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Liberating Wings
Liberating the joy within by liberating the birds without
Life of the Skies
Étienne-Jules Marey around 1882
Is there a bird inside of you? Yearning for freedom, for meaning? DH Lawrence wrote, "Birds are the life of the skies, and when they fly – they reveal the thoughts of the skies".
There's more to bird watching than meets the eyes. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but now and then the choir likes to hear a song it knows.
Do you know the song of a bird? Well then, maybe a story like this has happened to you.
A Buddhist master is walking with the disciple and accuses the master of hiding the secret of Zen from him.
Just then a bird called from the riverside.
The master asked, do you hear the bird.
Yes said the disciple.
Well then you know I have hidden nothing from you.
And then he was enlightened.
In watching birds not just a lightening of the spirit is possible, but something fiercer and not all that comfortable to behold. For when birds tell us of meaning, they tell us not just of life, but also of death. And it's in that crucible held by feathered wings that we can be held in both beauty and tragedy, and make meaning of our lives.
Jonathan Rose, author of the ministers' book of the month, The Life of the Skies – Birding at the End of Nature, says the reason why there are some 50 million bird watchers in this country is because birds are the last remaining wild animals that are abundantly visible to us. They are the windows into all of wild nature, our own wild nature as well.
Birds link us back in time to evolution, where creative life constantly arises out of death. Each year it's increasingly clearer that birds evolved from dinosaurs. If the movie Jurassic Park were made today, Tyrannosaurus Rex and all the velociraptors would have feathers. It'd be great to see such a dinosaur, but I'm glad it's a goldfinch that comes to the feeders and not a T.Rex.
Photo by Aarong Gustafason
So we lost dinosaurs along the way for the dynamite soaring birds of today, and now we are losing them too, at our own hands, and it's not clear what new life might arise. It's hard as a bird watcher to not be aware of their dwindling numbers, and to despair. How amazing that there are 5,000 Sandhill cranes, but imagine 50,000 here in Florida, hundreds of thousands of Carolina Parakeets, and 2 billion Passenger Pigeons in the U.S. The Parakeet and Pigeon went extinct for many reasons, and tragically the last birds succumbed to collectors. The only nest of Carolina Parakeet eggs, long dead, is housed here at the Florida Museum of Natural History. They were turned in by a poacher who would not reveal the location of this last nest until long after the parents died, and subsequently the entire species.
In our primate minds, the urge to kill and the urge to conserve are so closely linked, death never far from life, as experienced so acutely with a flying bird of life easily dead due to the fragility of their hollow bones, air sacs, and paper thin feathers. John James Audubon saw a monkey kill his parrot. He mused that it is this image that caused him to study and paint birds with pleasure, and to do so he killed thousands of birds.
The wild primate lives inside of us all. We hunt as we look for birds through our binoculars, and we are haunted by a lifestyle that leaves ¼ of Florida's birds in danger.
In the early 20th Century, President Teddy Roosevelt heard reports about plume hunters wiping out bird populations in Florida, and made Pelican Island the first time the federal government set aside land for the sake of wildlife. Roosevelt was a great conservationist, not "in spite of the fact that he was a hunter, but because he was one. He never discounted the human urge to destroy, since he indulged in that urge so zealously himself. Rather accepting it as a given of human nature, he allowed that knowledge to inform his understanding of the necessity of check and balances of human rapacity." (Jonathan Rosen).
Knowing who we are and what we might do based on our understanding of our place in communities of mixed species are key religious questions. Birds help us know of our sacred reality, our divine possibility, and how we must arise out of the ashes of our burning human greed.
Harold Bloom who studied American Religious Poetry found in Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Adams, Frost, and Dickinson the image that the risen Jesus is in each of us – that each of us as individual can bring salvation to this world through the blessing of our very being. John James Audubon paintings captured this in his anthropomorphized birds. They don't look like birds as much as they look like humans with feathers. He melds birds with humans – wild nature, beauty without end, amen.
Walt Whitman perhaps best portrayed nature and birds as lived religion. As a boy Whitman listened to a pair of mockingbirds one summer. Then one of the pair died, and the remaining bird sang throughout the night. The young Whitman went out into the night to listen to this song, and was changed forever. Later he said, "Now in a moment I know what I am for."
He wrote about this episode in his famous poem, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. "It's fusion of the human and the animal, and in its depiction of an entire country through animal symbols is a kind of poetic extension of Audubon's paintings" (Rosen, pg. 59).
Emerson too melds human experience with birds. Drawn to Sufism, Emerson writes of the Conference of the Birds, one of the most central of all Sufi texts. In this text, birds undertake a spiritual journey and show us the way of Emerson's Transcendentalism, a kind of homegrown American Sufism. We are the image of God, and divinity reflects from our souls ever more brightly as we work to polish our inner mirror.
Colleague to Emerson, Emily Dickinson compared birding to church, and preferred birding. It's a tough call. The point is birds and church-like activities are just some of the ways to grow more connected, more aware, and more whole, which is the eternal light ever shining in the darkness.
Robert Frost wrote in the 20th century, a time of darkness, death and extinction. His poem, The Ovenbird poses this: The question that he (the bird) frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.
What are we to make of our diminishing lives through age, illness, death, and the loss of biodiversity? Hope isn't the thing with feathers – it's us. We are the ones who can learn to know ourselves and the world around us, and take intentional steps forward into a future of abundant life.
In the U.S. there is a unique chance to know who we are through birds and to respond accordingly because of our long history with birds and nature religion. We're the Republic of Feathers. We could also probably call our congregation the Unitarian Universalist Feathership of Gainesville because so much of our country's nature/bird traditions come from those with UU ties. Whitman, Dickinson, Thoreau, and Frost had strong Unitarian Universalist connections. Unitarians clearly claim as their own Emerson, the two Adam Presidents and Thomas Jefferson who kept a pet mockingbird in the White House Study.
So here we descendants are today, helping one another face the darkness around us and in us, seeking to free ourselves from senseless suffering through joy. Birding is but one way to take up an intentional practice that asks us to look within at our inner demons and look outward in acknowledgement that though we may be alone or feel it, we are interconnected to all of life.
Thoreau, the patron saint of backyard birders, exhibited the paradox of birding and our kind by loving isolation and craving connection. He wrote:
Each new year is a surprise to us.
We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again, it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous sate of existence.
The voice of nature is always encouraging.
In a bird we meld the past with the dream of the future.
Birding is the synthesis of individuals and communities, of art and science, and of secularism and religion. Watching birds allows us to live in a symbolic world that is also scientific. We do not lose our rational mind, but find our wondrous mind in seeing wonder around us. Birding perhaps seems such a small thing to do, but small gestures can save the world, as can small groups upon wooded or sandy trail. For it is there on the path where beauty is all around us, as is death, that we can let loose our joy. Joy does not lead us to "escape the world, but to fly free in it, to embrace it with all its suffering and all its wonder and creative powers." (David Spangler).
It's not an easy path. In the middle of preparing this sermon yesterday I went for a short walk to get my mail. There flew across me a Cooper's hawk carrying a red-bellied woodpecker screaming it's final song. The hawk could barely fly so burdened was it with the crying pitiful bird. I wanted to run after it and tear the beautiful dying thing from its talons, and yet was also mesmerized by the beauty of the successful hunt. In me was a turning of the gut, a heart-wrenching glimpse of reality where all moments consist of inseparable life and death. In that one moment, I knew what I am for.
We all are burdened with dying things. For a good part of my life I have been a bird veterinarian and I know the stark truth that that the desire to have bird beauty in our homes is killing off the wild birds, and causing much suffering to those held captive. I've handled Spix Macaws, which are now extinct in the wild, due largely to collectors who desired these startlingly blue beings. In my career as a bird veterinarian, I worked for 3 of the four largest bird collections in the world. I did this so I could be close to beauty and hence I captured my joy, binding the world to my desires with resulting loss and suffering. I am the monkey with parrot blood on her hands, the hawk with a dying bird in its talons, the dove with a rising spirit of joy that cannot be caged.
In the movie The Thin Red Line based on John James novel the hero says, "One man looks at a dying bird and sees nothing but unanswerable pain, and another looks at the same bird and feels the glory, feels something smiling through it."
Before Christmas I was in Puerto Rico where I reunited with the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Project. Once there was nearly a million of this parrot species on the island and by the 1970s, only 15. Two weeks ago there were 40 in the wild and I witnessed 20 more captive raised birds released into the wild, increasing their numbers by 50%. To see those birds fly free, prone yes to hawks and the ravaging reaches of humankind, death ever before them, creates a smile that did not end that day and I believe echoes the eternal smile in each of us that is born in each sunrise.
I wish I knew how to live more constantly like that, to free and feed the bird within and the bird without.
Do you know how?
Please let me know. Let us share this life of the skies together.
LoraKim
Jul 31, 2009 7:25:50 PM | Bird and People, Conservation, Puerto Rico, Religion, Spirituality
A Spiritual Practice of Backyard Birding I have a daily spiritual practice that includes sitting on my back porch in silence, pondering the lives of birds while also keeping my eyes roaming through the multi-layered habitat of my backyard. There daily dramas play out among the...
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LoraKim Joyner
Unitarian Universalist minister, avian veterinarian, vegetarian.
Twitter | amoloros@juno.com
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Q: WP Rest API V2 CORS error preflight response I'm trying to develop a web app with AngularJS that's managed with WordPress. I've installed WP and the WP Rest API V2 plugin. I want to get my response with Angular's $http and work with the returned data.
I have my factory that looks like this:
(function() {
    'use strict';

    /**
     * @ngdoc function
     * @name app.service:prayersService
     * @description
     * # prayersService
     * Service of the app
     */

    angular
        .module('prayers')
        .factory('PrayersService', Prayers);
        // Inject your dependencies as .$inject = ['$http', 'someSevide'];
        // function Name ($http, someSevide) {...}

        Prayers.$inject = ['$q', '$http'];

        function Prayers ($q, $http) {

            return{
                get: function(){
                    return $http.get('https://drummerboyhosting.com/sandbox/rosary/wp-json/wp/v2/rosary_prayers/')
                }
            }

        }

})();

So when I visit my site and try to log the results on my localhost I get this error:
XMLHttpRequest cannot load https://drummerboyhosting.com/sandbox/rosary/wp-json/wp/v2/rosary_prayers/. Request header field X-Requested-With is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Headers in preflight response.

A: I'd recommend you to Allow all cross-origin requests to your WordPress site's REST API. I wrote a plugin for just that.

A: according to "Ahmad Awais":
// Hook.
add_action( 'rest_api_init', 'wp_rest_allow_all_cors', 15 );

/**
 * Allow all CORS.
 *
 * @since 1.0.0
 */
function wp_rest_allow_all_cors() {
    // Remove the default filter.
    remove_filter( 'rest_pre_serve_request', 'rest_send_cors_headers' );

    // Add a Custom filter.
    add_filter( 'rest_pre_serve_request', function( $value ) {
        header( 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *' );
        header( 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET, OPTIONS, PUT, DELETE' );
        header( 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true' );
        header( 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *' );
        return $value;
    });
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Light usually scatters in all directions; but when it's reflected from flat surfaces, it tends to become polarized, meaning it travels in a more uniform (usually horizontal) direction. This creates an annoying and sometimes dangerous intensity of reflected light that causes glare and reduces visibility.
Polarized lenses are popular amongst boaters, fisherman, skiers, bikers, golfers and joggers since all of these activities require the elimination of glare for optimum safety and performance.
Polarized sunglasses can be helpful for driving, too, because they reduce glare-causing reflections from flat surfaces, such as the hood of the car or the road's surface.
Some light-sensitivepeople, including post-cataract surgery patients and those continually exposed to bright light through windows, may also choose to wear polarized sunglasses indoors.
Although polarized sunglasses improve comfort and visibility, you will encounter some instances when these lenses may not be advisable. One example is downhill skiing, where you don't want to block light reflecting off icy patches because this alerts skiers to hazards they are approaching.
Boaters and pilots also have reported similar problems when viewing LCD displays on instrument panels, which can be a crucial issue when it comes to making split-second decisions based strictly on information displayed on a panel.


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You are browsing: All Lights In The Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe
Lights In The Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe (Paperback)
Daniel Trilling
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Shortlisted for the Stanford Travel Book of the Year
'This powerful study looks behind the statistics and political slogans to reveal the human face of the refugee crisis.' Guardian
A mother who puts her children into a refrigerated lorry and asks `what else could I do?' A runaway teenager who comes of age on the streets and in abandoned buildings. A student who leaves his war-ravaged country behind because he doesn't want to kill. Each of the thousands of people who come to Europe in search of asylum every year brings a unique story with them. But their stories don't end there.
In Lights in the Distance, acclaimed journalist Daniel Trilling draws on years of reporting to build a portrait of the refugee crisis, seen through the eyes of the people who experienced it first-hand. As the European Union has grown, so has a tangled and often violent system designed to filter out unwanted migrants - one that extends from the border into cities. Most of us became aware of the crisis when it apparently reached its peak in 2015, but the roots go much deeper. Visiting camps and hostels, sneaking into detention centres and delving into his own family's history of displacement, Trilling weaves together the stories of people he met and followed from country to country. In doing so, he shows that the terms commonly used to define them - refugee or economic migrant, legal or illegal, deserving or undeserving - fall woefully short of capturing the complex realities.
The founding myth of the EU is that it exists to ensure the horrors of the twentieth century are never repeated. Now, as it comes to terms with its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, the 'European values' of freedom, tolerance and respect for human rights are being put to the test. Lights in the Distance is a uniquely powerful and illuminating exploration of the nature and human dimensions of the crisis.
Essays & Writing Essays & Journalism Reportage & collected journalismHistory & Politics Politics & government International relations International institutionsPhilosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences Social issues & processes GlobalizationPhilosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences Social issues & processes Migration, immigration & emigration Publisher: Pan Macmillan Publication Date: 24/01/2019 ISBN-13: 9781509815630 Details: Type: Paperback Format: Books
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Daniel Trilling is the editor of New Humanist magazine and has reported extensively on refugees in Europe. His work has been published in the London Review of Books, Guardian, New York Times and others, and won a 2017 Migration Media Award. His first book, Bloody Nasty People: the Rise of Britain's Far Right, was longlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize. He lives in London. Praise for Bloody Nasty People: 'With the threat posed by prejudice and bigotry ever greater at a time of economic crisis, Trilling's voice must be heard.' Owen Jones 'An indispensable guide to contemporary far-right British politics.' Will Self, Guardian 'A cracking book that respectfully weaves together testimonies and stories - of people and places - with national political formations, examining them alongside the deeper economic and cultural questions posed by globalisation.' Jon Cruddas, New Statesman 'A compelling narrative . . . Trilling challenges much conventional wisdom.' David Edgar, Guardian
More books by Daniel Trilling
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Contested World Orders: Rising ...
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Cydia, the App Store for jailbroken iDevices has never been the quickest app out there, with long delays in pulling data from its servers. Now though, developer Jay 'Saurik' Freeman has given the app a speed boost.
@saurik: Just switched Cydia's www over to the new "CDN->ELB" stack I've been building: requests to / from my apartment are down from 0.45s to 0.25s!
In a tweet today, Freeman told us that he has switched Cydia's servers to a new CDN-ELB stack, improving request times from 0.45s to 0.25s. He also released three graphs showing the improved Cydia responsiveness over the space of three months.


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Shireen has assisted me greatly in thinking through all the relevant aspects that would contribute to sustainability of my organisation. She has helped me refine our strategy and also assisted with some much-needed fundraising support.


text:
The jihad goes on 2
This post follows on from How goes the jihad?, posted four days ago after two lethal bombs were exploded near the finishing line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people – one of them Martin Richard, aged 8 – and wounding about 180 others, crippling some for life by blowing off their limbs. We quoted a short article we had first posted seventeen months earlier, to focus attention on jihad, because we suspected that the Boston bombing was a continuation of Islam's perpetual "holy war". We didn't mention the bombing. We were waiting to know who the Boston bombers were.
Now we know. We are not surprised. They were Muslims. A pair of Muslim brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were zealously fighting the jihad, as their religion commands them to do.
The Left however will remain utterly at a loss to imagine what their motive could possible be. Typically Politico, for instance, reporting who the bombers were and many things about them, including their religion, comments: "It remains unclear at this time what the motive was behind the Boston Marathon bombing."
In another piece on the subject, Politico asks and comments:
Why would Chechen refugees, who've been locked for nearly two decades in a bitter, violent conflict against the Russian government, harbor such anger against the United States that they'd want to carry out a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon?" Politico asks.
"The answer is far from obvious," it concludes.
Which prompts Daniel Greenfield to point out rightly at Front Page:
Those few lines sum up the whole problem with our war on terror. A Muslim terrorist attack by Muslim terrorists? Why? The political establishment has spent decades choosing to ignore the basic facts. Then each time it's baffled when the obvious happens.
Greenfield lists a few of the facts about one of these Muslim terrorists:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's YouTube channel had a playlist titled "Islam" and another playlist titled "Terrorists". That should be obvious enough even for Politico.
His last subscription was to a channel "Allah is the One." His Islam playlist includes "The Emergence of Prophecy: The Black Flags From Khorasan", a Jihadi video that refers to those black flags you see Salafists, including Al Qaeda, waving around.
The video deals with a key part of jihadist mythology: That one of the most significant battles fought against the "infidels" will take place in the Khorasan, a geographic area that includes parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
And where the final battle, the Muslim Eschaton, will take place according to Islamic prophecy.
But the Left, which includes the mainstream media, will ignore all this, because –
Muslim terrorists are non-persons. The political establishment pretends they don't exist. And then they kill a bunch of people and the media has to explain why the people they can't see and who they don't believe exist somehow carried out an atrocity for no reason at all.
And Greenfield concludes with a quotation from the Muslim prophet – that also the Left will ignore:
"I have been made victorious through terror" Mohammed said.
NBC News can find out nothing bad about the brothers, and gathers glowing testimonials for them:
One became an American citizen last year on Sept. 11. The other was a boxer who once said: "I like the USA." …
The suspect at large early Friday was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, born in Kyrgyzstan, who became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11, 2012 … He had a Massachusetts driver's license and living in the Boston suburb of Cambridge. …
His father, speaking from Russia, told The Associated Press that he was "a true angel" with an interest in medicine. He was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the school said. He was awarded a $2,500 city scholarship toward college two years ago. …
A high school friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told NBC News that he had lots of friends … He was a nice guy. He was shy … As we knew him, he was funny."
[Another admirer said he was] "just a light, airy, curly-haired kid. I can't tell you enough what a beautiful young man this was," she said.
The other brother, killed in a firefight with law enforcement, was identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, born in Russia. He became a legal permanent resident in 2007 …
Tamerlan Tsarnaev studied at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and wanted to become an engineer, according to a profile that appeared in a Boston University magazine in 2010. He said that he hoped to become an American citizen and one day join the U.S. Olympic boxing team. …He also said that he was a Muslim who did not smoke or drink. …
Tamerlan Tsarnaev boxed in a 2004 tournament as part of a program called Golden Gloves, according to The Lowell Sun newspaper. He told the newspaper then: "I like the USA."
He said that his first love was music, and that he played the piano and violin.
"America has a lot of jobs," he said. "That's something Russia doesn't have. You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work."
His former wrestling coach … described him to NBC News as quiet and courteous …
The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that he had seen on television that his son was killed. "They were set up!" he exclaimed …
Both men were believed to have entered the country with their family in 2002 or 2003, when the family sought asylum.
Most of the Muslims of Chechnya are Sufis. The Sufis are the Gnostics of Islam. (Dervishes – those mystics who ritually whirl wearing tall hats – belong to the Sufi order.) By reputation they form an especially peaceful branch of that reputedly peaceful religion.
Most, or more probably all, of the terrorists who seized a school at Beslan and killed hundreds of small children (southern Russia, September 1-3, 2004) were Chechen Sufi Muslims.
Here's a quotation from the Washington Post describing what they did:
Hundreds of children, their parents and teachers died in the bloody culmination of a 52-hour siege that began when heavily armed Muslim guerrillas [Washpo for "terrorists"] stormed their school Wednesday and ended in an hours-long battle with Russian troops Friday.
The battered, burned and scorched survivors of Beslan's School No. 1, many of them half-naked children, filled the region's hospitals as troops continued to fight through the afternoon with guerrillas [Muslim terrorists] holed up inside the school. …
Between 500 and 700 injured former hostages were hospitalized Friday, more than 300 of them children … Hundreds were still unaccounted for … Officials acknowledged that the death toll would exceed 250.
The worst carnage, according to escaped hostages and rescuers, came at the start of the pitched battle just after 1 p.m. Friday, when the [Muslim terrorists] exploded the bombs they had rigged inside the school's cavernous gym. The children had been held there without food or medicine, and scores perished [were crushed to death] when the gym's roof fell on them. …
The siege of School No. 1, attended by 6- to 16-year-olds, began just after 9 a.m. Wednesday, when the [Muslim terrorists] blasted their way into the building at the end of the opening-day assembly. … They … demonstrated their seriousness by mining the school with explosives and threatening to blow it up if Russian forces moved in on them.
For 52 hours, that didn't happen. Then came what looked to be progress midday Friday, when the hostage takers agreed to allow Russians to collect several bodies … of adults killed in the initial shootout. At 1 p.m., four doctors from the Emergency Situations Ministry arrived to do so.
Instead, a battle erupted.
First, two powerful explosions from inside the building rocked Beslan. Soon, scores of hostages started fleeing, some of them dodging gunfire from the guerrillas. "When the children ran, they began to shoot them in their backs," said [a] Putin aide …
"Bandits [Muslim terrorists] opened fire on the escaping children and adults," said [the] regional head of the Federal Security Service. "To save their lives, we retaliated." …
After initial confusion, the Russian attack began. Helicopters roared overhead, special forces stormed the building, tanks swerved into position. Many of Beslan's anxious fathers also ran toward the school, some armed, some not – intent only on rescuing their children.
Amidst the shooting, many young hostages, most of them barefoot and almost naked after three days in the withering heat of their gym-turned-prison, ran or limped or were carried to safety. Those still standing gulped bottles of water handed to them by rescue workers. "They're killing us," a young girl on a stretcher told a police officer. "They're exploding everything."
Many of the injured were bloodied and burned and covered in dirt. A man came out carrying a naked girl, her hair matted, her body streaked with shrapnel cuts, her head lolled back. He laid her on the ground and tried to revive her. When she didn't respond, he started to cry.
The rescue operation was interrupted by a new round of shooting, right near the line of makeshift ambulances. Rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire from automatic rifles sent the volunteers retreating a block farther from the school, and it was there that four children's corpses soon appeared, laid out under bloodstained white sheets. Several parents came up and looked under the sheets, searching. Then an old woman in a torn flowered dress was brought out on a stretcher, also dead, and rolled onto the grass next to the four children. …
Across the railroad tracks that divide Beslan, the scene at the hospital was bedlam. The courtyard was crowded with rank upon rank of stretchers with injured and dazed children. Hundreds of relatives clamored to inspect the handwritten lists of the wounded.
Through it all, the battle with the remaining [Muslim terrorists] continued. Some apparently remained inside the school well into the evening … Others escaped and fought elsewhere in Beslan with Russian troops. As night fell, the school's gym was still smoldering, its massive windows blown out. The walls inside were pocked with bullet holes and echoed with periodic gunfire and explosions. …
Russian officials have long claimed that Chechen rebels were connected to international Islamic fighters [terrorists], including al Qaeda. Late Friday, they announced that 10 of the dead guerrillas in the school siege were Arabs, and state television showed video from inside the building showing several dead fighters who appeared to be foreign.
And again we pick information and apt comment from an article by Daniel Greenfield, titled Beslan Comes to America:
There has been too much sympathy in some circles for Chechen terrorists. After the Beslan Massacre, Time Magazine asked, "Does Russia Share Blame for Beslan?" The London Times reported that the mastermind of the massacre was "is in a state of shock over what happened, but blames the Russians."
This was Beslan.
Survivors told how screaming teenage girls were dragged into rooms adjoining the gymnasium where they were being held and raped by their Chechen captors who chillingly made a video film of their appalling exploits. They said children were forced to drink their own urine and eat the petals off the flowers they had brought their teachers after nearly three days without food or water in the stifling hot gym.
These are the types of savage monsters who could place a bomb next to an 8-year-old boy.
Beslan has come to America and it should be a wake up call. There should be no more sympathy for Chechen terrorists. Or for that matter any Muslim terrorists.
And we need to stop bringing refugees from Muslim conflicts to America. That goes for Chechens, Afghans, Syrians and all the rest. All we're doing is importing bloody wars from around the world here.
Events like the Marathon Massacre are inevitable if we keep maintaining an immigration policy that invites the people responsible for atrocities such as Beslan to repeat them in this country.
The jihad goes on.
Posted under Commentary, Islam, jihad, Muslims, Russia, Terrorism, United States, War by Jillian Becker on Friday, April 19, 2013
Tagged with Anzor Tsarnaev, Beslan, Daniel Greenfield, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Martin Richard, Sufi Muslim terrorists attack school at Beslan, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, The Beslan school massacre, the Boston Marathon bombs


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Keep up with all things red and white and sign up to Sunderland AFC's club mailing list.
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This month I managed to read 10 novels. What an appalling month. I think reading almost 400 books for Children's Book Council, then however many books for Aurealis, reviewing, and otherwise has finally burnt me out. I have dozens of books I really do want to read – but I try and I fall asleep, or just can't focus.
Did I mention I've been diagnosed with Ross River again? The last few weeks were filled with blood tests and doctors visits, as well as being enrolled in a fairly impressive leaders course through work that's cost my department thousands for me to attend. So that's taken a lot of focus also.
But anyway. I'll catch up to my goodreads challenge eventually. Trying not to worry. This month became an attempt to get reviewing done before I go away in April.
And now, onto the novels read in March!
Firefight by Brandon Sanderson is a review book I had hanging around for ages. For some reason I never manage to review this series in a timely manner, but once I get into it, I can't put it down! You can read my review of it here. I really like the direction this one is going in, and I'm pretty eager for the next book. Third is the charm, right? Hopefully I'll dive right in!
A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab is a book I've been eagerly anticipating for ages. I love Schwab's work, and when this started to get pushed and pushed by media and the publisher I began to get a little worried. Sometimes I've noted that books pushed to a certain level by publishers aren't always my cuppa tea.
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black is a book I read while trying to get back into a bookclub I love. Sadly, it didn't go too well as I'm the odd one out – I really didn't get into this book at all. I think I was just too anxious to get caught up in my reading in general that I just couldn't give this the attention it deserved and I just couldn't get into the rhythm of the book. A shame, as Black used to be one of my favourite authors.
Insert Title Here edited by Tehani Wessely is the latest anthology out from FableCroft Publishing, where I intern. While I proof-read, I review, so here's a full review short by short, which you can read in full here. And then go out and buy it! It's the darkest anthology they've done yet, and I loved every bit of it. If I had to recommend any anthologies from FableCroft, it would be Phantazein or Insert Title Here, and Cranky Ladies of History for those who don't think they love spec fic – it's an awesome anthology for paving the way in gently with some historical fiction.
Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik is the second in a series Alex got me and Tehani into – however Tehani's read all in the series within a matter of days (it seems, at least) and here I am still chugging along slowly. I love the series though – and this book certainly took us in a direction I wasn't quite expecting.
Corsair by James Cambias was a 100 page preview that I wrote a little about here.
Every Word by Ellie Marney is my review here. I read the first book for Children's Book Council judging, received the third to review and requested the second also so I could read the series properly. I'm glad I did, as I loved this book. The action was excellent, and I really loved how the characters grew and took off in this piece. I do love London which is probably what swayed me also.
Water So Deep by Nichole Giles is quite a fun book, another I've reviewed because why not. You can read my review here. Though not immediately apparent, this seems to actually be a series. Not sure when the next one is out?
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart is another review book – you can read my review here. This was a book I devoured in a few hours and really, really enjoyed. This had such a complex yet simple, very interesting protagonist which made it impossible to put down. I can't say I really enjoyed the ending – Lockhart's endings always catch me by surprise somewhat, but it was still dang worth the read.
April is going to be taken by up two weeks of travel. I'm off to Perth, then Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Swancon (also the Natcon) first, then the Aurealis Awards night, with visiting almost every single friend I have throughout Australia so I highly doubt I'll get much reading done surprisingly. I used to read so much on planes and now it's all about comedy audios and podcasts as I try to doze.


Goals of Aesopology are to increase awareness, provide music, plays and stories to assist teachers and classrooms.
To develop a child's reading literacy through storytelling, music, and drama.
To promote a high interest for books using classic Aesop's fables in an interactive way.
To provide original, live music written to complement the Aesop's Fables. Interesting enough for adults to enjoy and easy enough for children to sing.
To provide classroom dramatization of Aesop's Fables, that are easy to direct, fun for the student actors and enjoyable for teachers, parents and staff.
To provide high quality audio recordings of Aesop's Fables with narration and songs.
To provide dramatic performances by The Fabulists, who tell the classic Aesop's fables in an interactive way with puppets, music and singing.
To provide resources for elementary teachers and parents that will expand their use of Aesop's Fables to include lesson plans, music, plays, history and an extensive bibliography of Aesop's Fables.
LET US KNOW if you need any help finding anything related to Aesop's Fables. We want to help you because that's just what we do!


text:
Daily Journal Corporation es una editorial estadounidense y una empresa de tecnología con sede en Los Ángeles, California. La compañía tiene oficinas en Corona, Oakland, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San José y Santa Ana en California, y en Denver, Colorado; Logan, Utah; Phoenix, Arizona y Melbourne, Australia.

Gobernanza

The Daily Journal Corporation cotiza en bolsa desde 1987 en el NASDAQ bajo DJCO. Su presidente es Charles T. Munger, quien también es vicepresidente de Berkshire Hathaway. J.P. Guerin fue vicepresidente del Daily Journal Corporation hasta su fallecimiento, en 2020. Gerald L. Salzman es director ejecutivo y presidente.

Negocio editorial

El periódico original, The Daily Court Journal (Los Ángeles), comenzó a publicarse en 1888. Charles T. Munger compró el periódico en 1977 y, mediante una serie de adquisiciones y crecimiento orgánico, lo incorporó a un grupo de periódicos y sitios web que brindan información sobre la industria legal, inmobiliaria y del comercio en general. La compañía ahora publica 10 periódicos en California y Arizona. Sus publicaciones más importantes son Los Angeles Daily Journal y San Francisco Daily Journal. Los periódicos de The Daily Journal han ganado numerosos premios por su periodismo, y el Los Angeles Press Club en 2003 señaló que Los Angeles Daily Journal era "el periódico más galardonado de Los Ángeles con la única excepción del Los Angeles Times".

 Periódicos

 Business Journal (Riverside, California)
 Daily Commerce (Los Ángeles, California)
 The Daily Recorder (Sacramento, California)
 The Daily Transcript (San Diego, California)
 The Inter-City Express (Oakland, California)
 Los Angeles Daily Journal (Los Ángeles, California)
 Orange County Reporter (Santa Ana, California)
 San Francisco Daily Journal (San Francisco, California)
 San Jose Post-Record (San José, California)
 The Record Reporter (Phoenix, Arizona)

 Online

 California Lawyer (San Francisco, California)

Representante de publicidad y periódicos

Las publicaciones del Daily Journal llevan publicidad comercial y la mayoría también contienen publicidad de aviso público. La publicidad comercial consiste en publicidad gráfica y clasificada y el mercado de publicidad de empleo. La publicidad de avisos públicos consiste en muchos tipos de avisos legales que la ley exige que se publiquen en un periódico adjudicado de circulación general, incluidos avisos de defunción, nombres comerciales ficticios, avisos de venta fiduciaria y avisos de audiencias gubernamentales. Los principales tipos de anunciantes de avisos públicos son empresas y fideicomisarios relacionados con bienes raíces, agencias gubernamentales, abogados y empresas o personas que presentan declaraciones de nombres comerciales ficticios.

Oficina de Servicios de Periódicos de California

"CNSB", una división de la empresa, es un representante de periódicos de todo el estado que se especializa desde 1934 en anuncios publicitarios. La CNSB coloca avisos públicos y otras formas de publicidad en periódicos adjudicados de circulación general, la mayoría de los cuales no son propiedad de The Daily Journal.

Negocio tecnológico

Journal Technologies, Inc. es una subsidiaria de propiedad total de la Compañía. Consiste en las operaciones combinadas de Sustain Technologies, Inc., establecida a mediados de la década de 1980 y adquirida por Daily Journal Corporation en 1999; New Dawn Technologies, Inc., adquirida en 2012; e ISD Technologies, Inc., adquirida en 2013.

Journal Technologies fabrica software para tribunales de primera instancia y de apelación y agencias relacionadas con los sistemas judiciales, incluidas las agencias fiscales, los defensores públicos, los departamentos de libertad condicional y las oficinas de instrucción en todo Estados Unidos, Canadá y Australia.

Journal Technologies se ha distinguido en el mercado con un sistema de gestión de casos basado en navegador que es un motor de procesamiento empresarial altamente configurable que es la pieza central para la gestión de documentos y archivos electrónicos.

Referencias

Empresas de Estados Unidos
Empresas de California

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: background image not displaying can someone please tell me why the background image is not displaying in my php code.
#wrap-iframe{
    background-image: url(bg_01.gif);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    border:0 none;
    min-width:760px;
    min-height: 700px;
}

this is the CSS i have. the div box is displayed flawlessly. the image url is correct. if i inlcude the image through the  tag, it shows up.
i was not this bad at CSS...:-(

A: Note that the image path must be relative to the stylesheet. If your stylesheet is in a different directory than the page, you must adjust the path in url() accordingly.
You can right click the DIV in Firefox and click "show background image". It will take you to the URL where firefox is looking for the image, and you can see whether it's correct or not.

A: I recommend using an "absolute" path. Start with a forward slash and describe the path from the HTML root forwards, i.e. /images/bg_01.gif would resolve to http://yourdomain.com/images/bg_01.gif
I always put quotes round the filename too, though they may not be 100% necessary:
background-image: url("/images/bg_01.gif");


text:
package com.wordnik.client.model;

import com.wordnik.client.model.Object;
import com.wordnik.client.model.HttpHeaders;
public class ResponseEntity«Map«string,object»» {
  private String statusCode = null;
  //public enum statusCodeEnum { 100, 101, 102, 103, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 226, 300, 301, 302, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 426, 428, 429, 431, 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511, };
  private HttpHeaders headers = null;
  private Object body = null;
  public String getStatusCode() {
    return statusCode;
  }
  public void setStatusCode(String statusCode) {
    this.statusCode = statusCode;
  }

  public HttpHeaders getHeaders() {
    return headers;
  }
  public void setHeaders(HttpHeaders headers) {
    this.headers = headers;
  }

  public Object getBody() {
    return body;
  }
  public void setBody(Object body) {
    this.body = body;
  }

  @Override
  public String toString()  {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.append("class ResponseEntity«Map«string,object»» {\n");
    sb.append("  statusCode: ").append(statusCode).append("\n");
    sb.append("  headers: ").append(headers).append("\n");
    sb.append("  body: ").append(body).append("\n");
    sb.append("}\n");
    return sb.toString();
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


About 20 million Americans suffer from thyroid disease, and approximately 13 million more are currently undiagnosed. Read more for important information on the thyroid, risk factors, symptoms and treatment for thyroid disease.
The thyroid gland is a small, butterfly-shaped gland located at the base of the neck, just below the Adam's apple and right above the collarbone, surrounding the windpipe. The thyroid helps control the function of many of the body's organs, including the heart, brain, liver, kidneys and skin, but it mostly helps to set the metabolism.
The two types of thyroid disease are hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism.
Age—The Thyroid Foundation of America recommends that women get annual thyroid hormone level tests yearly starting at age 50; men should as well beginning at age 60.
A family history—If the disease runs in the family, testing every five years after age 35 is recommended.
Treatment for hyperthyroidism usually includes prescription drugs, radioactive iodine therapy and/or surgery. Hypothyroidism tends to be treated most effectively with a prescription thyroid replacement hormone.
For information on preventive wellness programs, contact us.


An IP address is the location of a computer on the internet.
Here are some terminologies for IP addresses.
Static means the IP address never changes as long as you stay with the same provider or same server.
Dynamic means the IP address can change from time-to-time.
Public means the IP address can be visited from any computer in the world.
Private means the IP address can only be used by those on the same network.
Shared means other people use your IP address for their connection or sites.
Dedicated means no one else uses your IP address for their connection or sites.
PerSeat Hosting always provides static, public IPs on our servers. We offer shared by default, and dedicated by request.
Advanced: The class identifies the range of your IP address and the default subnet mask.


text:
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  <meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='IE=edge'>
  <meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1'>

  <meta content='#2f3241' name='theme-color' />
  <link rel='shortcut icon' href='{{ site.baseurl }}/images/favicon.ico'/>
  <link rel='stylesheet' href='{{ site.baseurl }}/css/index.css'>
  <link rel="manifest" href='{{ site.baseurl }}/js/manifest.json'>
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    (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
    (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
    m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
    })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

    ga('create', 'UA-3769691-57', 'auto');
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text:
Special Collections Online at The University of Tennessee
George Lewis Letter
This collection houses one letter from George Lewis to his sister, Naracessa Hampton, of Casvade, Virginia. Lewis focuses on the plight of his sister, whose husband was apparently compelled to serve in the Confederate Army. He offers her advice and instructs her to keep her household in good condition.
Dates: 1865 January 28
Found in: Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Grenville Mellen Dodge Manuscript
This manuscript contains copies of regimental and brigade general and special orders documenting the activities of the Second Division of the Army of Tennessee under the command of General Grenville Mellen Dodge from 1 January 1863 to 14 January 1864.
Henry Bechtel Letter
Henry Bechtel of Company E of the 22nd Ohio Infantry wrote this letter to his parents on June 5, 1863 from camp on Haines Bluff in Mississippi. He mentions having recently left Jackson, Tennessee, and traveled through Memphis before approaching Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Dates: 1863 June 5
Henry Bryan Letter
This collection houses a letter dated January 25, 1865 from Assistant Inspector General Major Henry Bryan (then stationed in Tombigbee River, Alabama) to Colonel George William Brent documenting the artillery units of the Confederate Army of Tennessee shortly before the Confederate surrender.
Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk Broadside
Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk wrote this broadside, entitled A Proclamation. To All Soldiers, in This Department Absent from Their Commands Without Leave, from his headquarters in Demopolis, Alabama on April 16, 1864. In it, he offers to pardon soldiers who have deserted if they return to their commands.
Dates: 1864 April 16
Robert Moore Diary
Abstract Robert Moore of Kewanee, Illinois used this diary to record his experiences as a Private with the 124th Illinois Infantry during the Civil War. His account begins when he enlists in the regiment on 1862 August 14 and goes on to describe the unit's movement from Illinois to Jackson, Tennessee and Corinth, Mississippi. Moore notes that they served under General John A. Logan's division of the Army of the Tennessee and mentions many of their responsibilities, including guarding the railroads,...
Dates: 1862 August 14-1864 January 9
Subject: United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865. X
Subject: Mississippi -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865. X
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865. 5
Tennessee -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865. 3
Alabama -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865. 1
Broadsides 1
Confederate States of America. Army -- Recruiting, enlistment, etc. 1
Confederate States of America. Army of Tennessee -- Artillery. 1
Confederate States of America. Army. Mississippi Cavalry Regiment, 28th. 1
Soldiers -- Mississippi -- Correspondence. 1
Soldiers -- Ohio -- Correspondence. 1
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Desertions. 1
United States. Army of the Cumberland. 1
Vicksburg (Miss.) -- History -- Siege, 1863. 1
Virginia -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865. 1


If you work for an employer, you might be able to save for retirement with a 401k plan. When you need to borrow money and cannot get the financing you need from your local bank or credit union, you can also obtain the money you need with a 401k loan. Before you ask your 401k plan administrator there are a few things you need to know.
While many employers offer 401k retirement plans, not every plan offers 401k loans. If you work for a small business with only a handful of employees, it is very likely that you will not have a 401k loan option. It's simply too expensive of a tool that your employer cannot afford. After all, the traditional purpose of a 401k plan is to save for retirement.
You will need to check with your employer's human resources department or your 401k plan administrator to see if they offer loans.
Some plans will let you borrow for any reason. Looking at your 401k plan summary can provide additional information on if you qualify for a 401k loan.
You will need to show documentation to support the reason for your loan request. As many 401k loans are viewed as hardship loans, your 401k plan administrator might expect you to first apply for financing from a bank.
There are application fees with 401k loans. You can expect to pay approximately $40 per request.
If you have the loan for more than one year, you can also expect to pay an annual maintenance fee of approximately $25.
You can also repay a 401k loan early with no prepayment penalties.
You can only borrow up to 50% of your 401k account balance or $50,000, whichever is less. And, the balance often needs to be repaid within five years. Home purchase loans have up to 10 or 15 years to be repaid.
While a 401k loan can help you purchase a new home, you won't be able to avoid getting a mortgage for the rest of the home purchase due to the limited borrowing limits.
If you quit or lose your job before you repay your loan, you will also only have 60 days to repay the remaining loan balance. After those 60 days are up, any remaining loan balance will be considered an early withdrawal and will be subject to a 10% penalty and any applicable taxes and fees.
Some plans might allow you to take out two different 401k loans at once, while others will only allow one at a time.
Interest rates for 401k plans are often based on the Prime Rate and add an additional one or two percentage points.
If the Prime Rate is 4.25%, you can expect to pay between 5.25% and 6.25% on your 401k loan.
Other loans have lower interest rates like auto loans and home mortgages.
A 401k loan can be a good option if you need quick access to credit before a bank can complete the traditional loan application. A 401k can also be a good alternative to high-interest credit card balances or payday loans. Many financial advisors do not recommend 401k loans because you can greatly reduce the growth potential of your retirement savings. If you only plan to borrow for a short time period, a 401k loan can be a better option than choosing a loan with a significantly higher interest rate.


The University of Washington School of Law is hosting policymakers from Alaska and around the country for discussions on Arctic security and politics, development, transportation and shipping, environmental protection, and climate change.
The third annual Arctic Encounter Symposium runs Friday through Saturday in Seattle.
Elected Alaska officials, academics, municipal and Native corporation representatives, and some of the Coast Guard's top officers are expected to attend.
Bethel Rep. Bob Herron is part of a panel that will discuss development of a port system, and improving communications and mapping of the Arctic. He said they'll also talk about reducing heating costs, developing adequate water and sewer systems for Arctic communities, and responding to the effects of climate change.
"I think that we have to remind them that maybe we are the best to be deeply involved, and not to take us for granted," Herron said.
Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire and Craig Fleener, the Walker administration's Arctic policy adviser, are some of the other Alaskans participating in panel discussions or addressing the conference.
Herron is attending again this year in his role as chair of the House Economic Development, Tourism & Arctic Policy Committee. He admits to being annoyed whenever he hears comments from nonresidents that imply that Alaska needs saving from Alaskans.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, co-chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee respectively, will also attend the symposium.
Herron said it's good that the symposium is being held in Seattle this year.


The City of El Paso Department of Public Health has been notified that one of several mosquito pools collected here have tested positive for West Nile Virus.
The Vector Control Program with the Environmental Services Department has been setting traps this season since May. The mosquito pool that tested positive was located in the central part of town within the 79903 zip code.
In years past, human cases of diseases like Chikungunya, Dengue, and Zika virus have been seen in El Paso but in travel-associated cases only. El Paso has yet to see a locally acquired case of these diseases. When it comes to West Nile, there have been no cases reported this season, but a total of 14 human cases were confirmed locally last year.
As we continue to see sporadic rains in the area, residents are reminded that it only takes a teaspoon of water to create breeding conditions around your home.
El Pasoans are urged to "Tip and Toss" items outside their homes frequently, to prevent stagnant water which could result in mosquito breeding. Residents should also follow these tips.


As a kid, all you ever wanted to have was food, sleep, and fun. How many times a week were you at the playground? At least twice a week? And wasn`t the coolest part visiting different playgrounds because every one of them was different from each other? On PDPlay you can make you childish dreams come true and maybe composing your child's playground you will add things you always wanted to have. PDPlay have four options for you to choose from: outdoor learning environments, natural playgrounds, dog play structures, and play structures. As you can see even if you do not have kids you can always compose a dog play structure, in other words, a dog park for your pet.


text:
Geraldton GuardianRegional WAMid West
Shopkeeper 'sick, tired' of youth crime on the terrace
Tamra CarrGeraldton Guardian
Fri, 26 January 2018 10:08AM
Camera IconShopkeepers at the west end of Marine Terrace say they are fed up with break-ins and anti-social behaviour in the street. Credit: Tamra Carr, The Geraldton Guardian
Several shopkeepers along Marine Terrace want a greater police presence at the west end of Marine Terrace to help curb criminal and antisocial behaviour.
Aussie Shop owner Gary Clement-Burns said $150 was taken from his register earlier this month and about $1000 worth of merchandise and money was stolen from him last year.
The 75-year-old said about 5.30pm on January 4, four girls aged between about 14 and 17 came into the souvenir store.
He told them he was about to close the shop but they remained inside, walking down a side aisle.
Mr Clement-Burns said he stood up from his position at the front counter and two of the girls walked outside.
When he walked towards the other two girls at the back of the shop, one came to the front of the shop and stole his mobile phone and the coin tray from his cash register, which was open.
"I'm sick and tired of them pinching stuff," he said.
"It's always on a Thursday, or a Sunday and Saturday afternoon.
"I know they've been pinching stuff from a lot of shops. We need more patrols, especially on Thursdays and Saturdays."
Other shopkeepers along Marine Terrace, who asked to remain anonymous, said they had seen people, particularly youths, shoplifting, hitting signs, ripping flowers out of pots, tipping things over and yelling and swearing.
One woman said she had a satchel of sugar thrown at her.
Geraldton police operations manager Sergeant Drue Pardoe said police were aware of the antisocial behaviour and were responding accordingly.
"As per our Summer Crime Strategy, Geraldton police have had increased patrols conducted especially within the Central Business District," she said.
"This includes vehicle, bike and foot patrols. We continue to engage with the community at community events and also police-initiated actions like the ongoing Coffee with a Cop."
Sgt Pardoe said Geraldton police were aware of anti-social behaviour, particularly that which occurred on Thursday nights, and they responded to all incidents that were reported to police.
"In regards to the specific issue of the youths on a Thursday and Friday evening, Geraldton police and the youth crime officers are constantly working with the youths, community groups and stakeholders to minimise or reduce these issues," Sgt Pardoe said.
To report suspicious activity and non-life threatening crime, contact Geraldton police on 131 444.
Spalding Golf Club 'keeper helps Carnarvon turn green
Towns' Russell makes century to pass 6000 runsPremium


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LinkedIn's approach to automated accessibility (A11y) testing
Oliver Tse
Co-authors: Oliver Tse, Andrew Lee, Melanie Sumner, and Renato Iwashima
Editor's note: This blog has been updated.
Accessibility (A11y) Engineering at LinkedIn aims to streamline accessible product development and maintenance. We think about how tooling can help achieve accessibility success and increase the efficiency of our fellow engineers across the organization. We design tools and the infrastructure necessary for engineers to build products that are accessible, elegant, delightful, and more easily testable.
Our overall aim is to bring together the amazing talent across all product teams at LinkedIn and to facilitate inclusive design through innovative tooling, collaborative projects, and consultations. Just as LinkedIn ensures that everyone is connected to economic opportunity, A11y Engineering ensures that every product and platform is inclusively empowered to do just that.
With this vision in mind, we have strategically embraced accessibility test automation to accelerate our detection of common issues in new features and reduce regressions in existing features. At its core, accessibility test automation involves running a suite of accessibility rules on essential user flows and user interfaces of our applications.
The main strength of automated accessibility testing is its ability to find "low-hanging fruit" caused by oversights at the code level. This frees up engineering time and covers common defects that are often overlooked.
The other key benefit is the ability to guard against regressions. Good accessibility test coverage provides a clear signal for overall a11y health. A sudden introduction of new violations will act as a smoke signal, serving as a leading indicator for the existence of other issues. In an environment characterized by multiple releases per day, where it is not feasible to accompany each new release with manual testing, this becomes an indispensable tool.
Running accessibility test automation rules during continuous integration prevents common accessibility issues from ever reaching LinkedIn members, allowing us to address problems before we ship. While we see automated testing as an essential part of our arsenal to scale accessibility, we fully acknowledge that, depending on who you ask or reference, accessibility test automation will only identify between 20% and 30% of accessibility issues out there ("Automated accessibility checking... can only auto-check about 30% of #a11y issues" and "Manual Accessibility Testing: Why & How").
At LinkedIn, we integrate various open-source and licensed automation frameworks into our continuous integration pipeline, where only if the commit passes accessibility checks will it be merged into the main branch for our web, iOS, and Android applications, including:
Deque's axe-core for the web
Google's Toolbox for Accessibility for iOS (GTXiLib)
Google's Accessibility Test Framework for Android (ATF)
LinkedIn web applications are built using the Ember JavaScript framework. It features an extensive ecosystem of plugins and extensions commonly referred to as Ember Add-ons. Testing is a core tenet of the framework and is built in as a first-class citizen.
LinkedIn uses Deque's Axe Core accessibility testing framework for our web apps. Axe is a static analysis engine for websites and other HTML-based user interfaces. It is integrated into our Ember testing infrastructure by the Ember A11y Testing Addon.
There are three types of Ember tests:
Unit tests verify individual pieces of code. They are insufficient to assess a11y but are very quick to execute.
Integration tests verify user interface components. They are examined in isolation, somewhat quick to execute, but lack the fidelity to accurately assess a11y.
Acceptance tests are the ideal point of integration as they most closely resemble what a user would experience. However, they are much more costly in terms of run-time and resourcing.
Our continuous integration and deployment process is 3x3, consisting of at least three daily deployments and three stages of validation: pre-commit, pre-merge, and post-merge.
Pre-commit occurs on push-to-remote and includes static linting checks and dependency validation.
Pre-merge occurs after a successful push and includes build verification and test suite execution.
If successful, post-merge checks queue up associated changes for deployment.
In terms of accessibility, any resulting violations prevent changes from moving onto the next stage. Specifically, invalid a11y ember-template-lint checks block commits, while failed a11y test assertions block merging and are auto-reverted.
So, we have a multi-faceted approach to accessibility engineering—we use linting for static analysis, automated testing for dynamic analysis, and manual testing for the things we can't automate yet. Each of these approaches has their strengths—linting gives developers feedback right in their IDE, automated testing can more robustly check the rendered code to make sure it provides what screen readers expect, and manual audits ensure usability—and as such, we consider them to all be important parts of the whole.
As engineers run local tests during their day-to-day work, a11y regressions resulting from UI changes are automatically identified by existing a11y assertions. As such, it is imperative that all new a11y assertions are introduced at a clean state, meaning that all identified violations are addressed before submission. Since the entire test suite runs after pushing a code commit, any a11y failures block the associated commit from being merged.
Impact on performance
Commit to Publish (C2P) time is an important metric signaling the overall health of our build and testing infrastructure. Unfortunately, the initial implementation of automated accessibility tests turned out to negatively impact and regress C2P. Tests with added a11y assertions were found to more than double in execution time. Considering that there are over 8,000 acceptance tests, the additional load would equate to substantial degradation of the CI/CD pipeline.
Mitigating negative performance impacts required cross-collaboration with several partner teams. Based on intensive investigatory work, clear guidance and integration, best practices were formulated:
Indiscriminate a11y assertions cause redundancy, as multiple tests end up checking the same view.
To avoid such redundancy, assertions should be deliberate and scoped into specific segments of the screen.
Assertions should cover high-traffic, high-impact, transaction paths.
100% accessibility test coverage is not the goal. Tests are a signal of overall accessibility health, but not the only signal. They are but a single tool in our overall arsenal.
Further investigation led to improvements from optimized configuration settings and the omission of non-performant, low-impact rules. But, by far, the biggest improvement came from the creation of a dedicated accessibility distributed test job. This job automatically pipes all a11y assertions into a parallel process so that the main test execution isn't affected, thus preserving C2P time.
We use the same testing approach for iOS and Android that we use for web. However, we run fewer rules and we do not run them using the same library. This is because mobile platforms have their own APIs and different ways to interact with assistive technologies. We do plan to increase the number of accessibility checks as the accessibility capability of both platforms evolves.
We have 6 rules. We check for whether:
Label is present: ensure that all accessibility elements have a label.
Trait is not in the label: ensure that elements don't redundantly describe accessibility traits such as "Button" in the label, since these roles are announced by the screen reader automatically.
Label is not redundant: ensure that accessibility labels are unique so that they are distinguishable when using a screen reader.
Traits don't conflict: ensure that incompatible traits such as "Button" and "Link" are not used at the same time.
Touch target size: ensure that all interactive elements have a touch target size of at least 44pt.
Contrast is sufficient: ensure that text contrast is at least 4.5 to 1.
For more information, check Google's GTXiLib.
We have 10 rules. We check for:
Unsupported item type: ensure that specified accessibility class name (role) is supported by TalkBack.
Clickable span: ensure that ClickableSpan is not being used in a TextView, since it is inaccessible because individual spans cannot be selected independently in a single TextView.
Traversal order: ensure that traversal order specified by the developer doesn't have any problems such as loops or constraints in the traversal.
Contrast check: ensure that text contrast is at least 4.5 to 1.
Label present: ensure that all accessibility elements have a label.
Duplicate clickable bounds: ensure that clickable/touchable bounds are not overlapping each other.
Duplicate speakable text: ensure that accessibility labels are unique so that they are distinguishable when using a screen reader.
Editable content description: ensure that an editable TextView is not labeled by a contentDescription.
Touch target size: ensure that all interactive elements have the touch target size of at least 48dp.
Link purpose is unclear: ensure that the link purpose is not unclear or nor insufficiently descriptive enough.
For more information, check Google's Accessibility Testing Framework and Google's Accessibility Scanner.
Libraries for accessibility checking on iOS and Android
We use internal wrapper libraries for both Android and iOS called android-autocheck and ios-autocheck respectively.
These wrapper libraries use the Accessibility Testing Framework for Android and GTXiLib for iOS.
We use wrapper libraries because we can:
Add custom rules
Override existing rules
Define sets of rules
Define suppression list
Android also provides a linting tool that does some basic accessibility checks. None of the linting checks are considered errors, due to false positives inherent to static analysis checks, but they are still very helpful for engineers to detect possible issues.
To be effective, a11y automated testing must be executed thoughtfully, deliberately, and in conjunction with multiple types of testing—including human manual testing, engineers doing their due diligence, linting, etc.—with each deployed at the right time in the continuous integration development process.
A11y automated testing is forward-looking. When executed early and often during the development process, it is a highly accurate predictor of how accessible our products will be. While it's true that a11y automated testing is unable to detect issues found only by manual testing, its key benefit is that it is highly efficient. Automated testing can identify issues faster than the amount of time it takes a human manual tester to file a single bug. By exploiting its efficiency, we use it as a litmus test to gain insight into the accessibility of our products.
Overall, a11y automated testing is an essential tool that empowers our engineers to build accessible products for our members in service of our vision to create economic opportunity for everyone, including the more than 1 billion people around the world with disabilities.
We are extremely grateful to Tom Broadbent, who did the initial R&D on automated a11y testing, and Stephen Yeung, whose insight and work empowered us to set up the dedicated a11y parallel test job. We are also grateful to Chris Leonavicius, Nan Wang, and Veeresh Kinagi for their insights into iOS a11y testing, and to Howard Narvaez and Pedro Soto, who were the first to pilot and integrate a11y automated testing into their products. We extend our gratitude to Aaron Armstrong and Matt Burdick for their leadership in facilitating the collaboration between their teams and A11y Engineering.
Finally, we gratefully acknowledge Amyn Thawer, Branden Thompson, Eleanor Hamm, Heather McKelvey, Jennison Asuncion, and Rae Hinton for their leadership and continued support for the work that we are doing for accessibility.
Building a smooth Stories experience on iOS
Building a blazingly fast Android app, Part 2


To receive digital Glory TV via satellite but not through Sky, you need to tune your equipment to the correct frequencies yourself. For help with tuning, please contact your equipment retailer, manufacturer or installer.
Please refer to your receiver user manual for the tuning instructions. All Sky receivers will automatically re-tune to the new frequency.


AAA Gates Wildlife Control has been proudly servicing the residents of North York for over 32 years. We have pioneered a humane hands-on removal method to provide effective customer service while at the same time safeguarding our urban wildlife. National Geographic Channel in a 13 part documentary called Animal Extractors recently filmed AAA Gates Wildlife Control.
For free of charge we provide on-site inspections and written estimates. Providing quality service since 1984 has resulted in over 50% of our business stemming from our satisfied customers referring us to their friends and family. AAA Gates Wildlife Control is well-respected by numerous organizations including Humane Societies, Animal Services, Wildlife Rehabilitators, Ministry of Natural Resources, Pest Control Businesses and even our direct competition.


You might be contemplating selling your house. The property market may be new for you. The internet provides you a simple means to sell your house privately online.
Selling your property online is as easy as online shopping.
Once you understand the simplicity and benefits of the process you will yourself decide to do away with agents and sell your house privately online.
When you decide to sell your house, it is a good idea to put yourself in the buyer's shoes. For this, you should be clear about the target market. For instance, if you decide to sell your house to a family, you need to highlight the proximity of schools.
There certain general aspects that any buyer will expect from the property. Buyers will look for a parking facility, public transportation etc. Another important aspect is that the house is well maintained and damage-free. Conducting a pre-inspection of your property can help you in this. You can further increase the appeal of your house by keeping it neat and tidy.
You can price your property yourself by checking the price of similar properties. The location of the house also plays a part in its price. You could take the help of an expert for this. This is because pricing a property is very critical as overpricing and underpricing the property affect its sale.
There are numerous property websites available where you can list your property and connect with potential buyers. Listing is a very simple process. It can be done free or at a minimal charge. Online property listing helps you reach out to a wide range of customers. It also enables you to market your property by uploading a number of pictures and providing a description of the property.
Buyers from anywhere can get an idea about your property by browsing through the site. They directly contact you and no middlemen are involved.
This is the biggest advantage of the online sale of property. Agents charge a % of the total sale amount as a commission. If you sell your property privately you gain the entire sales proceeds.
If you sell your house yourself you give a personal touch to the advertising. You also add your touch when you deal with the buyer for inspection or negotiation. Buyers prefer this to dealing through an agent.
This enables you to be more in control of the entire sale procedure.
Technology has inspired the evolution in the real estate market. You can now sell your property privately using online methods and pocket all the profits.


text:
Q: How do I force re-rendering of a row in ag-grid? I am using ag-grid in raw javascript (ie- no angular, no jquery). The grid shows streaming data and dynamically updates with new rows as they come in. My goal is to highlight rows that are less than 20s old in a different color.
I can easily apply css classes on a row-by-row basis when they are initially rendered, but I can't figure out how to remove the css classes when they become older than 20 seconds. Here is what I am doing:
  class TickerController {
    constructor() {
      ...
      this.gridOptions = {
        rowClass: 'ticker--row',
        rowClassRules: {
          '-new-row': params =>
            (Date.now() - params.data.accepted_time) < NEW_ROW_THRESHOLD
        }
      };
      let tickerGrid = this._getElementById('ticker-grid');
      new agGrid.Grid(tickerGrid, this.gridOptions);
    }
    ...
  }

You can see here that I am applying a ticker--row class to all rows and a -new-row class to rows that are new. This does highlight new rows, but I don't know how to re-apply the rowClassRules on a periodic basis.
Can someone explain the proper way to achieve my goal of removing the -new-row class when the row is no longer new?

A: plunker for demonstration
Here is one way that it could be done:

*

*have a data value in the row to hold the information of whether or not to highlight the row

*define the rowClassRules to look at that data value

*when a new row is added, create a timeout to trigger in 20 seconds to update this value.

var gridOptions = {
    ...
    rowClassRules: {
      'highlight': 'data.lessThan2'
    }
    ...
};

function onInsertRowAt2() {
    var newItem = createNewRowData();
    var res = gridOptions.api.updateRowData({add: [newItem], addIndex: 2});
    printResult(res);
    setTimeout(updateItems,2000,res)
}

function updateItems(rows) {
  var updatedRows = rows.add.map(row => row.data)
  updatedRows.map(e=>e.lessThan2 = false)
  gridOptions.api.updateRowData({update: updatedRows})
}


text:
Dry Bulk Shipping: No Quick Recovery For The Dry Bulk Market As Covid-19 Digs Deeper
By sailor.news team On May 26, 2020 In Breaking News, International Shipping News No Comments
The outlook is poor for dry bulk, as the negative demand shock and overcapacity come together to send rates to multi-year lows, even a return to work in China is not enough to support the market.
Demand drivers and freight rates
The dry bulk shipping market has had an appalling start to the year, with all sectors at loss-making levels. Even as China returns to work, the Capesize market, which had found some relief in April, is again experiencing rock-bottom freight rates.
The first quarter of the year proved a mixed bag for the dry bulk shipping industry, with freight rates for the smaller dry bulk segments faring better than those in the Capesize market. April has provided some relief for the struggling Capesize markets, although rates for all ship types remain below break-even levels.
Capesize earnings have been well below the average USD 15,300 per day needed to break even, falling to just USD 1,992 per day, its lowest level since March 2016. While the smaller vessel sizes did not reach such a low point, earnings only reached break-even levels for a brief period, with most of the year at loss making levels.
The importance of China to the dry bulk market was clearly reflected when it went into lockdown, as the rates went downwards and, since its reopening, it has provided some upwards support to volumes, but the low rates remain. Volumes of China's major dry bulk imports have posted year-on-year growth throughout the crisis. Iron-ore imports are up 5.3% and coal up an impressive 27.8% in the first four months.
Of particular importance to the Capesize market are iron ore exports out of Brazil – and, here, the reason for the low freight rates becomes clearer. Iron-ore exports are down 8.7% in the first four months of the year, a loss of 9m tonnes, or 45 Capesize loads (200,000 tonnes).
The exports of 24m tonnes in April curtailed the losses of the first quarter, when volumes were down 17.2% from Q1 2019. This was largely because of the low April exports in 2019. The 24m tonnes was much higher than the 18.7m tonnes last year, when the tailings dam collapse and poor weather conditions disrupted exports. The strong April exports this year did little to lift spot freight rates though, with the majority of the volume going on the ships that are on long-term charters and which have been waiting in line for cargoes after slow exports in the first quarter of the year. Spot rates for iron ore from Brazil to China have fallen to just USD 7 per tonne, down from USD 18.8 at the start of the year.
Two-thirds of Brazilian exports in the first four months of the year went to China (+10.5% or 5.8m tonnes from 4M 2019). The lost volumes to the rest of the world come primarily from lower exports to Asia, excluding China, (-5.2m tonnes) and Europe (-4.5m tonnes).
Even though they have remained consistently below break-even levels, rates for the smaller vessel sizes have avoided the trough that the Capesize market was in, as volumes on their main trades have remained stronger. In more normal times, in fact, developments on these trades would probably have pushed freight rates much higher, but, given the conditions in the market, positive demand developments have only just been enough to sustain freight rates.
Brazilian soya bean exports were particularly impressive in April. After their highest ever Q1 exports of 17.4m tonnes, 16.3m tonnes were exported in April alone, bringing year-on-year growth to 33.8%. Comparing April 2020 with April 2019, an extra 92 Panamax loads (75,000 tonnes) were exported, with 113 extra loads needed in the first four months of this year compared to last. Three-quarters of total exports went to China.
On the other hand, the drop in US soya-bean exports to China has been particularly marked, down 41.7% from the first quarter of last year. Compared with 2017, before the trade war started, soya-bean exports are down 65.6%, a loss of 5.4 million tonnes, or 72 Panamax loads (75,000 tonnes).
Argentinian grain exports have been strong, growing 18.7% from Q1 2019 to Q1 2020, with strong wheat and coarse-grains exports, in particular, providing much-needed demand for Panamax and Supramax ships – but still not enough to bring freight rates up to profitable levels.
The poor US exports spoil the picture of strong grain exports from the Americas. As data is released for each new month, the failure of the "Phase One" trade agreement between the US and China becomes more and more obvious.
Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, January exports saw no boost, and this has only worsened since then. In the first quarter of the year, only 3.1 million tonnes of agricultural goods have been exported from the US to China – less than 10% of the 33.4 million tonnes that China committed to buying at the start of the year.
Since the start of the year, the dry bulk shipping fleet has grown by 1.6% to reach 891.5m DWT on 19 May. BIMCO expects the fleet to grow by 3% in 2020, and we expect a further 39.3 million DWT to be delivered to the market through the rest of the year. This reflects a higher slippage rate for planned deliveries because of the Covid-19 disruptions, which has risen to 35% from 25% before the crisis.
Demolitions have also been disrupted by the pandemic, with the major shipbreaking nations having closed their beaches to ships because of their lockdown measures. This resulted in only one dry bulk ship being demolished in April, a 28-year-old ore carrier with a capacity of 268,132 DWT. The easing of some of the measures allowed 3 ships to be demolished in May, bringing total dry bulk demolition so far this year to 5.4 million DWT.
As a result of the poorer outlook for the dry bulk market this year, BIMCO has revised upwards its demolition expectations for the dry bulk market to 14m DWT, from 12m.
After reduced contracting activity in March, there was a slew of orders from Chinese interests in April, including eight, 210,000 DWT Capesizes. New orders in April totalled 2.7m DWT, bringing total ordering this year to 4.8m DWT, down 56% from the 11m DWT ordered in the same period of 2019.
Vale's announcement that it will stop using converted very large ore carriers (VLOCs) spells the end of this ship type, as most are well past average demolition ages for the sector and, in the current market conditions, have no prospect for future gainful employment beyond their expiring contracts. Already, 60% of these converted VLOCs are out of operation, and BIMCO expects them to be demolished over the next few years as their charters expire.
Even as China, the biggest driver for the dry bulk industry recovers, the full scale of the demand shock for the dry bulk industry remains to be seen.
Some of the stimulus measures that have been, or are expected to be, announced concentrate on infrastructure and housing investment, which will boost demand for raw materials. But other industries that provide demand for dry bulk – such as steel and aluminium for the automotive industry – have all but collapsed.
The automotive industry has taken a significant hit. Chinese car sales fell 41% in the first quarter of the year and sales in the UK fell by 97% in April, to their lowest level since 1946. While some of the sales will recover when the shops re-open, the poorer financial situation in which many consumers are finding themselves, and a reluctance to invest in durable goods, will limit this recovery and, therefore, the demand for steel – and, so, the demand for iron ore.
BIMCO expects trading in all commodities to fall, including the grains trade, although this could yet turn out to be the joker for the year. Lower commodity demand comes as a direct result of the lockdowns, as well as from the ensuing economic slowdown. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects demand for coal will fall by 8% in 2020, with lower demand coming from lower electricity consumption because of lockdowns and reduced manufacturing activity.
Given the overcapacity – which was already plaguing the market after years of supply growth outstripping demand – BIMCO already expected average freight rates to be in loss-making territory in 2020. This will only be exacerbated by the negative demand shock from Covid-19.
The outlook may yet deteriorate further if lockdown measures last longer than expected, or have to be reinstated to avoid a new wave of infections, but there is little prospect of an improvement. Even with large government investments in infrastructure, the global recession will doubtless lead to lower demand and low freight rates.
Source: BIMCO, Peter Sand, Chief Shipping Analyst
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Specif…
Port of Felixstowe to begin 5G trial https://sailor.news/uncategorized/port-of-felixstowe-to-begin-5g-trial/
Port of Felixstowe to begin 5G trial January 15, 2021