East Khasi Hills is one of the 11 (eleven) districts of the State of Meghalaya. The district occupies an area of 2,748 Sq. Kms. and it lies between 25°07" & 25°41" N Lat. and 91°21" & 92°09" E Long. bounded by Ri-Bhoi District on the north, Karbi Anglong District on the north east, Jaintia Hills district on the east, Bangladesh on the south and West Khasi Hills district on the west.
Shillong is the District Headquarter of East Khasi Hills District as well as the state Capital. It is a hill stations with unique natural scenic beauty which is an ideal resort throughout the year. The district is well connected with motorable roads throughout the length and breadth .


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AD'S GOOD AS GOLD
Adriana Lima stuns in a gold gown at a star-studded gala in Los Angeles
Simon Boyle
0:43, 27 Sep 2021
Updated: 4:05, 27 Sep 2021
THE Academy Awards may be six months away – but A-listers from the movie business needed little encouragement to throw on their finery and celebrate the best of the big screen last weekend.
The organisation's Museum of Motion Pictures held its' opening gala in Los Angeles – where guests included Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Benedict Cumberbatch and a raft more stars who gathered in celebration of the best of Tinseltown's history.
The organisation's Museum of Motion Pictures held its' opening gala in Los AngelesCredit: Rex
Adriana Lima dressed in an ensemble which could have been inspired by the iconic golden statuetteCredit: AFP
Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima dressed suitably in an ensemble which could have been inspired by the iconic golden statuette handed out at the Oscars, as the evening paid homage to veteran filmmakers Sophia Loren and Haile Gerima.
Tom Hanks, Annette Bening and Disney chairman Bob Iger were also recognised for their fundraising efforts to support the new museum – which was designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano.
HONEST VOGUE
To everyone else I looked happy and carefree but I wasn't, says Vogue Williams
Adriana Lima stuns in mesh outfit as Victoria's Secret decides to disband legendary Angels

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Last updated December 18, 2017.


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Home » Our Schools » Secondary Schools » Hopkins North Junior High
International Baccalaureate at Hopkins Junior Highs
Hopkins North Junior High was authorized as an IB World School offering the Middle Years Programme (MYP) in June 2015.
The MYP is a globally-recognized curriculum framework, representing current best practices in teaching, learning and assessment. It encourages students to make practical connections between their studies and the real world, preparing them for success in further study and in life. The MYP aims to develop active learners and internationally minded young people who can empathize with others and pursue lives of purpose and meaning. The program empowers students to inquire into a wide range of locally, nationally, and globally significant issues and ideas. The result is young people who are creative, critical and reflective thinkers.
As students develop their disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies, they will learn through eight subject groups (links from IB website):
Individuals and societies
Physical and health education
Throughout the program of inquiry in the MYP, students will explore concepts and contexts that help us find our place in time and space, see our connections to others and to the world around us. With a commitment to authentic service, the MYP helps learners see opportunities for action in order to make the future more sustainable for all. At NJH, the MYP culminates with the Community Project, an opportunity for all 9th grade students to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community through a sustained, in-depth service project. This project demonstrates our students' developing identities as young leaders and positive examples of the IB's Learner Profile in action.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Middle Years Program here at Hopkins North Junior High.
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Becky Melville


Foxwoods now faces a years-long delay in its drive to build a casino in Philadelphia amid intense neighborhood opposition and mounting difficulties nailing down a development site.The giant Connecticut casino recently asked state gambling regulators for as much as two more years to open a major gambling venue in Philadelphia. The request comes with the previous deadline for Foxwoods to open its proposed downtown casino having come and gone last week.
Foxwoods unveiled plans to build a major urban gambling Mecca in Pennsylvania's largest city nearly four years ago. But the tribal operator has met with one setback after another, with its pursuit of a Philadelphia casino triggering intense opposition from city residents and others.


These were the common picks KISS members used or threw out to the crowd during the tour. Although thousands of these were made for the tour unlike the city picks, they are still a great item for collectors. If you were there at the show or not you can still own a piece of KISStory!


This beautiful story of Chinese migration follows the strains and joys experienced by émigré Lan Lan as she arrives in the UK. Narrowly escaping an arranged marriage, Lan Lan settles in London with two older Chinese migrants. But as she adjusts to the culture of her new home, Lan Lan wonders if the three companions might be more than just friends.
Foreign Moon (Yueman Yinglun) was written and directed by established filmmaker Zhang Zeming. It was the first film to be made outside of China by one of the country's Fifth Generation of filmmakers.


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This Is the Moment the Anti-Vaccine Movement Has Been Waiting For
As the coronavirus began pushing the nation into lockdown in March 2020, Joshua Coleman, an anti-vaccine campaigner who organizes anti-vaccine rallies, went on Facebook Live to give his followers a rallying speech. He laid out what he thought the pandemic really was: an opportunity.
"This is the one time in human history where every single human being across this country, possibly across the planet, but especially in this country, are all going to have an interest in vaccination and vaccines," he said. "So it's time for us to educate."
By "educate," he meant to spread misinformation about vaccines.
The approach that Mr. Coleman displayed in his nearly 10-minute-long appearance — turning any negative event into a marketing opportunity — is characteristic of anti-vaccine activists. Their versatility and ability to read and assimilate the language and culture of different social groups have been key to their success. But Mr. Coleman's speech also encapsulated a yearslong campaign during which the anti-vaccine movement has maneuvered itself to exploit what Mr. Coleman called "a very unique position in this moment in time."
Over the last six years, anti-vaccine groups and leaders have begun to organize politically at a level like never before. They've founded state political action committees, formed coalitions with other constituencies, and built a vast network that is now the foundation of vaccination opposition by conservative groups and legislators across the country. They have taken common-sense concepts — that parents should be able to raise their children as they see fit, and that medical decisions should be autonomous and private — and warped them in ways that have set back decades of public health advances.
The power of anti-vaccine mobilization is particularly evident now in efforts to protect Americans against Covid-19. Only about 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated — not enough to provide national protection — even though the vaccines are free and are the best tool for keeping people out of overcrowded hospitals. But those who are baffled by the outsize influence of the anti-vaccine movement must understand how carefully its leaders have navigated their way to this point.
Vaccine hesitancy has existed in some form since the development of the first vaccine over 200 years ago. But the 2014-2015 measles outbreak, which began among mostly unvaccinated visitors at Disneyland in California and led to more than 125 cases, woke up the nation to the threat of that hesitancy. The only reason measles had gained a foothold was that pockets of the country with low vaccination rates had led to the erosion of herd immunity in those places.
In years leading up to that outbreak, vaccines had not been a partisan issue in the United States. But something was changing. Politicians like Chris Christie and Rand Paul called for respecting parents' choice to vaccinate their children or not (although Mr. Christie later backpedaled a bit).
Meanwhile, public outcry followed the discovery that the outbreak began with unvaccinated children, with everyone from soccer moms to late-night television hosts lambasting parents who refused to vaccinate their kids. A coalition of parents led by Leah Russin, co-founder of the nonprofit group Vaccinate California, worked with California legislators like Richard Pan, a state senator and pediatrician, to push for a bill that would remove all nonmedical exemptions for school vaccine requirements, which had grown in recent years to allow pockets of low vaccination coverage to spring up.
But the mockery of "anti-vaxxers" in that uproar also mobilized the movement.
Anti-vaccine activists of all political stripes pushed back — hard — against the bill. When they found that inaccurate claims about vaccines didn't sway California legislators, they shifted gears and asserted that removing nonmedical exemptions impinged on their freedom to raise their children as they wanted. In the late-Tea Party era, that argument had traction.
Renée DiResta, a researcher at Stanford, found through Twitter analysis that there was "an evolution in messaging." The movement discovered that a focus on freedom "was more resonant with legislators and would help them actually achieve their political goals," Ms. DiResta said to me. Anti-vaccine Twitter accounts that had been posting for years about autism and toxins pivoted to Tea Party-esque ideas, leading to the emergence of a new cluster of accounts focused on "vaccine choice" messaging, Ms. DiResta said.
Anti-vaccine activists used the measles outbreak and others to claim public officials would force "harmful" vaccines on people. They also found new ways to court politicians, especially those who take pride in bucking the system.
Just a week after the California bill had been filed, a well-meaning Republican legislator in Texas, Jason Villalba, filed a similar bill in Austin. But Mr. Villalba didn't realize that anti-vaccine sentiment had been growing in his state, and his bill unwittingly "kicked the hornet's nest," said Rekha Lakshmanan, director of advocacy and public policy for a Texas-based nonprofit group, the Immunization Partnership. "All of a sudden we saw a kind of new generation of the anti-vaccine movement in Texas emerge."
Though Mr. Villalba's bill never got to a vote, it helped drive the new guard to form Texans for Vaccine Choice, which would become a PAC, to lobby against the legislation. Other influential conservative state PACs took notice and may have joined forces with Texans for Vaccine Choice behind the scenes. The group's emphasis on parents' rights and medical freedom were a natural fit, aligning them with Tea Party-type Republicans like Jonathan Stickland, whose ringing cry for any issue was "freedom."
Likely under the tutelage of conservative grass-roots groups, the fledgling anti-vaccine PAC learned effective political electioneering. It backed a champion for its cause to challenge Mr. Villalba in the Republican primary, a far-right politician named Lisa Luby Ryan. When Ms. Ryan defeated Mr. Villalba, Texans for Vaccine Choice cried victory. That Ms. Ryan eventually lost the general election was beside the point. Anti-vaccine activists had shown they were a formidable force, and Texas Republicans learned it was "politically expedient" to stay silent when, for example, Mr. Stickland attacked vaccine scientists, as The Houston Chronicle editorial board wrote.
With vaccine refusal reframed as "parent choice," Republicans could no longer risk appearing to oppose "freedom of choice" on any issue. More state anti-vaccine PACs and nonprofit groups formed, and social media allowed greater collaboration. The "freedom" messaging united anti-vaccine groups, particularly those in Texas and California, and withstood social media platforms' growing attempts to stanch false claims.
New anti-vaccine organizations also began fund-raising in earnest, bringing in millions of dollars, both from wealthy donors and by selling fear. They use this money to create slick propaganda for larger audiences, such as a spate of anti-vaccine films like "Vaxxed," which provided a blueprint for pandemic denialism films like "Plandemic." And they donate funds to the politicians they hope to win over.
At the anti-vaccine Health Freedom Summit in 2020, several anti-vaccine activists spoke. Jennifer Larson, who believes vaccination caused her child's autism, described how she had worked to gain the trust of Minnesota legislators. She and another vaccine opponent, Mark Blaxill, had formed a political party in 2011 to run candidates who oppose vaccine mandates and "medical injury," but the two-party system was too entrenched. So they pivoted to supporting major-party politicians who would champion their causes.
"If they say something that might be considered controversial, we have a community of people who will run to have their back and support them," Ms. Larson said at the gathering. "If you can, get involved … Get to know them, get them to trust you."
That became the anti-vaccine playbook across the nation. And in state after state, vaccine opponents have gradually leveraged their state and local Republican parties to their ends, riding the "freedom" wave that has become so central to party messaging today. Hence the seamless marriage between anti-vaccine activists and groups protesting mask mandates and lockdowns.
As one example, by 2020, anti-vaccine groups joined anti-mask groups in Ohio to support a Republican-sponsored bill to curtail the Department of Health's ability to issue quarantine orders and allow legislators to rescind health department orders. Though that attempt failed, Republican legislators eventually succeeded in 2021 in barring public schools and colleges from requiring Covid-19 vaccination before the vaccines had full FDA approval. States like Texas and Florida are now trying to stop businesses from requiring Covid vaccines.
"The most dangerous thing that could happen," Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, told me he had worried in recent years, "is the Republican Party adopts anti-vaccine anti-science to the major platform. … This is the nightmare situation I'd hoped to avoid."
Tennessee offers a glimpse of that nightmare.
Dr. Michelle Fiscus, Tennessee's medical director in charge of vaccinations, was fired in mid-July after promoting vaccination to young people, an effort state legislators like Scott Cepicky, a Republican representative, found "reprehensible." And then the state suspended vaccination outreach for all vaccines.
Dr. Fiscus says the anti-vaccine movement is partly to blame. "I think it's been this insidious growth of their influence on susceptible legislators," she said, "especially in Southern states where they have taken the 'medical freedom' kind of angle."
Though Tennessee has since resumed most of those programs, the pause was a bellwether. Had widespread Republican opposition to Covid vaccination now apparently reached the point of interfering with routine childhood vaccinations?
Those of us who have followed the anti-vaccine movement for years know that's been the plan all along. Although the movement's leaders could not have known a pandemic was coming, they were more ready to take advantage of the moment with their messaging than public health experts and policymakers were to combat it.
The nature of the scientific process during a pandemic, with its unrelenting influx of new data and constantly evolving understanding of it, makes health communication incredibly challenging. That reality, combined with botched messaging from public health agencies, has emboldened vaccine opponents.
Americans hoping to fight the anti-vaccine movement must learn to use the same tools of political rhetoric and mobilization, to speak up against misinformation and to swarm lawmakers' phone lines to oppose bills that harm public health. Republican legislators must defend the importance of public health more forcefully.
The Covid vaccine hesitancy running through the Republican Party threatens to do more than prolong this pandemic. It also threatens America's ability to fight other diseases, of the past and the future.
Tags: activism, anti-science, anti-vaccine-political-activism, anti-vaccines, anti-vaccines-fear, fear, fear-mongering, plandemic, political-activism
America Is Too Broken to Fight the Coronavirus
No other developed country is doing so badly.
Graphs of the coronavirus curves in Britain, Canada, Germany and Italy look like mountains, with steep climbs up and then back down. The one for America shows a fast climb up to a plateau. For a while, the number of new cases in the U.S. was at least slowly declining. Now, according to The Times, it's up a terrifying 22 percent over the last 14 days.
As Politico reported on Monday, Italy's coronavirus catastrophe once looked to Americans like a worst-case scenario. Today, it said, "America's new per capita cases remain on par with Italy's worst day — and show signs of rising further."
This is what American exceptionalism looks like under Donald Trump. It's not just that the United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths of any country in the world. Republican political dysfunction has made a coherent campaign to fight the pandemic impossible.
At the federal level as well as in many states, we're seeing a combination of the blustering contempt for science that marks the conservative approach to climate change and the high tolerance for carnage that makes American gun culture unique.
The rot starts at the top. At the beginning of the crisis Trump acted as if he could wish the coronavirus away, and after an interval when he at least pretended to take it seriously, his administration has resumed a posture of blithe denial.
The task force led by Mike Pence has been sidelined, its members meeting only twice a week. Last Tuesday, the vice president wrote an op-ed essay in The Wall Street Journal about how well things are going: "We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy," he claimed.
In an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity last week, Trump said the virus is "fading away." Speaking to The Journal, he said that some people might be wearing masks only to show their disapproval of him and suggested, contrary to all credible public health guidance, that mask-wearing might increase people's risk of infection. It's not surprising, then, that many people at his sad Saturday rally in Tulsa, Okla. — where coronavirus cases are spiking — went maskless.
Just a few weeks ago, panicked about occupying my kids through the summer in a shut-down New York City, I thought about taking them to stay with my retired parents in Arizona. Now, as New York gingerly reopens, Arizona has become a hot spot — which isn't stopping Trump from holding a rally at a Phoenix megachurch on Tuesday. Cases are also soaring in Texas, Florida and several other states. An epidemic that was once concentrated in blue states is increasingly raging in red ones.
When coronavirus cases started exploding on the East Coast in March, there were devastating failures by Democratic leaders. New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, not only forced nursing homes to take back residents who'd been hospitalized for the coronavirus, he barred them from testing the residents to see if they were still infected.
As ProPublica reported, following Cuomo's order, "Covid-19 tore through New York state's nursing facilities, killing more than 6,000 people — about 6 percent of its more than 100,000 nursing home residents." In Florida, which prohibited such transfers, the virus has so far killed only 1.6 percent of nursing home residents.
Given how Cuomo's errors contributed to New York's catastrophe, it's hard to say how much credit he deserves for eventually rising to the occasion. Still, by the time New York's cases got to where Arizona's are now, he at least understood that the state faced calamity and imposed the lockdown that helped bring it back from the abyss.
Arizona, Florida and Texas, by contrast, aren't even doing simple things like mandating mask-wearing. Worse, until last week, the governors of Arizona and Texas prevented cities from instituting their own such requirements.
So far, evidence about the role mass protests over police violence played in coronavirus spikes is mixed, but liberal support for the demonstrations solidified the conviction among many conservatives that strict social distancing rules are a hypocritical tool of social control. The paranoia and resentment that have long been part of the culture of the modern right are now directed at those warning about the ongoing dangers of the pandemic.
Across the country, public health workers have faced death threats, harassment and armed protesters at their homes. No matter how bad things get in red America, it's hard to imagine where the political will to contain the virus will come from.
So while countries with competent leadership haltingly return to normal, ours will continue to be pummeled. In mid-May, when America's coronavirus death toll was around 85,000, Trump sycophant Lindsey Graham said that as long as fatalities didn't go much beyond 120,000, "I think you can say you limited the casualties in this war."
By The Times's count, we just hit that number. The war goes on, but Trump has already lost it.
Tags: america-disfunction, andrew-cuomo, anti-science, anti-social-distancing, anti-social-distancing-social-control, coronavirus, coronavirus-democrats-fail-andrew-cuomo, coronavirus-democrats-fail-andrew-cuomo-nursing-home-take-back-covid-19-residents, coronavirus-false-optimism, coronavirus-masks, coronavirus-paranoia, false-optimism, gun-culture, gun-culture-tolerance-of-death, megachurch, michelle-goldberg, mike-pence-coronavirus-false-optimism, paranoid-style, resentment, social-distancing-hypocrisy, trump-megachurch
When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult
The Trump team confirms all of our worst fears.
So, here's the response of the Trump team and its allies to the coronavirus, at least so far: It's actually good for America. Also, it's a hoax perpetrated by the news media and the Democrats. Besides, it's no big deal, and people should buy stocks. Anyway, we'll get it all under control under the leadership of a man who doesn't believe in science.
From the day Donald Trump was elected, some of us worried how his administration would deal with a crisis not of its own making. Remarkably, we've gone three years without finding out: Until now, every serious problem facing the Trump administration, from trade wars to confrontation with Iran, has been self-created. But the coronavirus is looking as if it might be the test we've been fearing.
And the results aren't looking good.
The story of the Trump pandemic response actually began several years ago.
Almost as soon as he took office, Trump began cutting funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading in turn to an 80 percent cut in the resources the agency devotes to global disease outbreaks.
Trump also shut down the entire global-health-security unit of the National Security Council.
Experts warned that these moves were exposing America to severe risks. "We'll leave the field open to microbes," declared Tom Frieden, a much-admired former head of the C.D.C., more than two years ago. But the Trump administration has a preconceived notion about where national security threats come from — basically, scary brown people — and is hostile to science in general. So we entered the current crisis in an already weakened condition.
And the microbes came.
The first reaction of the Trumpers was to see the coronavirus as a Chinese problem — and to see whatever is bad for China as being good for us. Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, cheered it on as a development that would "accelerate the return of jobs to North America.
The story changed once it became clear that the virus was spreading well beyond China. At that point it became a hoax perpetrated by the news media. Rush Limbaugh weighed in: "It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … The coronavirus is the common cold, folks."
Limbaugh was, you may not be surprised to hear, projecting. Back in 2014 right-wing politicians and media did indeed try to politically weaponize a disease outbreak, the Ebola virus, with Trump himself responsible for more than 100 tweets denouncing the Obama administration's response (which was actually competent and effective).
And in case you're wondering, no, the coronavirus isn't like the common cold. In fact, early indications are that the virus may be as lethal as the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed as many as 50 million people.
Financial markets evidently don't agree that the virus is a hoax; by Thursday afternoon the Dow was off more than 3,000 points since last week. Falling markets appear to worry the administration more than the prospect of, you know, people dying. So Larry Kudlow, the administration's top economist, made a point of declaring that the virus was "contained" — contradicting the C.D.C. — and suggested that Americans buy stocks. The market continued to drop.
At that point the administration appears to have finally realized that it might need to do something beyond insisting that things were great. But according to The Washington Post's Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, it initially proposed paying for a virus response by cutting aid to the poor — specifically, low-income heating subsidies. Cruelty in all things.
On Wednesday Trump held a news conference on the virus, much of it devoted to incoherent jabs at Democrats and the media. He did, however, announce the leader of the government response to the threat. Instead of putting a health care professional in charge, however, he handed the job to Vice President Mike Pence, who has an interesting relationship with both health policy and science.
Early in his political career, Pence staked out a distinctive position on public health, declaring that smoking doesn't kill people. He has also repeatedly insisted that evolution is just a theory. As governor of Indiana, he blocked a needle exchange program that could have prevented a significant H.I.V. outbreak, calling for prayer instead.
And now, according to The Times, government scientists will need to get Pence's approval before making public statements about the coronavirus.
So the Trumpian response to crisis is completely self-centered, entirely focused on making Trump look good rather than protecting America. If the facts don't make Trump look good, he and his allies attack the messengers, blaming the news media and the Democrats — while trying to prevent scientists from keeping us informed. And in choosing people to deal with a real crisis, Trump prizes loyalty rather than competence.
Maybe Trump — and America — will be lucky, and this won't be as bad as it might be. But anyone feeling confident right now isn't paying attention.
Tags: anti-science, china-public-health-virus-coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus-prevention-funding, mike-pence-anti-science, mike-pence-anti-science-smoking-doesnt-kill, partisan-weaponize, rush-limbaugh, rush-limbaugh-partisan-hoax-coronavirus, self-centered, shoot-the-messenger, trump-loyalty, trump-loyalty-vs-competency, trump-partisan-weaponize-disease-ebola, trump-self-centered, wilbur-ross-partisan-weaponize-disease-coronavirus, win-zero-sum, zero-sum
Erdoğan's Authoritarian Quackery
Why do conspiracy theories and general charlatanism so often receive their strongest support from the world's dictators? Sure, dictators are almost always oddballs themselves, but that cannot be all there is to it. In fact, it is worth asking whether quackery is a necessary feature of authoritarian rule.
.. to force the central bank to pursue his bizarre monetary policy, Erdoğan has installed his utterly unqualified son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as the country's Minister of Finance and Treasury.
.. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I am particularly sensitive to the impact of perverse scientific theories on a society. Joseph Stalin rejected Mendelian genetics (the fundamental laws of heredity) and even Darwin's theory of evolution in favor of the bogus theories of Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet biologist who believed that human traits were acquired, not inherited. With Stalin's backing, Lysenko – whose spurious agricultural research doomed perhaps millions of people to starvation – sent Soviet biology down a two-decade-long rabbit hole of lunacy.
.. Nikita Khrushchev may have overturned Stalinism, but he was no less a prisoner of theoretical perversity. He not only supported the Lysenko theories, but also believed ideologically hardened engineers and geologists who insisted that the rules of communism could defy the laws of nature. They told him that Soviet atomic bombs could be used to reverse the course of major rivers, allowing water to be redirected toward agriculture, rather than being "wasted" by flowing into the Arctic Sea.
.. Hitler's embrace of demented racial "science" delivered the world into darkness and led, almost inexorably, to the Holocaust. The perversion of reason was so normalized under Nazi rule that Josef Mengele's grotesque human experiments could be discussed at scientific conferences just like any other medical research.
Erdoğan, who has long been convinced that external forces are relentlessly plotting against his regime, is no exception.
In Erdoğan's eyes, these malevolent forces usually act through the financial markets. So far, he has refrained from claiming outright that these markets act at the behest of "world Jewry" (the architects, many Turkish Islamists believe, of the 1908 Young Turk revolution and the secular republic that arose after World War I). But his core supporters hear the dog whistle behind his condemnations of the forces of finance – forces that now seem to be demanding higher interest rates.
.. perhaps no current leader is more susceptible to misbegotten science and half-baked conspiracy theories than the US president and wannabe authoritarian, Donald Trump
.. On more than 20 occasions, Trump has tweeted about a potential link between vaccines and autism.
.. Trump also denies any link between human activity and climate change, again bucking the overwhelming scientific consensus.
And he insists, over the protests of countless economists, that trade deficits are a sign of US economic weakness.
.. Perhaps a shared paranoid style is what draws Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has continually argued that the world is conspiring to deprive Russia of the great-power status it deserves.
.. Those who refuse to recognize the world as it is – whether they are viewing it from Turkey, the US, Venezuela, or a host of other countries – eventually lose the position that their denial of reality was supposed to protect.
Source: www.project-syndicate.org
Tags: anti-science, autism-vaccination, conspiracy, recep-tayyip-erdogan, vladimir-putin
Mike Pence, Holy Terror
Are you sure you want to get rid of Donald Trump?
There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.
That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He's also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.
To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn't genuinely possess: the conviction that he's on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy.
.. The book persuasively illustrates what an ineffectual congressman he was, apart from cozying up to the Koch brothers, Betsy DeVos and other rich Republican donors
.. the strong possibility that he wouldn't have won re-election; his luck in being spared that humiliation by the summons from Trump, who needed an outwardly bland, intensely religious character witness to muffle his madness and launder his sins; and the alacrity with which he says whatever Trump needs him to regardless of the truth.
.. In Pence's view, any bite marks in his tongue are divinely ordained. Trump wouldn't be president if God didn't want that; Pence wouldn't be vice president if he weren't supposed to sanctify Trump. And his obsequiousness is his own best route to the Oval Office, which may very well be God's grand plan.
.. "I don't think he's as resilient, politically, as Bill Clinton was," D'Antonio said. "He doesn't relish a partisan fight in the same way. He loves to go to rallies where people adore him."
There's no deeply felt policy vision or sense of duty to sustain him through the investigations and accusations. "If the pain is great enough," D'Antonio said, "I think he'd be disposed not to run again."
.. It lays out his disregard for science, evident in his onetime insistence that smoking doesn't cause cancer and a belief that alarms about climate change were "a secret effort to increase government control over people's lives for some unstated diabolical purpose," according to the book.
.. It suggests callousness at best toward African-Americans. As governor, Pence refused to pardon a black man who had spent almost a decade in prison for a crime that he clearly hadn't committed. He also ignored a crisis — similar to the one in Flint, Mich. — in which people in a poor, largely black Indiana city were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead. D'Antonio told me: "I think he's just as driven by prejudice as Trump is."
.. he rallied behind the unhinged former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. In a speech he called Arpaio a "tireless champion" of the "rule of law." This was after Arpaio's contempt-of-court conviction for ignoring a federal judge's order to stop using illegal tactics to torment immigrants. The conservative columnist George Will seized on Pence's speech to write that Pence had dethroned Trump as "America's most repulsive public figure."
.. You can thank Pence for DeVos. They are longtime allies, going back decades, who bonded over such shared passions as making it O.K. for students to use government money, in the form of vouchers, at religious schools.
Pence cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate to confirm her as education secretary.
.. Pence once spoke positively on the House floor about historical figures who "actually placed it beyond doubt that the offense of abortion was a capital offense, punishable even by death." He seemed to back federal funds for anti-gay conversion therapy. He promoted a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
"He is absolutely certain that his moral view should govern public policy," D'Antonio told me.
.. Pence sees himself and fellow Christian warriors as a blessed but oppressed group, and his "hope for the future resided in his faith that, as chosen people, conservative evangelicals would eventually be served by a leader whom God would enable to defeat their enemies and create a Christian nation."
.. Is America worse off with Trump or Pence?
"I have to say that I prefer Donald Trump, because I think that Trump is more obvious in his intent," he said, while Pence tends to "disguise his agenda."
Tags: abortion, abortion-capital-offence, anti-gay-conversion-therapy, anti-science, betsy-devos, bigoted, bland, callous, christian-nation, christian-warriors, christians-oppressed, climate-change-denial, cruel, donors, flint-michigan-water, joe-arpaio, kleptocracy, koch-brothers, lies, mike-pence, mike-pence-agenda, mike-pence-presidency, mirror, religoius, rule-of-law, self-infatuated, smoking-doesnt-cause-cancer, sycophant, theocracy, trump-one-term
Jonah Goldberg: Special Counsel Would Allow Trump to Focus on Message, If He Can Do That
This gets to a point I tried to make last night on Special Report (scroll to around 9:05 for the video). My friend Mollie Hemingway is absolutely right when she says there are double standards at work here. The Obama administration got away with things — inappropriately sharing intelligence, influencing investigations, attacking the media — without a fraction of the gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth we've seen from the mainstream media, and without inviting a special counsel.
But the essential reason we got a special counsel and a media feeding frenzy is that Trump seems determined to do everything he can to invite chaos and hysteria to his administration.
The idea that the media or some shadowy cabal of "Never Trumpers" forced the president to fire James Comey in a comically incompetent manner is ludicrous. No one was holding Ivanka Trump hostage in a Motel 6 when Donald Trump confessed to Lester Holt that his administration's explanation for why Comey was fired was a lie or forced Trump to admit that he fired Comey for his handling of the Russia investigation.
.. Now, as someone who's been writing for two years that Trump was lying when he said he could be presidential — to himself and to everyone else — I'm tempted to ask, "What took you so long?"
If Trump could simply hold a tune — about jobs, tax reform, etc. — for a few months, his poll numbers would creep up, some good policy might get enacted, and, crucially for Trump, he would earn some political capital that might take the bite out of whatever Mueller finds, if he finds anything at all. Alternatively, keeping his fan base loyal but alienating everyone else is a recipe for staying in the mid 30s for the rest of his term and taking down the GOP majority in the House.
.. In Western mathematics, our ways of knowing include formalized reasoning or proof, decontextualization, and algorithmic thinking, leaving little room for those having non-Western mathematical skills and thinking processes.
.. Mathematics tells us that individual is intellectually lacking. Mathematics formulae also differentiate between the classification of a war or a genocide and have been used to trick indigenous peoples out of land and property.
.. It was Rousseau who first, or at least most famously, leveled the indictment against the tyranny of science in his First Discourse.
.. All of this prattle about "algorithmic thinking" is just Romanticism with a fresh coat of paint.
..The model we came up with for distinguishing between war and genocide involves this mysterious craft called "counting." But it also involves other things such as motives, means, and other aspects of what serious people call historical context. These criteria do not come from math, they come from politics, morality, and reason. All math does is count the dead. It takes human intelligence to place the dead in context. The Spanish Flu killed millions. It wasn't genocide.
.. Blaming math for what people do with it should disqualify you from teaching math.
It's also immoral, self-indulgent, and dangerous nonsense. We use math to make vaccines and model how to get them to indigenous peoples. We use math to feed the hungry. Teaching children that Western math is pernicious is the very essence of perniciousness. It is also incandescently stupid. Do Chinese computers use Confucian math?
.. How much head-popping hysteria have we had to put up with about the evils of teaching "creationism"?
Tags: anti-science, anti-trump, attention-seeking, attention-span, chaos, creationism, focus, jean-jacques-rousseau, jonah-goldberg, mathematics, romanticism, trump-special-councel, tryranny-of
How French "Intellectuals" Ruined The West: Postmodernism and its Impact, Explained
Postmodernism presents a threat not only to liberal democracy but to modernity itself. That may sound like a bold or even hyperbolic claim, but the reality is that the cluster of ideas and values at the root of postmodernism have broken the bounds of academia and gained great cultural power in western society. The irrational and identitarian "symptoms" of postmodernism are easily recognizable and much criticized, but the ethos underlying them is not well understood. This is partly because postmodernists rarely explain themselves clearly and partly because of the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of a way of thought which denies a stable reality or reliable knowledge to exist.
.. They underlie the problems we see today in Social Justice Activism, undermine the credibility of the Left and threaten to return us to an irrational and tribal "pre-modern" culture.
.. It drew on avant-garde and surrealist art and earlier philosophical ideas, particularly those of Nietzsche and Heidegger
.. Above all, postmodernists attacked science and its goal of attaining objective knowledge about a reality which exists independently of human perceptions which they saw as merely another form of constructed ideology dominated by bourgeois, western assumptions
.. The modern era is the period of history which saw Renaissance Humanism, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution and the development of liberal values and human rights; the period when Western societies gradually came to value reason and science over faith and superstition as routes to knowledge, and developed a concept of the person as an individual member of the human race deserving of rights and freedoms rather than as part of various collectives subject to rigid hierarchical roles in society.
.. the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy denies this and says "Rather, its differences lie within modernity itself, and postmodernism is a continuation of modern thinking in another mode
.. If we see the essence of modernity as the development of science and reason as well as humanism and universal liberalism, postmodernists are opposed to it.
.. If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire, postmodernists are attempting to continue it,
but their targets are now science, reason, humanism and liberalism.
.. postmodernism are inherently political and revolutionary, albeit in a destructive or, as they would term it, deconstructive way.
.. He defined the postmodern condition as "an incredulity towards metanarratives." A metanarrative is a wide-ranging and cohesive explanation for large phenomena. Religions and other totalizing ideologies are metanarratives in their attempts to explain the meaning of life or all of society's ills.
.. For Foucault, discourses control what can be "known" and in different periods and places, different systems of institutional power control discourses.
.. "The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces."[2] He leaves almost no room for individual agency or autonomy.
.. He presents medieval feudalism and modern liberal democracy as equally oppressive, and advocates criticizing and attacking institutions to unmask the "political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them."
.. shared humanity and individuality are almost entirely absent. Instead, people are constructed by their position in relation to dominant cultural ideas either as oppressors or oppressed.
.. We see too the equation of language with violence and coercion and the equation of reason and universal liberalism with oppression.
.. Derrida's best-known pronouncement "There is no outside-text" relates to his rejection of the idea that words refer to anything straightforwardly. Rather, "there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring." [5]
.. Therefore the author of a text is not the authority on its meaning. The reader or listener makes their own equally valid meaning
.. Man" is positive and 'woman' negative. "Occident" is positive and "Orient" negative. He insisted that "We are not dealing with the peaceful co-existence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy.
.. Deconstruction, therefore, involves inverting these perceived hierarchies, making "woman" and "Orient" positive and "man" and "Occident" negative. This is to be done ironically to reveal the culturally constructed and arbitrary nature of these perceived oppositions in unequal conflict.
.. We see in Derrida further relativity, both cultural and epistemic, and further justification for identity politics.
.. There is an explicit denial that differences can be other than oppositional and therefore a rejection of Enlightenment liberalism's values of overcoming differences and focusing on universal human rights and individual freedom and empowerment.
.. The intention of the speaker is irrelevant. What matters is the impact of speech. This, along with Foucauldian ideas, underlies the current belief in the deeply damaging nature of "microaggressions" and misuse of terminology related to gender, race or sexuality.
.. intense sensitivity to language on the level of the word and a feeling that what the speaker means is less important than how it is received, no matter how radical the interpretation.
.. Morality is culturally relative, as is reality itself.
.. Empirical evidence is suspect and so are any culturally dominant ideas including science, reason, and universal liberalism. These are Enlightenment values which are naïve, totalizing and oppressive, and there is a moral necessity to smash them. Far more important is the lived experience, narratives and beliefs of "marginalized" groups all of which are equally "true" but must now be privileged over Enlightenment values to reverse an oppressive
.. we are at a unique point in history where the status quo is fairly consistently liberal, with a liberalism that upholds the values of freedom, equal rights and opportunities for everyone regardless of gender, race and sexuality. The result is confusion in which life-long liberals wishing to conserve this kind of liberal status quo find themselves considered conservative and those wishing to avoid conservatism at all costs find themselves defending irrationalism and illiberalism.
.. Whilst the first postmodernists mostly challenged discourse with discourse, the activists motivated by their ideas are becoming more authoritarian and following those ideas to their logical conclusion. Freedom of speech is under threat because speech is now dangerous. So dangerous that people considering themselves liberal can now justify responding to it with violence. The need to argue a case persuasively using reasoned argument is now often replaced with references to identity and pure rage.
.. one wonders why Derrida bothered to explain the infinite malleability of texts at such length if I could read his entire body of work and claim it to be a story about bunny rabbits with the same degree of authority.
.. If I judge that tennis balls do not fit into wine bottles, can you show precisely how it is that my gender, historical and spatial location, class, ethnicity, etc., undermine the objectivity of this judgement?"
.. "When I had occasion to ask her whether or not it was a fact that giraffes are taller than ants, she replied that it was not a fact, but rather an article of religious faith in our culture."
.. There is something very odd indeed in the belief that in looking, say, for causal laws or a unified theory, or in asking whether atoms really do obey the laws of quantum mechanics, the activities of scientists are somehow inherently 'bourgeois' or 'Eurocentric' or 'masculinist', or even 'militarist.'"
.. Despite this, science as a methodology is not going anywhere. It cannot be "adapted" to include epistemic relativity and "alternative ways of knowing."
.. The social sciences and humanities, however, are in danger of changing out of all recognition.
.. Empirical historians are often criticized by the postmodernists among us for claiming to know what really happened in the past
.. Christopher Butler recalls Diane Purkiss' accusation that Keith Thomas was enabling a myth that grounded men's historical identity in "the powerlessness and speechlessness of women" when he provided evidence that accused witches were usually powerless beggar women. Presumably, he should have claimed, against the evidence, that they were wealthy women or better still, men.
.. Shakespeare's audience's would not have found Desdemona's attraction to Black Othello, who was Christian and a soldier for Venice, so difficult to understand because prejudice against skin color did not become prevalent until a little later in the seventeenth century when the Atlantic Slave Trade gained steam
.. Postmodernist thought sees the culture as containing a number of perpetually competing stories, whose effectiveness depends not so much on an appeal to an independent standard of judgement, as upon their appeal to the communities in which they circulate."
.. the far-Right is now using identity politics and epistemic relativism in a very similar way to the postmodern-Left.
.. sections of academia and of the left have in recent decades helped create a culture in which relativized views of facts and knowledge seem untroubling, and hence made it easier for the reactionary right not just to re-appropriate but also to promote reactionary ideas."
.. making itself harder for reasonable people to support.
.. we need to out-discourse the postmodern-Left. We need to meet their oppositions, divisions and hierarchies with universal principles of freedom, equality and justice.
.. We must address concerns about immigration, globalism and authoritarian identity politics currently empowering the far- Right rather than calling people who express them "racist," "sexist" or "homophobic" and accusing them of wanting to commit verbal violence. We can do this whilst continuing to oppose authoritarian factions of the Right who genuinely are racist, sexist and homophobic,
Source: areomagazine.com
Tags: alt-right, anti-science, authoritarian, democracy, enlightenment, feudalism, friedrich-nietzsche, gender, identity-politics, jacques-derrida, lgbtq, liberal, martin-heidegger, modernity, oppression, post-modern, power, racism, relativity, right-wing, sex, universal, violence


What were the top tech and Apple stories of 2011? Join Macworld Editorial Director Jason Snell and a panel of experts for a lively walk through the most important events — some obvious, some surprising — of the past year.
Got questions? Macworld has answers, and this is your chance to pick the brains of the Mac's premier publication as they sit down for an interactive session with attendees. You'll get a chance to hear the Macworld team's impressions of the latest product releases, views on the state of the Mac platform, and opinions on the industry — whatever you, the attendees, decide to talk about. (No individual troubleshooting questions, please!). Who Should Attend? Users of all levels will enjoy this Q&A session. Attendees Will Learn: Rather than a "How do you do this?" session, Ask The Editors is a "What do you think about…?" panel that lets attendees get on-the-spot answers to the questions they've always wanted to ask, from the people behind Macworld magazine and Macworld.com.
So this was the second session of this particular day with almost the exact same set of participants/panelists, except instead of riffing on Snell's top 10 stories they riffed on questions from the audience. I played with my new olloclip iPhone camera lens adapter. Fun.
A single human brain has more switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on Earth," said Stephen Smith, PhD, professor of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford Medical School. With the help of a consortium of neuroscientists from Stanford, Harvard and MIT, Smith has pioneered a method for directly observing brain circuit development, structure and function called "array tomography." By combining electron microscopy, specialized fluorescent molecules from jellyfish, high-resolution photography and massive computing power — then bringing all these components together with Mac imaging, movie, and music technologies — Smith will take the Macworld audience on a breathtaking guided tour of the most amazing computer of all — the brain.
Didn't get back from lunch in time for this one. My interest is based education theory and how humans learn, an basis that's a bit different from those interested because they might see a relationship between how computers work and how humans work. Damn.
Apple's iCloud service is great for synchronizing your contacts and appointments between your Mac, iPhone and iPad, and it lets you automatically download your iTunes music purchases to all of your devices, but it still has a few limitations. Luckily, there are plenty of options available to pick up where iCloud leaves off, including online file storage, and alternate photo and music storage solutions. Who Should Attend? Mac, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users that want to learn more about Apple's iCloud service, and the other cloud-based services they can use to get even more out of their computer and iOS gear. Attendees Will Learn: Attendees will learn what iCloud can and can't do for them, which apps and online services can sync and share files iCloud can't, how to supplement iCloud's features without spending any money, and headache-free ways to share files.


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Hendersonia culmicola är en svampart som beskrevs av Sacc. 1878. Hendersonia culmicola ingår i släktet Hendersonia och familjen Phaeosphaeriaceae.   Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Sporsäcksvampar
culmicola

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Andy Murphie Sr., DVM performing veterinary surgery at the Anderson's Corner Animal Hospital in Toano, VA.
I have been dealing with a very painful knee for many years. The first injury occurred in 1962 and there were multiple injuries since that time, during which I underwent knee arthroscopy 5 times. The discomfort had reached the level, where on several occasions while traveling with my wife and groups, our plans had to be changed, as I was unable to leave the ship or hotel room.
When my Baker's Cyst began to drain, I met with Dr. John Burrow. He addressed with me the risk I was taking for a blood clot and advised that I get a total knee replacement ASAP. While meeting with him prior to surgery, I expressed my concerns about the duration of recovery time. He explained all and advised me this would be uncomfortable, but he felt that I was motivated enough to possibly return to work in 4 weeks.
I am pleased to say–I returned to work in 2.5 weeks post-op, at which time I was able to return to veterinary surgery. I am now without discomfort in my knee. I can go up and down stairs normally alternating steps which I could not do before surgery. Also, I can stand upright from a chair normally. I cannot be more pleased with the outcome from my total knee arthroplasty.


Want to join our awesome gym by becoming a Lions Den Gym & Fitness Centre member? Awesome!
You can do that right here with our online sign-up.
Simply choose a membership option, fill in your details, make an initial payment, confirm and you're on your way.


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The Steinway & Sons Podcast
The 5 Browns
Steinway Artists The 5 Browns are five sibling pianists — Deondra, Desirae, Gergory, Melody and Ryan — who are also five Julliard-trained pianists. Their latest release on the Steinway & Sons label is Christmas with the 5 Browns. They spoke about the album to Soundboard producer/host Ben Finane — Editor in Chief at Steinway's award-winning online music magazine listenmusicculture.com — from the Steinway Factory in New York City..
'There's not a first violinist in the group.... We definitely take turns leading, whoever is leading the section or driving the tempo.'
Keep Listening...
Soundboard — Anne-Sophie Mutter
The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter discusses arts advocacy, Beethoven, John Williams, and her process behind learning new music.
Soundboard — Isaac Mizrahi
The fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi sees fashion as telling stories of women's lives. He also discusses the intersection of music and fashion, couture vs. QVC, his new concert series — and becoming himself.
Soundboard — Eric Whitacre
The Grammy Award–winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre discusses how he writes choral music — as well as his influences and technological ventures.
Soundboard — Lauren Sclafani
Steinway & Sons piano technician and audio engineer Lauren Sclafani discusses her craft.
Soundboard — Lenny Kravitz
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, rockstar and designer Lenny Kravitz reveals the inspiration for his music and for the Kravitz Grand Limited Edition from Steinway & Sons.
Soundboard — Kenneth Jones
Kenneth Jones, a New York City–based playwright, librettist and lyricist, talks about the craft of writing for the theatre.
Soundboard — Drew Magary
Writer, novelist and columnist Drew Magary talks about the twenty-first-century shift in the media landscape and the launch of Defector, a new subscription-only sports blog and media company.
Soundboard — Christopher Tin
The composer Christopher Tin, on the occasion of his latest release — To Shiver The Sky (Decca Gold) — speaks to keeping your music in listeners' ears.
Soundboard — Michael Gallant
The pianist Michael Gallant discusses how he creates solo-piano covers of rock classics.
Soundboard — Ahmad Jamal
American pianist, composer, orchestrator and educator, Steinway Artist Ahmad Jamal discusses his influences and approach to music.


Edward Carter's are proud to be the longest established family owned and run funeral directors in the Abingdon area. Serving the Oxfordshire community for so many years, the business is now run by Nigel Carter and his son Paul, helping family's with a completely bespoke service when arranging a funeral, along with a wide range of memorials to remember your loved ones by or if you are thinking about the future by way of a pre-paid plan. The history of the business goes back three generations to the early 1950's when Edward Carter became a highly respected funeral director in Oxford. Edward's proudest moment was arranging and directing Sir Winston Churchill's burial in Bladon. We cater for all requirements, arranging the details of the funeral, from the practical elements, such as coffins, hearse and limousines to the church or crematorium, along with obituary notices, flowers, receptions, catering, service sheets, music requirements and any other requests that make the funeral the personal tribute that it deserves to be. Our business logo includes the words Commitment with Compassion, which sums up our approach to ensure your loved ones have the personal and dignified arrangements they deserve. Please feel free to contact us via telephone or email with any enquiries you may have, we are always here to help.


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Public consultation to begin for Jean-Claude Juncker's roadmap for new Common Agricultural Policy
Ray Ryan reports on EU plans to discuss future CAP policies, which will help safeguard 22 million farmers and 44 million agri-related jobs.
Mon, 02 Jan, 2017 - 00:00
The European Commission has announced a roadmap to begin designing the Common Agricultural Policy of the future.
President Jean-Claude Juncker and Commissioner Phil Hogan disclosed the move at a conference in Brussels.
A wide-ranging public consultation will begin shortly with a view to publishing a document by the end of 2017.
It follows a Commission commitment to "modernise and simplify" the CAP so that it makes a stronger contribution to job creation targets and sustainable development goals in the EU.
The CAP, which has an annual €59bn budget, helps the EU to protect 22 million farmers and 44 million jobs which depend on agriculture — twice the number of employees in the European auto and aviation sectors combined.
But the Commission president said it must be simplified to reduce the administrative burden on farmers. And it must be modernised to meet 21st century challenges and must meet the objectives in sustainable development.
President Juncker said there can be no doubt that this policy must be maintained with regard to its guiding principles.
"It must, of course, be able to be adjusted or supplemented when we find faults. I have repeatedly had occasion to refer to the position of farmers in the food chain: I can't agree that the price of milk may be lower than that of water," he said.
President Juncker said that simplification and modernisation are therefore the key words and the primary objective of the Communication on the future of the CAP which the Commission plans to adopt before the end of 2017.
Commissioner Hogan said President Juncker's announcement reflects a commitment to take forward work and consult widely.
"Without prejudicing the outcome, I believe that there are a small number of key principles that should inform this important work, which will affect the life of every European citizen.
"I am convinced, based on our market experiences as well as our international commitments, that the CAP has to ensure greater market resilience, more sustainable agricultural production and progress on generational renewal," he said.
Mr Hogan said he had stressed previously stressed that the CAP needs to be "fit for purpose" to meet the challenges ahead.
"I have spent much of the past year reflecting on the early implementation of this CAP and identifying areas in which it could be improved, based on the lessons of implementation and, particularly, the crises in a number of sectors.
"As these markets recover, we must apply the lessons learned. The dependence on public intervention in the market will inevitably become more limited, but should also be more targeted and effective," he said.
Mr Hogan said while the last couple of years have been challenging, they have also shown there are opportunities for EU farmers and agri-businesses.
"Yes, the CAP makes great demands of our farmers when it comes to maintaining food safety and quality standards. We have the most stringent requirements of any agri-food system on the planet.
"And that will not change. If anything, the expectations will only become greater. Put simply, the new CAP will have to have a higher level of environmental ambition.
"And that is because it is the right thing to do. Our farmers and related actors will have to focus on the challenge and innovate as never before. But this challenge also provides huge and unquestionable opportunities for our producers.
"Because, when they start to lead from the front in terms of sustainable intensification, they will be delivering products of the highest quality with impeccable environmental credentials. That's what the market wants," he said.
Mr Hogan said the EU stands for high quality and high standards and this is a principle on which we should never waver. "There can be no question of joining any race to the bottom. Our standards are our reputation.
"In modernising and simplifying the CAP, we have a chance to shape a policy that meets the challenges of today and tomorrow," said Mr Hogan, adding that the Commission does not have a monopoly of wisdom on the ideal policy for the future.
"We want your input and active and constructive engagement, beginning with the public consultation, which I expect to launch early in the New Year," he told stakeholders.
Henri Brichart, the French vice-president of COPA, the European umbrella body for farmers, said the CAP is an essential part of farmers' lives.
"It's important that we can enter into dialogue with the EU Commission and other stakeholders on the future of it to explain the realities of farming and to ensure that measures are workable," he said Underlining the importance of farming, he said agriculture must remain a priority for the EU since it is not only important for food security but also for growth and jobs.
"Consumers need to be aware of this," he said. "It's a difficult time and farmers need a simple and stable CAP in the future, with application of common rules across the EU.
"We have many challenges — competitiveness, market volatility, sustainability — and it's important to have a CAP that provides solutions rather than problems. We need to reflect on the right tools for the future. Direct payments to farmers under the CAP must continue. We will need to have more tools in the future to help farmers better manage the risks of increasingly volatile markets," he said.
"More innovation and investment is also essential to help farmers respond to the increasing challenges."
Mr Brichart was recently elected chairman of the EU Civil Dialogue Group with a one-year mandate to help steer the discussions on the future CAP.
more CAP articles
Extra payments in 2023 for farmers who do more for the environment and climate
Call for CAP nature reform
Water charges may be capped for 10 years
Late supply bonus adds 2c at Glanbia
Relatively low uptake of Covid payments by agriculture and related sectors
Feed price rise pushes up pig breakeven price
farming newsfarmcapplace: brusselsperson: jean-claude junckerperson: ray ryanperson: presidentperson: commissionerperson: phil hoganperson: president junckerperson: hoganperson: henri brichartevent: new yearorganisation: euorganisation: european commissionorganisation: cap
Food and drink exports were resilient in pandemic year of 2020
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MORALITY AND THE LAW
Is America a "Christian nation"? Most Democrats today would probably say "no," or at least claim that America was founded as a strictly secular state. As evidence they would point to the lack of mention of God in the U.S. Constitution.
Interestingly, however, no less a Democrat than President Barack Obama observed that "our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo- Christian tradition" (The Audacity of Hope, p. 218). He noted that "Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., — indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – not only were motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue their causes" (Ibid.).
Interestingly, however, when we look at the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 it becomes apparent that there was a variety of opinion among the Founding Fathers on the matter. By far the greatest moral question facing the Constitutional Convention and the early Republic was slavery. The slave trade was still very much alive in 1787 and slavery was an entrenched institution in some states, particularly South Carolina and Georgia. The question arose at the Convention as to what to do about the importation of slaves. Luther Martin of Maryland suggested either taxing it, in order to discourage it, or prohibiting it altogether. He noted that "it was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution and dishonorable to the American character to have such a feature in the Constitution" (Madison's Notes, Aug. 21, 1787). To which John Rutledge of South Carolina replied, "Religion & humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations." Several delegates, including both Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, wanted to leave the question alone. But interestingly George Mason of Virginia, spoke out strongly against slavery, declaring that slaves "bring the judgment of heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities" (Aug. 22).
So who was right? Rutledge or Mason? Slavery remained as an American institution, and seventy years later the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, tried to settle the matter once and for all. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, writing for the majority, asserted that black people "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order . . . so far inferior, that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect." The problem, however, is that in God's sight there is no essential difference between a black person and a white person: they are both human beings created in His image. And while every human society must have its political and economic structures in order to function, no human being should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. That applies to black slaves; that applies to unborn children.
And, just as George Mason had predicted, "providence punishes national sins by national calamities." On April 12, 1861 Confederate artillery opened fire on Ft. Sumter, and the Civil War had begun. By the time it was over 620,000 soldiers on both sides were dead and the South lay in ruins.
Every civilized human society has had to struggle with the question of justice. Does might make right? To the victor goes the spoils? Or is there some universal standard of morality that governs all actions of human beings?
The question is by no means new; it faced the citizens of ancient Athens. In Plato's dialogue Gorgias there is a fascinating account of a philosophical debate in which Socrates, one of the participants, challenges the conventional attitudes of the day regarding education and politics. Is it all ultimately based on self-interest? Or should we all be pursuing a higher aim in life?
Socrates argued for the latter, but was never able satisfactorily to answer the question, where, ultimately, does this standard of justice and morality come from? He had a sense that a human being if more than just a human body, that there has to be a principle of justice that ought to govern human actions, and even that there has to be an afterlife and a final judgment. But he could not find a deeper explanation for this other than man's pursuit of happiness.
The fact of the matter is that as human beings we have the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, and we cannot avoid the moral implications of the choices we make in life. Was it wrong to drop an atomic bomb on a Japanese city? Is it wrong to take the life of an unborn child? How do we know?
None of us wants to live in a lawless society; nor do we wish to live under a human tyranny. The Christian answer is that we were created by God in His image and are accountable to Him for the way we live our lives. Morality originates with God Himself. The safest protection for our liberties is to acknowledge them as having come from God: we "are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. . ."
Filed Under: Politics / Economics, Uncategorized
Tags: Constitutional Convention : Dred Scott decision : George Mason : John Rutledge : President Obama : Socrates


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Q: How are object dependencies between static blocks resolved? I recently came across this at work. While I am not sure it is really a good idea, I don't understand how static blocks are handled by the compiler.
Here is an example:
Consider that you have classes A and B:
public class A {

    public final static List<Integer> list;
    static {
        list = new ArrayList<>();
    }
}

public class B {

    public final static int dependsOnA;
    static {
        dependsOnA = A.list.size();
    }
}

And a main class that just reads B.dependsOnA.
The static block in B is dependent of the one in A, since it uses the list static variable.
Now, the code executes properly and no NullPointerException is raised at runtime. But what is the mechanism that ensures that list is initialized before it is potentially used elsewhere?

A: The "mechanism" is the JVM's classloader, which will ensure that a class' initalization blocks are executed (with a global lock across the whole JVM) before returning control flow to where the class was first referenced. It will first load class A only after referenced, in this case when B's init block references A.list.

A: During execution of the static block of B, the runtime encounters A for the first time, and it will invoke the static block of A before it accesses A.list.

A: No matter how you write the code, a static block is a static block and it will execute as part of the JVM loading a class.
When you say B.dependsOnA, B class starts geting loaded by the JVM and the static block in B gets called somewhere during this process. When you say dependsOnA = A.list.size();, class A starts getting loaded by the JVM and the static block in A will execute somewhere during this process which initializes the list. The statment list.size() will only execute after class A has been loaded completely by the JVM. Subsequently, the JVM can only finish loading class B  after the static block in B completes.

A: This is the job of the class loader. The class loading in java starts with the bootstrap classloader. This class loader first loads all the classes in the standard java library, the rt.jar.
Then the extension classloader is invoked. This loads all the classes from the extension jar files installed in a JVM ext directory. Now finally the classpath classloader is invoked.
The classpath classloader starts loading classes from the main class, the class that has the main method defined. Once it is loaded, it executes any static initializers in that class. While in the execution of the initializer, if it encounters any class that is not loaded, it will pause the execution of the static block, loads the class first, and finally resumes the execution of that static block.
So, there is no chance that any calls to non-loaded classes to occur. Let's see this with your own example, whose code is like this:
class A
{
    public final static List<Integer> list;
    static
    {
        System.out.println("Loaded Class A");
        list = new ArrayList<>();
    }
}

class B
{
    public final static int dependsOnA;
    static
    {
        System.out.println("Loaded Class B");
        dependsOnA = A.list.size();
    }
}

Here in this example, there is actually no main method, so these classes won't actually be loaded into the memory. Suppose, let's add the following main class to the above code.
class C
{
    static
    {
        System.out.println("Loaded Class C");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        System.out.println(B.dependsOnA);
    }
}

Let's see what this would produce in the output: http://ideone.com/pLg3Uh
Loaded Class C
Loaded Class B
Loaded Class A
0

That is, first the class C is loaded, because it had the main method. Once it is loaded, the static initializer of class C is invoked. Notice, however, that the main method is invoked after the static block of class C is loaded.
Now the main method, we printed the value of dependsOnA of class B. Now, the class loader stops executing that statement, and loads the class B, and executes it's static block, which in turn, assigns the dependsOnA variable with the value of the number of elements in the list of class A, which is not loaded.
So the class loader jumps from there, loads the class now, and invokes the static block of the class A, and a list is created. Now since there are no more classes to load, the class loader comes back to the static block of class B, and assignment is complete. Now finally, the control is now with the main method, and the value of dependsOnA is printed to the console.
Hope this helps.

A: Here we have some explaination
Static Block in Java
If you call the A class first, the A static is called and A.list exists and will when B will call it.
If you call the B class first, the B static is called, cascading to the A call, calling its static block, where A.list is created.
We could see is its trickiest way:
B > B.static > A > A.static > A.list exists

A: The working is very simple JVM class loader, which will ensure that a class static blocks are executed when the class is first referenced.
1.If you have executable statements in the static block, JVM will automatically execute these statements when the class is loaded into JVM.
2.If you're referring some static variables/methods from the static blocks, these statements will be executed after the class is loaded into JVM same as above i.e., now the static variables/methods referred and the static block both will be executed.

A: The mechanism is described in detail here, but the five most important points are:

*

*Before a class is referenced, it needs to be initialised.

*If initialisation of a class has already begun (or if it's finished), it isn't attempted again.

*Before a class is initialised, all its superclasses and superinterfaces need to be initialised first.

*Static initialisers within a single class are executed in textual order.

*Implemented interfaces are initialised in the order in which they appear in the implements clause.

These rules completely define the order in which static blocks are executed.
Your case is rather simple: before you access B.dependsOnA, B needs to be initialised (rule 1), the static initialiser is then trying to access A.list, which triggers the initialisation of class A (again rule 1).
Note that there's nothing stopping you from creating circular dependencies this way, which will cause interesting things to happen:
public class Bar {
    public static int X = Foo.X+1;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println( Bar.X+" "+Foo.X); //
    }

}

class Foo {
    public static int X = Bar.X+1;
}

The result here is 2 1 because the way the initialisation happens is this:

*

*Bars initialisation begins.

*Bar.Xs initial value is evaluated, which requires initialising Foo first

*Foos initialisation begins.

*Foo.Xs initial value is evaluated, but since Bars initialisation is already in progress, it isn't initialised again, Bar.Xs "current" value is used, which is 0, thus Foo.X is initialised to 1.

*We're back to evaluating Bar.Xs value, Foo.X is 1 so Bar.X becomes 2.

This works even if both fields were declared final.
The moral of the story is to be careful with static initialisers referring to other classes in the same library or application (referring to classes in a third party library or standard class library is safe as they won't be referring back to your class).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Today morning, I was on a ground, running and just came by the side, where there are some gyming machines. I Was working out there and saw another small boy doing something there.. Just felt like talking to him and as I was speaking, he said, he is from Vadodara, they have come to put some stalls there in the ground. And he showed me his mom and dad. And I went to talk to his mom and started sharing about Jesus, she didn't even know who He was. Holy Spirit told me to tell her to call her husband and yes he came and we began to talk.
She didn't have any disease or something But we know she still needed Jesus. I began to share more with her and her husband and another old man came and sat inside the tent we were and was listening. After explaining the gospel, I invited them to recieve Jesus, all three of them gave their life to Jesus, this husband got so lost in the presence of God that I am just calling and calling him, he couldn't wake up. I patted on him and he got up with a jerk. Asked him what had happened, he said, he felt someone come inside of him, and he said, he started showing me so many beautiful places and I was lost in it, I wasn't here. This is eternal life, to know Him, that God has promised us (John 17:3).
God is doing some amazing things with me too. I shared the gospel with them and Testimonies too for almost one and half hours in Hindi which is just God. The old man was so excited to know more about God. He said, show me a place where I can know so much more about Jesus so that I can share with everyone I see.
I carry Hindi bibles, everywhere I go, so gave it to both of them. And Praise God for the people God has given us all over India. I immediately called Bro Freddy from Vadodara and connected them with him. They stay close to his house. Now after they go back, they can still connected!
Enjoying his life eternal flowing into lives and making difference! Thank you Jesus!!


Concussion expert offers advice on diagnosing head injury.
Shepherd Center's Russell Gore, M.D., concurs with FDA warning, offers advice.
According to a new warning issued last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, coaches, parents and other healthcare consumers should not rely on unapproved medical devices, including smartphone apps, to assess, diagnose or manage head injury, including concussion, traumatic brain injury (TBI) or mild TBI. Russell Gore, M.D., a Shepherd Center concussion expert, agrees with that advisory and offers advice on the use of technology to diagnose concussion.
The FDA's warning said the use of these unapproved medical devices and apps – which are often marketed to consumers – could result in an incorrect diagnosis, potentially leading to a person with a serious head injury returning to their normal activities instead of getting medical care. Typically, medical devices must be reviewed by the FDA for both safety and efficacy.
To date, there are a limited number of medical devices that have been approved or cleared by the FDA to aid in the diagnosis, treatment, or management of concussion, and all of them require an evaluation by a healthcare professional.
The FDA's warning about unapproved medical devices to diagnosis head injury says the products of concern include those that claim to assess and diagnose any changes in brain function by having an injured person perform tests on a smartphone or tablet-based app to determine a change in physical or mental (cognitive) status, including vision, concentration, memory, balance and speech.
The FDA's recommendations for consumers, parents, caregivers, and athletic coaches and trainers note that individuals should seek treatment right away from a healthcare professional if any head injury, including concussion, is suspected.
The FDA will continue to monitor promotional materials and claims about uses of these and similar products and contact companies when it sees violative practices. If the agency's concerns are not addressed, the FDA said it will consider what additional actions, including potential enforcement actions, are appropriate. The FDA will continue to monitor complaints and adverse event reports from patients, caregivers, healthcare providers and industry, its advisory said.
At Shepherd Center's Complex Concussion Clinic in Atlanta, patients receive comprehensive assessment and treatment by a team of specialists in neurology, vestibular and balance disorders, athletic training, rehabilitation medicine, neuropsychology and neurosurgery. The Complex Concussion Clinic streamlines care by providing interdisciplinary resources at a single site. The patient evaluation includes cognitive, ocular-motor, vestibular and balance testing, and, when needed, assessments with other diagnostic technologies including advanced imaging. Patients ages 12 and up can be seen at the Complex Concussion Clinic.
Have dizziness, balance problems and nausea lasting more than a few days after the injury.
Have protracted difficulty with concentration, memory, dizziness and difficulty sleeping two to three weeks after injury.
Had a prior concussion that required an extended recovery.
Have a history of migraine, attention deficits, or other learning challenges.
More information on the Complex Concussion Clinic at Shepherd Center is available here, or call 404-603-4300 or email Cheryl Appleberry at cheryl.appleberry@shepherd.org.


In your Steam library, right click on "Ginger Beyond the Crystal" and select "Properties"
In the box, type " -window-mode exclusive" and click "Ok"
If you use not steam version in desktop shortcut's properties in object field add " -window-mode exclusive" after 'ginger_btc.exe'.
Thanks Neovad - much appreciated!
Another cute game I have to buy, because it has a fix. Thanks neovad.


text:
Q: Copy-item using invoke-async in Powershell This article shows how to use Invoke-Async in PowerShell: https://sqljana.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/powershell-sql-server-run-in-parallel-collect-sql-results-with-print-output-from-across-your-sql-farm-fast/
I wish to run in parallel the copy-item cmdlet in PowerShell because the alternative is to use FileSystemObject via Excel and copy one file at a time out of a total of millions of files.
I have cobbled together the following:
.SYNOPSIS
<Brief description>
For examples type:
Get-Help .\<filename>.ps1 -examples
.DESCRIPTION
Copys files from one path to another
.PARAMETER FileList
e.g. C:\path\to\list\of\files\to\copy.txt
.PARAMETER NumCopyThreads
default is 8 (but can be 100 if you want to stress the machine to maximum!)
.EXAMPLE
.\CopyFilesToBackup -filelist C:\path\to\list\of\files\to\copy.txt
.NOTES
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
    [String] $FileList = "C:\temp\copytest.csv",
    [int] $NumCopyThreads = 8
)

$filesToCopy = New-Object "System.Collections.Generic.List[fileToCopy]"
$csv = Import-Csv $FileList

foreach($item in $csv)
{
    $file = New-Object fileToCopy
    $file.SrcFileName = $item.SrcFileName
    $file.DestFileName = $item.DestFileName
    $filesToCopy.add($file)
}

$sb = [scriptblock] {
    param($file)
    Copy-item -Path $file.SrcFileName -Destination $file.DestFileName
}
$results = Invoke-Async -Set $filesToCopy -SetParam file -ScriptBlock $sb -Verbose -Measure:$true -ThreadCount 8
$results | Format-Table

Class fileToCopy {
    [String]$SrcFileName = ""
    [String]$DestFileName = ""
}

the csv input for which looks like this:
SrcFileName,DestFileName
C:\Temp\dummy-data\101438\101438-0154723869.zip,\\backupserver\Project Archives\101438\0154723869.zip
C:\Temp\dummy-data\101438\101438-0165498273.xlsx,\\backupserver\Project Archives\101438\0165498273.xlsx

What am I missing to get this working, because when I run .\CopyFiles.ps1 -FileList C:\Temp\test.csv nothing happens. The files exist in the source path, but the file objects aren't being pulled from the -Set collection. (Unless I have misunderstood how the collection is used?)
No, I can't use robocopy to do this because there are millions of files which resolve to different paths depending upon their original location.

A: I have no explanation for your symptom based on the code in your question (see bottom section), but I suggest basing your solution on the (now) standard Start-ThreadJob cmdlet (comes with PowerShell Core; in Windows PowerShell, install it with Install-Module ThreadJob -Scope CurrentUser, for instance[1]):
Such a solution is more efficient than use of the third-party Invoke-Async function, which as of this writing is flawed in that it waits for jobs to finish in a tight loop, which creates unnecessary processing overhead.
Start-ThreadJob jobs are a lightweight, thread-based alternative to the process-based Start-Job background jobs, yet they integrate with the standard job-management cmdlets, such as Wait-Job and Receive-Job.
Here's a self-contained example based on your code that demonstrates its use:
Note: Whether you use Start-ThreadJob or Invoke-Async, you won't be able to explicit reference custom classes such as [fileToCopy] in the script block that runs in separate threads (runspaces; see bottom section), so the solution below simply uses [pscustomobject] instances with the properties of interest for simplicity and brevity.
# Create sample CSV file with 10 rows.
$FileList = Join-Path ([IO.Path]::GetTempPath()) "tmp.$PID.csv"
@'
Foo,SrcFileName,DestFileName,Bar
1,c:\tmp\a,\\server\share\a,baz
2,c:\tmp\b,\\server\share\b,baz
3,c:\tmp\c,\\server\share\c,baz
4,c:\tmp\d,\\server\share\d,baz
5,c:\tmp\e,\\server\share\e,baz
6,c:\tmp\f,\\server\share\f,baz
7,c:\tmp\g,\\server\share\g,baz
8,c:\tmp\h,\\server\share\h,baz
9,c:\tmp\i,\\server\share\i,baz
10,c:\tmp\j,\\server\share\j,baz
'@ | Set-Content $FileList

# How many threads at most to run concurrently.
$NumCopyThreads = 8

Write-Host 'Creating jobs...'
$dtStart = [datetime]::UtcNow

# Import the CSV data and transform it to [pscustomobject] instances
# with only .SrcFileName and .DestFileName properties - they take
# the place of your original [fileToCopy] instances.
$jobs = Import-Csv $FileList | Select-Object SrcFileName, DestFileName |
  ForEach-Object {
    # Start the thread job for the file pair at hand.
    Start-ThreadJob -ThrottleLimit $NumCopyThreads -ArgumentList $_ {
      param($f)
      $simulatedRuntimeMs = 2000 # How long each job (thread) should run for.
      # Delay output for a random period.
      $randomSleepPeriodMs = Get-Random -Minimum 100 -Maximum $simulatedRuntimeMs
      Start-Sleep -Milliseconds $randomSleepPeriodMs
      # Produce output.
      "Copied $($f.SrcFileName) to $($f.DestFileName)"
      # Wait for the remainder of the simulated runtime.
      Start-Sleep -Milliseconds ($simulatedRuntimeMs - $randomSleepPeriodMs)
    }
  }

Write-Host "Waiting for $($jobs.Count) jobs to complete..."

# Synchronously wait for all jobs (threads) to finish and output their results
# *as they become available*, then remove the jobs.
# NOTE: Output will typically NOT be in input order.
Receive-Job -Job $jobs -Wait -AutoRemoveJob
Write-Host "Total time lapsed: $([datetime]::UtcNow - $dtStart)"

# Clean up the temp. file
Remove-Item $FileList

The above yields something like:
Creating jobs...
Waiting for 10 jobs to complete...
Copied c:\tmp\b to \\server\share\b
Copied c:\tmp\g to \\server\share\g
Copied c:\tmp\d to \\server\share\d
Copied c:\tmp\f to \\server\share\f
Copied c:\tmp\e to \\server\share\e
Copied c:\tmp\h to \\server\share\h
Copied c:\tmp\c to \\server\share\c
Copied c:\tmp\a to \\server\share\a
Copied c:\tmp\j to \\server\share\j
Copied c:\tmp\i to \\server\share\i
Total time lapsed: 00:00:05.1961541

Note that the output received does not reflect the input order, and that the overall runtime is roughly 2 times the per-thread runtime of 2 seconds (plus overhead), because 2 "batches" have to be run due to the input count being 10, whereas only 8 threads were made available.
If you upped the thread count to 10 or more (50 is the default), the overall runtime would drop to 2 seconds plus overhead, because all jobs then run concurrently.
Caveat: The above numbers stem from running in PowerShell Core, version on Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit; Version 1903), using version 2.0.1 of the ThreadJob module.
Inexplicably, the same code is much slower in Windows PowerShell,  v5.1.18362.145.

However, for performance and memory consumption it is better to use batching (chunking) in your case, i.e, to process multiple file pairs per thread.
The following solution demonstrates this approach; tweak $chunkSize to find a batch size that works for you.
# Create sample CSV file with 10 rows.
$FileList = Join-Path ([IO.Path]::GetTempPath()) "tmp.$PID.csv"
@'
Foo,SrcFileName,DestFileName,Bar
1,c:\tmp\a,\\server\share\a,baz
2,c:\tmp\b,\\server\share\b,baz
3,c:\tmp\c,\\server\share\c,baz
4,c:\tmp\d,\\server\share\d,baz
5,c:\tmp\e,\\server\share\e,baz
6,c:\tmp\f,\\server\share\f,baz
7,c:\tmp\g,\\server\share\g,baz
8,c:\tmp\h,\\server\share\h,baz
9,c:\tmp\i,\\server\share\i,baz
10,c:\tmp\j,\\server\share\j,baz
'@ | Set-Content $FileList

# How many threads at most to run concurrently.
$NumCopyThreads = 8

# How many files to process per thread
$chunkSize = 3

# The script block to run in each thread, which now receives a
# $chunkSize-sized *array* of file pairs.
$jobScriptBlock = {
  param([pscustomobject[]] $filePairs)
  $simulatedRuntimeMs = 2000 # How long each job (thread) should run for.
  # Delay output for a random period.
  $randomSleepPeriodMs = Get-Random -Minimum 100 -Maximum $simulatedRuntimeMs
  Start-Sleep -Milliseconds $randomSleepPeriodMs
  # Produce output for each pair.
  foreach ($filePair in $filePairs) {
    "Copied $($filePair.SrcFileName) to $($filePair.DestFileName)"
  }
  # Wait for the remainder of the simulated runtime.
  Start-Sleep -Milliseconds ($simulatedRuntimeMs - $randomSleepPeriodMs)
}

Write-Host 'Creating jobs...'
$dtStart = [datetime]::UtcNow

$jobs = & {

  # Process the input objects in chunks.
  $i = 0
  $chunk = [pscustomobject[]]::new($chunkSize)
  Import-Csv $FileList | Select-Object SrcFileName, DestFileName | ForEach-Object {
    $chunk[$i % $chunkSize] = $_
    if (++$i % $chunkSize -ne 0) { return }
    # Note the need to wrap $chunk in a single-element helper array (, $chunk)
    # to ensure that it is passed *as a whole* to the script block.
    Start-ThreadJob -ThrottleLimit $NumCopyThreads -ArgumentList (, $chunk) -ScriptBlock $jobScriptBlock
    $chunk = [pscustomobject[]]::new($chunkSize) # we must create a new array
  }

  # Process any remaining objects.
  # Note: $chunk -ne $null returns those elements in $chunk, if any, that are non-null
  if ($remainingChunk = $chunk -ne $null) {
    Start-ThreadJob -ThrottleLimit $NumCopyThreads -ArgumentList (, $remainingChunk) -ScriptBlock $jobScriptBlock
  }

}

Write-Host "Waiting for $($jobs.Count) jobs to complete..."

# Synchronously wait for all jobs (threads) to finish and output their results
# *as they become available*, then remove the jobs.
# NOTE: Output will typically NOT be in input order.
Receive-Job -Job $jobs -Wait -AutoRemoveJob
Write-Host "Total time lapsed: $([datetime]::UtcNow - $dtStart)"

# Clean up the temp. file
Remove-Item $FileList

While the output is effectively the same, note how only 4 jobs were created this time, each of which processed (up to) $chunkSize (3) file pairs.

As for what you tried:
The screen shot you show suggests that the problem is that your custom class, [fileToCopy], isn't visible to the script block run by Invoke-Async.
Since Invoke-Async invokes the script block via the PowerShell SDK in separate runspaces that know nothing about the caller's state, it is to be expected that these runspaces don't know your class (this equally applies to Start-ThreadJob).
However, it is unclear why that is a problem in your code, because your script block doesn't make an explicit reference to you class: your script-block parameter $file is not type-constrained (it is implicitly [object]-typed).
Therefore, simply accessing the properties of your custom-class instance inside the script block should work, and indeed does in my tests on Windows PowerShell v5.1.18362.145 on Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit; Version 1903).
However, if your real script-block code were to explicitly reference custom class [fileToCopy] - such as by defining the parameter as param([fileToToCopy] $file) - you would see the symptom.

[1] In Windows PowerShell v3 and v4, which do not come with the PowerShellGet module, Install-Module isn't available by default. However, the module can be installed on demand, as described in Installing PowerShellGet.


The MA in Gender Culture and Society is a one-year programme offered by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
To facilitate students in gaining an in-depth knowledge of how gender relations have operated inthe past and the present the ways in which the categories 'women' and 'men' are differentiated, for example, via notions of masculinity and femininity representations of women's lives and experiences in the areas of literature, media and organisations feminist research and theory gender, inequalities and multiculturalismsTo facilitate learning and personal educational development by offering a range of teaching and assessment approaches and tutorial supportTo provide a sound basis for moving from an academic setting into different areas of the labour force by helping students to identity the transferable skills gained during the MA programme.
A primary degree in any discipline with first or second class honours or an approved equivalent qualification. An equivalent capability based on prior professional experience at the discretion of the admissions subcommittee.