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The Fabric of Civilization
The Power of Glamour
The Future & Its Enemies
The Substance of Style
Dynamist Blog
Suburban Industry
Stephanie McCrummen of the WaPost reports on a hobby I was utterly unaware of until I moved to Dallas: the creation of elaborately decorated scrapbooks by suburban moms documenting their family's life.
With devotion, and, some say, obsession, they have fueled the thriving, $2.5 billion scrapbooking industry, an ever-expanding, ever-more-elaborate supply of photo-safe minutiae: corner lacing punches and circle cutters, rickrack and paisley paper and brads eyelets and packages of thematic word stickers -- on love, on vacation, on childhood -- the better to frame a life.
What's driving the phenomenon? One theory is that it creates an excuse for sociability while allowing time for personal enjoyment. I suspect that scrapbookers find their hobby a deeply satisfying source of "flow" . But will anyone, except maybe 22nd-century social historians, really want to look at these scrapbooks?
Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist with Context-Based Research Group, a company that studies consumer behavior for such clients as the Campbell Soup Co., spent a while observing the scrapbooker. He concluded that what Ballard described as "going out and coming in" was at the root of the phenomenon and others such as the iPod. Blinkoff calls the underlying trend "alone, together."
"It makes me feel part of a larger community, but it also grows my sense of self," he said. "That's what scrapbooking does, especially for moms, who have no time to be creative these days."
And yet, among their thousands and thousands of photos, women tend to include very few, if any, photos of themselves, often because they don't like to be photographed or are reluctant to relinquish control of how their descendants will view their lives in 100 years.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 29, 2006 • Comments
In the buildup to Oscar, Steve Kurtz has posted his "Film Year In Review--2005," which is much smarter and more fun than the Oscars.
Like Steve, I'm sorry that theater attendance is down. I like to see movies in a dark room with other people. Of course, I don't like it when those other people talk or bring their squirmy, loudmouth kids. And I do think movies are pricing themselves out of the market, forgetting that they have competition for your entertainment dollar.
I didn't see that many movies in 2005, but I second his recommendations of Downfall, which was absolutely riveting, and Layercake. And, like him, I had fun at Mr. and Mrs. Smith, even though I understand the critics' objections.
Doing the Math
Quite a few readers have written to ask about the answer to the bat-and-ball question in my NYT column. Here's the relevant equation: $1.05-0.05=$1.00.
Interestingly, when Shane Frederick asks a different version of the question, substituting a difference of 13 cents for a bagel and banana totaling 37 cents, many fewer people get the answer wrong--because it's not intuitive.
Another X Prize
Having spurred the development of private space flight, the X Prize Foundation is now turning to genetics. According this WSJ report (subscription NOT required):
The X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit-education organization, is looking to spur a new adventure -- into human genes.
The Santa Monica, Calif., foundation plans to offer a $5 million to $20 million prize to the first team that completely decodes the DNA of 100 or more people in a matter of weeks, according to foundation officials and others involved.
Such speedy gene sequencing would represent a technology breakthrough for medical research. It could launch an era of "personal" genomics in which ordinary people can learn their complete DNA code for less than the cost of a wide-screen television.
The X Prize Foundation's website is here.
Kelo Backlash, Cont'd
The bank BB&T (once upon a time, my brother Sam's employer) has announced that it will not fund commercial development that depends on eminent domain to seize private property. The Institute for Justice press release is here. The policy no doubt reflects CEO John Allison's Objectivist convictions.
Content Matters--But So Does Style
On the lookout for style-as-innovation stories, my friend Sean Doughterty, an old-time radio buff, sends along an exchange from a fan listserve that illustrates that the iPod is hardly the first audio innovation to change behavior with aesthetics. The reply is from Elizabeth McLeod, author of The Original Amos 'n' Andy -- Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and the 1928-43 Radio Serial , and I am posting it with her permission.
My question: do you think that Amos 'n' Andy - or any other specific radio stars of the late '20s-early '30s era (perhaps Rudy Vallee?) - helped drive radio sales, and thereby hasten the heyday of great radio entertainment?
Or was it a more general thing - that RCA created a National Broadcasting Company to encourage radio sales... and the talent then rose up to fill the airwaves with that needed entertainment?
There's a lot of anecdotal talk to the effect that many people bought their first radios to listen to "Amos 'n' Andy" during 1929-30, but I don't think it's realistic to claim that the fad surrounding the program was the major engine driving radio sales during that era. There were numerous other factors as well.
The most important of these factors involved the evolution of radios themselves. Beginning around 1925, radio sets evolved from crude-looking boxes festooned with knobs and jacks and dials and visible wiring to more elegant devices contained in wooden cabinets designed as furniture. This change made radio far more acceptable as family entertainment for the living room instead of a reclusive hobby for the attic.
Following this change, in 1926-27, radio manufacturers introduced sets that operated directly off the AC line, rather than off batteries. Many housewives of the era objected to the presence of batteries in their living rooms -- especially the wet-cell "A" batteries that could leak acid on the floor, create odors, or otherwise make their presence unpleasant. These batteries, likewise, would need to be carried off to a garage or filling station once a week or so to be recharged, adding to the inconvenience of owning a set. An AC set, on the other hand, could simply be plugged into the wall and enjoyed without any of this muss or fuss.
And the final such factor came in 1930, with the introduction of "midget" radios. These small table sets -- including the famous "cathedral" cabinets -- were much easier to fit into a living room than a massive console, and were also much more affordable for working-class people, who could buy one on credit for as little as fifty cents a week. These radios exploded onto the market during 1930, a period which coincided with the peak of A&A's popularity, and the two crazes thus were able to feed off each other -- more people could buy radios to listen to A&A, and more people who bought radios discovered they enjoyed A&A.
The popularity of "Amos 'n' Andy" did, however, undoubtedly drive the popularity of radio drama during the early 1930s, encouraging a great many imitators in the nightly serial format -- and soon spreading into daytime as well. While most dramatic programs prior to A&A had been anthologies, with few or no continuing characters, the popularity of "Amos 'n' Andy" proved beyond question that listeners would and could follow the stories of favorite characters and that Everyman characters such as they were could serve as the framework for long-term series popularity. Without the proletarian influence of Amos and Andy, the evolution and development of dramatic radio might have lagged for years in the sort of stilted, psuedo-stagey productions which characterized most American radio drama prior to their rise.
Her account echoes Elmo Elkins Caulkins's landmark 1927 Atlantic article, "Beauty the New Business Tool", which I discuss in Chapter Two of The Substance of Style. Caulkins wrote:
In applying art to machines we are on our own ground. Machines are native with us, and the effort to beautify them has created a new field of artistic endeavor, as witness the sky-scraper, the motor car, the phonograph and the radio....
Among our new playthings was the phonograph. For a long while it lingered in its ugly box with its blatant horn, and no one minded its hideousness in the strange new experience of listening to it. It did not occur to us that it was not necessary to affront the eye to please the ear. But the spur of competition compelled the manufacturers to add every improvement they could think of, and when mechanical improvements were exhausted they turned to aesthetic ones, with the result that the great horn disappeared inside, the case took on some semblance of form, designers and cabinetmakers were consulted and period and other designs produced, so that now the phonograph may easily be an addition to the furnishing and decoration of a room. The transformation of the radio took less time. While it is still so new that broadcasting stations have not yet been assigned permanent waves, its makers are as much concerned with giving it an acceptable physical appearance as with lengthening its reach. That is because it arrived in an age in which both manufacturer and consumer are aware that there is such a thing as good taste. We demand beauty with our utility, beauty with our amusement, beauty in the things with which we live. And so the radio has been promptly put in the hands of the designers, to make it, if possible, a thing of beauty and a joy forever even when silent or especially when silent.
Intuition, Reflection, and Risk
My latest NYT column looks at some fascinating, and fun work by MIT's Shane Frederick on the connection between cognitive ability and attitudes toward risk and waiting. Those psych test subjects are more diverse--in important ways--than you'd think from the generalizations we often hear from psychologists and behavioral economists. Fortunately, investment, loan, and insurance markets largely accommodate this variety, no personality tests needed.
And, to answer some of my emails in public, if you think the question about a 15 percent chance of $1,000,000 is a misprint or wrongly reported, it isn't. Those are the real results, and they're remarkably consistent. In fact, at 1% and 3% chances, essentially everyone went for the sure $500, with no distinguishable difference among groups.
Bayesian Drug Tests
In the Pipeline blogger and pharmaceutical research chemist, Derek Lowe reports on the prospects for using Bayesian statistics in clinical drug trials. The Bayesian approach, which he explains more precisely than I could, essentially lets you revise your estimates of how likely success is as you get more information from experiments. For new drugs, fans say, it could "make clinical trials easier to run and more meaningful at the same time."
If Bayesian spam filters are an indicator, a Bayesian approach is definitely the way to go. SpamSieve, a Bayesian filter for Mac OS X, has pretty much solved my spam problems.
Fashion Geek
Leslie Katz of CNet News profiles Project Runway contestant Diana Eng, "a geek's geek who discovered the joys of math by second grade."
Do I Really Look Like Alicia Keyes?
Dan Drezner explains.
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This is a second-line antiasthma drug, traces of which are found in black tea. Use it if prescribed, but consider complementary medical therapies to aim at a cure for asthma rather than this drug, which simply relieves symptoms.
These are powerful antibiotics with many side effects and should only be used after a firm diagnosis, culture and sensitivity have been established on any infection. This is sadly not done and many strains of bacteria are proving to be resistant to this antibiotic .
Until recently this was the most popular antihistamine because it had a weak sedative effect. It is now known to create marked arrhythmias and should be avoided.
Tamoxifen blocks oestrogen receptors and is the first-line hormonal treatment in breast cancer that is sensitive to oestrogen. It is also used in postmenopausal women because of an effect other than oestrogen blocking , side effects are rare but include menopausal symptoms and will, of course, stop the normal cycle.
Initially an injectable drug used in acute attacks of migraine, it is now available orally but has many side effects and little long-term experience. It should be used only after all other alternatives and orthodox antimigraine treatments have been tried.
God's gift to nappy rash. This zinc-based synthetic beeswax cream acts as a marvellous barrier to prevent infection for nappy rash and open sores. Used in conjunction with an Arnica or Calendula cream, it will protect whilst the other heals.
Sudafed is an adrenaline-like drug called pseu-doephedrine. It is used as a topical nasal decongestant and should only be considered after alternative treatments have failed for situations such as rhinitis and hay fever.


Better delineate expectations of all faculty and staff, regardless of religious orientation, to be knowledgeable of and support the Catholic mission of the University.
Hire individuals whose philosophy aligns with our Catholic Benedictine tradition and values.
Extend a familiarity with the intellectual habits and resources within the Catholic intellectual tradition, Catholic social teaching, and the Benedictine wisdom tradition.
Provide Catholic, non-Catholic Christian, non-Christian University employees and those of no faith with the opportunity to contribute to the "intellectual landscape" in which serious moral and religious questions can be addressed; and to enter into dialogue with one another in order to understand that which unites our traditions and to respect that which is distinct.
Instill an appreciation of the institution's responsibility to serve the Catholic Church.
Create opportunities for each employee's professional, academic and spiritual growth.
For additional information or questions, please contact your Fr. David Turner, O.S.B. at dturner@ben.edu.


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Office launched to monitor REDD in Nepal through community forest management
A Project Management Unit (PMU), an office within the premises of the Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture and Bio-resources (ANSAB), has been launched in Kathmandu to coordinate and manage the project for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in community forests. The PMU was launched amidst a small ceremony on 16 July 2010. It was inaugurated by Mr Berend de Groot, Director of Programme Operations of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). This four-year project (2009-2013) is funded by NORAD's Forest and Climate Initiative, and carries out demonstrations on developing a REDD payment mechanism and related activities with the aim of strengthening the capacity of civil societies to take part in the REDD process.
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and REDD+ are global policies under the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These policies, through incentive mechanisms, reward the forestry and land-use sector by paying for the conservation and maintenance of forest cover in an effort to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Nepal has 1.2 m ha of community forest (CF) managed by over 15,000 community forestry user groups (CFUGs). According to published figures, Nepal's deforestation rate is around 1.6% per annum, and REDD should be seen as an additional incentive for reducing deforestation and forest degradation and assisting communities in promoting sustainable management of forests.
Developing a REDD payment mechanism is a new area of work in Nepal and requires the involvement of government and civil society organisations working in collaboration and cooperation with each other. ICIMOD, with ANSAB and the Federation of Community Forestry Users, Nepal (FECOFUN), is involved in this process. ICIMOD coordinates the overall project and provides technical guidance to ANSAB and FECOFUN. Lessons learned from this pilot project will enable local communities dependent on forest resources to decide whether to take part in the REDD programme.
The PMU will be the focal point for FECOFUN, ANSAB, and civil societies to take it further in terms of continuing with REDD and REDD+ activities. The project will facilitate the establishment of a Forest Carbon Trust Fund that will be sustainable, equitable, and credible in the long term for community forest users. Demonstration of the benefits of REDD is carried out through mobilising seed money in a carbon trust fund which is channelled to local forest users. Individual CFUGs will receive REDD benefits from seed money based on the amount of carbon they increase.
Community forests of three watersheds have been selected for the study as the demonstration pilot sites in the mid-hills of Nepal; namely, the Charnawati Watershed in Dolakha district, the Ludikhola Watershed in Gorkha district, and the Kayarkhola Watershed in Chitwan district. The entire project covers about 10,266 hectares of community forest area. In each watershed, there is a 'watershed level REDD Network Office' to coordinate REDD activities with different groups of forest users within the watershed. Local forest users learn how to carry out forest inventories; monitor carbon flux; establish equitable and transparent REDD mechanisms for sharing revenue; and to understand and actively participate in the overall REDD process.
Mr Eak Rana Magar
Coordinator, Project Management Unit for REDD Office Nepal
Tel: 9841448173, 4497547, 4478412
email: erana@icimod.org
Ms Nira Gurung
email: info@icimod.org, ngurung@icimod.org
REDD Brochure
REDD in Nepal through Community Forest Management (PDF, 500KB)
Nepal foresters ready to sell carbon stocks [SciDev Net]
Office launched to monitor REDD in Nepal [The Himalayan Times]
ICIMOD opens office to monitor REDD [The Himalayan Times]
Project mgmt unit on REDD mechanism launched (PDF, 170 KB) [The Rising Nepal]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Today Quantum Corp. announced the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) has selected Quantum StorNext as their archive file system, with a Quantum Scalar i6000 tape library providing dedicated Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM).
Our ability to archive data is vital to TACC's success, and the combination of StorNext as our archive file system managing Quantum hybrid storage, Scalar tape and our DDN primary disk will enable us to meet our commitments to the talented researchers who depend on TACC now and in the future," said Tommy Minyard, Director of Advanced Computing at TACC.
TACC designs and operates some of the world's most powerful computing resources. The center's mission is to enable discoveries that advance science and society through the application of advanced computing technologies. TACC's environment includes a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure ecosystem of leading-edge resources in high performance computing (HPC), visualization, data analysis, storage, archive, cloud, data-driven computing, connectivity, tools, APIs, algorithms, consulting, and software. TACC experts work with thousands of researchers on more than 3,000 projects each year.
Researchers from around the globe leverage TACC's computing resources for projects that span pure research and include partnerships with industry, generating an enormous volume of data which must be archived and accessible for future use. The Quantum system combined with DDN SFA14KX primary storage replaces TACC's original Oracle solution for migrating files to and from tape archive. The new system will utilize LTO technologies, taking an open approach to archive which is designed for future growth without the limitations of proprietary tape.


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Q: Get data with jQuery I have two text fields on different pages. One text field with the id ais on page 1 and second text field with the id b is on page 2.
I want to know how can I get data from 1st text field and put it into 2nd text field with jQuery.

A: You need to transfer the value from one page to the other when navigating. You can do this via url parameters and you can access them via the URL.
Here's an example:
Page 1 HTML:
Link
<input type="text" id="a" value="some value" />

Page 1 JS:
$('#link').click(function (event) {
    $(this).attr('href', 'page2.html?text=' + $('#a').val());
});

Page 2:
Refer to this post on how to extract the URL parameter.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


When we were young there were only two things we liked about school: trips to the zoo, and the end of term disco. It seems Nimblebit and Milkbag Games have similarly fond memories, as they have forced both these events together for their new collaboration Disco Zoo.
Despite the fact Disco Zoo will hit the App Store tomorrow, we are still a little short on details as to what the game will actually be.
From what we can gather , you have to travel the world to collect exotic animals – including dinosaurs. Once back at your at the zoo you must expand the tourist attraction to bring in extra cash, before throwing disco parties to get you animal and visitors strutting their funky stuff.
Nimblebit will no doubt bring the free-to-play mechanics it has honed on games like Tiny Tower and Tiny Death Star to the game. And, as Milk Bag Games is Trainyard creator Matt Rix's baby, we hope to see some clever puzzle gameplay incorporated into the mix.
Luckily, we won't have to wait long to find out just what the dancing development duo have in store for us, as Disco Zoo is expected to hit the App Store tomorrow.


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Gamboru Village And Tale of 3 Girls On A Suicide Mission
By (Blogger) Abdulkareem Haruna
Three beautiful girls in their early teens were woken from their sleep on a chilly harmattan night by the Boko Haram commanders.
It was md night. But regardless of the unfriendly weather condition, they must be prepared for their great mission which must be carried out on Tuesday 9 January, 2018, unfailingly.
From the past experiences and antecedents of various suicide bombings around Borno state, it usually takes at least a week to prime a young girl, or a pair of them or even a threesome, to carry out a suicide bombing attack in a particular location.
And it was already about a week since the last time Gamboru village mosque was attacked of which about a dozen worshippers were killed therein.
It probably had been "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar" all through last week as the vile-hearted bomb masters crowded around their transistor radio cheering as they catch the news from the BBC or VOA Hausa services, telling the story of how their teenage girls had carried out the attack on Gamboru village.
"Prepare three more girls for yet another attack on Gamboru in the next one week", Abubakar Shekau or some terror kingpin may have presumably instructed his bomb couplers and hypnotic masters.
So, these three beautiful young girls must be primed early enough to be able to accomplish the bestial mission.
They were selected few days to the mission. Some of their parents who were either adherent of Boko Haram may have willingly volunteered them; while other parents who were also abducted had to release their girls with a suppressed sorrow burning up their hearts - they dare not show their emotions.
Regardless of how they feel about it, the parents too had to corroborate the hypnotic master's deception that the girls were being prepared for a mission to what they called Gida Mai albarka (a blessed land, in Hausa), where they would be married to some handsome princes.
But the chosen girls could only make that happen when they press a button connected by some wire attached to a special protective vest (suicide belt) that would be strapped round their body. Once the piece of button was pressed they would disappear and find themselves being welcomed in their new homes on the 'blessed land'.
Their hair were neatly plaited, their faces made, beautiful local tattoos (known as lalle) have been used to ornament their hands and legs just like a bride in the northern Nigeria are made up on their wedding-day.
The innocent girls who were ignorant of the deadly nature of what they were about to carry out smiled happily amidst fake chant of ululation from the women.
By 3.30am the three phantom brides were ready. They do not need any baggage. All they had to carry was the explosives belt worn around their waists and covered by their overflowing hijjabs.
Three motorbike riders would then transport them to the outskirts of the village or town where they were to carry out the mission.
Their hearts beat fast because they saw the grief on the faces of their parents who knew that they would never set their eyes on their girls again.
The girls may have mistaken such grief for the normal emotions expressed by a mother when a bride is finally being taken to her husband's.
As the three girls clinged unto the bike riders who moved at neck breaking speed even in the dark hours of the night, one of the girls may have been reconstructing the events of the last few days and how she was being transported in a awkward manner to meet a husband she knew nothing about. Perhaps the cold attitude of her mother during the last hours of her departure may have stirred some curiosity on her to rethink the narratives being forced on them.
As the bike bumped their way through the dusty rough roads towards Gamboru, the tightness of the belt strapped around her body began to discomfort her.
She gradually eased one of her hands from around the bike rider to feel the suicide belt.
"But what could this belt laced with tins be", she may have begun to think. "Why must I wear this and be transported on a bike in the dead of the night without any of my bridal friends accompanying me, just to meet my husband? Could this be for real? Why was my mother wearing a long sorrowful face and avoiding to look at me when I was being taken away? And why is this bike rider not talking to me all through this journey?"
As these assumed thoughts came to her mind, tears began to form on her eyes. Her mouth sudden became dry, she could not even whet her throat with her saliva. The hot tears rolled down her cheeks. Her heart began to beat faster, suddenly she couldn't feel the cold weather any more. She was sweating!
The sudden brake applied by the biker jolted her back to consciousness, the bike rider was talking to her but she could not hear him.
"Are you listening to me?" He said with a stern voice as he tapped her shoulder forcefully. "I said you can now go and join your two colleagues over there"
He held her wrist with his right hand and felt her waist to be sure the belt was still intact.
"You can now go", he told her. "But don't forget what Mallam said. You know the consequences if you fail to press that button".
The girl nodded her head in affirmative response.
She clearly remembers what the Mallam told them.
Death would be the consequence of failing to press the button, and permanent forfeiture of their new husbands as well as opportunity to see their parents and siblings again.
As she walked up to meet the other girls who had also bid farewell to their bikers, she again used her hand to feel the belt on her body. She tried tugging at it and she noticed the belt had adjusted...
With the other girls, she noticed the two of them wearing some kind of calm look and a bit excited.
Something told her not to disclose her thoughts with them. They might not believe her. Days back they had been so excited about meeting their new husbands.
As they advanced towards Gamboru village, she informed them that she was instructed to take a different root. So she parted ways with the two others. A few yards away she stopped, pulled off her hijjab and began to fiddle with the straps....
The two other girls quicken their steps as they began to notice the silhouette of Gamboru village forming in the brightening darkness.
It was yet dawn and the mission must be carried out before daylight, they told themselves. They still have some hundreds of meters ahead.
About an hour later, they were still walking. The lazy sunlight was in yolky form gradually waking from its hours of sleep. But this time around, its services were not welcomed by the these two beautiful brides whose chances of connecting with their phantom grooms could be deemed by the brightness of light the rising sun was coming up with.
They kept walking.
Suddenly they began to hear distant voices.
"Hey you two there, stop at once".
It was the voice of soldiers guarding the outskirts of Gamboru. They had spotted them from a far.
The two girls looked at each other. Their minds began to beat fast. Are they about to miss the chance of getting to the 'blessed land'? Are they about to die? No! They must get to their destination and press the button, lest they risk never seeing their parents again. We must go on. No one should stop us; not even the soldiers.
"I said stop moving and raise up your hands", a soldier yelled in Hausa.
No! The girls told themselves. We must move on....
The first girl was still fiddling with the strap of the explosives belt when she suddenly heard sounds of gunshootings and a piercing voice of a female screaming and then everything went silent.
At that point, it suddenly dawned on her that her two colleagues must have been the ones shot at...There was no husband to meet or 'blessed land' to go. It was all an illusion and deception.
The straps suddenly came off and she gently peeled off the belt from around her body. Holding the device on her hands, the girl took a closer look at the cans of explosives and wires that connected them to the detonating button. She knew the device had nothing good to do with connecting her with her phantom husband. She looked around and hid it under some shrubs and began walking away towards Gamboru village.
"Hey stop there", a male voice yelled at her. She raises up her hands and waited for the person to come and get her.
A group Nigeria soldiers appeared.
And that ends the assumptive recreation of the narrative of this Blogger.
Spokesman of the Theatre Command, Operation Lafiya Dole, Colonel Onyema Nwachukwu, took over the narrative with a real life account of Tuesday morning happenstance in Gamboru village, 140km northeast of Maiduguri, Borno state capital.
"Troops of Operation Lafiya Dole deployed around Gamboru Ngala have successfully averted what would have been a major devastating suicide attack carried out by three female Boko Haram terrorists against innocent citizens in Gamboru town in Gamboru Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State in the early hours of Tuesday", Colonel Nwachukwu, a deputy director army public relations.
"Two of the suicide bombers, strapped with suicide vests had attempted infiltrating Gamboru town at about 6.45 am when they were sighted by a joint patrol team of vigilant troops and Civilian JTF at Unguwar Yobe area shortly before entering the town.
"They were halted by the patrol team from a safe distance and were ordered to unstrap their suicide vests, to which they vehemently declined. All efforts and entreaties by the patrol team to make the suicide bombers remove their IED vests failed as the duo adamantly approached the troops armed with their IED vests. They were immediately neutralised by the troops, while the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team (EOD) safely unstrapped and detonated the suicide vests.
"A third female suicide bomber was detected and intercepted within the same general area and subsequently confessed to the joint patrol that she and the other two terrorists had been dispatched at about 3.30 am on Tuesday to unleash mayhem on Gamboru town.
"She also revealed the location she had hid her suicide vest and led the troops to recover it.
"The recovered vests and the surviving suicide bomber have been taken into custody for further interrogations.
"We call on the general public to be more alert and vigilant, while going about their daily activities in their various communities to detect suspicious persons and inform the security agencies accordingly".
Since 2015 when Boko Haram fighters resort to weaponise teenage girls as suicide bombers, more than a hundred girls have lost their lives carrying out such deadly mission.
Most of the few girls who were either intercepted or managed to back out of carrying out the attacks, gave a disturbing tale of how they were either deceived or forced to go on such fatal missions.


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robtryan
Books, Travel, Music & Food
THE FALLS GUY
Last Thursday was an important day in the calendar for fans of Sherlock Holmes. After its winter closure, the funicular to the Reichenbach Falls re-opened. Yes, the place where, in 1893, in one of the most cold and calculated acts of detecticide in literature, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sent his Sherlock Holmes tumbling into the abyss, locked in fatal combat with Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, is easily accessible again. The location of the death plunge really does exist, although it often comes as a surprise to some people that Holmes isn't real, yet the Reichenbach Falls are.
Given that, until recently, I lived in a road in North London famous for its once-resident serial killer, I am not much given to Murder Tourism. Yet there we were, standing next to the site of one of the most notorious homicides of the late 19th century.
In truth, it is a rather lovely spot to send someone to their doom. Sitting above the town of Meiringen in the Swiss Bernese Oberland, reached by its seasonal funicular railway or a steep, winding path, the Reichenbach Falls cascade in a series of cataracts before spinning through the air for their final free descent, twisting through a hole in the rock halfway down, like liquid cotton threading through the eye of needle, and then plunging into an ice-blue pool at the base.
With a total drop of 250 metres, the falls are dramatic, certainly, but don't come expecting the Niagara-like flow as seen in the Robert Downey Jr Holmes movie, or even the tumult as described by Conan Doyle, which, before they went through that fissure in the rock, passed through the rapids of a writer's imagination. It is not "a dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam" from whence no bodies could ever be recovered. And although there is a ledge claiming to mark the exact spot of the momentous struggle between the good and evil geniuses, in actuality the site Conan Doyle had in mind was much closer to the rushing water than the current photo-opportunity. However, the path has become dangerous over the years and, understandably, the local tourist board don't want too many literal re-enactments of the death plunge.
Yet, all that aside, standing on the bridge at the top, looking down the narrow gorge of "coal-black rocks", there is something haunting about the falls, the feeling that this beautiful and apparently benign chute is capable of a fatal capriciousness. The waters can, as Watson says, "turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour ". It isn't difficult to see why Doyle took Sir Henry Lunn's advice and chose it as the ideal spot to unburden himself of his over-popular detective, although public pressure meant a resurrection a decade later. And he shows no sign of dying again any time soon.
Even if you are not one of the pilgrims convinced that Holmes was real, there is much to recommend this part of Switzerland, not least the spectacular mountains that ACD loved so much. Having visited with his first wife (as part of her TB cure), the author became a vocal ambassador for the country – arguably his tale of skiing from Davos to Arosa in The Strand magazine in 1894 kick started the whole British Alpine skiing movement.
If you have a Swiss Travel Pass (swisstravelsystem.co.uk; three days from £170), which covers the majority of train and boat services you can easily get to Meiringen and the falls from anywhere in the Bernese Oberland. You could reach Meiringen by using train only, but it would be a shame to miss out on the alternate ferry crossing over the startlingly green Lake Brienz, the hue caused by the cryophilic algae that thrive in the glacial waters. What will impress during the hour-long voyage is the sheer number of lesser-known waterfalls that punch out of the sides of the flanking mountains, as if the whole range is weeping silvery flumes. Many are strikingly lovely, but, thanks to a Scottish writer with a sick wife, none will ever have the resonance of the "tremendous abyss from which the spray rolls up like smoke from a burning house" that is the Reichenbach Falls.
Further information: Switzerland Tourism (00800 100 200 30, MySwitzerland.com). Thomson Lakes & Mountain (020 8939 0740, thomsonlakes.co.uk) has various packages to the Bernese Oberland.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on May 7, 2017 by Robert Ryan.
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1 thought on "THE FALLS GUY"
johnnybongo May 8, 2017 at 10:16 am
It's clear Lime undersold Switzerland. As well as the cuckoo clock there's gruyere and of course Holmes' spectacular plunge of death. Good stuff.
Hero, smuggler, mercenary, adventurer: the real Zumbach
That's Not A Tiger Tank!


We specialize in advanced dental restoration procedures to repair damaged, injured or decayed teeth and restore your smile. These are some of the common procedures we offer.
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text:
PIP = pip3
PYTHON = python3
PIPY_REPOSITORY=pypi

ifdef PY_VENV_PATH
PYTHON_ACTIVATE = . $(PY_VENV_PATH)/bin/activate
PIP = $(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && pip
PYTHON_BIN := $(PYTHON)
PYTHON := $(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && $(PYTHON)
ifneq ("$(wildcard $(PY_VENV_PATH)/bin/activate)","")
$(PYTHON_ACTIVATE):
else
$(PYTHON_ACTIVATE):
	virtualenv -p$(PYTHON_BIN) $(PY_VENV_PATH)
endif
endif

.PHONY: clean
clean:
	rm -rf .cache .tox/ .coverage build/ dist/ docs/_build htmlcov *.egg-info

.PHONY: install
install: $(PYTHON_ACTIVATE)
	# $(PIP) install -r requirements-dev.txt
	$(PYTHON) setup.py install

.PHONY: install-dev
install-dev: $(PYTHON_ACTIVATE)
	$(PIP) install -r requirements-dev.txt
	# $(PYTHON) setup.py install

# make lint PY_VENV_PATH=env
.PHONY: lint
lint: $(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) install-dev
	echo "Start linting"
	$(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && pep8 --exclude .tox,env,docs
	# $(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && pep257 boilerplate tests

# make test PY_VENV_PATH=env
.PHONY: test
test: install-dev lint
	echo "Start testing"
	$(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && nosetests -v --with-doctest

# make register PIPY_REPOSITORY=pypitest
.PHONY: register
register:
	$(PYTHON) setup.py register -r ${PIPY_REPOSITORY}

# make dist PIPY_REPOSITORY=pypitest
.PHONY: dist
dist: install
	$(PYTHON) setup.py sdist

# make upload PIPY_REPOSITORY=pypitest
.PHONY: upload
upload:
	$(PYTHON) setup.py sdist upload -r ${PIPY_REPOSITORY}

# make minor PY_VENV_PATH=env
.PHONY: minor
minor:
	$(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && bumpversion --allow-dirty --verbose minor

# make patch PY_VENV_PATH=env
.PHONY: patch
patch:
	$(PYTHON_ACTIVATE) && bumpversion --allow-dirty --verbose patch

ifndef VERBOSE
.SILENT:
endif

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Get_Tract — Returns census tract or field from tract table of where the geometry is located. Default to returning short name of tract.
Given a geometry will return the census tract location of that geometry. NAD 83 long lat is assumed if no spatial ref sys is specified.
This function uses the census tract whic is not loaded by default. If you have already loaded your state table, you can load tract as well as bg, and tabblock using the Loader_Generate_Census_Script script.
then they will be included by the Loader_Generate_Script.


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Infectious diseases spread through direct or indirect contact with a person or contaminated surface, an infected insect, or contaminated food or water.
At Dignity Health, our primary care doctors work together with emergency medical providers to offer timely care. The options for treatment are different for viral and bacterial infections.
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text:
Success Academy 2: The Founder
Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy, the highest performing and most controversial charter school network in New York City, and the subject of this season of StartUp. To understand Success, you have to understand Eva.
So on this episode, we go back to the beginning, looking at what got Eva interested in education in the first place, seeing the battles she fought on her way to starting Success, and watching as she opens her first schools. She cut her teeth serving on the New York City Council as chair of its Education Committee. In 2003 she did the unthinkable for a Democratic politician: she challenged the teachers' union. The war that ensued would include protests outside her schools, parents opposing Success at local hearings, and a newly elected mayor trying to shut her down. Eva's instinct to fight has helped keep Success Academy growing, but it has also made her a lot of enemies.
Peter Leonard mixed the episode.
Our theme song is by Mark Philips, remixed by Bobby Lord.
Build Buildings wrote and performed our special ad music.
Additional music by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Hot Moms Dot Gov, Michael Charles Smith, Armond WakeUp, Basement Riot, Golden Gram, and BlueDot.
LISA: If you want to understand Success Academy, the charter school network we're following this season, you have to understand the driving force behind it: its founder and CEO, Eva Moskowitz. So we paid a visit to the people who have known her the longest … her parents.
ANITA: Are we being recorded?
LISA: Anita and Marty Moskowitz live in a two bedroom apartment near Columbia University, not far from the home where Eva grew up. They're in their 80s, both retired professors, and, looking through family pictures, you can tell that education was always taken very seriously in the Moskowitz household.
ANITA: Well it's her preschool graduation.
LISA: So she's four?
ANITA: Four-and-a-half? The photo shows her wearing a cap-and-gown. Laughs They had a real graduation ceremony, and there she is.
LISA: You can catch other, early signs of the sort of person Eva would become -- the things she would place value in.
Like with this one story Marty told us … a story which, quick warning, contains one four-letter word. It happened when Eva was in elementary school. She didn't really get along with her teacher. And, one day, Eva arrived late to class.
MARTIN: The teacher had given out music, so Eva said, 'Well I'd like the music.' And she said, 'Well we don't have any left.' And then some other kid came in even later and she gave that other kid a copy of the music. Eva was very very angry at that and I… I'm not going to tell you what all happened there.
LISA: Why, what happened?
ANITA: Well, Marty did something bad.
LISA: You have to finish the story.
MARTIN: Well I...
ANITA: Okay I'll tell you. So Marty wrote a note...
LISA: The way Anita and Marty remember it… he wrote a note for Eva to keep to herself, a note to give her some comfort whenever she feeling frustrated with her teacher. And the note, it didn't say the type of thing you'd expect a dad to write for his elementary school daughter.
ANITA: And said, "Dear Ms. Rubin, fuck you. Martin Moskowitz."
LISA: So the note was never intended for the teacher, it was a way for you and Eva to vent anger.
MARTIN: Right.
ANITA: Exactly and Eva knew that.
MARTIN: But that's not the way it played out.
LISA: The next day at school, Eva went up to her teacher.
MARTIN: She said, "I have a note for you from my father."
ANITA: Which of course she knew was the wrong thing to do. And so Marty was called into the principal's office and the principal said, 'Mr. Moskowitz a fellow educator, I'm surprised at you.' And Marty apologized to the principal, to the teacher. It was a bad thing.
-music-
MARTIN: But anyway She couldn't forbear to not give the teacher this note.
LISA: Welcome to StartUp, I'm LC.
Feeling wronged, and fighting back-- we'll see this over and over again with Eva Moskowitz. And because of that, that four letter word you just heard, it'll reappear.
Last week on the show, we went inside Success Academy. It's the highest performing and most controversial charter school network in New York. And we got a glimpse of what Success is doing differently.
Today, Success' founder, Eva Moskowitz. She's a lightning rod in New York City politics and the world of public education. Many people want her to fail because she's become a fierce charter school advocate in a very liberal town. But also because she's handed a lot of fuck you notes to a lot of people. Those notes have been an essential part of building Success Academy. But, as we'll see, when you hand someone a fuck you note, it doesn't end there.
Eva was raised in a family of public school believers. But she also experienced, first hand, how segregated New York City's schools were. It was during her junior year of high school when she started to question the way the public school system was designed. She was volunteering with a group that helped Cambodian refugees resettle in the city. She'd found an apartment for one family but then had trouble finding their children a good school.
EVA: I was walking around Brooklyn, and all the schools that were good they weren't zoned for, and all the schools that were bad, they were zoned for. I didn't even know what a zone was. People would construct a zone to keep people out? I thought public education was equal and for all.
LISA: It was a basic and awful reality that Eva was discovering: where you live determines how good your school is… meaning if you're poor, you only really have access to bad schools.
This unfairness in the school system stayed with her, through college and a short academic career. Then, in the 90s she got involved in local politics; she made education a main issue and won a seat on the New York City Council.
LISA: At the time, the city's school system was among the most segregated in the country. The majority of the city's one million public school students... weren't reading or doing math at grade level. Only half were on track to graduate from high school on time. The picture was much better in the more affluent and whiter parts of the city.
Soon after joining the city council, Eva became chair of the council's education committee. To improve the city's schools, she decided she first needed to understand what was actually happening in them. So she started inspecting them, one-by-one. She'd quiz the teachers, interrogate the principals, track down the custodians.
EVA: I thought that I could visit all New York City schools.
LISA: This is typical Eva -- ambitious, exhaustive, obsessive. At the time there were around 1200 schools in New York City.
EVA: I only got, and it killed me, I only got to 300 of them.
LISA: Eva was trying to understand big issues like graduation rates and math proficiency... but she started getting calls from constituents about more basic concerns.
EVA: 'Council member Moskowitz, you've gotta come to our school. The toilet isn't working.' So I started going around to all these schools. 'Let me see. It can't be. We have custodians. We have a capital budget of billions of dollars.' It just seemed so far-fetched. But sure enough there was not a single case where they were wrong.
LISA: Eva examined bathrooms in a few dozen schools. Today, whenever I see Eva at work, she is always dressed up in stilettos and bright, fitted dresses. When I picture her back in her city council days, leaning over toilet after toilet, giving each a test flush, this is how I picture her.
Eva estimated that as many as a third of the bathrooms in the system were broken. She told the Department of Education what she'd found. They came back to her with a plan.
EVA: They presented their whole toilet-fixing plan. And of course they want it to happen over five years and you say, 'No no no, this can't happen over five years. This is actually an urgent schooling matter.' It's very challenging having 500 kids and they can't use the bathroom.
LISA: The Department of Education fast-tracked the toilet plan. A few months later, they called Eva to tell her it was done -- the toilets were fixed. Eva didn't buy it. She wanted to hold them accountable, and so she drafted fuck you note number one.
EVA: Because I don't trust them, I would go back to the schools that I had visited, and I remember calling the head of facilities -- I was in Chinatown I'll never forgot this -- and saying 'This toilet problem is not solved.' She said 'Eva I'm telling you it's solved' and I said I'm calling her mind you from the bathroom. I said, 'well, what about PS dadadadada?' She said let me look at my list. She looks really she said Eva that was finished three months ago. I said, 'I'm standing here, the toilets do not work.' You know, I'm sure she got off the phone and said, 'oh my God, this woman's crazy, you know, she's going to the schools personally?' It, you know, probably wasn't the best use of my time because I probably moved the needle 1%. And I spent hours and hours and my staff did and we tried every way to Sunday to get working toilets for kids.
LISA: A former facilities employee said the broken toilet problem wasn't as widespread as Eva describes -- and that she was often calling for enhancements, like a new flushing handle, rather than fixes.
Either way, this does make Eva seem crazy. She's attacking the toilets with all of her might … visiting bathrooms, haranguing bureaucrats, and then revisiting bathrooms. But maybe you need that level of craziness to change a crazy system. She was about to test that theory on a much bigger level.
LISA: As Eva was touring the 300 New York City public school buildings, she started seeing things other than the broken toilets -- signs she thought pointed to larger problems in the school system.
EVA: I'd go and look at the lunchroom and it was food fights, and there was utter chaos. And there was one aide. And I would say, 'Where are the adults?' And they would say, 'Oh, don't you know, the teachers' union contract prohibits teachers from doing lunch duty?'
LISA: The teachers' union contract … a document that protects the interests of teachers in traditional public schools. She asked her staff to get a copy of the teachers contract, expecting something that was maybe 20 pages. But instead, it was 300 pages in length.
EVA: It was this giant document, I thought, 'No wonder nothing works. This is madness.'
LISA: The contract was packed with rules that seemed to control every minute of the school day. And Eva saw a lot of things she believed were not in the best interest of kids. For example, that rule that kept teachers out of lunchrooms -- that was in it. And there were rules that promoted teachers based on seniority, regardless of whether they were actually good instructors.
Dan Weisberg was head of labor policy for New York City's education department at the time, and currently serves on Success Academy's leadership council. He says that those seniority rules meant teachers who'd been in the system a while could claim an open job at a school, without the principal having any say in it.
DAN: A principal could have somebody walk into their office on the first day of school and say, 'Mr. or Ms. Jones, I'm here to claim your third grade teaching position. You've never met me. You didn't get to interview me. You have no idea who I am, what my qualifications are, whether I believe in your vision. But by the contract, I claim this position.' That was it.
LISA: There were also rules on tenure. Dan says the contract basically insured teachers a job for life, if they met expectations through their first three years. That's because the process for firing a bad teacher was long and complicated. As a result, something else would happen -- something that people called the dance of the lemons.
DAN: The dance of the lemons, where teachers who everybody in the system knew were not good would get bounced around. I know I can't fire him or her, but i'll convince her to transfer to a different school, and then the next principal would convince her to transfer to a different school, and they'd get bounced around the system for years and years. Those teachers were winding up predominantly in low-income communities. So the kids who most desperately needed great teachers were least likely to get 'em.
LISA: Dan believes this is one of the main reasons schools in poor neighborhoods stay bad. Union officials disagree: they say these schools stay bad because they're underfunded, and teacher turnover in them is actually really high. And there are all these systemic factors -- like poverty and racism -- working against these kids.
But as Eva studied the 300 page contract, she became convinced that one of the biggest reasons New York City public schools were failing, that kids were not achieving at the levels they should or could be, was that the entire system was set up to protect the adults ... not the kids.
EVA: So there were all these things that principals knew, teachers knew, it was common knowledge. But it was not common knowledge to editorial boards, to journalists, to the general public, certainly not to parents.
LISA: So Eva decided to make it common knowledge. She wanted to expose a system she thought was broken, failing at its core mission: educating children. And so, as chair of the city council's education committee, she put together a series of high profile public hearings to reveal exactly what was in these union contracts. These hearings were her fuck you note number 2.
LISA: The hearings would make a name for Eva. She'd been fascinated by the Watergate and Iran-Contra hearings when she was younger -- those were her models. Now was her chance to grill school officials about the union contracts -- in front of city councilors, journalists, and the general public. She thought if she could get people worked up over things like the dance of the lemons, that would bring pressure to change the contracts, to build more accountability into the system.
But, this meant taking on the teacher's union -- one of the most powerful forces in New York City politics … a huge donor to the Democratic party, with hundreds of thousands of members ready to mobilize quickly.
In the days leading up to the hearings, Eva felt under attack -- getting barraged by calls insisting that she cancel the hearings.
Mark Goldey was a lawyer on Eva's staff; he was the main person helping her prepare for the hearings.
MARK: There was just a lot of pressure and a lot of tension in the office. And it was not a surprise, but you can know a tidal wave is coming and maybe that makes it a little better when it lands, but you're still soaking wet and swimming against the tide. And that's certainly what was happening.
LISA: Eva had asked several people to testify at the hearings … school principals, officials at the Department of Education, union representatives. Witnesses started cancelling on her. One principal asked for her voice to be disguised in a taped testimony.
EVA: You know my witnesses were intimidated. They got threats. I felt like I was in a Godfather movie, and I had never been in a Godfather movie before.
LISA: Eva went forward with the hearings anyway. They started on November 12, 2003.
MARK: It was in City Hall. You walk up the steps. The building has enough presence that it makes you feel like you're going somewhere that matters. The council chamber looks kind of like a beautiful old theater. There were so many people you could not get in the door. And the place was jammed to the rafters, completely full. The hallway was overflowing.
LISA: Eva sat at the front of the room, flanked by her city council colleagues. She presided over the hearing.
EVA: Obviously I'm not blind to the controversy that has ensued as a result of holding these hearings.
LISA: The hearings lasted five days. They discussed union rules on who paints classrooms, what custodians were allowed to fix in schools, and how a school's maintenance budget was set. The climax came when Eva took up the 300-page teachers contract. Randi Weingarten, the head of the UFT -- New York City's teachers union -- fired back.
RANDI: If the contract really delivered the nirvana for teachers that some think it does, why aren't teachers knocking down our doors to get in? And if teaching under this contract is such a cushy job why do one in four new teachers leave within a year and 40 percent leave within three years.
LISA: In the extended back-and-forth that followed Randi's statement, she and Eva found little common ground.
RANDI: You clearly do not believe that seniority or experience...
EVA: No, Randi, Randi, no. We're... I'm not going to have you tell me what I believe and don't believe because we don't know each other well enough for you to ascribe views to me.
LISA: At some point during the hearing, Eva tried to nail Randi down on the part of the contract that allowed teachers to show up at a school on the first day of class and claim a job. It's called a transfer plan.
EVA: Given the latter of the contract is it the case or is it not the case that a principal could have to accept a candidate site unseen. Is that correct or incorrect?
RANDI: Again, and I don't mean to be a pest, but there is no UFT transfer plan. There is a plan that was negotiated starting in the mid-50s between the department of education and the UFT…
EVA: Could you answer my question? Is it the case that a principal under any circumstance could have to take a candidate without ever having interviewed them. Yes or no?
RANDI: Yes.
EVA: Thank you.
LISA: In the end … Eva got the media attention that she wanted. Newspapers including the New York Times devoted a lot of space to the hearings. Eva had accomplished her goal of putting the problems she found in the contracts before the public.
LISA: But actually moving the dial on them turned out to be far more difficult. When it came time to renegotiate the teachers contract, the union brought intense pressure, and the contract didn't change nearly as much as Eva would have liked. The whole experience left her feeling pretty disillusioned.
EVA: The team I was on... the Democratic team is the team that cares about the little guy, that cares about the most vulnerable children. And instead I got shot at. I was like whoa this is different... I thought I was fighting for justice and educational access only to be told don't say anything bad about public education. That's not Eva how we do things in the Democratic Party. I mean my whole political narrative got upended.
LISA: Even today, that defeat continues to haunt her.
EVA: It still saddens me that we've made so little progress. And so many children are trapped in schools that don't work on the most fundamental level. And that just makes me very sad.
LISA: Eva's tangle with the union wasn't over yet. They'd soon hand her another major defeat, that's after the break.
LISA: Welcome back to StartUp.
Eva's first major clash with the teacher's union, the hearings in City Hall on the teacher's contract, raised her profile in New York City. And Eva took advantage of that. She was ambitious and wanted to have a bigger impact on the city. So two years later, she decided to run for higher office... the Manhattan borough president seat.
LISA: Her campaign literature highlighted how dogged she'd been solving constituent complaints. Her tagline was "Don't get mad; get Eva." But her hearings had created an enemy in the teachers union, and they came out in force. Jenny Sedlis worked on Eva's campaign.
JENNY: We would be on street corners campaigning and teachers would just shout at us from a corner. They were able to put flyers in every kid's backpack in the borough. And the reason we found that out was because Eva's own child got a flyer in his backpack comparing his mother to Cruella DeVille. So we learned cross the union at your peril. Eva had to be taken out. That was the union's perspective.
LISA: Leo Casey was a high school teacher in New York City and a union member at the time. He now runs the research arm of a national teachers union. He says that Eva's hearings felt like an attack on teachers … and their right to bargain collectively.
LEO: You had to fight teachers off from coming to do phone calls and walk precincts to ensure her defeat. There was no choice but to oppose her in that election.
LISA: Then the New York Times dealt her campaign a serious blow. Its editorial board endorsed her opponent, describing Eva as "smart and driven," but "abrasive." Eva was devastated. She lost the election by 9 percentage points . And now, she was out of a job.
She felt that all her hard work … her relentless pursuit of the broken toilets … her hearings on the union contracts … it had all been for nothing.
And then Eva got a call that would change the course of her life -- one that would give her an entirely different platform to transform public education. It came from two Wall Street investors who had followed her education work on the City Council.
JOEL: I believe Eva is as close to Superwoman as I'm ever going to meet.
JOHN: There was no one else who was a visionary like Eva and I'll probably never meet anyone like that again.
LISA: Joel Greenblatt and John Petry run hedge funds. And they're part of a group of Democrats that started donating to education reform efforts around this time, and were active in trying to shape national policy.
They'd backed a few one-off efforts at New York schools. But they knew, a one off wasn't going to really change the public education landscape. Plus, they're business guys, so they were looking for something that was replicable, something that could scale.
JOEL: John and I think of business models and so our thought was let's create some kind of model, iterate and expand.
LISA: So they filed an application to start a charter school.
LISA: Their charter school would be nonprofit. It would still run on public money… but it wouldn't have to follow the same rules as a traditional public school. The founders would get to decide their own curriculum, class size, how long the school day and year would be. Their teachers wouldn't be part of a union; so they could hire and fire who they wanted to. They would have all this freedom … as long as they showed a certain level of student performance, as measured by standardized test scores.
Joel and John offered Eva the chance to lead their charter school. But they weren't the only ones who wanted Eva's expertise. The head of the Department of Education, a guy named Joel Klein, had also offered Eva a position. Even though she'd been a thorn in his side, she'd earned his respect, and he'd asked her to run a new teacher training program. So Eva could stick with the public education system she's spent years advocating for or abandon it altogether.
She choose the second option... to abandon it. She joined Joel and John to lead what they'd call Harlem Success Charter School --- sending the New York City Public school establishment --- one which she'd struggled to make change in --- fuck you note number 3.
LISA: Now, instead of examining the problems of an entire school system, she was actually in charge of building a school from scratch. She was on her own, and she had eight months to make it happen.
LISA: Her school, Harlem Success, would start with a kindergarten and first grade. One of its first needs? Families that would take the risk on a brand new school that had never educated a single child. Eva started flyering on street corners, knocking on doors in public housing complexes, making the rounds. Natasha Shannon, whose daughter ended up enrolling in the first year of the school, told our producer Heather Rogers about hearing Eva's pitch.
NATASHA: Miss Moskowitz visited the Head Start program the day care that my daughter was attending and pitched the idea of a school that she was starting with no building and no teachers nothing at the time just said, "I have this vision--Your children will graduate college."
HEATHER: But did she like have a plan like this is how we're finding teachers. This is how we're finding space. Did she tell you about that stuff?
NATASHA: No no no not at all actually. But you were taking a chance with that her vision was better than my reality. Her vision was better than the failing schools of the neighborhood.
HEATHER: What did it what was that like to hear that when your child was 4 years old?
NATASHA: To hear someone say that not only do I believe that your child is capable but I'm going to help them to get there meant everything.
LISA: Getting kids on track to finish college was one of Success' key goals. In fact the school called its inaugural first graders the Class of 2022-- the year they'd graduate from college, not high school. Around that college promise, they envisioned a curriculum with rigorous math, science starting in kindergarten, a school day extended to fit in extracurriculars like music and chess, and parents reading to their kids every night. These were lofty goals.
Success, like other charters, was free and open to any student who applied. It had more applications than it could accommodate its first year, so the 165 kindergarten and first grade students that Success welcomed on its first day were chosen through a random lottery.
Leading up to that first day, Stacey Gershkovich, a founding teacher, remembers spending a lot of time working on bulletin boards, and skits welcoming the students … but in all of that, they'd forgotten some basic schooling things.
STACEY: The night before school started I remember sitting down with my co- teacher and saying, 'Ok well what are we going to teach tomorrow? Like what happens at 715. 7:30, and 7:45?' And then we didn't have any time to talk. And so then at 5:00 p.m. we would go back upstairs and say, 'OK well what are we going to do tomorrow?'
LISA: It quickly became apparent that, across the school, people were making it up as they went along… including Eva.
STACEY: Even well into the first year, I thought she had way more planned and experience and knowledge than she did. I don't think I knew how much she was just kind of doing... As she says, building the plane as we flew it.
EVA: The first six or seven months, it was not a great school.
LISA: It turns out that actually running a school was a lot trickier than critiquing a school system. She faced a stream of small and large crises that needed fixing before she could even start to think about what kids should be learning. Just like when, as a city councilor, she set out to improve literacy and math proficiency in schools and ended up fixing toilets.
LISA: In the first week of the new school, Eva sent John and Joel an email outlining a few of the crises she'd run into. Among the problems she outlined: bad teachers, crying teachers, students threatening teachers, parents threatening the school, spotty electricity, and milk that was frozen solid. Another problem early on?
EVA: My god there are bugs.
LISA: Bugs. Lice, bedbugs, weevils in school snacks…
EVA: And I guess I should have been ready for it but when it's all raining down upon you, it's not like you have three weeks in between bugs, they are coming, and parents are very upset.
LISA: While all these unforeseen crises were crawling around outside the classroom, there were causes for alarm in the classroom too. Three weeks into school, Eva was stunned to walk into a math lesson and discover that they had only gotten up to the number seven.
EVA: Most of them knew the number seven. You don't spend three weeks on the number seven. And I gathered the teachers and I said, 'You know doesn't this seem idiotic?' And they said yes! And I said, 'Well why didn't you tell me? You should have told me three weeks ago?' And their response was, 'We didn't know we could do something about it, and what are we going to do about it?' And I said, 'I don't know what we're going to do about it but we're not going to stick with the number seven'.
LISA: The absurdity of it taking three weeks to get to seven -- a rate of about one number learned every two days -- made it clear to Eva that the curriculum they'd chosen to use just didn't match her ambitions. She knew kids could do more. So they took a pretty radical step -- one fit for a startup school: they scrapped most of the curriculum, pulled from other resources, and wrote their own. So, on top of everything else they were juggling, teachers now had to start over and rebuild their lesson plans from the ground up.
As a small startup, Success was nimble and could make changes like this at lightning speed compared to traditional public schools. And for people with experience in traditional public schools, there was another thing that felt different: this was a school with resources. Paola Zalkind had spent a couple years teaching in a public school before she came to Success.
PAOLA: You could have this beautiful classroom with the books you needed to teach, and nothing was broken, and it was clean, and there was always toilet paper and paper towels and soap, and snack every day, that you didn't buy for the children. And to this day I have no idea how the financing of all of this worked. I don't think I want to know.
LISA: Here is how the financing worked. Each year, Success got money from the government for every student they educated. The more kids they were able to draw into their school, and away from other schools, the more money they got. They also got a couple million dollars from Joel and John, to cover startup costs and to get the school through its first year. By their third year, if everything went right, the school should be breaking even on public money… and not need any more from people like Joel and John.
So Success could move fast, they had money, and they were different in another important way: they thought a lot of schools lowered their expectations for poor kids, for black and Latino kids. Eva refused to do that. Jim Manly was an early leader at Success. He had taught for several years before coming to work for Eva, and like many of his white, middle-class colleagues, he made certain assumptions about what disadvantaged students could handle.
JIM: I would often say, 'Well that test is too challenging' or 'I'm not sure we should be rushing them to read this book'. And she would just look at me and say, 'Well, do your kids read those books?' And then she'd say, 'well, let's read those books.' There was uh talk about what we were going to do for Halloween. And a lot of the teachers said, well we shouldn't celebrate halloween the kids bring in fake weapons and put masks on, maybe we should just have a harvest festival. And Eva just turned to me and she said, 'Are your kids dressing up for halloween in their school?' And I said absolutely yeah my son will be a superhero and my daughter will be a princess or whatever. And she said 'Exactly right, kids love dressing up in costumes, they love halloween, and so let's have a halloween parade." And I really appreciated that. Kids are just amazingly flexible human beings and if you give them the right supports in the right environment, the sky's the limit. And Eva definitely changed my thinking in terms of the work that students could take on.
LISA: That first year, Eva kept retooling and recalibrating, and pushing her teachers to expect more from their kids. And, little by little, it started to pay off. Michele Caracappa, a first grade teacher, was working with her students on early literacy skills.
MICHELLE: We're teaching kids the basics of decoding, and eight weeks into the program, they could all read these decodable books, ...and we're like 'oh my god nobody could read?' and the parents were so excited, 'my baby can read!' the kids are so excited everyone's carrying these little paper books everywhere.
LISA: As a city councilor, Eva had attacked problem after problem, from toilets to tenure, with a high-expectations, fuck-you-note relentlessness. But she made incremental progress. Now, she had built an education lab where she could direct that same energy at constantly testing and improving how much kids could learn. And, not surprisingly, she wasn't satisfied with just one lab.
At the end of Success' first year, she invited the press into the school. Elizabeth Green was there; she's an education reporter who has followed Success since that first year. And she was stunned when she heard what Eva announced.
ELIZABETH: She was serving 165 students, but she had already decided that she was going to open 40 schools in a decade. That was crazy. All in New York City; all in New York city. Something that nobody had done--start a new school system from scratch and she was just on this one block of Harlem like, 'I'm going to take over the whole city, like, it's all going to be mine!' Like, what?!
LISA: The desire to build an entire network of schools … to grow at this unprecedented rate … came in part from the overwhelming demand Success had seen when it opened. And, if Eva was going to make even a tiny dent in the systemic inequality that got her focused on education in the first place, she was going to have to build a lot more schools.
Eva also saw her school as being a proof-point that poor kids could achieve at the same level as rich kids, if given the right supports.
EVA: to prove that it's possible and it's not miraculous to have great schooling. And my thought was that if you had 40, at some point, the cynics would have to say, 'Well the idealists are right.' And the cynics would have to say uncle.
LISA: But making that case to the cynics? That was not going to be easy. The same fuck-you-note approach that was energizing Eva's charter school crusade, would also start to throw up major roadblocks.
PROTESTORS: Eva Moskowitz must go.
LISA: That's after this break.
LISA: Welcome back to SU. In the fall of 2008, two years after her first school had opened, Eva launched three new schools. It was the first step in Success' 40-school expansion plan. 3600 students applied for the 600 spots at the new schools. Success took this as a clear sign that families were desperate for schools like the ones they were building.
But not everyone was eager for Eva to open more schools.
PROTEST: Eva Moskowitz must go. Eva Moskowitz must go.
LISA: People started picketing outside of these new Success schools. The protestors included union members, who opposed Eva and the non union jobs she was creating. There were also people from the neighborhood, who didn't like the idea of charter schools coming in. The fight got even more intense, more emotional ... because of something called colocation.
LISA: Colocation is when multiple schools share space inside the same public school building. In Success' case, that meant putting charter schools and traditional schools, Eva Moskowitz and the unions, side by side in the same building … sharing the cafeteria, gym, auditorium, and stairwells.
Success' plan to open 40 schools in 10 years was built on the financial assumption that they could open these schools in existing public school buildings… buildings that were underutilized where student enrollment had declined. And it would save Success millions of dollars they would otherwise have to spend on renting space or building new buildings.
Of course, what on paper looked like unused space was in practice often rooms that the existing schools had found uses for -- informal meeting or counseling spaces; rooms for art, or science labs. And for resource-starved public schools, shiny new charter schools pushing them out of those spaces seemed like salt in the wound.
LISA: These issues came to a head at public hearings, where the Department of Education would hear out people's views on Success' new school openings -- before signing off on the colocation. In a hearing on Success' second school, Success Academy Harlem 2, opponents and supporters filed into a school auditorium to weigh in. A woman takes the microphone.
HEARING: Let me say to Ms. Eva Markowitz, Ms Markowitz as I said to you before, folks in Harlem will not let you disrespect them.
LISA: This particular hearing was captured in a documentary film called "The Lottery". The people in the audience are divided -- some are wearing Success Academy hats; others have on teacher union hats. Sanayi Canton lives in Harlem, and heads a local parent group that advises the city on public school policy. She says underpinning this tension between the opponents and Success … was the issue of race. Eva Moskowitz and most of Success' staff are white. The majority of students in Harlem are black and brown.
SANAYI: We want people that look like us teaching our kids. We're not saying that all the people have to look like us but there should be a decent amount of people that look like the children you're serving and that understand their culture. How many of those teachers that you have in those schools actually know the community.
LISA: A lot of charter schools had been moving into Harlem during this time, and to some, they felt like an attack on older public schools -- institutions that had a long history in the community.
HEARING: If you mean well, then you would not come into our community, and try to divide its neighbors. The PS 194 is here and we will not, I repeat we will not give up this fight. Build your own buildings.
LISA: For Eva, though, the issue seemed simple.
EVA: The educational needs are so so profoundly great, why are we having this discussion? Shouldn't it be that, if there's space, if the quality of the school is good, why wouldn't that be a no-brainer?
LISA: To help make her case at this hearing, Eva used a tactic from her old political days. She mobilized her constituents -- Success Academy parents.
EVA: We had 500 parents who you know, 'I live in the Martin Luther King houses here are my children 5 and 7. Why would you prevent me from going to the school?'
HEARING: She's our Obama ok? She brought change to our kids, ok? My 13-year-old just got put in the 8th grade and my five-year-old is teaching her to read. We're not trying to say your kids can't come here, we're not trying to say we don't want your kids. We're trying to say tell them to come talk to her, see what she's doing bring it to your school and work together as a team.
LISA: Jim Manly, who'd discussed the halloween celebration with Eva, was principal at the school being debated. He says the meeting was intense and emotional. And even though Success faced a lot of blowback...there was one moment that also reminded him why he believed in their work.
JIM: A dad walked up with his daughter. And you know he actually lifted her up and he said, 'Mr. Manly who is this?' And I said her name. I wasn't sure what he was doing and then he proceeded to say, 'I was in New York City public schools for 12 13 years. And' sorry I get choked up but he's like, 'no one ever knew my name. And you know this school knows my daughter and they care.' And you know I just was it was just incredibly powerful just to hear some folks' experiences with with public schools and what they hadn't gotten and their allegiance to what we were trying to do.
LISA: Success didn't get space at this particular school. The Department of Education backtracked on the colocation, because of the opposition, and because of a lawsuit from the teacher's union and the New York Civil Liberties Union. Success eventually found space in another school.
Opponents have continued to fight most of the new schools Success Academy has opened. And Eva has regularly turned Success into a political mobilizing operation -- which has helped them win a lot of those fights. Within five years, they would have 21 schools across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx.
The thing that helped fuel that growth despite all the opposition that proved Success was onto something was the charter school network's test scores. Of their very first batch of students to take statewide standardized tests, 95% passed English and 100% passed Math. Those scores were significantly higher than the city-wide average.
ELIZABETH: Test scores are everything for a charter school leader.
LISA: Elizabeth Green was the reporter who'd covered the press conference at Success during its first year. She's also the founder of Chalkbeat, an education news site.
ELIZABETH: They are the key to the money, ie donors. They are the key to staying open. They were the keys to the students. So test scores are everything. Laugh.
LISA: Soon, other charter school leaders were calling Success to ask how they were doing so well on their tests.
DOUG: Eva, your test scores were awesome. Can we come and figure out what you did?
LISA: Success' incredible test scores have themselves been a sort of fuck you note from Eva -- One that she hands to the New York City public school establishment year after year.
The note basically says fuck all your excuses for why black and brown kids can't achieve at the same level as white kids... here's proof they can.
Next time on StartUp, we try to figure out how Success gets its scores. We go inside its test-taking machine, and see the crazy lengths the school goes to get those results.
LISA: StartUp is hosted by me, Lisa Chow. This episode was produced by Bruce Wallace, Molly Messick, Heather Rogers, and Sindhu Gnanasambandan. Editing by Sara Sarasohn and Emanuele Berry, with help from Mathilde Urfalino, Laura Morris, Kareem Maddox, Peter Bresnan, Erin Kelly, and Rob Szypko. The audio of the 2003 Education Committee hearings came from New York Public Radio Archives.
Special thanks to Madeleine Sackler who directed the documentary film "The Lottery," and Rachel McCormick.
Our theme song is by Mark Philips. Build Buildings wrote and performed our special ad music. For full music credits, visit our website, GimletMedia.com/startup. Peter Leonard mixed the episode.
To subscribe to StartUp, go to Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you like to use. And while you're there leave a review! Find out more about the show at GimletMedia.com. You can follow us on Twitter @podcaststartup. Thanks for listening, and before I forget, we're taking Thanksgiving off. So we'll see you in two weeks!
CORRECTION: We misstated Success Academy's passing rates the first year its students took the state tests, and how their scores compared to the city average. Ninety-five percent passed English and 100 percent passed math, and those scores were significantly higher than the citywide average, not double.


This article was posted online by The Batavian | Batavia. Spot On New York collects excepts of news articles from this news source and add these in the 'Finger Lakes'-category. For mor einformation about Spot On New York, you can check the About Us-page.


text:
Mountain Melodies: Preserving the Musical Past
[s2If is_user_logged_in()]
Click here to view this article as a PDF[/s2If]
Drawing on indie and punk-rock influence, Chris Hale is introducing a new generation to century-old Appalachian folk music.
by STEVEN STIEFEL
Chris Hale's banjo is like a time machine. When he performs, the listener is mentally transported to the 1920s, perhaps imagining a lonesome player sitting on the porch of an old home place and making sweet sounds in the sweltering summer heat. [s2If !is_user_logged_in()]
To read the rest of this article, pick up a copy of the Fall 2013 issue OR Subscribe Now for instant access to our online edition, which offers more photos (including those not published in the print edition).
[/s2If][s2If is_user_logged_in()]Folk music evokes a mood and makes some listeners recall period movies they've seen or old pictures of their relatives. Sometimes Hale likes to strike up an impromptu rendition of "Dueling Banjos" from the 1972 film "Deliverance" when he's tuning his banjo before a show. He says it never fails to provoke a grin from someone walking past.
Hale's family moved from Virginia to Alabama when he was a young boy. He started playing the banjo about six years ago, after learning more about local heritage. "I just sort of picked up music on my own," he says.
Hale started playing Appalachian or "old-time" music after listening to other musicians and wanting to be a part of it. "I was old, relatively speaking, the first time I picked up a banjo, in my mid-20s."
He feels a need to preserve the style of music he performs because the unique Southern culture it derives from is fading away. "A century ago, most musicians played that style, but now there are millions of kids who've never heard this kind of music and probably never will," he says. "There aren't any old-time chair makers anymore. There are no traditional loggers anymore. There's going to be fewer and fewer people playing this type of music if performers don't put it out there," he said.
Playing at festivals with artists presenting other musical genres is often a good way to reach new listeners.
"I play a variety of Appalachian ballads, old fiddle songs and country blues," hale says. "The style is actually popular with young people in Birmingham and Nashville. People who are into indie and punk rock music seem to be into it as well. The punk-rock and indie scene is kind of my background in listening to music, buying it when I was younger and learning to play."
A punk rocker expressing himself with an instrument that was the height of cool in 1830? "I know! It doesn't seem right to see a punk rock banjo player," Hale admits. "I still listen to more punk rock music, even now, than I do the old-time music. When you're influenced early on, you never quite get rid of it. I don't play all of the songs like the original performers. I wouldn't want to."
The influence is most obvious on instrumental tunes he writes.
"They're fast and not ballads most of the time, but they still sound like mountain music," Hale says.
He credits Dock Boggs, a coal miner who recorded folk music in the 1920s, for much of his own sound. Contemporary old-time music artists he likes to listen to are the Old Time Travelers from Chattanooga, Tenn., Charlie Parr and William Elliott Whitmore.
Hale says old Appalachian folk music "is steeped in a religious background. aA lot of musicians here in the Deep South grew up listening to or singing in church choirs. Northeast Alabama generates a lot of musical talent, and festivals bring talent into this area. Then, of course, there are acts like Alabama that put Fort Payne on the map. Maybe there is something in the water besides fluoride…"
Hale's performances also incorporate country blues. When asked whether he thinks it is possible to sing the blues without experiencing genuine suffering, he says a combination of life experience and inspirational sources make it easier for modern artists to tap into what musicians were experiencing when they wrote emotionally wrenching songs about sorrow, loss, heartache and suffering in the 1930s.
"It seems like nowadays there's so much about the old days in movies or on the Internet that allows us to see and understand how life was harder for people back then," Hale says. "Even though few people alive today were around to experience the Great Depression, we can still sort of feel a sense of it. America's going through a hard time economically, but even though things could be a lot better, these aren't the hardest of times we've endured as a people."
Music taps into universal human experiences, enabling listeners to imagine what others have felt and desired across the ages. Performing songs live is a form of storytelling.
"Performing is like a journey," Hale says. "You anticipate how a show is going to end up, but there's always things throughout, maybe hiccups or little ah-ha moments where you come up with something, that make each performance a unique journey."
Hale's talent isn't limited to playing the banjo. He spends most of his time as a professional sign painter.
"I mix my time between music and art," he says. "I also make craftsmanstyle furniture. I used to drive through Fort Payne [Ala.] and see Mr. [Jimmy] Richardson on a scaffold painting a sign. I thought it was so cool. Now everything is digital. Painting signs is a way to keep that alive."
Hale sees parallels between the signs he paints and the songs he plays. "People are becoming hip to preserving elements of the past and having them around for the future," he says.
You can catch Hale performing at the Boom Days Festival in Fort Payne, Ala., Sept. 21, at the Mentone, Ala., Colorfest on Oct. 20, at the Mentone Farmer's Market on Saturdays, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., at the Vintage 1889 restaurant in Fort Payne and at venues in Huntsville, Ala. He also is producing a new album of Appalachian banjo songs. Hear his music online at reverbnation.com/chrishalebanjo.[/s2If]
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have been released by Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle and SAP on Monday, 25. June 2007. Consequently some syntax and interface proposal as listed on this site became obsolete that we want to integrate with the syntax via conceptional meta-models.
The need for integration of human interaction scenarios into BPEL processes lead to the formalisation of tasks and human roles. The specifications BPEL4People and WS- HumanTask introduce, among other definitions, a dedicated people activity that uses a task performed by a human as well as human roles that describe the relationship of people, processes and tasks. This work presents the architecture of Vienna BPEL for People (VieBOP), a new BPEL4People system that can be coupled with an arbitrary BPEL engine. We evaluate the standards for BPEL4People and WS- HumanTask against goals as derived from the BPEL4People white paper and compare it to our work.
Web services have become widely accepted as the de-facto standard for distributed business applications. They bring maximum interoperability, use an open and flexible architecture, and the implementation and complexity of a Web service can be hidden towards a service requestor. Layered on top of these services, BPEL, the standard for Web service orchestration, formally describes processes. While external activities correspond to Web services, human interactions and process activities that are related to human aspects cannot be specified using plain BPEL. Thus, while BPEL glues together the logic of a process, individual solutions have to be realised when people are integrated into business processes. Thus: there is a need to integrate people into BPEL processes.
by extending BPEL with additional independent syntax and semantic.
have been published by various companies.
As BPEL4People really is an extension to BPEL, we chose to design a system that interacts with arbitrary BPEL engines while hosting BPEL4People information and managing BPEL processes on a people level. VieBOP thus encapsulates a traditional BPEL compliant engine transparently while offering specific interfaces to clients.
We can accomplish that by replacing BPEL extended elements into a set of invoke and receive activities for deployment on the BPEL engine. As with the people activity, the extension, that is hosted on VieBOP, then is transparently called by the BPEL engine.


Stanley has been making this scraper plane for over a hundred years. Then they moved production to Mexico and the quality dropped below acceptability (which is impressive considering it's not that complicated a tool). This version by Kunz Is very nice and well made. Basically all a scraper plane is is a simple frame that holds a scraper (included) at the correct angle to your work. A little screw is used to bow out the scraper if you wish to control the cut. The main reason for using a cabinet scraper in a frame like this is that hand-held scrapers are tiring to use on large surfaces. With this tool you will find it a lot easier to get a consistent shaving and you don't have to worry about the heat buildup that makes hand - held scrapers hard to told when working quickly. To use: burnish a burr on one edge of the blade as you would on a cabinet scraper. Made in Germany.