division winner making the playoffs as a 1, 2, 3, or 4 seed, depending on their overall record. The top two seeds receive a first round bye, while only the first seed is guaranteed home field advantage for the entire playoffs.
The final two seeds, 5 and 6, are left for the best two teams that did not win their division. These are the "wild cards" and will most likely not play a home playoff game (unless both were to make it to the conference championship, where the higher seed would host).
The NFL's plan is simple- add one more wild card team, or a 7 seed, to each conference. This would nullify the first round bye for the second seed while keeping the rest of the current format intact. The number 1 seed would become even more valuable in this situation.
For those wondering, the Ravens would still have not made the playoffs this season if a seventh seed was added, but rather the Pittsburgh Steelers would have.
Another topic of discussion lately in the NFL is the possibility of reseeding the playoffs by record, further complicating the wild card. This has long been a topic of debate, especially since the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks hosted and defeated the 11-5 New Orleans Saints in the 2010 postseason. Many felt that the Saints deserved the home playoff game and that the Seahawks did not even have a place in the postseason (they had the best record in the NFC West at the time).
The fact that the NFL could expand the playoffs should not come as a surprise. Even though this move would make the playoffs less prestigious, it would create two additional playoff games for the NFL to make money. After all, the NFL is a business.