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Komsakulturen är en omdiskuterad benämning på arkeologiska fynd från den norska och ryska ishavskusten, de äldsta daterade till den tid då merparten av norra Skandinavien var täckt av inlandsis. Fynden har gjorts från Tromsø i väster till Kolahalvön i öster, en kuststräcka som blev isfri långt före inlandet. Under början av 1900-talet framfördes teorier om att människor överlevt istiden i området, men moderna forskare framhåller likheterna med Ahrensburgkulturen i norra Tyskland och tror att området koloniserades från sydväst under istidens slutskede.

Utforskning och kännetecken
Benämningen Komsakulturen användes först av arkeologen Anders Nummedal i ett foredrag han höll 1926. Han använde den inte utan brukade andra namn som Finnmarkskulturen, Finnmarksfunnene, Le Finnmarkien och så vidare.

Några år senare hittades fler boplatser i Finnmark, och de publicerades i verket Le Finmarkien, skrivet av Nummedal och Johannes Bøe 1936. Här tolkar de fynden så att komsakulturen har ett östligt ursprung, och att det rör sig om en särskild invandring strax efter istiden och som har kommit till Nordnorge över nuvarande Finland och Ryssland. Detta grundade de på att motsvarande stenåldersplatser mellan norra Tromsø och södra Helgoland saknas. De menade också att komsakulturen snabbt upphörde, och att detta förklarades av att denna kultur fick svårigheter med att anpassa sig till ett varmare klimat.

Kulturen blev omdiskuterad från första stund. I synnerhet pekades på att om invandringen hade kommit från öster, borde det vara möjligt att finna boplatser också längs den väg människorna skulle ha följt. Det visade sig vara svårt att hitta väldefinierade boplatser från denna tid i Finland och norra Ryssland.  Likaväl blev begreppet komsakulturen använt, om än motvilligt, av några forskare till slutet av 1980-talet. Då kom benämningen kritiseras kraftigt från flera håll, och det  resulterade i att begreppet i dag är praktiskt taget försvunnit i facklitteraturen. Kritiken utgick från att nyare forskning har påvisat stora olikheter i materialet från området. Dessutom är det nu påvisat ett stort antal stenåldersboplatser, också från pioniärtiden i hela det området som Bøe og Nummedal menade var fyndtomt. Och inte minst: Genom att bruka samlingsbegreppet komsakultur, ger man ett intryck av att det är tal om en statisk arkeologisk tillstånd i området, och det är helt  felaktigt.

Beteckningen komsakultur användes därefter främst i diverse populärvetenskapliga sammanhang men blir nog allt eftersom sällsyntare även på detta området.

Diskussionen om Komsakulturen i Fornvännen 1929-1930
I Fornvännen 1929 i artikeln Ett nordskandinaviskt paleoliticum?  skriver Gunnar Ekholm om Nummedals fynd av Fosna och Komsa. Ekholm skriver att dateringar är oklara och att enighet bara nåtts att de är av maglemoseålder men att Nummedals  datering till Magdalénien är felaktig. Han beskriver teorin om en invandring från öster. Ekholm beskriver fynden som primitiva och grova. Likheten med paleolitiska fynd gäller bara den generella slagtekniken. Klara typer är inte paleolitiska utan mesolitiska till exempel pilspetsar, skivskrapor samt skivyxor. Ekholm ser detta som ett tecken på att kulturen kommit söderifrån. Han ger förslaget att Komsafynden är en nordlig utlöpare av Fosnafynden. Han påpekar att denna Fosnakultur av Therkel Pedersen förklarats som en "reflex" av Sydskandinaviens flintcivilisation. Edholm skriver:  Komsakulturen skulle sålunda intaga samma ställning till Sydskandinaviens mesolitiska flintkultur, som den förr såsom "arktisk" betecknade skifferkulturen till dess neolitiska. I båda fallen har motsättningen mellan Syd- och Nordskandinavien sin grund i det olikartade stenmaterial, som kommit till användning. Översättningarna av de södra landsdelarnas flintformer ha ej alltid kunnat bli ordagranna. Ekholm ser fram emot naturvetenskapliga dateringar av fynden.

I Fornvännen 1930 i artikeln Noen bemerkninger om Komsakulturen svarar Anathon Bjørn på Ekholms artikel:

Han urskiljer tre kronologiska stadier i Komsakulturens utveckling som vart och ett har sina särdrag. De ligger på olika höjdnivåer. Dessa faser kallas Porsanger-, Tollevik och Berlevågstadiet. Björn hänvisar till olika avhandlinger där han behandlat detta. Äldsta Porsangerstadium utmärker sig med en rad stora och primitiva former såsom coup-de-poings og Lovallois-skraperc och att man har använt kvarts.Yngre intryck gör fynden från Tolleviksstadiet som i mycket representerer en typisk spånkultur och framförallt har många sticklar av varierande form samt spetsaroch en rad mindre former.  Levalloisskrapor (benämningen är tagen från en tidig mellanpaleoltisk tid) förekommer men inte så ofta. Däremot finns flera skivskrapor. Dessa redskapsformer är tillverkade av dolomitflinta. Berlevågstadiet har kvar de viktigaste av formerna från Tolleviksstadiet, doch med färre sticklar  men man har utvecklat nya former och skivavslagen är ganska allmänt förekommande. De redskapen är en vidareutveckling av Tolleviksstadiets primitiva avslag.

Han avslutar med: Betraktet som helhet kan det om Komsakulturen sis at den begynner med en utpreget makrolitisk industri men efterhvert optar i sig eller solv utvikler en rekke småformer uten at dog det makrolitiske preg trer i bakgrunnen. Og videre er saerlig den eldre Komsakultur preget av en eiendommelig blandning av gammel- og ungpaleolitiske former, et forhold av störste betydning når vi söker efter forutsetningerne for hele kulturformen.

Som klart framgår vill Björn föra fynden till paleolitiskt tid och jämför också med mycket gamla tidig- och mellanpaleolitiska fynd. Senare värderingar av forskare har vad gäller dateringarna klart varit för Ekholms dateringar.

Dateringar
De äldsta fynden från Finnmark verkar vara från preboreal tid fynden anses vara som äldst från omkring 8000 före vår tideräkning och de yngsta brukar anses vara från början av yngre stenålder ca 3500 . Fynden är dock inte enhetliga. De många variationerna i fyndmaterialet och den långa tidsperioden gör att arkeologerna inte längre anser att det är relevant att tala om en "kultur".

Förbindelser med andra områden
Det finns stora likheter mellan Komsafynden och de fynd som gjorts längre söderut vid den norska kusten, mellan Bergen och Trondheim, den så kallade Fosnakulturen. Det har föreslagits att båda fyndområdena i själva verket ingår i samma helhet.

Graham Clark skriver i The Earlier Stone Age Settlement of Scandinavia (sid 201) att Nummedals upptäckt 1909 av flintansamlingar i höga terränglägen vid Kristiansund (Fosna) var första ansatsen till att förståelse att Norge var bebyggt före Nöstvedkulturens tid. Sedan arkeologkongressen i Oslo 1936 då man hittat 60 boplatser i Finnmark hade fyndmaterialet fördubblats 1966. Han hänvisar till Odner Komsakulturen i Nesseby og Sør-Varanger som källa för det och anför att man nu också hittat platser i Sovjetunionen öster om Finnmark. På sidan 208 skriver han om vackra tångepilspetsar av Ahrenburgstyp som finns på Fosna och Komsa bosättningar och på Hardangervidda. Han jämför också med polska spetsar men inverterad retusch och slutligen med material från svenska västkusten Djupedal (Fredsjö 1953) och Ahrenburgsspetsar i Hensbackakulturen. Han föreslår förklaringen att man följt renen norrut men att den bara fanns på fjällvidderna och att om man vill stanna vid kusten tvingades man övergå till fiske, fågelfångst och att jaga havsdäggdjur. (sid 208).

Arkeologiska lämningar indikerar att befolkningen var havsorienterad och levde huvudsakligen på säljakt och att de var goda båtbyggare och fiskare. I jämförelse med de söderut i Norge samtida Fosnafynden av närbesläktad kultur verkar stenverktyg och andra redskap vara grova, råare. Detta förklaras av bristen på flinta i området.

Oftast sågs dessa tidiga bosättningar vid norra Norges kust att ha sitt ursprung på västra och sydvästra kusten i Norge, och att de kan spåras till den paleolitiska Ahrensburgkulturen i nordvästra Europa. Invandringen tänks ha följt den norsk kustlinjen följande den minskande inlandsisen mellan 11 000 och 8000 före vår tideräkning öppnades nya områden för bosättning. Före detta trodde man att inflyttningen till viss del kom till Finnmark från nordöst från Kolahalvöns isfria kust.

Finska fynd tyder på invandring också från Ryssland
Nyare arkeologiska fynd från finska Lappland tolkades inledningsvis 2004  som inlandsfynd av Komsakulturen lika gamla som de äldsta fynden från norska kusten. Detta material anses nu  ha anknytning till den samtidiga  Post-Swiderianska kulturen i norra centrala Ryssland och östra Baltikum och alltså representera en separat tidig invandring i norra Skandinavien.

Nyare tolkningar av forskarna indikerar att ett antal av de kustboplatser vid Varangerfjord som tidigare har förts till andra fasen av Komsa snarare representerar en tidig bosättning från sydöst (nordvästra Ryssland) och kan relateras till tidigt Post-Swiderian inflyttande som först upptäcktes i norra finska Lappland.

Äldre svenska bosättningar med oklart ursprung
Åren 2000 till 2010  hittades mycket gamla boplatser med fynd av renben i Norrbottens län. Ungefär samtida med boplatsen i Kangos, eller något senare, är den vid Dumpokjauratj i Arjeplogs kommun. Dessa boplatser  har det gemensamt att de tillkommit kort efter att inlandsisen drog sig tillbaka från nordost. De sydligare delarna av Norrland var då fortfarande täckta av is eller låg under vatten, vilket innebar att landförbindelse saknades med södra Sverige.

De mycket gamla lämningarna vid sjön Dumpokjauratj i Arjeplogs kommun har föreslagits komma från sentida ättlingar till de människor som levde i norska Finnmark. Den tidigaste kolonisationen av nordligaste Sverige skulle alltså ha skett från norr. Lämningarna vid Dumpkojauratj är från en mesolitisk bosättning som har daterats till tidsperioden 8630±85 B.P. (ca 7800 f.Kr.), inte långt efter att inlandsisen drog sig tillbaka från området. Att döma av benmaterial på boplatsen var ren det viktigaste bytesdjuret.

I Aareavaara, Pajala  kommun, hittades 2009 lämningar som bedöms vara 10 600 år gamla, samtida eller äldre än de äldsta fynden från Finnmark. Knappt fyra mil västerut, i Kangos hittades en liknande boplats  tusen år yngre.  En invandring från nuvarande Finland, med koppling till den ryska Butovokulturen är också tänkbar.

Forskningsöversikt
Alma Elizabeth Thuestad ger i sin magisteravhanling En romlig analyse av tidlig eldre steinalderlokaliteter i Vest-Finnmark og Troms en god sammanfattning av forskningen över Finnmarks äldre stenålderskultur. Denna sammanfattas i korthet nedan.

Uppfattningen i arkeologiska kretsar under 1900-talets början var att de nordskandinaviska området var sent befolkade utkantsområden. I Finnmark blev sedan äldre stenålder ett ämne som väckte stort intresse. De första Finnmarkslokalerna  hittades på strandterrasser vid Tollevik (I og II) och Stenseng (I og II) i närheten av Komsafjället.

Från 1925 till 1939 arbetade Nummedal med fältundersökningar i Finnmark. De flesta boplatserna saknade spår efter bostäder och eldstäder. Platserna identifierades genom en ansamling av stenmaterial på markytan. Genom registrering, ytfyndsinsamling och utgrävning samlade Nummedal in ett betydande arkeologisk källmaterial. Detta material kom i 1930-talets arkeologiske debatt att relateras till  benämningen Komsakultur.

Det som diskuterades på 1930-talet var frågan om människornas ursprung och när de hade bosatt sig på Finnmark. Komsakulturens ålder uppskattades med strandlinjedatering  och typologisk datering. När strandlinjedatering används som  metod för tidsbestämning av förhistoriska lokaler är tanken att strandnära bosättning påverkas av strandförskjutning och flyttas nedåt i terrängen om havet sjunker i nivå. Lokaliteters relativa höjd över havet uppfattades som en indikation på högsta ålder för möjlig bosättning. Man utgår från att lokalens placering står i samband  den samtida havsnivån. Detta skulle idag innebära att likåldriga bosättningar skulle idag återfinnas på vissa höjdkurvor i terrängen. Nummedal använde denna typ av datering under sina fältarbeten. Kustbundna boplatser behöver inte alltid placeras i omedelbar närhet av havet så det finns en påtaglig felkälla i denna dateringsmodell.

Dateringsbara artefakter var viktiga i diskussionen om Komsakulturens upphov. Det arkeologiske materialet från bosättningar i Finnmark jämfördes med olika tidsperioder på typologiska grunder med material från andra platser med känd ålder i södra Skandinavien och Västeuropa. Nummedal hävdade inledningsvis att typologiske element från franskt paleolitikum fanns i redskapsformer och i stenbearbetning  i materialet från platserna i Alta på Komsafjället. Han ville datera materialet till paleolitisk tid.

Övervintringsteorien stod botanisten Rolf Nordhagen för. Nordhagen menade att isfria områden längs norska kusten gav förutsättning för levnadsmöjlighet för djur och växter.. Nordhagen föreslog att en kustkultur med paleolitiska drag hade bebott Norges västliga och nordvästliga kust under istiden. Komsakulturen var alltså en kvarleva från Västeuropas paleolitikum. Mårten Stenberger recenserade boken i Fornvännen 1934. Recensionen var uppskattande och berömde boken för att den klargjorde de geologiska förutsättningarna för landskapsutvecklingen under istiden.  Inte desto mindre kom Övervintringsteorin snabbt att överges i den arkeologiske debatten

De flesta forskarna trodde på att människorna hade  invandrat till Finnmark efter sista istiden (exempelvis Bjørn 1928, Bøe & Nummedal 1936, Gjessing 1941). Frågan var från vilket område och vilken väg man hade kommit dit. Väsentligen diskuterade man möjligheten av en östlig invandring eller en sydvästlig  invandring. Nummedal var för en anknytning till västeuropeiska områden på 1920-talet.  I Le Finmarkien lutade man mer åt området i öst och söder om Östersjön.(Odner 1966: sidan 12). Bjørn argumenterade för inandring från nordost från det centralasiatiske området.. Gutorm Gjessing visar på  likheter i materiell kultur när han tror att Komsakulturen kom österifrån  in i Finnmark Annorlunda var det med icke norska forskare som anknöt Fosna och Komsafyndet till mesolitiska traditioner i södra Skandinavien.

Poul Simonsen
Det senare arbetet med äldre stenålder i Finnmark måste relateras till Povl Simonsens ooh Knut Odners forskningar. Simonsen arbetade främst med yngre stenålder, men med sina omfattande undersökningar i Pasvik vid Varangerfjorden, på Sørøya och i Altas vattenområde behandlade han också äldre material. Omkring 1960 hade man funnit 80 lokaler med äldre materia i Finnmark. De  var med få undantag öppna platser med ytansamlingar av artefakter på ytan över större område. Simonsen menar att det inte är säkert varifrån de första inflyttarna kom. De kan ka följt norska kusten eller kommit från inlandet ner till Varangerfjorden, men han menar att en invandring från sydöst är mest sannolik. (Simonsen 1994: 174-175).

Klas Odner
Komsakulturens kronologi och upphov togs åter upp Odner 1966 med stöd i materialet från Varangerområdet. På grundval av typologiske analyser och boplatsernas topografiska placering ser Odner på Komsakulturen som ett utskott från Fosnakulturen (Odner 1966 sidan 132). Sannolikt är äldsta datering omkring 8000-7000 f.Kr (Odner 1966 sidan136).  Sedan 1990-talet återges ofta Hein Bjercks syn att det var en snabb förflyttning norrut längs Norska kusten i preboreal i tid (1994: 46).

Odners forskning visade på en säsongsflyttning mellan inner- och ytterfjorden i Varanger. Han arbete börjar med undersöka lokalernas storlek och placering i förhållande till säsongens resurser. Storleken uppskattades med antal fynd per lokal. Odner fann stora lokaler i inre fjordområdet och små ut mot kusten. Detta såg han  indikationer på basboplatser i det inre fjordlandskapet och mindre fångststationer ute i kustbandet. Odner liknar detta vid den moderna befolkningens flyttmönster i området. Bosättningsmönstret var mobilt med årstidsflyttningar styrda av områdets resurser. Bosättningarnas läge och flyttningar har senare behandlats i flera sammanhang av olika forskare.

Efter Woodman ändrat forskningsfokus
Tidig äldre stenålder var  i Finnmark dominerande forskning fram till mitten av 1960-talet, då fokus istället blev yngre stenålder (Schanche 1988:sidan 100). I slutet av 1980-talet  ändrades intresset igen till äldre tid. Materialet hade nu växt som en följd av  systematisk registrering av fornminnen för det Ekonomisk Kartverket som började på 1960-talet. Materialet växte också till följd av forskningsprojekt (Grydeland 2005 och Schanche 1988) och vid exploateringar.

Komsakulturen var den länge betäckningen på den tidiga bosättningen i Finnmark. 1980-talets  kritik mot begreppet Komsakultur var hård. Problemet var att en 5000 år lång bosättning och kulturhistoria där Komsakulturen  beskrivs som ett enhetligt komplex (Olsen 1994: 23). Komsakulturen beskrevs som om det bestod av en samling litiska bestånd från öppna lokaler längs Finnmarkskusten.. Artefaktbeståndet sågs som ett resultat av en konservativ redskapskultur med stora, grova stenredskap.

Peter Woodmans artikel The Komsa Culture ändrade perspektivet på begreppet Komsakultur och relationen till äldre stenålder i Finnmark. Hans genomgång av  material från utvalda Komsalokaler ledde till slutsatsen att om begreppet Komsakultur skall användas är det för att  beskriva en preciserad samling av artefakter såsom tångespetsaer, skärredskap och skivyxor som är knutna till en bestämt kronologisk fas som tar slut för cirka  8500 år sedan.

Woodman delade Nordnorges mesolitikum (Komsakultur)  i tre distinkta faser. Den tidigaste kallades först Komsafasen av Woodman, men har i Norge döpts om till helt enkelt Fas 1. (Olsen 1994). Denna daterades till10 000 - 8 500 BP av Woodman och till 10 000–9 000 BP av Olsen. Dn andra fasen kallades Sæleneshøgda fasen av Woodman och förenklades senare till Fase II. Woodman daterade början till 8 500 BP utan att ge slutdatum men accepterade senare Olsens begynnelsedatum på 7 500/7 000 BP för Fase III, som ursprungligen kallades Trapets fasen av Woodman (Woodman 1992, 1999)

Kjersti Schanche
Kjersti Schanche är central för senare års studier av äldre stenålder i Finnmark (inte Komsakultur!). I Schanches magistergradsavhandling Mortensnes - en boplass i Varanger. Et studie av samfunn og materiell kultur gjennom 10000 år. visar att fynden är mer än öppna lokaler  på Finnmarkskusten. Schanches målsättning var att belysa förändringar i kulturen, bosättningsmönster, resursutnyttjande, sociale relationer och samarbetsformer (Schanche 1988: 3). Mortensnes ligger på norra stranden av Varangerfjorden. 1988 hittades 34 tält eller husgrunder som låg på flera fält som med strandlinjedatering daterades till tiden 9000 BP och 6000 BP. Från äldre stenålder fanns öppna boplatser men också tufter (huslämningar) från äldre stenålder och Schanche kunde visa att äldre boplatser i detta området är material med stor variation som har förändrats över tid och vars bosättningsmönster varken är statiskt eller likriktat.  Schanches (1988) modell visar en successiv förändring från mobilt till ett fast flyttningsmönster inom ett områd..I äldsta tid var bosättningarna mobila. Under tidens gång har bosättningar blivit alltmer fasta och att man har återvänt till samma platser under bestämda tider av året(Schanche 1988: 163-164). Parallellt med detta menar hon att huskonstruktionerna har blivit mer solida. (Schanche 1988: 144).

Bjarne Olsen
En del av Schanches resultat kan återfinnas hos Bjarne Olsen. I motsats till Odner framhäver Olsen (1994: sid 36-37) förändringar över tiden.. I tidig äldre stenålder präglas bilden öppna lokaler utan synliga strukturer. Bosättningsmönstret har hög rörlighet med  säsongsflyttningar i kustområdena (Olsen 1994: sid 38). Under äldre  stenålder  börjar man att utnyttja  av inlandsområdet mera. Huslämningar i materialet ser han som större bofasthet eller fastare flyttvanor. (Olsen 1994: 38). I slutet av  äldre stenålder  etableras inlandsbosättningar. Olsens hypotes är att samhället med hög rörlighet hade territorier organiserade runt vattendrag (Olsen 1994: 40). På kustnära lägen är boplatserna mer mobila men man har mer fasta säsongplatser.

Komsakulturen och samerna
Under första halvan av 1900-talet menade språkforskaren K.B. Wiklund att samernas särskilda "antropologiska typ" måste ha utvecklats under en längre period av isolering från andra folkgrupper. Komsakulturens och Fosnakulturens mycket gamla lämningar, som tydde på att människor hade kunnat övervintra vid havskusten under istiden, passade bra in i den teorin. Wiklund tyckte sig även se tydliga antropologiska likheter mellan den nutida samerna i norr och befolkningen inom det område där Fosnakulturens fynd påträffats.  Denna teori byggd på rasargument har övergivits av forskningen men det finns fortsatt försök att anknyta samerna till dessa tidigare boplatser.

Finskspråkiga wikipedia har en källa som anger att det finns genetiska spår i östra Finland från tidiga Finnmarks gener i den samiska populationen.

Se även
Hällristningarna i Alta
Samernas historia

Litteratur
 Clark, Grahame (2009) The Earlier Stone Age Settlement of Scandinavia (Cambridge University Press)
 Hansen, Lars Ivar and Bjørnar Olsen (2004) Samenes Historie: Fram til 1750 (Cappelen Akademisk)
 Olsen, Bjørnar (1994) Bosetning og samfunn i Finnmarks forhistorie (Universitetsforlaget)

Referenser

Stenåldern
Arkeologiska kulturer
Norges förhistoria
Europa under 7000-talet f.Kr. (millennium)


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Orioles minor league recap 9/13: Bowie drops pitchers' duel, falls behind in series
Baysox drop 2-1 decision to Trenton to fall behind 2-1 in Eastern League final; must-win Game 4 on tap today.
By Drew Bonifant Sep 13, 2019, 8:00am EDT
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Photo by Daniel Kucin Jr./Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The Bowie Baysox were looking for the upper hand in the Eastern League finals. Their pitchers did well enough to get it.
But on Thursday night, Trenton's were just a little bit better.
The Thunder's three-hitter trumped Bowie's six-hitter, and a seventh-inning run lifted Trenton to both a 2-1 win and a 2-1 lead in the teams' best-of-five series.
It'd be hard to put this defeat on the pitchers. Alex Wells, who was 8-6 with a 2.95 ERA during the regular season, was terrific, as was Steven Klimek. Wells went the first seven innings and allowed the two runs on six hits while striking out eight, and Klimek tossed two scoreless frames in relief.
But the Bowie bats were silent against Clarke Schmidt, who got the start and fanned nine in 4.2 innings while allowing two hits and one run. After James Reeves got a strikeout, Michael King pitched the remaining four innings and dazzled as well, allowing one hit, two walks and no runs while striking out five. Bowie hitters struck out 15 times in the game.
Trenton took the lead in the second, with Chris Gittens connecting for a leadoff home run on the second pitch of the inning.
Bowie drew even in the fifth. With one out, T.J. Nichting walked and then advanced to second on a groundout. That brought up Cedric Mullins, and on a 3-1 pitch the outfielder ripped a line drive to right field for one of his two hits, scoring Nichting and tying the game at 1.
Trenton took a page from old-school baseball for its go-ahead run. Hoy Jun Park singled to lead off the seventh, and then went to second and third on singles by Gittens and Isiah Gilliam that loaded the bases with no outs.
The Thunder had a golden opportunity, but appeared to be squandering it when Wells battled back to strike out Kyle Holder and then Angel Aguilar to come within one out of an escape. He never got it. Wells went up 1-2 on Brian Navarreto when Park broke for home, taking advantage of the fact that the lefty Wells had his back to third base. Park got in safely, putting Trenton ahead 2-1 on a steal of home.
Bowie was held scoreless in the last three innings, turning Park's go-ahead run into the winning tally.
Still, the Baysox had a couple of chances to get the one run that could have made this an opposite outcome. The first came in the opening inning, after Mullins singled to lead off the game and stole second after the next two batters were retired. Carlos Perez had a runner in scoring position but popped out instead, ending the threat right there.
The second chance came in the seventh, when Bowie was trying to respond to Trenton's go-ahead run. Mason McCoy drew a one-out walk and then took two bases one out later on a Preston Palmeiro single to center. Runners were at the corners, but Bowie again couldn't get the big hit as Mullins picked a bad time for his only out of the game and went down on strikes.
Bowie won't have to wait for its chance to pull even in the series again. The teams are back at it for Game 4 today, with a first pitch scheduled for 7:05 p.m. Tyler Herb (8-10, 5.82 during the regular season) will get the ball for Bowie, while Trenton's starter will be determined later since King pitched tonight.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Angus ricompare a sorpresa…per una promozione calcistica!
You are here: Home / News / Angus ricompare a sorpresa…per una promozione calcistica!
Ecco un simpatico Angus riapparire per un'insolita promozione "calcistica", in occasione del match tra Fortuna Düsseldorf e Eintracht che si terrà in data 30 Novembre. Il chitarrista infatti, nel breve video che riportiamo qui sotto, dichiara sorridente: "Mi piace il Fortuna Düsseldorf più dell'Eintracht, perchè è Rock'n'Roll. Super!".
Angus Young compie 60 anni!
il video non si vede..dove posso andare per vederlo????
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Camera FV-5 Pro is One Of The Best Camera app for Android . It's a professional camera application for mobile devices, that puts DSLR-like manual controls in your fingertips. Tailored to enthusiast and professional photographers, with this camera application you can capture the best raw photographs so that you can post-process them later and get stunning results. The only limit is your imagination and creativity!


On the eve of the NATO-Russian meeting in Lisbon and following the G 20 gathering in Seoul, policy makers are looking with emphasis, to the US Modern Grand Strategy which managed to impose itself, as a conduit for easing international relations.
Nato can be at a new dawn where under the same umbrella, a Nato West and a Nato East, will project cooperation for the best interest of humanity, hence perform attention to pacific areas and to the near "Intermarrium" abroad.
From here partnering between the US/EU and Russia from one side and concerting relations between the US and China to generate a dual engine for economic growth from another, are two pillars for the 21st century peaceful performance.
While transition is supreme until a better framework is developed and defined for international trade, education exchange, immigration fluxes and global security; it is inevitable that priorities should be set.
From above food provisions, aid delivery, energy security, currency oscillations, finance regulations, reformed governance, are all actual requirements in our contemporary world.
Data about the economic recovery will fluctuate and sentiments will be subject to ups and downs, yet without optimism in US consumer spending and increase in Chinese spending it is widely accepted that the economic comeback will lag and be threatened by either inflation or deflation.
Analysts share the need to rebalance international economies, however in doing this, the need is to recover the US market and simultaneously create other growth hubs, especially in China and India.
This will naturally affect the geopolitics of the land mass area stretched between China and Portugal. The US policy acting as ballerina will spur the recovery and reduce the debt, open to immigration, focus on education, integrate with Russia, concert with China, establish a stable rotation in government in Iraq and facilitate the "Jirga Governance" in the Afghanistan theater.
The US will enforce the mechanism to change the attitude of the Iranian guards; it will broker the talks between Israel and the Palestinians and project international cooperation on tense fronts. Be these the Korean Peninsula, the African Continent, Guinea , Madagascar, or the Thai kingdom.
This policy will be implemented faster if coupled to an enforced role of balancing nations like, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt, Canada, Japan, India, Turkey, Cuba, Norway and Lebanon.
Efforts in the coming decade will focus on rebalancing international economies and currencies, where the formula is to have both US and Chinese consumer spending; manufacturing and employment at satisfactory levels.
Whenever US lawmakers will agree on the recipe for growth and extend Tax and regulation holidays for start-ups, introduce a 4 % flat VAT on all items under USD 100, allow further immigration to reach 450 million inhabitants by 2050/2060, reduce the long term assistance to unemployment up to a maximum of 20 weeks, the outlook for the economy will shine.
Much will be left to be done such as defining a plan to transform public waste into wealth and expand exports in goods and services. Furthermore investment in infrastructure, education and human resources and the gradual plan to reduce national debt without affecting the recovery.
As much as the new START treaty needs to be passed in both chambers hopefully by the end of the year with a bipartisan wise action.
Rumors are spreading about a US – Israeli understanding to freeze partially the settlements in exchange for some assurances, in order to reactivate talks with the NPA, and this is a very good thing.
We need to see a Syrian position versus peace clarified after the announced Israeli withdrawal from Northern Gajar, so that both nations Israel and Syria can reach out in direct talks in Paris early next year.
Whenever there will be no advance this will deteriorate the stability and complicate further the geopolitical environment, widening the probability for strife and ultimately of a major war.
The evolution in the Five plus One talks with Iran will seek a new accord to impede any military use of nuclear power, as much as peace talks will define an interim Federal Palestine and the successful international effort to achieve justice in Lebanon, will be all pivotal, to synchronize the Chinese advance in Middle Eastern Affairs to be acting in tandem with international efforts to stabilize and ensure progress in the oil rich territorial area.
In the "Third Dynamic" and in "The Crossroads" I elaborated about factors and dynamics influencing world affairs, and the requirement to put the third dynamic under strict control, and to avoid any halt to the march of justice in Lebanon.
While observers agree that no party has any interest to start a conflagration, it is expected that the indictment of the STL will be announced and that the reaction of the accused will not exceed rhetoric. In fact any wise calculation of benefit and loss will decisively not alter the acting formula before the trial will stand and the verdict issued.
And even then, when the verdict is known, it is doubtful in front of the Sudanese example that a major event will change the Lebanese status quo. Pessimist observers and verbal threats will not succeed to stop the work of the STL, and the indictment will be announced as much as the trial and the verdict will be accomplished.
The solution is not to threaten Lebanon, rather to bring to justice the perpetrators , but in the same time to create a mechanism of salvation " A commission for Prosperity and truth " that will look into the crucial topics of the cedar nations and will seek rapprochement and harmony between all communities. A regeneration of State Affairs is much on demand, approval of the budget, setting a policy for reforms and route map for jobs creation.
Lebanon 's place is to become a pole for conventions specialized in Liquids ( water, beer, vodka, whiskey, wine, Oil, etc…), Banking, Aesthetics, Pharmaceutical and inventions.
The IRGC, the Syrian regime and Hezbollah can operate in darkness but they will fail to affect the events ahead. The military build up and power accumulated will oblige them to think twice before unleashing a conflict or to surrender in case of it.
Two red lines exist and these are the security of the state of Israel and the sovereignty, democracy and independence of the Lebanese state and its capability to exert a monopoly of coercion and activate a doctrine of defense to reach permanent and just peace with all its neighbors including Israel.
The Lebanese state is not a pariah rather a full expression of auto-determination of a civil society and its future will not be played by armed gangsters.
Violence and peace always differ, but with a heavy price and toll for both, be this of destruction or construction.
Any strategic error to start the HOSTILITIES will expand into its effects to a very wide area. In any case this will not alter the US geopolitical perspective to impede Iran from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons and to exert diplomatic restraint in the Iraqi and Af-pak theaters.
All Lebanese parties should relax to the STL indictment to be announced in the first week of December, and must work to instate a "Commission for Progress and Truth" and find a compromise enabling the accused to be detained for a certain period, and to pay a material sum to have the pardon for their murderous action in killing so many innocents and politicians. Furthermore the focus must concentrate on evolving the state of Lebanon to become a Tourism example and an engine for growth.
This is possible if justice will pinch or soupcon an accepatable outcome for the citizenry.
There will be no "Casus Belli", simply because who will dare to change the equation will need to face the reaction expected in two phases.
The first will be slow and intense, issuing alerts and warnings, and the second after assessing the situation will give the green light for a major military invasion that will be overwhelming, disproportionate, decisive, aggressive, fast, very powerful, incisive, unrelenting and irreversible.
Hezbollah will lose once and for all, and the IRGC will have less influence in the whole area. Syria will stand idle even after bombing all Hezbollah targets inside its territories to erase the lines of supply.
The International community will broker the "Commission for Progress and Truth" as much as it did with the STL for the benefit of freedom, democracy and liberal markets and thoughts.
Whenever Hezbollah will gamble, the alliance between the West/Israel/Gulf Countries/Lebanon and Syria will oblige the IRGC to lose an important card to save the regime itself from perishing.
The Syrian commander in chief has no other choice than to align himself with the alliance and work hard to find diplomatic solutions, for the benefit of all parties. Palmyra and Akkar will both become hubs for alternative energy to provide electricity and water to an ever increasing population and consumer spending.
Peace will prevail defended by a formidable armada and an extraordinary display of power, diplomacy and intelligence.
The indictment will pave the way for the tribunal to issue its verdicts and the compromise will be to reach peace for all, as there is no alternative to this than a war that will allow Israel to use Lebanese offshore fossil hydrocarbons.
Charities will play a significant role to impede war, and whenever an armed conflict can not be impeded then these will help to rebuild the damages and to express post-bellum sound governance.
The area can grow and seek a common currency between Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Iran and the GCC nations, confluent into the Unity of the Mediterranean or it will become a theater for strife and interminable conflict.
Following the last G20 meeting and the expected and upcoming NATO-Russian meeting, observers can easily affirm that the US Modern Grand Strategy based on a unique partnership with the EU and Russia and concerted relations with China is already bearing its fruits, meager and not.
Easing international relations and amplifying areas of cooperation in different sectors from trade, education, immigration, security and extending to food, aid, energy, currency, finance, reformed governance, is a requirement and a necessity in our contemporary evolving world.
Latest diffused data show some optimism in consumer sentiment in the US, and this is a welcomed indicator, although it can not affect the results of the mid term elections.
In truth a co-habitation will emerge and this will, contrary to perceptions, reinforce in my view the US market and world economy.
While analysts can agree with the need to rebalance international economies, not to heavily rely on one engine and market, it is widely accepted that in the coming decade recovery/growth can emerge mainly from the US and it will be a synonymous to acquiring a major boost for peace efforts and to project soft/hard power.
From here balance in the US domestic politics will be a stabilizing factor albeit charged with verbal debate and political polemics.
How geopolitics between China and Portugal, will react is unknown.
Yet it is very rational to sum-up the US policy acting as a ballerina, to perform at best to avoid clamorous fall downs.
The US needs more than ever to recover its own economy, open to immigration, integrate with Russia, entice China to concert, secure energy routes, establish a Maliki/Allawi rotation in unity government in Iraq and help create a rotating unity "Jirga Governance" in Afghanistan.
But it needs also to act swiftly and decisively to change the attitude of the Iranian guards, resolve the Israeli Arab conflict and project international cooperation. Assuming that easing tensions in the Korean peninsula is an acquired achievement in the US foreign affairs thoughts, an innovative sunshine policy should be in the making. This has to be coupled to exerting global guidance in synchrony to balancing nations, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt, Canada, Japan, India, Turkey, Cuba and Lebanon.
A wide and global effort directed to generate vision and to implement unison policies.
While efforts in the coming decade will focus on rebalancing international economies and currencies, expectation is high that global trade will inevitably witness a growth and an increase in output and in consumption.
The requirement for a healthy growth is a task of every responsible citizen. However this can be possible only if sources of energy are delivered to economies to generate international peace. The formula is to have both US and Chinese consumer spending; manufacturing and employment at satisfactory levels.
My hope is that after Mid term, US lawmakers will agree on the recipe for growth and extend Tax and regulation holidays for start-ups, introduce a 4 % flat VAT on all items under USD 100, allow further immigration to reach 450 million inhabitants by 2050/2060 and reduce the long term assistance to unemployment up to a maximum of 20 weeks.
Furthermore define a plan to transform public waste into wealth, expand exports in goods and services. Invest in infrastructure, education and human resources.
Finally elaborate the rational plan to reduce debt gradually, without affecting the maneuver of recovery.
But my concern is if the global dynamics will enable above policies to be applied.
Risks are many starting from the necessity for Israel to ally Likud & labor with Kadima, halt settlements and exert a major flexibility in talks with the NPA, and for Syria to opt irreversibly for peace and chose the West as a sincere partner.
Furthermore both nations will need to reach out in direct talks. I imagine notables Moratinos, Blair, Mitchell, Suleiman, Lavrov and Sarkozy to stand in a joint conference with Assad where he will announce his unequivocal determination to become a peace maker in the ME and a consequent direct meeting Assad/Netanyahu to follow in Paris.
Failure to advance with concrete steps in the right direction will leave the citizenry subject to hazardous winds that might well alter the stability and complicate further the geopolitical environment, pronging conflict and instating strife and ultimately war.
Positive steps can be the evolution in the US parley/covert action with the IRGC, a breakthrough in peace talks with Federal Palestine, a successful international effort to achieve justice in Lebanon, a Syrian decisive embrace to a new future, a Chinese financial role to pursue a dual track with the US enforcing world order.
In the Third Dynamic I explained about different factors governing world affairs today, and elaborated to a certain extent about the dangers, where I prospected the third velocity to obscure if not suppress the movement of the rest during a conflict and a devastating impact.
We all know that no party has any interest to start a conflagration, but perpetrators can not hope that crimes and skeletons will be simply put in the closet.
And here the indictment of the STL rivets a major importance because it represents the pendulum of intentions either for western culture or for fomenters of death.
The solution is not to threaten Lebanon.
The regime in Syria must know that it has to take a decision and this is either for peace and with a sovereign Lebanon, or for war and against Lebanon.
The IRGC and Hizb can manipulate at will, yet they need to know that the modularity, velocity, flexibility, build up and power accumulated so far and still in process, will oblige them to surrender and to demise.
Objective analysts can forecast future projection scenarios, however there are irrevocable lines and these are the security of the state of Israel and the sovereignty, democracy and independence of the Lebanese state and its capability to exert a monopoly of coercion and activate a doctrine of defense.
Hope and hostility will always differ, but under no circumstance their interaction will change the US geopolitical perspective to impede Iran from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons and to exert diplomatic restraint in the Af-pak Theater.
Although the STL indictment expected to be issued immediately after 25 November, is considered to be the trigger for a remarkable "Casus Belli", it is also fairly objective to consider the maneuvers played by the perpetrators, to be laying in agony in the courtyard of determination and resolute attitude.
Those who will start the conflict in Lebanon will lose with certitude.
The military reaction and the pace of operations are expected to be overwhelming, disproportionate, decisive, aggressive, fast, very powerful, incisive, unrelenting and irreversible.
Hezbollah will be eradicated as a military extension, and the IRGC will be decimated and this will portray on the China/Portugal mainland/landmass a major favorable impact for the decades to come.
The perimeter of the battle will be only in Lebanon, (as if it expands to Syrian territory and/or to a strategic/tactical bombardment of Iran) its conduct (initiative and pace) will be unprecedented and the outcome will definitely cause the end of the actual impasse in oppressive regimes seeking only survival.
The rules of engagement and the extension/linearity/modeling of action will be set by the international community, for the benefit of freedom, democracy and liberal markets and thoughts.
While no plan of battle will match the outcome, it is safe to consider that the alliance between the West/Israel/Gulf Countries/Lebanon and at the last minute Syria will oblige the IRGC to desist before committing any strategic mistake.
The Syrian commander in chief will ponder a decision if to throw his nation into chaos or to accept the STL and make a just peace with Israel where lots of terrain near Palmyra, will produce enough energy for an ever increasing population in number and in consumer spending.
Peace will prevail defended by a formidable armada and an extraordinary display of power.
We are at a crossroads, the indictment will seek a peaceful dismantling of Hizb military assets, and whenever this will not occur, the day after, will resemble to an epic tragedy.
Diplomats, Charities and NGO's will have a major role in rebuilding the damages and in expressing sound governance.
The only possible future for the area is to grow and to approve a common currency between Lebanon/Jordan/Iraq/Syria/Turkey/Israel/Egypt/Iran and the GCC nations, where failure to oversee this framework will plunge all of humanity into a bad formula.
The bad formula will substitute praise to good actions, by indifference to assassinations and to expanding totalitarian regimes devouring universal rights.
The review of the US modern Grand Strategy, successfully expressed, by partnering with Russia and concerting with China is widely accepted within the community of analysts as the excellent tool for global governance.
The US unique partnership with the EU and with Russia can only benefit cooperation between powers in an era of peace and stability. However, also the empowerment of the US/Sino and Asian/Sino relations will be useful to act as a multiplier to relaxed international relations.
Although the global citizenry knows very well that a lot of work should still be done, from widening international trade, boosting common defense and replacing visas by a modern ticket as an expression of friendly borders. And of course securing energy, ensuring water & food, ending with international solidarity versus natural calamities, non proliferation of mass destruction, weapons and UN reforms.
It is understood that a basic requirement to apply the Modern Grand Strategy is to recover the US economy. In this intent the filtered ideas seem incapable to gather bipartisan consensus, thus enabling lawmakers to act swiftly on short and long term basis.
My expectation is still that a compromise will be reached for an extension to Tax cuts, and for an effective aid to start-ups in extending funds and easing of regulations. While it is less secure that from one side government income will increase by the introduction of a 4 % Flat VAT and from another expenses will decrease by reducing to 20 weeks wrong and very long assistance to labor.
Open policy for immigration and education still needs to be implemented to reach a target of 450 million inhabitants by 2050/2060. An adequate rational plan will eventually change public waste into wealth, expand exports in goods and services and invest in infrastructure.
Coupling Modern Grand Strategy to US economic recovery is a main engine for peace in considering geopolitical issues from China to Portugal.
Acting as a ballerina, The US will recover the US economy, integrate with Russia, concert with China, secure energy routes and stabilize Iraq through an actively help to establish a democratic government. It will also entice a diplomatic Jirga with rational factions in Afghanistan, change the Iranian attitude versus the nuclear file, resolve the Israeli Arab conflict and widen international cooperation. Ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula by exerting patient restraint,and perfect global guidance in synchrony with balancing nations Turkey, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt, Canada, Japan, Cuba and India.
From above, we can presume that some powers will undertake willingly or unwillingly policies leading to relent if not oppose the perspective of US guidance to peace. Based on the historic record of international relations, the modern grand strategy (MGS) will expand the area of peace and common interests although stiff opposition will survive.
The recent reprisal of peace talks in the Middle East is the window from which we can best describe the interaction between hope and intransigence. In fact from the US geopolitical perspective, the policy is to partially contain Iran while simultaneously moving forward national unity governments in Lebanon and Iraq. Evidently it will try to actively entice Syria by decoupling it from Iran and by helping it to set a new course. But it will apply also counterinsurgency coupled to diplomacy in the Afpak Theater.
To show its strength it already set military bases surrounding Iran and displayed a defensive/offensive build up together to strong sanctions. The ultimate objective is to pressure the Iranian regime to cripple, implode and thus to negotiate the terms of its surrender/demise.
While this approach is slowly working, it is not a perfect solution nor a winning strategy to reach out to both the Iranian mainstream and to Israeli security.
A thorough analysis will reveal three different movements, the first will eventually lead to a deal cut between Iran and the US , the second will eventually accelerate the preemptive blitz and the third will consist in drawing an always moving red line enabling Iranian influence to test western resolve.
The complex interaction between the three movements above already generated a perfect house of falling cards. The reason for this is simple.
At first the deal/parlor between the US and Iran will never bring any final framework of understanding, rather it can probably advance small deals a' la Contras.
Secondly the preemptive action either started by Israel or by the US cannot guarantee a credible day after scenario. In fact even if Israel will succeed to erase Hezbollah assets and manage to change the cards in hand of the Iranian Guards, or if the US will disarm the guards from the Hormuz option by a strategic/tactical bombardment that will pulverize the Iranian state, there is no certitude that military contingencies will sufficiently stabilize the Eurasian landmass.
Thirdly the Iranian expansion of influence will always move slightly and surely the red line of western resolve, by acting silently and covertly to shake the fundamentals of the modern world order.
In front of the impasse, ongoing drills and enduring tension rising here and there, every now and then, I see the need for a game changer. This is a new Russian role in world affairs.
If it is true that the USSR was dismantled after the fall of the communist regime, it is also true that Russia is hardly expressing an understandable political role today.
The intricacy of the Russian approach seems to me difficult to understand and I believe the chess heroes are wrong.
Assuming a US / Iranian rapprochement will lead to a grand bargain, Russian interests will not benefit.
Assuming also that Israel or the US will apply coercion and erase Iranian assets, Russian interests will not benefit.
Assuming again that Iran will test western resolve by expanding its influence, Russian interests will not benefit.
Hence, Russia is at a crossroad in international relations, as much as China is at a crossroads in financial relations. China started trading the Yuan for Malaysian currency and soon also for the ruble. Russia by contrast needs to do something in the political field to generate peace and effectiveness.
Russian policy makers need to reflect and realize that they are entitled to become masons of the house of stable cards, by cementing international relations and evolving their diplomatic status to a leading international power, rather than applying old bad policies.
Russia needs to integrate with the EU and the US fast and to cooperate with the US strongly acting as a game changer to world affairs.
The upcoming period can be either full of suspense and intrigue leading to a disaster or it can be smooth and surprising where Russian political and monetary integration with the west will advance peace in the world.


Thomas Bayes vs. Sherlock Holmes: The Case of Who's Laughing Now?
While at home over the holidays, my parents (mom's a huge British mystery fan) rented Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes (it's pretty good if you like that sort of thing). That got me thinking about my favorite fictional detective, Encyclopedia Brown. Combined with my love of Martin Gardner's mathematical games column in Scientific American, I thought a little puzzle might be in order.
Here's my first attempt — it could use some help in the story part. Or is this just too undigified for a textbook?
The Case of Who's Laughing Now?
Mr. and Mrs. Green had very different senses of humor and somewhat distinctive laughs. Only one of them ever laughs at a time. But they both laugh by saying "hee" or "haw", sometimes using a mix of the two sounds in succession, such as "hee hee haw hee haw". Over time, Sherlock has observed that when Mr. Green laughs, 20% of the utterances are "hee" and 80% are "haw"; Mrs. Green is more ladylike, with 60% "hee" and only 40% "haw".
One day, Sherlock was walking by the Green house, and heard the laugh "hee haw haw" from a window. He had no knowledge of whether Mr. or Mrs. Green was more likely to be laughing, but knew it had to be one of them.
What odds should Sherlock post to create a fair bet that the laugh was Mr. Green's?
I did mention naive Bayes, didn't I?
This entry was posted on January 7, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Carp's Blog, LingPipe in Use.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
How about using Bayes' Theorem to prove that God exists?
I knew about Pascal's decision theory arguments (aka Pascal's Wager), but not Bayes's.
I'd hate to be arguing about priors in a theological context!
My first year at Edinburgh Uni (1984/85) I lived in the international dorm, which is next to New College, the seat of Presbyterianism. Bayes and I pounded the same pavement!
Given that you haven't specified the priors on each person laughing, we're left with just choosing the person based on the product of the probabilities of the (assumed independent) observations.
So the odds for the Mr are 12:8 == 3:2 (since he's the underdog).
As you'll see in the next post, there's a mistake in Rich W's calculation that I just copied over; it should be .2*.2*.8=16/125, making the result a bit more intuitive.


text:
Lionello Manfredonia (ur. 27 listopada 1956 w Rzymie) – piłkarz włoski grający na pozycji defensywnego pomocnika lub libero.

Kariera klubowa
Manfredonia urodził się w Rzymie. Piłkarską karierę rozpoczął w tamtejszym klubie S.S. Lazio. W 1975 roku włączono go do kadry pierwszej drużyny, a 2 listopada zadebiutował w Serie A w zremisowanym 1:1 meczu z Bologną. W pierwszym składzie Lazio zaczął jednak grywać w następnym sezonie - 1976/1977. Grał nie tylko na pozycji środkowego pomocnika, ale czasem ustawiano go na stoperze lub libero. W 1977 roku zajął z Lazio 5. pozycję w lidze, ale w kolejnych sezonach były to pozycje w środku tabeli ligowej. Skandalem zakończył się sezon 1979/1980, gdy wykryto tzw. aferę Totonero, związaną z ustawianiem meczów w zakładach bukmacherskich. Zarówno A.C. Milan, jak i Lazio, zostały karnie zdegradowane do Serie B, a Manfredonia wraz z klubowym kolegą Brunem Giordano został zdyskwalifikowany na 2 lata. Do gry powrócił w sezonie 1982/1983 i przyczynił się do wywalczenia wicemistrzostwa Serie B oraz powrotu "biancocelestich" do Serie A. W Lazio spędził kolejne dwa lata, jednak w 1985 roku przeżył kolejną degradację do drugiej ligi. W rzymskiej drużynie rozegrał łącznie 201 spotkań i strzelił 8 goli.

Latem 1985 Manfredonia odszedł do Juventusu, zdobywcy Pucharu Mistrzów. Jako gracz pierwszego składu osiągnął swój największy sukces w karierze, którym było zdobycie mistrzostwa Włoch. W mistrzowskim sezonie Lionello rozegrał 23 spotkania. W 1987 roku Juve nie obroniło mistrzostwa (straciło je na rzecz SSC Napoli), ale zajęło 2. pozycję w lidze. Latem Manfredonia został zawodnikiem AS Roma. W swoim drugim rzymskim klubie w karierze spędził trzy sezony. W 1988 roku zajął 3. lokatę w Serie A, co było jego największym sukcesem w barwach "giallorossich". W 1990 roku zakończył karierę.

Kariera reprezentacyjna
W reprezentacji Włoch Manfredonia zadebiutował 3 grudnia 1977 roku w wygranym 3:0 spotkaniu z Luksemburgiem. W 1978 roku został powołany przez Enza Bearzota do kadry na Mistrzostwa Świata w Argentynie, na których był rezerwowym i nie rozegrał żadnego spotkania. W "Squadra Azzurra" wystąpił 4 razy.

Reprezentanci Włoch w piłce nożnej
Piłkarze S.S. Lazio
Piłkarze Juventus F.C.
Piłkarze AS Roma
Uczestnicy Mistrzostw Świata w Piłce Nożnej 1978
Urodzeni w 1956
Ludzie urodzeni w Rzymie

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA) is a Government Component within the Ministry for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. This initiative is an integral part of the Department of Cooperative Governance's programme towards improving municipal infrastructure provisioning and maintenance in line with the objectives of Local Government Turnaround Strategy. MISA's primary function is to support municipalities in planning, development and management, operations and maintenance as well as building technical capacity for effective delivery and management of municipal infrastructure.
Purpose: The purpose of the MISA Internship Programme is to provide interns with practical work. This programme is designed for unemployed youth graduates who have completed their tertiary studies and who have not been an intern in the Public Service.
A minimum of a 3-year diploma/degree or N6 qualification.
Applicants should be within the age of 18-35 years of age.
Applications must be submitted on the Z83 form (download here), obtainable from any Public Service department, and should be accompanied by copies of qualification(s), Identity Document (certified within the past 3 months), a comprehensive CV, indicating 3 reference.
Applications may also be hand delivered to: MISA Offices, Riverside Office Park, Letaba House, 1303 Heuwel Road, Centurion 0046.
Enquiries: Mr James Chaitwa, tel. (011) 234-8650 Closing date: 22 July 2014.
Important: Applicants who have previously been on an Internship Programme in any Government Department will not be considered for this Programme. Only one programme must be attached to each CV in line to your field of study. This is a 12-month programme.


Life is challenging because... that's life. It's what it does to enable us to grow and develop. Sometimes, however, the challenges may appear too big or just overwhelming. It's at these times it's good to look at what's happening (or not happening) and find a way to unstick the self from the situation it has gotten itself into.
In working with me, you will be guided through the minefield of the mind to untangle the knots those thoughts can tie you in.
If you have something worrying you but not able to identify what the problem is or unable to move on from it, talking about it can bring the worry into focus and enable you to name it. Using language to name and identify brings the unseen into the seen. Sometimes just the seeing allows it to dissolve as you let go.
Just know, you're not alone in this. You just think you are. If you have a 'problem' there are many others with very similar problems. The only difference between them and you is that you've decided you've had enough and want to do something about it.
If you would like to explore counselling, please give me a call to discuss your situation and if counselling is appropriate for you. It is also possible to use a mix of counselling and hypnosis.


Creating and maintaining a fantastic garden isn't the easiest thing in the world to do for any of us.
A lot of hard work goes into making this a place where flowers can bloom and where a beautiful lawn looks right at home.
Yet, there are some very useful accessories and add-ons that can lift your garden onto the next level effortlessly. Why not give a few of the following items a try and see how much they improve your garden and even your lifestyle?
If you have a pond in your outdoor space then adding a pump will enhance it greatly. For a start, this will help you to keep the water clean and fresh, meaning that you can add fish if you want to.
Many pumps also come with a fountain feature that lets you add some excitement with an easy water feature that looks great and adds a peaceful atmosphere too. They don't cost much and you can even chose from tiny, solar powered models if you don't have a lot of room.
Forgetting to water your plants or using the wrong amount of water are among the most common gardening mistakes. A reliable irrigation timer will help you to cut out this risk at a single stroke.
These accessories are typically small and very easy to use, with a range of settings that can be quickly programmed to meet your needs. There are numerous models to choose from and you certainly won't spend a fortune on it.
The addition of outdoor lighting can transform your garden into a space that you can finally use after dark. If you like the idea of eating outdoors, reading a book in the garden or having a party then this is an essential add-on.
If you don't get to get involved with messy wiring installation then you can opt for solar-powered lights. You will be amazed at how this simple change allows you to use your garden more often and for a greater variety of things.
A garden arch can be a lovely, decorative feature that becomes a highlight of the property. However, it would be wrong to suggest that it doesn't have any practical functions too.
One of the great things about an arch is that it gives you an easy way to add climbing plants or eye-catching flowers. If you choose a big model then you should have enough space to put a seat or bench in the shade below it too.
If your garden doesn't have a table and chairs in it then you are missing out on the chance to enjoy a different kind of dining experience. This is a great place to eat together as a family or when you have friends round.
Getting out of the house to eat in the fresh air can work wonders when it comes to improving your mood too, and it might even encourage you to eat more healthily. You might also find that it quickly becomes your favourite part of the whole property for you to eat every meal in.
Adding somewhere to be active in your garden is a great way of making it more useful. If you can't find the inspiration to go to the gym then maybe you will enjoy working out here far more.
Of course, you can tailor this area to your own needs and wants. This means that it could be a tennis court, an outdoor home gym or even just a pull-up up bar or something else simple that you can use whenever you want to.
If mowing the lawn is one of your pet hates then perhaps you need an auto mower to help out. This is a sort of bot that you can set and then wait while it trundles off to do its job.
With this approach, getting a perfect looking lawn every time will be completely effortless. You can then enjoy doing other stuff while forgetting all about carrying out this task.
We mentioned earlier about how to make watering easier with a simple irrigation timer. Well, using an auto reel with a long hose is another smart way of doing this. In this way, you can reach every part of even the biggest garden without getting the hose all tangled up and twisted. Watering your garden becomes a lot simpler when you can very easily get out the hose and then store it away again at the end.
Enjoying a prettier and more useful garden isn't as difficult as you might have think. Try out a few of these add-ons and you will be delighted to see how they make spending time outdoors even more enjoyable.
Simon is a gardening expert who has discovered that the likes of best water irrigation timers have made life a lot easier.


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Numlock Sunday: Surya Mattu and Aaron Sankin on the perils of crime prediction algorithms
Dec 12, 2021 • 31M
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Numlock News is a daily morning newsletter that pops out fascinating numbers buried in the news, highlighting awesome stories you're missing out on. Every Sunday, Walt Hickey interviews someone cool. Sometimes he records it in quality befitting a podcast.
Welcome to another Numlock Sunday podcast edition!
This week, I spoke to Surya Mattu and Aaron Sankin, who wrote Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them for The Markup. Here's what I wrote about it:
An analysis of 5.9 million crime predictions from a company called PredPol — predictions that informed policing in multiple cities across the country, affecting something like one out of every 33 Americans from 2018 to 2021 — found that the recommendations appear to be lousy with racial bias, persistently recommending increased patrols in neighborhoods with higher percentages of Black and Latino residents, with some neighborhoods seeing multiple crime predictions per day. Even when crime predictions targeted a majority-White neighborhood in the Northridge area of Los Angeles, it clustered those forecasts on the Latino blocks. The most-targeted neighborhoods were 28 percent more Black, 16 percent more Latino, and 17 percent less White than the overall jurisdiction. The efficacy of these programs is suspect, as there's no vetting if the predictions actually bear out, or any report when a crime prediction software leads to charges. Critics allege the software is little more than "bias by proxy," offering a justification to over-police certain areas with a vague algorithmic justification.
This is an incredibly well-reported story, and shines a light on how software that attempts to predict crime can unintentionally come bundled with a bunch of racial biases.
We talked about how exactly they managed to report this out and how The Markup is able to use data to bring accountability to new technology that hasn't been adequately vetted.
Mattu and Sankin can each be found on Twitter, there's a bunch of data for this story they've uploaded to GitHub if you're interested in getting hands on with it, you can read more about how they pulled this off here, and the story is over at The Markup.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
You two wrote a really fantastic story over at The Markup, you're both data reporters over there so you were really in the weeds on this one. It's all about crime prediction software, and some of the issues inherent therein. Can y'all tell me a little bit about crime prediction in general? Are police offices really using software to try to predict crimes before they happen?
Aaron Sankin: Our story was looking at a particular piece of crime prediction software called PredPol. And the way that PredPol works is that it ingests crime report data, which is information that comes from if someone calls an 911 saying, "My car was broken into." Or if a police officer is driving around and they see someone in the act of breaking into a car and arrest them. So all of that crime report data then gets fed into an algorithm that is inside of this system that was devised by PredPol. And from there, it points on a map the locations where and when they think that crime of this particular type is most likely to happen.
And then from there, the idea is that you can direct an officer while on patrol to go to that area, and either by their sheer presence will dissuade criminals from offending in that area, or they will catch them in the act. And that is effectively how this system that we looked at works. There are other predictive policing systems that are more person-based, looking at who might either commit a crime or become a victim of a crime. But the things that we were looking at are very tightly focused on this kind of location-based type of prediction.
Y'all obtained just a wild set of data, something like 5.9 million crime predictions. What was it like to work with that? And what format did they come in? Like, how'd you even embark on this?
Surya Mattu: We had 5.9 million predictions that we used for this analysis. But actually the data that our colleague on the story, Dhruv Mehrotra, found on the internet was more than that. It was actually around 8 million predictions across 70 different jurisdictions, including some really interesting ones. Like I found some data from Venezuela and Bahrain, which didn't make it into the story, but that was what he found. All of that data, by the way, is on the GitHub repository that goes with this, there's a link in our methodology to the data if anyone wants to play with it. The raw data itself came to us in the form of HTML files, it was about, I forget how many gigabytes, but many, many gigabytes of just raw HTML that we then had to parse and write parsers to convert into spreadsheets that we could then use for analysis.
Just kind of taking a step back to the final story in which you ended up finding, algorithms are oftentimes sold as impartial ways to understand the world, but your report really found that that's not the case at all. That the human biases of the people who design the algorithms kind of make it into the final data. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you found?
Surya Mattu: What we basically found was that across 38 jurisdictions that we looked at, the software disproportionately targeted low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods. And we define proportionate here as compared to those jurisdictions overall. That obviously comes with caveats, such as crime isn't spread equally across a place. It happens at specific locations and all of that. But what we found was that this underlying trend did exist in the data we had.
The reason it was important, we thought, to do this analysis and present it this way is because as you said, we wanted to just prove definitively that with real world data, people can't say that algorithms aren't racist because they're not looking at certain types of data such as demographics. The point we were trying to make is that that will be reflected in the outcome of software, even if you don't include it, because as you said earlier, the systemic bias is kind of embedded within the input data that's going into these algorithms.
Aaron Sankin: I think that's a really important point that Surya makes about the issues around the input data. Because PredPol's algorithm, because the founders of the company are academics, they had disclosed previously just the core of their algorithm in an academic paper that they published a number of years ago. The inputs to this do not specifically mention race, they don't mention income. The inputs to the system are just the crime reports. And what they take away from a crime report is really just the type of crime, the time it happened and the location. And that's it. The issue here is essentially, what is creating this kind of disproportionate skew targeting these certain neighborhoods?
It is based around, what is going in, what inputs are coming into those crime reports. We can talk a little bit about the issues of input data affecting an algorithm, but you have things like fundamentally different rates of crime victimization in different neighborhoods. You have issues around, as you know, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has found repeatedly that Black and Latino and low-income people tend to report crimes at higher rates than white and higher-income people. And also issues around feedback loops, where if there are officers in a particular area, they're more likely to see crimes in the areas where they patrol.
And then because of that, they see those crimes, they identify the crimes and then the crime report data then comes back from that, comes back into the system. There's a lot of different things that are all working together here. But I think it's also important to say that, all of this stuff can happen in systems that are facially neutral about this.
I think a big takeaway for this story for me is that this system, PredPol, is intended to take away the opportunity to have individual biases of a police officer affect where they patrol. You could say, yes, you're concerned about individual police officers saying, "I want to patrol the Black neighborhood or Latino neighborhood. And that's where I'm going to spend all my time." And this system is intended to kind of circumvent that in a lot of ways. But at the same time, because the input data is what it is, you're then going to get potentially very similar results to if you just had a police officer going on their own kind of biases and history and common sense and experience.
That feedback loop seems like a big problem. Because again, if it's designed to subvert the desire to over-police different areas, but it's based on the fact that people are already over-policing specific areas, that seems like it's kind of a key issue here.
Aaron Sankin: Yeah. A kind of caveat here, and Surya can go into this because he did a lot of this data work, is that fundamentally what we were looking at is the algorithm, right? We were looking at these inputs and outputs because it was really difficult for us to get a handle on how this was being used by individual police departments, right? That was a question that we asked to all of these departments that were in analysis, we're like, "How did you use it?" And we had a lot of variance. Some departments were like, "Yeah, we use it all the time." And other departments were like, "We hardly use this at all, even though we're paying for it."
But at the same time, we had specifically asked all of the police departments, "Had this system directly led to arrests? Can you recall any specific time where PredPol said, there was going to be a crime here, and then you went to that area and then you made an arrest?" And none of them responded to that in the affirmative. And whether that's because it wasn't particularly useful for that or because that information never made it into their system, which I think is a big issue with the system where information about whether or not a stop and arrest was a direct result of a prediction, is generally, from what I can understand, not making its way into kind of the legal system.
It's really hard for us to know exactly how this is being used. I think therefore, it also makes it a little fuzzier in terms of the feedback loop question. Because that was a concern that I think a lot of activists and critics and academics who have been studying and raising the alarm about place-based predictive policing systems, like PredPol, have worried about. And I think that was something that we wanted to be able to answer, but because we weren't able to get a lot of clarity on that, we can't say with any certainty exactly how big that feedback loop issue is, even though it's certainly there.
Surya Mattu: Right. Just to add to that, in the data, that's why we went with this disparate impact analysis at the end. Because really what we're measuring is where these predictions took place and kind of who lives there, right? Because that's the one thing we could be really specific about and measured precisely. All of the stuff Aaron just said, I think, is a good explanation of why we chose this analysis in the first place.
One thing I really enjoy about The Markup's coverage in general is that you do have the technical ability to look at these algorithms and understand what's going on here. It seems interesting that in this case, Aaron, to your point, that oftentimes algorithms will have a way to kind of train themselves for accuracy, that they would find results about how efficacious they actually are and try to get more like that. But it doesn't sound like that's happening here.
Surya Mattu: Well, that gets to a really kind of interesting thing we've seen both in the academic literature and just kind of through our own research as we've been working on this stuff is, the way I kind of joke about it is that you either look at systemic inequality as a feature or a bug of society.
Surya Mattu: Right? And I think that that's basically the two views. We look at it as a feature of society, right? So when we're doing our analysis we're saying, "We know this exists. Is it being reflected in this new system?" So the analysis we're doing is kind of treating systemic inequality as a feature. What PredPol, the company and the software they made, is doing is kind of treating it like a bug.
They're saying that, "Oh, this is a problem. If we don't look at it, it's probably not going to be there. It's not going to affect us because we're not looking at it. But it's not ours to fix. If it got fixed, the software would work, super perfect and super unbiased." And then I think fundamentally, that's the different... Like that's the back and forth in this conversation. Does that make sense?
Yeah. What you're getting at here is that, you view the systemic inequality component as a fundamentally central feature of what the inputs are in this, either implicitly or not. Whereas if you're operating a police prediction algorithm, that's just like, "Well, that's not really our department." And as a result, pretending it doesn't exist, which, does that cause the issues that you're kind of realizing in this?
Surya Mattu: Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean, if you're PredPol, what do you do? Aaron can talk about this more, but he found a study in which they have looked into this issue themselves. They basically kind of came down to the fact that, "Yeah, it can perpetuate systemic biases, but we don't know what to do about that. We're just going to leave it because it also can make it 'less accurate' if you start trying to be less precise in where you target. Or look into these other features to determine whether people are being exposed to these predictions."
Aaron Sankin: I think something important here is, essentially, the way The Markup operates with these sorts of investigations is we'll do our analysis and we'll put together a whole methodology and then we'll send it out to the company or whoever we're investigating for an adversarial review. Just like, "Hey, what do you think about this whole method that we did?" And then we had a whole bunch of questions and stuff.
I think we asked pretty point-blank of like, "What do you make of these differences?" And, "This is who's getting targeted across all these jurisdictions." And their argument was really like, "We don't really have a problem with this because it's based on crime reports. These are the neighborhoods that legitimately need more policing." Again, it's like, if this is what the algorithm says, it's good because it's based on this data, it's not based on human biases. I feel like that's a question a little above my pay grade, in terms of what's going on and what is an appropriate level of policing in each of these communities.
Because in certain parts of these jurisdictions, I'm sure there are a lot of people who say, "Yes, I want more cops in my neighborhood." And then there are other people who are saying, "I think the policing levels here are too high." What I was really excited to do with this story is allow those conversations to happen locally, because they are not really ones that can happen at the national, 30,000-foot view. Even though there is research that shows there are problems that happen around over-policing and what happens to individuals and young people and communities when there are a lot of negative interactions with police.
But those decisions need to be made at the individual and local level. I think at least in my conversations with a lot of activists and leaders in a lot of these cities, they didn't know this was being used. They hadn't heard about this stuff before. It really just needs to be part of that conversation, to decide if it's something that needs to be appropriate or not. Because at the same time, there is research that does suggest that crime does coalesce into hotspots, and even just having a cop on a corner for a little bit of time can often decrease the levels of reported crime in a community.
There are lots of different trade-offs that are happening here. I just think in order for a community to really reckon with the levels and types of policing that it wants to have, they just need a certain degree of information. And I think that is what, in a lot of ways, what we're trying to do with this story.
Again, I love this story. It's so in-depth and folks should definitely check it out if they haven't read it already. But the thing that is really interesting about it is, I almost got the sense that describing it as a crime prediction software is kind of undermining what it's trying to do, in the sense that it seems like it's less a weather forecast and more a climate forecast, and misleading these two things is just kind of leading to disproportionate coverage. Again, you guys were really involved with the data. I would love your thoughts on that.
Aaron Sankin: I think I had heard it described as less about finding the location or the most likely location for future crimes, it's more about finding the location where someone will make a report about a crime in the future, if that makes sense. And those two things aren't necessarily the same. That's what's important to think about. What this is predicting is incidents of people or police officers reporting crime to authorities, which is different than people who are victimized by crime, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I get that. That does make sense. The work that y'all do at The Markup is so great, you have also covered things not just involving predictive policing. You've covered Facebook, you've covered Google, YouTube, all this kind of thing. In the course of covering the algorithms that you've covered, have you noticed any reliable blind spots that folks who are designing these kind of keep on running into?
Surya Mattu: One of the things we do in our analysis and our methodologies is we are always really explicit about the limitations of our analysis and what we can and can't say, and how we had to limit what we were looking at. And I think that is something that I wish I would see more in technology overall, is this more rigorous — the way I think about it is like, you know how you have penetration testing for security?
Surya Mattu: Where people hire white hat hackers to come and test the security of their systems, because they can build it as well as they want but until someone is going to really find all the leaky pipes, you're not going to know. You need a similar kind of approach. The work we do really kind of comes down to a lot of data collection and cleaning. With this story, it's 5.9 million records, but we had to geocode each one of those lat-longs, connect it to census data, do over a hundred FOIA requests to join the data, to actually be able to even build the datasets we needed to do an analysis to answer a question.
I think that's the kind of work I hope in the future companies start doing more and more of around the products they're putting out into the world. There could be a variety of ways in which that happens. You could talk to advocates and experts and people who work with vulnerable communities who are the most likely to be harmed by these tools to see what it looks like on the ground. I don't see that happening as much as I would like it to. I'm hoping that the work we do at The Markup raises that conversation around what it looks like to do internal adversarial testing of how your technology influences society.
Aaron Sankin: That makes me think about a story that came out a few months ago. It was probably the thing this year that a tech company did that I just really appreciated the most. It was a report that came out of Twitter, and their report was basically that they had studied it and they found that basically everywhere that Twitter operates, it is amplifying right-wing content more than it is amplifying centrist or left-wing content. The key here is that they say, "We do not know why this is happening. We looked at this and this is a real thing. We have studied this. This is a systematic bias in our system, but we cannot figure out what is the core reason that this is happening across so many countries all over the world."
I thought that was just such an important way to do that in a couple ways. I think, one, because they are admitting there's this big gap in their knowledge. They're admitting that this thing is a process. But also, there's a certain degree of transparency in saying, "We are studying this and looking into it and we think it's important. And we would like to know more, but we're not quite there yet."
I think that is something that The Markup tries to embody as well in our work of saying, "These are the limits to our knowledge in terms of the research and analyses and reporting that we've done." I really like seeing that from a big tech company that deals in algorithms like that. It also made me think about how rare that sort of statement and sentiment is among kind of like Twitter's peers and big tech, algorithmic space.
That's really insightful. I love that observation that again, just for whatever reason, whether it's just the Silicon Valley culture, or even just like how people understand and reconcile the things that they've built with the impacts of the things that they've built. But there really is a lack of technological humility from a lot of different circles on this, that you guys very well illustrate in your own work.
Surya Mattu: I really like that term, technological humility. I'm definitely going to use it in the future.
Steal it. All yours.
Surya Mattu: That is what we're after here. One thing I always say at work is that, we're kind of like the Mr. Rogers of data, we want to be honest and treat you like the humans and who'll understand nuance and can understand a detailed, complicated thing. Where it's not like just finger pointing and saying, everything is bad. We're trying to show you that things are complicated. Here are the tradeoffs, here's what we can say, here's what we can't say.
I think if you can do that with nuance and specificity and really precisely define the problem, even if you can't solve it, it gives people a little more agency on how they want to deal and interact with it. And I think that's a big part of what our job is here. Is to just shine a light and give you the nuance and details so you can understand how to think about the system.
I love that. And again, so y'all at The Markup have been at this for a while. The reports that you come out with are really terrific. I suppose, like in this kind of specific case, there are a couple of stakeholders involved, right? There are these different municipalities in the cities. I guess, how has the reaction been and how do you kind of hope people use what you've found in their own municipal basis?
Aaron Sankin: I think it's still a little early to get a sense of the reaction post-publication. But really, one of the things that I found really interesting is, once we had conducted and finished and locked down our analysis, we went to all of the departments that were included in it. Surya had made these really great data sheets, which are available in our GitHub, that break down the targeting for each city. We provided these things to each of the departments and we asked them a whole bunch of questions about their own use of this system.
We got, I think, about like 15 or so departments to respond to us. Most of those were ones that had used this system at one point and then stopped. The thing that struck me was this kind of consistent refrain from a lot of departments that had used PredPol and then stopped, was that they were like, they felt that it wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know, which kind of makes a lot of sense.
Because a lot of these are smaller or mid-size cities. You have not a huge jurisdiction and you have police officers often who have been working in these beats for years, if not decades. They're like, "Yes, I know where to go, where there are the car break-ins. I know generally where the muggings happen because they are there in these communities." I think that struck me as something that was really interesting. Because it suggests, is this a really great purchase or product for these departments to be making at all?
But also at the same time, if we are finding that these predictions, which are based on the crime report data, are so closely lining up with the preconceived notions of the individual police officers, is this whole system just replicating or reinforcing the same sorts of biases that have already been in there that could end up being fairly problematic? I think that, to me, was something that I found particularly interesting in interfacing with all of these departments.
It makes me think also of, there's some really excellent work by a University of Texas sociologist named Sarah Brayne, and she had done work at the LAPD, looking at their uses of technologies. One of the insights that she had seen is that to her, it kind of like, in a sense, functions as almost a de-skilling of police work, where it's like, you have police officers who feel like they have all of this knowledge and suddenly they're taking directions on where to go from a computer. And it's like, we already kind of know this. So I thought that's something that was really interesting and interfacing of how this stuff is working on the ground, in that it didn't seem to be telling — at least any of the departments I had seen — anything that was particularly surprising to them.
One example is, there was a department. They were like, "Yes, we had a car break-in at an area where PredPol had made a car break-in location. But we already knew that there were a rash of cars that were getting broken into there. And the car that was broken into was a bait car that we had stuck there a while earlier. So, you can't credit it to that."
Totally. I almost wonder, like, where is the demand for this kind of software? It doesn't sound like it's necessarily coming from the rank and file of the police departments. Who, I guess, is the customer here, really?
Well. I think a lot of this kind of comes back to the whole kind of CompStat era, which started in the NYPD in the '90s. A lot of that is using a lot of data to map crime locations. I think a really important, and I think maybe underrated, element of that entire movement is accountability. It gives the police chiefs this ability to then take their captains and other leadership to say, "Hey, you're in charge of this division, or you're in charge of this area. How come there are so many muggings right here? What are you going to do about it to stop this from happening in the future?" From my conversations with people in the field, that was a pretty fundamental shift in how policing was conceived.
This whole predictive policing model is taking that to the next step of saying, "What can we do to be proactive about preventing crime?" Yes, there are a lot of things you could do to be proactive about preventing crime. But a lot of those things are like giving people social services and getting people jobs and doing all of these gigantic social engineering and social services things. And you're a police chief in a small or medium-size city, you do not have the budget to do all of those things and it's probably not in your mission.
But you can spend $20,000 to $30,000 a year on this system that will allow you to say, "Hey, I'm being proactive," which I think is at least part of the reason that this stuff is happening. At the same time, I don't know, like at least off the top, it's probably for the kind of techier people in law enforcement. It's probably kind of a cool thing to be like, "Hey, there's this computer system that can give me secret insight into how to do this better. Let's give it a shot."
Got it. The story's at The Markup. It's called, "Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them." You guys also had a really wonderful post explaining exactly how you pulled this off and it is on GitHub. Just to wrap it up, where can folks find you and where can folks find the work?
Surya Mattu: You can find us on Twitter. Mine is @suryamattu. TheMarkup.org is where we publish all our work. I'll plug one more thing, which is that, if you're interested in the data and want to see what it looked like for different cities, if you go to the bottom, we've actually published all those data sheets Aaron mentioned, with maps to show what these predictions actually look like for the 38 different jurisdictions. So definitely play around with that if you're interested in the data.
Aaron Sankin: I also am published at TheMarkup.org. You can find me on Twitter @ASankin. I do want to plug that this story was published in partnership with the technology news site Gizmodo and you can also read it and additional materials on their site as well.
If you have anything you'd like to see in this Sunday special, shoot me an email. Comment below! Thanks for reading, and thanks so much for supporting Numlock.
Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber!
Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips, or feedback at walt@numlock.news.


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Why FIBREMET
Prof Catherine Stanton
Home | Our People | Prof Catherine Stanton
Prof. Stanton is Senior Principal Research Officer at Teagasc and Research Professor at UCC, College of Medicine and Health. She is one of the nine original PI's in the APC Microbiome Institute, Cork. Her research programme addresses food and health, including developing innovative dairy foods and probiotics that influence human health and gut microbiota. She has been involved in numerous national and international grants, including the coordination of FP5 funded EU-BIOCLA, JPI FOOD PROCESSING FOR HEALTH-LONGLIFE (2016-2019) and ERA-GAS funded METHLAB (2017-2020). Professor Stanton received the ELIE METCHKNOFF AWARD 2010 for research on the application of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) in fermented dairy products to improve health. She was awarded D.Sc. from NUI (2009), and Irish Laboratory Scientist of the Year 2017 and 2019.