text:
Bark Bark Woof Woof
Mustang Bobby has a blog....no, not a dog, a blog. Although he may have a dog too. And a cat. And a fish named Rhonda. Thats certainly a possibility.
Gross Cloistered Ditherings
Slacktivist nicely fillets some recent cloistered ditherings from Daniel Gross.
GROSS: We've all seen the symptoms. A table of four raging over Bush's Iraq policy while sampling the $58 tasting menu at Virot, an expensive new bistro on the Upper West Side. A middle-aged man clucking over the deficit while fondling home furnishings at Restoration Hardware. The thirtysomething lawyer seething over the neutering of the Environment Protection Agency with one side of her brain, while weighing that classic conundrum -- Cape Cod or Tuscany next summer? -- with the other side.
Read it all here
I'd like to stick around for a while but I must be off. I'm busy polishing my English Regency tea service and thinking of replacing the Egyptian motiffs in my grand dining hall with something more rococo-revival.
Sorry, we have no bananas...
we have no bananas today, or tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the day after the next day....
Atrios points to a dumb post, possibly the "Dumbest. Post. Ever."
Which reminded me of this:
Bananas are a Dying Breed
Thanks to selective breeding, our favorite fruit can neither reproduce nor defend itself from disease
The banana is about to disappear from store shelves around the globe. Experts say the world's favourite fruit will pass into oblivion within a decade. No more fresh bananas. No more banana bread. No more banana muffins or banana cream pie.
Why? Because the banana is the victim of centuries of genetic tampering. Scientists say they will be unable to prevent the extirpation of the banana as an edible commercial crop. And its demise may be one more powerful argument in the hands of those who are concerned about genetic modification of foods.
The banana's main problem is that it has become sterile and seedless as a result of 10,000 years of selective breeding. It has, over time, become a plant with unvarying genetic sameness. The genetic diversity needed to cope with environmental stresses, such as diseases and crop pests, has long ago been bred out of the banana. Consequently, the banana plantations of the world are completely vulnerable to devastating environmental pressures. ~ continue reading here
by Robert Alison
The Rise and Fall of the House of Banana...(continued)
First edible bananas date back 10,000 years to South-East Asia. Half a billion people in Africa and Asia depend on them as a staple food. [...] The Cavendish banana now being eaten across the globe lacks genetic diversity, he argues in an article in New Scientist magazine, and its survival is threatened by:
- Panama disease, caused by a soil fungus, which wiped out the Gros Michel variety in the 1950s
- Black sigatoka, another fungal disease which has reached global epidemic proportions
- Pests invading plantations and farms in central America, Africa and Asia alike.
Bananas could split for good
Must Be Something in the Water
From The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland via Juan Cole:
An overwhelming 87% said that, before the war, the Bush administration portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat...
Though the all-powerful Clenis can't be ruled out either. Beyond that, I'm stumped.
link to this post - by Potato Head : 7:40 PM |
Have we got a deal for you!
Yep, the deal under which Bush has agreed to show the 9/11 commission the Presidential Daily Briefings.
First, the terms of the deal won't be made public.
Second, what we do know of the deal says that Bush gets to edit the papers before showing them to the commission. 17 minute gap, anyone? Needless to say, the families know this is fucked, and are saying so.
What I want to know is, why are Democrats even participating in this farce?
link to this post - by Lambert : 4:45 PM |
The Chickenhawks Come Home to Roost
Josh Marshall has a trenchant post up about the corner we've backed ourselves into in Iraq. He points out that in many ways this winter is a replay of last, with an isolated U.S. trying to persuade a skeptical world to share the burden of its imperial adventure, only this time the need is real, not theoretical. Unfortunately, we pretty much burned all our diplomatic bridges in between, and not just over Iraq: South Korea's reluctance to get involved is in no small measure the result of our high-handedness towards North Korea/South Korean rapprochement, for example. The Bushies, Marshall notes pungently, mistook "preeminence as omnipotence"; now we're all paying the price.
I'd like to add one more thread to Marshall's. First, the obvious: from the beginning, the hallmark of Bushism in all its forms has been a contempt for institutions, an impatience with process, a disregard for dissent. At one level, of course, it's because they are radicals, and show a radical's hostility to the system that they seek to destroy.
But even radicals can be competent; such radicals would recognize that the art of statecraft is one that applies to all governments, just like the law of gravity applies to all planets. The Bushies, it's been clear since at least 1990, disdained any such recognition that the world is a complicated place, and that the interlocking set of relationships that define world politics, however amoral and expedient, form an ecology that we tinker with, let alone break, at our peril.
This attitude is hardly surprising. These were, after all, people who, almost without exception, avoided any direct contact with the consequences of their own ideas, a character flaw most notoriously symbolized by their eagerness to have other people fight wars they supported, but also in their subsidized, think-tank backgrounds, and paradoxically anti-intellectual, ideologically driven outlooks.
Clinton, an intellectual, recognized the complexities of governance, and governed accordingly, to the frustration of even his supporters; so, too, did veteran and ex-CIA bureaucrat, George HW Bush. So while Shirk's future brain trust silently fumed under the latter, and openly loathed the former, they were held in check by the very institutions they despised.
In Shirk, however, the chickenhawks found their own useful idiot. Shirk not only lacked any appreciation of nuance in diplomacy, he was uninterested in acquiring it. Marinated in privilege, his class prejudices and intellectual sloth reinforced by the simplistic moral nostrums of philistine right-wing evangelism, Shirk's success in business and politics derived instead solely from his ability to keep his sponsors happy and get everybody out before the roof caved in (a talent the Bush family in general seem preternaturally blessed with). Self-reflection and humility are not marketable commodities among hucksters. In this, his cheerleading past was a pretty good prologue.
Shirk's deficiencies were abundantly clear to anyone who paid attention during Campaign 2000, yet, as Bob Somerby and Gene Lyons and a few others have pointed out, Shirk's very liabilities were transmuted by a puerile press corps into something approaching virtues. Drunk with utopian fantasies about the business cycle, enslaved to the cult of celebrity, and deranged by years of sexual McCarthyism and pseudo-scandal politics generally, the Fifth Estate pretty much decided that the Most Powerful Office on Earth could be run on autopilot--indeed would run better on autopilot, or at least in a manner congenial to the thumbs-up/thumbs-down, nuance-free media culture. Thus, what mattered in the new millennium was finding the right cheerleader to occupy this now largely ceremonial post. That the cerebral, technocratic Al Gore still managed to actually get 600,000 more votes than the cheerleader probably only confirmed his backers in their contempt for the popular intelligence.
Now, a year away from a referendum on this experiment in slash-and-burn governance, we are staring a bottomless fiscal hole, a steady stream of "transport tubes," near-complete international isolation, a bureaucratic revolt at CIA and State, deteroriating infrastructure, and the first net loss of jobs since Hoover, all amid a steady worsening of the conditions that preceded 9/11.
If this is success, I don't how much more of it we can stand.
link to this post - by Potato Head : 12:21 PM |
The American Consensus Project:
A grassroots documentary filmmaking proposal from Emma.
"I envision American Consensus to be a discussion with Americans. I'd like to hear from people across the country and from all different backgrounds. Initially, I thought about going out and doing the documentary myself, but this has a number of downsides. The biggest is that I wouldn't have the time or money to interview a truly broad range of Americans. But I also don't have access to many Americans. So then I wondered: why not see if I could get filmmakers from around the country to interview people in their communities?"
"So, while I'm away, I'll leave this question with you. Are you interested?"
Much more insight, information and logistical support via: Notes on the Atrocities
It's a good idea. Anything to coax NTodd away from taking any more pictures of those gawd-damned cats is a good idea.
Go see for yourself.
Marching to the Tuck of the CPB Drum
Big Daddy Coonrod's boy Tuck won't be crossing no line into none-a-that seamy advo-cacy bidness. No seh. It's all just straight-shootin' re-portin' and honest tucket.
Robert Coonrod, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said he had been concerned that some of Moyers' work had crossed the line between reporting and advocacy and had expressed that to Pat Mitchell, PBS president. The CPB is one of the PBS system's chief funders, providing $22.5 million to the system for programming.
"I think we should have more perspectives on public television than we have now," Coonrod said. "We have to put it into the context of good programming."
Coonrod said the CPB is likely to provide seed money to help start Carlson's show. The organization does not fund "Now with Bill Moyers."
Carlson, the bowtied commentator who will keep his job on CNN's "Crossfire," said he's aiming for something more compelling than the "eat your peas" television of most public affairs shows.
He'd also like to get beyond the few dozen Washington officials that are regulars on political talk shows, he said.
"The standards are going to be pretty clear -- tell me something I don't know and no lying," he said. "They're simple, but you rarely see that on TV, so it's harder than it sounds."
A pilot for Mr. Carlson's show featured 10 guests, including Ann Coulter, a political conservative, a lawyer and an author of best sellers "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton" and "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right." - via: TVWeek
"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it! It's yours.'" ~ Ann Coulter, FoxNews/Hannity & Colmes, June 20, 2001
Thank you for your contributions and support for new standards in public broadcasting. I can't wait for the first episode of the AnnSpeak Roadshow or maybe something like Morning Sedition with Rush Limbaugh! What's Neal Boortz up to? Think of it, the Nooze Hour with Neal Boortz. Think of the graphic image marketing possibilities. "Nooze, Spoortz and Boortz!". "Good programming" ideas are hard to come by these days. Now shut up and eat your peas.
AWOL Moms And Other Interesting Stuff
Trish Wilson has a searing commentary about that "military AWOL mother" of seven kids, who had been ordered by a judge to not report for duty in Iraq, (since the military dad had already been ordered to Iraq), and then was threatened by her commander with a court marshall if she didn't.
I caught a piece of the story on O'Reilly, who interviewed the mother's attorney, there was some discussion that some of the children were the father's from a previous marriage so that the military mom was actually a military step-mom, and some passing reference to a prior custody battle, but no discussion of the children's birth mom. Turns out two of the children have a birth mom who had been caring for them until a custody battle gave them to the father and his new wife, and it was the judge in the custody case who insisted the mother could not deploy or lose those two children.
Trish pieces together the story for you, and the half-assed way the media has covered it. She doesn't forget to notice how all this is affecting the seven kids in the home. And she raises all the right questions about why no one seems interested in why the birth mom has been excluded from being part of the solution for at least two of these kids to the very real problem of two military parents who are fighting a war in Iraq.
Trish also has an interesting post that uses McDonald's attempt to keep "McJob" out of the new Merriam-Webster's dictionary, to describe the increasing use of appeals to public sentiment by opponents of progressive extensions of human rights.
And as long as you're there, don't miss this post about "metrosexuality," , or this one about "EBay antics," and whatever you do, don't miss this killer response to Monsieur du Toit, DuToitglodytes and Other Irritants.
link to this post - by Leah A : 1:20 PM |
We've Always Been at Peace with Eurasia
So now that the country is becoming ungovernable amid escalating terrorist attacks, the plan is to declare victory and get out of Iraq as soon as possible, with guns ablazing.
Interesting. I seem to recall thunderous denunciations being made in the wake of 9/11, of any policy that appeared to address terrorist goals, as unspeakably evil appeasement. Now we're tripping over ourselves to give said terrorists more or less exactly what they're after, lest they spoil Shirk's prom night next September.
"Objectively pro-terrorist," anyone?
I guess Clinton's mistake in Somalia was in not handing over the keys to the Presidential palace to the street vendor selling Kitfo Helper on his way out.
link to this post - by Potato Head : 10:39 AM |
Various Offenses
Great moments in slutty ingratiatory PR gibberish. And they wonder why people call em' media whores. Some guy named Jeff Bieber insults the intelligence of everyone who ever lived in Baltimore and pretty much anyone, almost anywhere else, even remotely functionally literate, alive or dead.
"We were looking for a fresh, different voice that we could build a franchise around," says executive producer Jeff Bieber, 50, comparing Carlson to legendary social critic and humorist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956).
Carlson's father, Richard, was head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the early '90s. The younger Carlson has never given money to PBS, but says its acclaimed documentary series Frontline made him a true believer.
For PBS, Tucker Carlson the right guy for new series
By Gail Shister, Philadelphia Inquirer
Axis of the Golden Spurs ~ and other highlights from the Harpers Index:
(heads up via: TalkLeft)
Percentage of Americans who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of this year's tax cut: 88
Average amount these Americans will save: $4
Year in which House Republicans thrice rejected an amendment to upgrade the U.S. electrical grid: 2001
Number of Virginia Republican Party officials fined this year for eavesdropping on Democratic Party conference calls: 3
Years after the Watergate break-in that deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder admitted hearing President Nixon order it: 30
Year in which Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs: 1983
Price of the oil-field supplies sold to Iraq by two Halliburton subsidiaries during Cheney's tenure: $73,000,000
Amount Pat Robertson has invested in Liberian gold mining: $8,000,000
Estimated number of soccer balls the U.S. government sent Iraq this summer to help "bring life back to normal": 60,000
Amount New Zealand's Fire Service spent this year on a TV campaign against cooking while drunk: $201,300
Maximum number of miles that Ford's most fuel-efficient 2003 car can drive on a gallon of gas: 36
Maximum number its 1912 Model T could: 35
Percentage of the bombs dropped on Iraq this year that were not precision-guided: 32
Average age at which an American believes that adulthood begins: 26
Using that Biblical method of determining adultery by coitus consequently means determining marriage by coitus. By pointing out the biological impossibility of coitus for homosexuals together, the decision unwittingly indicated that "same sex marriages" are equally impossible.
It also (unwittingly) shows that polygamy is very possible, indeed. History's first recorded "adultery" word and adultery-determined-by-coitus commandment were written by Moses, who married two wives!
Yeah, I know what ya mean. I knew a guy named Coitus. He was from New Jersey. Always telling everyone else what to do. But I don't think he spelled his name like that.
Judging The Judges
As you've no doubt heard, the Republicans have scheduled thirty hours of debate on the only four of Bush's nominees to the Federal Judiciary Democrats have opposed. The thirty hours, which begins tonight, is a response to the Democrats' threat to fillibuster the four nominees, which the Republicans are labelling as somehow scandalous, because it's a tactic rarely if ever used in the past. Their own machinations that successfully denied approval to over fifty of President Clinton's nominees are somehow not scandalous because Republicans did not rely on the fillibuster. Of course, they were the majority party, the Democrats are the minority. The fillibuster means that approval of the nominations can only be had by a two-thirds 'yea' vote.
MoveOn thinks we ought to let the Senate Democrats know we're with them and is suggesting we keep them company through the long hours ahead via this petition that is a MoveOn/DNC joint effort.
Go , sign the petition. It only takes a moment.
The Platonic Form Of Clueless
Yes, I know, Plato's forms, or archetypes, or universals, or ideas aren't meant to exist in the everyday world, Plato not being a big booster of "the word made flesh" type of proposition, but you tell me if this NYDaily News column by Stanley Crouch isn't a form of clueless perfection.
For years, Crouch has cultivated a maverick reputation, a man too independent, too free of cant, too original to be pegged with left/right labels. Personally, I've usually found him entirely too pegable, but this little poisened pen letter to "the press," taking "it" to task for its "coverage of casualities in Iraq" reaches new depths, even for Crouch.
Contemplating that coverage, he's glad this press corps wasn't around 150 years ago, when two years into the Civil War, Lincoln, faced with "unprecedented" casuality lists, needed time to find a new General who could win the war, i.e., Grant, because, golly gee, with them being all negative and harping on casualities like they do today, well....Crouch never says, "damn, if the Union might not have been defeated," but you're meant to fill in the blanks.
Crouch allows that Bush et al have made some mistakes.
In our moment, President Bush puffed out his chest too soon, and now too much is expected in too short a time. Plus, the stated goal, the purpose, of the war in Iraq changes shape too often for the President to get an understandable message through to the nation.
And what's Crouch's problem with the rest of the media noticing the above? Actually, so clueless is his explanation, I'm not sure, although perhaps what we have here is nothing more nor less than the obligatory careerist reference to "Bill Clinton" as an icon of the unsavory.
This is all grist for a press corps that has had nothing messy to talk about in high places since Bill Clinton was literally caught with his pants down in the Oval Office. That was scandalous, but it didn't have the dramatic power of Watergate or the uprising against the war in Vietnam or the Pentagon Papers.
The media have been itching for big trouble at the top, and so now the efforts of a small group of determined terrorists is being described as creating a quagmire.
Of course what was unsavory was less what the President did or did not do with Monica Lewinsky in the oval office than what Ken Starr and his merry band of men and elves did in their search for "the whole truth," one more reminiscent of Savanorola than of Jefferson, Adams, or Madison, i.e., ascertain and then publish the minutest details of private sexual behavior between two consenting adults that turned out to have no relevance to anyone beside the principals themselves and those who knew and cared about them. [see the first ten pages of "The Human Stain."] So, in that same spirit, let me point out that we still can't be sure whether the President's pants were actually "down," or whether they were "up" and only his fly was open.
As it happens, Crouch's history lesson is as clueless as his commentary. During those first two years of losing major battles to the south, the press attacks on Lincoln and his war policies were brutal and unstinting. A cursory glance at any issue of Harper's Weekly for those years makes hash of Crouch's basic supposition. Nor is discussion of press attacks on Lincoln missing from any decent book on the Civil War.
The press today, bad press, bad press, is faulted for not putting the number of casualities in perspective, showing that they're remarkably low, compared, I guess, with Civil War casualities, when, remember, to be wounded was pretty much a death warrant.
But what brought my epiphany that what was before me, shimmering in the light of my computer monitor, was an actual Platonic form were these words:
Our greatest American skill has almost always been improvising, discovering the solution in motion, looking away from the music paper and following the dictates of our ears when we heard something in our heads that sounded better than what we were looking at on the paper.
That is where we are in Iraq, and the Bush administration would do well to make that clear to the public.
Improvise? This President? Change policies, "in motion," to meet the demands of an ever-changing situation on the ground? Our "bold" "bring 'em on" leader, steadfast, unmovable, who never acknowledges a change of policy even on those rare occasions that there is one, which is actually okay, because it turns out it isn't a change at all, only a shift in how we're meant to percieve the policy? That President Bush? Should make clear to us that we need to give him room to "riff?"
Mr. Crouch, sir, Bush's whole Iraq policy is just one long riff, and he is as likely to be able to riff on his riff, as a shark is to improvise a new way to attack. Both creatures are designed to move only forwards; neither is capable of looking back, or sideways, or at themselves.
Okay, maybe I'm over the top, with all this talk of Platonic forms.
Maybe I should just have called what Crouch has to say "hooey." But give me this, if it is just an example of hooey, it's hooey of a very high order.
Twilight of the Gods ~ recapitulated
Who says history doesn't repeat itself. Lets play a fill in the blanks game. My own entries appear below in bold type. Each entry is preceded by a number, *1-*15. The original words as they appeared before I replaced them with my own 15 twenty first century entries are listed at the bottom of the post. Compare this twentieth century editorial below with our current twenty first century state of political affairs.
That *1 - George W. Bush has *2 - distorted, obfuscated and lied must be plain to everyone. All the great reforms in government that were to follow his elevation to the purple have failed to show themselves, and he has been *3 - succored by Congress in a manner almost pathetic. His appointments, with few exceptions, have been atrocious, and he is still surrounded in the White House by the same political buzzards who rounded up delegates for him in *4 - 2000 and brought about his nomination. His tolerance of such gentry seems to be almost unlimited: he apparently lacks all sense of smell. No President was ever put into office by a sorrier gang, and none ever revealed a more unashamed gratitude afterward.
In his statecraft no plausible principles are visible. He remains silent about most of the questions that engage the country, and from his acts one can deduce nothing save the fact that he is eager to be renominated and reelected in *5 - 2004, and willing to do anything to bring the business about. No one, at this writing, knows what he actually thinks of *6 - insert your own issue here. He has spoken of it idiotically as a *7 - insert your own list of buzz phrases and platitudes here, and that is about all. Does he believe that it can ever be enforced? He doesn't say. Does he believe that it is intrinsically just, wise and tolerable? No one knows. All that is plain is that he believes the *8 - American Enterprise Institute, NRA, TVNews-o-mercial make believe-land, etc... and the *9 - Religious Right are still strong enough to give him help year after next, and that he is ready to play with them so long as he believes it. To that end he is apparently willing to sacrifice anything, including even the integrity of the judiciary.
During the campaign of *10 - 2000 much was made of the hon. gentleman's political innocence, and it was represented that he had nothing to do with the whooping up of religious bigotry that went on; indeed, he himself let it be known that he was "instinctively" opposed to it. But now the exultant babblings of *11 - Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Judge Roy Moore, Rush Limbaugh, etc... and company make it obvious that he was well aware of everything that was done, and that he made no honest effort to stop it. In other words, he profited knowingly and willingly by the dreadful performance of such fanatics as *12 - insert your favorite monomaniacal right wing wagtail here. A plain word from him might have shut them off: he'd probably have been elected anyhow. But he preferred the disgrace of their support to the honor of a frank man. And since he has been in office he has done nothing whatever to put them down, and is manifestly ready to do business with them again, and on precisely the same terms that prevailed *13 - three years ago, in *14 - 2000.
It is very hard to understand such a man. By what standard of values does he judge himself? What is his honest verdict when he looks into his shaving-glass of a morning? The Presidency is in his hands, and there is nothing higher for him to look for in this world. One would naturally expect a man in that situation to give some thought to the essential decencies - to devote himself to making sure, not of his immediate benefit, but of his ultimate reputation. But *15 - George W. Bush seems either unwilling or unable to take that view. He prefers to go on as he came in - playing shabby politics, consorting with creatures from the abyss, contributing his miserable mite to the destruction of free government among us.
It is a picture so depressing that it seems somehow fantastic. It is difficult to imagine any man of sound sense throwing himself (and democracy) away so tragically.
The above editorial is a bastardization of the original written by HL Mencken, August 1930 / "Gotterdammerung", The American Mercury. A critical excoriation of the Herbert Hoover administration. Mencken's original words, those sequentially replaced above, are listed below.
1- Dr. Hoover
2- blown up
3- kicked about
4- 1928
6- Prohibition
7- Noble Experiment
8- Anti-Saloon League
9- Methodist bishops
10- 1928
11- Deets Pickett
12- Bishop Cannon
13- two
15- Dr. Hoover
To The Men And Women Of The Armed Forces
Thank-you.
We all know that the icon of the spat-upon returning Vietnam vet is one of those myths that just won't die. The real abuse of those who served in Vietnam came from their own government, who exposed them to powerful chemicals without telling them, who provided only the most truncated GI bill benefits, and who ferried them in and out of this country with as little fanfare as possible.
Still, I was pleased to hear someone like Tim Robbins, a fervent questioner of the Bush administration's war policies, when asked by a questioiner after a speech given at the Washington Press Club, what he would say to the men and women serving in Iraq, and to those who were then clearly at that point of a full-scale invasion of that country, Tim replied that he'd say something like, thank-you for serving your country, because there is always honor to be had in such service, even when the military action is wrong, or foolish, or self-defeating. Tim's argument, he was clear on, was not with the men and women who were about to carry out the Bush doctrine, but with the administration who had formulated it.
My approval for the Armed Services in a previous post was understandably questioned by readers like "khr," as well as others. So let me clarify. I'm not naieve about what is probably going on "on the ground," as they say, in Iraq. The "we're here to help you, we're here to fight you as we see necessary, so we can control you so we can help you" logic of this occupation is a deadly one. For the occupiers as much as for the occupied.
As for what responsibilities, and at one levels of command, the individual soldier is responsible for his actions, you won't find a better discussion than this statement by Christian Bauman Atrios recently pusblished at Eschaton.
For a sense of what it's really like for the actual Americans charged with making this occupation work, I urge everyone to read this five part series published in the AsianTimes Online.
The reporter, Nir Rosen, follows the day to day "slog," of 1000 soldiers who make up "the 1st Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR), based in Fort Carson of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and currently stationed in al-Qaim, at the western edge of Anbar province, bordering on Syria." Rosen talks to the soldiers, watches what they do, talks to Iraqis and watches how they react, and pays attention to all the details. He finds anger, misunderstandings, ambivalence, reasons to be pessimistic, reasons to hope. Some soldiers succumb to understandable anger, others succeed in attaining a remarkable empathy. I think the series illustrates what I was trying to say about my own sense of pride in the representative nature of our Armed Services, and their level of decency and professionalism.
Today, Veterans' Day is meant to be one of commemoration; what better way to do that than to get to know what thousands of young Americans are experiencing in Iraq?
And what better way to do it than to take advantage of this Washington Post feature, "Faces Of The Fallen," a highly useable data base of pictures and information about the Americans who have died in Iraq. I spent the morning with these heartbreaking snaptshots and brief bios. It won't make you feel better about this war, but there is still something healing about it.
Ask advice on buying a printer cartridge, get tortured as a terrorist suspect.
In Service To Her Country
Lori Piestewa was the first American servicewoman to die in Iraq.
She was twenty-three and the mother of a three year old daughter, Carla, and a five year old son, Brandon, when her Army maintenance unit was ambused near Nasiriya. Her body was found several days later, in a shallow grave. Lori was a Hopi, and after her divorce, lived with her parents on the Hopi reservation in Arizona. She joined the army to better herself.
My compatriot, the Farmer, pointed me to this moving story about an multi-nation commerative service to honor Lori Piestewa, held on the Big Cypress Seminole reservation last Friday.
Florida's Seminole community closed a protective circle around one of its own Thursday, honoring Lori Piestewa, the first American servicewoman killed in the Iraq war.
On a cord around her neck, Percy Piestewa, Lori's mother, wears a talisman, a laminated snapshot of the two smiling young women.
The photo was taken in February, when their company shipped out for Iraq. A month later Piestewa was dead, and Lynch was taken prisoner by Iraqi troops.
Sonny Nequaya, a Comanche, traveled with several family members from Apache, Okla., to chant, drum and dance at the ceremony. Dressed in feathered hats, beaded garments and moccasins, the Comanches' voices echoed through a large open-air auditorium on the reservation where several hundred Seminoles, Comanche, Navaho and other Native American tribe members fanned themselves in the still heat.
Read the rest. Native-Americans understand that ceremony matters.
Updating Pvt. Lynch
Atrios has an interesting post on his reaction of the Lynch affair, somewhere. Sorry, I can't seem to find the link.
Billmon at Whiskey Bar has a much longer one on the subject, as always, an original and fascinating addition to the discussion.
And Jeanne at Body And Soul, picks up on a new attitutde toward the waifish war hero over at Fox News.
My own thoughts in the post below were a provisional attempt to wrest the little blonde from West Virginia from the fickle clutches of Drudge, Fox and talk radio, and to view her, the person of Pfc. Lynch, from some other perspective than a propogandist's.
The weekend has brought new confusions to the story of exactly what happened to her in Iraq. Reports about TIME's selections from the Bragg book tell of her battling with Iraqi surgeons getting ready to amputate her leg, yelling at them not to. Apparently, the book claims that the amputation was considered necessary before she was airlifted to another hospital or to Baghdad; there is also a suggestion that she was being readied for a role in a propoganda film. None of this comes from Jessica herself, who doesn't remember anything from the time of her capture, until she woke up on the hospital from which she was rescued.
The doctors at this latter hospital are already denying the story told in the book. As to the matter of rape, the book makes some such claim based on "medical records," although which records isn't made clear. It sounds like the records might be from the initial hospitilization in Germany. No actual medical rape investigation was done, but injuries suggest, according to this version of what happened, she was anally penetrated. There are quotes from family members verifying their belief, based on what they've been told about those medical records, that this did happen.
I think it is these reports that caused the always excellent "Pansypoo," to question, in a comment to my post, Lynch's believability. I would caution all of us to wait to see what Jessica has to say for herself, and to remember that both she and her family are often only reporting what others say happened. What still stands out to me, is her refusal to be fit into other people's narratives. I should also have pointed out that Jessica has called Lori Piestewa, with whom she was best friends, the real hero, and that Jessica has also fully supported Shoshonna Johnson in her attempts to get the kind of disability benefits awarded to Jessica.
Bush Boom, eh?
So in the same month that the United States, amid much self-congratulation, added 126,000 jobs, Canada, at 1/10 the size, added roughly half that many. I'm no economist, but to me that figures out to five times the jump on a population-adjusted basis, and without budget-destroying tax cuts or shredding of the social safety net.
Maybe Bushonomics works better, the farther away from it you are?
More Reasons To Thank All the Jessica Lynchs
Through-out the nineties, the right carried on a curious campaign of hostile criticism against the US armed forces. It was a major component of that decade's share of the never ending rightwing declarations that the culture wars, which for the right have always been politics by other means, are still going on. The wedge issue was expanded roles for women in the military. The targets of rightwing ire, who else but "radical feminists," (as if there were any other kind in the rightwing world view), and their pandering puppets in the Clinton administration, of which the most important was the "Pander-in-Chief," Bill Clinton.
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, another one of those right-wing front groups, was the pointwoman for most of the attacks, but the likes of Kate O"Beirne and Laura Ingraham got in their licks, too, often attacking the top ranks of the military for being afraid of the feminist lobby, and BTW, without ever being accused of being unAmerican, or rooting for our enemies.
The right has never acknowledged the reality that in an all volunteer armed forces, women doing jobs that take them to the edge, if not right into combat zones, is inescapable. It has nothing to do with feminists or whose in the Presidency, it has always had been a case of military necessity. That's why the Bush administration has done nothing to restore the rules on how women are allowed to serve back to the pre-Clinton days.
One of the most effective of the right's attacks on the notion that women in the military should do no more than hover at the edges of the action was the question they loved to ask, about how America would feel when women soldiers became POWs, when women soldiers started coming home in body bags. The implication was that Americans would fall apart and demand, if not a return to the days of the WACs and the WAVEs, but at the very least, to a military use of women that vindicated the gender views of the right, and further isolated from the mainstream, the feminist left.
Well, now we have the answer to that question. In Iraq, three women became POWs, and one of them, Pfc. Lori Piestewa, tragically, returned in a body bag, but the Rockies didn't tumble, Gibralter didn't crumble, and the American public took it all in stride. In the case of Pfc Lynch, they fairly grooved on her story, at first, anyway, and no place more than on Fox News.
Pfc Lynch presented a real problem to Donnelly and most other rightwing commentators. Here's Jane Chastain in an April 10th column typical of the way many on the right struggled with how to respond to Jessica's story.
Private Lynch survived the ambush in Iraq of the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, but can she survive the ambush of the feminine forces of political correctness that placed her in harm's way.
These people want to use her to promote their theory that men and women soldiers are the same.
The feminists found willing accomplices in Democrat presidents Jimmy Carter – who viewed war as unnecessary – and Bill Clinton, who wasn't above hiding behind the skirts he was unable to lift.
Unfortunately, all these changes in law and regulations were made with little fanfare, little mention in the press. Also, a myth was perpetrated that once combat positions were open to women, they simply would be allowed to decide if they wished to accept these dangerous assignments.
That myth was shattered on March 23, 2003, when the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company was ambushed after being lost, resulting in the capture of Pfc. Lynch, who is one of the more fortunate members of her unit.
No one doubts the bravery of the women of the 507th. Let's just hope that Pfc. Lynch is as brave in confronting the feminists, when it comes time to address these truths, as she was in standing up to the paramilitary in Iraq.
Will she become a soldier of truth – or remain a prisoner of political correctness?
Of course it's nonsense to say that feminists tried to use Lynch; for the most part, we were wise enough not to to hype the clear reality that Americans were willing to accept that when women become soldiers, some of them are going to get captured, and some are going to get killed.
Here's Elaine Donnelly in a story posted at Free Republic, dated in June, asking some hard questions of the Pentagon about what happened to the women taken capture in Iraq. I suspect that many on the left would applaud some of the questions. But in Donnelly's case they betray a gnawing anxiety that the Bush administration is playing the story all wrong. In the comments thread that follows, there is mainly angry support for Donnelly's take on why Lynch's story supports everything Donnelly's ever thought or said about women in the military, but there are some surprises there, too.
When at the end of this week, ABC began to leak some of what Lynch says in her interview with "Diane," the Freeper mood and hearts began hardening toward Jessica, but even here, they're are a few surprises.
Of course women soldiers are still dying in Iraq. And they're still working side by side with their male compatriots, asking for no quarter, giving none. My take on what I've seen in the film from Iraq is that this is an armed forces that truly represents America today, men and women of all races, from red and blue states, working together as comrades, with the utmost professionalism. I'm not talking about what they're being asked to do. They don't have control over that. And please, no comments that they're war criminals for not refusing to serve. Anyone who believes that simply hasn't read enough of the testimonies of those who've been the victims of war crimes.
In their obsession with the ruination of all American instutitions, especially the American military, by the forces of so-called "political correctness," it just might finally be the rightwing that is falling out of step with the mainstream.
Thanking Pvt. Lynch
From the beginning of this saga of the rescued Jessica Lynch, I was impressed by the quiet dignity with which her family and community conducted themselves. For them, it was always about caring for this gravely injured young woman, and one another. In Germany, when her parents discovered from her doctors that Jessica had suffered neither knife nor gun wounds, they told us. There were a few on camera interviews with neighbors and friends, but not many, and the question of Jessica's herosim was never a cause that either her family or friends took as their own. The controversies swirled around them, without ever distracting them from the central task of healing Jessica, whose intrinsic bravery was not an issue for those who knew and loved her. Yes, the Pentagon asked them to be quiet. But I had the feeling such a request wasn't necessary. In their unemphatic way, this family from Palestine, West Virginia, insulated by the strong bonds of a rural community, managed not to be used by either the media or the government. They might owe the American public what information they had about their daughter, because we all seemed to care so much, but that was all they owed us. (If you haven't had an opportunity to read the Farmer's musings on liberals and their perennial failure to formulate a rural election strategy, you can and should find it here, check out the comments, too, and here.)
While arguments raged about what the true story of her rescue was, and whether or not the Pentagon and/or the press had used her to advance a story line of brave, good American soldiers versus bad, brutal Iraqis, save one, her family and her community kept to themselves and out of the limelight, seeming to understand just how distorting a lens it can be. The long stay in the hospital in Germany before she could come home to continue treatment here spoke to the gravity of her injuries. While she struggled through what had to be an arduous rehab, her parents, friends, and fiance shielded her from the press and from us.
When she was finally ready to come home to West Virginia, pundits said we'd be inundated with little Jessica, the waif/soldier, and speculated on the huge killing she was about to make off the media synergies that would package and repackage her story, her image, pieces of her image, her meaning, Jessica as icon was going to be irrisistible, to her as much as to us. Remember the network letter to her, CBS wasn't it, explaining all the multiple ways she could market herself and her story?
It never seemed to occur to any of these chroniclers of celebrity, often media stars in their own right, that there might be something, even several somethings more important to Pvt Lynch and those who mattered to her than fifteen minutes of stardom. In fact, except for a brief view of her during her public homecoming, and a brief speech, we saw and heard little from her or her parents or her community.
Yes, eventually she signed a book deal, and a TV movie deal. But that was all. And Rick Bragg insured a certain level of quality for the book, while wisely, she had nothing to do with the TV movie. No one should begrudge Pvt. Lynch the money she will make. She could have made more, she could have given multiple interviews, with Barbara WaWa as well as with Diane I'll empathize till you barf Sawyer. She could have posed for covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen. She could have allowed herself to be feted on Broadway, in Hollywood. She could've have been seen gleefully proclaiming she was going to DisneyWorld.
I might be wrong, but I'm betting she won't. And for that, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to that little town in West Virginia for nurturing a family like the Lynchs, and the real Pvt. Lynch, whose strong sense of who she is, and was, coupled with her concerns for the many soldiers whose suffering will not be chronicled, guided her not to make "the most" of her temporary fame. With any kind of luck, we won't weary of Jessica Lynch before we have an opportunity to appreciate and learn anew, how extraordinary "ordinary" people turn out to be, as we're beginning to, now that she's getting her first opportunities to set the record straight.
link to this post - by Leah A : 12:33 PM |
What's In a Flag?
Well, according to our old friend, Rick Berke, quite a lot. Sorta....Depending...
In an article with the almost Zen title, "What You Can Say Can't Hurt You Until It Can," Berke takes a whack at the Howard Dean Confederate flag flap and discovers that no one should have been surprised because Dean's been making that point about needing to appeal to Southern whites, including those stars and bars references, all year. So, what was different this time? Context, says Berke. "Context is all," he tells us, which will come as a shock to those of you who've read Berke's concertedly out of context coverage of Al Gore and Bill Clinton.
The context now - Dean's the front runner among eight other Presidential wannabes gunning for Dean; Confederate flags on the back of pickup trucks being an irresistible target, all of them were bound to take shots at it.
Berke's point? If any reader can tell me, please avail yourself of the Comments to do so.
To make Dean look like an amateur? To make the other contenders look like cynical grandstanders? To make Times' readers loath politics and politicians even more than they do already by fixating on the most meaningless details of the political process in an analysis that does nothing more than plug in the already well-known, mainly meaningless, and certainly too oft-repeated cliches of what passes currently for political reporting. Whatever his intentions, Berke handily accomplishes all three.
Let's take a look at how a real journalist discuses the politics of the prior week. Sidney Blumenthal writing in Salon finds a connection between Dean & Da Duking Dems, and last week's triumph of Republican outrage, the disappearing CBS miniseries about The Reagans, uniting them under a title drawn from the lyrics of Dixie, "Old Times There Are Not Forgotten."
Blumenthal also points out that Dean as early as last March had expressed his belief that the Democratic party shouldn't and couldn't give up on getting the votes of white Southeners and any other whites who've been split off by a successful Republican policy of dividing Americans from one another over wedge issues. Unlike Berke, Blumenthal takes the time to give us what Dean actually said then:
"I think the Republicans, ever since 1968, with Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, have divided us on race issues. Look, when I go to the South, I talk about race deliberately ... If we're going to have elections about race, we might as well talk about it openly. I want white males, particularly in the South, to come back to the Democratic Party. And the case that FDR made was, look, when was the last time you all got a raise? When was the last time your kids got decent health insurance? What kind of schools do your kids go to if you can't afford a private academy?"
For Blumenthal, Dean's mistake last week was his shorthanding of the issue, which left out the context of Nixon and FDR and his own committment to an honest discussion about race. Blumenthal doesn't make the mistake of shorthanding why the Confederate flag is still such a potent wedge, and unlike the rest of the pundit class, who last week seemed to have developed partial amnesia about that symbol's continued potency to stir defensive anger in the hearts of white Southerners, said pundits proclaiming that Dean had alienated both blacks and especially Southern whites, who don't care to see themselves in pickup trucks flying tiny Confederate flags. Maybe not, but an awful lot of them don't care to give up the regular sized version of that flag, especially when flown over state capitals.
Blumenthal is just as good on what happened to make "The Reagans," disappear from the CBS lineup, and finds the connection between that story and the flag flap in Reagan's role as the Republican President who consolidated Nixon's southern strategy, firmly placing the GOP in the position of being the bulwark against any further advances on majority rights by the civil rights movement.
Have I mentioned what a pleasure it is to read a journalist who can actually write well.
Ronald Reagan and the Confederate flag, after all, have long been for the Southern Republican Party the equivalent of apple pie and motherhood.
Once a Republican mole filched a copy of the script, the Republican Party chairman, Ed Gillespie (former chief lobbyist for Enron), assumed the disinterested pose of historian. The owl of Minerva perched on his shoulder, he called on CBS to yank the series or put a warning on the screen that would flash every 10 minutes that it was make-believe.
Leslie Moonves, the CBS president, abased himself with ritual abject apologies. In the battle for control of imagery, CBS was no match for the RNC. The Republicans know far better than a network the ruthless business of going negative.
Blumenthal reminds us of "certain crucial events" having to do with Reagan's actual words and positions on civil rights whose absence from "The Reagans," didn't bother Gillespie.
Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (calling it "humiliating to the South"), and ran for governor of California in 1966 promising to wipe the Fair Housing Act off the books. "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house," Reagan said, "he has a right to do so."
Neither the words or positions changed that much during Reagan's presidency.
I recommend you read the whole article. Which brings us to the problem of linking to Salon articles that require one to be a subsriber. At the risk of seeming to be a shill for David Talbot, let me suggest that non-subscribers reconsider. Salon has some of the best left of center reporting and commentary anywhere. You can get Salon Premium with ads for only $22.50 a year. And you can get a month pass/ subscription for $6. All past articles are archived and available.
Yes, Talbot has published Paglia, Sullivan and Horowitz. That's okay with me; in a context like Salon's their bent reasoning and sodden prose shows up ever more clearly by contrast with any article by a Sid Blumenthal.
link to this post - by Leah A : 4:25 AM |


text:
614 F. 2d 474 - Environmental Defense Fund Inc v. R Alexander Louisville and Nashville Railroad
614 F2d 474 Environmental Defense Fund Inc v. R Alexander Louisville and Nashville Railroad
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND, INC., Committee for Leaving the
Environment of America Natural, Glenn H. Clemmer,
G. Randall Grace, and F. Glenn Liming,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
Clifford R. ALEXANDER, Secretary, Dept. of the Army, the
United States Army Corps of Engineers, Dept. of the Army,
and Major General John Morris, Chief of Engineers, Dept. of
the Army, Defendants-Appellees,
Tombigbee River Valley Water Management District,
Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development
Authority, State of Alabama and
Tombigbee Valley Development
Defendants-
Appellees.
LOUISVILLE AND NASHVILLE RAILROAD, Plaintiff-Appellant,
Authority, State of Alabama, and
Fifth Circuit.
Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied April 22, 1980.
Jon T. Brown, Stephen E. Roady, Washington, D. C., James T. B. Tripp, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.
Glenn Whitaker, Lawrence Moloney, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for Alexander and Morris.
Pogue & Pace, Ralph E. Pogue, Aberdeen, Miss., for Water Management Dist.
Hunter M. Gholson, Columbus, Miss., for Waterway Development Authority.
William T. Stephens, Asst. Atty. Gen., Montgomery, Ala., for State of Ala.
H. M. Ray, U. S. Atty., Oxford, Miss., for the U. S.
David Webb, Mobile Dist., Mobile, Ala., for U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Before GEWIN, RUBIN and SAM D. JOHNSON, Circuit Judges.
ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge:
This attempt to halt the construction of a federally financed waterway because the width of the waterway exceeds the size authorized by Congress was dismissed by the district court on the basis that it was barred by laches delay in presenting the claim resulting in prejudice to the defendants. We hold that laches was an appropriate defense, that the factual findings on which the district judge based his conclusions were supported by the record and that the legal principles he applied were correct.
The headwater of this litigation commenced to flow forty years ago when the Army Corps of Engineers presented Congress with a preliminary design for the proposed Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The design was reviewed and modified in a report submitted to Congress in 1946. In that year Congress authorized construction of the waterway in accordance with the plans presented to it. Act of July 24, 1946, Pub.L.No. 79-525, 60 Stat. 634. The plans described a waterway that would provide a navigation channel not less than nine feet in depth with a minimum bottom width of 170 feet (called a 170-foot channel), thus permitting two-way barge traffic.
Shortly after authorizing construction, Congress decided that the waterway was not economically feasible, and for some time it did not appropriate any funds for construction. However, studies continued. In June, 1966, in response to a request by Congress for restudy of the economic desirability of the project, the Corps of Engineers recommended that the proposed plan be modified to provide for a 300-foot channel (for convenience we refer to this as the 300-foot channel although this is its minimum width at its bottom). A channel of this size would accommodate larger tows and be better suited to changed economic conditions. On November 3, 1966, the Chief of Engineers issued an announcement notifying the public that the restudy of the waterway had been completed, and that it had been determined that the project was better justified economically with a 300-foot channel. Interested parties were invited to present their views and comments concerning the report within thirty days.
The restudy report was submitted on March 20, 1967, to the Secretary of the Army with the recommendation that he exercise what the Corps considered his discretionary authority under the authorizing statute to increase the project width to 300 feet, and allow further planning to proceed on that basis. Ten days later the Secretary accepted and acted on this recommendation. He forwarded a copy of the restudy report to the House and Senate Public Works and Appropriations Committees along with a copy of his memorandum reflecting the increase in the project width. Congress did not then or later amend the statutory authorization for a 170-foot channel.
On May 18, 1967, the Association of American Railroads, on behalf of the L&N Railroad Company and other railroad companies in the waterway area, submitted a report to the Senate Appropriations Committee specifically suggesting the need for a reevaluation of the project authorization because of the increase in the project's width from 170 feet to 300 feet. See Public Works for Water and Power Resources Development and Atomic Energy Commission Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1969: Hearings on H.R. 17903 Before the Subcomm. of the Senate Comm. on Appropriations, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 2050, 2054 (1968) (Statement of Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Project Committee, Association of American Railroads). Subsequently, the Appropriations Committees recommended appropriation (in fiscal year 1971) of construction funds for the waterway with the increased bottom width. During the budget hearings for fiscal year 1971, representatives of appellants L&N Railroad and Committee for Leaving the Environment of America Natural (CLEAN) appeared before the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to oppose funding of the waterway.1
Congress appropriated construction funds of $1 million for fiscal year 1971 and $6 million for fiscal year 1972. See Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Corps of Engineers of the United States Army, 348 F.Supp. 916, 924 (N.D.Miss.1972), aff'd, 492 F.2d 1123 (5th Cir. 1974). CLEAN and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) filed suit to enjoin the construction of the waterway in 1971. It was stipulated in that suit that the authorized width of the waterway was 300 feet. See id. at 920. Actual construction of the waterway began in 1972. Ultimately, the 1971 suit was dismissed by the court, and construction proceeded.
In November, 1976, this suit was filed, again seeking to enjoin construction. Plaintiffs alleged that the project under construction differed substantially from the project authorized by Congress and would have a greater impact on the environment and economic conditions of the surrounding areas, violating both statutory limitations and administrative regulations. However, the increase in the width of the channel was neither mentioned nor challenged. Over a year later, on January 30, 1978, an amended complaint was filed questioning, for the first time, the authority of the Corps to build a 300-foot channel.
When this suit was filed, the Corps had spent $36,000,000 out of a total estimated cost of $604,000,000 for channels and canals. By January 30, 1978, when the amended complaint was filed, it estimates it had completed 18% of the total project and spent over $265,000,000. After filing the lack of authority claims, the plaintiffs made no effort to obtain immediate injunctive relief and thus halt the further expenditure of funds or work on the project.
The Corps is now obligated on outstanding construction contracts in the amount of $864,302,200. If the project is restricted to a 170-foot channel, some of these funds may be recouped by sale of the unnecessary right of way and by renegotiation of contracts. Those who question authority to proceed urge that a substantial part of the $864 million could be saved if the project were restricted to 170 feet. In response to inquiry by this court concerning amounts spent for construction, the Corps estimates that by September 30, 1978,.$408,651,600 had been spent for construction and $616,007,156 has been spent to the present. The opponents of the waterway state that the following sums have been spent on actual project construction:
As of September 30, 1976: $93,314,300.
As of September 30, 1977: $176,324,100.
This is in addition to those costs incurred for purposes other than construction.2
The district judge did not decide whether the Secretary was authorized to increase the width of the channel because he concluded that the challenge was barred by laches. Deciding only that issue, he directed entry of a final judgment pursuant to rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, making an express determination that there was no just reason for delay and an express direction for the entry of judgment. That order is appealable. See Bailey v. McCann, 550 F.2d 1016 (5th Cir. 1977); B.B. Adams General Contractors, Inc. v. HUD, 501 F.2d 176 (5th Cir. 1974). After discussing the general principles applicable, we will consider separately each of the grounds on which it is urged that we should reverse.
Mindful that we do not sit to decree what accords with "commonsense and the public weal" and that the constitutional separation of governmental powers forbids the Secretary or this court to preempt congressional action, Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 196, 98 S.Ct. 2279, 2302, 57 L.Ed.2d 117, 147 (1978), we review the applicability of the doctrine of laches. What is sought here is an injunction, an equitable form of relief. The doctrine of laches was developed by chancellors of equity to prevent the assertion of stale claims and to remedy an injustice that sometimes arose from the existence of the separate system of equity: when an equitable remedy was sought, the statute of limitations that ordinarily would apply to a legal right was inapplicable.
The doctrine was eventually adopted by common law courts and, following the merger of law and equity, became part of the general body of rules governing relief in the federal court system. Its interpretation in equity courts was not uniform; at times the courts required a showing of prejudice to the defendants, at other times the chancellor applied it if a plaintiff had unreasonably delayed the assertion of his claim whether or not the defendant had been prejudiced. One basic principle has, however, been consistently followed: equitable remedies are not available if granting the remedy would be inequitable to the defendant because of the plaintiff's long delay.
Today, three independent criteria must be met before laches can be invoked to bar litigation. "The defendant must show: (1) a delay in asserting a right or claim; (2) that the delay was not excusable; and (3) that there was undue prejudice to the party against whom the claim is asserted." Save Our Wetlands, Inc. (SOWL) v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 549 F.2d 1021, 1026 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 836, 98 S.Ct. 126, 54 L.Ed.2d 98 (1977); accord, Gardner v. Panama R. Co., 342 U.S. 29, 72 S.Ct. 12, 96 L.Ed. 31 (1951); Law v. Royal Palm Beach Colony, Inc., 578 F.2d 98 (5th Cir. 1978); Van Bourg v. Nitze, 128 U.S.App.D.C. 301, 388 F.2d 557 (D.C. Cir. 1967). Whether laches bars an action in a given case depends upon the circumstances of that case and is "a question primarily addressed to the discretion of the trial court." Gardner v. Panama R. Co., 342 U.S. 29, 30, 72 S.Ct. 12, 13, 96 L.Ed. 31, 32 (1951).
As we have recently said, the applicability of the doctrine of laches to environmental litigation is no longer open to doubt. See Save Our Wetlands, Inc. (SOWL) v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 549 F.2d 1021, 1026 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 836, 98 S.Ct. 126, 54 L.Ed.2d 98 (1977), and cases cited therein. It is equally applicable to suits questioning public authority to act. Ecology Center of Louisiana, Inc. v. Coleman, 515 F.2d 860 (5th Cir. 1975); Clark v. Volpe, 342 F.Supp. 1324 (E.D.La.), aff'd, 461 F.2d 1266 (5th Cir. 1972).
The record, which we have already summarized, amply supports the district judge's finding that on November 3, 1966, about a decade before the suit was filed, the Corps gave public notice of its recommendation to expand the width of the canal together with an invitation to the public to submit written comments. Shortly thereafter, the Secretary decided to increase the width. While there is no mention in the legislative history from 1967 to 1976 of the Secretary's explicit invocation of his discretionary authority to widen the waterway, it is evident in the Committee reports and other congressional documents issued in this period that Congress had been informed of the change in plans to make the channel wider. In 1967 the Secretary sent his report to Congress with the recommended changes; both the legislative history and the 1971 Environmental Impact Statement note that the channel is 300 feet.
There is also ample evidence that the waterway opponents who appear in this suit were aware of this change: the 1967 opposition to a 300-foot channel by the Association of American Railroads, in part on L&N RR's behalf; the opposition to funding of the 300-foot channel project by CLEAN and EDF in Congress; and the suit to halt construction in 1971. The present waterway opponents did not challenge that decision until 1978, eleven years later. Even if we assume the challenge to have been effective when the complaint was filed in 1976,3 the delay was nine years. If we accept the contention that appellants remained blissfully ignorant of the increased dimensions throughout the congressional hearings on the waterway and despite the public attention the project received, they were aware of the width increase no later than 1971, when they sought to enjoin construction and stipulated to that width. This suit was not filed until five years thereafter, and the issue of authority to make the width increase was not injected until two years later.
Mere neglect to challenge action is not sufficient to establish laches in any case. When government action is involved, members of the public are entitled to assume that public officials will act in accordance with law. Save Our Wetlands, Inc. (SOWL) v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 549 F.2d 1021, 1027-28 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 836, 98 S.Ct. 126, 54 L.Ed.2d 98 (1977). Therefore, apart from the question of prejudice, which we will discuss later, the government must show that those whom it seeks to bar by invoking laches were or should have been aware of the questionable nature of the governmental activity. The waterway opponents in this case had an adequate indication that the Secretary of the Army had unilaterally expanded the width of the canal beyond its statutorily authorized channel width. This was enough to alert them to the claim that the authorities were not acting legally.
The appellants urge that it was only in 1976, when the Corps released its reanalysis of the TTW project, that they were aware of a problem in the authorization of the increased channel width and the economic and environmental consequences of that increase. The district judge was entirely justified in concluding that this was not a credible excuse. The waterway opponents' long interest in this project and their activities in opposition to it have already been reviewed. We do not find the trial judge erroneous because he lacked credulity in the contention that the plaintiffs were not aware of the threat posed to their interests by a 300-foot waterway until 1976.
Their claim in effect is reduced to the assertion they did not realize it was illegal for the Army to do what it had done. However, laches does not depend on subjective awareness of the legal basis on which a claim can be made. Moreover, although it is impossible for any person to know what is in another's mind, the record contains ample evidence that the problem should have been known; the authorization problem had occurred to others and was evident from the Army Corps of Engineers' discussions of the project and their regulations.
Because there is no evidence of any excuse for the lengthy delay, we next consider the final prerequisite to laches: prejudice. Measuring prejudice entails balancing equities. Under the rule as applied in Save Our Wetlands, Inc. (SOWL) v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 549 F.2d 1021 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 836, 98 S.Ct. 126, 54 L.Ed.2d 98 (1977), we are required to consider the expenditures made by the defendants against the benefits claimed if their efforts were halted. Environmental concerns are not presented to us; therefore, unlike the situation in Ecology Center of Louisiana, Inc. v. Coleman, 515 F.2d 860 (5th Cir. 1975), detriment to the environment cannot be a factor in our balance; the benefits we must weigh that could accrue by arresting work can be only those arising from the claimed vindication of congressional authority.
The amounts expended may be large in absolute terms but this does not tilt the scales if it represents a relatively small percentage of the total expenditures anticipated. See, e. g., Ecology Center of Louisiana, Inc. v. Coleman, 515 F.2d 860 (5th Cir. 1975) ($1 million had been spent out of a total estimated cost of $667 million). Here by the most conservative estimates, between $176 million and $286 million had been spent before the no-authority claim was asserted. This represented about 11% of the total project cost,4 far more than the 1/6 of 1% expended in Coleman. Vast amounts of soil had been excavated, locks had been built, and local authorities had constructed bridges. Reshaping the project would not only entail waste of much of those expenditures but also the outlay of additional funds to narrow the channel; moreover, there is substantial evidence that the narrower channel would be economically impractical and would never have been constructed.
It is difficult to say that a government agency can be prejudiced by forcing it to comply with the law. The citizenry are prejudiced by the improper outlay of public funds and it is they who suffer if governmental authorities violate the law. However, there is public interest in the prompt presentation of even the most valid objections to public projects from another point of view: those who oppose the unauthorized expenditure of public funds should act timely in order to prevent the utter waste that results if what is done must be undone.
Whether or not Congress authorized widening the channel, it has considered environmental impact statements on the project and determined to go ahead. Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Corps of Engineers of the United States Army, 492 F.2d 1123 (5th Cir. 1974). It has continued to appropriate money for the project. Although the public interest and prejudice to that interest cannot always be determined by a kind of economic weighing of how much has been spent, it is a fact that over $176 million had been spent at the time the amended complaint was filed and that much of the waterway has been built. The Corps has shown ample prejudice here both in the wasting expenditure that has occurred and the additional expense of narrowing what has already been built.
It is tendentious to assert that the district court had a duty to decide the case on the merits and not to consider the defense of laches. The court surely has a duty to decide all cases and controversies within its jurisdiction, but we know of no duty to resolve the case on a particular basis. While the defense of laches is, as we have already pointed out, directed to the remedy, the decision of the case on that basis need not turn upon or follow a decision on the merits.
The defense is not restricted to cases in which only private law claims are asserted; it is also applicable to complaints based on constitutional claims and those based on alleged violation of separation of powers. The doctrine bars us from granting an equitable remedy sought by plaintiffs. If the defense is established, the court's musings about how the case might have been decided on the merits if timely filed and if we could grant relief would surely be the rendering of an advisory opinion in violation of the constitutional stricture. See U.S. Const. art. 3, § 2; Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 240-41, 57 S.Ct. 461, 464, 81 L.Ed. 617, 621 (1937).
The argument that the district court denied plaintiffs due process by giving assurances that laches was not an issue lacks any foundation in the record and is indeed belied by it. Buttressed only by factual affidavits filed in this court for the first time, in disregard of our function as an appellate court, one of plaintiff's counsel asserts that he spoke to one of the judge's law clerks who told counsel that the judge did not plan to take evidence on any issue but the authorization for the project at the hearing and that all other issues including affirmative defenses would be heard later. We repeat the argument in order to give it express condemnation: courts speak to litigants by orders or minute entries or judgments or, on occasion, at conference in chambers. Ex parte communications with judges are generally disfavored. Code of Judicial Conduct for United States Judges, Canon 3 A(4). A fortiori, neither ex parte communication with a judge's clerks nor reliance upon such communication can be condoned.
Moreover, the record does not support the notion of reliance on this communication: prior to the hearing, both the United States and the plaintiffs filed briefs addressing the issue of laches in relation to the authorization question, and, in his opening statement, counsel for the United States urged the issue on the court. Plaintiffs' counsel expressed no objection either to the statement or to the evidence introduced. Neither did counsel urge to the court that fair notice of the issue had not been given; in fact, plaintiffs' counsel recommended a conclusion of law on the laches issue favorable to their position. The contention is, therefore, completely without merit.
Laches is a clement doctrine. It assures that old grievances will some day be laid to rest, that litigation will be decided on the basis of evidence that remains reasonably accessible and that those against whom claims are presented will not be unduly prejudiced by delay in asserting them. Inevitably it means that some potentially meritorius demands will not be entertained. But there is justice too in an end to conflict and in the quiet of peace. The district court concluded that the day for battle on the authorization issue had come and gone and that the question should now be laid to rest unheard. Finding his factual premises supported by the record and his conclusions of law correct, we AFFIRM his judgment.
See Public Works for Water, Pollution Control, and Power Development and Atomic Energy Commission Appropriation Bill, 1971: Hearings Before the Subcomm. of the House Comm. on Appropriations, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. 391, 397 (1970); Public Works for Water, Pollution Control, and Power Development and Atomic Energy Commission Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1971: Hearings on H.R. 18127 Before the Subcomm. of the Senate Comm. on Appropriations, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. 467 (1970)
Focusing on "construction costs," the waterway opponents assert that money spent for historical and archeological surveys was not a part of construction costs, and that amounts spent for engineering and design and supervision and administration should not be counted toward money spent on construction because some of the design could be used if there were a 170-foot rather than a 300-foot project. However, at least some of these expenditures could not be recovered
We think the district judge properly measured injury at the time the challenge to the channel width was made, January 30, 1978, and not at the time the original complaint was filed. Our discussion of prejudice, therefore, will focus on the date this amended complaint was filed. In some circumstances application of a statute of limitations may depend upon when suit was filed and not when a particular claim is made, for the claim may relate back to the original complaint. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(c); Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 323 U.S. 574, 65 S.Ct. 421, 89 L.Ed. 465 (1945). However, laches rests on policy concerns different from those of statutes of limitations. The challenge to the channel width is fundamental and strikes at the heart of the project. It was appropriate to appraise injury to defendants at the time plaintiffs actually asserted the claim, rather than at the time at which they began to raise other challenges to the project
This is, of course, a very rough estimate, taking into account the uncertainty, based on appellants' figures, of exactly how much had been spent at the time the amended complaint was filed, and taking the most recent estimate for initial total project cost available. ($1,925,000,000) The figure is probably conservative; the government estimates it at 18%

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
require([
    "dojo/_base/declare",
    "dojo/dom-construct",
    "dojo/query",
	"dojo/dom-style",
	"dojo/_base/connect",
    "esri", // We're not directly using anything defined in esri.js but geometry, locator and utils are not AMD. So, the only way to get reference to esri object is through esri module (ie. esri/main)
    "esri/geometry",
    "esri/utils"
],
function(declare, domConstruct, query, domStyle, connect, esri) {
    var Widget = declare("HeatmapLayer", [esri.layers.DynamicMapServiceLayer], {
        properties: {},
        heatMap: null,
        // constructor
        constructor: function (properties) {
            declare.safeMixin(this.properties, properties);
            // map var
            this._map = this.properties.map;
            // last data storage
            this.lastData = [];
            // map node
            this.domNode = document.getElementById(this.properties.domNodeId);
            // config
            this.config = {
                element: this.domNode,
                width: this._map.width,
                height: this._map.height,
                radius: 40,
                debug: false,
                visible: true,
                useLocalMaximum: false,
                gradient: {
                    0.45: "rgb(000,000,255)",
                    0.55: "rgb(000,255,255)",
                    0.65: "rgb(000,255,000)",
                    0.95: "rgb(255,255,000)",
                    1.00: "rgb(255,000,000)"
                }
            };
            // mix in config for heatmap.js settings
            declare.safeMixin(this.config, properties.config);
            // create heatmap
            this.heatMap = heatmapFactory.create(this.config);
            // loaded
            this.loaded = true;
            this.onLoad(this);
            // global maximum value
            this.globalMax = 0;
			var _self = this;
            // connect on resize
			connect.connect(this._map, "onResize", this, this.resizeHeatmap);
            // heatlayer div styling
            this.domNode.style.position = 'relative';
            this.domNode.style.display = 'none';
        },
        resizeHeatmap: function (extent, width, height) {
            // set heatmap data size
            this.heatMap.set("width", width);
            this.heatMap.set("height", height);
            // set width and height of container
            domStyle.set(this.domNode, {
                "width": width + 'px',
                "height": height + 'px'
            });
            // set width and height of canvas element inside of container
            var child = query(':first-child', this.domNode);
            if (child) {
                child.attr('width', width);
                child.attr('height', height);
            }
            // set atx canvas width and height fix
            var actx = this.heatMap.get("actx");
            actx.canvas.height = height;
            actx.canvas.width = width;
            this.heatMap.set("actx", actx);
            // refresh image and heat map size
            this.refresh();
        },
        // stores heatmap converted data into the plugin which renders it
        storeHeatmapData: function (heatPluginData) {
            // set heatmap data
            this.heatMap.store.setDataSet(heatPluginData);
        },
        // converts parsed data into heatmap format
        convertHeatmapData: function (parsedData) {
            // variables
            var xParsed, yParsed, heatPluginData, dataPoint, screenGeometry;
            // set heat plugin data object
            heatPluginData = {
                max: parsedData.max,
                data: [] // empty data
            };
            // if data
            if (parsedData.data) {
                // for all x values
                for (xParsed in parsedData.data) {
                    // if data[x]
                    if (parsedData.data.hasOwnProperty(xParsed)) {
                        // for all y values and count
                        for (yParsed in parsedData.data[xParsed]) {
                            if (parsedData.data[xParsed].hasOwnProperty(yParsed)) {
                                // convert data point into screen geometry
                                screenGeometry = esri.geometry.toScreenGeometry(this._map.extent, this._map.width, this._map.height, parsedData.data[xParsed][yParsed].dataPoint);
                                // push to heatmap plugin data array
                                heatPluginData.data.push({
                                    x: screenGeometry.x,
                                    y: screenGeometry.y,
                                    count: parsedData.data[xParsed][yParsed].count // count value of x,y
                                });
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            // store in heatmap plugin which will render it
            this.storeHeatmapData(heatPluginData);
        },
        // runs through data and calulates weights and max
        parseHeatmapData: function (features) {
            // variables
            var i, parsedData, dataPoint, attributes;
            // if data points exist
            if (features) {
                // create parsed data object
                parsedData = {
                    max: 0,
                    data: []
                };
                if (!this.config.useLocalMaximum) {
                    parsedData.max = this.globalMax;
                }
                // for each data point
                for (i = 0; i < features.length; i++) {
                    // create geometry point
                    dataPoint = esri.geometry.Point(features[i].geometry.x, features[i].geometry.y, this._map.spatialReference);
                    // check point
                    var validPoint = false;
                    // if not using local max, point is valid
                    if (!this.config.useLocalMaximum) {
                        validPoint = true;
                    }
                    // using local max, make sure point is within extent
                    else if(this._map.extent.contains(dataPoint)){
                        validPoint = true;
                    }
                    if (validPoint) {
                        // attributes
                        attributes = features[i].attributes;
                        // if array value is undefined
                        if (!parsedData.data[dataPoint.x]) {
                            // create empty array value
                            parsedData.data[dataPoint.x] = [];
                        }
                        // array value array is undefined
                        if (!parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y]) {
                            // create object in array
                            parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y] = {};
                            // if count is defined in datapoint
                            if (attributes && attributes.hasOwnProperty('count')) {
                                // create array value with count of count set in datapoint
                                parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].count = attributes.count;
                            } else {
                                // create array value with count of 0
                                parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].count = 0;
                            }
                        }
                        // add 1 to the count
                        parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].count += 1;
                        // store dataPoint var
                        parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].dataPoint = dataPoint;
                        // if count is greater than current max
                        if (parsedData.max < parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].count) {
                            // set max to this count
                            parsedData.max = parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].count;
                            if (!this.config.useLocalMaximum) {
                                this.globalMax = parsedData.data[dataPoint.x][dataPoint.y].count;
                            }
                        }

                    }
                }
                // convert parsed data into heatmap plugin formatted data
                this.convertHeatmapData(parsedData);
            }
        },
        // set data function call
        setData: function (features) {
            // set width/height
            this.resizeHeatmap(null, this._map.width, this._map.height);
            // store points
            this.lastData = features;
            // create data and then store it
            this.parseHeatmapData(features);
            // redraws the heatmap
            this.refresh();
        },
        // add one feature to the heatmap
        addDataPoint: function (feature) {
            if (feature) {
                // push to data
                this.lastData.push(feature);
                // set data
                this.setData(this.lastData);
            }
        },
        // return data set of features
        exportDataSet: function () {
            return this.lastData;
        },
        // clear data function
        clearData: function () {
            // empty heat map
            this.heatMap.clear();
            // empty array
            var empty = [];
            // set data to empty array
            this.setData(empty);
        },
        // get image
        getImageUrl: function (extent, width, height, callback) {
            // create heatmap data using last data
            this.parseHeatmapData(this.lastData);
            // image data
            var imageUrl = this.heatMap.get("canvas").toDataURL("image/png");
            // callback
            callback(imageUrl);
        }
    });
    return Widget;
});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
NASA's Puttkamer Stresses Mission to Mars
From Volume 8, Issue 28 of EIR Online, Published July 14, 2009
Global Economic News
July 11 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, Jesco von Puttkamer, who has been working with NASA for about 50 years, says, among other things:
"Mars is the planet of our destiny. There's the well-founded hope that we might find traces of extraterrestrial life there for the first time, even if it's only fossilized microbes. A human scientist who can take and analyze samples on the ground is much better suited to this search than a robot, no matter how sophisticated it is. But the most important thing is the fact that people will one day set foot on Mars and populate it. The red desert planet Mars, provided it doesn't have any life of its own, could become a green Mars through so-called terraforming—in other words, active transformation. If that is successful, humankind will have created itself a second home, just in case an asteroid impact or other major catastrophe wipes out life on Earth. Only through having Mars as a reserve planet will the human race really become immortal."


text:
Industries minister: HC reprimanding state govt a matter of shame
The remark comes after the HC, while hearing a public interest litigation on the Sabarmati river pollution, suggested the state government relocate the industrial units functioning within the limits of Ahmedabad city.
By: Express News Service | Ahmedabad |
December 19, 2021 2:49:57 am
"It is sad that when we are supporting industries, the government has to listen to rebukes from the Gujarat High Court," said industries minister Jagdish Vishwakarma. (File)
Days after the Gujarat High Court pulled up the Gujarat government for the pollution of the Sabarmati river, industries minister Jagdish Vishwakarma said the HC reprimanding the state government and industries was a "matter of shame".
"It is sad that when we are supporting industries, the government has to listen to rebukes from the Gujarat High Court. I do not know how much the industries have to listen. But when the High Court pulls up the chief minister or the industries, it is a matter of shame," he said addressing a 'Sneh Milan' event organised by Laghu Udhog Bharati at Vatva in Ahmedabad. Members of the Vatva Industrial Association were also present at the event.
"But despite this (directions from HC), the chief minister is always thinking of finding a middle path," he said, adding when the HC decided to take steps against the industries, chief minister Bhupendra Patel called a high-level meeting and tried to find out a solution. "I suggested to the chief minister that as connections (for water or power) are severed, the department will do its work and issue closure notices. We will also have to call the industries and advise them. Why is the high court reprimanding either you or us," he told the audience where the chief minister was present.
He asked the industries why the COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) levels (for industrial effluents) should hit the maximum levels as suggested by the National Green Tribunal.
The minister said the new government under Bhupendra Patel has been in power for the last 90 days and he is yet to get a detailed note from the industries and their associations about their problems and the possible solutions.
Ahmedabad News
1Daily infections of Covid again rise in Gujarat with 10,150 cases
2TPR higher than 10 pc in 5 Gujarat districts, 7 new Covid deaths
3Penalties recovered for illegal mining in state rises 144 percent: Govt
More from Ahmedabad
For all the latest Ahmedabad News, download Indian Express App.


text:
Моделът Ламбда-CDM или ΛCDM (съкращение от английски: lambda cold dark matter – ламбда студена тъмна материя) е параметризация на космологичния модел на Големия взрив, в който Вселената съдържа три основни компонента: първо, космологична константа, обозначена с гръцката буква ламбда (на гръцки: Λ), която се асоциира с тъмната енергия; второ, постулираната студена тъмна материя (съкратено CDM от английски: cold dark matter); и трето, обикновена материя. Често се нарича стандартен модел на космологията на Големия взрив, тъй като е най-простият модел, който дава сравнително добра представа за следните свойства на космоса:

 съществуването и структурата на реликтово излъчване;
 мащабната структура в разпределението на галактиките (мегагалактики);
 наблюдаваното изобилие от водород (включително деутерий), хелий и литий;
 ускоряващото се разширяване на Вселената, наблюдавано в светлината от далечни галактики и свръхнови.

Моделът приема, че общата теория на относителността е правилната теория на гравитацията в космологични мащаби. Той се появява в края на 90-те години на миналия век като съгласувана космология, след период на изследвания, в който различни наблюдавани свойства на Вселената изглеждат взаимно несъвместими и няма консенсус относно структурата на енергийна плътност на Вселената.

Моделът ΛCDM може да бъде разширен чрез добавяне на космологична инфлация, квинтесенция и други елементи, които са текущи области на спекулации и изследвания в космологията.

Някои алтернативни модели оспорват допусканията на модела ΛCDM. Примери за такива модели са модифицираната нютонова динамика, ентропийната гравитация, модифицираната гравитация, теории за широкомащабни вариации в плътността на материята на Вселената, биметрична гравитация, мащабна инвариантност на празното пространство и разлагаща се тъмна материя (DDM).

Източници

Космология

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


There are several different factors involved in providing safety supplies for workers. You'll want to consider the work being done, possible hazards, and what safety products workers will need. When choosing safety equipment, there's a wide variety of options available, including safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, fall harnesses and lanyards, respirators, and much more. Workers may only need one safety product or a combination. With the right safety supplies from Gamka Sales Co. Inc., workers will be protected and happy to comply.
Call us today for all your jobsite safety supplies at 732-248-1400. We deliver to you.


text:
Home	Featured	Analysis: Why McLaren are right to give Magnussen a race seat
FeaturesFormula 1
Analysis: Why McLaren are right to give Magnussen a race seat
by Peter Allen 13 November 2013
written by Peter Allen 13 November 2013
Photo: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
Like so many decisions in modern-day, scrutinised-on-Twitter-within-minutes Formula 1, the call that McLaren have made to promote Kevin Magnussen into a race seat for 2014 has polarised opinion.
As champions of young talent, it is probably no surprise that us at PaddockScout have supported the move. It's not quite as straightforward as that though – we didn't immediately jump to the defence of Red Bull when they made the shock decision to hand the Toro Rosso vacancy to Daniil Kvyat, for example.
For anybody who has felt the need to consult Magnussen's CV in the aftermath of recent developments to try and gauge his abilities, it is maybe difficult to see what's quite so special about him that he deserves an immediate elevation into a McLaren seat. Casting aside the somewhat obscure Danish Formula Ford, it took him until this year to win a major single-seater title, and even that was at his second attempt. It's not the sort of resume that would earn him a place in the same league as Lewis Hamilton or even Nico Hulkenberg.
But this merely highlights how it's too easy to judge a young driver by their achievements over their career. It would be impossible to predict how good Sebastian Vettel has become after he failed to win the F3 Euro Series title at the second try. It is a driver's abilities that determines his potential, not results. Magnussen has long shown talent, and although it's taken until now for him to deliver a title, the manner in which he has achieved that has been particularly impressive and proved he's ready.
Perez hasn't had enough of a chance to show what he can do in terms of results. He hasn't performed too badly in the chances he has had. But this is about more than results. McLaren have worked with loads of good drivers. They have worked with Perez over 17 races. They will know whether he has the ultimate long term potential to be a great, and word is that the engineers haven't been impressed.
They have been impressed though with the two days of testing that Magnussen has done. Two days isn't enough to know whether he's a future world champion but, taking their respective simulator work into account – an area where Magnussen has reportedly excelled, they feel that he has greater potential than Perez. In which case there's no real point holding onto Perez for another year and keeping Magnussen on the subs bench.
12 months ago McLaren had to choose between two drivers they didn't yet know, and like many they were drawn to Perez thanks to his three podiums, but in reality he wasn't the most talented driver available. This time, they know Magnussen and they know Perez and they know which one has shown them more potential.
With so little F1 mileage under his belt there have to be question marks about how Magnussen will fare thrust into a McLaren next year. But this year he's shown all the qualities that he needs; speed, consistency, maturity, confidence, calmness, determination, ability under pressure… I could go on.
He's the most ready for F1 that any junior single-seater driver has been for some years, even if others have had more glittering careers-to-date. Credit to McLaren for realising that proven F1 podium finishers are not the answer, and giving a chance to somebody with the potential to do so much more.
Kevin MagnussenMcLaren
2013 Macau Grand Prix preview
Rosenqvist heads Felix da Costa in first qualifying in Macau


The Chautauqua Nexus at the University of Louisiana at Monroe will meet Thursday, April 18 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on the second floor of the Student Union Building.
Speakers Jean Low, ULM associate professor of Psychology, and Jean Cottingham, also a ULM assistance professor of Psychology, will present a view of emotion as a dynamic associative network of feelings, physiological reactions, motor responses, thoughts, and memories based on the work on Bower and Berkowitz.
On Friday afternoon, April 19 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in the SUB, representatives from State Farm and the State Police will talk about the emotion of anger, how it is expressed in road rage, and the consequences of road rage and aggressive driving.


Hair loss is one of the major issues that people are facing these days. Many are having sleepless nights due to the same reason. Hair loss can occur due to many reasons so it's important to identify it separately for each person. Some of the most common causes of hair fall are air pollution, hormonal imbalances, underactive thyroid gland, nutrition deficiency in the body, etc. If you want to effectively treat the condition, you must know the exact reason causing your hairs to fall. Hair DNA testing is the only tried and tested way to find out the real cause of your untimely hair loss.
The procedure lets you know the real reason for your hair fall in an efficient manner.
Depending on the resulting reason, it would become easier for the doctor to suggest you the most appropriate medicines to treat the condition.
You would know the extent and severity of your hair loss issue.
This procedure is free from any kind of side-effects since it is a non-invasive procedure.
Hair DNA testing can prevent baldness before it even begins if you get your hair tested beforehand.
The procedure will prevent the doctor from suggesting ineffective medicines.
This is a good indicator of the chances of you having androgenic alopecia, years before it actually starts. If the test result shows that there is the presence of the balding gene in your body, you are at 70% risk of facing this variety of alopecia. Hair DNA testing would allow you the required time to get treatment for this condition so that your balding process starts much later and slower than expected. You never know if you get hair loss treatment well in advance, you may not even suffer from any kind of hair related issue. Hair DNA testing allows you to take precautionary measures and effective steps to save you from the embarrassment of having fewer hair strands on your head.
Ensure that the labor center you are going for the hair DNA testing is reliable.


Graphite is a research platform for computer graphics, 3D modeling and numerical geometry.
Graphite was awarded the special prize "most innovative project" and the third prize "scientific software category" at the "trophées du libre" international free software competition.
Latest version: Graphite 3.0 alpha is out !
Graphite is hosted by Inria GForge.
Do not hesitate to contact us if you want a link to your project here.