text:
5 Minutes of Inspiration: One Neighborhood – Stronger Together
lebanon_syria-crisis_hanaa_860px.jpg
With the local NGO Akkarouna, CARE in Lebanon has provided shelter and access to services for some of the most vulnerable communities hosting Syrian refugees.
Salma and her two siblings were living in dire conditions in one of the most highly vulnerable and marginalized areas in north Lebanon. The family also had mental and physical disabilities, and no source of income. Salma's shelter is a one-room structure with no window and no lockable door, nor a toilet or a kitchen. But CARE in Lebanon helped the family get back on their feet, providing locks and a toilet so they can live in safety and dignity, and connecting them to service providers to meet their specific needs and additional support.
In Tripoli, many Lebanese residents – landlords included – are often living in standards as poor as those of the refugees. The influx resulting from the ongoing Syrian crisis has exacerbated underlying and often extreme poverty issues, sowing the seeds of resentment and causing tension. CARE's "One Neighborhood Approach" is not a single project. Rather, it is a programmatic approach that bridges several areas of expertise – shelter, housing and settlements, infrastructure, livelihoods, markets and economics, community-based protection mechanisms and community regeneration – through which inclusive governance is mainstreamed. CARE recognized the importance of working with the whole community, so individuals are targeted according to need, while the wider neighborhood is improved through communal spaces and shared infrastructure. The needs, concerns and rights of both landlords and tenants are addressed through tripartite rental agreements generating greater tenure security alongside physical improvements to the building and living space.
The "One Neighborhood Approach" in Lebanon has been funded by BPRM since 2015, with $7 million cumulatively reaching over 5,000 people directly through household-level shelter interventions and 20,000 people through community infrastructure, both refugees themselves or hosts.
What did we accomplish?
Community Committees are created and empowered, representing the diversity of backgrounds and interests of the local neighborhood: "Unity Committees" were established and now have a total of 213 active members (194 female, 19 male) who have received training to strengthen their capacities in community-based protection and shelter-related concerns. Topics include early marriage, domestic violence, conflict resolution, communication skills, and Participatory Approaches to Safe Shelter Awareness (PASSA).
People live in improved quality housing: Moving from substandard shelter to a home, and in so doing having access to a safe and healthy environment, protects privacy and dignity, and leads to comfort and wellbeing in displacement. 1,416 shelters have been improved, of which 91 percent of beneficiaries reported satisfaction with the quality of work done.
Families gain improved security of tenure – and reduce the risk of eviction, particularly for the most vulnerable: 94 percent of survey respondents were still residing in the same dwelling three months post-intervention. Those who left were all Syrians and all confirmed moving to bigger apartments. In June 2018 (two years after the first interventions), 84 percent of beneficiaries were still residing in the same dwelling. The eviction rate was found to be two percent, which demonstrates that landlords largely followed the terms of the tenancy agreement signed before the shelter rehabilitation. 14 percent of families confirmed that they left the house, but they were not evicted.
Landlords benefit from improvements to their properties in the long term: At the same time, landlords are meeting the immediate needs of refugees in their neighborhood, with high satisfaction rates of the rehabilitation reported by landlords.
Collective engagement in community projects: This engagement, whether at the building or neighborhood level, stimulates shared interests, a sense of ownership and belonging, a safer environment and improved relationships.
Generated greater understanding of and sensitivity to the challenges affecting people with different needs and abilities: Particularly with a focus on protecting women and children within the neighborhood.
Leading a successful pilot approach that is being adopted by UNHCR and other agencies and replicated in other countries in the Middle East: The One-Neighborhood Approach proved to be successful throughout CARE's implementation, and adopted as UNHCR's "area-based approach" and in Solidarité's "Al-Hay".
Active engagement of the community on challenges they encounter on a day-to-day basis to identify key areas for physical improvements in access, drainage and lighting.
Deep understanding of neighborhood dynamics, generated through multiple layers of engagement and mapping.
Broad sweep of household assessments (over 3,000 in total) validated the findings at the neighborhood and city level, and helped identify those most in need.
Profound community buy-in through a lengthy preparatory process of participatory engagement to ensure the most vulnerable families were identified and prioritized for assistance by the communities themselves.
Peer-to-peer training and strengthening of capacity in social protection issues was provided within the communities.
Integrated activities ensured complex needs for shelter, water, sanitation, protection and communal spaces were addressed in a holistic manner, multiplying the impact of each intervention.
Check out the approach summary, a story about a landlord and her tenants, and watch the video on the project.


Evening ofthe 21st of Trical, 1331 Avard.
With the sun recently set and the party well-camouflaged back away from the tree line, their only real information came from Hadarai's familiar, a falcon that seemed to appear and disappear at his whims. Search parties of 15 to 20 pirates occasionall scouted through the brush with torches held high, but the majority of the pirates clustered around a huge bonfire in the midst of the village. Several guards maintained watch over the longboats.
Despite a clear night's stars seen through the canopy, a storm front began to move in from the sea.
Killik the tomanth was still in something of a torpor, and lying unmoving and hidden on the cold ground was not helping. Making use of a covering cloak, Johannes pulled forth his Divinities book and, with the help of a tiny bit of light, began a ritual to protect all of them save Kat from the elements.
Kat had told the group she would not be following them aboard the ships. Her people and her lands were there, on the shore – and she held them somewhat accountable for the loss of the village of Ihorangi, for leading the pirates to the villagers. Though the villagers weren't a part of her personal jurisdiction, she still felt somewhat responsible, and was not going to lead any such trouble back to her own peoples. The party would be on their own. Kat would do what she could, by way of making a wide trail even a storm could follow, but she was leaving.
Johannes' ritual spread out from his holy symbol like a warm, soothing balm. The cold of the ground lessoned, and the chill of the late autumn air fell away. The ritual would protect them with Arpelos' blessings for a full day, until sunset the next night. During that time, no winter cold and no desert heat could harm them. And it would allow them to swim in the cold ocean waters without fear of freezing to death.
The group of them said their goodbyes, and then Kat left them for her homelands. The rest of the party moved back and away, easily avoiding the few pirate search parties, and headed well down the beach. From there, they slipped across the beach and into the water. Johannes shifted into the form of a shark, and led the first of them out to the largest of the pirate ships, a galleon that was a giant in the water.
They congregated at the rear of the bigger ship, holding onto the rudder and rudder chains while they whispered with one another, plotting their next move. The storm winds had begun to pick up, and they knew time was running out. The game plan was simple: they broke two of Horbes' tokens, in the hopes of gathering his attention. They would infiltrate the bigger ship or hang on, and once all of the fleet had been teleported near to Mad Dog Island, then the party could begin boarding and killing pirates. With so many pirates ashore, there was simply too much risk in boarding the ships too soon.
The party had a chamber pot dumped on them while they were waiting. The big ship had a wide spread of windows along its backside – and apparently a meeting was taking place in the room. Lantern light showed shifting shadows, and one voice in particular was so deep that it was hard to hear. Another voice was inhuman and uncomfortable. Other voices were more audible over the waves lapping at the ship.
The deep-voiced individual wanted the shield found, to hell with the costs in men or time. He seemed to think the shaman ashore, an Amaran follower of Elinthar – God of the Hunt – would find the party and the shield, no matter what.
Dolon pulled out his climbing pitons, and offered two to Killik and two to Johannes. If the pitons were inserted into the rudder chains, then that would lock the ships in one direction – and make it that much harder for those other two ships to give chase, or maneuver in the storm. The five of them were familiar enough with sailing to crew the Dellistar themselves, but it would be more of a limp, and the bigger ships with full crews would run them down and board them – unless their rudders could be disabled, if only for awhile.
Realizing that the Amaran shaman would be returning to the big pirate ship, Johannes set out to capsize the longboat with him in it. The battle did not go well, with Johannes alone agains the four rowmen and the shaman, who used voodoo dolls and a bone club and other powers against him. The Prior of Arpelos garnered support from Killik, and the two returned to try and stop the shaman before he returned with word of the attack.
The second attack faired somewhat better than the first, with Killik killing one of the pirates rowing. The shaman forced them to retreat, again, even as the alarm bell began to rang on the big pirate ship – the cries of the rowers had been heard.
The party changed their mind; hanging around the big pirate ship was foolhardy. Instead, they moved out for the Dellistar, with the intent of taking it just as the storm hit. They were spotted as soon as they began to clamber aboard, but the pirates proved no match against the five of them. Grania was a whirling scythe of death among the pirates, while Dolon and Johannes focused primarlily on the pirate captain of the ship. Hadarai slew nine of them in one blast of thunder. The pirate captain and the remaining pirates were forced below decks, defensively. Eighteen pirate bodies lay on the deck, bleeding into the rain, when the fight was finished. Dolon dogged the hatches, locking them down below, as they surveyed the deck of the Dellistar.
Lightning flashed, showing a deck full of bodies and body parts, searing a scene of horror into them that they would forever be haunted by. And then they undogged the hatches and dropped down below, ready to kill the remaining pirates and add to the carnage. The pirates had holed themselves up in the petty mess, where the party usually stayed when aboard the Dellistar.
Rather than break the door down, Johannes tried diplomacy, guaranteeing his word as a Prior of Arpelos that they would be allowed to jump off the ship and swim for shore or another ship.
The pirate captain made sure his men got up and out of the hold, and over the side. He was the last to go, and paused only long enough to answer Hadarai's question about where the crew of the Dellistar and the Alahandra were. The pirate gave a partial answer, in that half of them were aboard the galleon Cries of Gulls – and then he went overboard.
The party watched the pirates swimming through rough storm waters filled with sharks, before the darkness took them. The pirates had seen for themselves – the sea was less a danger than the shield-bearers.
They began to make fast the ship against the storm.
Midnight of the 21st of Trical, 1331 Avard.
Each player received 1500 experience points for playing. Hadarai and Dolon now have 12500 experience points each (7th level), and Johannes has 12055 points (7th level). Grania has 12005 experience points (7th level).
We met on the 8th of August, 2009 – incidentally my three year anniversary of leaving the Army. Didn't catch that until just now. Well, we played at my place, and John treated us to dinner: Chinese food! Woohoo! Jalinda brought her son Simon with her, and we managed to hook Simon up with a few games to keep him occupied. I just have to see if he'll like C&C Generals! As for the session, things moved along well enough after I nudged things a bit. I'm learning that Indecision leads to Inaction, but they're not the same thing – especially when you can lure players into using their character's abilities. (innocent whistle) John was especially funny, and had us laughing pretty well about things, so double kudos to John for the evening. If I see him put his elbow in front of his face again while he bobs his head, I'm going to lose it. As for Kat… Sommer's put together a bard that she wants to play, and the character of Kat was never really cut out for staying with the party for long – but she was a great way for Sommer to get introduced to things, and to begin to like the game for what it was.


text:
\section{Introduction} \label{sec:intro}
\noindent
Quantum illumination (QI) is a photonic quantum sensing  protocol (see \cite{PBG+18} for an overview of the field) introduced by Lloyd \cite{Llo08} in which entanglement shared between a signal beam interrogating a target region and a locally held idler beam is used to detect the presence of a weakly reflecting target better than a strategy using only a signal beam of the same energy, i.e., average photon number. Soon after \cite{Llo08} appeared, Tan et al. found  that using multiple signal-idler modes prepared in the two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) state allows a 6 dB improvement of the error probability exponent relative to a classical ladar (laser detection and ranging) system of the same energy \cite{TEG+08}. Surprisingly -- and unlike other sensing applications for which quantum advantage quickly disappears in the presence of decoherence \cite{EdMFD11,DKG12} -- this 6 dB advantage occurs when the target is bathed in  thermal background radiation of brightness (i.e.,  per-mode energy) $N_B \gg 1$, due to which the initial signal-idler entanglement is lost.
These results have inspired much theoretical \cite{SL09,GE09,BGW+15,SLHG-R+17,ZZS17SFG,ZZS17Rayleighfading,ZZS17ROC,WTL+17,DPB18,WPT+16,YMZ18arxiv,PLL+19} and experimental \cite{LR-BD13,ZTZ+13,ZMW+15,CVB+19,LGH+19,BPV+20} work in QI, much of which is reviewed in \cite{PBG+18,Sha20}.

In this paper, we use tools from quantum information \cite{NC00}  to investigate the fundamental limits of bosonic QI systems in all regimes of signal and background noise strength and allowing for all possible choices of quantum states at the transmitter and quantum measurements at the receiver. We first derive a lower bound on the average error probability of any QI system that transmits an $M$-mode signal beam entangled with locally held idler modes under a total signal energy constraint $\mathcal{N}_S$. For  $N_B \gg 1$, we show that the  scheme of \cite{TEG+08} using independently and identically distributed (iid) copies of  TMSV states with signal brightness  $N_S \equiv \mathcal{N}_S/M \ll 1$ achieves the greatest error probability exponent allowed by quantum mechanics, and that its near optimality persists for the detection of targets exhibiting flat Rayleigh fading. We also show that any QI system for estimating the reflectance of a detected target has a mean squared error that is at least half that suffered by the best classical ladar.

\section{QI Setup and Background} \label{sec:setup}

\begin{figure}[tbp]
\centering
{\includegraphics[trim=22mm 70mm 22mm 42mm, clip=true,width=\columnwidth]{QIsetupv2.pdf}}
\caption{General setup for QI: An entangled state $\Psi$ of $M$ signal and idler modes is prepared. Each signal mode $\hat{a}_S^{(m)}$  interrogates a distant target region  bathed in  thermal radiation $\hat{a}_B^{(m)}$ which may contain a target of effective reflectance $\eta \ll 1$. The modes $\{\hat{a}_R^{(m)}\}_{m=1}^M$ returned from the target region are measured jointly with the unperturbed idler modes $\{\hat{a}_I^{(m)}\}_{m=1}^M$ in order to decide whether or not the target was present. }
\label{fig:QIsetup}
\end{figure}

A general QI setup is depicted schematically in Fig.~\ref{fig:QIsetup}. A transmitter prepares an entangled quantum state of $M$ signal (denoted $S$) modes (annihilation operators $\{\hat{a}_S^{(m)}\}_{m=1}^M$) and idler (denoted $I$) modes (annihilation operators $\{\hat{a}_I^{(m)}\}_{m=1}^{M}$). The signal modes interrogate a target region which may contain a weakly reflecting target  bathed in background (denoted $B$) light (annihilation operators $\{\hat{a}_B^{(m)}\}_{m=1}^M$). The annihilation operators $\{\hat{a}_R^{(m)}\}_{m=1}^M$ of the modes returned from the target region, which may acquire an additional phase shift $\phi$, obey the relation
\begin{align} \label{HP}
\hat{a}_R^{(m)} &=  \sqrt{\eta_h}\,e^{i\phi}\, \hat{a}_S^{(m)} + \sqrt{1-\eta_h} \,\hat{a}_B^{(m)}.
\end{align}
Here $h=0 \,(1)$ indicates the absence (presence) of a target, $\eta_0 = 0$, and $\eta_1 = \eta \ll 1$ is the effective reflectance of the  signal to return beam path when the target is present. The two hypotheses are assigned prior probabilities $\{\pi_h\}_{h=0}^1$. In order to derive fundamental physical limits, we assume initially that the target is specular and that the values of $\eta$ and $\phi$ are known to the receiver. As in previous works \cite{TEG+08,SL09,GE09,BGW+15,SLHG-R+17,ZZS17SFG,ZZS17Rayleighfading,ZZS17ROC,WTL+17,DPB18,Sha20}, each  background mode is assumed to be in a thermal state $\rho_{\tsf{th}}(N_B^{(h)}) = \sum_{n=0}^\infty {N_B^{(h)}}^n/ {\pars{N_B^{(h)} +1 }}^{n+1} \ket{n}\bra{n}_B$ ($\{\ket{n}_B\}$ are number states of $B$) of brightness
\begin{align} \label{NBh}
\big\langle{\hat{a}_B^{(m)^\dag} \hat{a}_B^{(m)}}\big\rangle_h \equiv N_B^{(h)} = N_B/(1-\eta_h)
\end{align}
under  hypothesis $h$, where $N_B$ is a given nominal value of the background brightness. ~Eq.~\eqref{NBh} ensures that the target leaves no passive signature, and cannot be detected if a vacuum state is transmitted. Since $\eta \ll 1$ for standoff sensing, we have $N_B^{(1)} \simeq N_B = N^{(0)}_B$.

Let $\ket{\mb{n}}_S$ denote a product number state of the $M$ signal modes with $\mb{n} = (n_1,\ldots, n_M)$. The most general QI strategy  consists of preparing a pure quantum state
\begin{align} \label{transmitter}
\ket{\psi}_{IS} &= \sum_{\mb{n}} \sqrt{p_\mb{n}} \keti{\chi_\mb{n}}\kets{\mb{n}},
\end{align}
of the $IS$ system (called  \emph{transmitter} hereafter) subject only to the total signal energy constraint
$\sum_{\mb{n}} p_\mb{n} (n_1 + \cdots + n_M) \equiv \sum_{n=0}^\infty n\, p_n = \cl{N}_S.$
 Here,  $\set{\keti{\chi_\mb{n}}}$ is any normalized (not necessarily orthogonal) set of idler states and $\set{p_n}$ is the probability mass function of the \emph{total} photon number $n= \sum_{m=1}^M n_m$ in the $S$ modes.
In the Schr\"odinger picture, the evolution (\ref{HP}) corresponds to the output density operators
\begin{align} \label{dos}
\rho_h &= \Big[{\mr{id}_I \otimes {\big( \cl{U}_{\phi} \circ \cl{L}_{\eta_h,N_B^{(h)}}\big)}^{\otimes M} }\Big]\pars{\Psi},
\end{align}
where $\Psi = \ket{\psi}\bra{\psi}_{IS}$, $\mr{id}_I$ denotes the identity channel on $I$,  and unitary phase-shift channels $\cl{U}_\phi$ and  \emph{noisy attenuator} channels $\cl{L}_{\eta_h, N_B^{(h)}}$ of transmittance $\eta_h$ and added noise $N_B^{(h)}$ (see Fig.~\ref{fig:channeldecomp}, \cite{CGH06,G-PN-BL+12})  act on each mode of $S$. Note that $\rho_0 = \pars{\Tr_S \Psi} \otimes \rho_{\tsf{th}}(N_B)$ for any value of $\phi$, where $\Tr_S$ indicates  partial trace over $S$.

The receiver makes a joint measurement with outcome $\check{h} \in \{0,1\}$ on the returned and idler modes  that minimizes the average error probability
$P_e\bracs{\rho_0,\rho_1} = \pi_0 P_F + \pi_1 P_M,$
where $P_F = \mr{Pr}[\check{h}=1 | h=0]$ is the false-alarm probability and $P_M = \mr{Pr}[\check{h}=0 | h=1]$ is the miss probability. The lowest achievable $P_e$ is given by the \emph{Helstrom limit} \cite{Hel76}:
\begin{align} \label{Helstrom}
P_e\bracs{\rho_0,\rho_1}  = 1/2 - \norm{\pi_0 \rho_o - \pi_1 \rho_1}_1/2,
\end{align}
where $\norm{X}_1 = \Tr \sqrt{X^\dag X}$ is the operator trace norm. Since the trace norm is hard to calculate, we often resort to bounds on it.

To be useful, a  QI system must have a lower $P_e$ than the best classical ladar, i.e., a transmitter that is in a coherent state or a mixture of product signal-idler coherent states. In \cite{TEG+08}, it was shown that no classical ladar with signal energy $\cl{N}_S$ can have an error probability lower than
 \begin{align} \label{CI}
 P_e^{\tsf{cl}} \simeq \sqrt{\pi_0 \pi_1}\, \exp\Big[{-\eta\cl{N}_S \Big({\sqrt{N_B+1}- \sqrt{N_B}}}\Big)^2\Big].
 \end{align}
 In particular, the exponent after the minus sign in the above expression is the best possible for a classical ladar and  $\simeq \eta \cl{N}_S/ 4N_B$ in the regime $N_B \gg 1$. It was also shown using the quantum Chernoff bound \cite{ACM+07,PL08} that  if  $M$ copies of the TMSV state $\ket{\psi}_{I_m S_m} = \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} \sqrt{N_S^n/\pars{N_S+1}^{n+1}} \ket{n}_{I_m}\ket{n}_{S_m}$ are transmitted, there exists a measurement that achieves
 \begin{align} \label{TMSVQI}
 P_e^{\tsf{TMSV}} \simeq \sqrt{\pi_0 \pi_1}\, \exp{(-\eta\cl{N}_S/N_B)}
 \end{align}
 in the regime of signal brightness $N_S = \cl{N}_S/M \ll 1$ and noise brightness $N_B \gg 1$. Recently, a concrete receiver using sum frequency generation (SFG) was proposed \cite{ZZS17SFG} that can in principle realize this 6 dB error exponent advantage over the classical performance (\ref{CI}).

\section{Methods and Results} \label{sec:methods}

\begin{figure}[tbp]
\centering
{\includegraphics[trim=14mm 80mm 10mm 75mm, clip=true,width=\columnwidth]{channeldecomp.pdf}}
\caption{Left: A noisy attenuator channel $\cl{L}_{\eta, N}$  mixes the signal mode $S$ with a background mode $B$ in a thermal state of energy $N$ at a beam splitter of transmittance $\eta$. Right:  $\cl{L}_{\eta, N}$ can be realized as a cascade of a quantum-limited (mode $E_1$  in vacuum) loss channel $\cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta}}$ with $\widetilde{\eta} = \eta/G$ and a quantum-limited (mode $E_2$ in vacuum) amplifier (two-mode squeezer) $\cl{A}_G$ of gain $G= (1-\eta)N +1$. }
\label{fig:channeldecomp}
\end{figure}

In this paper, we are interested in performance bounds valid for arbitrary transmitters $\Psi$. A key tool that we use is the decomposition of the noisy attenuator channels appearing in Eq.~\eqref{dos} in terms of quantum-limited attenuators and amplifiers. Specifically, we can write $\cl{L}_{\eta, N}$ as the concatenation (see Fig.~\ref{fig:channeldecomp})
\begin{align} \label{decompositionparameters}
\cl{L}_{\eta,N} &= \cl{A}_{{G}} \circ \cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta}},
\end{align}
 where $\cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta}} := \cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta},0}$, $\cl{A}_G$ is a quantum-limited amplifier of gain $G= (1-\eta)N + 1$, and $\widetilde{\eta} = {\eta}/G$ \cite{CGH06,G-PN-BL+12}.

We also make much use of the \emph{fidelity} between two  states $\rho$ and $\sigma$ of a quantum system  defined as $F(\rho,\sigma) = \Tr \sqrt{\sqrt{\rho} \,\sigma \sqrt{\rho}}$, which is an important measure of closeness between quantum states \cite{NC00}. The fidelity satisfies the \emph{data processing inequality}  $F(\cl{C}(\rho),\cl{C}(\sigma))  \geqslant F(\rho,\sigma)$, where $\cl{C}$ is any quantum channel \cite{NC00}.

\subsection{Lower bound on QI error probability} \label{sec:Pelb}

We begin by using  Eqs.~(\ref{NBh}) and (\ref{decompositionparameters}) to write
\begin{align} \label{QIparams}
\cl{L}_{\eta_h,N_B^{(h)}} &= \cl{A}_{N_B + 1} \circ \cl{L}_{\eta_h/(N_B + 1)} \equiv \cl{A}_{N_B + 1} \circ \cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta}_h}.
\end{align}
Then, using the data processing inequality on the states in Eq.~\eqref{dos} gives
\begin{align}
 F\pars{\rho_0, \rho_1} &\geqslant
 F\pars{\Big[{\mr{id}_I \otimes \cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta}_0}^{\otimes M} }\Big] ({\Psi}), \bracs{\mr{id}_I \otimes \cl{L}_{\widetilde{\eta}_1}^{\otimes M} } (\Psi) } \\
 &\geqslant \sum_n p_n \mu^n,
\end{align}
where  the last inequality follows from the result of \cite{Nai11} (Sec.~II) with $\mu = \sqrt{1-\eta/(N_B+1)}$. Using the inequalities $P_e[\sigma_0,\sigma_1] \geqslant \pars{1 - \sqrt{1-4\pi_0\pi_1F^2\pars{\sigma_0, \sigma_1}}}/2 \geqslant \pi_0\pi_1F^2\pars{\sigma_0, \sigma_1} $ relating the Helstrom limit Eq.~\eqref{Helstrom} and the fidelity  for any two states $\sigma_0$ and $\sigma_1$ \cite{FvdG99,Aud14}, we get the bound
\begin{align} \label{PelbPsi}
P_e^{\Psi} \geqslant \pi_0\pi_1\bigg\{\sum_{n=0}^\infty p_n \big[1-{\eta}/({N_B+1})\big]^{n/2}\bigg\}^2
\end{align}
on the $P_e$ of any  $\Psi$. Further, using Jensen's inequality on the convex function $x \mapsto \mu^x$  gives the $\Psi$-independent bound
\begin{align} \label{Pelb}
P_e^{\tsf{QI}} \geqslant \pi_0 \pi_1  \exp\pars{-\beta \cl{N}_S},
\end{align}
where we have defined the exponent $\beta:= -\ln[1-\eta/(N_B+1)]$.

Eqs.~(\ref{PelbPsi})-(\ref{Pelb}) make up our first result. Eq.~\eqref{Pelb} shows that no QI system with signal energy $\cl{N}_S$ can have an error probability exponent greater than $\beta \cl{N}_S$. In the low-noise limit $N_B \simeq 0$, we have  $\beta \simeq \eta$, and the best possible exponent $ \simeq \eta\cl{N}_S$. This matches that achieved by a classical ladar (Eq.~\eqref{CI}) and is consistent with earlier no-go results for QI advantage in this regime  \cite{Nai11,SL09}. In the high-noise regime $N_B \gg 1$, the optimum exponent  $ \simeq \eta \cl{N}_S/N_B$ is attained by the TMSV QI system \cite{TEG+08} (cf. Eq.~\eqref{TMSVQI}).

Eq.~\eqref{PelbPsi} explains why a TMSV QI system  must use a large $M$ in order to beat the classical performance  given by Eq.~\eqref{CI} for any $N_B$. Intuitively, the right-hand side of Eq.~\eqref{PelbPsi} decreases the more the  distribution $\left\{p_n \right\}$ is concentrated around its mean $\cl{N}_S$. For TMSV QI, the variance of the total signal photon number is $\cl{N_S}\pars{N_S +1}$, which is minimized  as the brightness $N_S \rightarrow 0$ for fixed $\cl{N}_S$. More precisely, evaluating Eq.~\eqref{PelbPsi} gives:
\begin{align} \label{Pelbtmsv}
P_e^{\tsf{TMSV}} \geqslant \pi_0 \pi_1 \bigg[1 + \cl{N}_S \Big(1 - \sqrt{1 - \eta/(N_B+1)}\Big)/M\bigg]^{-2M}.
\end{align}
Thus, for  fixed $M$, the error probability of TMSV QI cannot decay exponentially  with $\cl{N}_S$. However, if $M \rightarrow \infty$ for fixed $\cl{N}_S$, Eq.~\eqref{Pelbtmsv} allows the exponential scaling of Eq.~\eqref{Pelb}.

\subsection{Targets exhibiting flat Rayleigh fading} \label{sec:fading}

 At optical wavelengths, most target surfaces are rough and our model of Eq.~\eqref{HP} involving  deterministic and known values for $\eta$ and $\phi$ needs modification. Such targets often obey a \emph{Rayleigh fading} model \cite{VanTreesI,Sha82} where  $\eta$ and $\phi$  are independent random variables with $\eta$ distributed according to an exponential probability density $P(\eta)$ of mean $\overline{\eta}$ (the average reflectance of the target) and  $\phi$ uniformly distributed over $[0,2\pi)$. In addition, we  consider the \emph{flat fading} limit in which the values of $\eta$ and $\phi$ do not vary over the $M$ signal modes. Such a model  was used in the TMSV QI study \cite{ZZS17Rayleighfading}.  With these assumptions, $\rho_1$ in Eq.~\eqref{dos} is replaced by
 \begin{align} \label{fadingrho1}
 \rho_1 = \frac{1}{2\pi}\int_0^1 \diff \eta \,P(\eta) \int_{0}^{2\pi} \diff \phi  \Big[{\mr{id}_I \otimes {\big(\cl{U}_{\phi} \circ \cl{L}_{\eta,N_B^{(\eta)}} \big)}^{\otimes M} }\Big] \pars{\Psi}
 \end{align}
 while $\rho_0$ remains the same as before. In Eq.~\eqref{fadingrho1}, $N_B^{(\eta)} = N_B/(1-\eta)$ can vary greatly in the region $\eta \approx 1$, but the model is an excellent  one if $\overline{\eta} \ll 1$, as is the case in practice.

 With some more work (see Appendix \ref{sec:appA} for details), the  approach of Sec.~\ref{sec:Pelb} can be extended to give the  lower bound
 \begin{align} \label{Rayleighfadingbound}
 P_e^{\tsf{QI}\mr{; fading}} \geqslant \pi_0\pi_1/\bracs{1 + \overline{\eta}\cl{N}_S \ln \pars{1 +1/N_B}}
\end{align}
for {any} transmitter with signal energy $\cl{N}_S$. We see that for fading targets the error probability no longer decays exponentially with $\cl{N}_S$, generalizing the result of \cite{ZZS17Rayleighfading} beyond just TMSV QI in the  $N_S \ll 1, N_B \gg 1$ regime. In the same regime, it was shown that the SFG  receiver of \cite{ZZS17SFG} can in principle achieve $ P_e^{\tsf{TMSV}\mr{; fading}} \simeq \pi_1/\pars{1 + \overline{\eta}\cl{N}_S/N_B}$ for $\overline{\eta}\cl{N}_S/N_B \gg 1$, while  the best classical transmitter has a $P_e$ that is greater by a factor  $\simeq \ln \pars{\overline{\eta}\cl{N}_S/N_B}$ \cite{ZZS17Rayleighfading}. Comparing with Eq.~\eqref{Rayleighfadingbound}, we see that TMSV transmitters with SFG reception perform essentially optimally among all transmitters with the same $\cl{N}_S$.

\subsection{Estimation of target reflectance} \label{sec:estimation}

Finally, we consider the problem of \emph{estimating} the effective reflectance $\eta \ll 1$ of a detected  specular target. The setup of Fig.~\ref{fig:QIsetup} applies  except that a target is known to be present and the joint  measurement of the returned signal and idler modes generates an estimate $\check{\eta}$ of  $\eta$. Instead of Eq.~\eqref{dos}, we  have a family of density operators $\left\{\rho_\eta\right\}$ given by
\begin{align} \label{estimationdos}
\rho_{\eta} &= \Big[\mr{id}_I \otimes \big(\cl{U}_{\phi} \circ \cl{L}_{\eta,N_B^{(\eta)}} \big)^{\otimes M} \Big] \pars{\Psi},
\end{align}
where, as before, $\Psi$ is a general energy-constrained $M$-mode transmitter, $N_B^{(\eta)} = N_B/(1-\eta)$, and $\phi$ is assumed to be known.
The mean squared error $\mr{MSE}_{\eta} = \mathbb{E} \bracs{\pars{\check{\eta} - \eta}^2}$ of any unbiased estimator $\check{\eta}$ of $\eta$ obeys the quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound \cite{Hel76,PBG+18}:
\begin{align} \label{QCRB}
\mr{MSE}_{\eta} \geqslant \cl{K}_{\eta}^{-1} = \Big[ - 4 \,{\partial^2 F \big(\rho_{\eta}, \rho_{\eta'}\big)}/{\partial \eta'^2} \big\vert_{\eta' = \eta}\Big]^{-1},
\end{align}
where $\cl{K}_\eta$ is the \emph{quantum Fisher information} (QFI) on $\eta$, and the equality relating QFI to fidelity is due to  \cite{BC94}.

Using  data processing arguments similar to those used for our target detection results, we can derive the upper bound
\begin{align} \label{QFIub}
\cl{K}_\eta^{\tsf{QI}} \leqslant \cl{N}_S/\bracs{\eta (N_B +1 -\eta)}
\end{align}
on the QFI valid for any $\Psi$, and the upper bound
\begin{align} \label{QFIcl}
\cl{K}_\eta^{\tsf{cl}} \leqslant \cl{N}_S/\bracs{\eta (2N_B +1)}
\end{align}
on the QFI of any classical transmitter  which is achieved using coherent states (see Appendix \ref{sec:appB} for details).   For $N_B=0$, Eq.~\eqref{QFIub} recovers the result of \cite{Nai18loss}  that holds for all $\eta$ and is achieved by a large class of transmitters. For $N_B >0$ and $\eta \ll 1$, it is  close to an upper bound on the QFI  derived in \cite{SLHG-R+17}, though only for iid transmitters. In the presence of excess noise, Eq.~\eqref{QFIub} need not be saturable, but it was shown ( Eq.~(6) of \cite{SLHG-R+17}\footnote{Ref.~\cite{SLHG-R+17} reports the per-mode QFI $\cl{K}_{\sqrt{\eta}}/M$ on the {reflectivity} $\sqrt{\eta}$, which is related to  $\cl{K}_{\eta}$ via  $\cl{K}_{\eta} = \pars{\partial \sqrt{\eta}/\partial \eta}^2 \cl{K}_{\sqrt{\eta}}$.}) that the QFI of an $M$-mode TMSV transmitter is
\begin{align} \label{QFItmsv}
\cl{K}_{\eta}^{\tsf{TMSV}} = \bracs{\cl{N}_S (1+N_S)}/\bracs{\eta\pars{2N_SN_B + N_S + N_B +1}}.
\end{align}
In the low-brightness limit $N_S \rightarrow 0$, Eq.~\eqref{QFItmsv} approaches the bound Eq.~\eqref{QFIub} for all values of $N_B$ when $\eta \ll 1$. Moreover, as argued in \cite{SLHG-R+17}, this bound is achieved by the optical parametric amplifier receiver of \cite{GE09} (see also \cite{SZZ20}).  From Eqs.~(\ref{QCRB})-(\ref{QFItmsv}), we see  that the advantage of using quantum transmitters in the $\eta \ll 1$ regime is limited to at best a factor of 2  in the MSE.

\section{Discussion and Outlook} \label{sec:discussion}
Our study of QI target detection took place in the Bayesian paradigm in which prior probabilities are assigned to the two hypotheses. Target detection is often treated in the alternative Neyman-Pearson setting \cite{Hel76} where one asks for the best achievable detection probability $P_D = 1 - P_M$ for given $P_F$ (which determines the so-called Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)). TMSV QI has been extensively studied  in this paradigm \cite{WTL+17,ZZS17ROC,Sha20}, and shown to be asymptotically optimal in a specific sense in \cite{DPB18}. We note that the fidelity lower bounds developed here can also be used to place upper bounds on the ROC  curve  of arbitrary QI transmitters (see, e.g., \cite{TN12,Tsa13}). We can also ask if adaptively chosen transmitter states help in QI target detection -- some suggestive results are known for the  Bayesian \cite{PLL+19} and Neyman-Pearson \cite{CMW16,BHK+18arxiv} paradigms.

Our reflectance estimation results show that the gain in using quantum transmitters is modest when $\eta \ll 1$. It is therefore interesting to explore quantum limits in detection and estimation in the region of moderate $\eta$ and $N_B$, which is relevant to detection applications like quantum reading \cite{Pir11} and various estimation applications (see, e.g., \cite{Nai18loss} and references therein). Our techniques may also be extended to protocols of phase-randomized quantum illumination without amplitude fading,  e.g., the implementations \cite{LR-BD13,LGH+19}.

While further study of operational limitations and nonidealities in QI systems is necessary to assess their performance in real-world situations \cite{Sha20}, our work  delineates their ultimate capabilities for all ranges of system parameters. We also believe that the  tools developed here may help to study quantum limits of other optical sensing and communication protocols operating in noisy high-loss conditions.

\section*{Funding Information}
National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF-NRFF2016-02); NRF Singapore and L'Agence Nationale de la Recherche Joint Project (NRF2017-NRFANR004 VanQuTe); Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE2019-T1-002-015); FQXi (FQXi-RFP-IPW-1903).

\section*{Acknowledgments}

We thank Nicolas Menicucci, Jeffrey Shapiro, and Quntao Zhuang for helpful comments.

\onecolumngrid

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Q: How would one implement a sidebar similar to Mail/iTunes/Finder/etc in Cocoa/IB? I think the title pretty much says it all... I'm looking to implement an interface similar to the standard OS X sidebar used in all the above mentioned programs, and I'm wondering if anybody has any thoughts as to the easiest way to do it, namely about what view to use for the left hand selection pane. Really I don't think I even need the hierarchical component as seen in the apple apps, I just need a good looking flat list of choices which determine what's shown in the right hand pane.
The obvious start is a vertical split layout view, but beyond that I'm not entirely sure where to go. A collection view with only one column or something like that?

A: I've done a few applications that use a similar setup.
I generally use an NSSplitView, with a single column NSTableView in the left pane.  Don't forget to disable the headers, and make it display as a "Source View" style.
If you want the disclosure triangles, then you'll want to use NSOutlineView instead of NSTableView, but at least for the first go, I'd stick to a simple NSTableView.
A pattern I also use is to make the NSTableView slightly shorter than the NSSplitView, and have buttons at the bottom (add, delete, etc).  I've usually built the program around Core Data, so it's easy to hook up these to methods to create/delete objects, and then bind the NSTableView to the array of objects.

A: Direct support for this sort of thing was added in Leopard.  It's called a 'source list'.
Please see the AppKit release notes.  Search for NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleSourceList in the document.
Or, drag out a table view and select Highlight: Source List in Interface Builder.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The Tudor Vladimirescu Division (full name: Romanian 1st Volunteer Infantry Division 'Tudor Vladimirescu – Debrecen' ) was a Soviet-organized division of Romanians that fought against Germany and Hungary during the final year of World War II.

Creation
Named after Tudor Vladimirescu, the leader of the Wallachian uprising of 1821, the division was formed from Romanian prisoners of war in October 1943, under the command of Brigadier General Nicolae Cambrea.

Wartime service
The division marched into Bucharest on August 29, 1944 as liberators, liberating the city alongside the units of the Romanian Army when Romania left the Axis Powers and attacked German troops stationed in the country.

The division, still under Soviet control, saw real combat during the final months of the war in Transylvania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, playing a key role in the Soviet seizure of Debrecen, Hungary, in October 1944. Combat losses were heavy; by March 1945 the strength of the division had sunk to 4,436 men.

In March 1945 the division was pulled out of the front lines, but remained under the operational control of the 2nd Ukrainian Front until August 15, 1945.

Postwar political role
In late 1945 the division was reported to have been integrated into the Romanian 4th Army. Relentlessly politicized by their communist leaders, the Tudor Vladimirescu Division became a politically reliable military formation of the Romanian communists. Along with another Romanian communist unit, the Horea, Cloșca și Crișan Division, and backed by tens of thousands of Red Army troops, the Tudor Vladimirescu Division played a key role in imposing communist rule in Romania after the war. The two communist divisions were integrated into the Romanian Army on August 22, 1945. The Tudor Vladimirescu Division was converted into an armored division by 1947 while the regular Romanian army was reduced to four divisions with no tanks, thus providing the Romanian communists the trump cards of mobility and firepower had a conflict with anti-communist elements in the Romanian Army taken place.

The Division was converted into the 1st Armored Division in 1947, then 5 Tank Corps, followed by 47 Tank Corps, and finally take the name of 37 Mechanised Division, which became in 1957 a Mechanised Division.

In the 1950s, during the Soviet occupation of Romania, Soviet officers were employed as advisors. Order subunits (battalions, companies) was matched by political officers. After 1956-1957, the youth division officers were assigned to three years in military school or other schools in Sibiu.

See also
Romania in World War II
Horea, Cloșca și Crișan Division
Soviet occupation of Romania

References

External links
The Romanian Army of World War 2, Mark Axworthy and Horia Șerbănescu, London: Osprey, 1991. .
Stalins Fremde Heere, Peter Gosztony, Bonn: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1991. .

Military history of Romania during World War II
Military history of the Soviet Union during World War II
Expatriate units and formations of Romania
Socialist Republic of Romania
Divisions of Romania
Romania–Soviet Union relations
Military units and formations established in 1943

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


MIAMI — Naidelys Montoya didn't wait for her son's baby teeth to fall out. She took the boy to an oral surgeon to have two of the loose ones extracted.
"He was a bit scared," said Montoya, of Hialeah, Fla. "He's not that brave."
The dentist shipped the teeth in a temperature-controlled steel container to a lab in Massachusetts, where their stem cells will be spun out, frozen to colder than minus-100 degrees and stored — in case her son, Raul Estrada, 6, might need them to treat a future illness.
Montoya and her son have joined a major new medical movement.
"I can't help but feel excitement for their potential use in regenerating different tissues in the human body," said Dr. Jeremy Mao, director of the Regenerative Medicine Laboratory at Columbia University. Mao also is chief science advisor to StemSave, a New York City company that freezes the stem cells and stores them for later use.
There are concerns. It's expensive: $590 up front plus $100 a year to store the stem cells of as many as four teeth for as long as 20 years. It's also speculative: The first FDA-approved practical use of such stem cells is years away.
"Every treatment using dental stem cells is still in the clinical testing phase, and won't be ready for general use for at least five years," said Art Greco, StemSave's chief executive.
Other researchers welcome the new source of stem cells.
"Within human adults and children, there are lots of reservoirs of stem cells," said Dr. Joshua Hare, director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the University of Miami Medical School. He is not involved with dental stem cells. "We get them from bone marrow; others use umbilical cord blood. It seems teeth are also a good source."
The National Institutes of Health concluded in 2003 that teeth are a rich source of stem cells. Every child has about 20 baby teeth that fall out between ages 6 and 12. Adolescents have wisdom teeth that often are removed between ages 14 and 25 because they crowd the jaw or grow in crookedly.
To retain viable stem cells, oral surgeons must extract baby teeth before they fall out naturally, so they have a blood supply to keep them healthy. Blum puts them in a temperature-controlled steel container and ships them overnight to StemSave.
Stem cells are the body's repair system. Stem cells beneath the skin are constantly spinning off new skin cells to replace skin that is sloughed off or damaged in daily life. The same is true for hearts, livers, pancreases — except that as the body weakens from age, injury or disease, those stem cells start to lose the ability to keep up, and they need help. Today, stem cells from bone marrow, blood and now perhaps teeth can be reprogrammed to help those ailing organs.
Also, by using these stem cells, researchers avoid involving human embryonic stem cells, which are controversial because their creation involves destroying human embryos.
The first practical use of dental stem cells probably will be to repair human teeth and jawbones, researchers say. At Boston University's School of Dental Medicine, researchers have used stem cells from baby and wisdom teeth to generate dental pulp, the soft interior of a tooth, and dentin, its hard white casing.
They are inserting the material into a broken human tooth and implanting it into a mouse to tap a blood supply. When the technology reaches humans, the pulp material would be injected into a spongy "scaffold" where a tooth has been removed to prompt it to grow into a human tooth. It's at least five years away.
The use of stem cells to heal the human body is exploding. At the University of Miami's medical school, Hare is conducting human trials using stem cells from bone marrow to inject around damaged hearts, hoping to regenerate damaged heart tissue.
Stem cells from umbilical cord blood have saved the lives of patients with leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell and other diseases.
So far, only private banks are storing dental stem cells, although Mao says a public bank would be valuable and appropriate.
The American Dental Association, while cautiously optimistic about the potential of dental stem cells, urges parents to consider both the cost and the rarity of use before joining private donation programs.


text:
Sorry Bhai  is an Indian Hindi romance drama film starring Shabana Azmi, Boman Irani, Sanjay Suri, Sharman Joshi and Chitrangada Singh. It was directed by Onir and released on 28 November 2008.

Plot
Siddharth Mathur (Sharman Joshi), a shy young scientist, travels to Mauritius for his elder brother Harsh's (Sanjay Suri)  wedding. Accompanying him is his mother Gayatri (Shabana Azmi), a reluctant traveller since she is angry at Harsh for deciding to get married without consulting them. Also travelling is Siddharth's cheery father Navin (Boman Irani), whose sole entertainment is pulling Gayatri's leg. Harsh, pre-occupied with work, can spend little time with his family and it is left to his fiancée Aaliyah (Chitrangada Singh) to show them around Mauritius before the wedding. However, Ma's anger at Harsh ensures that she takes an instant dislike for Aaliyah, and it is Aaliyah and Siddharth who end up spending loads of time together. This, added to the fact that Aaliyah feels neglected by the career-obsessed Harsh, leads to them being irresistibly drawn to each other. A horrified Siddharth battles this attraction desperately, but Aaliyah has fallen madly in love and pursues him with single-minded determination. When Siddharth's defences start crumbling and Ma starts getting suspicious, all hell breaks loose in the Mathur family.

Cast
 Sharman Joshi as Siddharth Mathur
 Chitrangada Singh as Aaliyah
 Shabana Azmi as Gayatri Devi Mathur
 Sanjay Suri as Harshvardhan Mathur
 Boman Irani as Navin Mathur
 Gaurav Nanda as Student

Soundtrack

References

External links

2000s Hindi-language films
2008 films
Films set in Mauritius


text:
Norma Ahlqvist, född den 22 februari 1941 i Göteborg, är en svensk dansare och koreograf.

Filmografi

Koreografi
 1983 - Två killar och en tjej

Skådespelare
 - Dansare
 - Dansare

Teater

Roller (ej komplett)

Koreografi

Referenser

Noter

Externa länkar

Svenska dansare under 1900-talet
Svenska koreografer under 1900-talet
Dansare från Göteborg
Födda 1941
Levande personer
Kvinnor


Formerly known as the Trust Services Principles (TSP), the Trust Services Criteria (TSC) has gone through a few more changes than just the name.
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Assurance Services Executive Committee (ASEC) Trust Information Integrity Task Force ensures the technical accuracy of the TSC, which includes the expanding scope for organization-wide engagements and developing related services that leverage the TSC.
The ASEC keeps watch over all the changes made through the AICPA and other decision-making entities regarding System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 reporting elements to make sure all businesses required to perform these audits have easy access any necessary information.
There are two major changes to the Trust Services Principles and Criteria for SOC 2 reporting.
A specific type of information used by the entity.
A business's data and computing systems are fully protected against any unauthorized access, unauthorized and inappropriate disclosure of information, and any possible damage to systems that might compromise the processing integrity, availability, confidentiality or privacy of data or systems that may affect the entity's ability to meet its objectives.
All information and computing systems are ready and available for operation and use at all times to meet the entity's objectives.
All system processing is complete, accurate, valid, timely and authorized to ensure that the entity meets its objectives.
Any information designated as confidential remains secure to meet the entity's objectives.
All personal information collected, used, retained, stored, disclosed or disposed of must meet the entity's objectives.
The control criteria has stayed the same under the new name, but there is another vital change to note, which is the control criteria's integration with the 2013 COSO Framework. The COSO stands for the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, and the body set out to provide a framework for publicly traded companies to rigorously assess and report on the design and operating effectiveness of their internal controls each year.
As for the integration with the TSC, the ASEC removed the term "principles" from the original "Trust Services Principles and Criteria" name since the 2013 COSO Framework uses "principles" to refer to its own internal control factors. The ASEC considered this the best solution to avoid any misunderstandings between the two.
Integrating this framework into SOC 2 reporting was done with the intention of expanding the assessment environment. The 2013 COSO is used to assess the design, implementation and maintenance of internal controls and evaluate their effectiveness.
Seeing as these internal control principles do not automatically connect to the 2016 update of the Trust Services Principles and Criteria, service organizations will most likely need to restructure their internal controls to comply with the integration.
System Operations. The way that service organizations handle the operation of their systems in order to monitor, detect and mitigate security incidents.
Logical and Physical Access Controls. The ways that service organizations implement logical and physical access controls that serve to prevent unauthorized access and protect data assets.
Change Management. How service organizations evaluate and determine necessary changes in infrastructure, data, software and procedures, which gives them the ability to securely make changes and prevent unauthorized changes.
Risk Mitigation. The way that service organizations identify, choose and develop risk mitigation strategies for risks that may involve vendors, business partners and any other possible disruptions.
Why Are the Trust Services Criteria and 2013 COSO Framework So Important to SOC Reporting?
Working with service organizations has become standard operating procedure for most businesses these days. Even smaller companies often outsource some aspect of their business for matters like cloud storage or payroll, so everyone who engages these valuable resources must protect their vital and confidential information and technology.
The TSC offers CIOs and other business leaders a clear set of guidelines to work confidently with service organizations while protecting their interests.
Do You Feel Confident About the New Trust Services Criteria Changes and How They Might Affect Your Business?
Have you heard about these changes to the original Trust Services Principles and Criteria? If it is all new to you and you could use a little extra explanation or help, our I.S. Partners, LLC. team has it all under control. We can help you determine the principles that are relevant to your organization and that you need to address for your upcoming SOC 2 audit.
Call us at 866-642-2230, send us a message, launch a chat session or request a quote so we can help you sort it all out and stay on track to meet your goals.
This post was originally published on December 10, 2015 and has since been modified to reflect the most up-to-date information.


text:
A Writer Writes "The Good Old Days"
tlhmavrick
Well, Roger, damn, never heard that story. Reminds me that a headline today read, "U.S. terrorist groups on the rise."…
Roger Landrum was a PCV in Nigeria, 1961-63. He taught at the new University of Nigeria at Nsukka in Nigeria's first year of independence and his experience was the subject of a Peace Corps documentary film called "Give Me A Riddle." Landrum was one of the first RPCVs to join the PC/W staff.
Landrum devoted most of his subsequent career to expanding youth service opportunities in the US. He founded and directed The Teachers Inc. which provided Peace Corps-like programming for American inner-city schools. Landrum co-authored Youth and the Needs of the Nation with Harris Wofford, a policy blueprint for a large-scale national service initiative. In 1986 Landrum launched Youth Service America (YSA) which led efforts to expand and mobilize a national youth service infrastructure that culminated in the National and Community Service Acts of 1990 and 1993 and creation of the federal Corporation for National Service along with AmeriCorps.
As president of RPCV/W, the largest local organization of RPCVs in the country, Landrum led the Peace Corps alumni coalition which initiated and organized the famous 25th Peace Corps Anniversary Conference in Washington in 1986. The conference brought new momentum and funding to the NPCA which Landrum later served as board chair.
In recent years Landrum has become an award-winning international photographer. His work was recently featured by the International Photographic Society of the IMF/World Bank, and can be viewed at RogerLandrum.com.
Here, however, is Roger's chilling tale of what America was like back in the 1960s in the South. And it is rather amazing, given Roger's story of a weekend trip in Georgia, that today, nearly fifty years later, we have not only a Peace Corps Director who is an African-American, but also a President. Maybe there is hope for America.
by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961-63)
THE YEAR WAS 1965. The Peace Corps was at full throttle under Sargent Shriver's direction. The famed recruiting blitzes developed by Robert Gale were still underway at college and university campuses. After serving as a PCV for two years in Nigeria, I was a training officer at Washington headquarters. Peace Corps training was still being conducted by institutions of higher education as more or less an academic exercise, with physical training and the notorious "de-selection process" supervised by psychiatrists thrown in. Like other training officers, my job was to contract and oversee training programs for groups of recruits for several months in collaboration with such institutions.
This particular story began when I was assigned to a recruiting blitz at the Atlanta University Center in Georgia (Morehouse and Spelman colleges along with the associated graduate schools). Our team spread out to speak about the Peace Corps in classes and make our pitch to students at tables around the campuses, with the goal of signing up more African-Americans for Peace Corps service. This was exciting stuff. African-American PCVs were few and far between. The residues of America's racial caste system remained potent. Racial tensions still permeated the country, especially in the Deep South. The civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Here was the Peace Corp with its foot in the middle of black Atlanta. For somebody who had just lived in Nigeria for two years the sense of distance and awkwardness between black and white Americans was odd — greater than anything experienced in Nigeria.
The evening of the last day of recruiting, a banquet was held with high officials of the Atlanta University Center, faculty and student leaders, and the Peace Corps team. Dr. Benjamin Mays, the great president of Morehouse College, rose to speak. Mays was a man of awesome stature. He had mentored Martin Luther King while King was an undergraduate at Morehouse and was still close to King. Morehouse, he pointed out, has some of the finest African studies programming in the United States. Why is it the Peace Corps has never utilized us for training PCVs being assigned to African countries?
Franklin Williams, who had helped Shriver pull the Peace Corps together and directed its Africa region programming, stood up to reply. Williams was at this time U.S ambassador to UNESCO and would soon be the American ambassador to Ghana. He had been a legal aide to Thurgood Marshall and a top attorney at the NAACP prosecuting early civil rights cases. I don't know the answer, he replied to President Mays, but we will find out for you. There is a young training officer here who will get back to you promptly. That would be me.
I didn't know Franklin Williams, but that's how the Peace Corps operated in those years, Shriver and the people around him. Challenges were thrown around like footballs. Particular relish was taken in throwing them to the first RPCVs who had joined the headquarters staff.
Back at the Maiatico Building across Lafayette Square from the White House, I reported my unexpected assignment to the director of the training division. He laughed and said he would find out at a senior staff meeting why Morehouse had never been contracted for Volunteer training. As it turned out, a Shriver policy barred training at locations where African-American trainees might face discrimination, which ruled out Atlanta and much of the Deep South. But Dr. Mays request was taken seriously. I was instructed to negotiate a training contract with Morehouse with one large red flag: the training program should not stir up political trouble for the Peace Corps back in Washington. Mostly this meant avoiding any problems with U.S. Senator Richard Russell (D-Georgia), a powerful force in the U.S. Senate on the Appropriations Committee and an avowed segregationist opposing the civil right movement. Seemed simple enough.
And so we began pulling together Africa training programs at Morehouse in 1965 and 1966. Dr. Mays appointed a talented young political scientist, Tobe Johnson, as program director. Morehouse proved to be an able and flexible partner for hosting a contingent of Peace Corps trainees and the standard training curriculum of that time. Practice teaching was arranged in nearby high schools. Africa area studies staff were drawn from Morehouse and Spelman faculty and universities across the country, and included a contingent of outstanding RPCVs from Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. Language training was directed by Dr. Sabestian Mezu, a Nigerian linguist, who assembled and trained a staff of instructors made up entirely of African graduate students from across the U.S. Among other notables, the training faculty include Dr. Jean Herskovitz, then and now one of this country's leading experts on Nigeria. A lot of detailed work was involved in undertaking Volunteer training at a new site, but much of the training at Morehouse operated fairly smoothly.
The sudden location of a contingent of mostly young white trainees bound for West Africa at a historically black college in a segregated black community of Atlanta, Georgia generated a great deal of excitement and some interesting tensions. Merely eating in groups at Pascals, the famed soul food restaurant near Morehouse, caused a stir. Trainees roamed black communities near Morehouse such as Vine City and Buttermilk Bottom. Tobe Johnson had his hands full with adjustments on all sides. The Africans on staff found the adjustments as challenging as anyone else. Mezu joked that in the North local muggers say, "your money or your life. Here they say, your money AND your life." The selection staff discussed varied interracial sexual escapades with raised eyebrows. On one memorable occasion, some staff and trainees squeezed into Ebenezer Baptist Church for a visiting sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr. An RPCV on the training staff recently wrote me that "it was arguably the best place to be in America at the time to begin to understand the significance of the civil rights movement."
During the summer of 1966, I visited Morehouse to see how training was going and to participate in trainee selection deliberations. Over one weekend a contingent of staff and trainees decided to drive to the Georgia coast. We wanted to see the Atlantic Ocean and Jekell Island. Ten of us — 5 program staff, 4 trainees, and myself; black and white; male and female — piled into a new Plymouth station wagon in high spirits and headed out on Highway 341 driving south. Mark Hill, an undergraduate at Morehouse and popular program assistant to Tobe Johnson, drove the Morehouse station wagon. Just outside the small town of Roberta, Georgia in the late afternoon we drove into a Gulf gas station to fill up the tank. It was a hot Georgia day. Everyone got out to stretch their legs and buy soft drinks or ice cream sandwiches. It soon became apparent the guys operating the gas station were bristling with hostility at our integrated group. They fumed when Anastasia Megwa, a Nigerian staff member, shared her ice cream sandwich with whites in the group. The black members of our group were instructed to use paper cups at a drinking fountain, the whites were not. We quickly paid the bill and drove away.
A couple miles out of town a police car with blinking lights pulled us over. The officer took Mark Hill aside, told him he was being charged with speeding, and instructed him to follow the police car, which pulled off the highway into a dirt road. This was roughly two years after Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Cheney had been detained by police in rural Mississippi, then killed and buried in a dirt dam. The associations were not lost on us. We were led slowly back into town and stopped outside the Roberta city jail. Mark Hill was again singled out and taken inside the station. Efforts to show my Peace Corps credentials as a federal officer were turned aside. Mark returned, clearly shaken, and asked for $35 to pay the speeding fine (going 50 in a supposedly 25 MPH zone). Photos later proved the speed limit where we were stopped was 50 MPH.
About this time the Roberta sheriff arrived and the tension escalated. Our station wagon was searched. The six men were lined up and frisked. The sheriff announced that we were all intoxicated and the males being jailed to "sober up" (nobody had been drinking and there was no alcohol in the station wagon). We were not put in the main jail but inside two cells of a filthy, roach-infested concrete shed out back. We asked to make a phone call. The sheriff mumbled we could make "one" but proceeded to throw a chain around the cell door and lock the padlock. Somebody knocked out the props which held the windows to our cells open. The female staff and trainees were left outside. Cars began to drive by jeering at them. They requested protection and were refused. A hot Georgia evening got hotter.
What seemed obvious initially, that we had been confused with civil rights workers, faded into uncertainty and fear about what was really up. Mark Hill, who had been singled out for the most intense harassment, was close to unraveling, saying "they are going to let you white guys go and nobody is every going to hear about me again."
Several hours passed in darkness. After awhile, the women came to a window to report they had found a pay phone and wanted to know who they should call. They were given the number of the after hours duty officer at Peace Corps and told to also call Morehouse and the Nigerian Embassy to report what had happened and to get us the hell out of Roberta. The situation would have seemed absurd if it had not been so menacingly real. The false charges, shake-down and posturing of the Roberta police had a practiced quality.
The women were able to complete the phone calls from the pay phone. The Nigerian Embassy called the sheriff directly, insisting that he release their citizen with her party so we could all return to Atlanta safely. So far as we know, the Peace Corps did nothing. Morehouse swung into action through their Congressman. We were soon asked by the sheriff if we could post bond ($275). We couldn't. Arrangements were made for Tobe Johnson to drive to Roberta, post bond, and escort us back to Morehouse. Dr. Johnson arrived around 2 AM. As we drove cautiously out of town on HIghway 341 in the dark, other autos trailed us for several miles. Dr. Johnson cryptically remarked that we might be in more danger now than we were before, but nothing more happened.
We still faced a date for a hearing and possible trial back in Roberta. Morehouse assembled a legal team of top civil rights attorneys to defend us and petition for removal of the case from the City Court of Roberta to a U.S. district court. Individual accounts of what happened were gathered from each trainee and staff member involved and attached to the petition. I still have a copy. It had the unfortunate title of "City of Roberta v. Landrum, et. al." Reading through it brings back all the chilling details:
Petitioners' arrest and prosecution are attempts by governmental authorities, under color of state criminal process, to punish, coerce, harass, and intimidate the petitioners because of their usage of public accommodations in an integrated group . . . as well as an attempt to coerce, threaten, harass, and intimidate other Negro citizens of Roberta, Georgia, and those who travel through Roberta, Georgia . . .
We discussed and debated what to do next with our lawyers and Dr. Johnson. Basically, the hearing and possible trial in Roberta were dropped in exchange for not contesting the behavior of the Roberta police. The money extorted with the trumped-up charges was not returned. There were no consequences for the corrupt police of Roberta.
The training program resumed, the trainees eventually sworn in as PCVs and flown to their assignments in West Africa. I was grateful that nobody at PC headquarters ever said much about the episode. Two years later Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. The civil war in Nigeria interrupted the service of the PCVs.
Roberta, Georgia in 1966 was a lot more primitive than my PCV site in Nigeria. When people try to wax nostalgic about the "good old days" of an earlier America, recall for them what Mark Hill, Tobe Johnson, Dr. Mays and other black Americans had to put up with for so long.
Leo Cecchini says:
Growing up in a thoroughly segregated southern city, Washington DC, I have a graphic knowledge of the "good old days." Thank God almighty we are all "Free at last."
This is very important to know and remember.
tlhmavrick says:
Well, Roger, damn, never heard that story. Reminds me that a headline today read, "U.S. terrorist groups on the rise."
"The same populist anger that has led to political victories nationwide in recent years has also fueled an incredible rise of anti-government fanaticism, one of the leading watchdogs of American extremism said on Thursday. Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said his organization tracked an "astronomical" growth in the number of anti-government militia and so-called patriot groups last year. "There's a lot of populist rage out there," Potok told TPM. "Demonizing propaganda…"

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
"This is Houston, Texas."
Nearly 60,000 People Marched Yesterday to Honor George Floyd
Thousands amassed on City Hall to protest police brutality.
By Samantha Dorisca 6/3/2020 at 12:46pm
The drumbeat reverberated across Discovery Green on Tuesday afternoon as thousands gathered in Downtown Houston in honor of George Floyd, the Houston native whose death after an officer kneeled on the prone Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis last week has since sparked protests across the nation and around the world.
While city officials expected about 20,000 to attend, despite concerns over the coronavirus, the park near the George R. Brown Convention Center was a sea of people, and more kept coming as the organizers of the event, Bun B and Trae Tha Truth started off the rally.
By the time Lakewood Church Pastor Joel Osteen was leading the gathering in an opening prayer, more than 60,000 Houstonians were surrounding the park. Then the mile-long march began as more than a dozen members of Floyd's family helped lead the way down Walker Street toward Houston City Hall. Adrenaline coursed through the crowd as they walked past police officers clad in riot gear—although police only lined the roadways and did not interact with protestors.
This is no longer just a black parade. This is a parade of all kinds of races and cultures.
It took longer than most expected to make that walk to City Hall due to the sheer size of the turnout, and with temperature highs above 90 degrees, the marchers, many of them masked to protect against COVID-19, were soaked with sweat. Clusters of well-wishers along the way offered free water and snacks to keep people hydrated, and the mood of crowd was giddy. Some rode down the street on horseback, while others held up signs. Many simply marched and chanted, "I can't breathe," Floyd's last words.
But once the march arrived in front of City Hall, people wearing masks flooded around the reflecting pool. Floyd's family members filed onto the stage, many of them holding signs. Bun B stepped up to the microphone, and the crowd grew hushed as he began to speak. "Look around you. Don't let anybody tell you what Houston, Texas, is. This is Houston, Texas," he said.
"Houston is unified. Houston stands together in solidarity, against police brutality, against racial injustice," Bun B said. "We are all children of God and that's why we are standing here today, to honor a fellow brother of ours, George Floyd, who was tortured and murdered in the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota. We will never forget. We will never forget his name is memory."
The crowd erupted in cheers, as he continued, reminding the audience, "You may be sweaty. Your legs may hurt, but you will never have to deal with the pain George Floyd had to deal with."
Much of the following speeches were calls for unity, but when activist Tamika Mallory took the podium, her frustration boiled over. Mallory demanded police be held accountable for such crimes. "They keep asking me, 'How do we calm the streets down?' and I keep telling them to arrest and band the cops who had something to do with George's death. Arrest the cops!" The audience responded to her outrage, chanting and waving their fists in the air. Although the crowd was soaking up her energy, Mallory eventually tempered her message, reminding people that they can make changes happen by banding as a community, registering to vote, and showing up to the polls.
Overall, the rally focused on finding constructive ways of ensuring that what happened to Floyd will never happen again. Messages of change and reform within the community were reinforced by many of the speakers, with both U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and US. Rep. Al Green vowing to introduce legislation to better protect people from being victims of police brutality. Bun B pleaded for a community review board with subpoena power for when "the police cannot police themselves."
Seated in a wheelchair on the stage, Rev. Bill Lawson, the 93-year-old pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, who once marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., offered up a more tempered message. At first the crowd didn't seem responsive, but after being reminded of Lawson's long history in the Civil Rights Movement, they settled down. Lawson advised his listeners to have hope. "This is no longer just a black parade. This is a parade of all kinds, of races and cultures. You have been heard," he said, speaking so softly people quieted to hear him.
"The next thing you have to do is not march, but register and vote," Lawson said. "We have to get out of office those people who feel they have to energize and make possible those who would suppress black folks. Keep mobilized. Don't let this be a one-day movement."
Mayor Sylvester Turner then took over, acknowledging that changes need to be made in Houston. "In our city, in the midst of so much prosperity, there are communities that have been underserved, under-resourced for decades," he said. "We recognize there is a lot of work that needs to be made."
Turner vowed to stand with the community and to continue marching alongside their efforts to fight for reforms. "I'm not here to tell you that we're perfect," he said. "I'm not here to tell you that we don't make mistakes. But what is important, for people like myself in positions of authority and power, is we have to make sure that while we are here we work every single day to make a positive difference. And what is important is for the mayor of Houston to march, walk, protest, with you, not against you."
In our city, in the midst of so much prosperity, there are communities that have been underserved, under-resourced for decades.
Turner noted that Floyd's family wanted to have a peaceful protest and would not provoke any damages or violence. "All that they ask, is that as we march, protest, demonstrate, that we do it in such a way that we do not deface his name," he told the crowd. "They want us to be peaceful, and I ask that we do it this way in the City of Houston, because that is just who we are."
As the speeches concluded, a woman onstage sang a rendition of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," her voice pulling shivers and goosebumps from audience members, even in the midst of a hot June day with the sun beating down from above.
Trae Tha Truth and Bun B led people back to Discovery Green. Floyd's family and thousands of Houstonians walked with them, still chanting and the drumbeats still sounding. Members of Crips and Bloods gangs even bound their bandanas together in order to symbolize unity among usually opposing sides. Things got tense at Travis and Walker streets when a protestor interacting with one police officer quickly became about 100 officers lining up and facing a couple hundred marchers. But Trae Tha Truth and Floyd's family interceded, breaking the tension and sending that clump of protestors on their way within minutes, something they continued to do as they moved through the city.
While a significant number of people lingered downtown, many did as the organizers and Turner asked and headed home after the protest was over. There were other fraught moments between the protestors and the police as the sun began to set. Upon arrival at Discovery Green, the remaining protestors swarmed the streets and blocked the buses from proceeding, climbing on top of the METRO vehicles, and holding up their signs. HPD officers started asking people to leave at around 6 p.m. But when the officers didn't actually clear the area, people came back, the start of a pattern that went on for another three hours until officers and mounted police turned out around 9 p.m. to more forcefully encourage people to disburse.
It is important to be in solidarity with one another and to keep this peaceful.
Considering what has been going on other American cities, and the way the first Houston protest devolved last Friday, the Tuesday demonstration was something all Houstonians should be proud of, marcher Salem Keleti said.
"The importance of coming to this march is seeing how many people support the Black Lives Matter movement," she said. "It is important to be in solidarity with one another and to keep this peaceful. I think we successfully put on a successful march and I am very proud of my city for putting this on for George Floyd and his family."
Civil Rights, Protest, George Floyd
What We're Ordering Out This Week: Massive Quesadillas, New Korean Chicken
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Talking with the Ho Family about Their New Reality TV Series, House of Ho


Bibliomania is a twisted fairytale about a young man obsessed with the acquisition of books to the detriment of all else. Having inherited his father's library as well as his lust for books, Thomas Phillips casts his greedy eyes on the town to feed his ever growing collection.
Thomas's book-lust reaches epic proportions as the film approaches its thrilling climax.


text:
Ripping Yarns - The Complete Series
Following the phenomenal success of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Michael Palin and Terry Jones created this unforgettable, BAFTA-winning series of comic plays for the BBC. Gleefully parodying the conventions of Boy's Own-style adventure, Ripping Yarns sees Palin taking the protagonist's role in nine rip-roaring stories from stirring tales of sporting endeavour, intrepid exploration and wartime heroism to skulduggery, supernatural mystery and murder... and, of course, the notorious exploits of Eric Olthwaite – Yorkshire's most interesting outlaw. An illustrious supporting cast includes John Le Mesurier, Iain Cuthbertson, Denholm Elliott, Joan Sanderson and Don Henderson, with Terry Jones starring in one episode and fellow former Python John Cleese also making a cameo appearance; the series was produced and directed by the multi award-winning team of Terry Hughes (The Two Ronnies), Jim Franklin (The Goodies) and Alan J.W. Bell (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Both series, originally aired between 1976 and 1979, are released in this special-edition set, with special features including deleted scenes, a 1983 documentary, Comic Roots, in which Palin revisits his native Sheffield, and Secrets, the only surviving recording of Palin and Jones 1973 screenplay for the BBC s darkly comic (now sadly wiped) Black and Blue anthology series.
Langue des Sous-Titres:
Ripping Yarns


Uncategorized | Life, She Wrote.
If there is one thing you should know in this lifetime, it's that people will let you down. It's not always that they mean to, it's just that it's a human flaw and i figure, it just can't be helped.
Today, I am let down. So immensely let down. By someone who I genuinely thought would never be the cause of this feeling. I am so consumed by disappointment I can barely eat. I tried to cry, but the tears won't fall and I'm not sure whether that just simply means that the hurt is too deep.
I wanted to believe that they were a better person. In fact, I did. I trusted in it. I trusted in them with almost everything I had. Which is more profound than I can explain coming from the girl who holds more faith in rollercoasters than human promise.
And yet, here I am. Tucked away in the midst of a summer afternoon storm, craving to be alone with my thoughts, and my confusion over how someone could have so epically fallen short of the mark.
Perhaps I said it one too many times that the happiness out loud theory excavated my own happiness in pursuit of nailing my feet back to the ground. Or perhaps I just couldn't see through the sugar coating.
Maybe they were always destined to let me down.
And I guess this is where I try to make sense of it. Wildly typing my raw emotions into my MacBook in the hope that it will expose a reason why. Something that will make the hurt make sense, that will make me understand.
And when I finish and the reason remains un-illumintaed, I'll stop to realise that this, this hurt – it's part and parcel of life. And that eventually it'll make me stronger, like a broken bone healing over.
It's a bit of a sad reality, and I know this blog's purpose has always been to illuminate the beauty in this world, but I am beginning to understand that there's a strange beauty in learning the hard lessons too. People will always let you down. You don't ever see it coming until it's there, staring you in the face and giving you a choice. And I'll never give you a more important piece of advice other than to stop walking towards the people who let you down, and couldn't care less.
I'm a girl who happily gives too much. And maybe I'll never change despite the broken edges of my heart. But I will learn to be braver in the face of being let down.
Just know that your hurt, just like mine, will fade. And what grows in it's empty place will bring better days. I have to believe in that. So you can too.
Today I was lying out in the sun with Igloo (who has settled in as if he always lived here!). And I was watching him sit next to me in all his cute-ness, silently wishing that he could somehow just never grow up.
He may still not know how to use them most effectively, but his little legs are getting bigger each day. A part of me wishes he would slow down with the growing thing, because I'm just not done with him being the smallest bundle of fur!
But I got to thinking about how long he's going to be in my life. And I was a little sad when I realised that if I'm lucky, we are looking at maybe 15 years. Which for me, is simply not long enough.
This put me onto another train of thought, as I tried to picture where I would be in 15 years.
You see, comparatively – it seems like such a short amount of time when I think about Igloo, but when I think about me, 15 years couldn't be further away!
I simply don't understand how in my mind, one could seem longer than the other. It's the same amount of time devoted to two different lives.
I know Igloo will spend the next 15 years most likely eating grass, getting sand stuck in his ears at the beach and being loved beyond measure.
But what will I be doing? What does my life look like in 15 years? I'm very curious to know.
I guess only time will tell, and that's a little frustrating for little impatient me. I mean, a lot could really change in 15 years and I'll only know when I get there.
But time is precious, and as curious as I am, I would never wish to rush time.
So for now, I think I'll channel my inner "One Tree Hill" tin box in a brick wall, and settle for writing a list of predictions for the year 2031 (which sounds like another lifetime away).
• I will be married, and happily married at that!
• I will have a child, or maybe even two, to keep my hands full and my heart even more so.
• I will have made CN at work, and loved every moment of it.
• I will have finished my Nurse Practitioner degree, maybe i'll even be lucky enough to be working as one in emergency, or in a clinic!
• I will own a soccer mum car, and happily fill it with orange slices every Saturday morning for the big game.
• Igloo will be by my side, grey hairs and all. Still as adorable as ever.
• I will have a house with enough room for my shoe collection!
• I will have ticked at least 15 more things off my Bucket List.
• I will have travelled more, and seen some of the most beautiful parts of this world.
• And I will take time each week, no matter how busy its been, to sit down by the beach with my Mr., watch the sun set, and cherish every moment.
I think it will be so special to look back at this post in 15 years and simply see how far I've come. Life is everchanging, and we really don't know what's in store for us. But we can hope for the best version of our lives.
I am guaranteed to have some of my worst and some of my best days in the next 15 years, and while I may not end up where I thought I would, I'll know that it was somehow exactly where I am supposed to be.
Here's to 2031. And in the ultimate prediction, I'm sure I won't believe it when you're here.