In order to put your best foot forward, you'll need to be in good shape both physically and mentally. Chronic tiredness can take away from your physical comfort as well as your mental alertness, which can be a problem on the job. Talk to fatigue risk management services and read on to learn about chronic tiredness affects the body and mind.
If you have ever pulled an all-nighter studying for a test or a work presentation, you have some idea of how disoriented you might feel throughout the second consecutive day of being awake. It can be difficult to concentrate, and you might find yourself lethargic and lacking motivation. People need to sleep in order to rest and recharge. When you go for long stretches of time without getting the opportunity to rejuvenate, you will inevitably start feeling the mental effects of chronic tiredness.
Sleep is just as important for your physical state as it is for your mental well being. Being awake for too long can wear out your body, no matter what you're doing. Whether you are spending your time at a desk in front of a computer or driving a commercial vehicle across the country, fatigue can begin to drag your body down. You might start to notice headaches and other pains that you wouldn't normally experience. If this happens to you, make sure you are trying hard enough to get the sleep you need to function properly.
Since people are often chronically tired because they are not able to conform to a normal, healthy sleeping schedule, they are also more likely to sleep at inopportune times. Napping during the day to relieve your tiredness can keep you up at night, which contributes to insomnia. This can make the problem even worse, so do what you can to get yourself on a healthy schedule.
You can protect your team from chronic tiredness thanks to the driver fatigue services that Guardvant offers. Please don't hesitate to visit our website or call us at (520) 299-1911 to learn about our collision avoidance systems.


text:
La sesmaría (de sesma, del latín "sexĭma": "sexta parte") era la concesión de tierras en el Brasil por parte del gobierno portugués con intención de promover la agricultura, la cría de ganados y, tiempo después, el extractivismo vegetal, expandiendo la cultura del café y el cacao. Al mismo tiempo, servía para poblar el territorio y recompensar a nobles, navegantes o militares por servicios prestados a la corona portuguesa. El sistema de sesmarías en el Brasil era un prolongamiento del sistema jurídico portugués, establecido por la ley del 26 de mayo de 1375 y pendiente por D. Fernando.

La sesmaría representaba la explotación económica de la tierra de manera rápida, teniendo como fundamento la organización social y trabajo desarrollado en el Brasil, así como el latifundio monocultural y esclavista.

Bibliographia
 Marcia Maria Menendes Motta: The Sesmarias In Brazil: Colonial Land Policies In The Late Eighteenth-Century, Department of History, Universidade Federal Fluminense, e-journal of Portuguese history, Band 3, Nummer 2, Winter 2005, S. 1–12,  (PDF; 283 kB).

Referencias

Historia colonial del Brasil

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The D.E.N. is open from 7:45am until 4:15pm. Students may use the computers or check out books before or after school and during their lunch; they can also use the library during the school day with teacher permission.
Is there a certain title you'd like to read but The D.E.N. doesn't have it available? Use the link above to put in a book request and we will do our best to get it ordered.


(Reuters) - U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told CNBC on Friday he was "completely in support" of the Food and Drug Administration's proposed crackdown on e-cigarettes.
"We are not going to permit e-cigarettes to become a pathway to nicotine dependency" or the use of combustible tobacco, Azar said in an interview with CNBC.
He said he disagreed with a belief that banning e-cigarettes would push youth towards traditional cigarettes.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Wednesday the agency was considering a ban on flavored e-cigarettes from Juul Labs and other companies as it grapples with an "epidemic" of youth e-cigarette use that threatened to create a new generation of nicotine addicts.


text:
USS Porpoise (1820)
For other ships with the same name, see USS Porpoise.
Name USS Porpoise
Builder Portsmouth Navy Yard
Fate Sunk, 1833
Type Schooner
Displacement 177 long tons (180 t)
Length 86 ft (26 m)
Beam 24 ft 7 in (7.49 m)
Depth 10 ft 4 in (3.15 m)
Propulsion Sail
Armament 12 × 6-pounder guns
The first USS Porpoise was a topsail schooner in the United States Navy.
Porpoise was built in 1820 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine. The schooners Alligator, Dolphin, and Shark were her sister ships.
She first cruised in the West Indies in 1821–1823, Lieutenant James Ramage in command, hunting pirates.
Cruising the West African coast in 1824–25, the schooner engaged in the suppression of the slave trade. Late in 1825 she returned to the United States and, under Commander Foxhall A. Parker, Sr., cruised off the northeast coast of the United States.
Porpoise cruised the Mediterranean from 1826 until 1830 under the command of Lts. Benjamin Cooper, John H. Bell, and Thomas M. Newell successively. Returning to the West Indies in 1830, she sailed under Lts. John Percival, James Armstrong, and James McIntosh.
While cruising in the West Indies in 1833 under the command of Lt. William Taylor, Porpoise was wrecked on a reef off Point Lizardo.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1833
5 Feb: Hibernia
14 Feb: HMS Forester
15 Feb: Providence
11 May: Lady of the Lake
19 May: Lioness
5 Jul: Dorothy
10 Jul: Hebe
31 Aug: Amphitrite, Ann and Amelia
9 Oct: Caesar
17 Nov: Asia, HMS Comus
28 Nov: Kingston
12 Dec: HMS Thais
15 Dec: Superbe
Unknown date: Amelia Wilson, Kennersley Castle, USS Porpoise
Other incidents
16 Jul: Lady Harewood
3 Oct: York
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=USS_Porpoise_(1820)&oldid=992518698"
Schooners of the United States Navy
Ships built in Kittery, Maine
Shipwrecks in the Caribbean Sea
Maritime incidents in 1833
Ship infoboxes without an image
Caribbean Sea articles missing geocoordinate data
All articles needing coordinates
Articles missing coordinates without coordinates on Wikidata

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Before I go into what Puyo Puyo Tetris is (or what little I know of it, at least) and why I want it so badly, let me say that the next six months are going to be terrible both for my wallet and my marriage.
That's because I'm planning to pick up a ton of 3DS games, both North American and Japanese, within that time frame, such as Bravely Default, Daigasso! Band Bros. P, Game Center CX 3, Hometown Story, Pokemon X/Y and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call--and that doesn't even include possibles/probables like Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
As of yesterday, Puyo Puyo Tetris has been added to that lengthy list despite the fact that I don't know much about it yet. What I do know about it sounds pretty interesting, though--such as that its "Classic" mode allows gamers to choose either Puyo Puyo or Tetris, while its "Swap" mode forces them to switch between the two every few seconds (or is it minutes?).
Take the info above with a grain of salt, by the way. All that's known about the title so far comes from folks on various sites (NeoGAF, among them) who have taken a stab at translating the Japanese text included in these Famitsu magazine scans and found on famitsu.com.
Are any of you also pining for a little Puyo Puyo Tetris action in your lives? If so, which version would you most like to play--the one planned for the 3DS, the PS3 (shown above), the Vita or the Wii U?
I wonder - is this related to - or the same thing as - the tetris game I saw that had monster collection elements?
I could see myself picking that up, maybe for the Vita. I already have my favorite version of Tetris -- the B&W Game Boy version -- on my 3DS, but the Vita needs love.
Yes, the B&W GameBoy version probably is the best version of the game, isn't it? Although I also really, really like Tetris DS.
Anyway, I'm still interested in this one, despite the fact that it's likely to be a lesser game compared to those two predecessors.
Funny...I've always loved Tetris but found Puyo Puyo to be sort of tedious and hard to manage.
Really, though, going through that list kid of scared me. That's a lot of games! And more are being announced all the time. Ahhhh!
I hear ya, Justin. Although I like Puyo Puyo, I much prefer Tetris and even Zoo Keeper and its ilk. I've just never been able to fully wrap my brain around Puyo Puyo's rules, I guess, or maybe its strategy? Still, I want this game.


text:
Here's how California can help fix America's broken supply chain
By Danny Wan, Special to CalMatters
The global supply chain crisis is daunting. Congestion and bottlenecks across the West Coast have left large cargo vessels stranded at anchor for weeks on end. Across the country, our supply chain has faced major disruptions, driving up costs for consumers and inevitably causing major delays on delivery of essential goods.
Last week, I testified before the Senate & Assembly Select Committees on Ports and Goods Movement to offer policymakers solutions to address these challenges.
Early last year – during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic – California ports saw significant decreases in trade with record breaking impacts. But demand rose for medical equipment, along with home improvement items, exercise equipment and office furniture as consumers grappled with adapting to a new world that revolved around remote work and virtual learning.
The surge in cargo has created unprecedented challenges across our state's coast. California ports stepped up and took action to help address supply chain disruption.
Operationally, California ports have proactively taken steps to alleviate supply chain congestion. These steps include: creating policies that incentivize terminal operators to move trucks faster and more efficiently, extending operating hours at port terminals and implementing best practices to make use of existing cargo capacity.
While the steps taken by California ports are significant, addressing the global supply chain crisis demands intensive public policy initiatives and reform at every level of government.
As president of the California Association of Port Authorities, I've asked how the most consequential system of ports in the nation could receive so little resources from the federal government. Over the past decade, the federal government has invested roughly $11 billion in the eastern Gulf coast ports, but only $1 billion in the West Coast ports.
I urge the Legislature, governor and federal policymakers to work with California ports to advance initiatives to mitigate supply chain disruption. This includes:
Ongoing long-term funding for projects that address land capacity challenges and infrastructure;
A designated supply chain czar within state government to work with the industry to create and implement a state freight and goods movement policy; and
Identifying incentives for American companies making equipment like chassis and containers to allow the ability to move containers currently clogging port property.
The issues facing our global supply will not disappear overnight. Our elected leadership must take action to help get goods moving. That requires a holistic policy approach that addresses the consistent underfunding of California ports and a reinvestment in infrastructure, technology and data-driven methods that will get us back on track.
Last week's Legislative hearing on the ports and goods movement was a significant step in addressing these goals. The California Association of Port Authorities stands to work as a partner with these leaders to address and advance solutions.
Home to our nation's three largest container ports and responsible for handling 40% of containerized imports in the nation, California should play an important role in fixing America's broken supply chain. But to do that, our state must take immediate and bold action by embracing the maritime industry and commit to ongoing, critical investments in the global supply chain. At the California Association of Port Authorities, we look forward to working with the governor's office and the Legislature to meet this moment with long-term solutions.
Danny Wan is the executive director of the Port of Oakland and the president of the California Association of Port Authorities.
Read the full op-ed by CalMatters here.


The WITTE Quick Color Change (QCC) is perfect for master batch applications with frequently changing colors. This extrusion melt pump is equipped with two regulating screws and a separate product flange. The regulating screws allow for a color or product change during running operation. The position of the screws influences the direction of the lubricant flow. This can either be guided back into the main flow or out of the pump through a separate product flange. This prevents contaminated material from the previous application from entering the new product flow.
Position of the regulating screws with normal melting transport. Product 1 is guided back to the main product flow.
Position of the regulating screws with a product change. Product 1 is pressed through product 2 out of the bearing lubricant flow and transported out of the pump.


SHIRE of Mundaring has confirmed its bulk verge collection period will span six weeks this year with collections scheduled for all suburbs in August, September and October.
Waste must not be placed on your verge more than two weeks prior to your collection date.
For more information visit the Bulk Verge Collection page of the Shire website www.mundaring.wa.gov.au or phone 9290 6666.


text:
Aschiphasmodes ascepasmoidea är en insektsart som först beskrevs av Ludwig Redtenbacher 1908.  Aschiphasmodes ascepasmoidea ingår i släktet Aschiphasmodes och familjen Diapheromeridae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Spökskräckor
ascepasmoidea


PPC vs SEO - What should you choose for your business?
In this article we will look at PPC vs SEO and give you enough information for you to make a decision on what would be best used for your business and why. So lets begin.
PPC vs SEO – both PPC and SEO allow your website to be found on the search engines. It is estimated that 81% of people will find your website through a search engine. For this reason alone it is important for your business to be on that front page and SEO and PPC are two different ways of achieving that.
Pay per click, sponsored ads, purchased links, etc are another way of getting your website to the front of the search engines.
Pay per click link clicks as the name would suggest cost you every time a person clicks on one of your ads. For an example if we were to be bidding on the keyword web design wales then every time someone clicked on our ad we would pay a small fee to Google.
PPC and SEO when done correctly can both get you to the first page of the search engines and both can be profitable to your business. Both methods however have advantages and disadvantages.
SEO will help your website increase in the organic listings, and research has found that organic listings are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked on that paid advertising. This means that if your website were to rank for a keyword organically and you were bidding for that keyword through PPC then your organic listing would receive 8.5 times more clicks than the paid add.
SEO also doesn't cost you per click, with SEO services you are charged to get on to that first page of Google but every click you will receive is then essentially free.
SEO takes time, a new site can even be sand boxed for 30 days and then ranking a site from there can take longer. Changes to search engine algorithms can also adjust your sites position on the search pages. That is why it is very important that if you hire a SEO company then hire one that doesn't practice black hat (bad) techniques as your site could become penalised and it would lose its rankings.
If SEO is slow then PPC is fast, PPC can get you onto the search engine front page within a day. You set your campaign, select a budget and when approved you can get traffic to your website right away.
PPC also converts better. Studies have shown that PPC ads convert 1.5 times more than organic search pages. This is because PPC allows you to send your visitors to a landing page that is highly targeted to that visitor.
PPC is quick but its also costly, You can get on the front page of the search engines within a day, but to get the costs down and create a campaign that is making you a profit can take a while.
Every click that you receive from a PPC add costs you money. This could be anything from a couple of pence to a few pound per click.
If I only had to choose between PPC vs SEO I would go for SEO as ranking high for a targeted keyword is going to be very valuable to your business. SEO is slower but once your website is ranking then each additional click is not going to cost you anything.
That is not to say you should ignore PPC because I think that both SEO and PPC have their place in business and ideally you should be considering both for your business.
If you would like to discuss getting more targeted leads to your business or would like to find out more about our SEO Services in wales then click here to talk to us today.


The premium of delivered bunker fuel at the bunkering hub of Rotterdam over 3.5% FOB Rotterdam barges has been elevated in recent weeks on tight availability and congestion at the port.
Additionally, Rotterdam availability has been under further strain from last week's launch of Exxon's delayed coker at the 320,000 b/d Antwerp refinery, which the company confirmed on October 31. This has tightened the local Antwerp bunker market and required the Rotterdam market to make up the shortfall, sources said.
Traders have estimated that the loss of ExxonMobil's fuel oil exports removes 200,000 mt/month from the Antwerp bunker market.
"[There are] long waiting times at the refineries to load barges, depending on what tank you want to load from," a local supplier said, adding that it is unclear when the congestion is likely to ease.
Buyers at the port have been struggling to find suppliers that have bunker fuel availability for prompt dates. "Dates look tight," a buyer said.


this clip really makes me wonder if the kid who said he shot people because he watched Rambo is really true. How much does the meida effect each person? I dont think we will ever know, because it effects each person in different ways.


Get $50 USD NO-Deposit Bonus within 48 hours.
Withdrawal will be processed within 48 hours.
Each client can receive this Bonus only once.
Bonus account can't be traded with same IP.
Transaction time between the opening and closing of minimum 30 seconds.
Bonus will be expire in 14 days from the date of registration.
Get more bonus on deposit & Extra Profits on trading volume.
1.All Eligible Clients are permitted to hold only one (1) "No Deposit Bonus" Account per one (1) unique IP address. Multiple registrations from the same IP are not permitted nor multiple "No Deposit Bonus Accounts" registered with same personal details.
2.Profits from trading on "No Deposit Bonus "Accounts maybe withdrawn after 7 days, provided that the trading volume in the relevant real trading Account reaches at least 50 Standard lots (5.0 Million), and provided that at least 50 round turn trades have been completed. The number of lots traded and of round turn trades realized can be verified by logging in to your live account under the "Account History" tab or by contacting your account manager.
3.Once the client believes that they have achieved the required volumes he/she should email his/her assigned personal account manager who will in turn verify with the support in London that they qualify, and will have the amount approved to their account.
4.All withdrawals will be processed only on "Activated Accounts".
5.An account is considered "Activated" only on a minimum deposit of 200 USD & full KYC verification.
Awards are available to Customers who meet the Company's appropriateness requirements.
Award rules acceptance – prior to accepting any Award offer Customers shall consider the particular terms and conditions associated with the Award and these Bonus and Award Policy, as both may be amended from time to time. Acceptance of the Award is done by placing trade in the Account.
Trading the Award – the funds of your deposit(s) to the Account are used prior to the Award. For example, if you have made a deposit of $200 to the Account and received an Award of $50 to Account, upon placing trades the funds of your deposit will be used first. Therefore, if you lose $200, unless you have met the below trading requirements for being able to withdraw your Award, there will be no funds eligible for withdrawal from the Account. For more information please contact Customer Support.
4.1.1 In order for the Customer to be eligible to withdraw the Award, the Customer must execute a minimum trading volume of $20,000 for every dollar awarded by The Company to the Account (e.g. if Customer who receives $100 Award will need to have a minimum trading volume of $2,000,000).
4.1.2 If the Customer withdraws any funds from the Account before satisfying the required trading volume, the total Award & Profits will be deducted from the Account. The Customer's trading volume in the Account starts counting on the date the Customer receives the Award.
Time Terms -5.1 Time frame – Customers have 3 months*, from the date of receiving the Award ("Time frame"), to meet the above mentioned Volume Conditions.
5.2 Expiration – upon Time frame expiration the Account shall be adjusted to the deposits made by the Client to the Account.


This Sunday we invite all friends and family to join us at our keto Easter brunch!
Come enjoy our favorite keto dishes such as avocado toast, poached eggs, all-american pancakes and sugar-free carrot cake. Yum!
The first completely low-carb, sugar-free, ketogenic inspired restaurant in Europe, and one of the pioneers in this area worldwide. As keto diet enthousiasts ourselves, we found it hard to eat out and wanted to create a place for everyone that wanted fresh, vegetarian and sugar- and carb-free food.
Together with our amazing team, led by the great ibiza-based chef Gee van Dee, we have tested and tried countless dishes and composed a healthy and exciting menu for you.
We would love to give all of you a taste of what healthy, mindful, sugar-free food can be like.
Delicious and satisfying, with zero guilt.
Easter time is the best time to spend it with your family and friends in the friendly atmosphere and watching the sport of the kings only in Ibiza Polo Club. Join us for the opening of the polo season!!!
The weather isn´t looking polo-tastic for the weekend, but we are still remaining optimistic! We are tracking the weather and may change the schedule at short notice, if there is a better window for play.
In addition to the Semana Santa Market in Las Dalias, you're invited to this lively gastronomic event and open-air day in which the food on wheels returns, live music, flea markets, DJ's, and a children's area.
A selection of food trucks with a unique touch and a wide and varied gastronomic offer participate in this fourth edition.
Join us for a healthy afternoon of Yoga & a smoothie or a light lunch.
Vinyasa Flow is a series of postures (asanas) that move with the breath (prana) to produce a "flow" from one posture to the next followed by a relaxation (savasana) and finishing in meditation/mantra.
Each class is slightly different and we may focus on different body parts, emotions, chakras, deities or themes, however consistently the aim is to stretch the body whilst quieting the mind.
Classes encourage balance, flexibility, strength, relaxation and mental clarity.
This is a mixed ability class where beginners are welcome!
Enjoy your Ibiza Yoga Retreat or Yoga Holidays in 2019 at Lena Tancredi's Yoga Wellness retreat in Ibiza.
Experienced yoga teacher and always cheerful, Lena Tancredi, teaches group lessons and workshops during your yoga retreat week or vacation.
Enjoying Hatha yoga, Sivananda yoga, massages and therapy group and a sound bath, together with exceptionally good vegetarian health food and comfortable accommodation at a beautiful yoga retreat, set in 30.000 m2 of Ibiza's purest nature, help you to relax, recharge & rejuvenate body, mind and soul being immersed in beautiful nature and intense yoga classes in order to become more aware of yourself, your life and your natural happiness within.
You will experience 3 hours of yoga theory classes a week.
Theory classes incl.: Introduction to Vedanta Philosophy, The Three Gunas, The four paths of Yoga, The 8 limbs of Raja Yoga, The Chakras, Basic Asanas and their benefits and the Ayurveda diet and life style.
Ibiza Yoga Retreats are suitable for both beginners and advanced yogi & yogines, as all activities are tailored to each guest's specific needs, preferences and goals.
This year's yoga retreats weeks will include a Sound Bath Session by Sound Therapist Deva Alchi.
Sound baths help facilitate a shift in ones brainwave state. Through frequency and entertainment with sound one can easily down-shift from normal beta state (normal waking consciousness) to alpha state (relaxed consciousness), while many people are able to reach theta state (meditative) and even delta state (where internal healing occurs). This experience is helpful for anyone who wants to give themselves a moment of relaxation or gain the benefits from meditation, but has not yet learned how to access on their own.


In the age of social media and online world, there is little or perhaps no ground left for businesses to limit themselves only to physical world and ignore benefits of the digital world.
While it is true that digital world won't take your business to the top in one go but there are greater chances for enhancing your potential and allowing you to achieve new heights.
Social media can certainly make your small business grow once your potential clients came across your brand and your area of specialization. While most businesses these days do have their well maintained websites but a website is mainly a static page with your contact information and sample of your work. Social media is bit different.
Its alright you have your website but you need to be sharing your content actively through social media. Virtual world is fast and keeps on updating every second. Content sharing using Face book, Blogs, Twitter can be highly effective in this regard. Your consumers will certainly respond back to you by sharing their ideas about your product and providing you healthy feed back. Over time, you will be able to build relationship with your clients that will help your cause greatly.
It is better reaching out to your customers than they reach to you. You can start online discussion among your clients by creating open discussion forums and fan pages. Such forums will provide you an opportunity to listen to your customer's genuine views in depth.
Interaction with your clients and providing them free product samples will help your business grow and make a name for yourself among your potential customers. Organizing small events that allow your customers to interact on personal level with you will not only enhance your company reputation but will also strengthen customer bond with your company.
While above mentioned steps will help you in attracting customers, another important step is networking with your alike partners in the field. It's better to be working in an environment of mutual interest. Advertising on partner's websites and forums is a handy task for small inter-connected companies.
While our elderly experience business people still maintain they need to hire a special IT equipped individual to perform all above tasks it's no longer the situation. Today you don't have to hire any such individual as a layman can perform all these tasks. Even you, yourself can do this even if you starting from scratch you will learn all this stuff posting and updating over time and very soon.


text:
PostEverything
closePerspective Discussion of news topics with a point of view, including narratives by individuals regarding their own experiences
Why Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare
BioBioFollowFollow
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of 'The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity'.
March 24, 2017 at 10:12 p.m. UTC
Let me briefly try to answer this question: How did Republicans fail to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act? In no order, and off the top of my addled mind at the end of a crushing week:
— They hated Obamacare but they never understood the Affordable Care Act. This is the uber-explanation for much of what follows. Hating Obamacare became just what you did on the right. It didn't mean you understood it, beyond maybe getting that it was a government program and thus paid for by taxes. It certainly (and this turned out to be very important) didn't mean you had any ideas about what it did, how it worked or how many people were benefiting from it … or how to replace it.
— Obamacare created a new baseline. It's hard to take away something — in this case, health insurance coverage for more than 20 million people — from which people are benefiting. This relates to the above — because they didn't understand the law, they convinced themselves that calibration problems, of which there were many, were fatal. So, when premiums rose sharply in some of the exchanges, they didn't understand that most exchange recipients wouldn't see anything like those increases (due to the subsidies that adjusted to meet the higher costs). They didn't recognize that less than 10 percent of those with coverage get it through that part of the market. Millions more get Obamacare coverage through the Medicaid expansion, and they convinced themselves that this was a terrible part of a program that no Republican governor or member of Congress would ever want to keep in place.
— They don't have a policy bench. From Trump on down, many of today's conservatives tend be much more skilled at campaigning, opposing pretty much everything, riling up their bases with antipathy toward the other side and getting elected (granted, that last bit's kind of important) than at the qualities that enable governing, like compromise and fact-based analysis. Of course, there are thoughtful conservatives with cogent ideas about health policy, but clearly they're of little interest to today's leadership. How do I know that? Because their replacement law — the American Health Care Act — was an incoherent dog's breakfast of massive tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor, more a caricature of Republican policy than actual policy. In this regard, credit also goes to the Congressional Budget Office, for quickly and credibly revealing the damage that would be done by the AHCA.
— The one policy Republicans get is tax cuts, and little else motivates/interests them. This is a variant on the previous entry, but it meant that a real motivation for the repeal was cutting about $1 trillion in taxes, including two ACA taxes paid mostly by the wealthiest Americans. It is axiomatic that when you cut such highly progressive taxes, the benefits go to those at the top of the scale, and it quickly became clear that, for example, almost 50 percent of the cuts went to millionaire households. The 400 richest taxpayers, with average income above $300 million, would get a tax break averaging $7 million. Couple that with the sharp cuts in Medicaid and the predicted premium increases for low-income elderly people in their AHCA plan, and even in D.C., the extent of this Robin-Hood-in-reverse play was too much for moderate Republicans, many of whom have ACA beneficiaries in their districts from whom they were hearing.
— They're ungovernable. It caught my attention when former House leader John A. Boehner predicted what just happened a few weeks ago. Part of this was a variation of the "no bench" point above: "In the 25 years I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time, agreed on what a health-care proposal should look like. Not once." But part was an impossible political Sudoku problem that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan couldn't solve: If you try to please the moderates, you lose the hard right. Boehner learned that lesson in must-pass votes, like raising the debt ceiling, that he passed with votes from Democrats, which wasn't going to happen here.
— President Trump wasn't much help. When I worked for Obama during his first administration, I vividly recall two challenges in moving legislation: Republicans and Democrats. From day one, the R's were never with us, but we also quickly learned that it would take a ton of work to woo our own caucus. I don't think team Trump is there yet by a long shot. Moreover, he's got some unique problems of his own making: People are learning his "art-of-the-deal" shtick, so they know that what he says Monday may well be totally different from where he is Tuesday.
— Their version of reality did not allow for the ACA gaining public support. Various polls, including this one from Pew, show public support for the ACA hitting its highest level on record, with 54 percent approval and 43 percent disapproval (see Figure 3 here as well). Their bubble also seems to have kept them from realizing that their replacement bill was in terrible shape re: public support. Before they pulled the vote on Friday, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, of all people, was compelled to tweet out the following: "Why would you schedule a vote on a bill that is at 17 percent approval? Have we forgotten everything Reagan taught us?"
Readers of this column know my extremely negative take on their replacement bill, so of course I'm very glad about this outcome. But we're not out of the woods, in part because the ACA is far from perfect and I don't expect this government to provide it with the maintenance it needs. Also, while I know that Trump said that if this vote fails, there will be no trips back to this well, recall what I said above about the veracity of such announcements: No one should believe them.
But at least so far, I was wrong when I bemoaned late on the night of Nov. 8: "There goes the ACA." It's still standing, and for millions of Americans with affordable coverage, that is a very good thing.
What happened to Trump's promise to repeal and replace Obamacare 'on Day 1'? (The Washington Post)


text:
Home > African History > Aspects of British Gunboat Diplomacy – Jaja King of Opobo
Aspects of British Gunboat Diplomacy – Jaja King of Opobo
King Jaja is probably one of the most fascinating rulers in the Niger Delta during the 19th century.
Written by So Jaja 29/11/2019
Jaja King of Opobo
He arrived in the Kingdom of Bonny in 1833, the year the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by the British Parliament, as a child with no weight in substance, and in the space of thirty-seven years; he rose through the ranks by sheer force of personality to become a clan sub-chief, Head chief of a trading House (Opubo Annie Pepple House), and King of Opobo.
Jaja founded the Kingdom of Opobo after he retreated with members of his clan into Andony territory after Bonny civil war in 1869. King Jaja was a middleman broker of palm oil (the "Legitimate trade" that replaced the slave trade in the region) and he controlled the important trade routes from 1870 until the mid-1880s. Jaja's troubles with British traders began in the early 1880s when George Watts, opened his factory in Kwa Ibo (an enclave within Jaja jurisdiction, which was situated along the route leading to the palm oil fairs in the hinterland). As a result, King Jaja led the first punitive expedition to the region on 11 April 1881 and that was followed by a second expedition, on the night of 16 May 1881. Following both expeditions, the disagreements between Jaja and the British Consular Authority worsened.
As a child, Jaja King of Opobo
Another contentious issue arose when Consul Hewett met with King Jaja to discuss the Protectorate Treaty. The consul met fierce opposition from Jaja -and his chiefs- over a clause that called for free trade and freedom of movement for the British traders. (The Protectorate treaty was the forerunner of the Berlin Conference and it was designed to guarantee British traders access to the hinterland). However, King Jaja signed the treaty after the disputed clause was removed, and Consul Hewett had given him assurance in writing to state that 'Queen Victoria did not want to take his country or markets'. On 5 June 1885, King Jaja ordered his armed men -in a show of force- to place booms across Opobo River to block the route leading to the interior when the British traders attempted to enforce the treaty.
In 1885, European traders requested a reduction in the price of palm oil due to the drop in the world price. But King Jaja rejected their request. However, when Alex and George Miller (owners of Miller Brothers & Co.) withdrew membership from the African Association -an amalgamation of British trading firms- and agreed to purchase Jaja's palm oil at the preferred rate; they secured much of the trade within King Jaja's jurisdiction.
The disagreement over 'comey' (brokerage charge), which derives from the word commission, was another cause of resentment. Consul Hewett and members of the African Association called the charge a 'shakehand'. The word that was contrived to make it seem as though the British traders were being extorted. But they made no complaints about the comey charges imposed on them in other neighboring city-states.
What the British traders sought was free trade. The firms were quite keen to set up shop (their factories) closer to the fairs so that they could buy the palm oil directly from growers (thus bypassing the agents working for King Jaja and his chiefs).
On 19 September 1887, King Jaja was deposed for obstructing British commercial and political expansion, and he was taken out of Opobo River on 21 September 1887 for trial in Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana).
His trial took place on 29 November 1887; he was accused of administering illegal oaths to the native people in his markets ostensibly to frighten them from dealing directly with European Agents. He was accused of barring trade to the inland districts beyond his jurisdiction, of blocking the highway and sea-lane entrance into Opobo River -thereby flouting the terms and spirit of the Berlin Treaty of 1884.
On 1 December 1887, Sir Walter Hunt-Grubbe found Jaja guilty, and he was exiled to the West Indies. When King Jaja was pardoned and released to return to Opobo he died in Santa Cruz, Tenerife in the early hours of the morning of 8 July 1891.
The authors have shed more light on how big business influenced British government policy in the Niger Delta in the mid-1880s -a period agreed upon to have been the beginning of the "Scramble for Africa". This is a well-deserved look at his rise to power and reign from a new perspective. The authors have gone further to reveal more about his private life, his closest political aides, personal attendants and family. Also, they have succeeded in merging some of Jaja's experiences in the West Indies and Santa Cruz, Tenerife in the book.
The most surprising revelation for the authors while researching the book was the discovery of Prince Waribo -King Jaja's long forgotten son. Prince Waribo was sent to attend school in Britain, and had died after a game of cricket in the Cheshire village of Frodsham, England in 1882. The prince bore a remarkable resemblance to his father, and according to a newspaper report; he was an apt student who gave evidence of rare talent (the prince had been entrusted in the care of Mr. Walter Johnstone partner of Couper, Johnstone and Co. of Glasgow –partner of a British firm based in Opobo).
So Jaja is an author who lives in London. Educated in Worcestershire, England, studied in Indiana, USA, and City University London. He works in publishing. Aspects of British Gunboat Diplomacy is the only book he co-authored with his late father Amaopusenibo E. A. Jaja, who was a journalist and former Managing Director of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc. (he served on King Jaja Executive Authority Opobo Town as Chairman of Queen Osunju Jaja House).
by Pauline de Souza.
Thank you for this interesting article. Please read the article on W.E.B. Du Bois.
by Alabo Senator Adawari Sam Annie Pepple
Interesting Article that calls for a sobre reflection on the high handedness of the pre-colonial Masters!
Group portrait of 'Dahomey Amazons', visiting Paris (Europe), Circa 01 / 02-1891
The History of the Kingdom of Dahomey
Situated in western Africa, the kingdom of Dahomey (or Abomey in its earliest years) was formed by a…
Black Histories: Oba Ewuare & Benin City
Currently inhabited by the Edo people, a native ethnic group to Nigeria, Benin City was an unofficial wonder…
The crown of a local Nubian king who ruled between the collapse of the Meroitic dynasty in 350 or 400 AD and the founding of the Christian kingdom of Nubia in 600 AD. It was found in Tomb 118 at Ballana in Lower Nubia by the British Egyptologist W.B. Emery
Nubia and the Noba people
Nubia is a region along the Nile river located in what is today northern Sudan and southern Egypt….
WATCH: University of the Arts London
University of the Arts London (UAL) is made up of six colleges: Camberwell College of Arts Central Saint…
CCS Adoption
Start your adoption journey with us today. We are your local specialist adoption agency and charity with 110…
Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service
Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service values the benefits that differences between employees can bring to our organisation. We…
The Office for National Statistics (ONS)
It is responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population and society at national, regional…
Applications for teacher training 2019 are now open. Register for support from teaching experts
WATCH: Department for Education
Applications for teacher training 2019 are now open. Register for support from teaching experts Register Use this service…
Equality Challenge Unit
Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) works to further and support equality and diversity for staff and students in higher…
The National Assembly for Wales
As the democratically elected body that represents the interest of Wales and its people, we are dedicated to…
The Bedfordshire Schools' Training Partnership
We are a small, school based, teacher training provider working on behalf of local schools – specialising in…
Nursing and Midwifery Council
The Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) is incredibly excited to be recruiting Test of Competence Assurance Advisory Group…
The University of Lincoln
The University of Lincoln's award-winning city centre campus provides a modern student-centred environment. Based on the picturesque Brayford…
At DMU, we pride ourselves on being an innovative, exciting and dynamic institution, one that attracts staff and…
Gambling Commission
The Gambling Commission is an executive non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for…
Barts Health NHS Trust
The Trust's five hospitals – St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City,including the Barts Heart Centre, The Royal London…
Levi Roots at the launch of the Black Heroes Foundation, City Hall, London.
The Black Heroes Foundation
The Black Heroes Foundation is a community based charity for the development and promotion of talent, together with cultural and…
Adopt with PACT
Adoption charity Parents And Children Together (PACT) is urgently appealing for people from black and minority ethnic communities…


text:
Zuma trial: 'We are dealing with the godfather of South African politics'
12 October 2019 10:59 AM
Many South Africans met the news that Jacob Zuma is scheduled to stand next week on 15 October, with disbelief.
There have after all been years of delays in bringing the case to court - the disgraced former president faces charges of fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering relating to payments from French arms company Thales made to him through his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik, who was convicted in 2005.
RELATED: 'There is no case here, no corruption charge, it is just a political vendetta'
On Friday, a full bench of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court found that Zuma and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) were equally complicit in causing the delay.
The court dismissed the application for a permanent stay in prosecution by the former president and co-accused Thales.
RELATED: Analyst explains link between Jacob Zuma and French arms company Thales
CapeTalk's Abongile Nzelenzele Dube gets the input of Xolani Dube, political analyst with the Xubera Institute of Research and Development.
Dube describes Zuma as the "godfather" of local politics, produced and until recently, protected by the ANC.
There is always one godfather that African politics produces and in our country, we have produced JZ and fortunately or unfortunately, we have produced a very sophisticated godfather in our politics.
— Xolani Dube, Political analyst - Xubera Institute for Research and Development
The question on everyone's lips - will Zuma appeal? And does he have the funds to do so?
Dube has a scathing response:
In South Africa we have lots of poor people but we are supposed to always go to court and finance their (politicians') cases.
If he (Zuma) is telling us that he's got no money it's clearly an indication that South African politicians, they are taking us for a ride to say we have to finance even their ways of fighting against the allegations of their ill-deeds, against us!
Dube goes on to say that, in fact, this trial is not about Jacob Zuma the individual, but about the organisation of the ANC which allowed him to become president and stay in power.
Bear in mind the people who are protecting this individual, the people who made this individual so powerful is the organisation that is in power.
If Jacob Zuma is going to trial, or to jail, here it is about the image, the morality, the ethics of the ANC. Because Zuma, he's the representative of the whole.
According to Dube, South Africans need to have a conversation about their relationship with the ruling party. That can only be effective however, if there is a discussion first about the country's electoral system.
If we have that discourse it will also mean a discourse that says, look the electoral system is very disempowering because South Africans have been waiting for justice for the past 15 years, or ten years and we are not even sure that Jacob Zuma, come Tuesday, is not going to appeal because he's a man of Stalingrad approach.
— Xolani Dube - Political Analyst with Xubera Institute of Research and Development.
If we can have that conversation, that's also how we can protect these institutions that need to mete out justice against those who do evil things in our society.
We must not be excited because that would show that we are vulnerable in that we have to say, this organisation can protect someone who's rogue and even make that individual a president which means that they can also bring us someone else who is rogue and after ten years they can say that person was not fit.
Listen to Dube's impassioned argument below:
This article first appeared on CapeTalk : Zuma trial: 'We are dealing with the godfather of South African politics'
Written by: Paula Luckhoff
Chikane: Renewal at state institutions key for ANC to achieve January 8 promises
Party president Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the ANC's January 8 in Kimberley over the weekend. Rev Frank Chikane shares his thoughts.
Mabuza's resignation as Eskom chair long overdue - Cosatu
Cosatu has called on other Eskom board members to step down and for action to be taken against the Public Enterprises Minister.
'There is no case here, no corruption charge, it is just a political vendetta'
11 October 2019 1:12 PM
A Jacob Zuma's supporter, Nkosentsha Shezi rubbishes the corruption and other charges upheld against the former president.
Zuma to know by Friday if his corruption case will be dismissed
9 October 2019 3:53 PM
Earlier this year, the former president argued in court why he wanted his case to be struck off the roll.
Zuma's tweet backs Brazil's Lula's bid to clear his name of corruption charges
7 October 2019 10:55 AM
Jacob Zuma tweets 'the mighty truth will prevail' backing former Brazilian leader's bid to clear his name of corruption charges.
Analyst explains link between Jacob Zuma and French arms company Thales
22 May 2019 8:48 AM
Arms deal critic and activist Paul Holden unpacks permanent stay of prosecution application by former president and co-accused.


text:
17 delicious loaf tin recipes (that aren't banana bread)
Tim Dowling
A traditional 2lb loaf tin does not weigh two pounds, nor does it cost £2 – even the cheapest model will set you back about £2.50. It is called that because it is designed to accommodate 2lb of bread dough – about 900g.
So, it is not a size, but a rough measure of capacity – any 2lb loaf tin will hold about 1.5l of water. The shape, however, will vary from tin to tin – some are broad and shallow, like a barge, others high-sided, like a removal van. But they all do the same job and they are all good for a lot more than a beginner's lockdown loaf. Here are 17 uses for an ordinary loaf tin – and not one of them is banana bread. If you are still looking for ways to use up old bananas, you need to stop buying bananas.
A good place to start is plain old bread – specifically, Dan Lepard's sour cream sandwich loaf. While it is possible to knock up endless free-form, rustic loaves at home, the point of the tin is to make bread that in some way resembles the stuff you buy in a shop: sharp-cornered, sandwich friendly, toaster ready. Lepard's method relies on a quick knead – about 10 seconds – repeated at 10 minute intervals, plus a final rise in the tin. In this, and in every recipe here, you would be wise first to line your tin with greaseproof paper, even if the loaf tin in question is non-stick. If you like living dangerously, feel free to ignore this warning and accept the consequences.
Claire Thomson's porridge bread makes good use of leftover cold porridge, mixed in with the white flour. For a darker, gluten-free bread, Lepard offers multiseed and molasses bread. Besides molasses (or black treacle), the recipe requires a mix of potato starch, cornflour, rice flour, psyllium husk, egg white and a selection of seeds. But because there is no gluten, there is no need to knead: you end up with a sort of batter that firms itself up as it rises.
Loaf tins are not just for bread – you can also use them to make loaf-shaped cakes, a pound cake being one of the best and simplest. Traditionally, pound cake contained a pound of each of the four main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar and eggs), but you don't need a maths degree to realise that this would overwhelm a 2lb tin. Instead, try this recipe for vanilla pound cake, which calls for 200g of each (that means three eggs), along with a teaspoon of untraditional, but wholly welcome, baking powder.
Drizzle cake is another loaf tin standard. Felicity Cloake's perfect version is a close relative to pound cake, with some ground almonds and lemon zest thrown in and, of course, the drizzle. Fergus Henderson's seed cake, meanwhile, is one of the few dedicated elevenses recipes out there, best administered with a glass of something while lunch is still a distant prospect. The seed in question is caraway; the something should be madeira.
Rachel Roddy's marmalade cake is yet another variation – the proportions are the same as for pound cake, although the amounts here suggest a 1lb loaf tin may be a more suitable size. Tamal Ray's blood orange syrup loaf is a gluten-free option, using polenta instead of flour. In an emergency, you could profitably employ regular oranges.
Ruby Tandoh's blueberry loaf cake is made with yoghurt and almond oil (although she says sunflower oil, with a little added vanilla, works as a substitute). Delia Smith has a recipe for dark Jamaican gingerbread that will allow you to get more use out of that tin of black treacle or molasses you bought to make Lepard's bread.
Your loaf tin can also serve as a mould for savoury dishes, most famously meatloaf. There are countless wildly different variations on this classic American dish and I have hit on a few bad ones while trying to recreate the kind my mother made. As ever, it is wisest to rely on Cloake's definitive version: after some experimentation, she settles on a recipe containing, among other things, spinach, yoghurt, eggs, garlic, brown sugar and ketchup. If you are looking for something elementary – and very much in the humble, no-nonsense spirit of the dish – you could have a go at this five-ingredient meatloaf: mince, bacon, sage-and-onion stuffing mix, a beef stock cube and sunflower oil. If you don't like the sound of that list, don't be surprised if you don't like meatloaf.
As far as I am concerned, a terrine tin and a loaf tin are the same thing – if you have one, you have both. This means that as soon as you have turned out your bread you can use the tin to whip up a paté de campagne. Once again, I am passing on Cloake's hard-won expertise, alongside a warning that this will amount to rather more than a lazy afternoon's work. Plus, you may have to source some caul fat. Another option is this festive-sounding duck and pork terrine with cranberries and pistachios, which has the advantage of being rather easier to pull together.
A terrine need not be a savoury dish – your loaf tin can give shape to all sorts of desserts and puddings. This coffee ice-cream terrine, for example, is made up of layers of coffee and vanilla ice-cream, cemented together with chocolate sauce and left to set hard in the freezer.
Chocolate caramel terrine is another layered pudding – this time a caramel, mascarpone, chocolate and cream mixture interspersed with caramel wafers cut to fit your loaf tin. More impressive still is Liam Charles's rhubarb and honey panna cotta terrine: a blondie biscuit base with rhubarb jelly on top and panna cotta in between. If you feel uncomfortable making something like that in the same loaf tin you used for meatloaf last week, then I am with you. Best to buy another one for desserts – you can get them for about £2.50.
ViacomCBS' CBS All Access streaming service will finally be rebranded as Paramount+ on March 4, the company said Tuesday. That day is when the rebranded streaming service will go live in the U.S. and Latin America, with planned launches for the Nordics on March 25 and in Australia in mid-2021. Canada's version of CBS All Access will also be rebranded to Paramount+ on March 4 and "an expanded offering will be available later in the year." ViacomCBS will host an investor-focused ViacomCBS Streaming Event on Feb. 24, eight days ahead of the Paramount+ rebrand. Per the company, "The presentation will deliver a comprehensive overview of the company's streaming strategy, including Paramount+, Pluto TV, and Showtime OTT." Also Read: Miranda Cosgrove to Return for 'iCarly' Revival at Paramount+ More to come… Read original story CBS All Access to Finally Rebrand as Paramount+ on March 4 At TheWrap


text:
A Fraunhofer-féle vonalak a Nap színképében található sötét vonalak.

Bár néhányukat először William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828) angol kémikus vette észre 1802-ben, 1814-ben, tőle függetlenül Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826) német tudós jóval részletesebben figyelte meg őket. Kísérleti eredményeit Fraunhofer publikálta is, ezért a vonalak róla kapták a nevüket. Fraunhofer 574 vonalat írt le, és közülük a különösen intenzíveket betűkkel jelölte meg. Ez a felfedezése tette lehetővé a színképelemzés vizsgálati módszerének kialakulását.

A jelenség magyarázata

Az atommagok körül elhelyezkedő elektronok energiaszintjei kvantáltak. Az alapállapotú atom csak két energiaszint közötti különbségnek megfelelő energiaadagot képes felvenni. Egy ilyen energiacsomag elnyelése után az atom magasabb energiájú, ún. gerjesztett állapotba kerül. A zömmel alapállapotú gázatomok a fehér fényből csak azokat a fotonokat nyelik el, amelyeknek energiája éppen megfelel valamely két energiaszint különbségének. A rendszert megvilágító fényből az elnyelődés után az ilyen hullámhosszú vonalak hiányoznak, és helyükön sötét, ún. abszorpciós vonalak jelennek meg. Ezeknek a sötét vonalaknak a helye, azaz a hullámhossza jellemző az elnyelő közeg anyagára, ezért az abszorpciós színkép alapján meghatározható annak összetétele. Ilyen színképvizsgálattal mutatta ki Cecilia Payne, hogy a Nap légköre (a kromoszféra) túlnyomórészt hidrogénből áll.

Jegyzetek

Források

Kapcsolódó cikkek

Színkép
Spektrum
Abszorpció (fizika)
Nap
Elektron
Kvantum
Kromoszféra
Statisztika
Burr-eloszlás

Optika


City leaders from Hamburg, Helsinki and Detroit on Re-imagining the City: mayoral voice can be a particularly powerful tool to ease the path to inclusion for newcomers.
Migrants don't just go to Germany, Denmark or Great Britain but quite specifically to Berlin, Copenhagen and London, said Mesghena of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, our co-host at the 2014 Cities of Migration Conference in Berlin. Cities have always been laboratories of social innovation and pioneering places of change for precisely the reasons of social and cultural diversity that makes them stand out. The success of many large cities is largely to do with the fact that the hopes and dreams of those people who have decided to settle in them can come true.
Diversity has emerged as a business-critical factor in the ability to innovate, attract clients and partners, and retain and cultivate the best talent amid changing demographics, unpredictable business climate or political regimes, says Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard University professor of social ethics.
As national teams representing the best in football vie for supremacy in Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff described the World Cup as the cup for peace and against racism among other things. Can football fight racism? At the 2nd International Cities of Migration conference held in Berlin this month, two prolific thinkers weighed in on the motion: Be it resolved professional football is powerless to end racism.
We look forward to seeing you in Berlin for the 2nd international Cities of Migration Conference between June 4 and 6, 2014. And if you are not able to be at the conference, we will be live-streaming some select sessions.
Councillor Sam Merulla and Maria Antelo, a community development worker, tell here what prompted Hamilton to re-affirm its commitment to ensuring access to services without fear to immigrants without full status or full documents.
Embracing diversity and creating inclusive communities is the way forward from being merely a welcoming place for immigrants. Expect to hear new ideas and strategies for moving beyond welcoming at our Cities of Migration conference and on why harnessing diversity adds to the strengths of organizations.
Henry Yu, University of British Columbia and Co-Chair of the Vancouver Dialogues Project, shares ideas on welcoming communities and newcomer settlement. with Judi Altinkaya, Newcomers Marae Welcomes project at the Wellington Regional Settlement Strategy, New Zealand.
Is Diversity a Threat to Freedom?
Edward Mortimer in this Open Society Foundations article says diversity is both a condition and a result of freedom. Without it, there would be no alternatives for people to choose freely between; and since in practice people make different choices, their freedom produces a diversity of outcomes.


We are a local, neighbourhood charity based in the Radford and Lenton Sands area of inner-cityNottingham. Our mission is to alleviate the isolation and loneliness amongst vulnerable, older people in the area. We do this by providing people with a volunteer visitor for friendship and support who visit them in their own homes. We also organise shopping trips, outings and social events for our clients to help alleviate feelings of loneliness or isolation.
Our volunteers all come from the local area, many are older people themselves with a significant proportion coming from the BME communities reflecting the diversity of the area as a whole. We offer our volunteers ongoing support, training and supervision in their work with our clients. We also run the Radford Healthy Living 50+ Project which is a health awareness and promotion scheme for people over 50 in the area, the funding for which has come from the Big Lottery Fund which terminates in September 2008.


text:
Do Rational People Exist?
Does it make sense to talk about "rational people"?
That is, is there a sub-population of individuals who consistently exhibit less cognitive bias and better judgment under uncertainty than average people? Do these people have the dispositions we'd intuitively associate with more thoughtful habits of mind? (Are they more flexible and deliberative, less dogmatic and impulsive?)
And, if so, what are the characteristics associated with rationality? Are rational people more intelligent? Do they have distinctive demographics, educational backgrounds, or neurological features?
This is my attempt to find out what the scientific literature has to say about the question. (Note: I'm going to borrow heavily from Keith Stanovich, as he's the leading researcher in individual differences in rationality. My positions are very close, if not identical, to his, though I answer some questions that he doesn't cover.)
A minority of people avoid cognitive biases
Most of the standard tests for cognitive bias find that most study participants "fail" (display bias) but a minority "pass" (give the rational or correct answer).
The Wason Selection Task is a standard measure of confirmation bias. Less than 10% got it right in Wason's original experiment.[1]
The "feminist bank teller" question famous from Kahneman's experiments is a measure of the conjunction fallacy. Only 10% got it right — 15% for students in the decision science program of the Stanford Business School, who had taken advanced courses in statistics, probability, and decision theory.[2]
Overconfidence bias shows up in 88% of study participants. [6]
The Cognitive Reflection Test measures the ability to avoid choosing intuitive-but-wrong answers. Only 17% get all 3 questions right. [7]
The incidence of framing effects appears to be lower and more variable. Stanovich's experiments find a framing effect in 30-50% of subjects.[3] The frequency of framing effects in Kahneman and Tversky's experiments occupy roughly the same range. [4] The incidence of the sunk cost fallacy in experiments is only about 25%. [5]
On 15 cognitive bias questions developed by Keith Stanovich, subjects' accuracy rates ranged from 92.2% (for a gambler's fallacy question) to 15.6% (for a sample size neglect question). The average score was 6.88 (46%) with a standard deviation of 2.32. [8]
Many standard measures of cognitive bias find that a minority of subjects get the correct answer. There is significant individual variation in cognitive bias.
Correlation between cognitive bias tasks
Is "rationality" a cluster in thingspace? "Rational" only makes sense as a descriptor of people if the same people are systematically better at cognitive bias tasks across the board. This appears to be true.
Stanovich found that the Cognitive Reflection Test was correlated (r=0.49) with score on the 15-question cognitive bias test. Performance also correlated (r=0.41) with IQ, measured with the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence.
Stanovich also found that four rational thinking tasks (a syllogistic reasoning task, a Wason selection task, a statistical reasoning task, and an argument evaluation task) were correlated at the 0.001 significance level (r = 0.2-0.4). These were also correlated with SAT score (r = 0.53) and more weakly with math background (r = 0.145).[9]
Stanovich found, however, that many types of cognitive bias tests failed to correlate with measures of intelligence such as SAT or IQ scores. [10]
The Cognitive Reflection Test was found to be significantly correlated with correct responses on the base rate fallacy, conservatism, and overconfidence bias, but not with the endowment effect. [12]
Philip Tetlock's "super-forecasters" — the top 2% most successful predictors on current-events questions in IARPA's Good Judgment Project — outperformed the average by 65% and the best learning algorithms by 35-60%. The best forecasters scored significantly higher than average on IQ, the Cognitive Reflection Test, and political knowledge. [11]
Correct responses on probability questions correlate with lower rates of the conjunction fallacy. [16]
In short, there appears to be significant correlation between a variety of tests of cognitive biases. Higher IQ is also correlated with avoiding cognitive biases, though many individual cognitive biases are uncorrelated with IQ and the variation in cognitive bias is not fully explained by IQ differences. The cognitive reflection test is correlated with less cognitive bias and with IQ, as well as with forecasting ability. There's a compelling case that "rationality" is a distinct skill, related to intelligence and math or statistics ability.
Cognitive bias performance and dispositions
"Dispositions" are personal qualities that reflect one's priorities — "curiosity" would be an example of a disposition. Performance on cognitive bias tests is correlated with the types of dispositions we'd associate with being a thoughtful and reasonable person.
People scoring higher on the Cognitive Reflection Test are more patient, as measured by how willing they are to wait for a larger financial reward.[7]
Higher scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test also correlate with utilitarian thinking (as measured by willingness to throw the switch on the trolley problem.) [13]
Belief in the paranormal is correlated with higher rates of the conjunction fallacy. [17]
Score on rational thinking tasks (argument evaluation, syllogisms, and statistical reasoning) is correlated (r = 0.413) with score on a Thinking Dispositions questionnaire (which measures Actively Open-Minded Thinking, Dogmatism, Paranormal Beliefs, etc.)
Basically, it appears that lower rates of cognitive bias correlate with certain behavioral traits one could intuitively characterize as "reasonable." They're less dogmatic, and more open-minded. They're less likely to believe in the supernatural. They behave more like ideal economic actors. Most of this seems to add up to being more WEIRD, though this may be a function of the features that researchers chose to investigate.
Factors correlating with cognitive bias
Men score higher on the Cognitive Reflection Test than women — the group that answers all three questions correctly is two-thirds men, while the group that answers all three questions wrong is two-thirds women. [7]
Scientists [14] and mathematicians [15] performed no better than undergraduates on the Wason Selection Task, though mathematics undergraduates did better than history undergraduates.
Autistics [18] are less susceptible to the conjunction fallacy than neurotypicals.
Correct responses on conjunction fallacy and base rate questions correspond to better performance on "No-Go" tasks and greater N2, an EEG measure believed to reflect executive inhibition ability. [19] Response inhibition is thought to be based in the striatum and associated with striatal dopamine receptors.
COMT mutations predict greater susceptibility to confirmation bias. [20] COMT is involved in the degradation of dopamine. The Val/Met polymorphism makes the enzyme less efficient, which increases prefrontal cortex activation and working memory for abstract rules. Met carriers exhibited more confirmation bias (p = 0.005).
There doesn't seem to be that much data on the demographic characteristics of the most and least rational people.
There's some suggestive neuroscience on the issue; the ability to avoid intuitive-but-wrong choices has to do with executive function and impulsivity, while the ability to switch tasks and avoid being anchored on earlier beliefs has to do with prefrontal cortex learning. As we'll see later, Stanovich (independently of the neuroscience evidence) categorizes cognitive biases into two distinct types, more or less matching this distinction between "consciously avoiding the intuitive-but-wrong answer" skills and the "considering that you might be wrong" skills.
Is there a hyper-rational elite?
It seems clear that there's such a thing as individual variation in rationality, that people who are more rational in one area tend to be more rational in others, and that rationality correlates with the kinds of things you'd expect: intelligence, mathematical ability, and a flexible cognitive disposition.
It's not obvious that "cognitive biases" are a natural category — some are associated with IQ, while some aren't, and it seems quite probable that different biases have different neural correlates. But tentatively, it seems to make sense to talk about "rationality" as a single phenomenon.
A related question is whether there exists a small population of extreme outliers with very low rates of cognitive bias, a rationality elite. Tetlock's experiments seem to suggest this may be true — that there are an exceptional 2% who forecast significantly better than average people, experts, or algorithms.
In order for the "rationality elite" hypothesis to be generally valid, we'd have to see the same people score exceptionally high on a variety of cognitive bias tests. There doesn't yet appear to be evidence to confirm this.
Stanovich's tripartite model
Stanovich proposes dividing "System II", or the reasoning mind, into two further parts: the "reflective mind" and the "algorithmic mind." The reflective mind engages in self-skepticism; it interrupts processes and asks "is this right?" The algorithmic mind is involved in working memory and cognitive processing capacity — it is what IQ tests and SATs measure.
This would explain why some cognitive biases, but not others, correlate with IQ. Intelligence does not protect against myside bias, the bias blind spot, sunk costs, and anchoring effects. Intelligence is correlated with various tests of probabilistic reasoning (base rate neglect, probability matching), tests of logical reasoning (belief bias, argument evaluation), expected value maximization in gambles, overconfidence bias, and the Wason selection test.
One might argue that the skills that correlate with intelligence are tests of symbolic manipulation skill, the ability to consciously follow rules of logic and math, while the skills that don't correlate with intelligence require cognitive flexibility, the ability to change one's mind and avoid being tied to past choices.
Stanovich talks about "cognitive decoupling", the ability to block out context and experiential knowledge and just follow formal rules, as a main component of both performance on intelligence tests and performance on the cognitive bias tests that correlate with intelligence. Cognitive decoupling is the opposite of holistic thinking. It's the ability to separate, to view things in the abstract, to play devil's advocate.
Cognitive flexibility, for which the "actively open-minded thinking scale" is a good proxy measure, is the ability to question your own beliefs. It predicts performance on a forecasting task, because the open-minded people sought more information. [21] Less open-minded individuals are more biased towards their own first opinions and do less searching for information.[22] Actively open-minded thinking increases with age (in middle schoolers) and correlates with cognitive ability.[23]
Under this model, people with high IQs, and especially people with training in probability, economics, and maybe explicit rationality, will be better at the cognitive bias skills that have to do with cognitive decoupling, but won't be better at the others.
Speculatively, we might imagine that there is a "cognitive decoupling elite" of smart people who are good at probabilistic reasoning and score high on the cognitive reflection test and the IQ-correlated cognitive bias tests. These people would be more likely to be male, more likely to have at least undergrad-level math education, and more likely to have utilitarian views. Speculating a bit more, I'd expect this group to be likelier to think in rule-based, devil's-advocate ways, influenced by economics and analytic philosophy. I'd expect them to be more likely to identify as rational.
I'd expect them not to be much better than average at avoiding the cognitive biases uncorrelated with intelligence. The cognitive decoupling elite would be just as prone to dogmatism and anchoring as anybody else. However, the subset that were cognitively flexible would probably be noticeably better at predicting the future. Tetlock's finding that the most accurate political pundits are "foxes" not "hedgehogs" seems to be related to this idea of the "reflective mind." Most smart abstract thinkers are not especially open-minded, but those who are, get things right a lot more than everybody else.
It's also important to note that experiments on cognitive bias pinpoint a minority, but not a tiny minority, of less biased individuals. 17% of college students at all colleges, but 45% of college students at MIT, got all three questions on the cognitive reflection test right. MIT has about 120,000 living alumni; 27% of Americans have a bachelor's or professional degree. The number of Americans getting the Cognitive Reflection Test right is probably on the order of a few million — that is, a few percent of the total population. Obviously, conjunctively adding more cognitive bias tests should narrow down the population of ultra-rational people further, but we're not talking about a tiny elite cabal here. In the terminology of my previous post, the evidence points to the existence of unusually rational people, but only at the "One-Percenter" level. If there are Elites, Ultra-Elites, and beyond, we don't yet have the tests to detect them.
Yes, there are people who are consistently less cognitively biased than average. They are a minority, but not a tiny minority. They are smarter and more reasonable than average. When you break down the measures of cognitive bias into two types, you find that intelligence is correlated with measures of ability to reason formally, but not with measures of ability to question one's own judgment; the latter are more correlated with dispositions like "active open-mindedness." There's no evidence to suggest that there's a very small (e.g. less than 1% of the population) group of extremely rational people, probably because we don't have enough experimental power to detect extremes of performance on cognitive bias tests.
[1] Wason, Peter C. "Reasoning about a rule." The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 20.3 (1968): 273-281.
[2] Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: The conjunction fallacy in probability judgment." Psychological review 90.4 (1983): 293.
[3] E. Stanovich, Keith, and Richard F. West. "Individual differences in framing and conjunction effects." Thinking & Reasoning 4.4 (1998): 289-317.
[4] Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. "Rational choice and the framing of decisions." Journal of business (1986): S251-S278.
[5] Friedman, Daniel, et al. "Searching for the sunk cost fallacy." Experimental Economics 10.1 (2007): 79-104.
[6] West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). The domain specificity and generality of overconfidence: Individual differences in performance estimation bias. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 387-392.
[7] Frederick, Shane. "Cognitive reflection and decision making." Journal of Economic perspectives (2005): 25-42.
[8]Toplak, Maggie E., Richard F. West, and Keith E. Stanovich. "The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks."Memory & Cognition 39.7 (2011): 1275-1289.
[9] Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1998). Individual differences in rational thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 161-188
[10] Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2011). Intelligence and rationality. In R. J. Sternberg & S. B. Kaufman (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (pp. 784-826). New York: Cambridge University Press.
[11] Ungar, Lyle, et al. "The Good Judgment Project: A Large Scale Test of Different Methods of Combining Expert Predictions." 2012 AAAI Fall Symposium Series. 2012.
[12] Hoppe, Eva I., and David J. Kusterer. "Behavioral biases and cognitive reflection." Economics Letters 110.2 (2011): 97-100.
[13] Paxton, Joseph M., Leo Ungar, and Joshua D. Greene. "Reflection and reasoning in moral judgment." Cognitive Science 36.1 (2012): 163-177.
[14] Griggs, Richard A., and Sarah E. Ransdell. "Scientists and the selection task."Social Studies of Science 16.2 (1986): 319-330.
[15]Inglis, Matthew, and Adrian Simpson. "Mathematicians and the selection task."Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Vol. 3. 2004.
[16]Benassi, Victor A., and Russell L. Knoth. "The intractable conjunction fallacy: Statistical sophistication, instructional set, and training." Journal of Social Behavior & Personality (1993).
[17] Rogers, Paul, Tiffany Davis, and John Fisk. "Paranormal belief and susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy." Applied cognitive psychology 23.4 (2009): 524-542.
[18]Morsanyi, Kinga, Simon J. Handley, and Jonathan SBT Evans. "Decontextualised minds: Adolescents with autism are less susceptible to the conjunction fallacy than typically developing adolescents." Journal of autism and developmental disorders 40.11 (2010): 1378-1388.
[19] De Neys, Wim, et al. "What makes a good reasoner?: Brain potentials and heuristic bias susceptibility." Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Vol. 32. 2010.
[20] Doll, Bradley B., Kent E. Hutchison, and Michael J. Frank. "Dopaminergic genes predict individual differences in susceptibility to confirmation bias." The Journal of neuroscience 31.16 (2011): 6188-6198.
[21] Haran, Uriel, Ilana Ritov, and Barbara A. Mellers. "The role of actively open-minded thinking in information acquisition, accuracy, and calibration."Judgment & Decision Making 8.3 (2013).
[22] Baron, Jonathan. "Beliefs about thinking." Informal reasoning and education(1991): 169-186.
[23] Kokis, Judite V., et al. "Heuristic and analytic processing: Age trends and associations with cognitive ability and cognitive styles." Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 83.1 (2002): 26-52.
June 9, 2014 srconstantin	cognitive science, rationality
← Exit, Voice, and Empire
Dopamine, Perception, and Values →
36 thoughts on "Do Rational People Exist?"
How well does giving more rational answers to tests correlate with being more rational when making real-world decisions?
gwern says:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ahz/cashing_out_cognitive_biases_as_behavior/ is relevant.
Pingback: Assorted links ~
Lee Daniel Crocker says:
I would define "rationalist" by intent and affiliation, not necessarily by inherent ability. That is, a rationalist is someone dedicated to learning and using the tools of rational thought as a primary moral value, and who associates with others of similar values, whether or not they are naturally skilled at it. Indeed, rationalism is by its very nature counter to basic human instinct and common sense, so it's unlikely that anyone is naturally skilled at it.
How would one test rationality when making real-world decisions?
Life-outcome data? If we assume that rationale real-world decisions are ones that have a higher likelihood of producing "good" outcomes, then we can see if high scores in rationality tests correlate with high scores on scales of "good" life outcomes, such as health, income, employment, relationship satisfaction, etc.
D_Malik says:
That'd be lethally confounded by IQ.
Not nearly as much as you'd think: most of the biases have surprisingly low corrrelations with IQ (<r=0.2).
David Harmon says:
I agree with gwern. The most important thing I learned at Harvard was this: Intelligence isn't everything, or even the most important thing. When it comes to succeeding in life, character consistently trumps intelligence. And for many of the abilities discussed, in practice most people would class them under character: Self discipline, restraint, foresight, integrity (including intellectual integrity).
ThrustVectoring says:
Even if there are no "rationalists", it's still useful as a Platonic Ideal to strive towards.
Ben Kuhn says:
Do we know that the accuracy of super-forecasters in the Tetlock study is actually due to them being less biased, as opposed to having more of other skills (generating and comparing models, acquiring and remembering domain expertise, pattern-matching, etc.)? The link between low cognitive bias and high predictive ability seems to be the least robust part of this argument.
Yes, I agree that's the weakest link.
Tetlock's research, IIRC, did show that training in probability theory made people better forecasters. He also showed that "foxes" were better than "hedgehogs" (which sort of sounds like "active open-mindedness".) But I don't recall that he ever ran cognitive bias tests on the participants.
Michael Vassar says:
How is skill at generating and comparing models, acquiring and remembering (and appropriately applying) domain expertise, etc, in a manner which leads to better probabilistic prediction, *not* "being less biased"? What would Platonic "being less biased" look like?
I'll taboo "bias" and rephrase: what I'm wondering is the extent to which cognitive flexibility is the relevant variable in super-forecasters. Sarah gave one citation on actively open-minded thinking predicting forecasting in a lab, but I want to know if it generalizes to the field and what it looks like in the tail of the distribution.
Tyrrell McAllister says:
This would make a great Less Wrong post. Why not cross-post it?
John Salvatier says:
I love this. Useful to see this placed in the context of the elite hierarchy you talked about earlier. I also found the title a bit misleading, I thought the post was going to be about something else. Your speculation about "cognitive decoupling elite" paints a pretty plausible picture.
I'm concerned that an 'actively open-minded' style might directly cause people to be untrusted, or even to be seen as 'lacking in actively open-minded cognition', in a similar manner to how, IMHO, questioning and exploring your hypotheses makes you more likely to be called a 'know it all' avoiding cult-like behaviors makes your group more likely to be called a cult.
Pingback: Do Rational People Exist? | Blog ~
arthole says:
These kinds of arguments, and most language based cognitive tests are deeply flawed. For instance, the standard cognitive bias questions do not illustrate cognitive bias so much as an inability to parse the question correctly. Incorrectly answering questions, framed in a way to confuse an issue, does not demonstrate a cognitive bias. Cognitive bias questions are examples of bad writing that is confusing. Which perhaps does demonstrates our bias to clear and understandable language use. Which likely demonstrates that we do not want to engage in mental effort when parsing language because it is inefficient (thinking fast and slow). Secondly, the idea of rational cognition as some sort of mental functioning apart from brain functioning is deeply flawed. There is no extrinsic "rational thinking" apart from neurological activity. The idea of "elevating" rational thought above other kinds of neurological processes is itself a cognitive bias. Why not ask: what are the advantages of cognitive inflexibility? If the 'rational people' are in the minority, is that because rational thought is an aberrant form of human existence? Or does the social and ecological environment optimize 'rational people' to be in a minority because of hidden conditions? Or is rational thinking a bias that results particular kinds of development and protein expression and thus a side-effect of biological initial state, systems biology, and environmental interactions?
Pingback: Expertise vs. intelligence and rationality ~
mihipte says:
How does a rational person select goals? Or, does rationality correlate with any specific psychological disposition? Depending on what they aim to achieve, they might not be the best people to ask advice of.
Pingback: Do Rational People Exist? | economicsrant ~
Pingback: Do Rational People Exist? | econoception ~
Pingback: How do we reliably impact the far future? | The Best We Can ~
Pingback: Web Roundup: More Links for June - My blog ~
Pingback: Do Rational People Exist? - econoception ~
Pingback: Momentum, Reflectiveness, Peace | Otium ~
Pingback: The cognitive decoupling elite | drossbucket ~
Pingback: A Deep Dive into the Harris-Klein Controversy – Everything Studies ~
Pingback: The context is conflict – Put A Number On It! ~
Pingback: Decoupling Revisited – Everything Studies ~
Pingback: The Oblivious Nerd in Three Constructs | Accidental Shelf-Browsing ~
Pingback: Contextualizing vs Decoupling | διά πέντε / dia pente ~
Pingback: Book Review: The Eureka Factor – drossbucket ~
Pingback: The New Science of How to Argue—Constructively | Din Merican: the Malaysian DJ Blogger ~
Pingback: Cognitive decoupling and banana phones – drossbucket ~


text:
Monday, 17 January 2022 | 0.6°C Dublin
blatter refuses platini request to stand down
Michel Platini has not ruled out the possibility of a World Cup boycott by UEFA members if Sepp Blatter is re-elected as FIFA president today.
Platini, the president of European football's governing body, urged Blatter to stand down when the pair met yesterday amid fresh FIFA corruption allegations emerging from separate inquiries by the US Department of Justice and the Swiss government.
Blatter refused to quit and still intends to stand against Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein in Friday's presidential vote.
Platini said UEFA would unite behind Prince Ali and admitted that, if the 79-year-old Blatter was to win a fifth term in office, UEFA would have some tough decisions to make when its members meet again in Berlin next week before the Champions League final.
Asked if a boycott of FIFA competitions was a possibility, Platini said: "UEFA associations will meet in Berlin next week. We will be open to all options."
Pressed further on the prospect of a World Cup boycott, Platini added: "There may be proposals. I honestly don't wish that."
Platini confirmed he had personally pleaded with Blatter to quit following the latest scandal to hit FIFA.
He said: "I have had enough - enough is enough, too much is too much. I am the first to be disgusted.
"I told Mr Blatter 'we started together and now I am asking you to step down as we cannot continue this way'.
"He told me 'it's too late, I can't today all of sudden leave when Congress starts this afternoon'."
Platini said he was convinced Prince Ali could win, adding: "A very, very big majority of UEFA associations will vote for Prince Ali - a minimum of 45 or 46 (out of 53), and I try to convince more."
Platini warned, however, that Blatter's decision to stay meant his support is still daunting, but that there was now more democracy with confederations not voting en bloc.
"If he has decided to stay on, it means he is still strong," he said.
"But there's a renewal of democracy in the African zone to vote freely. As I said to Europe, vote freely - but vote for Prince Ali."


text:
package retrofit.mime;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;

/**
 * Binary data with an associated mime type.
 *
 * @author Bob Lee (bob@squareup.com)
 */
public interface TypedOutput {
    /**
     * Original filename.
     * <p/>
     * Used only for multipart requests, may be null.
     */
    String fileName();

    /**
     * Returns the mime type.
     */
    String mimeType();

    /**
     * Length in bytes or -1 if unknown.
     */
    long length();

    /**
     * Writes these bytes to the given output stream.
     */
    void writeTo(OutputStream out) throws IOException;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


refronted with brick, now painted, and plastered. Tiled roof. Casement windows.
Doorways with pediment-shaped hoods over. Two storeys. Five windows.
No. 3 Red Barn lies behind St. Anthony's, and forms one side of the White Hart car park. The cottage has been extended and extensively renovated during 2016 and 2017.
Red Barn No. 2, 1: A photo from 2007 showing the frontage of Red Barn, with the door of St. Anthony's Cottage to the right.
Red Barn No. 2, 2: This photo was taken in 2015.
Red Barn No. 3, 1: A photo from mid-2016 showing work on extending the rear of the cottage.
Red Barn No. 3, 2: This photo from late October 2016 shows the completed roof.
Red Barn No. 3, 3: Early November 2016 and the new house side facing the car park has been completed.
Red Barn No. 3: Late October 2017, and the cottage is completed, with new gate, gazebo, fencing and flowers.
Red Barn No.3: A photo from late June 2018.


The Czech Rectors Conference has expressed their concern "about the latest reports related to the possible termination of the activities carried out by the Central European University (CEU) based in Budapest," in a letter sent to CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff.
CEU "represents a significant position in the present-day Central European academic and scientific area, and in the field of humanities, it ranks among the finest educational institutions in Europe. For 25 years, this University of liberal orientation has supported democratic processes and cultivated civil society in the Central European region. A number of Czech universities have been developing close and fruitful cooperation with Central European University, which could be threatened in the coming future.
The Czech Rectors Conference appreciates the scientific and social role of Central European University and asks the Government of Hungary to foster the creation of such legislative conditions that would allow the smooth functioning of the Central European University in Budapest again."


text:
Child Health+5 more topics
How Climate Change Affects Children: AAP Policy Explained…
How Climate Change Affects Children: AAP Policy Explained When pediatricians take care of children, we aren't just thinking about their health and safety now—we are thinking about their health and safety in the future, too. When we talk with parents about healthy diet and exercise, we aren't just...
ErynWang
COVID-19+2 more topics
Situational and policy briefs: COVID-19 and migration…
This series of situational and policy briefs summarises key practical and operational aspects of the COVID-19 response in relation to migrants and refugees. They include public health and policy recommendations and perspectives that build on the Lancet Migration Global Statement recommendations to...
Covid-19 Policy Brief: Internet Access and Affordability…
In this global health crisis, the web is both a lifeline and a critical force in helping to curb the spread of Covid-19. Without public health information at our fingertips, many would be dangerously under-informed about the scale and severity of the situation. Without the option to work and learn...
The policy brief outlines guidance for providing universal access to an online world that is safe and empowering for everyone. In this global health crisis, the web is both a lifeline and a critical force in helping to curb the spread of Covid-19. Without public health information at our fingertips...
UN's Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Children…
According to the UN's policy brief on COVID-19 and children, "There are three main ways children are affected by this crisis: infection with the virus itself; immediate socioeconomic impacts of measures to stop transmission of the virus; and longer-term effects of delayed implementation of the...
Adapting to COVID-19: Pivoting the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child…
Background The health, social, political and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are disproportionately affecting girls and women by exacerbating existing systemic gender inequalities at all levels.1 This has potential implications for the incidence of child marriage. COVID-19 also has...
Epidemiology, Spectrum, and Impact of COVID-19 on Children, Adolescents, and …
Introduction and timeline of the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread from a local outbreak to a global pandemic within months. As of 29 June 2020, over 10 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 499,000 deaths have been...
Approximation to Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Programming for Youth…
Educational and public health systems have implemented psychosocial intervention programs to alleviate the mental health impacts of trauma on children all around the world. Crises that induce such trauma include natural disasters, armed conflict, civil and political unrest, and public health crises...
asames
(-) Policy Brief


text:
High Rate of Drug/Alcohol-Related Deaths in WTC Survivors
Rescue and Recovery Work and PTSD Are Among the Risk Factors
People who were exposed to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center (WTC) have elevated rates of alcohol- or drug-related death, reports a study in the October 2018 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "Following a major disaster, alcohol- and drug-related mortality may be increased," according to the new research by Jim Cone, MD, and colleagues of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The researchers analyzed data on more than 71,000 individuals with some type of direct exposure to the September 11, 2001, attacks, enrolled in the WTC Health Registry. Through 2012, there were 1,193 deaths in this group of WTC survivors. Sixty-six deaths were related to drugs or alcohol: a rate of 5.5 percent.
Several factors were linked to a higher risk of mortality from drugs or alcohol. Men accounted for about 82 percent of drug/alcohol-related deaths, compared to 53 percent of deaths from other causes. Forty-two percent of deaths from drugs or alcohol were in young people aged 18 to 44, compared to ten percent of deaths from other causes.
"The odds of dying from an alcohol- or drug-related cause were two times greater among enrollees with 9/11-related post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], compared to those without," Dr. Cone and coauthors write. Risk was also elevated for rescue/recovery workers and those who sustained an injury on 9/11.
The findings are consistent with previous post-disaster studies reporting high levels of alcohol use and binge drinking among rescue/recovery workers. "Rescue/recovery workers in our cohort likely experienced WTC exposures that were of greater intensity and duration…which may explain part of the greater odds of alcohol- or drug-related mortality observed in this group," the researchers write.
They note that PTSD — which has been linked to excessive alcohol use — was also a strong risk factor. "Screening for both current substance use disorders and at-risk alcohol and drug use behaviors should be included as part of post-disaster mental health assessments," Dr. Cone and coauthors conclude. "Moreover, it is imperative that substance use be addressed concomitantly with the treatment of comorbid health conditions such as PTSD and depression."
About the Author — Dr. Cone may be contacted for interviews at jcone@health.nyc.gov.
Welch A, Zweig KC, Liao T, et al. Alcohol and drug-related mortality among enrollees in the World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR), 2004 to 2012. J Occup Environ Med. 2018;60(10);875-9.