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Ten Second News / The League
Ticket brokers and the Super Bowl
by Dave · January 30, 2015
This article caught my interest. It addresses speculation in the market for Super Bowl tickets.
In ticketing, short selling works like this: A speculator offers to sell a ticket they do not own, for a price above where he thinks the market will ultimately end up. At the time of the sale, this may seem like a good deal. Following the normal ticket market demand curve, as the event gets closer, prices drop…
…For last year's Super Bowl in New York, the cheapest ticket on game-day was going for around $1,500. If the same pattern held this year, a spec seller who sold their ticket for $2,000 after the conference championship would pocket $500 and a 33% return for their week's worth of work.
A 33% return is nice for one week's worth of work, except when the market goes the other way:
With the cheapest pair to the 2015 game now going for $10,000, those same sellers are now looking at losses of up to $8,000—for each ticket.
The cheapest face value ticket for this year's Super Bowl was $1,200, which is $8,000 less than what you can get now on the secondary market. With nothing particularly different about the match-up, the participants or the location, those kinds of numbers suggest that the market is rigged.
The alternative explanation is that ticket brokers went heavily into short positions, unexpectedly encountered unfavorable market conditions (538 has historical pricing) and consequently ran up ticket prices when trying to cover losses. Simple as that.
While those with access won financially this year, they've done so at the expense of the fan, their own integrity, and the consumer's trust in the ticket market.
Please. The same can be said for last year, and we know that the winners in last year's markets are the losers in this year's market.
Dave is a part-time blogger that writes about whatever suits him at the time.
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Saul Degraw says:
I am trying to think of an event where I would be willing to pay 1200-1500 dollars for a ticket. I can't really think of one.
And people complain about how theatre tickets are too expensive.Report
Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:
When I see $1200-1500, I tend to think "that should include plane tickets, hotel room, and the event itself."
So, like, weddings or a funeral or something.Report
greginak in reply to Jaybird says:
And for that much the event should be more then 3 frickin hours. For that much money i want at least a week of fun stuff.Report
Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:
There goes the funeral.
Probably.Report
DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:
You could schedule a lot of funerals at once.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:
Or as long as you're all dressed up you could crash some wakes.Report
Kazzy in reply to Saul Degraw says:
@saul-degraw
I'd venture to guess that is because the events you are likely to picture are not unique in the way that sporting events are.
There is only one Super Bowl every year. Imagine how much tickets would go for if a given play, concert, or opera were performed once a year.
Furthermore, this Super Bowl will be nothing like the 40-some-odd Super Bowls beforehand and nothing like the Super Bowls to come. It is literally a once-in-a-lifetime event. Now, it could suck. It could be great. It could be middling. No one knows! You can make reasonable assumptions about both the entertainment level of the game AND the historical legacy of it based on the participants and other factors, which is why you see some ebb-and-flow in pricing year-to-year (other variables also factor in, primarily location).
So, now move beyond that play being performed but once a year, and imagine that this year's rendition has Kristoff Waltz and Jennifer Lawrence and this might be the only time they appear in the performance — either together or individually. And they're doing your favorite show! Sure, they might bomb or have no chemistry. But, holy crap, they might totally nail your favorite show and offer a transcendent performance! Suddenly, you might be thinking, "Ya know what… $1200 for a literally once in a lifetime performance of my favorite show doesn't seem so bad."
Now… I will say that I don't think I'd ever pay that much to attend the Super Bowl unless I attained a degree of wealth in which that was a rounding error. But I understand why others might and, more importantly, why the Super Bowl specifically and sporting events in general aren't comparable to most other types of performances.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Kazzy says:
If it were the seventh game of the 1962 World Series, and I knew that this time McCovey was going to get the ball over Richardson's head …Report
LWA says:
I hereby preemptively declare that this is one item which can completely, and justly be left to the marketplace.
P. S. And I denounce Stalin.
P. P.S. And Sharia Law.Report
Glyph in reply to LWA says:
Hey everybody, LWA started drinking early this weekend!
Prosit!Report
Burt Likko in reply to LWA says:
The Committee would like to have a few words with you, comrade….Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko says:
Good thing you didn't exist in the 1950s. Imagine your judgeship in peril over this comment!Report
Kazzy in reply to LWA says:
@lwa
See the link I provide below, wherein a number of people are not only missing out on an experience they were looking forward to, but also might be out thousands of dollars they spent on flights and hotels with possibly no opportunity to recoup. All because (potentially) of vague fine print.
I'm generally a pro-market guy. But when the fine print — which is written by the side with the balance of power in the negotiation — is vague, I support resolving these matters in the court and deciding on behalf of those who didn't write the contract, who couldn't have been expected to know better, and who didn't attempt to mislead anyone.
You want to write 30 page of fine print? Fine. But be perfect about it. If you fuck up, that's going to be on you.Report
Kolohe in reply to Kazzy says:
On the other other hand, if your rich enough to afford a 1000 plus buck ticket (and the concomitant expenses for meals, travel, and lodging), you should have the wherewithal to rad all the fine print – and if you don't want to do it yourself, hire someone.
They definitely should have the wherewithal to hire someone after the fact. Thus, given that relative equality in socioeconomic and political power, I'm *still* fine with leaving it to the market. The people that are able to buy these tickets are like the privileged investors that are able to invest in firms without the SEC getting involved.Report
Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:
@kolohe
That totally misses the mark. How many of us have taken a $3000 vacation in the last year? And, again, if the buyer wrote the terms, so be it. But the seller wrote the terms. So he is responsible for everything in there. Failed to acknowledge that tickets are not guaranteed? Guess what… that makes them guaranteed and you liable for failing to fulfill the contract.Report
Dave in reply to LWA says:
I'm taking a screenshot of this.Report
Mike Schilling says:
What people are angry about isn't who made or lost money in this market. It's that they thought they had a ticket, and then found out at the last minute that they didn't, because their broker either couldn't find a ticket at all or couldn't find one at a price they were willing to pay, so they offered a refund instead. (This particular story does a terrible job of making that clear.) And a refund is not very appealing if you've already paid for a hotel room (not cheap during the Super Bowl) and flights, none of which is going to be refunded.
The question, which none of the stories I've read about this describe well, is how clear these brokers make it that there's no guarantee that you'll ever receive the ticket you just "bought". When I've bought sports tickets on the secondary market, they've been for specific seats and I've been able to see them immediately, so I have no experience with this sort of speculative "purchase".Report
Kazzy in reply to Mike Schilling says:
@mike-schilling
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2014/story/_/id/12255886/hundreds-super-bowl-tickets-fall-through
Some brokers offered three times the price paid while others offered a 20% bump over price paid. Others are still in negotiations.
It seems that the 'fine print' often did not explicitly say that tickets were not guaranteed, but nonetheless excused the brokers of any liability. Which to me seems like a break down in how we handle contract law. You should not be able to exclude one's self for liability for actions not actually covered by the contract. If the contract said, "Tickets are not guaranteed. In the event we can not secure your ticket, here is how we will respond. This is non-negotiable and we are not liable for any damages as a result of failure to secure the ticket," so be it. But if the contract says, "$3000 for a ticket. Also, we're not liable, ohbytheway,"… well, not liable for what exactly? I would interpret that as, "I can't complain about a refund if my seat is in the nosebleeds." I would not interpret it to mean, "I could get stiffed on this deal and all associated costs for what seemed like a guaranteed offer-to-sell are wholly my own." And the brokers themselves should not get to unilaterally decide which interpretation is valid. That should be a matter for the courts and I hope the stiffed buyers sue and, if the language was deliberately left vague, the matter is decided in their favor.Report
Dave in reply to Kazzy says:
It seems that the 'fine print' often did not explicitly say that tickets were not guaranteed, but nonetheless excused the brokers of any liability. Which to me seems like a break down in how we handle contract law.
Other than failure to produce the ticket, what other kind of liability could it be?
I would interpret that as, "I can't complain about a refund if my seat is in the nosebleeds."
Unless a specific seat is promised, then I don't think that would apply. If a broker promises a ticket for a TBD location in the stadium and produces a ticket, then the broker has met the terms of the deal.Report
I'm referring to what the buyer understands. Yes, one should do his/her homework when spending thousands of dollars. But if Page 1 says "Buy your tickets!!!" in size 72 and page 47 says "Tickets not guaranted." in size 7, two different claims are being made. One tells me I bought a ticket, one tells me I didn't. Why give deference to the seller and the deliberately obscured claim?Report
Why give deference to the seller and the deliberately obscured claim?
Got to. This America, man.Report
@kazzy
But if Page 1 says "Buy your tickets!!!" in size 72 and page 47 says "Tickets not guaranted." in size 7, two different claims are being made. One tells me I bought a ticket, one tells me I didn't. Why give deference to the seller and the deliberately obscured claim?
I wouldn't give a seller any deference in that situation. I'm a fan of disclosure laws for reasons such as this.
My point is that I'm not sure how much is being obscured, deliberately or otherwise. I'm also not sure whether or not buyers are ignorant to this sort of thing. It's not an uncommon practice.Report
Damon in reply to Mike Schilling says:
Exactly. But what the "buyers" fail to understand is that they didn't make a purchase, they made a speculative purchase. If I was selling tickets, I'd not be so fired up to point out that there was a risk they wouldn't get the ticket if I couldn't get it first, but hey, you'd think the fans wanting tickets would understand this…after all…like you said, the seller most certainly DOESNT have the tickets in had to show the buyers….Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Damon says:
If I was selling tickets, I'd not be so fired up to point out that there was a risk they wouldn't get the ticket if I couldn't get it first,
That is, you'd be in it to find suckers rather than customers? Actually, I don't believe that. I think you like to talk tough, but you're really quite a decent person.Report
Damon in reply to Damon says:
There's full honesty and not mentioning "unlikely" events. But I wasn't talking about me specifically.. 🙂Report
Dave in reply to Mike Schilling says:
(This particular story does a terrible job of making that clear.)
The author is a ticket broker himself. That would explain why the story lacks any accountability on the part of ticket brokers.Report
The story is much more clear to me now. I read spec as just another form of scalper and the story provided more ins and outs of who gets Superbowl tickets and when.
Yeah, I don't think Superbowl tickets should be allowed on a short sell.Report
DavidTC says:
Am I the only person here who doesn't understand why 'ticket brokers' *exist*?
If you're willing to buy tickets months in advance, why is there someone acting as a delayed middle-man?
The unstated assumption here seems to be that tickets will *become* available before the game for $1500, and brokers can hand them off (And that failed here), which is completely baffling to me.
Were they not available earlier? Were they more expensive earlier?
How does this make any sense as a business model?Report
DavidTC in reply to DavidTC says:
Or, to put it another way…how the *hell* is there a short market in something that *only gets rarer*, and thus, by all logic, should only go up in price?Report
Malarche in reply to DavidTC says:
Am I the only person here who doesn't understand
You could save a lot of time by cutting and pasting that regularly.Report
Brandon Berg in reply to DavidTC says:
Doesn't work that way. If an asset's price predictably rises faster than the risk-free rate of return, then you can easily make money by buying it long. If you can easily make money by buying it long, then investors will do so until the current price is high enough that this is no longer true.
All of which is to say that price of tickets a year before the event is roughly equal to the net present value of the expected price of a ticket shortly before game day (or whenever it peaks). Since expectations of the peak price fluctuate, so does the current price.
Look up Hotelling's Rule, and of course the EMH.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to DavidTC says:
Yeah, this is all well understood. The fact that the market in Super Bowl tickets acted quite entirely differently last year and this year is just an irrelevant detail.Report
My claim is that the market price of a ticket does not predictably rise at a rate significantly exceeding the risk-adjusted interest rate. The fact that it does that sometimes (i.e. unpredictably) is entirely consistent with that claim. Clearly the brokers weren't predicting it.Report
Ah, now I see what you're saying.Report
It worked last year. And I've seen other situations where it would. Consider some big event like the Super Bowl or a Stones concert. Say a ticket's face price is $500. After all of the tickets have been bought up, there's a wide range in the price of tickets for resale, The cheaper ones get bought, and the more expensive ones in general don't, so the cheapest available ticket might be (say) $2000. As the event gets closer, prices start to come down, because sellers do not want to get stuck with unsold tickets. They might even get sold for a loss, because getting $200 for a $500 ticket is still better than getting nothing.
So say we're well in advance of the event, and the current price is (as we guessed above) $2000. If the broker expects the day-of-event price to be $1000, and he can sell the promise of a ticket for $1500, he's made $500 and his buyer has saved $500. Win-win. If he's wrong, and day-of-event is $1500, the broker breaks even (minus transaction costs) and the buyer still saves $500. If there's way more demand than anticipated (possibly because there are now way more brokers), day-of-event is $3000 and the broker is totally screwed.
Now, if this were a local event, not that big a deal. The broker refunds the $1500 (really, he should refund some interest as well), and the buyer learns that if you want a ticket you should buy a damned ticket. It's the fact that the buyer has spent a significant amount of money for now pointless travel and lodging based on the unfulfilled promise of a ticket that makes the situation so ugly.Report
DavidTC in reply to Mike Schilling says:
As the event gets closer, prices start to come down, because sellers do not want to get stuck with unsold tickets. They might even get sold for a loss, because getting $200 for a $500 ticket is still better than getting nothing.
…except that there is last minute market that should need tickets desperately: *The ticket brokers*
Which means this entire operation is, basically, premised on a scam. You point out that below that it is a cool (aka, scammy) business model to short-sell things and not be on the hook for actually supplying them, but it's even scammier than that.
If brokers *had to* supply the tickets they had supposedly short sold, then prices would *not* drop at the last minute. People would hold the line on the price, hoping a broker gets desperate enough to buy one.
The only reason the brokers can even exist is that they can threaten to walk away from a transaction they already made. If they couldn't, and people knew that, then people would gouge them, rendering the entire model nonsensical.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Mike Schilling says:
You're leaving out one important factor: the percentage of tickets that go through brokers. If it's small enough, they're not driving up each other's prices. Which makes it a successful business, which brings in more competition, which raises that percentage, and so on until this year, when it all went boom.Report
Dave in reply to DavidTC says:
Matching buyers and sellers?Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Dave says:
There are already lots of sites that match buyers and sellers directly. These guys exist specifically to arbitrage price movements.
But if you think about it, it's a really cool business model, effectively short-selling with no margin calls and the right to cancel the whole transaction if it's not going to be profitable for you.Report
DavidTC in reply to Dave says:
Well, yes, such a person would be called a ticket broker. But that wasn't what was described here.
My question was more 'How does a system in which people short-sell tickets to the Super Bowl…operate?'.Report
Like all futures markets, it's a way of arbitraging risk. The buyer locks in a price, and the broker either makes a profit or loses money based on the price at which he is actually able to obtain a ticket.
The only real problem here is the lack of a good escape clause. If brokers are contractually obligated to provide 11,000 tickets out of 10,000 available, then it doesn't matter how much loss they're willing to eat—it's just not happening. Ideally, buyers would specify in advance how much they would accept as compensation for failure to produce the ticket and pay based on that. So if you pay $2,000 you just get the $2,000 back, but if you pay $2,500 then you get $5,000 in the event the broker can't get you a ticket. Or something like that. I'm just making up the numbers.
This is a win-win proposition. The buyer pays the broker to take on risk instead of the buyer.Report
KatherineMW in reply to Brandon Berg says:
I'm not getting how the buyer benefits from this transaction more than by buying a ticket directly and having 100% surety that they now possess the ticket. Seems to me they benefit less, because they might never get a ticket and have to eat all the lost costs.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Brandon Berg says:
The price that the buyer pays is less than the price of currently available tickets, so they get the price reduction in return for the risk of not winding up with a ticket. (Though it's not clear that the brokers made it clear that that risk existed.)Report
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Philadelphia/Skype
London – Royal Opera House
MOSF
Previous TenorTalk Blog
Email for audition
National Opera Center, 330 7th Avenue, NYC
jlivigni@2uarts.com
Home Singing
Mr. Li Vigni, a graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts, honed many of his stage and repertoire skills at AVA and began bringing them to the international stage while yet a student at AVA. Mr. Li Vigni made his Metropolitan Opera of New York debut in 2004 in Boris Godunov, and was seen again at the Met in Lohengrin and Parsifal, and covered roles in Nabucco, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Samson et Dalila.
Jack's first time on the Met stage was during the finals of the National Council Competition's Grand Finals in 2003, where under the direction of Maestro Julius Rudel he sang arias from Lucia di Lammermoor and Werther. "Singing on the Met stage for the first time was an incredibly fulfilling and exciting event that both my family and I had dreamed about" says Li Vigni. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times identified Gioacchino as an audience favorite, and said that Gioacchino "wrings every virtue out of the voice God gave him."
Gioacchino's Turiddu in Portland was judged by critics as "excellent… he milked the scene for everything and brought down the house… passionate, the sparks almost tangible, incendiary." Gioacchino's acute sense for the interpretation of Verismo lead critics to write: "from a musical standpoint, the production is one of the best in memory. What is really astonishing, however, is that [the opera is] not only emotionally charged, but also believable, which is what 'verismo' is all about. [The opera] took fire with Turiddu, well sung by tenor Gioacchino Lauro LiVigni, who knows how to strut like a young Mussolini. (Opera set in 1939)" (Hyde, Portland Press Herald).
Lucia di Lammermoor has brought Gioacchino to many international stages, from Philadelphia to the Met to Thessaloniki, and Amsterdam, for De Nederlandse Opera's production. Critics characterized his performance as vibrant, full of rage and despair, and suave. Gioacchino expanded his Donizettian repertoire taking on the challenging role of Leicester in Maria Stuarda for Opera Marseille.
Gioacchino honed his sense of musicality with Mozart, singing the role of Ferrando in Così fan tutte, which he performed for AVA in Philadelphia, the Lake George Opera Festival, Michigan Opera Theater, Lyrique en Mer in France, and for his Chicago debut, of which Opera News wrote "Così fan tutte showcased talented young singers with truly impressive stage smarts Li Vigni's tenor is fresh, appealing, and wonderfully unfussy."
Many have compared Gioacchino's Italianate timbre and phrasing style to Carlo Bergonzi, one of Gioacchino's technical influences, with whom Jack worked one on one at the Verdi Academy in Busseto. Gioacchino is very much at home in singing Verdi. Among the Verdi roles, Gioacchino has been heard in Il Corsaro for Opera Orchestra of New York , Alfredo in La Traviata in Philadelphia, and covered in Nabucco for the Metropolitan Opera.
Gioacchino is vocally agile and has skillfully bent his instrument to sing Rossini. Among his performances, Il Barbiere di Siviglia for Oper Frankfurt where his rendition of Almaviva was characterized by critics as "charming, vocally agile, and playfully capable of change." He took on Almaviva also in Philadelphia and in Beijing for his Asian debut. He also appeared in Frankfurt as Ramiro in Cenerentola of which critics said he "gives a radiating clear Don Ramiro… very much worth seeing."
Among other operas Gioacchino has been heard in: Madama Butterfly (Philadelphia), La Sonnambula (Philadelphia), La Boheme (Palermo), Il Pirata for his Amsterdam debut at the Concertgebauw alongside Nelly Miricioiu, and for his debut in French repertoire – the role of Faust in São Paulo, Brazil alongside the Marguerite of Leontina Vaduva.
Gioacchino was among the winners at the 2003 Francisco Viñas International Voice Competition. He was also awarded the "Best Finalist" award by popular vote of the public of the Gran Teatro Liceu. Gioacchino was 1st place winner of The Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Foundation Opera Competition, 4th place winner in the Worldwide Bellini Festival Competition in Sicily, 3rd place in the Competizione Voci Donizettiane, 2nd place in the Oreste Giargiari Belcanto Competition, and finalist in the Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation Competition.
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Q: insertOnDuplicate isn't working in Magento So I'm trying to check custom database table, if 'something' exists in column 'test_type', replace the existing row with new data. However, it's still continuing writing duplicate column value 'test_type' in the database table. So I end up having two rows of 'something' in 'test_type' column.
            $adapter = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource')->getConnection('core_write');
            $data = array(
                'test_type' => 'something',
                'time_stamp' => $timeStamp,
            );
            $adapter->insertOnDuplicate('test_table', $data, array('test_type'));

Here is the update script for creating the table.
<?php

$installer = $this;
$installer->startSetup();
$installer->run("
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS {$installer->getTable('test_table')};
CREATE TABLE `{$installer->getTable('test_table')}` (
  `auto_id` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `test_type` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  `time_stamp` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`auto_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

");
$installer->endSetup();

A: In order to make the database understand a duplicate row to mean a row with a test_type the same as in an existing row, you could add test_type as a column in a unique index, e.g.
UNIQUE KEY `test_type_idx` (`test_type`)

thus changing your table creation code to be;
<?php

$installer = $this;
$installer->startSetup();
$installer->run("
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS {$installer->getTable('test_table')};
CREATE TABLE `{$installer->getTable('test_table')}` (
  `auto_id` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `test_type` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  `time_stamp` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`auto_id`)
  UNIQUE KEY `test_type_idx` (`test_type`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

");
$installer->endSetup();

EDIT
The other issue is with the third parameter being passed to the insertOnDuplicate method. This should specify the fields which need to be updated if there is a duplicate, so presumably time_stamp.
$adapter->insertOnDuplicate('test_table', $data, array('time_stamp'));

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I throw this saying around too much but these three little words help me through the wobbles I so frequently have about every aspect of my existence. Life unfortunately now is swamped by comparison thanks to the wide wonder that is social media. That old thing, I harp on about. When I had my initial orthodontist appointments I went home and searched out anyone sharing #adultbraces or #fastbraces. Strength in numbers, I guess. It was nice to know I wasn't the only one in my late 20s making such a decision. I knew the year wasn't going to be easy. Whilst I put on quite a display of being self-confident and self-assured it couldn't be further from the truth and it really took some sleepless nights and some future pep talks to make me feel like this was going to be ok.
The only negative part of this whole 'journey' (and I cannot believe I have just used that word), is the comparison. It really gets to me. Which is ridiculous because of all the things to compare teeth should not be one. Like life, my teeth were so different to the other girls I follow who also had braces fitted. We all started at relatively the same time but there are so many factors which influence how your treatment goes which means comparison shouldn't even cross my mind. Over the last couple of months, there have been some highs and lows. Whilst the majority of my teeth are in the correct place now my two front teeth just didn't want to cooperate. Being the main two visual teeth we agreed it was important they were perfect.
Whilst I was having early, hunger filled nights due to the pain of the wires putting my teeth back in place I noticed one of the accounts I follow had their braces removed which looked absolutely fantastic. Others had their retainers (did I ever think I could be jealous of this, err no?) and another was always updating social media on how the end was in sight. If I mentioned anything about toothache the usual response would always be "how long have you got left?" one question I have hated the whole time. It has always made me feel as though people are racing to get them off my teeth faster than I am myself when I know it's not the case. Especially watching the undatables with my Mum and her perfect timing when she asked out of the blue when my braces were coming off. Of course, I know what she was thinking.
My braces were always something I was doing for myself, for my confidence. I always met people who doubted me when I said I wanted them, couldn't really understand why I would consider going through with them. People who would always ask if I had considered Invisalign as if that wouldn't have crossed my mind. There were so many people who said to me they wished they were brave enough to go through with them, as though I was going to tackle a marathon. It was this I needed to remind myself. I didn't start this so I could have nice teeth before this person or this person. I didn't even have my braces fitted to have nicer teeth than a Hollywood star. I had them to help me, to make me feel better. So this comparison all of a sudden felt ridiculous. If mine take a few months longer than others than that is fine, really what are months in the grand scheme of things?
Finances: Probably one of the largest influences on how your brace experience goes is your budget. Going private as the majority of us have to do it is not cheap. I didn't really have a budget for my braces. It was something I needed to do for myself so I was going on what I felt reasonable. I received quotes from three different orthodontists which only differed very slightly in price but I know to many people the price and what they are getting is what will sway them. So don't try to compare your orthodontic journey with someone who has 10x the budget, it will be very different and that is ok.
Appearance: For me, it was always the end result I wanted and the in-between process did not bother me too much unless we are talking Hillbilly tooth gate and even that I managed to laugh off. I hated my teeth but for the fundamental reason that they were so uncomfortable in my mouth. I didn't do it for vanity purposes I personally didn't think they looked too horrendous but they were so uncomfortable to me not sitting straight and I think the strain against the orthodontic treatment I had as a teenager as they moved back slowly they were always causing discomfort. This meant I wasn't too concerned with what I would look like with braces. This is why I opted for the metal train tracks on the front of my teeth. Of course had my teeth not been so bad I would have gone for something like Invisalign but they were never going to work for me. Since having my braces fitted I have noticed a wrath of reality 'celebrities' with Invisalign and many with Lingual braces which are similar to what I have but behind the teeth. Again budget helps with what you can get, I didn't have access to Lingual, nor the budget. Would I have got them had I been able to afford them? Who knows, I am not sure I love the concept and for me, treatment time was more important with how they look which is why I didn't go for clear ceramic.
Time: Time is another huge factor as to why you should not compare what you are doing to others. For me I had no time frame, if I could have them off within a year I was happy but again I didn't want to rush the treatment for a date. I know many of us choose to have braces fitted to have a nicer smiler for weddings etc so time can be one of the determining factors of the treatment and options you choose. Just remember if yours are taking longer than others, it may be due to their deadline. Some even have them taken off before they are fully finished because of this date. I think the time is the one thing I would avoid setting yourself. Have a chat with your orthodontist and be frank, tell them what you are hoping for and ask their opinions. I found it useful to speak to Lana about this, she said at Christmas she didn't think they would be off until the New Year and I was fine with that. Knowing where you both are in the treatment will keep you from building up false hope or becoming frustrated.
Treatment: This fits with the appearance as well, but don't try and compare your treatment with someone who has taken a different option, or even someone who has the same braces fitted. Remember you didn't start with the same teeth. Everyone will be different and focusing on how you want yours to look at the end will keep you a lot more positive about the process.
Location: In cities, you are naturally going to have more choice, I don't know if this is a positive or not. I know for me it took me many trips across the Midlands before I found Jones Dental and knew they were the one. If you are in London or other larger cities there are going to be more options for you and therefore possibly more options on the treatment you can choose which can influence the others above.
I know this is less cheerful than my usual brace posts. For anyone who has come along looking for some reassurance and this is the first post you have read, go back to the beginning because you are about to start the best thing you could do for yourself, yes it is not easy, you will have days of doubts, but I promise it will be worth it. You do You and you will be fine. There is nothing more beautiful than someone smiling. And like they say a day without a smile is a day wasted.
This is the first of your blog posts i have read… and I'm definitely going to go back and find some of your earlier ones as this has made me feel much better already! Ive just had mine fitted about 3 weeks ago and can totally relate to the above! I find myself constantly looking at peoples before and after photos to cheer myself up and remind myself that it is worth it and the end result will be worth all of the discomfort etc.


text:
Q: How can I change the font size in Sublime Text for each file independently? When you zoom in or out Sublime Text, it seems to affect the font size globally. Is there a way of having Sublime Text remember the zoom settings for each file - very much like how Chrome remember the zoom scale on a per-site basis?

A: You can update the font-size only for the current file by entering the following in the Sublime Text console (View menu -> Show Console):
view.settings().set('font_size', 14)
where you can replace 14 with your desired font-size.  It will even remember it when you restart Sublime Text.  However, it won't remember it when you close the file and re-open it again later.
What you can do though, is set a syntax-specific font-size, so that for example all html files have one font-size and all css files have another font-size. When you have a html file open, from the Preferences menu, goto Settings - More and Syntax Specific - User and enter the font_size setting and save it. Then do the same with a css file open etc. Note that it is not the file extension that matters for syntax specific settings, but the syntax highlighting scheme selected for the document that has the focus when you select this menu item.
Example:
{
    "font_size": 20
}


Thank you for the best cartoon series made and the very first time I watched it was when I flew to go visit my cousin in Manhatan, New York and I was about eight years old. I still watch your show, at 1:00 at night. Do you think you can tell Disney to put it on earlier like around 8:00? And can also tell the too put back on the Mighty Ducks cartoon series? THANKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK YOU!
I'm afraid I have no influence over what or when they schedule anything.
I heard that you used to work on Disney's Mighty Ducks animated series. I that true? This is one of my favourite shows ever (next to Gargoyles) as it combined my two passinions: superheroes and hockey.
I helped develop the show, but I know it was redeveloped after I moved over to Gargoyles full time. I had literally nothing to do with the version that aired.


text:
german print send article
An Interview with Ralf Dahrendorf
Norbert Schreiber
If computers decline in performance, tuner software programs are used. If electrical impulses need to be amplified, radio specialists use "tuners", so, for example, radio receivers, as amplifiers. How can performance improvements can be achieved in politics and societies, societal development effects be amplified, this was the topic discussed by Frankfurt journalist Norbert Schreiber with the renowned sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who has published a new book from CHBeck-Verlag about the role of intellectuals in today's society.
In a brilliant society analysis of the "liberal mind", Dahrendorf develops at the same time a political ethic, a doctrine of virtue which could be effective as a control element, a "tuning model" for politics and society.
Drawing on an abundance of exemplary biographies in the tradition of the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ralf Dahrendorf tests to what extent these personalities correspond with his liberal mind. Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron and Norberto Bobbio, Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno and George Orwell are included along with Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Manès Sperber, Arthur Koestler or Georg Lukács. The result of the examination is a doctrine of virtue of freedom that lays claim to long-term validity.
In your book you talk about doctrine of virtue. What theorems does your doctrine of virtue have?
God, theorems sounds as if I had developed an entire medieval philosophy that needs to be learnt by everybody. It is a slightly ironic concept in favour of theorems that those who are immune to the great temptations of totalitarianism, or want to be, need certain virtues. I do deal extensively with some of them. For example, one needs to be able represent one's own positions clearly and courageously even when entirely surrounded by different positions, perhaps even opposing ones, and then this remarkable capacity to be a committed person in current issues and yet remain an observer is important to me, not entering into the tumult and not joining the fight. And somewhere behind this there is always an idea that good sense can exercised even with passion. That good sense is therefore not simply out of touch. That the perseverance of good sense is also one of the virtues that it's all about. I don't wish to speculate now on whether that actually earns the word doctrine.
Conveying virtues is a process of upbringing, with parents, educational institutions, school, universities and role models coming into play, because after all the aim is to make virtues a liveable experience. What could a process of reconstructing virtues look like, since after all we have lost virtues?
Completely right and at the same time I have become a bit sceptical over the course of my life as regards the possibility of consciously conveying virtues through such authorities. There is hardly anything more important than role models and, above all, visible role models, and one of my purposes in the book is to use personalities as illustrations of what differences there really are. After all, there are no standard personalities, but Raymond Aron and Isaiah Berlin, Norberto Bobbio, Hannah Arendt and others are very different and yet have the same ideas. I trust in role models.
You also talk about the intellectuals, their successes and failures, in your book. Can you name a few examples?
For me, one successful intellectual, first of all, is the philosopher, sociologist and essayist and journalist Raymond Aron, but one can also add Berlin, Popper and others. However, most of the others failed in the 20th century. And although my intention in my book was not to place the focus on failure, I did, however, describe a few examples. After all, intellectuals are also open to temptation and somebody like Jean Paul Sartre fell into every fashion, so to speak, that was popular at the time and then fell away from it again. Even a man like Heidegger, who made horrifying Nazi speeches in 1933 and 1934, afterwards withdrew into a more quiet world and was suddenly no longer the protagonist of a new ideology. But those are examples of failure, and unfortunately there are too many of those. However, my interest is in those who didn't fail.
It's no surprise that a sociologist should be undertaking classifications, you placed the group of the erasmists at the focus of your book. These are no "little green men" from Mars, you bring the erasmists together as one group in your book, what was the meaning behind this?
Yes, first of all I have to say that this game that I allowed myself in my book has been taken more seriously by some people than I intended. After all, I also point out that it is a game, it's not about forming a group. For the people portrayed are not group people. Actually, one of the crucial statements by Erasmus of Rotterdam to which I refer is that he was not a member of any party and does not wish to be classed as such, either. It is therefore a question of a category, if you like. A type of behaviour, a category of virtues that I link with the remarkable humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, who, at a time when all decisions had to be made – back to the orthodoxy of the Catholic church, to Luther and Protestantism – managed to assert a completely individual position, a position which in this respect corresponds to what my erasmists of the 20th century have done. At the end I then produced a type of table and said with it that there was a "Societas Erasmiana." Therefore it is not a question of a group, never ever, it's about individuals, not to say individualists.
It is currently being discussed that the social binding forces could be lost in society. As a sociologist, you have the task of observing this society, after all. How do you view the "force of the binding force", to put it in such terms?
The loss of social binding forces has been a topic of social sciences and politics as well for 150 years; when Tönnies wrote "Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft" he saw a society and a moving away from communities, and when Henry Maine said in the 1860s that we are moving away from the permanent ties with contractual circumstances he was thinking of exactly the same thing. Certainly that is a particularly weighty matter today and one needs to take account of that as a sociologist; indeed, I coined the term ligatures, binding forces, deep ties, which have been lost for many people. Precisely with this new book, "Versuchungen der Unfreiheit. Die Intellektuellen in Zeiten der Prüfung", I am concerned with the other matter, freedom, the full unfolding of freedom. It is a question of not being taken in by false ties, replacement religions, virtual ties, for that is the risk when too strong a focus is placed on this motive for ties.
On the one hand we have radical changes that put these binding forces at risk, on the hand, though, they also conceal chances to develop this society further, to better assume new challenges.
That is completely right, times of radical change and times of dynamism are always also times when severe new problems arise. For example, a time of economic dynamism, such as the one we are experiencing now, is one which has many losers, at any rate setting us, and consequently these people, new tasks at first. For me, that has never been a reason for resisting the dynamism itself or attempting to stifle what comes with new developments because it has side-effects. This also applies for freedom and ties. More freedom comes at a price for ties. However, that does not mean that one needs to give up freedom because ties are so attractive, but it means that one must seek and defend freedom. And simultaneously, or afterwards, one must worry how things are looking for the ties. And this simultaneously or afterwards is a key for me. That is to say, we will never realise, simultaneously, something which we consider worthy. And sometimes we need to decide: between two values that we respect equally highly, for example. My decision is clear; it is a decision for freedom.
Europe is currently in a legitimacy crisis; we are currently discussing the necessity of delimiting Europe more clearly, also telling the citizen in more precise terms, where Europe stops. What "tool" does politics have to produce legitimacy?
The reason for our really having this Europe must be clear. Since I am of the opinion that Europe only makes sense if it brings added freedom, I don't share many of the concerns that some professional Europeans have. I also have no illusion concerning the intensity of European unity in the early days of the European Community. I was a European Commissioner in the early days, and I cannot discern that the Europe of the Six was such an enormous friendly club, while today's Europe is falling apart. The Europe of the Six was totally disunited. De Gaulle conducted empty chair politics, Helmut Schmidt and Giscard D'Estaing had endless fights over whether joint currency or economic policy should be the priority. That was not a lovely and close and intensive tie. Which is why I am not even worried that 25, 27 or even 30 members are now concerned. For my part, a Europe of freedom includes precisely not setting any limits, but dealing with any issues that arise, when they arise. The Turkey question exists, the Ukraine question does not exist at the moment, so we must deal with the Turkey question and if it turns out during negotiations that Turkey not least accepts the political Copenhagen criteria, then in my opinion it is a thoroughly serious member. That is to say I have a much more open idea of Europe than is commonly the case and am therefore not as worried as those who allow themselves to be guided by the United States of Europe.
And a European like you also does not believe that Europe can be prescribed a DIN-standard soul, if possible from Brussels.
You say it as someone who loves freedom, I also love variety and simply believe that a Europe of variety is of better service to people and is also better for the world."
English translation by Alexandra Cox


Happy Dussehra SMS's have been floating around. It's the last day of the Durga Puja too. Doshomi. It's never a 'Happy' Doshomi for Bengalis. It signals the close of five days of Christmas for us. Five days of festivities that I was reminded rather acutely over the past few days. I was at Kolkata. At Debjan Apartments. The apartment complex we moved into in 1984.
The first Durga Puja of Debjan happened in 1985. The first three building blocks had just come up. The Pandal/ Shamian, in the car park, was the centre of our world for the five days of the Puja. Five days that we looked forward to through the year. Five days for which we bought new clothes, timed our hair cuts for (just long enough to avoid the school long hair curfews) and didn't have to study. Five days to spend with our friends. Five days of feeling important - making announcements on the microphone, changing cassettes in the tape recorder (Papa Don't Preach & Beat it in year one), performing skits in the cultural programmes, running errands for grown ups, writing for the Puja Souvenir. The excitement of watching old decrepit movies on a white bed sheet like screen put up on the courtyard, a creaking projector conjuring its 'Cinema Paradiso' magic. Giving Anjali on Ashtami. Sitting quietly on Doshomi as the building aunties bid farewell to the Goddess by doing 'Boron", waiting for them to hand out some mishti to us. Going for Bhashan (immersion of the Goddess) at night yelling 'Durga maiki joy", "aaschhe bochhor abar hobe" (once again next year) while the designated aunty, Debi Aunty, would ensure that my brother and I wouldn't enter the water. A duty my mother gave her every year even when I was past my teens. Coming back to kolakuli (festive hugging of peers) and pronams (touching the feets) of elders...the last laddoos distributed ... we were the last ones to drag our feet home.
The years passed. There was the original bunch of friends. New folks who joined he gang as they moved in.to the building Our world expanded as we inched towards high school and college. Our days at the building Pandal reduced as there were other friends to spend time with. Different worlds to explore. Mohammed Ali Park, College Square, Maddox Square, Park Circus, D park, Jodhpur Park, Poddo Pukur ... we didn't have to sit at our building Puja and hear about these mythical places. We were no longer children who could go out only if the grown ups took us out. We had crossed the line. It was the end of innocence. Soon it was time to leave the nest.
I was lucky enough to be there at the twenty fifth anniversary of the Debjan Puja. this time I thought that I would get felicitated and get a shawl or so for being one of the first of the Mohicans. What I did get instead were some huge smiles of welcome. Most of the original aunties were there. As were the uncles. I hope I am allowed to still call them that. Strangers call me uncle after all!
As would happen in Kolkata, hardly enough of those I grew up with were around. Most had moved out of town as had I. But there were a few who remained. With spouses and children added somewhere during the line. There to make me feel at home.
I was there on the biggest day of the Pujos. Ashtomi. The day of Pushpanjali and traditional clothes. I missed these as I was the Royal Calcutta Golf Club for a wonderful breakfast. You need your collars there. So no photographs of the Anjali.
I was back in time to sees the joyous chaos which signifies the end of the morning session of the Pujas. The Priest meticulously trying to close the session by doing Arati (an offering of the holy fire).... but there are more important things around. You are supposed to fast in the morning, have a bath and give Anjali. And you would wait desperately for this fast to end. Here I must say that this typically Bengali 'fast' lasts for all of three to four hours.
I was stuffed on rather heathen ham sandwiches, sensuous and alluring bondas and some robust coffee at the RCGC.
I could empathise with the urgent crowd of building residents who surrounded the girls patiently doling out the proshad (food offered to the Goddess) first. The Ashtami (Oshtomi) prasad is special. Not only cut fruits and sweets but a touch of bhog (cooked khichudi, torkari, luchi and payesh too). I took my share and took one plate home. Had a shower, changed into Kurta Pyjamas and came down for the afternoon lunch.
Ashtamir lunch or bhog was an integral part of Durga Puja for years. This is the only day of the Puja where you are supposed to eat vegetarian food. The menu is fixed. Khichudi (gruel of rice and daal of varying consistency), Labra ( a squishy mixed vegetable dish), chutney and sweets.
In Pujas such as the Debjan one, the community lunch soon extended to five days and a few nights too. You had to pay separately for some of these unlike the Ashtami one which was part of the deal. No one minded. Us kids didn't want to go up home any case. Gosh, where has all that energy gone?
Moms got a break from cooking. Most were working 24 by 7 at the Pandal - cutting fruits, coordinating with the priests, scolding us, buying us soft drinks and passing on extra sweets to us, organising the 'variety' programmes... make no mistake, the ladies take over when Ma Durga comes down to earth with her children. And for working mothers like mine, the building Puja meals allowed some me time to recuperate.
The lunches were small affairs initially. The building uncles, many of whom I met this time, would shop go to the local markets. The cooking done by a band of two or three cooks referred to as 'Thakurs'. Also the Bengali name for God. The food would be served by the residents themselves. Over the years I graduated from being allowed to serve chillies and salt to vegetables and daal and chutney. Never meats or fish though.
The khichudi bhog of this year's puja was spectacular. Apparently the same cooks who cooked twenty five years were called back. Though something tells me that with ingredients and spices such as the memories of happy times, the feeling of being home, the smiles and grins of recognition, the jokes that only those who have been a part of your growing up days can make, the joy of people getting together to host Ma Durga for these five days, the knowledge that maddeningly and reassuringly enough you will never be old enough for your mother ... the food was fated to taste heavenly.
At this risk of sounding like a Musical band Box dedication this one is for Rupu, Joy (Deb), Anondo, Bapida, Munnada, Gourob, Titli, Tania, Gautamda, Ranada, Amit, Tublu (whom I convinced to come down to the Pujas), Rumadi, Anurupadi, the mashimas, kakus, jethus, jethis, dadus, didas, my little brother and his friends most of whom are now respectably married, and specially for those who have left us since to join Ma Durga at her place.
felt as though we were all there.
have to eat bhog someday!
Awesome posting as usual , thoroughly enjoyed the write up and the photos.
shubo bijoya, in delhi missed the pujo that we have at my ancestral place, raniganj in bihar(close to indo-nepal border), this is the 33rd year of pujo started by my kaka.the photos reminds me of the pujo at home.


text:
Drew Levitt
CP255: GIS / Python
Professional Report Visualizations
Final Project: NYC Taxi Data
Exercise 10: making the very world spin at my command
Exercise 9: Web mapping with Leaflet and pandas
Exercise 6: APIs
Exercise 2: CartoDB
Sean on Final Project: NYC Taxi Data
My goal in this assignment was to familiarize myself with the resources available through the NYC Open Data portal, as well as explore CartoDB's mapping tools. As an "avid cyclist" myself, and a former resident of Brooklyn, I knew I wanted to look at bicycling in New York City.
My first instinct was to examine road conditions using the 311 Service Requests dataset. One classic stereotype of New Yorkers is that they love to complain, and at first glance I found this cliche to be validated by the data: even constraining my data request to only those 311 complaints pertaining to street condition, I found more than 566,000 records since the beginning of 2010. That's a lot of complaints! Viewed differently, however, maybe that's just a lot of people: there were only 0.012 street condition service requests per person per year.
The large majority (60%) of NYC 311 street condition complaints were requests for pothole repairs. (Pothole repair is a major NYC concern, and the NYC DOT's pothole squad even has its own Tumblr.) My intuition was that a map of street condition service requests would usefully proxy streets' pavement quality, adjusted by use (more people using the street = more people to complain about deficiencies).
Unfortunately, I was stopped in this line of analysis by CartoDB's limitations. First, the whole 311 dataset was much too large to fit within the service's free account quotas. Even after I limited the date range to the first half of 2013, CartoDB rejected my dataset and gave me no next steps to try. I still have the raw data, so may attempt to work with it in the future.
What I ended up doing was considering the relationship between bicycling and public transit. Bicycling can potentially be a useful solution to the last-mile problem of transit (efficiency dictates that the number of stops be limited, but then distance from stop to final destination may be high, and walking is relatively slow).
I used datasets for subway stations and bike racks from NYC Open Data. With these datasets, the process was simple – the website allowed me to download zipped ESRI shapefiles, which I was then able to upload to CartoDB without any trouble.
New York's 469 subway stations will be immediately familiar to many observers, but its many CityRacks (17,680 in number as of June 2013) are less familiar. This Department of Transportation program allows individuals and businesses to request the installation of bike racks anywhere in the city. Thus, we can reasonably expect that the location of CityRacks will roughly correspond to those places where lots of people who are aware of City resources and processes want to bike. (The dataset does not, however, include the innumerable fences, sign posts, and parking meters that also serve as bike parking in New York.)
My first map displays subway stations and bike racks as points and bubbles.
I chose complementary colors (blue and orange) to represent subway stations and bike racks respectively. Although one could conceivably symbologize subway stations according to average daily boardings, I chose not to, both because those figures weren't in the dataset I downloaded and because such a symbology would only further heighten the map's emphasis on the central business district, where transit ridership is highest. I did, however, apply a light bubble symbology to the bike rack data, because each point represents anywhere from one to several dozen bike racks (say, a bike corral). Because the large majority of points correspond to one or two racks, I kept the bubble size gradations limited so as not to attract excessive attention to the few larger installations.
This map suggests that CityRack installations are generally relatively close to subway stations, but that they are much more prevalent in certain areas than in others. In particular, they appear denser in Manhattan and parts of northern and downtown Brooklyn.
My next map attempts to better display the distribution of CityRacks using a density visualization.
Viewing this map zoomed out shows how the density of bike racks diminishes with distance from the city center, and viewing it while zoomed in highlights the particular density of racks in Manhattan and in Brooklyn north of Prospect Park. We can also see how the bike rack density cells seem to emanate from transit stations. In this way, the density visualization helps confirm our anecdotal observations from the point/bubble map.
These maps may not be the perfect analytical tool. One key problem lies in determining whether the density of CityRacks is a direct function of proximity to transit, or whether some other variables are mediating the relationship. Population density itself comes to mind (more people live near the subways, because transit is attractive), as does affluence and the likelihood of working within a bike-able distance.
Further analysis is warranted. In particular, I am interested in examining the relationship between bike rack placement and sociodemographic variables including race/ethnicity, median household income, and time at current address.
Posted on September 13, 2015 Author drew.levitt
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Launched April 2018, we provide advice & support for Network Marketers.
With news, informative features, interviews, and lots of 'how-to' advice from leading coaches and experts, it's an excellent resource for personal growth & professional development.
We're doing this because we think it provides a worthwhile service which should cover our financial needs and reasonable wants (plus a bit extra).
For more perspective-setting info read 'NOTES'.


Koda Kumi has released two MVs from her upcoming albums titled BRIDGET SONG and Ultraviolet.
Out March 8th, the albums are titled W FACE ~inside~ and W FACE ~outside~ respectively.
The albums W FACE ~inside~ and W FACE ~outside~ have been announced late last month and will each feature different genres of songs.
BRIDGET SONG is the lighter of the two and it's easy to see that by the smiling Kumi below. The sound is typical of her more ballad focused releases. Visually, it won't break records since it's her sitting and standing on a white stage. Still, a cute addition and one that is sure to please those who have followed her for years.
On the other hand, Ultraviolet is on the heavier side with a modern sound and packed full of dabs and even more jean jackets. The sound is typical of modern releases, and should please those who love today's popular music in the US (sadly I'm not one of them).
As mentioned before, they each have a massive difference in sound and is sure to appeal to fans who love a simple J-pop ballad or who love dabs and jean jackets. Make sure to check out both and the covers/track lists below!


Specialist Cars are pleased to announce that we will be continuing our partnership with Odyssey Gym Knebworth!
The Odyssey Gym offers a wide range of services from fitness,to fine dining, Spa and Pool services, Racquet facilities and much more! Whether you want to get in shape, maintain your fitness or just relax, the Odyssey Gym has you covered.
We are proud to be continuing our partnership with Odyssey and look forward to the exciting new ventures in the coming year!


Advisory Commissions, Committees & Boards: The City Council creates standing advisory commissions and committees to support the Council by seeking ideas and concerns from the community, researching related matters, and making recommendations to the City Council. Committee members are San Juan Capistrano residents (with one exception), appointed by the City Council, and are required to attend Ethics Training. Commissioners serve two-year terms. Current appointees will serve a term from April 1, 2017, through March 31, 2019.
The City Council also appoints members to the Youth Advisory Board. Youth Advisory Board members serve a one-year term beginning in June to coincide with the school year.
On occasion, an unscheduled vacancy may occur. The City Council may declare the vacancy and seek applications from residents to fill the vacancy until the end of the originally appointed term.
Committee Descriptions & Membership: The following links provide more detailed information and current membership of each body.
The Committee, which is comprised of at least five residents, is designed to include individuals with business experience, senior citizens, and knowledgeable professionals in the fields of construction, finance, law, and accounting. Members must be registered voters in San Juan Capistrano. City officials, employees, contractors, and commission or committee members are prohibited from serving on the committee.
The Citizens' Bond Oversight Ad-Hoc Committee will not have decision-making authority, but will review recommendations to the City Council for expenditure of bonds proceeds, and will report on whether such expenditures conform to the purposes stated in Ordinance 940 (Open Space Measure Y – 2008 Election), adopted by the City Council on August 19, 2009. The Committee will also review the audits and reports of expenditures of bond proceeds and will inform the public concerning the same.
On January 16, 2018, the City Council approved the appointment of five Committee Members that will serve until December 31, 2019.
The Cultural Heritage Commission acts as an advisory body to the City Council, Planning Commission, City Manager, and other groups in matters related the culture, heritage and history of the City.
Duties of the Cultural Heritage Commission include 1) Promote awareness and appreciation for the City's cultural and historical significance through preservation and promotion of traditional folkways associated with the community, 2) Encourage sponsorship of community events promoting knowledge of history, culture and traditional folkways of the community and assist organizations to undertake such tasks, 3) Compile and maintain lists of property, persons, events and landmarks of cultural or historical significance for City Council review and notify property owners of applicable City requirements, 4) Implement studies related to historical, cultural, paleontological, or archaeological matters and make recommendations on related districts, 5) Recommend an annual budget including financing of Commission activities and capital projects designed to protect the cultural heritage of the community, 6) Investigate availability of funding programs through State and Federal agencies; and, 7) Other duties as may be assigned by the City Council.
Commission Members are required to be registered voters of the City and are required by State law to file Fair Political Practices Commission Conflict of Interest Statements upon appointment, annually, and upon leaving office.
Current appointees will serve a term from April 1, 2019, through March 31, 2021.
To review and make recommendation to development applicants on the design of projects for compliance with the goals and policies of the City's General Plan Community Design Element and architectural design guidelines and other policies regarding the design of projects that are processed in accordance with Title 9, Chapter 2, Article 2, Section 9-2.313 of the municipal code; and to undertake such other duties as may be assigned by the City Council.
Committee Members are required to be registered voters of the City and are required by State law to file Fair Political Practices Commission Conflict of Interest Statements upon appointment, annually, and upon leaving office.
At their meeting of July 9, 2015, the City Council re-established the Housing Advisory Committee for the purposes to facilitate the mobile home rent control petition and hearing process regarding rent increases.
The Housing Advisory Committee shall consist of three (3) - five (5) members appointed by the City Council of City residents. Duties include: (a) Meet upon receiving Hearing Officer findings relating to the propriety of rent increases brought into issue by the filing of a petition by residents of or an owner of a mobile home park, and to conduct a de novo review of Hearing Officer findings for the purpose of making its own recommendation regarding the propriety of rent increases to the Council; and, (b) To undertake such other duties as may be assigned by the City Council.
(j) To undertake such other duties as may be assigned by the City Council.
The Parks, Recreation, Senior and Youth Services Commission shall consist of a total of seven (7) members.
Appointees will serve a term from April 1, 2019, through March 31, 2021.
Meetings: 3rd Monday, monthly at 5:30pm in the City Council Chamber.
8. To undertake such other duties as may be assigned by the City Council.
The Planning Commission appoints one Planning Commissioner to serve on the Design Review Committee with one Planning Commission alternate to serve in the absence of the appointed regular Design Review Committee member.
The Utilities Commission consists of five (5) members who are residents in the City of San Juan Capistrano. Duties of the Utilities Commission include reviewing and making recommendations to the City Council on matters concerning the Water Recycled Water, and Sewer Enterprise Fund budgets; water, recycled water, and sewer rates; water, recycled water, and sewer service standards; water and recycled water supply; water conservation; investment policy; and any other water, recycled water, sewer, and storm drain related matters that may be of concern to the City and utility users.
The Youth Advisory Board (YAB) serves as a liaison between the city's youth and the City Council, lobbying for youth interests, and identifying issues pertaining to youth, communicating the concerns of the youth, and suggesting action items for the Council agenda, proposing youth-related ordinances, city programs, activities, and fund raising events.
The Youth Advisory Board consists of a maximum of (15) youth members and a minimum of nine (9) youth members; and (2) adult advisory members. A Community Services Department staff member also serves on the Board. Only youth members will be voting members. All applicants must be residents of San Juan Capistrano. Members are selected on the basis of their knowledge, leadership skills and involvement in youth activities. The geographic areas of the City where the applicant resides and the school that the applicant attends shall also be considered. Appointments to the Youth Advisory Board normally take place in May, with appointees taking office in June. Youth Members serve a term of one-year; and Adult Advisors serve a term of two-years.
City Council Ad-Hoc Committees: The City Council may create ad-hoc committees on an as-needed basis to study and make recommendations concerning a particular matter. Ad-hoc committees are not permanent in nature and disband when completed with their charge. The City Council has two ad-hoc committees, the Citizens' Bond Oversight Ad-Hoc Committee and Auditing Finance Ad-Hoc Committee.
City Council Representation on Outside Agencies: City Council Members represent the City's interest on many regional agencies that are concerned with issues on a broader basis, such as transportation, library services, fire safety, and such. Click here to see a list of current appointments.


The JP4 device is a mini tablet computer designed and built for the correctional environment. It features a responsive touch screen, a built-in music player, an FM tuner, a calendar, e-mail, and comes pre-loaded with several games and other applications. The JP4 is said to be one of the most affordable and most powerful personal media devices available to inmates today.


Morgan McKinley is working with a global tech firm to find an EMEA Payroll Manager on a temp to perm basis. The role will look after 2000 staff across a global basis working with ADP, which is the outsourced payroll provider and linked to their Workday system.
Interested in the position, please apply.


The summer continued as a Seller's Market while showing signs of some minor shifting. By Seller's Market, I mean that it takes less than 4 months of currently available inventory, with no addition of inventory, to sell those homes. The Days to Sell and Average Sales Price numbers came directly from the MLS Listings results when I search a start date of July and an end date of August, in each of the two years. How does this shifting present itself?
One way to tell is with a moderate speed of accepted offers from a year ago. When the number of days to sell increases, such as in Half Moon Bay and Moss Beach, buyers are taking more time to submit an offer, either due to more houses to choose from, or feeling that the asking price may not present the value they are looking for.
Another way I notice a shift is in a lower average sale price, which occurred in Half Moon Bay. A lower average sales price shows a trend primarily. Individual houses may have sold for more than their asking price. The other three towns, El Granada, Moss Beach, and Montara, continued their average sales price increases for now. Half Moon Bay sellers need to know that this market is not the same as it was last summer (2015).
The two hot spots this summer were El Granada and Montara. Both towns showed both a decrease on the number of days to sell and an increase in the average sales prices. However, Moss Beach showed a mix of higher sales prices and longer time on the market. The interesting note is that the two properties that sold during this time frame both sold for lower than the asking price. This makes sense when we look at the higher days on market (59).
These differences are normal in a shifting market. As we enter the Fall 2016 Coastside real estate market, we expect plenty of activity while rates remain extremely low and inventory is slowly rising.
Here is what is available in Half Moon Bay right now. Feel free to contact me for all available homes.


text:
Innovation for Food Retail: The 50% Advanced Energy Design Guide for Grocery Stores Webinar
Find the presentation for the June 3, 2015 webinar on the 50% Advanced Energy Design Guide for Grocery Stores below.
The guide shows practical ways for grocery stores to achieve a 50% energy savings over ASHRAE 90.1-2004 and exceeds the requirements of 90.1-2013. Intended for grocery stores owners and designers, the guide includes specialty sections for refrigeration and food service found, not only in grocery stores but in convenience stores and food service establishments as well.
Speakers highlighted the guide, providing practical how-to tips to achieve the 50% savings level. The guide also helps those who build or design retail stores that may include refrigeration.
Below are the speakers from the webinar.
-Michael Lane, Puget Sound Energy
-Merle McBride, Owens Corning
-Caleb Nelson, CTA Group
-Paul Torcellini, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide for Office Buildings
This guide primarily applies to facility managers and energy managers of large existing office buildings larger than 100,000 square feet, but also includes considerations for small and medium office buildings. By presenting general project planning guidance as well as financial payback metrics for the most common energy efficiency measures, this guide provides a practical roadmap for effectively planning and implementing performance improvements for existing buildings.
Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Retail Buildings: Achieving 30% Energy Savings
The Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Retail Buildings (AEDG-SR; the Guide) is intended to provide a simple approach for contractors and designers who create retail buildings up to 20,000 ft2. Application of the recommendations in the Guide should result in small retail buildings with 30% energy savings when compared to those same retail buildings designed to the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999.
Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Warehouses and Self-Storage Buildings: Achieving 30% Energy Savings Towards a Net Zero Energy Building (AEDG Series: 30% Savings)
The Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Warehouses and Self-Storage Buildings (AEDG-WHSE; the Guide) is intended to provide a simple approach for contractors and designers who create warehouses. Application of the recommendations in the Guide should result in warehouses with 30% energy savings when compared to those same warehouses designed to the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings.
Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings: Achieving 30% Energy Savings
The Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings is intended to provide a simple approach for contractors and designers who create office buildings up to 20,000 ft2. Application of the recommendations in the Guide should result in small office buildings with 30% energy savings when compared to those same office buildings designed to the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999.
How-To Guide (13) Apply How-To Guide filter
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Financing and Investment (1) Apply Financing and Investment filter
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Energy-Performance-Based Acquisition: Develop Energy Performance Goals (21) Apply Energy-Performance-Based Acquisition: Develop Energy Performance Goals filter
Energy-Performance-Based Acquisition: Goal-Based Acquisition Case Studies (14) Apply Energy-Performance-Based Acquisition: Goal-Based Acquisition Case Studies filter


Our expert truffle hunters have dug up a wonderful selection of white and black truffles from Italy. Our truffles are handpicked in the forests of Alba, and we ship them straight to you within days of being picked. We ship internationally and our method of packing methods will keep your truffles fresh while it travels around the world, and to your kitchen.
Our truffles are extremely popular and the supply is limited. If our truffles are available, then it is best to order soon, or they may be gone.
Truffles are one of the world's most desired delicacies, and the black and white truffles from Alba are among the best and most unique in the world. Through the efforts of Casa Truffle, Alba truffles and its finished truffle products will now be available to the US market.


text:
#ifndef DO_SORT_H
#define DO_SORT_H

#include <vector>
#include <list>
#include <ctime>

#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

typedef long L;
typedef long long LL;
typedef unsigned long UL;
typedef unsigned long long ULL;
typedef long double LD;

using namespace std;

namespace do_sort {
  // Abstract class for sort.
  template <class T>
  class sort {
    protected:
      vector<T> v;      // A sequential array-based data structure.
      list<T> l;        // A two way linked list data structure.
      bool asc;         // Specify the order of sorting.

      // Each sorting algorithm will implement this funciton which will not be
      // explicitely called but from "do_sort" public function.
      virtual void specific_do_sort() = 0;

      // Merge two sorted lists.
      void merge(vector<T>& v,
                 vector<T>& aux,
                 LL low,
                 LL border,
                 LL high,
                 bool asc) {
        LL num = high - low + 1;
        LL ptr = low;
        LL low_end = border - 1;

        // Start mergin two lists until a list is finished before the other or
        // if both lists are finished at the same time, if they have same
        // length.
        if (asc) {
          // Merge two lists while maintaining the ascending order.
          while (low <= low_end && border <= high) {
            aux[ptr++] = (v[low] < v[border]) ? v[low++] : v[border++];
          }
        } else {
          // Merge two lists while maintaining the descending order.
          while (low <= low_end && border <= high) {
            aux[ptr++] = (v[low] > v[border]) ? v[low++] : v[border++];
          }
        }

        // Merge the ramaining.
        while (low <= low_end) {
          aux[ptr++] = v[low++];
        }

        // Merge the ramaining.
        while (border <= high) {
          aux[ptr++] = v[border++];
        }

        // Copy the sorted list to the original.
        copy(aux.begin() + (high - num + 1),
             aux.begin() + (high + 1),
             v.begin() + (high - num + 1));
      }

      // Heapify a subtree rooted with node "i" which is an index in the vector
      // "v". If the "i" is set to zero then the whole tree will be heapified.
      void heapify(vector<T>& v, LL n,  LL i, bool asc) {
        LL hit_ind = i;
        LL l = 2 * i + 1;
        LL r = 2 * i + 2;

        // Check whether the hit node (largest or smallest) is the root node,
        // otherwise set the hit to point to the child of the root.
        if (asc) {
          hit_ind = (l < n && v[l] > v[hit_ind]) ? l : hit_ind;
          hit_ind = (r < n && v[r] > v[hit_ind]) ? r : hit_ind;
        } else {
          hit_ind = (l < n && v[l] < v[hit_ind]) ? l : hit_ind;
          hit_ind = (r < n && v[r] < v[hit_ind]) ? r : hit_ind;
        }

        if (hit_ind != i) {
          // The hit node was not the root node. Swap the root with child and
          // then start the heapifying process recursively from the newly hit
          // node.
          swap(v[i], v[hit_ind]);
          heapify(v, n, hit_ind, sort<T>::asc);
        }
      }

    public:
      sort() {
      }

      virtual ~sort() {
        v.clear();
      }

      // Fill the vector with the input data.
      virtual size_t set_data(vector<T>& arr) {
        // Note that while the vector's data i.e. header, metadata and control
        // parameters are stored on the stack (which is not a big part of the
        // whole data), the elements themselves will be stored on the heap which
        // will be managed internally by the C++ container.
        v = arr;

        return v.size();
      }

      // Return the data explicitely at given index.
      virtual T get_data_at(size_t i) {
        return v[i];
      }

      virtual void clear_data() {
        v.clear();
      }

      // Dump values in a vector.
      void dump(string title) {
        cout << "---------- " << title << " ----------" << endl;
        for (LL i = 0; i < size(); ++i) {
          cout << "v[" << i << "]: " << v[i] << endl;
        }
      }

      virtual LD do_sort(bool elapsed_time,
                 bool asc = true) {
        LD t = 0.0;

        this->asc = asc;

        if (!elapsed_time) {
          // The elapsed time for the current sorting process is not needed to
          // be reported, so just 0.0 will be returned instead.
          specific_do_sort();
        } else {
          clock_t begin = clock();
          specific_do_sort();
          clock_t end = clock();

          t = (LD)(end - begin) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
        }

        return t;
      }

      // Return the size of the sorted data. The size data type is signed by
      // purpose. Otherwise some other sorting algorithms such as quick sort
      // might fail as they would find some termination condition when the size
      // is negative.
      LL size() {
        return (LL)v.size();
      }

      // Return true if the sorted data is empty.
      bool empty() {
        return v.empty();
      }

      // Get the whole sorted data at once. Might not be efficient for large
      // data.
      vector<T> getResult() {
        return v;
      }

      // Access sorted data by array indexing.
      T operator[](size_t i) {
        return v[i];
      }
  };
}

#endif /* DO_SORT_H */

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
package hotelmania.group4.domain;

import hotelmania.ontology.Contract;

/**
 * @author Marek Lewandowski <marek.lewandowski@icompass.pl>
 * @since 26/05/14
 */
public class ContractValueCalculator {

    public static float calculateContractValue(Contract contract) {
        // TODO implement this Alberth
        return 50;
    }
}


SOMO is committed to the highest quality products by continually perfecting the technology that creates quality optics. SOMO lens materials are available from CR-39 to 1.74 and have been awarded the COLTS Seal of Approval from COLTS Laboratories, an independent testing facility. SOMO's high quality, value added products are available in stock and at the best prices.
Superior AR coating engineered for long life. Durable scratch resistance as well as water, grease and dirt repellent and anti-static.
Premium AR coating featuring water resistance, dust and dirt repellence for long lasting cleanability.
Blue-violet light is reflected away from the eyes, delivering sharp vision, preventing contrast reduction, ULTRACLEAR AR coating provides additional protection by reducing glare.
Super tough hard coat for superior scratch resistance.


Christensen, C. & Raynor, M. E. (2003).	The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. 1st Ed. Massachussetts: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Gladwell, M. (2000).	The Tipping Point. 1st Ed. USA: Little, Brown and Company.
Johnstone, K. (1979)	IMPRO: Improvisation and the Theatre. 1st Ed. Great Britain: Hazell Watson & Viney Limited.
Koulopoulos, T. M. (2006).	Smartsourcing: Driving Innovation and Growth Through Outsourcing . 1st Ed. Massachusetts: Platinum Press.
Mauzy, J. & Harriman, R. (2003).	Creativity, Inc. 1st Ed. Massachussetts: Harvard Business School Publishing.
Napier, E. (2004).	Improvise Scene from Inside Out. 1st Ed. Hainemann Drama.
Rogers, E. (2003).	The Diffusion of Innovation. 5th Ed. New York: Free Press.


7729 7R, 9 1/2 Inch, Lotus Mist Burmese, Fenton Cameo Sand Carved Kelsey Murphy Robert Bomkamp "Dog & Dame" Vase. Made by Fenton Art Glass for their 2008 Studio Collection. This comes Mint In Box Artists were award winning Kelsey Murphy & Robert Bomkamp. Cameo carving is a painstaking process using great skill & experience.
Successive cameo carving is required to achieve the depth, shading & intricate details. Numbered & Limited to only 325 pieces, this is #71.
The item "Fenton Cameo Sand Carved Kelsey Murphy Robert Bomkamp Dog & Dame Vase" is in sale since Wednesday, July 4, 2018. This item is in the category "Pottery & Glass\Glass\Art Glass\North American\Fenton". The seller is "shadycreekcollections" and is located in Glen Saint Mary, Florida. This item can be shipped to United States.


text:
Civil Rights Leader Marc Morial Warns Black People to Stay 'Woke And Aware' in 2020
by Derek T. Dingle January 7, 2020 January 7, 2020 1502
Marc Morial, president, National Urban League (Black Enterprise)
With the dawning of a new decade, Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, the largest historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization, is fully aware of the myriad of formidable challenges facing African Americans – and the nation. However, he didn't expect that America would be on the brink of another war just two days into 2020.
As the recipient of BLACK ENTERPRISE's Xcel Awards at the 2019 Black Men Xcel Summit for redefining the civil rights for the 21st century, Morial shared his views with BE on that threat and a range of other issues, including the presidential election, voting rights, 2020 Census, entrepreneurship and race relations. A common thread through his responses; Urging African Americans to remain "woke and aware" – and when possible, take action.
The following is the excerpts from the interview:
BE: First, I want to start by gaining your impressions of the escalating tensions between the US and Iran.
People of the United States do not want another war. They do not want to fight these proxy wars over what is going on in the Middle East. And the challenge has been we are now almost 20 years into the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Our soldiers have been through two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight tours of duty. And we have spent trillions and trillions of dollars that could have been spent on critical infrastructure, invested in our schools, invested in the eradication of poverty.
Congress is going to have to put up a block on this. The Obama administration had sought a way forward with Iran, with a nuclear deal, which may have been controversial in some quarters but was designed to de-escalate tensions. The Trump administration has not articulated or advanced a strategy with respect to Iran and now has engaged with combative action, which is designed to create retaliatory measures. People need to resist now, and not be mulled and lulled like they were with the Iraq war.
2019 National Urban League Annual Press Conference July 2019 (Facebook/National Urban League)
The 2020 CENSUS AND VOTER PARTICIPATION
BE: As we look at other issues, what are NUL's priorities for 2020?
The National Urban League's priorities are one, making sure we do everything in our power so that the 2020 Census does not undercut anybody and the black community is fully counted because the ramifications of a low count will affect us for an entire decade.
The second thing we've got to do is ensure that everyone is registered, educated, motivated to vote in the fall, and combined with that, aggressively resist African American voter suppression. Whether it comes from state legislature, judicial decisions, Russian interference, we have to vocally and physically resist any voter suppression, and make sure that everyone votes in 2020.
To me, those are the Urban League's two tasks. We are in discussions with the Congressional Black Caucus and the civil rights community so that those priorities are going to be the black community's priorities.
BE: In terms of the Census, how do you ensure as many African Americans as possible are counted as well as understand its importance?
The US census Bureau was underfunded by the Trump Administration. We've aggressively advocated that Congress add additional money for the Census, and on three occasions, it has done that. [US Senate Minority Leader] Charles Schumer led an effort to ensure that they'd have additional [funding for] marketing and communications. The second thing we have done is continue The Census Black Roundtable with 50 to 60 African American civil rights groups and professional associations. What we're doing is trying to mobilize everyone to make sure that all of us are talking, messaging and educating people that this census includes online and telephone options to fill out the form in addition to the paper form and door knocking folks are doing.
BE: Is part of the electoral thrust trying to get the Voting Rights Advancement Act passed through the Republican-controlled Senate and signed by the president?
That's why we have to vote because the Senate may not be inclined to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act or may pass a watered-down version. We have to educate our community that that's why we have to vote not only for president but for members of the United States Senate, members of the House, mayors, county commissioners, council members, officeholders across the board. We have got to understand that our power lies in the vote, and when we turned out in large numbers in large numbers in Louisiana and Kentucky [in 2019], it affected the outcomes of those huge elections.
(iStock/Steve Debenport)
"I WANT TO SEE A BLACK PERSON ON THE TICKET"
BE: Now that the field of Democratic presidential candidates is becoming less diverse, what impact will that development have on your messaging for voter registration and involvement? Is there a push to ensure as we go through the primary process and pick the nominee that you advocate for a diverse ticket? Are such factors important?
All of the above in the short run. Cory Booker remains in the running. And I'm hoping Deval Patrick will go on to do well. However, my personal voter feeling is that I want to see a black person on the ticket if the nominee is a white person. I want to see a black person in the No. 2 position. I don't express an opinion right now as to who that might be. There are many qualified people who could play that role. The Democratic coalition has to reflect diversity.
BE: So how do you combat voter suppression at the polls?
Our role is going to be to publish a message that people need to resist voter suppression, and then we need to be well-educated about what the Russians did in 2016. They ran their own suppression campaign online talking about the black community, letting trolls pose as Black Lives Matter activists. We've got to be really woke and aware.
BE: The Trump Administration has revealed plans to alter the Community Reinvestment Act. How has NUL addressed these proposed changes?
So the Community Reinvestment Act is an economic civil rights law. It mandates that banks make loans and investments [as well as engage in] philanthropy within communities where their depositors are located. The proposed changes seek to de-emphasize mortgage lending to people of color with low and moderate incomes. The changes appear to allow banks to take credit for, for example, things that we understand to be gentrification. In other words, the investment in a luxury apartment complex that's located in a distressed community reinvestment area.
Those are the concerns that we have. This is a complicated thing. We're continuing to study it. We're preparing a formal comment that we will have some time soon. We've got to be proactive in it. We're going to propose advanced criticisms and recommend changes to the Community Reinvestment Act. But, people need to be highly aware that it was one of the tools that advanced, along with the affordable housing goals of Fannie Mae, an increase in black home ownership in the 1960s when it was 40% to the year of 2000 when it was 50%. Now, due to the Great Recession, It's gone all the way back trending towards 40%. And black home ownership could plunge to the middle 30s.
(iStock/pixelfit)
WE NEED LARGE BLACK BUSINESSES TO SOLVE WEALTH GAP
BE: Shifting to wealth creation through entrepreneurship, how can we significantly grow black-owned businesses in 2020?
The paramount issue for black-owned businesses today is access to capital, and that problem has not been solved. I believe it is an issue for which we need presidential leadership that will make it a priority and use the tools of the federal government to leverage the private sector. I mean there is a lot more risked capital out there interested in supporting African American businesses but the focus is still paltry and low.
I don't think we have the right mechanism. We need new approaches. I think one approach would be to take [Minority Business Development Agency], elevate it, make its leader an assistant secretary of Commerce and increase its funding. MBDA has been historically underfunded for 20 years.
We cannot solve the racial wealth gap unless we try to build black businesses of scale in the United States. I had an extremely aggressive strategy when I was Mayor in New Orleans related to African American Businesses. I probably created 20 to 25 black millionaires. Some of these folks are still in business today. Several of them took one opportunity in New Orleans and built it into businesses that are doing business all over the country. You need leadership from the top that says black business growth and development is in the best interest of the economy.
BE: From your vantage point, where does the nation stand in terms of race relations today?
I am deeply concerned about the direction of race relations in this country and the rise of white nationalism. That's the premise as a philosophy and an ideology, and we all have to resist it with our voices. We have to join others because hate crimes are on the rise, racial incidents, religious bigotry is on the rise in this country and it is absolutely unacceptable. When it's anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT, anti-black anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, its fruit of the same wicked, poisonous tree. Whether it's the NYPD or the FBI, they have to treat hate crimes for what they are and not just conduct investigations, but do arrests and prosecutions. When the public sees people taking a perps walk because they've been charged with hate crimes, I think that the message is going to be much stronger. So we will continue to work with black, brown, Muslims, Jewish, Latino colleagues. We will continue to stand up. We will continue to speak out.
Derek T. Dingle