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New House bill aims to streamline device accessory reviews
Alex Kacik
Two congresswomen on Tuesday introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that aims to streamline the FDA's review process for medical device accessories.
The Risk-Based Classification of Accessories Act seeks to revamp device accessory approvals at the FDA so lower risk accessories—such as a plastic tray packaged with a device—won't undergo the same scrutiny as higher-risk products. The FDA does not have the ability to create an appropriate risk-based classification system for current device accessories without congressional approval.
The bill could save manufacturers money by eliminating unnecessary review processes and ultimately reduce the cost of healthcare, Reps. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.) and Ann Kuster (D-N.H.), the bill's sponsors, said.
The 21st Century Cures Act included a provision directing the FDA to classify device accessories that are independent to their parent devices separately, correcting a flaw in the agency's review process that led to unnecessary higher-risk classifications, according to Scott Whitaker, president and CEO of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, which represents devicemakers. Yet, it did not authorize the FDA to reclassify accessories currently on the market, he said.
"A tailored review approach for device accessories would improve FDA's efficiency and save the agency resources while ensuring patients continue to benefit from safe and effective medical technologies," Whitaker said in a statement.
The proposed legislation would allow the developer of a new device to recommend a classification to the FDA based on relevant data. It would also authorize the FDA to efficiently re-classify accessories currently on the market.
The bill would reduce costs for manufacturers that are often passed on to consumers, legislators said.
"We need to be doing all we can to lower the cost of medical supplies and contain the high costs of healthcare," Kuster said in a statement.
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Is the growth of ad-blockers a threat to online media?
The growing prevalence of ad-blockers could lead to advertisers spending less and an increase in paywalled content.
The number of people using ad-blocking software rose 70 per cent last year, suggesting a potentially worrying situation for media owners and their advertisers.
Google is among those investing in ways to combat ad-blockers – the search giant is paying Eyeo, a software company that seeks to improve users' online experience, to get around it. Meanwhile, broadcasters such as Channel 4 can stop programmes from playing on their websites if they detect a visitor is using ad-blocking software.
Research suggests that most people are still not prepared to pay for premium, advertising-free content. However, blocking ads undermines the pay-off for any would-be advertisers, which could lead to them withdrawing much-needed investment for content creators.
Why are people downloading ad-blocking software in the first place? The increasing spend going into digital advertising now should make it worthwhile for agencies to make truly compelling ads, while advances in technology should mean very tight targeting. In addition, ads should not interfere with load times on websites.
For proponents of ad-blockers, the problem lies in the advertising itself. Ben Williams, the head of operations at Adblock Plus, argues that the daily use of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogs and websites, has become such an integral part of people's lives that they place a great deal of trust in them.
As a result, he explains: "It's important that these sites don't take advantage of their users' trust by allowing duplicitous or intrusive advertising to affect them. Or, at least, not to make it difficult to opt out of it, as we've seen with the likes of Facebook's targeted Exchange ads."
Ad-blocking software such as Adblock Plus are extremely popular, enabling users to take control of their online experience by switching on privacy tools such as the dedicated anti-tracking function EasyPrivacy and the social media buttons blocker.
They promise to protect users from invasive or unsafe advertising that they might be vulnerable to, but would this lead to more enforced paywalled sites?
"Growth in digital has allowed us to see the very best and very worst of online advertising. What will always succeed is great advertising that really connects with customers. Ad-blockers rightly force advertisers to raise their game."
"Most people block ads because they are intrusive and distract the user from content they are trying to consume. Unless we get to the bottom of the issue, there will always be new, alternative technology to ensure ways around ads."
"We need better-tailored, targeted ads and to educate consumers that free content is paid for by advertising and may well end up behind a paywall if they continue to use ad-blocking software indiscriminately."
"Ad-blockers aren't really the problem – they are a symptom of poorly executed and poorly managed digital campaigns. Too much is still 'spammy'. If advertisers evolve and learn to add value, consumers won't need or want to block ads."


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Tag Archives: Sir Frederick Ponsonby
November 20, 1925: Death of Alexandra of Denmark, Queen of the United Kingdom
Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Featured Royal, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Death, Royal Succession, Royal Titles, This Day in Royal History
Albert Edward, Alexandra of Denmark, Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Christian IX of Denmark, Dagmar of Denmark, Emperor of India, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Sir Frederick Ponsonby
Alexandra of Denmark (December 1, 1844 – November 20, 1925) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress of India from 22 January 1901 to 6 May 1910 as the wife of King-Emperor Edward VII.
Princess Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia, or "Alix", as her immediate family knew her, was born at the Yellow Palace, an 18th-century town house at 18 Amaliegade, immediately adjacent to the Amalienborg Palace complex in Copenhagen. Her father was Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and her mother was Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel.
Louise of Hesse-Cassel the daughter of Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel and Princess Charlotte of Denmark (herself a daughter of Frederik, Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Norway, and Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Charlotte of Denmark's father was a younger son of King Frederik V of Denmark and Norway, while her mother was a daughter of Duke Louis of Mecklenburg-Schwerin).
Louise of Hesse-Cassel siblings included Princess Marie Luise of Hesse-Cassel, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel and Princess Auguste Sophie of Hesse-Cassel. Louise of Hesse-Hesse-Cassel lived in Denmark from the age of three.
As a niece of King Christian VIII, who ruled Denmark between 1839 and 1848, Louise was very close to the succession after several individuals of the royal house of Denmark who were elderly and childless.
Alexandra had five siblings: Frederik, George (Wilhelm), Dagmar, Thyra and Valdemar.
Her father's family was a distant cadet branch of the Danish royal House of Oldenburg, which was descended from King Christian III. Although they were of royal blood, the family lived a comparatively modest life. They did not possess great wealth; her father's income from an army commission was about £800 per year and their house was a rent-free grace and favour property. Occasionally, Hans Christian Andersen was invited to call and tell the children stories before bedtime.
In 1852, her father, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was chosen with the consent of the major European powers to succeed his second cousin Frederik VII as king of Denmark. Shortly, I will be doing on this blog an in depth examination of the Danish succession crisis and the London Protocol that appointed her father to the Danish throne.
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, were already concerned with finding a bride for their son and heir, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. They enlisted the aid of their daughter, Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia, in seeking a suitable candidate. Alexandra was not their first choice because the Danes were at loggerheads with the Prussians over the Schleswig-Holstein Question, and most of the British royal family's relations were German. Eventually, after rejecting other possibilities, they settled on her as "the only one to be chosen".
On September 24, 1861, Crown Princess Victoria introduced her brother Albert Edward to Alexandra at Speyer. Almost a year later on September 9, 1862 (after his affair with Nellie Clifden and the death of his father) Albert Edward proposed to Alexandra at the Royal Castle of Laeken, the home of his great-uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium.
A few months later, Alexandra travelled from Denmark to Britain aboard the royal yacht Victoria and Albert and arrived in Gravesend, Kent, on March 7, 1863. Sir Arthur Sullivan composed music for her arrival and Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote an ode in Alexandra's honour:
Sea King's daughter from over the sea,
Alexandra!
Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,
But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee,
— A Welcome to Alexandra, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Thomas Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, married the couple on 10 March 10, 1863 at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. The choice of venue was criticised widely. As the ceremony took place outside London, the press complained that large public crowds would not be able to view the spectacle.
The year in which couple married, was the year in which her father became King of Denmark as Christian IX and her brother was appointed King of the Hellenes as George I, a few months prior to his father's accession to the throne.
Alexandra was Princess of Wales from 1863 to 1901, the longest anyone has ever held that title, and became generally popular; her style of dress and bearing were copied by fashion-conscious women. Largely excluded from wielding any political power, she unsuccessfully attempted to sway the opinion of British ministers and her husband's family to favour Greek and Danish interests. Her public duties were restricted to uncontroversial involvement in charitable work.
On the death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901, Albert Edward became King-Emperor as Edward VII, with Alexandra as Queen-Empress. She held the status until Edward's death in 1910.
Despite being queen, Alexandra's duties changed little, and she kept many of the same retainers. Alexandra's Woman of the Bedchamber, Charlotte Knollys, the daughter of Sir William Knollys, served Alexandra loyally for many years.
On December 10,1903, Knollys woke to find her bedroom full of smoke. She roused Alexandra and shepherded her to safety. In the words of Grand Duchess Augusta of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, "We must give credit to old Charlotte for really saving [Alexandra's] life."
Alexandra again looked after her grandchildren when George and Mary, the Prince and Princess of Wales, went on a second tour, this time to British India, over the winter of 1905–06. Her father, Christian IX of Denmark, died that January. Eager to retain their family links, both to each other and to Denmark, in 1907 Alexandra and her sister, the Dowager Empress of Russia, purchased a villa north of Copenhagen, Hvidøre, as a private getaway.
Alexandra greatly despised and distrusted her nephew, German Emperor Wilhelm II, calling him in 1900 "inwardly our enemy".
In 1910, Alexandra became the first Queen Consort to visit the British House of Commons during a debate. In a remarkable departure from precedent, for two hours she sat in the Ladies' Gallery overlooking the chamber while the Parliament Bill, to remove the right of the House of Lords to veto legislation, was debated. Privately, Alexandra disagreed with the bill.
Shortly afterwards, she left the United Kingdom to visit her brother, George I of the Hellenes, in Corfu. While there, she received news that King Edward VII was seriously ill. Alexandra returned at once and arrived only the day before her husband died.
On May 6, 1910, Edward suffered several heart attacks, but refused to go to bed, saying, "No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end." Between moments of faintness, his son the Prince of Wales (shortly to be King George V) told him that his horse, Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park that afternoon. The king replied, "Yes, I have heard of it. I am very glad": his final words. In his last hours, Queen Alexandra personally administered oxygen from a gas cylinder to help him breathe.
At 11:30 p.m. he lost consciousness for the last time and was put to bed. He died 15 minutes later.
After King Edward VII died She told Frederick Ponsonby, "I feel as if I had been turned into stone, unable to cry, unable to grasp the meaning of it all." Later that year she moved out of Buckingham Palace to Marlborough House, but she retained possession of Sandringham.
From Edward's death, Alexandra was queen mother, being a dowager queen and the mother of the reigning monarch. She did not attend her son's coronation in 1911 since it was not customary for a crowned queen to attend the coronation of another king or queen, but otherwise continued the public side of her life, devoting time to her charitable causes.
One such cause included Alexandra Rose Day, where artificial roses made by people with disabilities were sold in aid of hospitals by women volunteers. During the First World War, the custom of hanging the banners of foreign princes invested with Britain's highest order of knighthood, the Order of the Garter, in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, came under criticism, as the German members of the Order were fighting against Britain.
Alexandra joined calls to "have down those hateful German banners". Driven by public opinion, but against his own wishes, the king had the banners removed; but to Alexandra's dismay, he had taken down not only "those vile Prussian banners" but also those of her Hessian relations who were, in her opinion, "simply soldiers or vassals under that brutal German Emperor's orders".
On September 17, 1916, she was at Sandringham during a Zeppelin air raid, but far worse was to befall other members of her family. In Russia, her nephew Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and he, his wife and their children were killed by revolutionaries. Her sister, the Dowager Empress, was rescued from Russia in 1919 by HMS Marlborough and brought to England, where she lived for some time with Alexandra.
Alexandra retained a youthful appearance into her senior years, but during the war her age caught up with her. She took to wearing elaborate veils and heavy makeup, which was described by gossips as having her face "enamelled". She made no more trips abroad, and suffered increasing ill health. In 1920, a blood vessel in her eye burst, leaving her with temporary partial blindness. Towards the end of her life, her memory and speech became impaired. She died on November 20, 1925 aged 80 at Sandringham after suffering a heart attack, and was buried in an elaborate tomb next to her husband in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: I wrote a function in my main view. Now, how do I call it? I have a function that needs to be called from several different places in my main view.  Let's call it updateFunction.
I declare it as such:
- (void)updateFunction {
    //updates some variables here
}

This happens immediately after @implementation MainViewController.
Now, I cannot figure out how to call it.  [updateFunction]; is wrong, as it updateFunction();.
I know that this is stupid, but it's so basic that I don't think people are really writing about it.  Can someone please just tell me how to call the function that I've written?

A: If you're calling it from a method in MainViewController you'll probably want to call:
[self updateFunction];
If you're calling it from outside MainViewController then in the owning object it would look something like:
MainViewController *mainViewController;

mainViewController = // set it somewhere;

[mainViewController updateFunction];

p.s. - I recommend you start with some Objective-C tutorials.  Apple has a bunch on their website if you search for "sample code".

A: Use this code:
[self updateFunction];

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Falconry displays are held daily in the grounds of the Dunrobin Castle, at 11.30 and 14.00 (Seasonal).
During the half hour display you will see these majestic birds of prey fly over and close to your heads. You will also learn about the ancient sport of falconry and about the birds of prey flown.
Three different birds of prey are flown at each display.


HOURS: Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-2 p.m.
A group of chefs operating in the John F. Seiberling Federal Building in Akron, Ohio. Daily operations of the cafe in the Federal Building give The Culinary Chameleon - Catering & Cafe a convenient location to provide catering and box lunch services to the Akron and surrounding areas. Minutes from four large hospitals, medical offices, and other offices and commercial customers - a great meal is just around the corner. While the menu lists many of the most requested items, it is not meant to limit what can be done for your special event. If you have a special theme you are planning for - the chefs can create a custom menu to fit your needs and your budget. Delivery is available on all orders for an additional charge, or save money with curb-side pick-up.
Open for breakfast and lunch service.


text:
The Cinessential
Blogs Aaron Pinkston C.J. Prince Felicia Elliott John Gilpatrick Patrick Brown Sarah Gorr Zachary Davis
Films A-Z By Director By Year
Essays Opening Statements Themessentials Filmography First Viewing In Context Re-thinking the Oscars Related Review Scenessential Soundtracking Streaming Survey The Forum
Aaron Pinkston
C.J. Prince
Felicia Elliott
John Gilpatrick
Sarah Gorr
Zachary Davis
Essays/
Opening Statements
Themessentials
First Viewing
Re-thinking the Oscars
Related Review
Scenessential
Soundtracking
Streaming Survey
M: In Context
In Context: On Murder, Kangaroo Courts, and Ambivalent Politics
by Patrick Brown, February 21, 2017
"Fantastic! Against humanitarian soppiness. For the death penalty. Well made. Lang will be our director one day."
- Joseph Goebbels on M, from his diary [Thursday, May 21, 1931]
Fritz Lang's masterpiece M, released in Germany in May of 1931, was immediately—and has remained—a film viewers are eager to read as a reflection on its historical moment and political context. Produced during what turned out to be the final years of Germany's short-lived Weimar Republic [1919-1933], it condenses the turmoil of a society caught between official and unofficial means of retribution into a single story about the hunt for a serial killer.
M, Lang's first sound film [although not in the least Germany's, as the director sometimes liked to claim], would leave a lasting impression on global film and later television production—far beyond the forgotten American remake. More than any other film from the era, it set the tone and look of Hollywood's "film noir" era; we have it to thank for format of the serial killer drama that cuts back and forth between the perspective of an anonymous killer and the police force tracking him down; it established Peter Lorre as cinema's go-to creep; and it is a master class in the use of sound in tying scenes together, evoking off-screen space, and creating productive conflicts with the image.
Peter Kürten, "The Vampire of Düsseldorf"
With M, Lang and his fellow filmmakers, including screenwriter Thea von Harbou [the frequent collaborators were also husband and wife], probably invented the modern police procedural. Inspired by detective fiction, and following their own contributions to the crime film in Germany, Harbou and Lang crafted a film based on a then-recent real-life case: Peter Kürten, also known as "The Vampire of Düsseldorf," who had committed at least ten murders and dozens of sexual assaults in that western German city, and whose sensational trial had just concluded with the pronouncement of the death sentence in April of 1931.
Viewers in 1931 couldn't have missed the parallels between the much-publicized Kürten case and the plot of M; the film's depiction of the pursuit of Hans Beckert [Peter Lorre] recalls the situation around the murders in Düsseldorf in more ways than one. The hunt for the Vampire of Düsseldorf had included the recruitment of famed Berlin homicide detective Ernst Gennat, on whom Lang and Harbou would base their unconventional detective Inspector Lohmann [Otto Wernicke]. Gennat, like Lohmann, was known for his detached, casual demeanor in interrogations—and for cooling his feet off in ice buckets in his office.
The meticulousness of M's portrayal of police procedure—and the way this procedure is integrated into the film's complex series of cross-cuts and sound bridges—gives the impression of a documentarian ethic, and indeed Lang and Harbou spent much time researching the practices of police forces in Germany and elsewhere. But by inserting a second, criminal network of punishment and retribution into this framework, M also presents us with challenging questions regarding psychology, guilt, justice, and rational procedures of inquiry. What happens, the film's surprising second half seems to ask, when the criminal mob takes on the form and functions of the police?
The kangaroo court that ends the film, as the city's criminals band together to pass judgment on a child murderer the official police force has been unable to capture, is the central point of contention among those who have been eager to read either an anti- or pro-authoritarian message in the film. Although the gruff but valiant Inspector Lohmann breaks up the kangaroo court and nabs the killer Hans Beckert on behalf of the legal system, the depiction of both the criminals and the serial murderer are ambivalent enough that its politics remain something of an open question.
Could this be interpreted as a political statement? One is tempted to make reference to the Nazis here. When eventually the National Socialist German Worker's Party [National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei, the NSDAP or Nazi in its distinctly German abbreviation] took power in early 1933, rather than wholly replacing the Republic, they suspended the Constitution and supplemented and substituted the official institutions of the Reich with their own Party apparatus—and here we see where we are tempted to read ominous augury into M's kangaroo court.
A remarkable thing about the Nazi power structure is that rather than fully annul the democratic "Weimar Constitution," they suspended it legally, using its clause granting the President emergency powers to keep it in perpetual abeyance. This suspension allowed the Party to both use institutions already established by previous governments and to set up their own system of brutality that could work with equal legality. The rest, as they say, is history, and the kangaroo court in M seems to prefigure this catastrophe, as the brutish thugs take on the form of government.
Fritz Lang himself was happy, in the years after he fled Germany for America, to nurture any reading of his films that saw them as bold stances against the coming storm. His first two sound films, M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse [Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933—a film that, in my estimation, it's much more fair to read as a kind of anti-Nazi statement] are often tied up with a heavily embellished and [at least] partially fabricated story Lang liked to tell about fleeing Germany immediately after a meeting with Joseph Goebbels.
After fleeing to Hollywood, Lang buoyed his anti-Nazi credentials with such stories and with the projects he chose to work on. Some of his first projects in the US would be the Hitler-assassination thriller Manhunt [1941] and the Bertolt Brecht collaboration Hangmen Also Die [1943], which repurposes many of M's formal innovations to depict Gestapo agents hunting Reinhardt Heydrich's killer in occupied Prague.
Fritz Lang, when his thing was a monocle, before his thing became an eye patch.
For Lang and his collaborators in 1930, however, this was in the future—it is useful to remind ourselves, particularly at our own historical moment, that a Nazi ascension to power wasn't a foregone conclusion until it happened. So in what sense can we consider M within its context? The Nazis had earned 17% of the vote in the 1930 elections, an amount worrisome to German democrats but not enough to get them much power. A small, regional party as recently as the late 1920s, the onset of the Depression had increased both the NSDAP's profile and its popularity. Their appeal lay in their promise to return Germany to its alleged pre-democratic greatness by rooting out the "non-German" influences that had supposedly cost the nation the war and its position among the Western powers.
But although the Nazis were clearly growing, they were neither the only far-right nationalists nor the only party with a paramilitary organization. In early '30s Germany, even the German Social Democrats had a fledgling paramilitary group. To draw an imperfect analogy, imagine if the Democrats were to raise a small armed force.
The answer to the question posed is quite simply that the best way to read M's politics is against its own immediate past, rather than against its future. While the Nazis would exploit a glaring fault in the Weimar Constitution, the problems of an unstable political order, the widespread use of violence, and the existence of extralegal forces was one that had plagued the so-called Weimar Republic in the early years of its existence [1919-1923] and had returned with a vengeance with the Great Depression. A parliament that seemingly couldn't agree on anything was ceding more and more power to the President, the aging Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, who along with his revolving door of Chancellors, essentially ruled by decree between 1930 and 1933.
But complicating our initial reading of the criminal's kangaroo court in M as critical of justice by brute force is the fact that in 1930, Lang himself might have been susceptible to the nationalist fervor stirred up by the Nazis and other right-wing parties, rather than an opponent of it. Patrick McGilligan, Lang's biographer, relays testimony from Lang's acquaintances from the era—including Peter Lorre, the star of M—that Lang and von Harbou were friendly acquaintances of Goebbels. It is established fact that Goebbels, along with Hitler himself, held Lang and Harbou's works Metropolis [1927] and Die Nibelungen [1924] in particularly high esteem, and that Lang and Harbou attended social functions at which Goebbels was present in the early 1930s. M's producer, Seymour Nebenzahl, claimed that, for a short period in the early 1930s, a Nazi banner hung from the window of the apartment Harbou and Lang shared in Berlin.
Thea von Harbou who, in a story that couldn't fit here, might have helped Fritz Lang murder his first wife.
When Goebbels praised M in the diary entry quoted at the beginning of this piece, then, he was complimenting the work not only of an artist he admired—and whose politics the nationalist fantasy of Die Nibelungen had led him to believe he knew—but also one he probably had acquaintance with. It is hard for me to see how M might be understood as supporting the death penalty, but then it is in part the ambiguity of the film's climactic chase and kangaroo court scenes that make it so compelling. Are we meant to gawk and be horrified at the pleas of the murderer Hans Beckert, the soulless degenerate transfixed by gleaming shop windows and protected by the anonymity of urban culture—likely Goebbels's reading—or to find ourselves surprised by our horror at his mistreatment at the hands of the gang of The Safecracker [Gustaf Gründgens, an actor who would become notoriously identified with the Nazi regime]? I would insist that the visual and aural cues of the film direct us toward the latter reading, but Goebbels's appreciation shows us that, in context, other readings were possible.
Nothing conclusive can be said about Lang's party-political leanings at the time of M's production, particularly given the director's later propensity for self-aggrandizement, but two things are for certain: during this period von Harbou became a committed Nazi, and would continue to work for the film industry of the "Third Reich"; and Lang, on the other hand, would eventually choose to flee to the United States when, by all appearances, he was in no immediate danger, and had likely been offered a high position in the film industry—though it was certainly not in the dramatic, last-minute escape he liked to construct for later interviews. [1]
There was a clear divide of attitude between Lang and Harbou whose marriage was already falling apart as they worked on M; while the split by all accounts wouldn't be primarily over politics, one can imagine that the frequently cited political ambivalence of films such as Metropolis, Die Nibelungen, and M is the result of conflicting approaches from their creators. It is one of the reasons that even the fantasy films the two made are brilliant encapsulations of their moment in history.
Lang's later work might compel us to embrace the anti-Goebbels reading, however. Like Lang's first US film, Fury [1936], M can be read as part meticulously executed thriller, part statement against extra-legal mob rule—if so, it would be an even bolder statement, as the film's climactic scene would call upon us to recognize the humanity and right to due process of even a child rapist and murderer. Furthermore, this warning against mob rule came in the context of what was still, ostensibly, a democracy. The film retains its relevance today precisely because the problems it is concerned with around legality and punishment arose from a democracy in crisis, but not inevitably headed for fascist rule. One final twist, however, is that Beckert's final speech is the one part of the film Lang always credited without reservations to von Harbou, the committed Nazi.
[1] While ethnically half-Jewish, the Vienna-born Lang was raised a Catholic and, according to McGilligan, distanced himself from his Jewish roots long before it was politically expedient to do so. Lang's own account of mentioning his imperfect Aryan-ness to Goebbels in Spring of 1933, and the propaganda minister coolly informing him that "we decide who is Aryan" is probably a fabrication. But a category of "honorary Aryans" [Ehrenarianer] did exist in the mid-1930s, and would likely have protected a personally favored figure like Lang, at least until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast.
Eric D. Weitz. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy.
Other M essays:
Opening Statement, February 20, 2017
First Viewing: Murder and Mob Mentality, February 22, 2017
Scenessential: Sound and Silence, February 23, 2017
Related Review: Hangmen Also Die!, February 24, 2017
The Cinessential Podcast, Episode 11, February 27, 2017
Notes on 2019
Dinner with Oscar
Notes from 2019: On Two Animated Sequels https://t.co/BWMjgCn77d
Dinner with Oscar: Vice https://t.co/vXjkaTiDQD
Dinner with Oscar: The Favourite https://t.co/VJst1rt0le
©2017 The Cinessential


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Bernadette Protti: Bernadette J. Protti Now, Kirsten Costas Timeline
Traciy Curry-Reyes
Bernadette Protti killed cheerleader Kirsten Costas in 1984. Now, she is out of prison—a free woman. Bernadette J. Protti was born on September 20, 1968, in Contra Costa County to Raymond and Elaine Protti. She's the youngest of seven children. The rest—five sisters and one brother—are all several years ahead of her and were born in San Francisco County. Only one sister is close to her age—two years apart. The oldest sister is ten to eleven years her senior.
The following timeline was compiled by Traciy Curry-Reyes over a ten-year period. The research comes from public records, court records, news archives, stories told to her, and her personal notes. Some of the information originally appeared on her old Bernadette Protti Found site, and it was the first story she researched for the Movies Based on True Stories Database/Archives in the late 1990s.
Bernadette Protti Murder of Kirsten Costas Timeline
Thursday, June 21, 1984: Kirsten Costas is away at cheerleading camp. Her mother, Berit Costas, answers the phone at 10 p.m. She speaks to a female teenager, who claims to be a member of the Bob-O-Links. The young lady invites Kirsten to a dinner. Berit takes the message and relays it to her daughter.
Saturday, June 23, 1984: Kirsten Costas goes for a swim. By nightfall, her parents are out at a baseball potluck dinner with Kirsten's brother, Peter Costas.
At 8:20 p.m., Berit Costas calls Kirsten to tell her to turn on the front porch light and to check on her. Meanwhile, Bernadette Protti borrows her sister's car and makes the drive to Kirsten's home address at 62 Orchard Road, according to People.
Kirsten Costas is dressed and walks out of the front door. As she enters the shabby-looking Pinto, disappointment sets in once she sees it's Bernadette Protti. From there, the Miramonte High School teens drive to a church, where they can smoke mariju—. It's Kirsten Costas' idea, according to Bernadette.
At some point, Bernadette Protti uncomfortably admits there is no party.
A livid Kirsten Costas insults Bernadette Protti and exits the vehicle. She walks down a small hill leading to the home of Alex and Mary Jane Arnold, where she asks to use the phone to call her parents because her friend got "weird."
Some have speculated Bernadette Protti came on too strong, giving Kirsten Costas "weird" vibes or even lesbian vibes. Many disagree.
When there is no answer, Kirsten Costas asks Alex Arnold for a ride to her house. His wife, Mary Jane, sees a chunky, round-faced teen with light brown hair lurking, near the bushes.
Kirsten Costas' seems concerned but not terribly frightened, according to Mr. Arnold.
As the man pulls out of the driveway to take Kirsten Costas home, Mary Jane sees a yellowish or mustard-colored Pinto following her husband's car.
During the ride, Alex Arnold sees the same car behind them. He asks Kirsten Costas if everything is okay.
No one is home at Kirsten Costas' house. Alex Arnold waits nervously, eyeing Kirsten as she walks up the path.
Bernadette Protti retrieves the kitchen knife from the car console, exits the vehicle, appears dramatically on the lawn and plunges the knife into Kirsten Costas five times while Alex Arnold watches in horror.
The autopsy states the wounds are so deep, the knife had to have been embedded "with great force."
At the same time, California lawyer Arthur Hillman sees the wounded cheerleader running and falling toward his front door. She tells him she's been stabbed.
He applies pressure to the wound as Kirsten Costas struggles to stay alive. But the Orinda teen collapses in his arms. Meanwhile, Alex Arnold has left the scene and tries to catch the chunky blonde girl. When he loses her, he returns to the crime scene to help.
Art and Berit Costas return to Orchard Road. Police and an ambulance are there. Kirsten Costas is pronounced deceased at the local hospital at 11:02 p.m.
Bernadette Protti speeds back to her home at 16 La Espiral. She takes a walk with her mother, washes the knife and places it into the knife holder. Then she retreats to her room, where she becomes physically ill.
Before going to bed, she flushes the (Marij—) down the toilet.
At Miramonte High School the next day, word of Kirsten Costas' death spreads like wildfire.
Bernadette Protti acts concerned. She attends Kirsten Costas' funeral but keeps her secret for months. Protti attends summer school and then returns to Miramonte High in the fall.
[from the files of Traciy Curry-Reyes]
By December of 1984: Bernadette Protti is severely depressed and wants to commit suicide. She attends Catholic church more. The FBI profile of the killer indicates the "crime is disorganized, impulsive—a spur of the moment," killing. Contra Costa County detectives tell Bernadette Protti she fits the FBI's profile of the killer. She admits to the detectives that it sounds like her.
The guilt is crushing. Finally, Bernadette Protti pens a letter to her mother, admitting that she killed Kirsten Costas. Later, Her father, Raymond Protti, along with Bernadette's mother, Elaine Protti, drive her to the station, where she confesses to police.
Bernadette Protti tells police she is horrified by what happened and that she only wanted to hurt Kirsten Costas, not kill her. The reason was—she feared Kirsten Costas would tell everyone she was weird, and "that way."
In her confession to detectives, Bernadette Protti also said she was upset she lost for cheerleader and wasn't allowed into the club she wanted. She also told them her family didn't fit in, and she was very hurt after Kirsten Costas called her skis "crummy" in front of the other club members. According to Bernadette's taped confession to police, her family couldn't afford the nice skis.
The shy teenager also revealed she was hurt that she couldn't change her looks, become richer, or be popular.
The guilt weighs heavily on Bernadette. Mostly, she feels terrible about the public exposure and humiliation, she reveals.
[Image via Investigation Discovery/Permission use granted]
Contra Costa Juvenile Murder Trial Courthouse in Martinez
1985: March 11–The first of Bernadette Protti's three-day trial begins. She is sixteen-years-old.
Interested spectators, news media, and Miramonte High School parents pack into the courtroom to hear the sordid details. As the crowd swells, people are asked to exit the courtroom.
The judge's annoyance grows. He believes the murder trial resembles a "spectacle" as if it is only for entertainment.
The prosecutor admits social pressure along with jealousy motivated Bernadette Protti to kill her classmate and that the killing was intentional.
[Image courtesy San Francisco Examiner/Bernadette Protti in court with her sister.]
The defense attorney agrees jealousy played a role but tells the jury it's not a premeditated killing. The theory is Bernadette Protti acted on impulse due to a high-pressure moment and that after she murdered Kirsten Costas, she reached out to several people to tell the truth but never did.
Bernadette Protti sits with her mother and her sister. Her mother holds her hand throughout the court proceedings. They cry at various points during the trial as they stroke and hug Bernadette Protti.
Contra Costa jurors hear Bernadette Protti's confession tapes, and her handwritten letter is read in the courtroom. Those in attendance say you can hear a pin drop.
[A distraught-looking Berit Costas/Courtesy of San Francisco Examiner]
At Bernadette's sentencing, Kirsten Costas' mother begs the court for justice by prosecuting Bernadette to the fullest extent of the law. During Berit Costas' statement, Bernadette listens with her head down.
March 13—Bernadette Protti is found guilty of 2nd-degree murder in the death of her classmate Kirsten Costas. The original charge was first-degree murder.
Bernadette Protti is given up to nine years in prison. After she receives her sentence, she is placed in handcuffs. She cries and steals one last glance at her family as she leaves the courtroom.
Orinda residents are outraged the teen killer received such a light sentence.
Bernadette Protti is placed in the Youth Authority's Ventura School.
While in prison, Bernadette Protti gets a high school diploma, makes straight A's, and obtains an Associate of Arts degree through a college mailing program.
She writes letters to close friends and supporters. Mostly, she does well. Though, she has a few altercations. One is with a teenage boy with whom she falls in love. She exhibits the same rage that led to the death of Kirsten Costas. This altercation will come back to haunt her when she is considered for parole.
Berit Costas is second from the left with the dark hair. [via old Death of a Cheerleader blog/property of Traciy Curry-Reyes]
After the trial, Bernadette Protti's parents leave Orinda and Contra Costa County, and Kirsten Costas' parents and brother relocate to Hawaii. (The outcome of this suit is unpublished.)
June 17—Kirsten Costas' parents, Arthur and Berit Costas file a suit against Bernadette Protti, and her parents, Raymond and Elaine Protti, in Martinez. The Costas family said Protti's parents should have known of her dangerous tendencies. They also accuse the Prottis of negligence in the care and supervision of their child, according to court records. Kirsten Costas' parents ask for damages on the basis of "sustained great emotional disturbance, upset, shock, and injury to the nervous system" of a "permanent nature." They also seek payback for monies spent on burial and funeral costs.
June 26—Bernadette Protti receives a tentative parole date that could allow freedom at the age of 22.
July 18—Randall Sullivan's article, "Death of a Cheerleader," is published in Rolling Stone.
Bernadette Protti Parole
1990: August 2—Bernadette Protti is denied early parole. She is 21-years-old and is considered a model inmate. The Youthful Offender Parole Board states she'll be reviewed in six months.
December 14—-Bernadette Protti is denied parole. Art and Berit send a videotape from Hawaii, demanding she stays in prison.
1991: June 13—Bernadette Protti is denied parole.
1992: June 25—Parole board member Victor Wisehart votes to keep Bernadette Protti in jail. He reasons that she continues to present a danger to the public and needs treatment because she acts on impulse and lacks the ability to control her anger. He bases his decision on a violent altercation she had with her boyfriend at the school/prison, where she demonstrated the same rage that led to the death of Kirsten Costas.
The parole member also said Bernadette Protti has a hidden trigger that is switched on when she feels she's not getting what she wants in her relationship.
Jamie Bailey and Sergio Gomez grant Bernadette Protti parole because she poses "no threat to society."
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle from Honolulu, Arthur Costas says he holds resentment for a judicial system that allows the killer to go free after a few short years. He also finds it disheartening that Protti was allowed to have a boyfriend during her stint.
1993: September 21—Bernadette Protti finishes parole and is permanently released from the California Youth Authority's jurisdiction.
1994: Kirsten Costas case falls off the radar. Bernadette Protti lives in anonymity.
April—Bernadette Protti files and pays more than $60 to have her first and last name changed.
May 4-–The courts officially give Bernadette Protti a new name. She sometimes uses an alias, a varied spelling of her new last name.
May 16, 1994—She marries her husband under her new name in Monroe, Florida, according to Florida's marriage records. They live and settle in a small home in the Midwest.
September—The movie, A Friend to Die For/also named Death of a Cheerleader premieres. Most viewers, except for those who live in Orinda, don't make the connection between the movie and the real people.
1996: Bernadette Protti studies nursing at the University of Oklahoma and is honored.
Bernadette Protti studies medical science and obtains a master's degree and becomes a nurse practitioner. (Like a doctor—some have told me she eventually became a doctor.)
1998-2000: Traciy Curry-Reyes finds the names of the real people who inspired the movie (A Friend to Die For) Death of a Cheerleader.
She places Bernadette Protti's true story on the Movies Based on True Stories Database Geocities website with real pictures of Kirsten Costas and all other players in the case.
An even bigger following around this case begins as readers search for more updates about Bernadette Protti and Kirsten Costas' family.
2001: Bernadette and her husband move to a larger and pricier home in another state. They move around between three states.
2006: Bernadette Protti, still living under her new name, is appointed as director of a breast cancer organization. She conducts breast cancer research and writes medical articles about her findings in scientific medical journals. She serves until 2007.
2008: The blog Bernadette Protti Found, an offshoot of the now-defunct Movies Based on True Stories Database and the Movies Based on True Stories Archives by Traciy Curry-Reyes, gives the first update in the case, revealing information about Bernadette Protti's new identity and name change. Her new name is not revealed.
Traciy informs her readers that a recent photo of Bernadette Protti appeared at a breast cancer site, where she was on the board of directors. Traciy Curry-Reyes told her readers that she downloaded a copy of the photo but decided not to publish the photo online.
Traciy reaches out to the Protti family for an interview. There is no response and the matter is dropped.
Months later, Bernadette Protti's photo mysteriously vanishes from the breast cancer website.
Some people demand to know where Bernadette Protti's is and accuse Traciy of protecting her.
They also want to see the photo in her possession.
2012: Years pass. Then Bernadette Protti and the murder of Kirsten Costas airs on Investigation Discovery's true crime show, Deadly Women. The episode is called "Deadly Delinquents."
2013: A television producer reaches out to Traciy Curry-Reyes for an interview about the Kirsten Costas-Bernadette Protti case for Lifetime's Killer Kids. In Florida, Traciy shows the producer the recent photo of Bernadette Protti from the hotel computer lobby. The woman is shocked to see that it really is Bernadette. Bernadette Protti's family and the Costas family refuse to participate in the show.
March—the episode about the murder of Kirsten Costas airs on Lifetime's true crime documentary Killer Kids.
April—Traciy Curry-Reyes follows the trail of Bernadette Protti and reveals to her readers that she found a baby registry online for Bernadette Protti and her husband.
Fans still contact Traciy Curry-Reyes for confirmation of her new name. (see more here)
At least two readers email Traciy with Bernadette Protti's new name and ask her to confirm that it's her. Traciy confirms it.
Bernadette Protti has an unknown enemy who sets out to destroy her.
December—Bernadette Protti's new name is leaked online.
The same photo that Traciy Curry-Reyes saved in her email files, and the same photo that was deleted from the breast cancer website miraculously appears online.
Bernadette Protti Today
2015: Trouble brews for Bernadette Protti. She is involved in litigation due to her involvement with the breast cancer place years earlier. She is accused of negligence and violating her duties properly as director. The founder and president is accused of benefitting from the charitable organization during Protti's tenure. Protti, operating under her new identity, claims she had no knowledge of the founder's shady dealings.
June–Bernadette Protti's new identity still floods the internet as a slew of what appears to be fake social pages are set up in her new name.
2016: The claims against her are dismissed. She returns to her normal life. Could the leaked photo and new name information be connected to the scandal at the breast cancer organization? Or is it a relative?
2018: The state website says Bernadette Protti nursing license expired in 2016. Today, Bernadette Protti lives with her husband in a beautiful $600,000—4 bedroom, 3 bath home.
2019: February 2— The Lifetime movie remake of Death of a Cheerleader airs. The characters have different names.
Traciy Curry-Reyes is the founder and editor-in-chief of TV Crime Sky. She began her career as a true crime & entertainment freelance writer in the 1990's for her website, The Movies Based on True Stories Database/Archives. She has contributed content to other websites, such as Examiner.com and Inquisitr.com. Traciy also appears as a true-crime expert and commentator on TV One's Fatal Attraction, For My Man, and Justice by Any Means; Investigation Discovery's Murder Calls and Scorned; Oxygen's Snapped; FOX's Crime Watch Daily; and Lifetime Television's Killer Kids.
Categories: Movies Based On True Stories
Tags: death of a cheerleader, Kirsten Costas, lifetime movies based on true stories


text:
Linchpins 📍
How ICONIQ has leveraged an unparalleled network, spanning Hollywood and Silicon Valley, to build a market-beating venture firm. A guest post from Akash Bajwa.
Akash Bajwa
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Hi folks, Paddy here, cofounder of Odin. We are now live in private beta. Angels, VC's and founders can use Odin to set up an SPV at radically low cost, and invite others to participate in the deal.
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Via the Odin Times we share insights and ideas from leading thinkers in European venture, as well as deal flow and access to community events. This week, I'm cross-posting a piece from my friend Akash Bajwa, investor at Augmentum Fintech. Akash writes an excellent blog that I highly recommend.
Over to Mr Bajwa…
As an asset class, venture capital is undergoing a seismic explosion in growth. As many more astute observers have remarked, COVID induced step changes in society at previously unimaginable rates, touching every aspect of society including healthcare, education, government, and ecommerce. Many venture-backed companies are beneficiaries of these tailwinds, propelling them to unprecedented growth, as James Wise of Balderton noted:
James Wise @jpwiseuk
A huge amount of the current investment frenzy is justified. Some of our portfolio cos are growing faster than we've ever seen. Especially in health & climatetech, areas which are only just seeing broader tailwinds. If companies are growing faster, VCs have to be quicker too.
Gil Dibner @gdibner
The atmosphere of sheer panic among VCs these days is disconcerting. If I was an LP, I would be sitting on my hands right now. Up and down the capital stack, people have lost their wits, if not their minds.
7:34 PM ∙ Apr 8, 2021
12Likes1Retweet
The events of the last 18 months, coupled with a long-standing environment in which lower interest rates and lofty public market valuations have driven dry powder further into illiquid, alternative assets, have made venture capital an ideal destination for investors seeking alpha. We've seen a commensurate flourishing of fund managers deploying capital on behalf of these LPs, each asserting that they are uniquely positioned to defy the industry's historical concentration of returns.
Shai Goldman @shaig
2001 to 2010 vintage VC funds all geos 901 funds with DPI data on Pitchbook only 33 funds have 3x+ 3.7% of VC funds delivered 3x+
Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 🌐 @garrytan
I never really paused to consider how rare it is for venture capitalists to actually be successful at what they do. Everyone's deck says they're going to get you 10X or 50X return, but to even get 3X net on any consistent basis is very rare.
3:08 PM ∙ Sep 17, 2021
72Likes8Retweets
Later-stage funds are becoming multi-stage and backing companies from seed to IPO, early-stage funds are raising growth funds to do the same in an inverted order, hedge funds and private equity funds are swimming upstream (as we noted last week), and even superangels are raising monster funds to lead rounds on their own.
Let's imprint on ourselves the environment in which funds are operating today: fundraising volumes and values are shattering records, valuations are going up, and there are few signs of a calming of this tide.
Global startup funding. Source: CBInsights
Median Series A valuations in the US. Source: CBInsights
What does this mean? Mark Suster weighed in this week.
However, to be a great VC you have to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. On the one hand, you're over paying for every investment and valuations aren't rational. On the other hand, the biggest winners will turn out to be much larger than the prices people paid for them and this will happen faster than at any time in human history.
A plausible endgame 5-10 years from now is a further accentuation of the historical stratification of venture returns; fewer funds get into the best companies and the rest are overpaying for companies that won't move the needle for their funds.
Several leading investors have opined on how this all plays out.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi predicted a bifurcation of venture funds along the dimensions of sector specialism, stage specialism, or being a one-stop destination for your financing needs from inception to ringing the bell at the NASDAQ.
Source: Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Everett Randle predicted a squeezing out of the middle, analogous to what happened in retail. These are the funds that don't offer signalling/brand, exhibit inertia, or a reticence to adapt their practices and processes to the new environment.
Source: Everett Randle
Mark Suster recalled a prediction from a16z's Scott Kupor in his piece:
Years ago Scott Kupor of a16z was telling me that the market would split into "bulge bracket" VCs and specialized, smaller, early-stage firms and the middle ground would be gutted.
So, let's take stock. The majority of funds have historically failed to meet return expectations. Rising valuations, and increasing competition are only making it harder to outperform. A logical extension of this is that funds have to differentiate themselves to win.
Among the vectors of differentiation that are most commonly cited, a network is surely the most commoditised? Most firms can introduce you to investors for your next round. Some can help you hire people. A few help you land customers. Can it really set you apart from the rest?
ICONIQ: the allure of a network like no other
I count a hundred or so companies there. When they're all bunched together it's easy to gloss over the significance of some of these names, so let's recite just a few of the notable ones that have crossed over into the public markets.
Marqeta
I've clearly omitted several names that can already be reasonably claimed as home-runs, but I hope that illustrates my larger point: this is an incredibly impressive portfolio, even more so when you consider that the firm behind it hasn't even been around for a decade.
This is the portfolio of ICONIQ Growth, the venture capital arm of ICONIQ Capital.
ICONIQ Capital is a family office serving some of the most influential people in Silicon Valley. Founded in 2011 by Divesh Makan, Michael Anders and Chad Boeding, ICONIQ has now amassed $67 billion in assets under management and expanded beyond the family office into venture capital and real estate. ICONIQ raised their first fund to invest in private tech companies in 2013, and is now said to be raising their sixth fund of $3.75 billion, focusing on fintech and enterprise software.
In that time, ICONIQ Growth has muscled their way into hugely competitive deals, often co-investing alongside 'tier-1' funds or leading rounds, undoubtedly often securing allocation at the expense of prestigious VC firms from the Valley. How, one might ask?
Well, it turns out ICONIQ is absolutely unparalleled in one dimension above all: when you take investment from ICONIQ Growth, you can comfortably assume you are accessing one of the most powerful networks in the world.
ICONIQ serves a clientele intersecting Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and high finance. Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake, Chamath Palihapitiya, James Murdoch, Satya Nadella, Sarah Friar, Henry Kravis are but just a few of ICONIQ's clients; I picked these names out to stress the plurality of sectors and eminence represented, but at last count this list has over two hundred names of similar influence and cachet.
In a world where every firm is marketing themselves and their brand, ICONIQ keeps a low profile (in fact, just writing this piece gives me pause, considering their alleged previous efforts to quash a Forbes piece). Brian Solomon of Forbes and Rob Price and Meghan Morris of Business Insider have previously chronicled the making of Divesh Makan and ICONIQ in great detail, so I'll keep it short.
Divesh Makan was born in South Africa around 1974 and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Natal. After some time in consulting at Accenture, he went on to complete an MBA at Wharton in 2001, an inauspicious time to be returning to the workforce as the dot-com bubble burst. Makan landed at Goldman Sachs in their wealth management practice in San Francisco, and from here on there was no looking back.
Divesh began to cultivate a network of future icons well before they gained prominence, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chamath Palihapitiya and many others. Facebook's success was undoubtedly his big break, as it spawned a bevy of prospective clients with allegiance to Makan. He went out of his way to offer the best service for his clients, going beyond just managing their estate or finances to taking care of all of their life admin. He would facilitate introductions in his network, recommending Sandberg to Facebook. The seeds were being sowed for a seat at the highest of tables.
Fast forward to 2008 and Makan left Goldman (the nature of the departure is disputed by both sides), landing at Morgan Stanley, joined by eventual ICONIQ co-founders Chad Boeding and Michael Anders. The roots of ICONIQ were starting to emerge and in 2011, not long before Facebook's IPO, Makan, Boeding and Anders left Morgan Stanley to found ICONIQ.
Rubbing shoulders with tech billionaires
As we noted, there's an abundance of capital chasing very few exceptional businesses that will deliver exceptional returns. As a buyer of a product (VC), founders now have a long aisle to peruse. Some will claim to be hands-off and come with less dilution, others will claim the opposite, many will be in the middle, and so on. Even Tiger Global, though, at least tries to add value in some way (in this case by hiring Bain consultants).
With ICONIQ you get the chance to rub shoulders with icons of Silicon Valley, each ostensibly a contact you can leverage for the benefit of your company. As Brian Solomon wrote back in 2014:
Key to Makan's pitch is bowling over wannabe Zuckerbergs with raw star power. Before Iconiq led a $40 million Series D round last May for social media software firm Sprinklr, Makan invited founder Ragy Thomas to dinner with three famous billionaires.
"When someone like Iconiq wants to invest, you can't say no," says Thomas. "They can probably connect you to anyone in the world."
Aaron Skonnard, cofounder of e-learning startup Pluralsight, received a similar "join Silicon Valley's inner circle" pitch from Makan before Iconiq participated in the firm's $135 million Series B round.
"They don't want operational involvement," says Skonnard. "They just want to connect and network and give more access." He and his wife recently flew in to San Francisco from their home in Salt Lake City for a quarterly Iconiq networking event "where all the magic happens."
How has this product performed? Well, the proof is in ICONIQ Growth's returns, which have have steadily improved over its five funds to deliver genuine alpha, enticing enough to attract institutional investors outside of the family office's clients, such as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Let's zoom back out to the state of the venture market. Every firm is selling value add beyond capital to win deals in a market that's hotter than ever. How do firms add value? There's the a16z model of a platform that supercharges every function of your business, which has been replicated to varying degrees by firms all over the world. Then there's the pitch of choosing firms based on the pedigree of the firm for signalling value; being Sequoia-backed isn't going to lose its sheen anytime soon. Then there are a variety of other pitches about helping with go-to-market, traversing regulation and what not. ICONIQ is a hark back to years gone by, when a rolodex was the single most valuable asset to move the needle for your firm.
Will Griffith set up ICONIQ Growth in 2013 and continues to lead the division today, having previous been a General Partner at TCV. Other notable team members include Matthew Robinson (formerly of Battery Ventures and TCV), Yidrienne Lai (also formerly of TCV), Doug Pepper (formerly of Shasta Ventures), Aditya Agarwal (formerly CTO of Dropbox), among others.
ICONIQ investments by stage. Source: Crunchbase
ICONIQ predominantly continues to invest in the US at Series B and later, with little evidence of them swimming further upstream in terms of stage.
ICONIQ has been looking to plant a flag in Europe since the start of the year, searching for someone to lead their European investment efforts. Their European investments to date include Collibra, Wolt and Adyen. Whether they've found their candidate is unclear, but it only seems a matter of time until we begin to see them crop up much more in Europe…
Photo: JIim Vetter/ICONIQ. Swag: Odin
Thanks Akash!
Enjoy this? Subscribe to Akash's blog "Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants" for more. We'll be featuring more guest pieces from Akash and other writers on the Odin Times in the coming months. If you're interested in being featured, let me know.
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< Art for Sale – Portraits in pen and ink!
Wow – so many wonderful details. love the pink!!
Ohhh I love the eye roll girl. Bright and bold and beautiful. I also like the second one as much.
awesome art- and i love your vibrant and fresh updo on your blog! All this color makes me happy. Happy PPF!
Oh I'm just LOVING that pink lady – the colours are so outstanding that I'm drooling all over my keyboard. Well done, Sal!


Tampa, Fla. - Bright House Networks announced today that it has signed a strategic channel partnership agreement with Telarus, an award-winning distributor of business data, voice and cloud services.
"We are excited to join Bright House Networks Channel Partner program," said Patrick Oborn, co-founder, Telarus. "Bright House Networks offers industry-leading advanced communications services delivered over an extensive and secure fiber network, as well as top level customer service, and we are thrilled to add them to our portfolio of strategic partners."
As part of the agreement, Telarus' network of agent partners, Value Added Resellers (VARs), and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), will be able to offer Bright House Networks robust voice, Internet, and advanced managed services. Bright House Networks Channel Partner program includes some of the best support for channel partners in the industry.
"Our Channel Partner program has been extremely successful since we first launched it two years ago, and we are pleased to add Telarus as one of our Master Agents," said Craig Cowden, chief network officer and senior vice president of Enterprise Solutions, Bright House Networks. "Telarus has a proven track record for innovation, high-quality engineering and top sales agents, and they will make an excellent addition to our program."
As a trusted local leader of advanced communications and networking services, Bright House Networks has a robust line-up of products and solutions to support companies of any size. From startups to emerging companies and large enterprise organizations, our leading edge network and comprehensive portfolio of voice, data, video, cloud and managed services provide the connectivity, security and reliability today's organizations demand.
Bright House Networks is the sixth largest owner and operator of cable systems in the U.S. and the second largest in Florida, with technologically advanced systems located in five states including Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and California and two of the top 20 DMAs. For more information on Bright House Networks see www.brighthouse.com/channel.
Telarus, Inc. is the value added distributor that solution providers, VARs, and MSPs turn to for innovation. We hold contracts with and drive sales volume to the world's leading commercial telecommunication carriers through our partner channel, which we spoil with patented research technology, Cisco-certified sales engineers, complex project managers, commission advances, and single point-of-contact support. For more information on the Telarus partner program, please visit www.telarus.com or call the new partner hotline at 877-346-3232.


text:
/**
 * This file is part of the CernVM File System.
 */

#ifndef CVMFS_GARBAGE_COLLECTION_GARBAGE_COLLECTOR_IMPL_H_
#define CVMFS_GARBAGE_COLLECTION_GARBAGE_COLLECTOR_IMPL_H_

#include <algorithm>
#include <limits>
#include <string>
#include <vector>

#include "logging.h"

template<class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
const unsigned int GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT,
                                    HashFilterT>::Configuration::kFullHistory =
  std::numeric_limits<unsigned int>::max();

template<class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
const unsigned int GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT,
                                    HashFilterT>::Configuration::kNoHistory = 0;

template<class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
const time_t GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT,
                              HashFilterT>::Configuration::kNoTimestamp = 0;

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::GarbageCollector(
                                             const Configuration &configuration)
  : configuration_(configuration)
  , catalog_info_shim_(configuration.reflog)
  , traversal_(
      GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::GetTraversalParams(
                                                                configuration))
  , hash_filter_()
  , use_reflog_timestamps_(false)
  , oldest_trunk_catalog_(static_cast<uint64_t>(-1))
  , oldest_trunk_catalog_found_(false)
  , preserved_catalogs_(0)
  , condemned_catalogs_(0)
  , condemned_objects_(0)
{
  assert(configuration_.uploader != NULL);
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::UseReflogTimestamps() {
  traversal_.SetCatalogInfoShim(&catalog_info_shim_);
  use_reflog_timestamps_ = true;
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
typename GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::TraversalParameters
  GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::GetTraversalParams(
  const GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::Configuration &config)
{
  TraversalParameters params;
  params.object_fetcher      = config.object_fetcher;
  params.history             = config.keep_history_depth;
  params.timestamp           = config.keep_history_timestamp;
  params.no_repeat_history   = true;
  params.ignore_load_failure = true;
  params.quiet               = !config.verbose;
  return params;
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::PreserveDataObjects(
  const GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::
    TraversalCallbackDataTN &data  // NOLINT(runtime/references)
) {
  ++preserved_catalogs_;

  if (data.catalog->IsRoot()) {
    const uint64_t mtime = use_reflog_timestamps_
      ? catalog_info_shim_.GetLastModified(data.catalog)
      : data.catalog->GetLastModified();
    if (!oldest_trunk_catalog_found_)
      oldest_trunk_catalog_ = std::min(oldest_trunk_catalog_, mtime);
    if (configuration_.verbose) {
      const int    rev   = data.catalog->revision();
      LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStdout, "Preserving Revision %d (%s / added @ %s)",
               rev,
               StringifyTime(data.catalog->GetLastModified(), true).c_str(),
               StringifyTime(catalog_info_shim_.GetLastModified(data.catalog),
                             true).c_str());
      PrintCatalogTreeEntry(data.tree_level, data.catalog);
    }
  }

  // the hash of the actual catalog needs to preserved
  hash_filter_.Fill(data.catalog->hash());

  // all the objects referenced from this catalog need to be preserved
  const HashVector &referenced_hashes = data.catalog->GetReferencedObjects();
        typename HashVector::const_iterator i    = referenced_hashes.begin();
  const typename HashVector::const_iterator iend = referenced_hashes.end();
  for (; i != iend; ++i) {
    hash_filter_.Fill(*i);
  }
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::SweepDataObjects(
  const GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::
    TraversalCallbackDataTN &data  // NOLINT(runtime/references)
) {
  ++condemned_catalogs_;

  if (configuration_.verbose) {
    if (data.catalog->IsRoot()) {
      const int    rev   = data.catalog->revision();
      const time_t mtime = static_cast<time_t>(data.catalog->GetLastModified());
      LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStdout, "Sweeping Revision %d (%s)",
                                   rev, StringifyTime(mtime, true).c_str());
    }
    PrintCatalogTreeEntry(data.tree_level, data.catalog);
  }

  // all the objects referenced from this catalog need to be checked against the
  // the preserved hashes in the hash_filter_ and possibly deleted
  const HashVector &referenced_hashes = data.catalog->GetReferencedObjects();
        typename HashVector::const_iterator i    = referenced_hashes.begin();
  const typename HashVector::const_iterator iend = referenced_hashes.end();
  for (; i != iend; ++i) {
    CheckAndSweep(*i);
  }

  // the catalog itself is also condemned and needs to be removed
  CheckAndSweep(data.catalog->hash());
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::CheckAndSweep(
  const shash::Any &hash)
{
  if (!hash_filter_.Contains(hash))
    Sweep(hash);
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::Sweep(
                                                       const shash::Any &hash) {
  ++condemned_objects_;

  LogDeletion(hash);
  if (configuration_.dry_run) {
    return;
  }

  configuration_.uploader->Remove(hash);
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
bool GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::
  RemoveCatalogFromReflog(const shash::Any &catalog)
{
  assert(catalog.suffix == shash::kSuffixCatalog);
  return (configuration_.dry_run)
    ? true
    : configuration_.reflog->Remove(catalog);
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
bool GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::Collect() {
  return AnalyzePreservedCatalogTree() &&
         CheckPreservedRevisions()     &&
         SweepReflog();
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
bool GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::
  AnalyzePreservedCatalogTree()
{
  if (configuration_.verbose)
    LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStdout, "Preserving data objects in latest revision");

  typename CatalogTraversalT::CallbackTN *callback =
    traversal_.RegisterListener(
       &GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::PreserveDataObjects,
        this);

  bool success = traversal_.Traverse();
  oldest_trunk_catalog_found_ = true;
  success = success && traversal_.TraverseNamedSnapshots();
  traversal_.UnregisterListener(callback);

  return success;
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
bool GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::CheckPreservedRevisions()
{
  const bool keeps_revisions = (preserved_catalog_count() > 0);
  if (!keeps_revisions && configuration_.verbose) {
    LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStderr, "This would delete everything! Abort.");
  }

  return keeps_revisions;
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
bool GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::SweepReflog() {
  if (configuration_.verbose) {
    LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStdout, "Sweeping reference logs");
  }

  const ReflogTN *reflog = configuration_.reflog;
  std::vector<shash::Any> catalogs;
  if (NULL == reflog || !reflog->List(SqlReflog::kRefCatalog, &catalogs)) {
    LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStderr, "Failed to list catalog reference log");
    return false;
  }

  typename CatalogTraversalT::CallbackTN *callback =
    traversal_.RegisterListener(
       &GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::SweepDataObjects,
        this);

  bool success = true;
  const typename CatalogTraversalT::TraversalType traversal_type =
                                        CatalogTraversalT::kDepthFirstTraversal;
        std::vector<shash::Any>::const_iterator i    = catalogs.begin();
  const std::vector<shash::Any>::const_iterator iend = catalogs.end();
  for (; i != iend && success; ++i) {
    if (!hash_filter_.Contains(*i)) {
      success =
        success                                         &&
        traversal_.TraverseRevision(*i, traversal_type) &&
        RemoveCatalogFromReflog(*i);
    }
  }

  traversal_.UnregisterListener(callback);

  return success;
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::PrintCatalogTreeEntry(
                                              const unsigned int  tree_level,
                                              const CatalogTN    *catalog) const
{
  std::string tree_indent;
  for (unsigned int i = 0; i < tree_level; ++i) {
    tree_indent += "\u2502  ";
  }
  tree_indent += "\u251C\u2500 ";

  const std::string hash_string = catalog->hash().ToString();
  const std::string path =
    (catalog->mountpoint().IsEmpty()) ? "/" : catalog->mountpoint().ToString();

  LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStdout, "%s%s %s",
    tree_indent.c_str(),
    hash_string.c_str(),
    path.c_str());
}

template <class CatalogTraversalT, class HashFilterT>
void GarbageCollector<CatalogTraversalT, HashFilterT>::LogDeletion(
                                                 const shash::Any &hash) const {
  if (configuration_.verbose) {
    LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStdout, "Sweep: %s",
                                 hash.ToStringWithSuffix().c_str());
  }

  if (configuration_.has_deletion_log()) {
    const int written = fprintf(configuration_.deleted_objects_logfile,
                                "%s\n", hash.ToStringWithSuffix().c_str());
    if (written < 0) {
      LogCvmfs(kLogGc, kLogStderr, "failed to write to deleted objects log");
    }
  }
}

#endif  // CVMFS_GARBAGE_COLLECTION_GARBAGE_COLLECTOR_IMPL_H_

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Finding a used car doesn't have to be a hassle because nowadays you can go online and view full-colour photographs of the cars available at different companies, making it easy to narrow down your choices and schedule a visit with a particular car dealer when you're ready. The best part of it all is the fact that used cars, especially if they are only a few years old, offer a great deal at very low prices, making it a win-win situation every time.
Furthermore, finding the right used car dealer in Hull is easy and fast, especially if you start online, and the vehicles can start at under £1,000. All it takes is a little time and effort and you'll have the used car of your dreams sooner than you think.
Even if you are unsure of which type of car you'd like to purchase, the right dealer can help you because their salespeople know the ins and outs of all their vehicles and can help you choose the right one. They have sedans, minivans, SUVs, and trucks and their websites give you details that include type of transmission, age, price, and kilometres, making it easy for you to find the perfect one for your needs.


This is how I installad Debian / Sarge on my new T43p.
I also got a new 100 GB HDS disk, so I swapped out the 60 GB model an plug in my new 100 GB. When I booted the Sarge Installdisks with the 2.6 Kernel, Linux was not able to recognize the HD.
Then I booted with the old 2.4 Kernel, installed sarge, get a fresh kernel from kernel.org. After compilation and replacing hda through sda, the T43p boot into 2.6.
Note: Changing to the 2.6.8 kernel Sarge offers does not work, boot stops during init. A recent 2.6.15 kernel from backports.org does it, there's a detailed description available.
The Debian Sarge installation will not work if you try to use the 2.6 kernel. In brief, your hdd will be detected as a SCSI device, and should be assigned to /dev/sda. However, the installation program will look for the device as /dev/hda and refuse to boot. I have had no success in using the automated installation bootstrap sequence of a 2.6 kernel from the sarge installation cd - email me if you have an experience otherwise.
That being said, this is actually pretty simple to fix, and there are a multitude of ways to get around this. The easiest is to install the 2.4 kernel, which will put your drive in a ATA compatability mode (slooooww, approxmiately 4 MB/s throughput. Install it, and then install the 2.6 kernel. When you install the 2.6 kernel, change in your menu.lst or lilo config all references of /dev/hda to /dev/sda. You can get a nice .config for a modern kernel elsewhere on this site. I'm trying to move everything here for a central repository of information, but in the meantime check out the Linux on Laptops website for a wide selection of configs.
Otherwise, choose your packages to install, and have fun. You will get a basic, working, Debian system.
Note in note: at least in kernel 2.6.15 from http://backports.org tg3 is still available. So if you're using Sarge there's nothing to fear.
I read something about licencing issues and stuff and that because of these the Debian project removed that module from their release.
Install that package: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bcm5700-source, the kernel header files and the module-assistant. Start the module-assistant and run through that program (satisfying every compiling need) until it asks if you want to install the newly compiled module.
See http://jriddell.org/thinkpad-r40e.html -> Network, for details.
The onboard Intel WLAN adapter works with Ipw2200 module. The driver does not appear to support MII interface, so any roaming network configuration manager that uses it ( whereami in particular ) will prevent the card from working properly. I found that the combination of ifplugd, ifmetric and waproamd are a better solution, until NetworkManager comes around.
and you will be all set.
Use built-in or modular ALSA snd_intel8x0, works without any problems.
You may need to set compile options for other applications (e.g. mplayer) to use alsa.
Do not use the oss drivers if you want everything to play nice. Otherwise, you will get a lot of busy /dev/dsp's and have to use the oss alsa wrapper, which is a pain in the best of circumstances.
I used the debian packages from  version 8.14.13-2 and followed the instructions on that page.
With version 8.22.5 and a backport's kernel 2.6.15 on Sarge there's another way.
Note that debian sid now includes xorg server package if you like - ATI's driver works with both XFree and XOrg nicely.
I use one external USB Logitech Trackball and both internal, the Touchpad and the Trackpoint. In my XF86Config-4 are 3 mice.
To have all the hardware show up with its proper name, I had to get a new pci.ids file from the Linux PCI ID Repostiory and copy it to /usr/share/misc/pci.ids. I believe newer distributions and kernels won't need that file anymore. -- 2005-07-19 (kernel 2.6.12.2) still need it.
This page has been accessed 42,513 times.


text:
/* TyTools - public domain
   Niels Martignène <niels.martignene@protonmail.com>
   https://koromix.dev/tytools

   This software is in the public domain. Where that dedication is not
   recognized, you are granted a perpetual, irrevocable license to copy,
   distribute, and modify this file as you see fit.

   See the LICENSE file for more details. */

#ifndef TY_MONITOR_H
#define TY_MONITOR_H

#include "common.h"

TY_C_BEGIN

struct ty_board;

typedef struct ty_monitor ty_monitor;

typedef enum ty_monitor_event {
    TY_MONITOR_EVENT_ADDED,
    TY_MONITOR_EVENT_CHANGED,
    TY_MONITOR_EVENT_DISAPPEARED,
    TY_MONITOR_EVENT_DROPPED
} ty_monitor_event;

typedef int ty_monitor_callback_func(struct ty_board *board, ty_monitor_event event, void *udata);
typedef int ty_monitor_wait_func(ty_monitor *monitor, void *udata);

int ty_monitor_new(ty_monitor **rmonitor);
void ty_monitor_free(ty_monitor *monitor);

int ty_monitor_start(ty_monitor *monitor);
void ty_monitor_stop(ty_monitor *monitor);

void ty_monitor_get_descriptors(const ty_monitor *monitor, struct ty_descriptor_set *set, int id);

int ty_monitor_register_callback(ty_monitor *monitor, ty_monitor_callback_func *f, void *udata);
void ty_monitor_deregister_callback(ty_monitor *monitor, int id);

int ty_monitor_refresh(ty_monitor *monitor);
int ty_monitor_wait(ty_monitor *monitor, ty_monitor_wait_func *f, void *udata, int timeout);

int ty_monitor_list(ty_monitor *monitor, ty_monitor_callback_func *f, void *udata);

TY_C_END

#endif


text:
Home Agency News Humanitarians distribute aid in Af, one of world's greatest emergencies: UN
Humanitarians distribute aid in Af, one of world's greatest emergencies: UN
United Nations: The UN and partners are conducting needs assessments while distributing aid across Afghanistan, one of the world's greatest emergencies, UN humanitarians has said.
In the past seven days, they distributed food aid to about 280,000 people in just four of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, Xinhua news agency quoted the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as saying.
Food aid went to people in Badakshan, Baghlan, Takhar, and Parwan provinces.
The office said that this week, cash and winter assistance, household items, water, sanitation and hygiene supplies went to approximately 20,000 people in Ghor, Kabul and Parwan provinces. People receiving aid include internally displaced people and other vulnerable communities.
In the coming days, about 15,000 people, including internally displaced and drought-affected people, returnees, vulnerable host communities, and female, child, elderly and disabled head of households in Badakshan, Baghlan, Balkh and Kunduz provinces will receive humanitarian assistance, OCHA said. That aid includes food and cash.
The UN Afghanistan Flash Appeal identified prioritised needs in the country between September and December 2021 and required $606 million, OCHA said. It is 113 per cent funded at 683 million.
The independent UN Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan launched at the beginning of this year requires $869 million, the office said. It is 84 per cent funded at 730 million.
The two appeals complement one another, identifying 18.4 million people in need and targeting 17.7 million people, OCHA said. Humanitarians expect to reach the goal by year-end.
Next year, 24.4 million people will need humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, said the 2022 Global Humanitarian Overview launched in Geneva on Thursday. It identified Afghanistan as "one of the largest emergencies in the world."
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Saith Seren, Wrecsam | If SSIW is helping you, why not help us? Get DAILY lessons: Become an SSIW Member!
Thought I'd pop in and say helo.
We're a community run cooperative and have lots of volunteer opportunities (you'll find me volunteering behind the bar every Monday), it's been great to meet so many SSIW learners at the Monday practice sessions, I know the course has been a huge help to people.
I'm a Tresaith bootcamper as well, still very much learning but will always appreciate the time spent with Aran, Catrin and others at bootcamp which brought my Welsh along no end.
All our staff and volunteers at Saith are fluent Welsh speakers or learners (Even our Auzzie chef is learning fast!) , so please feel free to call in any time you want to practise!


text:
In this section: CFSAN Risk & Safety Assessments
CFSAN Risk & Safety Assessments
Science & Research (Food)
OFVM Chemical Safety Assessment Review: Report of the CFSAN Working Group
The FDA's Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine (OFVM), which encompasses both the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), must make effective and efficient use of its chemical safety resources, act to ensure the rigor and effectiveness of its chemical safety program responsibilities, and maintain and work to strengthen its national and international leadership role to meet current and future challenges in the field of chemical safety. To help accomplish these goals, OFVM initiated a review of its overall chemical safety assessment program, focusing on the scientific capacity and management of the program's multiple elements across the two centers. The review included:
Anonymous and confidential interviews of employees involved in all elements of OFVM's chemical safety assessment program;
Anonymous and confidential interviews with former staff as well as senior managers from other Federal agencies experienced in chemical safety assessment;
Listening sessions with internal and external stakeholders on OFVM's overall chemical safety assessment program; and
Independent review by four outside consultants, who met with OFVM and senior center managers to discuss the materials, providing in four separate consultant reports their own written recommendations for OFVM's chemical safety program.
Following delivery of the interview, listening session, and consultant reports, CFSAN's center director formed an internal Chemical Safety Working Group to review these documents and directed the group to develop a report identifying the most significant issues arising from the various documents and containing prioritized recommendations for improving the chemical safety program at CFSAN.
The working group submitted its report and recommendations, along with a plan to implement the recommendations. To view these materials, see "Report Contents" below.
It should be noted that the statements made by current or former FDA or other Federal employees, as well as statements by stakeholders and consultants in all the review materials and reports, are the expression of individual views and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the facts or agency policy or guidance, and cannot be construed as official representations of (as examples) statutes or regulations.
Update: September 2014
Since submitting the Chemical Safety Working Group report and recommendations, CFSAN, in partnership with CVM, has taken steps to improve the OFVM chemical safety program, building on its recommendations and in line with requests from Deputy Commissioner of Foods and Veterinary Medicine Michael Taylor, for a unified strategy across the two centers.
The centers have formed an FVM Chemical Safety Report Implementation Committee to oversee implementation of recommendations from the working group report, independent consultants and listening sessions. The timeline for implementing the recommendations is dependent on the nature of each recommendation. Some are considered "short term," meaning they can be implemented in 3 to 6 months; some are "intermediate," meaning they may take 6 to 18 months to implement; and still others are considered "long term," meaning they will take two or more years to implement.
CFSAN has formed a steering committee, including CVM representation, to focus on updating and maintaining the currency of the FDA's Toxicological Principles for the Safety Assessment of Food Ingredients, also known as the "Redbook." The steering committee will develop a project plan to include how stakeholders will be engaged as revisions of the Redbook are developed.
CFSAN will be forming a working group (with CVM representation) to update its 2002 Risk Analysis Framework document, which describes the process for identifying, selecting, managing, and conducting major risk assessments by incorporating both best practices and lessons learned. The group will be charged with developing a science-based SOP document for conducting chemical safety and risk assessments, designed to be followed whether cancer or non-cancer risks are being assessed. The science-based SOPs should address, for example, how susceptible populations are to be taken into account, the use of dose-response modeling, average consumer weights used in calculations, and current consumption data for exposure assessment. The working group's charges will pertain to safety and risk assessments in both centers.
Report Contents
Report (PDF - 201KB)
Metrics for Prioritization by the Three Subgroups (PDF - 45KB)
Appendix 1 - Results of Chemical Safety Assessment Personnel Interviews (PDF - 1.2MB)
Appendix 2 – FDA Foods Program Review of Chemical Safety, Capacity, and Management Report Skeleton (PDF - 936KB)
Appendix 3 – FDA Foods Program Review of Chemical Safety Capacity and Management: Results of External Interviews (PDF - 738KB)
Appendix 4 – Results from the Listening Sessions Conducted by CFSAN/CVM/OFVM Conducted as Part of the Chemical Safety Assessment Review (PDF - 93KB)
Appendix 5 – Consultant Reports
External Consultant #1 Report


Weekly Economics Podcast: How will Brexit affect our lives?
The single market. The customs union. Making a deal with the EU or leaving on WTO terms. There's a lot of jargon to contend with when we're discussing the economics of Brexit.
Sometimes it feels like we get so caught up in pretending we know what it all means that we forget to talk about the impact it's going to have on people's everyday lives.
When we leave the EU, will some people lose their jobs? Will the things we buy become more expensive? Will businesses do better or worse under new trading rules?
This week, Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Annie Quick, Subject Lead for Inequality at the New Economics Foundation and Sam Lowe, who leads on trade and Brexit at Friends of the Earth.