The basic idea is simple: Every major region in the world has the opportunity to make wines based on the expression of terroir. This applies to Burgundy as to California, to the Mosel, as well as to the Rhône Valley.
After several years of observation and research, Yves and Benjamin Gras have bottled their first signle vineyard wines from Gigondas and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, vintage 2014. In Gigondas they have opted for the "CLOS DERRIÈRE VIEILLE", a vineyard located 350 meters above sea level, on the chalky soil of the Dentelles de Montmirail. It joins the "HAUTES GARRIGUES", a wine made from Grenache and Mourvèdre, growing on alluvial soils of red clay and gravel next to the winery. "AUX LIEUX DITS", an assemblage made of grapes from eight different vineyards, completes the Gigondas wine range of Santa Duc.
Three wines also from Châteauneuf-du-Pape: The cuvée "HABEMUS PAPAM" unites the character of all vineyards cultivated by Yves Gras in the appellation. In the area of "SAINTES VIERGES" in the north-eastern part of the appellation, Grenache, Counoise and Mourvèdre are growing on fine, sandy soils, creating a soft, gentle and complex wine. Old Grenache vines growing in "LA CRAU OUEST", offer powerful aromas, depth and elegancy.
Tasted side by side, the wines tell a fascinating story about the character and the strength of terroir of these two famous wine areas, while each wine in itself promises a great, versatile wine experience.
Enjoyement levels in the '14s are high. The cool summer, with pockets of rain, ensured that most wines are fresh, have moderate alcohol, and are what the French call digeste – easy to drink. Accurate expressions of terroir are always well propted in such circumstances, in contrast du the heavily sunny vintages, which spend years shaking off their thick, ripe coating from the summer climate.
Inky, really deep, black-fruited nose. Silken, pure, expressive palate, has crunch and glow in its tannins. Drink 2019 – 2032.
2012 - Fruity or rather spicy, with good tannin structure and grapes with a lot of character from each vineyard.
"A year of staggering purity, freshness and elegance" - Jeb Dunnuck.
2013 - Capricious weather, low yields, moderate sugar content ... Therefore, good balance between acidity, body and structure.
2014 - Dry weather before harvest, late picking brought fully ripe, healthy grapes.
2015 - Balanced sugar / acid ratio, outstanding tannin ripeness. Harmonious vintage without excessive power and body.
Santa Duc GigondasDomaine Santa Duc prides itself on creating superb Gigondas from what might fairly be described as defiant clay soil. And the three vintages tasted with friends – 2005, 2007 and 2010 – brought unanimous expressions of enthusiasm that differed essentially over the question of which of these dark, robust and engaging wines elicited the greatest personal pleasure.
"Wine can and should stand on its own!" This is what John Gillespie, a recognized economists and observer of the American wine market, said during an interview 2013. Although Gillespie spoke more on the subject of "Wine and Food", his words perfectly fit to our thoughts on wine aging.
The wine barrel was probably invented in the 6th century BC and brought to perfection by the Gauls for wine and beer storage many centuries later. The use of wood casks was widespread from the 3rd century, but its apogee certainly came in the 1980's, when the barrel was idolized for his influence on wine.
If we are well aware of what oak has brought to our wines and still can bring, the balance of power between both has fairly changed in our cellar in recent years. Large wooden vats have replaced small oak barrels and large clay jars were added recently. Today, we principally rely on the terroir and the grapes to create the identity of our wines.
After a year of maturation in 800 L clay jars, the wines of the 2014 vintage are self-confident and balanced. The pure Grenache of La Crau Ouest flatters the palate with fine, soft tannins, joined by mineral acidity and pleasant aromas of fresh plums, cherry blossoms and a hint of white pepper. The Gigondas Hautes Garrigues, mainly consisting of Mourvèdre, presents itself with strenght and mellowness and extremely complex aromas.
Our wines have convinced us! We agree to them to continue the experiment of wine ageing in clay jars on the 2015 vintage.
One of my teachers made me pay attention to the world of wine for the first time at school, by making me memorize all AOC regions of France for lessons in geography.
My relation to wine became more serious and even professionnal while I was working in London in 2001. I spent the next eight years gaining experience and worked, amongst others, for the "Producteurs Plaimont", a natural step for someone coming from south-western France. It was my job at a high-quality wine retailer, that put me in contact with products and producers such as Champagne Giraud, Egon Müller on the Moselle River, Château de Fargues in Sauternes and Alois Kracher in Austria, giving me the opportunity to be surrounded by wine sellers and sommeliers with high interest in authenticity products. An extremely important approach on wine in my eyes, that I imediately found when joinging Yves and Benjamin Gras at the Domaine Santa Duc.
Already during picking the grapes gave us an insight into the high quality of the vintage. Not concerned by this summers heatwave, the fruit showed a good balance between sugar and acidity, as well as extremely ripe tannins. While the vintage was still considered as being particularly precocious in spring, some highly welcome rainfalls in August brought us back to normal picking times. Tasting of berries, as well as the first fermentations promised a particularly harmonious vintage.
According to our philosophy of respecting the freshness and flavors of the fruit, we fermented the grapes at low temperature without ever exceeding 25° C. Along with a relatively short maceration of 12 to 18 days, this allows to preserve the delicate aromas of Grenache. The first attempts with 800 L clay jars to age our wines in the past year are extremely promising. We have therefore decided to continue to equip our aging cellar for the vintage 2015 with more jars.


This is an exclusive EWTN on-line special offer in honor of our beloved Mother Angelica! It includes two books: "Praying with Mother Angelica" and Mother Angelica's Answers, Not Promises" along with a bonus DVD of two programs Mother did for local and national television networks before she began her Eternal Word Television Network. These vintage classics offer an extraordinary glimpse at Mother's spiritual genius and practical insight! The regular price of this set is $55.00 - the value... priceless!


Injection-molded, polymer-resin, forend grips improve stability and overall rifle control by giving your forward hand a comfortable, hand filling, textured gripping surface. Helps you maintain a natural fighting stance, reduces on-target time, and helps maintain muzzle control during rapid fire. Hollow center provides convenient storage space for spare batteries or other small items; rubber cap keeps out dust and moisture. All models clamp securely to forends with Picatinny or Weaver-style rails on underside. Short model low-profile, "broom handle" style grips are less likely to snag on other gear while keeping hands close to the weapon for maximum control. MVG features a Mfg: Command Arms Acc SPECS: Molded, reinforced polymer, black. MVG 3 3/4″ long. Pressure switch area 2.5″ (6.3cm) high, .63″ (1.6cm) wide..


NEW ORLEANS — As comedian Artie Lange reflected Saturday on the controversy he stirred this week with San Francisco 49er Chris Culliver, the publicist for the cornerback says sensitivity training will start post-Super Bowl for the anti-gay remarks the player made.
Culliver is scheduled to begin working with The Trevor Project, an organization that provides crisis and suicide intervention to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, according to his public relations representative, Theodore Palmer.
"It's just an opportunity for him to learn about his comments and educate himself about the LGBT community, and grow," Palmer said. "It's the first step in learning about his words."
On media day Tuesday, Lange had raised the issue with Culliver about whether he would accept a teammate who was gay. The second-year player said he would not accept that and added that if the 49ers had any homosexual players, they should leave.
"Yeah, in today's world I knew it would get a big reaction. It seemed to get a little crazier than I thought."
Culliver's anti-gay comments drew an immediate rebuke from the team and an apologetic statement from the player Wednesday, followed by an hour-long Q&A on the subject during player availability with media Thursday.
Meanwhile, the It Gets Better Project for gay rights has pulled from its website an ad made with some 49er players who subsequently said they thought they had been involved with only an anti-bullying video.
When shown the ad, defensive tackle Isaac Sopoaga and linebacker Ahmad Brooks told USA TODAY Sports they had no idea it was to support gay rights.
All this arising from what Lange thought was a harmless question.
"It ruined (Culliver's) week and I don't feel good about that. But if that's how he really felt and this helped it get out there, maybe he'll change it," Lange said.
"I'm a stupid comedian. I don't think he knew who I was. I looked homeless, quite frankly."
Palmer also said Culliver will spend time volunteering at a crisis center in San Francisco.


Team Member Manager Kathy Ricker offers a look back at all we've accomplished in 2017.
Learn more about why we take such good care when processing personal effects.
Vice President, Operations Robert Rowntree's update of Kenyon's active deployments involving Team Member participation.
Thirty years later, personal effects are discovered and returned to the family of the deceased.
We are pleased to announce the expansion of our Team Member program. Learn more about our Regional Team Member Coordinators.
Read about Team Member participation and the topics that were covered with the first Team Member webinar, and register for the next one.
Find out how the recent hurricanes affected Kenyon and the steps we took to ensure a smooth recovery.
Shout out to Kenyon's Clare, Victoria and Shona for their work with Sebastian's Trust.


text:
Q: htmldoc ignoring LC_TIME for date format I'm running the following Perl code to create a PDF file.
{
    local $ENV{LC_TIME} = 'de_DE.utf8';
    system qw(htmldoc --quiet --webpage -t pdf --jpeg --no-link --header .D. --footer .D/ --outfile), "$filename.pdf", $filename;
}

It works on my local machine, the date is formatted as 12.02.2013 15:18:19 in both header and footer.
As soon as I run the script on the remote server, I get 02/12/13 15:10:25.
Why is htmldoc ignoring the LC_TIME value?
"locale" already returns LC_TIME="de_DE.utf8" on both my local machine and the server, by the way.

A: your server possibly defines LC_ALL which has precedence over category-specific locale settings.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Each of our customers has special technical and economic requirements. At Spohn + Burkhardt we produce custom control transmitters, control systems and resistors that are robust and comfortable. Our modular construction system makes it possible to assemble specific control elements and adapt the features to the respective application.
We produce control transmitters, control systems and resistors as individual units and in small and large series, as well as custom, integrated solutions.


We have had record-breaking snowfalls this year, and staff have been trying to adjust their game plan to tackle Mother Nature's temperament. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to my office and provided updates on their road conditions; your feedback is always taken very seriously.
My staff and I have been working closely with road crews and the Public Works managers to assess the roads this week. I have personally traveled around the residential roads to provide options and my thoughts on how we can improve road conditions, especially in Greely. Since Osgoode Ward is so large, we have multiple zones that work to cover boundary to boundary. I have been assured that all residential roads in Greely today will receive the appropriate abrasive treatments after they have been plowed.
I would like to thank the crews who have been working around the clock in the villages of Osgoode and Metcalfe to keep the roads plowed. The reports from residents in these areas have been very positive and I have shared your compliments with crews!
I encourage you to call 3-1-1 if you believe your street needs further attention from our city road crews, or if there is ever anything urgent that should be brought to the city's immediate attention. The 3-1-1 system will immediately acknowledge your request and dispatch the appropriate city department. Please keep the reference # provided by 3-1-1, and email my office. My staff will be able to follow up on your request and provide updates, ultimately improving the City's level of service to you.
In the meantime, enjoy the winter season, because pretty soon we will be enjoying 30 degree sunshine and heat waves!


For everything we do, there is always a reason. Everything. Now sometimes we don't know what the reason is, partly because we don't take the time to track it back to identify what the reason might be for that action or decision we made, but there is always a reason. That is a truth.
Whatever it is, there is a reason behind everything that we do. Many of us, however, are not consciously aware of this truth. We may be quick to identify the perceived reasons when we experience a victory, but we might be less likely to identify the real reasons behind the challenges and difficulties in our lives.
We are all challenged to some degree. As we are moving forward with our lives, as we are evolving in our relationships with someone that we really care about, there is always going to be something around that is going to challenge us. There is no way out of this. In fact, the only way out of this is to literally go into this. This is another truth. Now, it might take you a little while to prove that truth to yourself, but that is the truth. The only way out of our stuff is to courageously and responsibly go into our stuff.
Many people are invited to the seminars, but not all of them come. In fact, one of the reasons why people don't make it to a seminar is because something happened within them. They got activated, so to speak, with something that was uncomfortable and was already challenging them. Maybe they didn't recognize it as such. As a result though, from their perspective they chose not to come. In 37 years of teaching, people have become activated in my classes over and over again. Activated, meaning their stuff would come up. This stuff is the baggage that has not yet been resolved from their past—it's their issues—whatever they are. This stuff sits in the storage bin of their subconscious. Then it just becomes a question of time when something will happen in their lives and/or relationships that will trigger some aspect of this old baggage; and there they will be in that activated energy.
This activated energy can, however, make them aware of something they need to heal if they choose to look at it. In order to truly heal and resolve our baggage, we must first be willing to actually see whatever it is that we are now choosing to heal. Until we are able to recognize this stuff, there can be no clearing or resolution of it.
What I've seen so many times over the years are good marriages, good friendships, and good partnerships be destroyed. What I have seen from my view and place of experience, this is why—this is it right here: It is because one or both members of that relationship or partnership were not yet willing to look at their own stuff; they weren't yet willing to be responsible for their own unresolved issues from their past. They are just dragging it forward with them. Most are not even aware they are doing this. And so this idea of the activation—when we get activated—can create havoc in our lives without the awareness of what it is that's really happening here. The end goal, of course, is getting to a point where we can no longer be activated in this way. When we no longer become activated, it means we have cleared up and resolved our issues. How cool would that be to no longer bring this stuff with us into our next relationship? Wow!
This is a key realization. When we experience challenges and difficulties in our lives, it is often because we are holding onto those unresolved issues as they get activated rather than actually releasing that material as it makes itself known to us. We are not always aware that this is the reason. And as stated before, until we are willing to look at the truth of the reason behind our activation, that energy cannot be healed or resolved.
There is another danger we need to be aware of, which is thinking the reason for our challenges or difficulties is someone else's fault. It can feel that way, because perhaps something they said or did activated us, but the activation is a result of our unhealed and unresolved issues, not theirs.
Think of someone outside of yourself that you have, what you would consider, a significant relationship with—it could be a parent, a friend, a business associate, a sibling. Whoever that person is, when you think of this person, you know you value this relationship and care about this person. As you think about this person, has there ever been a time where you find one of you has blamed the other for something that just occurred? Have you ever considered that the reason why you might be feeling what you're feeling when blaming the other, is because of something you did, or even experienced prior to whatever it is you're currently blaming them for?
I remember years ago, this was me. So many times I thought the reason why I was feeling what I was feeling was because of someone else. It took me a long time to get to these truths. These teachings I learned, quite frankly, in a way that was very painful to me. I've been slapped around from one side to the other many times in the context of my relationships. And so much had to do with this, what I now refer to as, a misplacement of projected energy. A misplacement of projected energy would be, for example; I would get activated, usually with anger, and project it on to others. I was very angry by the time I was eighteen. And for the life of me I couldn't understand why I was so angry.
Because I did not understand this anger or what to do with it when the people in my life would activate something within me, I would project that anger on to them. This would then cause rifts over time between us, which became very frustrating because, again, I didn't understand what was actually happening. All I knew was what I was experiencing as a result of this unhealed, projected energy that kept manifesting. During this time I was so addicted to food; and back then, I didn't even know that I had an addiction. What I did know though, is that I couldn't go longer than four hours without putting food in my body. When I did go longer, that anger would come up and then it just became a question of who I would project it on. Those on the receiving end of my projection would think they'd done something to anger me. In some cases that was true, but in most cases it was not. What they were doing back then was showing me how angry I already was.
I finally discovered the truth. The reason behind everything that is happening in our lives has something to do with us and our relationship with ourselves. This awareness can be the beginning of an amazing journey that will not only transform our relationship with self, but also will transform our relationships with others, including the letting go of those relationships that are no longer serving us. There could not be a more important reason to take this journey. Discovering how to have fulfilling and truly meaningful relationships with others in our lives, including the relationship with ourselves, could be one of the most significant acomplishments of our journey in life!
© Dale Halaway – Seminars That Inspire, LLC – www.SeminarsThatInspire.com Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to Dale Haloway and a link to www.seminarsthatinspire.com.


It's officially the end of the summer holidays with the arrival of the new Autumn term next week. We have had an absolute blast enjoying summer holiday camps with you all but are now very excited to officially start term next week and once again start spending lots of time with all our returning children and also all of our new starters. It's such a pleasure to be welcoming so many new families to join in with our forest fun.
We understand that next week may be a challenge for many of you as I remember all too well the utter heartbreak (pathetic really!) I felt whilst dropping my own children off for the first time. You've looked after these babies for years and we are so grateful for you putting your trust in us to continue to help them develop, learn and most importantly have fun! We will love each and every one of them.
We hope you enjoy receiving your welcome packs from us and look forward to sharing all of the exciting and happy memories we will be creating for your little ones at Little Forest Folk via our online learning journals soon.


text:
This article was published on April 26, 2013
Zeppelin takes its cloud-data business dashboard mobile with a new iOS application
April 26, 2013 - 11:22 am
Alex Wilhelm
Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at [email protected] (show all) Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at [email protected]
Today Zeppelin announced an iOS app, complementing its Web-based service that provides a social media dashboard for businesses to track their key metrics. Data from Google Analytics, MailChimp, and other services are shown inside of Zeppelin, and teams can communicate in feed form to stay on the same page.
The service looks like this when in action:
With the addition of its new iOS app, the company hopes to "fundamentally changing the way executives and managers access and act upon important business data while away from the office." For users of Zeppelin, it will be a boon.
The app itself does what you would expect, showing the same data that the desktop Web-dashboard shows, along with the activity stream users should already be familiar with. Alerts are a nice addition, pinging you when something requires your attention. Here's a shot of the application's interface that the company shared on its website:
The aggregation of cloud services into a meta-service isn't a new idea, but it is one that has legs; as companies and individuals increasingly lean on a disparate array of SaaS and PaaS tools to execute their daily workflow, finding a way to keep all their ducks rowed properly isn't a small task.
The service for now remains in beta, but you can submit your email address in hopes of an invite. Zeppelin is a company worth keeping an eye on. If it can help executives make better sense of their company's most vital statistics, it could help reduce confusion, and help drive better decision making.
Top Image Credit: Thinkstock
Published April 26, 2013 - 11:22 am UTC
Zoom's launch of animal avatars is a balm for video call fatigue
How to bring Safari's address bar back to the top on iOS 15

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
by K. Elliott
Imprint: Urban Lifestyle Press
Publisher: Urban Lifestyle Press
Parent Company: Urban Lifestyle Press
There's a lot going on from Charlotte to Miami to San Francisco — almost none of it favorable to Tommy 'Fatboy' Dupree. While one man is sleeping around with Tommy's live-in girlfriend, another urges a psychopath to rob him for multiple kilos. These men are…his friends…which means the worst is yet to come. Alicia Anderson's beauty is off the scales. The physically fit college student has a father who is a real estate mogul, so she could care less about a fat boy named Tommy who deals drugs. However, this new woman challenges him to give up the illicit profession and invest everything in a California real estate venture. Their serious love affair is overshadowed by his inability to hustle up enough money to walk away from the game. And although Fatboy has a few tricks in store for all his backstabbing friends, the DEA has plans to throw a nasty twist in his story. But Fatboy has even saved one last trick for the feds. This URBAN SUSPENSE threatens to brind the underground to the surface.
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text:
Q: Is it possible to do a JOIN without knowing ON what column the JOIN is done? Is there, for example, a function such as SELECT t0.*, t1.* JOIN t1 ON t0.some_known_field = GET_PRIMARY_INDEX(t1)?

A: No, it is not possible, in pure SQL, to use any sort of variable or lookup to construct the names of tables or columns.
You can use "dynamic SQL" which is a fancy-sounding way of having a stored procedure construct a text string from queries and other information and then run it as a SQL statement. Or you can do the same in your application program.  Many SQL applications do this sort of thing.


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Baan Por Pieng is a special program for housing the country's poorest and most vulnerable families
In 2017, the Thai government launched a housing program for the country's poorest citizens, urban and rural, called Baan Por Pieng ("Sufficient Housing Program"), in which 9,000 poor families (about 200 families per province) would receive a subsidy of 18,000 baht (US$ 554) to improve or rebuild their houses. The subsidy is quite small, though – not nearly enough to construct even the most minimal house in Thailand. So CODI used that insufficient subsidy as an opportunity to demonstrate a more community-managed and more collaborative way of addressing the housing problems of the poorest families.
The process began with a series of big meetings organized in each of the country's 76 provinces, to which all the various community networks in each province were invited, to discuss the program and set plans. Then came a province-wide process in which the networks surveyed their own communities, identified their own poorest members and developed plans for housing them. The power to fix these housing problems was entirely with the communities, with assistance from their local and provincial authorities. Because the 18,000 baht subsidy wasn't enough to complete any kind of proper house, the community networks were obliged to do a lot of leveraging and collaborating, to raise enough funds to build reasonable houses for those families. This leveraging happened on a national scale, with local governments, district authorities, provincial governments, local businesses, NGOs and all sorts of civil society organizations pitching in an additional 300 million baht (US$ 9.4 million), to complete the houses.
The program was so successful that in the first year alone, 10,370 housing units were built all over the country – 370 more houses than the target. The government followed up by increasing the grant for 2018 to 337 million baht (US$ 10.4 million), to subsidize another 15,000 houses.
Baan Por Pieng Housing Program Figures
(Figures as of May 2019)
1,425 projects approved, in 1,338 cities and districts, with a total subsidy (grant) of 303.75 million baht (US$ 9.5 million)
These projects provide housing to 28,861 poor families
25,000 of those housing units have been completed


Laden with 400,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil, the Icaro sits in the azure waters of the Caribbean just off the Dutch island of Curacao. It's been there more than a month, and it's not going anywhere until state-owned oil company PDVSA pays its bills.
The Icaro has become an unlikely but telling symbol of Venezuela's woes. And it shows how even before the U.S. sanctions imposed Monday, PDVSA was facing trouble getting its oil delivered to customers around the globe. That could worsen as the regime looks to offset the loss of its U.S. market.
The obstacle isn't the Trump administration, but some PDVSA's suppliers — from tow-boat operators to ship owners that transport oil. They've grown increasingly frustrated at not getting paid for their services. So they're turning to Caribbean courts to get the right to seize Venezuelan oil aboard vessels like the Icaro, until some kind of settlement is reached.
"Many of PDVSA's creditors ran out of patience and were looking to secure their positions," said Jan A.M. Burgers, a Curacao-based lawyer who specializes in maritime law. "There's no more logical or better way to do it" than to seize cargoes.
At least four companies have used the tactic since U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips successfully arm-wrestled PDVSA, or Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., in Dutch Caribbean courts last year as part of a global legal war to recoup a $2 billion arbitration award. Conoco obtained court orders to detain an armada of 12 Venezuelan oil tankers transiting the Caribbean, while filing legal papers in courts from New York to Hong Kong.
Trump's sanctions amounted to the latest U.S. move to pressure Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro to accept a peaceful transfer of power to Juan Guaido, whom the U.S. recognizes as the nation's interim president. Trump's action will effectively block PDVSA from exporting crude to the U.S. Venezuela was once Latin America's largest oil producer. Now it's pumping less than North Dakota, yet oil exports remain its main source of dollar revenues.
PDVSA has taken steps to avoid the seizures, mainly by trying to avoid the Caribbean islands. Last year, in the wake of the Conoco spat, only 17 PDVSA vessels discharged in Curacao, compared with 132 in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
But if Venezuela wants to sell more oil to Asia because of the U.S. sanctions, it may need its facility in the Caribbean for storage — exposing it to more seizures. For suppliers, seeking court redress isn't likely to go away anytime soon because some can't afford to wait for a regime change, said Kurt Barrow, a vice president at IHS Markit. Indeed, suppliers even track PDVSA oil cargoes every two to three weeks to see how close they get to Caribbean territory, said one creditor who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The 800-foot Icaro was supposed to have discharged its crude and return to Venezuela but suppliers got a court order putting a lien on the oil. Two creditors went after the cargo. Exotic Waves Marine SA claims debts of $7.3 million over unpaid fuel, while Ammon Shipping Co. claims $1 million. It remains docked at berth No. 5.
In another case, Energy Coal Spa from Genoa, Italy, was able to detain the ship Pericles for 208 days over a dispute involving the purchase of petroleum coke from PDVSA. A Curacao court issued a judgment in its favor and was set to sell the oil on board to pay the debt when PDVSA settled the case out of court.
The legal strategy carries risks, of course. ConocoPhillips angered many by effectively shutting down a huge portion of Curacao's economy when it won its orders. And not every court action is successful. In July, Huntington Ingalls Inc., based in Newport News, Va., lost an attempt to put a lien on PDVSA oil stored in Curacao. The company claimed it was owed $130 million from maintenance of two Venezuelan Navy frigates.
Companies going to court also run the risk of ruining their relationships with PDVSA, Burgers said. "It's really a last resort because this is still a big company with lots of oil," he said.
For the hundreds of Venezuelans working on seized vessels, there's not much to be done other than wait. But at least they have a roof over their heads and no food shortages, said an Icaro crew member, who spoke in the condition of anonymity. For Christmas, the workers had potato salad, sausage-stuffed bread and roasted beef, more than many Venezuelans who face empty shelves in supermarkets can say.


Last weekend we made a run down to Charleston, South Carolina to visit one of Rob's old friends. They had worked together for about seven years, but had not seen each other for almost three, so it was time to get them together. They had a great time catching up and Ben was a wonderful tour guide. He took us to beach, to Fort Moultrie, to dinner at one of the most amazing BBQ restaurants ever and took us on a beautiful walking tour. We were only there for about 24 hours, but it was time well spent.
The highlight, of course, was the Atlantic Ocean! The weather was absolutely perfect for walking on the beach, although there was a $1040 fine for wading. (Seriously?) Catheryn collected more shells than she could carry, so after she began handing them to me to carry for her, I was forced to "accidentally" drop some. William had fun gathering dead crabs, spongy seaweed and miscellaneous body parts from jelly fish. Nathan was content to drag a stick through the sand and occasionally stopped to dazzle us with his sand art. I love how different they all are. They had never seen the Atlantic before, so this was quite a treat.
One of my favorite things about Charleston was the people! I couldn't get over how many people were outside. Runners, walkers, bike riders, dog walkers, you name it. There are so many places where you rarely see anyone outside, so to see so many in one city was pretty amazing.
Rob enjoyed Charleston so much that he would like to spend next summer there. It is quite the tourist community, so finding jobs for the season shouldn't be too hard. I guess we will have to see next year when summer rolls back around.
This entry was posted in Crazy Kids, Daily Life, Family Adventures, Random Thoughts, RV Life, Travel and tagged Atlantic Ocean, beach, Charleston, RV life, South Carolina, travel. Bookmark the permalink.
Luckily we did not have to pay to go down to the beach, that would have been very disappointing. Not being able to wade was bad enough. (And no, we were not fined. But once I saw the sign, I wouldn't let the kids go back in the water. Such a law abider…) We will see you soon!


Abstract: This article outlines the development of mobile telephony in the nascent Republic of South Sudan (ROSS). We focus specifically on Juba, during turbulent times from the end of the second Sudanese Civil War in 2005 to just after independence in 2011. We highlight the complicated political relations behind the establishment of mobile networks and the main functions and importance of the mobile phone throughout this period. Despite major technical obstacles, reconnecting with (war-) dispersed relatives, providing security in the post-CPA period marked by high insecurity and symbolizing hope and access to markets were important features of mobile phone use in Juba. Mobile phones were also essential to the rapid development of migrant dominated trade and business. Through this case-study we aim to shed light on the way in which (new) communication technologies become entangled with mobility, politics and entrepreneurship in a (post)war setting characterized by a displacement economy.


text:
A Moment of Joy for We Happy Few
AGExpress Remutha
Home AGExpress
It's another example of the disparity between the classification of games here and in other countries.
We Happy Few was recently refused classification due to the use of the drug Joy allowing an easier gaming experience, seen as incentivising drug use and breeching classification requirements. Australia's National Classification Code states that games depicting "drug misuse or addiction ... in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults" will be refused classification.
"A player who takes Joy can reduce gameplay difficulty, therefore receiving an incentive by progressing through the game quickly. Although there are alternative methods to complete the game, gameplay requires the player to take Joy to progress," the board said in its original ruling. "In the Board's opinion, the game's drug-use mechanism of making game progression less difficult, constituted an incentive or reward for drug-use. Therefore, the game exceeded the R18+ classification because of the drug use related to incentives and rewards."
Meanwhile in other countries, including our neighbours in New Zealand, the game received a PG13 rating. The Classification Board received a heavy amount of backlash for their decision to decline the rating and was urged to reconsider, even by the developer Compulsion Games themselves.
The Classification Board announced today that it will consider an appeal of the Classification next month, and extended an invitation to individuals or organizations to "apply for standing as an interested party. The closing date to lodge your application for standing as an interested party and any submissions is 29 June 2018," the announcement says. "Please note that the Review Board can only consider submissions about We Happy Few itself and not any other matters relating to computer game classification policy or issues generally."
The Classification Board's re-review is scheduled for July 3.
If you wish to lodge your own application you can do so at the following link:
http://www.classification.gov.au/Public/Resources/Documents/2018-media-releases/26june2018--media-release--classification-review-announced-for-the-computer-game-we-happy-few.pdf
Or via post or email as follows:
Submissions should be emailed to crb@classification.gov.au or sent to:
The Convenor
Classification Review Board
Locked Bag 3
HAYMARKET NSW 1240
The Classification Review Board is an independent merits review body. It makes a fresh classification decision upon receipt of an application for review. The Classification Review Board decision takes the place of the original decision made by the Classification Board.
"We've received a lot of support since the first decision from the board and we want to thank everybody who has offered us help." -Compulsion Games
-Rem
For all of the latest from Aussie Gamers Express, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and also our weekly podcast.
Also, you can support us by purchasing your games from CD Keys.com by clicking on the CDKeys logo below. Thank you for your continued support.
Remutha
Remutha, or Rem, has been writing for 8 years. Combining this with a love of video games Rem has been writing game reviews for 2 years.


LeBeau-Thelen is a preeminent full service law firm with a reputation for efficient, creative and practical legal advice and strong advocacy. The firm's transactional and business attorneys understand how business works, and offer strategies and solutions that maximize the client's objectives and benefits. Our experienced team of civil litigators provides aggressive and effective representation in cases spanning complex business disputes, professional malpractice defense, personal injury and employment matters. The firm also offers expertise and guidance in estate planning, trust administration and probate litigation, for business owners and individuals. We serve clients in diverse industries including agriculture, oil and gas, financial institutions, real estate, governmental entities, large and small corporations and family owned businesses. Centrally located, the firm provides professional services throughout California with a focus in Central California and Northern Los Angeles County. LeBeau-Thelen has been widely involved in community events, professional groups, organizations and boards since 1985.


Last night during dinner, we sat outside with our out-of-town guests and looked at the same tree, and I had an idea. Going around the table, I asked everyone to use their own words to describe it. Funny how the writers were more descriptive and detailed, while the two lawyers dug deeper and were more analytical, but the financial guy was perfunctory and straight to the point. A mathematician might have talked about the distance from the tree to the water feature and other, nearby trees. Want to guess your child's future profession? Ask them to describe a tree.


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title:  inQuire
date:  14/10/2022
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#### inQuire

`How does this week's lesson bring comfort for those who die in Christ?`

`Using a concordance, give some additional examples of the words _Sheol_ and _Hades_.`

`How many times does the word _Sheol_ appear in Psalm 49:14, 15 and how is it translated? (Compare several versions.)`

`How do we explain Isaiah 14:9–11, where the wicked kings who are in _Sheol_ prepare to welcome the king of Babylon? The passage seems to indicate that the kings were conscious in _Sheol_.`

`What metaphorical language does Isaiah 38:10 use to describe confinement in _Sheol_?`

`Read Job 14:7–15. Which metaphors does this passage use to describe death and the resurrection? How do these metaphors bring comfort?`

`Make a list of the synonyms that appear in Jonah 2 that describe the place where Jonah went for three days. When Jonah cried out from the belly of _Sheol_, (Jonah 2:1), was he in a place of burning or in a watery grave?`

`Why does Revelation 6:8 say that death and _Hades_ followed the pale horse? Does the grave literally follow death?`

`How has Jesus having the keys of _Hades_ and of death change your life perspective?`

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


I have known Tommy Low for about 10 years, and I am thrilled to write this reference for him.
In a word, Tommy is exceptional! I have so much respect for the way he treats, cares for, and serves people. Over numerous lunches we have talked about his business dealings—both the challenges and the strategies for helping people . ( I had a former life in New Home Sales). I have heard multiple reports of how effective Tommy is in his work, and how pleased people are with the level of service they have received from him. Tom has a strong conviction of how to treat people with respect and integrity.
Tommy has faced the challenges of his life with steadfast courage. He has inspired me to persevere and never give up. I have often said that I get so much more from Tommy than I give. I believe many, many people would say the same.
I give to him my deepest admiration—and I highly recommend him as someone who positively and deeply impacts any environment in which he serves.
Tommy Low is an optimistic overcomer, who is able to turn a setback or disability into a strength and opportunity. He is honest, treating people with respect, regardless of race, colour or creed. Tommy is a hard worker who understands the need for all people, especially our youth, to have the capacity and chance for to use their strengths to build a future of hope, opportunity and prosperity. Tommy is caring, understanding how to give a hand up rather than a hand out. Tommy is intelligent and courageous, a man who has utilized his strengths and built success where many others would have lost hope. Tommy is friendly, using his big smile to bring a smile!
We've bought our first house in Canada with Tommy's help. Investing in a real estate property with lifetime savings is a nervous trip. But since we have the confidence in Tommy's professional knowledge and his integrity, we did from viewing properties to signing the offer in less a week. We are very satisfied with our investment. And Tommy is someone we can definitely count on.
challenges encountered during his long and productive career.
He is a tireless worker while balancing his social and personal commitments.
cutting edge with new ideas and practices.
reality with this level of gusto, determination and courage.
I have known Tommy Low for over 30 years now and he has proven to be a honest, hard working, straight up gentleman that "gets the job done".
He has looked after all of my real estate needs from purchases to management and has excelled in these areas.
In all of our dealings he was able to really connect with people of all races, socioeconomic backgrounds, and religions and is a man of integrity.
Tom is a great listener who is very solution oriented.His experience in the business world as well as personally has been vast and he utilizes this experience wisely in his decision making. Tom when it come to making deals in real estate and life, looks for a "win - win" solution for all parties involved.
Tom also is a very generous person who looks after the less fortunate in society giving not only of his time, but financially as well.
Tommy Low may be a little man, BUT he has a huge heart, a huge intellect and a huge work ethic. To be able to overcome a major physical handicap and go on to accomplish the success he has achieved takes courage, confidence and hard work.
These qualities are what every voter looks for in an MLA; don't miss out in having him represent you in government. He'll not let you down.


No matter how much marketers say otherwise, an attractive design is a significant influence to bounce rate and what visitors think of your site (yes, I had to emphasize this). Design is about making information more legible, and attractiveness is one factor that affects usability. Most of the following steps came from SEO Moz's list on Blog Design for Killer Infographics, but a few I added on my own.
A visually appealing presentation of information significantly reduces bounce rates.
This makes it easier for the user to find the information they are looking for.
A way for users to track where they are on the site and get back to where they were – usability.
Duh! The user must be able to explore your site easily. It does not have to be standard but it does need to be intuitive.
These help with your SEO ranking as well as add visual interest.
Most visitors have short attention spans and are very quick to jump from your site. You must catch their attention in their first few seconds on the site.
Link to your best content to help visitors find valuable information and improve its SEO importance through backlinks and increased traffic.
Search engines like new content and visitors like new content. How can you lose by doing this?
Last, but definitely not least, use relevant keyword phrases that your customers will be using to find information.


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Did Everton Make the Right Choices in January? - FOX21- Entertaining Delmarva One Click at a Time
Did Everton Make the Right Choices in January?
Tuesday, April 9, 2019 12:30 PM EDT
Originally posted on https://toffeetargets.com/did-everton-make-the-right-choices-in-january/
January has come and gone as quickly as Everton letting in a set-piece goal. There were no new signing for the Toffees in January after being linked with so many. So how did Everton really fair in the January transfer window?
Loans and Experience
There were a few youngsters that left Everton in January and rightly so. They needed experience and more importantly the minutes. Mason Holgate, Kieran Dowell, Antony Evans, and Beni Baningime were all loaned out in January.
This is a good move for the youngsters and Everton as well. It could be argued that they deserved minutes in the first team. We tend to agree, however that's not the case. Marcel Brands and Marco Silva will hope they return to the squad in the summer and push for starting spots.
Holding Firm on Gana Gueye
The main story towards the end of January was Idrissa Gana Gueye and Paris Saint-Germain. Everton stood firm and rejected bids for their star midfielder. Reportedly turning down 21.6 million in the process.
Gana handed in a transfer request as his head was turned by the French giants. Everton were not bullied though. But, should they have cashed in on their star player?
We will find out once the summer rolls around if Everton made the right decision on Gana. Will Everton receive a bid of 20 million for the 30-year-old? It's hard to see that happening. Everton should have sold Gana, started Beni, Davies or McCarthy in the short-term and reinvested that money in the summer.
No New Signings?
We were told from the beginning to not expect any new signing. Farhad Moshiri has dumped a lot of money into this squad and results have been poor. Brands was brought in the summer to fix this mess and he is going to need way more time.
Balancing the massive wage bill is a difficult task after seeing the wages some players are on. That alone should have reminded Evertonians to not expect much.
While Everton were linked with a handful of players, they made the right choice to stand pat, continue to scout and hopefully attack the market early in the summer.
Striker, Rightwing, Central Mid and Rightback should be the top priorities for Everton when summer rolls around. We can even say Centerback. There is a lot to improve still.
Everton need time. Koeman and Steve Walsh have set to club back aways. Not making signings for the sake of it is a start in the right direction.
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The 2018 TCF Style Expo in Atlanta, Georgia brought out a slew of your favorite plus positive ladies from all over the country. The weekend consisted of parties, panels, workshops, fashion shows, and more. One thing we couldn't get over was all the style inspo from the thicc girls. Click through our gallery to see some of the most fashionable moments of the weekend from your favorite curvy fashionistas.


A Chinese energy company has just finished building a massive a 250-acre solar farm in the shape of a panda. The first phase of the solar power plant was recently completed, adding 50MW (of the total 100MW) to the electricity grid in Datong, China. The panda shaped plant was proposed in May of 2016 by Panda Green Energy's largest shareholder, China Merchants New Energy. Panda Green Energy used both darker monocrystalline silicon and lighter thin film cells. This allowed the energy company to stagger the solar panels in an array that mimics the colouring and shape of a giant panda.
This is just the first of 100 panda-shaped solar plants planned across China and Asia in the coming years.
This entry was posted in NEWS and tagged Solar Energy. Bookmark the permalink.


Two overriding wireless technologies will likely power the Internet of Things (IoT), and one of those is entirely under the control of the mobile operators (MOPs).
WiFi has become the preferred wireless technology for in-home IoT applications, but for wide-area IoT device access, cellular service is really the only game in town. Satellite might be a wide-area option for some classes of applications, but it falls short in terms of low power draw and low device cost.


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HomePosts tagged 'Harry Potter'
Harry Potter and the Coefficient of Kinship
February 9, 2019 January 23, 2019 evolutiontheorist book club, Psychology and Evolution	book review, books, child abuse, children, coefficient of kinship, Dursleys, E. O. Wilson, genetic conflict, Harry Potter, Pinker, sociobiology, Trivers
Coefficient of kinship
The main character of the first 4 chapters of Harry Potter isn't Harry: it's the Dursleys:
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
The Dursleys are awful and abusive in an over-the-top, Roald Dahl way that somehow manages not to cause Harry any serious emotional problems, which even I, a hard-core hereditarian, would find improbable if Harry were a real boy. But Harry isn't the point: watching the Dursleys get their comeuppance is the point.
JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling both focused on the same group of people–common English peasants–but Tolkien's depiction of the Hobbits are much more sympathetic than Rowling's Muggles, even if they don't like adventures:
This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighborhood of The Hill for time out of mind and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.
We could wax philosophical (or political) about why Tolkien sees common folk as essentially good, despite their provinciality, and why Rowling sees them as essentially bad, for precisely the same reasons, but in the end both writers are correct, for there is good and bad in all groups.
Why are the Dursleys effective villains? Why is their buffoonish abuse believable, and why do so many people identify with young Harry? Is he not the Dursley's kin, if not their son, their nephew? Shouldn't they look out for him?
One of the great ironies of life is that the people who are closest to us are also the most likely to abuse us. Despite fears of "stranger danger" (or perhaps because of it) children are most likely to be harmed by parents, step-parents, guardians, or other close relatives/friends of the family, not strangers lurking in alleys or internet chatrooms.
The WHO reports:
…there were an estimated 57 000 deaths attributed to homicide among children under 15 years of age in 2000. Global estimates of child homicide suggest that infants and very young children are at greatest risk, with rates for the 0–4-year-old age group more than double those of 5–14-year-olds…
The risk of fatal abuse for children varies according to the income level of a country and region of the world. For children under 5 years of age living in high-income countries, the rate of homicide is 2.2 per 100 000 for boys and 1.8 per 100 000 for girls. In low- to middle-income countries the rates are 2–3 times higher – 6.1 per 100 000 for boys and 5.1 per 100 000 for girls. The highest homicide rates for children under 5 years of age are found in the WHO African Region – 17.9 per 100 000 for boys and 12.7 per 100 000 for girls.
(Aside: in every single region, baby boys were more likely to be murdered than baby girls–how's that "male privilege" for you?)
Estimates of physical abuse of children derived from population-based surveys vary considerably. A 1995 survey in the United States asked parents how they disciplined their children (12). An estimated rate of physical abuse of 49 per 1000 children was obtained from this survey when the following behaviours were included: hitting the child with an object, other than on the buttocks; kicking the child; beating the child; and threatening the child with a knife or gun. …
.In a cross-sectional survey of children in Egypt, 37% reported being beaten or tied up by their parents and 26% reported physical injuries such as fractures, loss of consciousness or permanent disability as a result of being beaten or tied up (17).
. In a recent study in the Republic of Korea, parents were questioned about their behaviour towards their children. Two-thirds of the parents reported whipping their children and 45% confirmed that they had hit, kicked or beaten them (26).
. A survey of households in Romania found that 4.6% of children reported suffering severe and frequent physical abuse, including being hit with an object, being burned or being deprived of food. Nearly half of Romanian parents admitted to beating their children ''regularly'' and 16% to beating their children with objects (34).
. In Ethiopia, 21% of urban schoolchildren and 64% of rural schoolchildren reported bruises or swellings on their bodies resulting from parental punishment (14).
Ugh. The Dursleys are looking almost decent right now.
In most ways, the Dursleys do not fit the pattern characteristic of most abuse cases–severe abuse and neglect are concentrated among drug-addicted single mothers with more children than they can feed and an unstable rotation of unrelated men in and out of the household. The Dursley's case is far more mild, but we may still ask: why would anyone mistreat their kin? Wouldn't natural selection–selfish genes and all that–select against such behavior?
There are a number of facile explanations for the Dursley's behavior. The first, suggest obliquely by Rowling, is that Mrs. Dursley was jealous of her sister, Lily, Harry's mother, for being more talented (and prettier) than she was. This is the old "they're only bullying you because they're jealous" canard, and it's usually wrong. We may discard this explanation immediately, as it is simply too big a leap from "I was jealous of my sister" to "therefore I abused her orphaned child for 11 years." Most of us endured some form of childhood hardship–including sibling rivalry–without turning into abusive assholes who lock little kids in cupboards.
The superior explanation is that there is something about Harry that they just can't stand. He's not like them. This is expressed in Harry's appearance–the Dursleys are described as tall, fat, pink skinned, and blue eyed with straight, blond hair, while Harry is described as short, skinny, pale skinned, and green-eyed with wavy, dark hair.
More importantly, Harry can do magic. The Dursley's can't.
It's never explained in the books why some people can do magic and not others, but the trait looks strongly like a genetic one–not much more complicated than blue eyes. Magic users normally give birth to magical children, and non-magic users (the term "muggle" is an ethnic slur and should be treated as such,) normally have non-magical children. Occasionally magical children are born to regular families, just as occasionally two brown-eyed parents have a blue-eyed child because both parents carried a recessive blue eyed gene that they both happened to pass on to their offspring, and occasionally magical parents have regular children, just as smart people sometimes have dumb offspring. On the whole, however, magical ability is stable enough across generations that there are whole magical families that have been around for hundreds of years and non-magical families that have done the same.
Any other factor–environmental, magical–could have been figured out by now and used to turn kids like Neville into competent wizards, so we conclude that such a factor does not exist.
Magic is a tricky thing to map, metaphorically, onto everyday existence, because nothing like it really exists in our world. We can vaguely imagine that Elsa hiding her ice powers is kind of like a gay person hiding the fact that they are gay, but being gay doesn't let you build palaces or create sentient snowmen. Likewise, the Dursely's anger at Harry being "one of them" and adamantly claiming that magic and wizardry don't exist, despite the fact that they know very well that Mrs. Dursley's sister could turn teacups into frogs, does resemble the habit of certain very conservative people to pretend that homosexuality doesn't exist, or that if their children never hear that homosexuality exists, they'll never become gay.
The other difficulty with this metaphor is that gay people, left to their own devices, don't produce children.
But putting together these two factors, we arrive at the conclusion that wizards are a distinct, mostly endogamous ethnic group that the Dursleys react to as though they were flaming homosexuals.
How many generations of endogamy would it take to produce two genetically distinct populations from one? Not many–take, for example, the Irish Travellers:
Researchers led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and the University of Edinburgh analysed genetic information from 42 people who identified as Irish Travellers.
The team compared variations in their DNA code with that of 143 European Roma, 2,232 settled Irish, 2,039 British and 6,255 European or worldwide individuals. …
They found that Travellers are of Irish ancestral origin but have significant differences in their genetic make-up compared with the settled community.
These differences have arisen because of hundreds of years of isolation combined with a decreasing Traveller population, the researchers say. …
The team estimates the group began to separate from the settled population at least 360 years ago.
That's a fair bit of separation for a mere 360 years or so–and certainly enough for your relatives to act rather funny about it if you decided to run off with Travellers and then your orphaned child turned up on their doorstep.
How old are the wizarding families? Ollivander's Fine Wands has been in business since 382 BC, and Merlin, Agrippa, and Ptolemy are mentioned as ancient Wizards, so we can probably assume a good 2,000 years of split between the two groups, with perhaps a 10% in-migration of non-magical spouses.
Harry is, based on his parents, 50% magical and 50% non-magical, though of course both Lily and Petunia Dursley probably carry some Wizard DNA.
In The Blank Slate, Pinker has some interesting observations on the subject of sociobiology:
As the notoriety of Sociobiology grew in the ensuing years, Hamilton and Trivers, who had thought up many of the ideas, also became targets of picketers… Trivers had argued that sociobiology is, if anything a force for political progress. It is rooted in the insight that organisms did not evolve to benefit their family, group, or species, because the individuals making up those groups have genetic conflicts of interest with one another and would be selected to defend those interests. This immediately subverts the comfortable belief that those in power rule for the good of all, and it throws a spotlight on hidden actors in the social world, such as female sand the younger generation.
Further in the book, Pinker continues:
Tolstoy's famous remark that happy families are all alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way is not true at the level of ultimate (evolutionary) causation. Trivers showed how the seeds of unhappiness in every family have the same underlying source. Though relatives have common interests because of their common genes, the degree of overlap is not identical within all their permutations and combinations of family members. Parents are related to all of their offspring by an equal factor, 50 percent, but each child is related to himself or herself by a factor of 100 percent. …
Parental investment is a limited resource. A day has only twenty-four hours … At one end of the lifespan, children learnt hat a mother cannot pump out an unlimited stream of milk; at the other, they learn that parents do not leave behind infinite inheritances.
To the extent that emotions among people reflect their typical genetic relatedness, Trivers argued, the members of a family should disagree on how parental investment should be divvied up.
And to the extent that one of the children in a household is actually a mixed-ethnicity nephew and no close kin at all to the father, the genetic relationship is even more distant between Harry and the Dursleys than between most children and the people raising them.
Parents should want to split their investment equitably among the children… But each child should want the parent to dole out twice as much of the investment to himself or herself as to a sibling, because children share half their genes with each full sibling but share all their genes with themselves. Given a family with two children and one pie, each child should want to split it in a ratio of two thirds to one third, while parents should want it to be split fifty fifty.
A person normally shares about 50% of their genes with their child and 25% of their genes with a niece or nephew, but we also share a certain amount of genes just by being distantly related to each other in the same species, race, or ethnic group.
Harry is, then, somewhat less genetically similar than the average nephew, so we can expect Mrs. Dursley to split any pies a bit less than 2/3s for Dudley and 1/3 for Harry, with Mr. Dursley grumbling that Harry doesn't deserve any pie at all because he's not their kid. (In a more extreme environment, if the Dursleys didn't have enough pie to go around, it would be in their interest to give all of the pie to Dudley, but the Dursleys have plenty of food and they can afford to grudgingly keep Harry alive.)
Let's check in with E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology:
Most kinds of social behavior, including perhaps all of the most complex forms, are based in one way or another on kinship. As a rule, the closer the genetic relationship of the members of a group, the more stable and intricate the social bonds of its members. …
Parent-offspring conflict and its obverse, sibling-sibling conflict, can be seen throughout the animal kingdom. Littermates or nestmates fight among themselves sometimes lethally, and fight with their mothers over access to milk, food, and care…. The conflict also plays out in the physiology of prenatal human development. Fetuses tap their mothers' bloodstreams to mine the most nutrients possible from their body, while the mother's body resists to keep it in good shape for future children. …
Trivers touted the liberatory nature of sociobiology by invoking an "underlying symmetry in our social relationships" and "submerged actors in the social world." He was referring to women, as we will see in the chapter on gender, and to children. The theory of parent-offspring conflict says that families do not contain all-powerful, all-knowing parents and their passive, grateful children. …
Sometimes families contain Dursleys and Potters.
Most profoundly, children do not allow their personalities to be shaped by their parents' nagging, blandishments, or attempts to serve as role models.
Quite lucky for Harry!
Quoting Trivers:
The offspring cannot rely on its parents for disinterested guidance. One expects the offspring to be preprogrammed to resist some parental manipulation while being open to other forms. When the parent imposes an arbitrary system of reinforcement (punishment and reward) in order to manipulate the offspring to act against its own best interests, selection will favor offspring that resist such schedules of reinforcement.
(Are mixed-race kids more likely to be abused than single-race kids? Well, they're more likely to be abused than White, Asian, or Hispanic kids, but less likely to be abused than Black or Native American children [Native American children have the highest rates of abuse]. It seems likely that the important factor here isn't degree of relatedness, but how many of your parents hail from a group with high rates of child abuse. The Dursleys are not from a group with high child abuse rates.)
Let us return to E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology:
Mammalogists have commonly dealt with conflict as if it were a nonadaptive consequence of the rupture of the parent-offspring bond. Or, in the case of macaques, it has been interpreted as a mechanism by which the female forces the offspring into independence, a step designed ultimately to benefit both generations. …
A wholly different approach to the subject has been taken by Trivers (1974). … Trivers interprets it as the outcome of natural selection operating in opposite directions on the two generations. How is it possible for a mother and her child to be in conflict and both remain adaptive? We must remember that the two share only one half their genes by common descent. There comes a time when it is more profitable for the mother to send the older juvenile on its way and to devote her efforts exclusively to the production of a new one. To the extent that the first offspring stands a chance to achieve an independent life, the mother is likely to increase (and at most, double,) her genetic representation in the next breeding generation by such an act. But the youngster cannot be expected to view the matter in this way at all. …
If the mothers inclusive fitness suffers first from the relationship, conflict will ensue.
At some point, of course, the child is grown and therefore no longer benefits from the mother's care; at this point the child and mother are no longer in conflict, but the roles may reverse as the parents become the ones in need of care.
As for humans:
Consider the offspring that behaves altruistically toward a full sibling. If it were the only active agent, its behavior would be selected when the benefit to the sibling exceeds two times the cost to itself. From the mother's point of view, however, inclusive fitness is gained however the benefit to the sibling simply exceeds the cost to the altruist. Consequently, there is likely to evolve a conflict between parents and offspring in the attitudes toward siblings: the parent will encourge more altruism than the youngster is prepared to give. The converse argument also holds: the parent will tolerate less selfishness and spite among siblings than they have a tendency to display…
Indeed, Dudley is, in his way, crueler (more likely to punch Harry) and more greedy than even his parents.
Altruistic acts toward a first cousin are ordinarily selected if the benefit to the cousin exceeds 8 times the cost to the altruist, since the coefficient of relationship of first cousins is 1/8. However, the parent is related to its nieces and nephews by r=1/4, and it should prefer to see altruistic acts by its children toward their cousins whenever the benefit-to-cost ratio exceeds 2. Parental conscientiousness will also extend to interactions with unrelated individuals. From a child's point of view, an act of selfishness or spite can provide a gain so long as its own inclusive fitness is enhanced… In human terms, the asymmetries in relationship and the differences in responses they imply will lead in evolution to an array of conflicts between parents and their children. In general, offspring will try to push their own socialization in a more egoistic fashion, while the parents will repeatedly attempt to discipline the children back to a higher level of altruism. There is a limit to the amount of altruism [healthy, normal] parents want to see; the difference is in the levels that selection causes the two generations to view as optimum.
To return to Pinker:
As if the bed weren't crowded enough, every child of a man and a woman is also the grandchild of two other men and two other women. Parents take an interest in their children's reproduction because in the long run it is their reproduction, too. Worse, the preciousness of female reproductive capacity makes it a valuable resource for the men who control her in traditional patriarchal societies, namely her father and brothers. They can trade a daughter or sister for additional wives or resources for themselves and thus they have an interest in protecting their investment by keeping her from becoming pregnant by men other than the ones they want to sell her to. It is not just the husband or boyfriend who takes a proprietary interest in a woman's sexual activity, then, but also her father and brothers. Westerners were horrified by the treatment of women under the regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan from 1995 to 2001…
[ah such an optimist time Pinker wrote in]
Like many children, Harry is rescued from a bad family situation by that most modern institution, the boarding school.
The weakening of parents' hold over their older children is also not just a recent casualty of destructive forces. It is part of a long-running expansion of freedom in the West that has granted children their always-present desire for more autonomy than parents are willing to cede. In traditional societies, children were shackled to the family's land, betrothed in arranged marriages, and under the thumb of the family patriarch. That began to change in Medieval Europe, and some historians argue it was the first steppingstone in the expansion of rights that we associate with the Enlightenment and that culminated in the abolition of feudalism and slavery. Today it is no doubt true that some children are led astray by a bad crowd or popular culture. But some children are rescued from abusive or manipulative families by peers, neighbors, and teachers. Many children have profited from laws, such as compulsory schooling and the ban on forced marriages, that may override the preferences of their parents.
The sad truth, for Harry–and many others–is that their interests and their relatives' interests are not always the same. Sometimes humans are greedy, self-centered, or just plain evil. Small children are completely dependent on their parents and other adults, unable to fend for themselves–so the death of his parents followed by abuse and neglect by his aunt and uncle constitute true betrayal.
But there is hope, even for an abused kid like Harry, because we live in a society that is much larger than families or tribal groups. We live in a place where honor killings aren't common and even kids who aren't useful to their families can find a way to be useful in the greater society. We live in a civilization.
People who Mysteriously don't seem to Know the Field they are Researching
May 14, 2018 April 20, 2018 evolutiontheorist Neuropolitics, Metapolitics	gender, Harry Potter, movies, political affiliation, sexual harassment, Slate Star Codex, survey
First we have Silver Screen Sorting: Social identity and selective exposure in popular film viewing (h/t Degen Rolf):
"In relation to the research suggesting that popular films might impact viewers' political attitudes, the increasing importance of selective exposure raises the question: are Americans engaging in political sorting in terms of which films they see?
We did find considerable evidence of sorting on popular films. Republicans were more likely to have seen American Sniper, Passion of the Christ, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldier of Benghazi, God's Not Dead, and Lone Survivor. Surprisingly, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to have seen War Dogs,
A movie that sounds exactly like it was intended for the Republican audience, how is this surprising? Even if the movie isn't actually one Republicans would like, it has effectively been marketed to them.
a dark comedic take on weapons dealers in the War on Terror.
Dude, they're Republicans, not humor-impaired. They can still laugh at human foibles in a setting they enjoy watching movies about. BTW, here's the summary for War Dogs from IMDb:
"Two friends in their early 20s (Hill and Teller) living in Miami Beach during the Iraq War exploit a little-known government initiative that allows small businesses to bid on U.S. Military contracts. Starting small, they begin raking in big money and are living the high life. But the pair gets in over their heads when they land a 300 million dollar deal to arm the Afghan Military – a deal that puts them in business with some very shady people, not the least of which turns out to be the U.S. Government. Based on true events."
Nothing here jumps out at me as "Libs are going to love this total pwnage of the government's contract-awarding system."
Anyway, back to the study:
In most cases, we found there was less sorting into movies with liberal themes than expected.
This sort of behavior might explain why conservatives (currently) understand the liberal point of view better than liberals understand conservatives'.
However, Democrats were more likely to have seen Precious, a movie that explores themes of poverty in a predominantly African American community, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I am amused that they felt compelled to explain the plot/appeal of Precious, which was released recently, promoted by Oprah, was nominated for or won tons of awards, and is famous enough that even I know the plot, but felt no need to explain The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was released back in 1975. (By the way, it's about transvestites and sexual debauchery.)
Interestingly, we also saw evidence of sorting on two movies where we did not expect it. Democrats were more likely to have seen both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Fantastic Beasts and where to Find Them.
How… how do you live in society and study whether people's movie taste sorts by political affiliation for a living and NOT NOTICE THAT LIBS LOVE HARRY POTTER?
EG, J.K. Rowling slams Donald Trump with Voldemort Diss:
J.K. Rowling took on Donald Trump with her latest tweet heard 'round the world.
After the Republican presidential candidate frontrunner said that all Muslims should be banned from entering America, Harry Potter fans began comparing Trump to Lorde Voldemort, a.k.a. he who must not be named, a.k.a. the most draconian, dastardly villain in all of literature — well at least in Harry Potter's wizarding world.
But Rowling didn't agree with the comparison. "How horrible," Rowling wrote. "Voldemort was nowhere near as bad."
J. K. Rowling herself hates Trump. Harry Potter fans hate Trump.
From The Guardian we have He who must not be named: how Harry Potter helps make sense of Trump's world:
At the worldwide Women's Marches in January, there were plenty of homemade signs that showed Princess Leia as the face of a new resistance, but there were as many Potter ones, such as "Dumbledore's army", inspirational quotes from the series and references to Hermione's role in Harry's survival. Perhaps these placards had been inspired by an outpouring of affection for the books following the US election in November, as people began to post quotes on Twitter. "Order of the Phoenix, mount up," wrote Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. There is even a Chrome extension that changes any mention of Donald Trump or his cabinet to the name of a notable Death Eater. Install it, and your browser will instantly refer to Betsy DeVos as Dolores Umbridge, Jeff Sessions as Antonin Dolohov or Rex Tillerson as Draco Malfoy.
I'm going to stop quoting here before I go off on a rant about how Harry Potter isn't actually about diversity, you idiots, it's about a genetic elite arguing within itself about whether it should completely wipe out the genetically inferior or merely avoid them at all costs. At no point does anyone suggest that "muggles" is an offensive slur and that the magically different should be allowed into Hogwarts, the magic curriculum should be eliminated because it discriminates against people born without a magical genetic advantage, and that the non-magical need to be fully integrated into Wizarding society.
Oops, there's the rant.
The question isn't "Do liberals love Harry Potter?" (Yes, they do, very loudly,) but "Why do liberals think Harry Potter promotes "liberal values" when the books are clearly reactionary meditations on noblesse oblige?"
I'll let you answer that.
The authors speculate that Fundamentalist Christians don't like Harry Potter, which is sometimes true but not the biggest factor in HP fandom.
Evidence for sorting was weak on documentaries, even political ones (eg, I own a copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth,) but that portion of the study suffered from low N because documentaries aren't very popular.
In related mysteriously not knowing the field you are studying, Slate Star Codex published the results of their survey on Sexual Harassment Levels by Field, which found that sexual harassment appears to be lower in STEM than in fields like health care or finance.
I've been saying this for YEARS, based on my own experiences in heavily male-dominated STEM fields. This is why I stand up and defend the men in my fields: they are among the best.
The why might be due to different cultures in different fields, but cultures are built by people, so the origin is ultimately in the kinds of people who go into STEM vs the kinds of people who go into retail, art, business, or law:
Retail, business, law, etc., all attract aggressive people, and aggressive people are more likely to loudly and aggressively signal sexual interests in others (whether appropriately or inappropriately.)
STEM is full of shy, polite people who worry endlessly about whether they are sexually harassing women just by thinking about them like Scott Aaronson (not to be confused with Scott Alexander,) who was so afraid he might accidentally harass a woman he actually tried to castrate himself.
Hate to say it, but many of the women in STEM just don't attract as much sexual attention as women in professions where looks are an important factor in getting hired.
Normies have stronger sex drives and higher time preferences than nerds, which leads them to have sex younger, get pregnant more often, catch more STDS, and get into more ill-thought-out sexually aggressive situations
I don't want to play into the "nerds are asexual" stereotype, because they definitely aren't, but many normies are sex-crazed maniacs.
Ultimately, is it really any surprise to people that mathematicians don't sexually harass each other very often?
To be fair to Alexander, I think, deep down inside, he must know that guys like himself aren't doing a lot of sexual harassment. But he still claims that the results were "surprising." I guess if you've never dealt with humans from outside your own field, but psychology kind of forces you to deal with different kinds of people. Back in Radicalizing the Romanceless, Alexander wrote about a details-slightly-changed-to-protect-the-innocent patient dubbed Henry:
– I had a patient, let's call him 'Henry' for reasons that are to become clear, who came to hospital after being picked up for police for beating up his fifth wife.
So I asked the obvious question: "What happened to your first four wives?"
"Oh," said the patient, "Domestic violence issues. Two of them left me. One of them I got put in jail, and she'd moved on once I got out. One I just grew tired of."
"You've beaten up all five of your wives?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yeah," he said, without sounding very apologetic.
"And why, exactly, were you beating your wife this time?" I asked.
"She was yelling at me, because I was cheating on her with one of my exes."
"With your ex-wife? One of the ones you beat up?"
"So you beat up your wife, she left you, you married someone else, and then she came back and had an affair on the side with you?" I asked him.
"Yeah," said Henry.
I wish, I wish I wish, that Henry was an isolated case. But he's interesting more for his anomalously high number of victims than for the particular pattern.
Surprising, perhaps, to people who benefit from promoting the narrative that Stem is some uniquely terrible field.
May 5, 2016 April 9, 2016 evolutiontheorist Structures and Civilization	abuse, bullying, cities, everything is awful, evil, frustrations. modern life, Harry Potter, paperworked to death, the banality of evil
A great deal of fiction–possibly the majority–is dedicated to the fantasy of having some control over your life. Superman and Batman are strong enough that they can beat up (or otherwise stop) the bad guys, and don't get sued or put in prison for their vigilante activities. Luke Skywalker gets in a little plane and shoots a laser beam into a hole and thereby brings down an entire Death Star. Voldemort gets pissed off at everyone for treating him shittily and so becomes the world's most powerful wizard and sets out to make the world burn; Harry Potter uses his own magic power to defeat evil.
One of the most horrible villains in the Harry Potter series isn't over-the top, sad-backstory Voldemort, but Dolores Umbridge–a plump Hogwartz teacher who dresses in pink, decorates with fluffy pink curtains and china plates with pictures of kittens on them, and makes Harry Potter write apologies in his own blood for, IIRC, having honestly states that Voldemort was back. She is the image of sweetness and propriety while torturing students and helping Voldemort, and there's nothing Harry and his friends can do to stop her from using the official wizarding world bureaucracy to take over his school, at least until they lure her into the forest and trick her into getting abducted by centaurs.
In real life there are many Doloreses, but no centaurs.
In real life, it is quite illegal to get in a fight (of any kind) with anyone. Even cursing at someone can be "verbal assault." The desire for revenge against those who've wronged you may be a basic human instinct (I am quite certain it is,) but revenge is illegal. Oh, yes, the state can take revenge–the state can lock people up or even put them to death–but ordinary citizens are not allowed to track down miscreants and beat the shit out of them. It is very, very illegal.
What do you do when someone wrongs you?
Here, fill out this form; talk to these people. If your case matches our criteria, something may be done–in months, or years. Here's some more paperwork.
Nope, sorry, you don't meet the criteria. There is nothing you can do.
The sheer amount of paperwork to keep track of in American society is overwhelming. I have friends who've lived in both America and China; the Chinese do not suffer under half the paperwork burden we do.
"Reducing overhead" remains one of my #1 political agenda items.
Paperwork, bureaucracy, and red tape are crushing our economy. They are probably worse than military spending, welfare, and everything else people hate that the government does combined. And they destroy people's lives by forcing them to spend their time doing fucking paperwork instead of living.
And we do paperwork because we aren't allowed to punch each other anymore.
If a mining company destroys a community by dumping poison waste into the local drinking water, the natural consequence is that the affected locals find the CEO, tie him to a chair, and drop him in the river. Today you file a class-action lawsuit and petition the local city officials to switch drinking water sources and groan in frustration as nothing happens for three decades straight.
Living in cities (as most of us do) means coming into constant contact with other people. Some of those people are nice, some are mean, and most are just irrelevant. You pass them on your way to work (or they pass you), ignore them at lunch and try not to make eye contact with them on the street.
Don't make too much noise; the neighbors might hear you.
I was just talking to someone who was vociferously complaining that their neighbors "slam their car doors" at 2 am. And what will they do? Ask their neighbors to close their doors more softly? Or call the police to report a noise complaint? Probably the latter.
Everyone has to dial down their personalities, close up, avoid the people around themselves to avoid conflicts with the hundreds (or thousands) of people they pass by every day, otherwise lawsuits or police officers get involved.
Cities are intolerable.
There is no power in real life; no one (except maybe lawyers, police officers, and some politicians,) has any power.
For all my disagreement with them, I understand where the BLM crowd and their ilk are coming from: they feel powerless. The system is against them (it's against everyone.)
Pretty much the only easy way to get power in modern society is to assemble a Twitter mob and attack someone. Maybe you can get them uninvited to a con, or kicked out of a university. Maybe you can just make them cry: power.
It's the closest we come to bloodying a bully's nose.
You might say the Twitter mob is the bully.
Yes, that's the entire point. The bully is the one with the power.
A friend of mine was abused as a child. It's powerless enough just being a child; everyone else is bigger than you. You must constantly obey others–teachers, parents, even older siblings and bigger kids on the playground. But to be beaten by your parents is another level entirely. And no one saved my friend. They grew up, broken, and devoted their life to becoming the biggest, baddest, meanest person around so they wouldn't be hurt again.
Of course, then the police got them.
Even when something doesn't involve conflict–just a simple change that would benefit everyone involved–it's virtually impossible to get anything done. Take milk. Pediatricians overwhelmingly agree that children should drink regular–4%, full-fat, whole–milk, not low-fat or fat-free milk. The low fat milks are specialty diet products for people who are on a diet, and pediatricians don't advise putting your kid on a diet unless they truly need to be on one, because calorie restriction can be really unhealthy when your body is supposed to be growing. Despite this, my kids' school only serves low-fat and fat free milk, and since no one who has the actual power to make purchasing decisions gives a shit that this is actually unhealthy for kids, only an insane amount of protesting on my part (say, convincing a few hundred parents to sign a petition to change the milk) could get them to change the milk to the variety it is supposed to be.
And this is accompanied by the infuriating feeling that people are only pretending to listen, because they never actually change anything.
So the best we can do is put on a movie or pic up a book and read about someone else–the girl who wins the super handsome hunk, the hero who defeats the evil bad guy–who gets to be powerful and control their life.


text:
package golaunch

import (
	"fmt"
	"runtime"

	"github.com/go-ble/ble"
)

// NewDefaultDevice is platform specific, see ble documentation for details.
func NewDefaultDevice() (d ble.Device, err error) {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("ble not supported on %s", runtime.GOOS)
}


text:
Lay Off Joe
The Connecticut senator has been strafed by the blogosphere for his health-care moves. Tunku Varadarajan on how Lieberman actually saved Obamacare.
Tunku Varadarajan
Updated 07.14.17 8:36PM ET / Published 12.16.09 10:44AM ET
Once upon a time in a land of obscene wealth, where—shocking to behold—dwelt millions of uninsured men, women and angelic children, there lived an ornery old man, a slippery turncoat, a vile apostate, an immoral pawn of the insurance industry, called Joseph I. Lieberman. He hated health-care reform so much—my, how he hated it!—that each time a compromise was reached that would allow the passage of a momentous, mind-blowingly cool health-care bill, he stomped his foot like some squalid little Rumpelstiltskin and said "NO!"
For his role in the frustration of Obamacare, this Lieberman became the object of high-octane contempt. One after another, apoplectic members of the Health Care Liberation Front stepped forward to denounce him. Ezra Klein, a precocious and excitable blogger, wrote this of Lieberman: "[He] seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score." Our own Lee Siegel, of The Daily Beast, called on Lieberman to " start acting Jewish", making the theologically audacious argument that no true Jew could possibly oppose health-care reform.
Lieberman has become the embodiment of the moral middle—socially liberal and fiscally conservative—and I, for one, accept his word that he is acting in accord with his political conscience in refusing to join the health-care herd.
• Lee Siegel: Joe, Start Acting Jewish! And there were others who came forth with their anathema. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger at The Atlantic, likened Lieberman to "a divorced Dad refusing to pay for private school, in part, because it might please his ex-wife." In The New York Times, the peerlessly empathetic Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed piece about a man who might die without adequate health care and tied Lieberman, by implication, to a possible thwarting of a health-care bill that would save this man's life. And today, in an editorial, the Times pilloried him as " The Million-Dollar Man", asserting that the "hypocritical" Lieberman was only doing the bidding of an insurance industry to which he was beholden—having taken "more than $1 million from the industry over his Senate career." (Here, I can't resist two questions: Why are the editorials of the Times, the world's most influential newspaper, always picayune, never magisterial? And how much money has Harry Reid taken from trial lawyers over the course of his Senate career? Click here.
In light of all this hot air and hysteria, I write today in defense of Joe Lieberman. Some readers of the Beast who also read The Wall Street Journal may recall that I have not always written kindly of the man. In fact, I once wrote of him most unkindly, in a piece titled " I Can't Stand Lieberman." But that was in the year 2000; times, and Lieberman himself, have changed. And so has my opinion. Witness his statement yesterday, in the face of charges that he had flip-flopped on the Medicare buy-in: "the party platform was to suggest one way to reform health care was to allow 55 to 65 year olds to buy into Medicare. That's a very stressed age group when you don't have insurance. But a lot of things have changed in nine years." The U.S. government, he said, was then running a surplus, not a deficit, and Medicare wasn't on the verge of imminent bankruptcy. Lieberman evolves: the very definition of intelligent life on the planet.
First, a little recap: Lieberman was jettisoned by the liberal establishment in favor of Ned Lamont in 2006 because he wouldn't renounce a war that most of them had also voted for, even though he's mostly a conventional Democrat on domestic and economic issues. Driven by the juice-box blogosphere, the establishment pursued a vendetta against him—even after he won reelection on his own heterodox platform—because he didn't suddenly adopt their national-security views. And they continued the vendetta right until the moment when—as it turned out—they needed his vote for the vast, permanent, and destructive entitlement expansion that is health-care reform. Uh-oh.
Payback is a bitch, and Lieberman is obviously enjoying a small measure of revenge. How could he not?
Why is Lieberman doing this? From his perspective as a senator from Connecticut, Lieberman has to know that the current health-care legislation does not create a viable environment for any of the major health-care carriers within his state. Competition by your regulator does not yield competition: It yields regulation, and results in the elimination of the private parties who do not get the subsidy from the state, and who suffer from its restrictions. But more to the point, Lieberman has only insisted on stripping out the most radical elements from a deeply radical bill, never challenging its fundamental policy priorities. From that Democratic perspective, I think Lieberman actually saved Obamacare at its moment of greatest weakness. If he hadn't, by his intransigence, given a heat shield to the equally nervous Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, Jim Webb, and Ben Nelson—and the leadership hadn't acceded to his demands, giving Obamacare a "moderate" gloss—one would have seen an exodus of crucial votes this week, instead of the fait accompli that Obamacare has now become.
There's a bigger, nonconformist point here as well. Why shouldn't one senator block the bill, or seek to change it? Why is that in any way an outrage? Lieberman has become the embodiment of the moral middle—socially liberal and fiscally conservative—and I, for one, accept his word that he is acting in accord with his political conscience in refusing to join the health-care herd.
That said, and regardless of what one thinks of the motives behind his actions, Lieberman has performed a great public service by exposing the zealous, ugly side of the left, which can't believe that someone could oppose this project without nefarious motives. So a pack has formed around Lieberman. Elias Canetti, in his Crowds and Power, called it a "hunting pack," one formed "wherever the object of the pack is an animal… too dangerous to be captured by one man alone." The hunting pack "moves with all its force toward a living object which it wants to kill in order subsequently to incorporate it."
The pack is hunting Joe Lieberman. Decent Americans should stand by their man.
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU's Stern Business School. (Follow him on Twitter here.)