text:
Hoarding case: 63 cats found in retired veteran's freezer
VALRICO (FOX 13) - From the street, it looks like a normal home, but that changes quickly when you step inside. The furniture is torn apart by claws, the floor is saturated with cat urine, and authorities say they removed 63 cats from the freezer.
"The truth is, I ran out of room in the backyard to bury them and I didn't know what else to do with them, so I put them in the freezer," said John Ellis, a retired veteran.
He and his partner, 70-year-old Cheryl Smith, say they cared for all their dozens of cats that were taken by Animal Control.
"They acted like they weren't fed enough. That's not true. They ate before we did," Smith told FOX 13 News.
Now, Hillsborough County Code Enforcement is planning an extensive clean-up of their Valrico home.
"We're taking everything down to the concrete slab," said Aaron Slattery of Spaulding Decon.
Every year, the Tampa-based decontamination company chooses a hardship case for a free clean-up. Cases like these are not just a nuisance. They can cause health problems.
Smith and Ellis' home smells of years of saturation with cat urine.
"I knew that ammonia in the carpet would not only kill them, it would kill us," Smith said.
Both say they can't wait for the cleanup. They'll be put up in a motel for a week while it's done.
"It's an absolute Godsend. We're just thrilled," said Ellis.
The couple will move back into their cleaned home in time for Christmas with a condition imposed by Code Enforcement -- that they don't keep cats.
Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald purchases minority stake in Phoenix Suns
New name for West Mesa neighborhood highlights area's growing Asian business presence


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Q: urlmanager doesn't route to the desire page Shop is the module, product is the controller. My links have an additional param called item, which is the name of the product. When i click on the link, it either never generates the desire url or the page just doesn't show.
I've tried several ways.
'shop/product/view/<id:\d+>/<item:\w+>'=>'<item>', this gives me shop/product/view/6?item=name
'<module:(shop)>/<controller:(product)>/<action:(view)>/<id:\d+>/<item:\w+>'=>'<item:\w+>' this gives me the same as the above
shop/product/view/id/<id:\d+>/item/<item:\w+>'>=>'shop/<item:\w+>', this gives me error page Unable to resolve the request "shop/name".
I've attempted to write my own extending curlmanager but failed. It gives me the same url.shop/product/view/6?item=name
class UrlManager extends CUrlManager
{
    public $connectionID = 'db';

    public function createUrl($manager,$route,$params,$ampersand)
    {
     if ($route == 'shop/product/view'){
            $product = Product::model()->findByPk($params['id']);
            $url=$product->product_name;
            return Yii::app()->createUrl(trim($url,'+'),$params,$ampersand);
    }

UPDATE:
'urlManager'=>array(
                'urlFormat'=>'path',
                'showScriptName'=>false,
                'rules'=>array(
                            'shop/product/view/id/<id:\d+>/item/<item:\w+>'=>'<item>',
//'category'=>array('site/category', 'caseSensitive'=>false),

//'shop'=>array('shop/product/view','caseSensitive'=>false),
//'<module:\w+>/<controller:\w+>/<action:\w+>/<id:\d+>'=>'<module>/<controller>/<action>',
//'<controller:\w+>/<action:\w+>/<id:\d+>'=>'<controller>',
// '<controller:\w+>/<action:\w+>'=>'<controller>/<action>',
// 'reset/<id:\d+>/<item:\w+>'=>array('site/reset/id', 'caseSensitive'=>false),
                 ),
         ),

A: shop/<item:\w+> looks identical to a controller/action so I believe that it gets overwritten by some other rules you have. Can you post all the rules to see them all?
Also try putting this rule in the beginning of the rules array, that should make it have priority over other rules.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Richmond Heights es una ciudad ubicada en el condado de San Luis en el estado estadounidense de Misuri. En el Censo de 2010 tenía una población de 8603 habitantes y una densidad poblacional de 1.444,19 personas por km².

Geografía
Richmond Heights se encuentra ubicada en las coordenadas . Según la Oficina del Censo de los Estados Unidos, Richmond Heights tiene una superficie total de 5.96 km², de la cual 5.96 km² corresponden a tierra firme y (0%) 0 km² es agua.

Demografía
Según el censo de 2010, había 8603 personas residiendo en Richmond Heights. La densidad de población era de 1.444,19 hab./km². De los 8603 habitantes, Richmond Heights estaba compuesto por el 81.72% blancos, el 11.65% eran afroamericanos, el 0.2% eran amerindios, el 4.17% eran asiáticos, el 0.02% eran isleños del Pacífico, el 0.46% eran de otras razas y el 1.78% pertenecían a dos o más razas. Del total de la población el 2.29% eran hispanos o latinos de cualquier raza.

Referencias

Enlaces externos

Ciudades de Misuri
Localidades del condado de San Luis

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text:
Home > Army > Historic First: A Medal for Sgt. William H. Carney
Historic First: A Medal for Sgt. William H. Carney
July 4, 2016 January 17, 2018 Dan Elder
Sgt. William H. Carney
Born in 1840 to a slave mother in Norfolk, Virginia, who was later freed upon her owner's death in 1854, William H. Carney eventually settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts and prepared himself to enter the ministry. 8 In 1863 the Union Army began to organize colored units, and one of the first was the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, organized at Camp Meigs. Carney was one of 47 African Americans recruited from New Bedford. Carney joined up and was assigned to Company C. In an 1863 interview for the Liberator magazine Carney explained his reasons for joining:
"Previous to the formation of colored troops, I had a strong inclination to prepare myself for the ministry; but when the country called for all persons, I could best serve my God serving my country and my oppressed brothers. The sequel is short — I enlisted for the war."
The 54th, along with the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers (redesignated the 35th United States Colored Troops (USCT) in 1864) were the object of great interest and curiosity, and their performance would be considered an important indication of the possibilities of using former black slaves in war. 10 The 54th largely consisted of freedmen, primarily from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and the 1st was made up of ex-slaves from the coastal areas of Virginia and the Carolinas.
James E. Reed, William H. Carney, c. 1901–1908, gelatin silver print, 5 1/2 × 3 3/4 in. (13.8 × 9.3 cm). Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Though late to the war, the 54th soon saw action at James Island in June 1863. But it was on July 18, 1863, that Carney would distinguish himself and cause his Regiment to be widely known. While leading the attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, the 54th was repulsed and Regimental commander Col. Robert G. Shaw was mortally wounded. In this desperate attack, the 54th was placed in the lead and 281 men of the regiment became casualties (54 were killed or fatally wounded and another 48 were never accounted for). Shaw died on the crest of the enemy parapet, shouting, "Forward, Fifty-fourth!"
According to Carney's Medal of Honor citation:
"When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier [Carney] grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded."
As Carney handed the flag over to other survivors of the 54th, he told them, "Boys, I only did my duty. The old flag never touched the ground." Those words inspired a 1901 song by Bob Cole, James Weldon Johnson, and J. Rosamond Johnson commemorating Carney's heroism titled "The Old Flag Never Touched the Ground." The bravery of Carney was duly recognized in his being awarded the Medal of Honor, the first ever conferred to an African-American. However it was not presented to Carney until May 20 1900. After leaving the service in 1865, Carney eventually returned to Massachusetts where he worked as a mail carrier in New Bedford. He died in 1908. Today, the flag he saved is preserved in Boston's Memorial Hall and Carney's home is known as the Sergeant Carney Memorial House.
CARNEY, WILLIAM H.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company C, 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry
Place and date: At Fort Wagner, S.C., 18 July 1863
Entered service at: New Bedford, Mass.
Date of issue: 23 May 1900
Citation: When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.
Army Blog Posts civil war, medal of honor
Last recipient of the Badge of Military Merit: SGT Daniel Bissell
The Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

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I am 50's + , Female , based in Kobe , Kyoto , Nara , Osaka , available on flexible , Sat , Sun , and speak English .
Hello! I'm Kuniko Inoue. Call me Kunchan. I live in Toyonaka city, nothern part of Osaka prefecture.
I had taught Japanese literature to students. So,I like traditional Japanese culture very much. Tea ceremony, wearing kimonoa, haiku, traditional cooking and so,on.
If you are interest in them, I think I could explain uniquely. Let's enjoy them together!
And, I like singing jazz and musical song. what kind of music, do you like?
Now I help my family's small internal medicine clinic. To communicate with stuff and patient is hapiest time to me.
I'm looking forward to seeing you, as a friendly guide!


The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is an Enterprise Framework for Agile and Lean methods developed by Dean Leffingwell.
Unlike many team-based agile methods, such as Scrum and XP, which have little to say about how to manage concerns beyond the immediate product development team, SAFe attempts to turn the whole organisation Agile and Lean in a structured way.
SAFe isn't unique: there are other approaches available; such as Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Holistic Software Engineering (HSE) and Enterprise Scrum. More on those at a future date.
SAFe borrows from Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP and a host of other areas including Don Reinertsen's work on Principles of Product Development Flow for prioritisation using a form of Cost-of-Delay with Weighted-Shortest-Job-First (WSJF).
This article focuses on the debate around SAFe, so gives only a brief description of the method – for full details you can consult the official SAFe guide.
Portfolio: Kanban and Lean techniques are used to map value streams, inform a Roadmap and assemble a prioritised backlog of Business Themes and Architectural Epics to focus investment. These Epics are long-lived and span different releases.
Program: The Portfolio Roadmap informs a Program-level prioritised backlog that also includes non-functional requirement (NFR) considerations and defines Potentially Shippable Increments (PSIs) for each solution. Development is based on a regular cadence with Delivery on demand via an Agile Release Train. Mixing our transport metaphors, an Architectural Runway is progressively built-out to support the solution.
Team: Each team has a prioritised backlog and uses Scrum with a dollop of XP and Agile practices to deliver product increments through a series of Sprints and Spikes which, in turn, are combined with other teams to form product releases delivered as required.
There's a ton more to SAFe than all this, but that will do for a brief tour.
So does SAFe deliver on its promise?
I'll give the disclaimer now: SAFe does bear a striking resemblance to similar structures that I've helped create for large organisations. So either both SAFe and I are on the right track, or we've still got much to learn. Perhaps both!
The RUP criticism is often mentioned but any similarities it has to RUP (which I find limited) are mostly those that are found in any large enterprise. In other words, SAFe has more structures than something like Scrum because it is working at a bigger scale: it has a different aim.
Like it or not, large businesses have thousands or tens of thousands of people that need to work together effectively to deliver products and services. I'm not just talking about software development here – there's a much bigger picture and larger group of people who need to work together. Scrum can work well with dozens or a few hundred of (typically mainly) software people, but beyond that? – and it doesn't say anything about wider issues beyond team-based product development.
There's a key choice here: do you believe in large businesses or not? Those that don't will always advocate methods suited to small and medium-sized groups. But those that do need something they can use and SAFe is trying to fill that role.
Is it over-complicated? The articulation of the Big Picture on a single slide suggests not – it actually tells a relatively simple story with considerable detail.
Does it build a dependency on a tool vendor and consultants? Well, I've yet to see an agile team of any size that didn't have a dependency on tools and consultants or coaches. Whatever your opinion of Rally (mine is mixed), this is a red-herring.
SAFe can indeed appear as a one-size-fits-all solution.
But that's because it is providing a template, a starting point that people can relate to. That's necessary.
Experienced Agilistas who are so familiar with Agile values and principles, often forget that they started out following someone else's template of how to do something – like Scrum – before they learned how to apply context, innovate and iterate their own methods.
Every SAFe trainer I've listened to (including Dean Leffingwell) always stresses that SAFe is supposed to be customised to fit each organisation.
I don't see the incompatibility with the Agile Manifesto. There's nothing in SAFe that directly conflicts with those values and principles, indeed it promotes many practices consistent with them.
Yes, it does talk about Processes and Tools, but that tends to happen when you are organising such a large number of people. The Agile Manifesto explicitly says that processes and tools are to be valued – just not over individuals and interactions.
It doesn't help to say: "let the people figure out a simpler way to work themselves" because in practice they won't: they lack the skills and awareness needed and are operating in an environment that can't support this. These organisations are not start-ups. It's not realistic to rock-up and want to blow-up their whole world. People need to go on a journey that starts from a place they can recognise.
Don't forget SAFe is covering much more ground than a single agile team method: value-stream-analyis, value-based prioritisation, business and architectural themes, flow-based decision-making, cross-team-coordination, on-demand release trains, architecture, system issues, spikes and much more. Of course there's more process and practices than alternatives.
If I was being flippant, I could say that Scrum is a "bunch of context-sensitive practices instead of values and principles which truly scale". All methodologies are. And people don't implement values and principles at scale; they implement specific practices that flow from them.
SAFe is simply setting out a stall: "Do these practices in these kinds of situations". Then learn and iterate from there.
Ken's last criticism is the one I agree with the most.
There is always a danger that SAFe is interpreted as a top-down solution to support traditional management thinking – that people pay lip-service to Agile, adopting its language and some rituals but not its values and principles. That is a risk that needs to be actively managed.
However, implementing SAFe is most definitely not business-as-usual: the changes it forces are pretty radical to most large organisations and it can serve as the start of the Agile journey – but not the end.
I don't think large companies fear the change that simple methods like Scrum, XP, or Kanban provide – it is much simpler than that. It's that they cannot see how a simple team-based method could possibly replace all the systems and structures they currently have to coordinate delivery across their portfolio.
And they are right: because none of these methods tell you How, they just tell you to "figure it out". That's just not good enough – and neither is it credible to say they don't need coordinating.
In my experience fear comes in later, once they've started on change and begin to see changes to their own roles and responsibilities that can seem threatening. Then fear can be a barrier. But at the start it is simply about credibility. SAFe scores well on this front because it makes a credible attempt to provide an Agile template for the whole organisation.
SAFe may well make money and for some that might be reason enough to resent it, but I disagree. We should be applauding anything that helps advance the cause of Agile through commercial success. One example of SAFe doing just that is how it's popularising useful tools like Cost-of-Delay.
I disagree that SAFe ignores the product: rather the reverse – it provides a structured way to capture business and architecture themes into epics, prioritise and group them into a products at the program level where they are further broken-down into small items and prioritised against other work.
Because of this SAFe is more product-driven than team-based Agile methods which tend to focus only on the next few stories. I've seen many Scrum teams who don't even have a Sprint Goal, just a collection of disparate stories and expect a hero-PO to just fix it.
In a large enterprise, continuous delivery into production is rarely a simple matter, particularly if there are SLAs (unlike the Facebook world). So the fact that SAFe includes release planning sessions is a good thing.
This is often overlooked in Agile. I'd like to see people place as much focus on Migration Ownership (including user training and operational loads / curve planning) as there is on Product Ownership. Agile can be highly destructive for end-users if they are bombarded with unnecessary changes thrown over the wall.
Hardening Sprints are a sensible reality that may not been needed in theory but usually are in practice.
They are also a sensible contingency. Releasing only "when it is done" is not practical when hundreds and thousands of other people depend on a predictable date for operational needs, marketing campaigns, customer credibility, staff and user training, market opportunities – and a host of other reasons that matter in an enterprise world.
I understand why Neil is opposed to estimates, he's a prominent member of the #NoEstimates campaign.
But there's a big difference between estimating tasks and forecasting release dates. Task estimation is something you can move beyond when you have a predictable velocity and maturity in breaking work down.
But it always makes sense to forecast when you'll be done – why wouldn't you? In the enterprise world there's a host of other people who have important work to do that is date-sensitive. Or do you only care about the software teams?
It pains me when people interpret Agile to mean that "we can't have a release date" – of course you can if you want, you just can't fix the scope. Equally, you can forecast a release date that might move. Agile just makes it easier to do this because you have real data on team progress.
It isn't Scrum per-se that scales but the things built on top of Scrum. People build a whole host of practices on top of Scrum to support portfolio considerations, prioritisation, value, architecture and much more. That's how they scale.
SAFe is simply a template for many of those scaling practices – a starting point. And guess what, many people like having a starting point rather than simply being told to "figure it out". SAFe's starting point isn't perfect but at least it is giving an answer.
I understand the argument that people will not become truly Agile until they have the ability to create their own practices based on knowledge and judgement and context. But many people will never go on that journey – that's what Agilistas struggle to understand: not everyone shares their passion. Yet all those people still have a role to play and SAFe helps them do it.
Clear levels, focus on lean, leadership, developing people, value streams, limiting WIP at the top, themes, epics, program/product clarity, release planning, cadence for development / demand for delivery, release trains, hardening sprints, team practices, code practices and more.
That may true if you limit the scope to technical product development.
But most organisations these days are delivering services made up of a whole bunch of products that are a mix of people and processes of which IT is only one part. In reality the number of people involved in each project is far greater.
The true opportunities for benefits with Agile lie in end-to-end change of the whole organisation, which means taking a much wider view of Agile. That's where a framework like SAFe can offer benefits that a team-based product development methodology cannot.
That doesn't make SAFe the best answer – but it is at least an answer.
However, SAFe's appeal means it stands a better chance of adoption, so it is at least creating an opportunity for change where it didn't exist before. It's up to those assisting with implementations (consultants and coaches) to do all they can to make sure that SAFe is a catalyst for further change and not the organisation's first and only step.
It may well be true that the heart of Agile is simply the principles in the manifesto plus some team practices.
Many feel passionately that this is all that is needed, plus a few team-to-team coordinating practices such as Scrum-of-Scrums and Communities of Practice. Some will simply never accept that any more is needed and reject out-of-hand anything that arrives with a bigger and more complicated structure.
SAFe recognises that large organisations who are used to a very non-Agile and traditional way of working need a structure to help them change.
Many of these organisations simply won't go on a change journey without a structure that they can understand and relate to – even if that structure up-ends many of their traditional practices. Unless you have an international reputation and can pick clients who are willing to simply do whatever you say, then many people will only buy a solution that offers them something they can recognise.
For that reason, SAFe is creating an opportunity for Agile change where it previously did not exist.
That doesn't mean that SAFe is a silver bullet: there are risks that organisations only implement SAFe as a static framework using traditional management thinking, miss the point and most of the benefits.
So, while I have a natural distaste for anything that is "Agile-in-a-box" on principle, I can see the point of SAFe and why it (or similar frameworks) are needed. Like Ron, I can also see a lot of good elements included in SAFe that will benefit most organisations.
It's up to us in the Agile community to ensure that these methods become launch vehicles for spreading and growing knowledge of the Values and Principles behind them.
Posted in Agile, Kanban, Lean, Methodologies, Scrum.
First of all that's a really good and comprehensive post!
Well your point has form of one must choose SAFe when there are thousands or more people working because Scrum won't deliver. I don't see a positive point though why Scrum can't do it? Of course if you read Ken's book on scrum of scrums you may see it as a naive attempt to scale scrum (And I fully agree with such point). But there are other attempts to scale Scrum like this of Bas Vodde and Craig Larman which has been used in large organizations mainly in Asia and proved to be working there. SAFe is not agile because it focuses on top-down portfolio and program management and as I said before cuts linkage between devs and product. That's what you cannot find in BV and CL approach.
Oh come on – that's a world of difference between having 100k various consultants and 10-20 systems and one system and one type of consultants. There is up to now no Prince2 or PMP company within agile movement and SAFe is on the way to change it. I believe in variety and not in monopoly. Just two factors Agile is trendy + there is no control style agile framework makes Rally + SAFe teams great candidates to win managers' harts.
4) However, implementing SAFe is most definitely not business-as-usual: the changes it forces are pretty radical to most large organisations and it can serve as the start of the Agile journey – but not the end.
I disagree with this. Managers and business leaders love to push devs to deliver while not make much effort themselves with respect to changes. SAFe does not stress this point as scrum or lean does.
Other points you make are great!
Hi Aleksander, thanks for all of your comments and taking the time to put them down.
1) I'm not at all saying SAFe is the only option – everyone is free to use what they like. But I don't consider vanilla Scrum an equivalent because it simply doesn't say anything at all about how to handle issues wider than a team or team of teams.
That doesn't mean you can't build on top of it (like Vodde & Larman do) but that's not the same thing – the point of things like SAFe is to provide a more comprehensive starting point. The point of that is adoption – some organisations ignore Scrum because it doesn't even try to answer some important questions.
I don't agree that SAFe "isn't agile". When you have a large business with complex products you can't just have the devs execute – you need more. SAFe doesn't cut the link – that's dependent on how you apply it. Nothing to stop you involving devs throughout. In fact, it explicitly attempts to make the upstream portfolio more agile – whereas vanilla Scrum effectively says "the PO sorts this out".
2) SAFe adds to the variety. It will only get a monopoly if succeeds – and it will only do that if it works (because it is far less resistence to implement PRINCE2). Nothing to stop anyone using anything else. Winning manager's hearts is a good thing if you want to change them – and in a large organisation you need to take managers on the journey with you if you want to succeed much beyond a single team.
3) I don't follow you here. Yes SAFe provides processes and tools (as do most methodologies – even Scrum) but nowhere does it say these are valued over individuals and interactions. That would be a bit like saying Scrum isn't agile because it is dominated by inflexible ritual processes like stand-ups and sprint planning sessions.
4) This is my point about adoption. If you want people to change then they need a path they can follow. For large organisations that needs to include managers, business leaders and the very large number of people outside IT who are key to delivering and supporting products and services (and working with smaller, faster, more frequent releases). Scrum doesn't try to change any manager's behaviour outside the dev team.
Don't get me wrong – I love Scrum too – but comparing them is a bit like comparing musical notation (Scrum) with a complete opera (SAFe). Yes, people could self-organise and use the notation to write and perform their own – but most big groups will struggle and fail to achieve it. Now, you might not like that particular opera – good for you, go choose something else.
Sometimes I get this disconnect with people who say "all you need is Scrum" – it is never, ever true in my experience. There's always a big pile of stuff that is built on top, especially for an enterprise organisation.
Thanks for your prompt reply and anchor fixing.
1) About vanilla scrum – I agree.
About "SAFe is not Agile". You can't evolve a big complex something directly you need to break it down. In the IT context this big something is mostly system or product. Agile chooses the latter while SAFe the former – (just check this on SAFe pages it's a system-level incrementation what teams do). Each choice has profound consequences. With the system there is no more real attachment to what company is earning money from (unless your company builds systems for money). If you leave behind the idea of team executing product incrementation and move it to the higher level you raise exponentially risk of getting software which is organized orthogonally to company's / user's needs. It's not true as well that SAFe encourages getting devs to the higher levels. Check for instance – http://scaledagileframework.com/team-demo and what it says about the system demo.
I bet Google realized that a link between their devs and real product is substantial and thus their people worked (at least two years ago) around product focus groups where cross-system development was left as an important but purely technical (and thus cross product groups) concern.
Historically companies loved the idea of separation between technical and business part with no real good mapping between them. Agile was a revolutionary approach because it said: just get rid of the mapping itself. This idea has been picked by modern software architecture styles like Domain Driven Design which says that both business and devs must use the same language which is reflected one-to-one in the names of code building blocks.
But the old easy to grasp system orientation and separation is pretty deep entrenched in management minds so they find SAFe approach awesome.
2) Coca Cola is the winning soda but does it make it the healthiest soda ever? Check scientific studies by Ilan Yaniv "Exploiting the wisdom of others to make better decisions…" on how people make decisions. Namely people by default take the option which resembles what they already think and not what by all (known to them) means must be better. The same goes to managers which pick system oriented top-down supportive SAFe approach because it sounds, feels and smells like yesterday's morning coffee & croissant.
4) Scrum puts the new ways of collaboration between devs and managers – just check Ken's "Agile Software Development with Scrum" – in its very core. SAFe follows good old fashioned separation and that's the issue regardless of numbers of managers.
About the musical notation and an opera. That's why one of the greatest projects (not necessarily most ethical ones) in the history of mankind "The Manhattan Project" valued face to face interactions at all cost and removed complex management structures. They understood that great specialists are way better then managerial overhead.
And of course I don't mind companies use SAFe. I just don't see the efficiency which you get from a massive cooperation of specialists focused on product goals there as I do find in Agile.
1) In most companies that are not software companies, there's a wider system of work beyond IT delivering products and services. The "product" is much more than just a technical solution and so is the work that needs to be organised in its delivery – there are always both systems and products (and ecosystems around them). That all needs mechanisms and we can argue about the merits of SAFe's but at least it proposes some.
I don't think we're going to agree on this point – the claims you make about what SAFe prevents I don't find to be true in practice, though of course there always bad implementations (just like the dozens of bad Scrum implementations I've seen – none of which prevent me thinking Scrum is a good thing).
2) It's still all about adoption. You can take the purist's approach but then you'll have very few companies of scale that embrace it. The managers that pick SAFe are not going to pick the purist alternatives. Is it better to move a large number of people a small way or a small number of people a large way? Why not offer and do both, I say.


text:
ScienceToday
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Jérôme Mallefet's abyssal fishing
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To draw up an inventory of the abyssal fauna; this was the ambitious objective of the Australian international mission in which Jérôme Mallefet participated. Over a month of intensive work in search of bioluminescent species was on the agenda. An interview.
If there is a fauna that remains largely unknown, it is the abyssal fauna, that is, that living between 2500 and 4000 metres in depth. It should be noted that it's not easy to explore; it's necessary to go to sea for several weeks with specialised equipment to reach it. These conditions didn't discourage Dr Tim O'Hara of the Museum Victoria of Melbourne, who decided to set up the first Australian expedition devoted to the abyssal fauna; an opportunity that Jérôme Mallefet of the UCL Laboratory of Marine Biology didn't allow to slip by! " I have worked for years on bioluminescent animals and when Tim O'Hara told me that he would be the head of mission for this expedition I notified him that if there was a free slot I was up for it. Very little is known about deep-sea bioluminescence," explains the researcher. "The abysses represent the largest ecosystem on our planet and not even 1% of them are known. There is already talk at present of mining ores from the seabed, while it's not known what lives there... So there is a serious risk that this ecosystem will be destroyed before it has been studied."
So the researcher set off for the east coast of Australia, from Tasmania to the coral reef, for a 32-day mission with international taxonomists. The objective: to identify the species living there. "There were 27 scientists divided into two teams. Each team was on duty/scientifically active for 12 hours; the first shift began at 2 a.m. and went until 2 p.m., while the second shift worked the 2 p.m. - 2 a.m. time slot. This allowed work to be carried out continuously while we were at sea."
The first challenge in getting access to these sea creatures is sending collection equipment to depths ranging from one to four kilometres on a terrain that the researchers first had to map out. "It's a bit as if you were in a helicopter between 1000 and 4000 m altitude and you sent a net 4 m wide to catch organisms on the ground blindly, or almost. In practice, to reach the bottom, 2, 4 or even over 6 km of cable must be played out. Imagine managing a net at 4 km depth that is 3 km behind the boat! It's necessary to take account of the wind, the surface and bottom currents; in short, it was a real balancing act," Jérôme Mallefet enthuses. To collect organisms living in various locations in the abysses, the researchers brought aboard several fishing tools:
a demersal trawl, a net 20 m wide that passes over the seabed,
a beam trawl 4 m wide that combs the seabed,
a sled with three cameras and lighting,
a second sled, called a Brenke sled, that collects the surface sediment,
a corer, a type of large box that sinks into the sediment and brings a quarter of a cubic metre of it back to the surface.
surface plankton nets.
"As for me, I also brought a luminometer to measure the bioluminescence, a microspectrometer to determine the colour of the light emissions (the spectra), fibre optics and an ultrasensitive camera to document the bioluminescence."
On the complexity of observing bioluminescence
A second challenge for the biologist was to successfully observe the light emitted by the abyssal animals! In fact, for this to be possible, it was necessary that the animals brought back to the boat be still alive, as light is produced in response to a stimulus. So it was necessary to be quick and observant! "As soon as the animals arrived in the sorting room I made my little tour, taking specimens still in good condition. I immediately put them in the dark, in seawater with sea ice. Once my "shopping" was finished, I isolated myself in a dark room set at 6°C in which I conducted all my experiments: first I stayed in the dark to allow my vision to acclimate as much as possible, and then I mechanically stimulated the organisms in order to be able to observe their luminescence and measure the maximum light by depolarisation. Finally, I attempted to take a photo of the bioluminescence."
Ophiure Pennatule
Holothurie Octocorail
Identifying and analysing unknown species
During this expedition, Jérôme Mallefet observed dozens of light-emitting specimens, including numerous specimens he had never seen and about which very little is yet known. "The taxonomists of the expedition are going to deal with determination of the species, and now I am conducting biochemical, morphological and physiological studies of the tissue samples I brought back in the laboratory. I hope to shed some light on this abyssal fauna."
The researcher and his colleagues can already congratulate themselves on the diversity of their harvests, however: "The animals brought up are astonishing and surprising because they are very well adapted to the depths where they live. There was a red coffinfish with a lure on its head, batfish, tripodfish that rest on the rays of their fins on the seabed and await their prey, the famous faceless fish, a starfish over 50 cm in diameter, an anemone over 30 cm in diameter, a bright red spiny crab, etc. Each time the nets or devices were brought back up there were surprises! It was just fascinating; we all waited for the arrivals of the net on deck and we were just as enthusiastic the last day of the expedition as the first. It was a unique opportunity to be able to study this poorly understood fauna. I have studied bioluminescence at UCL for 30 years and I have never had access to these animals. The entire mission was extraordinary; I saw spider crabs emit blue light, brittle stars and starfish shine in green, in blue, bamboo coral produce a blue glow... It was magical. With the exception of three days of storms that kept us from working, there was not a day without living light," Jérôme Mallefet concludes.
Faceless fish
Red coffinfish
To find out more about the expedition.
Elise Dubuisson
A glance at Jérôme Mallefet's bio
1982 : Bachelor of Biological Sciences (UCL)
1982-1988 : Doctor of Science (UCL) with Prof. Fernand Baguet
1998-1990 : FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher (UCL)
1989-1990 : Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Montréal, laboratory of Michel Anctil, Canadian government Fellow
1990- : FNRS Research Associate, Laboratory of Animal Physiology (UCL)
1996- : Part-time Professor (UCL) – Manager of the Marine Biology Laboratory


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Teachers have long been identified as the number one in-school factor influencing student outcomes. Conversely, teacher turnover, which has increased 20 to 30 percent over the last several decades, is correlated with lower student outcomes and contributes to school cultures where churn and instability prevent positive change from taking root.
On a systemic level, the same conditions that lead to high turnover—which surveys show commonly include dissatisfaction with leadership, school culture, or with the career of teaching among other reasons—can also hurt the reputation and prestige of the profession, complicating efforts to recruit talented new teachers.
What's more, challenges in retaining teachers are not evenly experienced across the E-12 landscape. Schools and teachers serving low income students, students of color, and students living in urban centers all experience disproportionately high levels of teacher turnover. In other words, the destabilizing effects of teacher turnover contribute to educational inequities.
Fortunately, there are stories—of schools, strategies, programs, and leaders—which buck these trends. Many schools around the country have fostered healthy, positive workplaces where a stable group of great teachers form the bedrock of learning programs where students thrive.
Today, we're announcing a new blog series to tell these stories, with the generous financial support of the McKnight Foundation. The goal of the series is to present actionable insights and ideas to inform, inspire, and equip those working at the school, district, and state level to retain and support great talent.
This new series, titled Retaining Teachers: Fostering Conditions Where Talent Thrives, will run now through the end of the year. It will examine the systemic determinants of teacher retention, including working conditions, leaders/leadership teams, district policy conditions, and more. And throughout coverage of these topics, it will apply an equity lens to consider the teachers and students disproportionately affected by high turnover.
Explore the link between working conditions and teacher retention/stability. This will include reviewing the academic research on the topic; highlighting examples of schools that maintain stable and consistent teachers and leaders (and why); examining tools used to provide insight to retain educators; and more.
Dig deeper into why teachers of color leave the profession at higher rates than their white peers. We will report on the available data and research on this question, and share stories and perspectives from those who have personal experiences with this challenge, and how to address it.
Explore the connection between effective leadership teams and teacher retention. We will examine the research on what constitutes effective leadership that creates a culture where teachers stay, highlight leaders who embody those characteristics, and consider leader training and coaching programs that have been effective in developing those abilities.
Look at the impact of district policy on teacher retention and effective leadership. We will hold up, through research and examples, what a productive and supportive district policy environment might look like.
We'll feature one to two posts a month as part of this series, alongside our usual posts on education policy and innovation, and will be doing a larger public launch of the series later this month after the first couple posts are up. We are enthusiastic to get started, and hope you will join us on this journey. If you haven't already, you can sign up for blog posts by email.
We are grateful to the McKnight Foundation for their generous financial support for this series.


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text:
Q: Parsing environment variables into configuration yaml file I am using dask on the GFDL analysis cluster to analyze large climate model output.
I am trying to set my temporary-directory configuration to a temporary directory, which can change depending on the node I am logging with (it is always identified by the environmental variable $TMPDIR).
Is there a way to parse environment variables in the dask configuration files?
Cheers.

A: Not as of today, but that could be done.  I recommend raising an issue on the Dask issue tracker.


text:
Kristen eksistensfilosofi, der også populært kaldes kristen eksistentialisme, er en filosofisk skole som kan spores tilbage til eksistensfilosoffen og teologen Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Den hviler på tre antagelser taget fra Kierkegaards unikke forståelse af kristendom. Den første var, at universet i bund og grund var et paradoks og at det største paradoks af alle var den ophøjede forening af Gud og menneske i personificeringen af Kristus. Den anden var at have et personligt forhold til Gud fortrænger alle moralsæt, sociale strukturer og fælles normer. Den tredje var at det at følge sociale regler dybest inde var et personligt æstetisk valgt gjort af individer.

Derfor mente Kierkegaard at hver person individuelt må træffe de valg som ligger til grund for hans eller hendes eksistens. Ingen pålagte strukturer — selv bibelske bud — kan ændre individers ansvar for at søge at behage Gud på hvilken personlig og paradoksal måde Gud kan behages. Hvert individ lider af ubeslutsomhedens kvaler indtil han eller hun tager "troens spring" og forpligter sig til et bestemt valg. Hver person har ansvaret for sin egen frie vilje og med det faktum, at et valg, selv et forkert valg, skal træffes for at man virkelig kan leve.

Blandt kristne eksistensfilosoffer har været amerikanske teologer, såsom Paul Tillich og europæiske filosoffer, såsom Karl Jaspers og Gabriel Marcel. Karl Barth føjede til Kierkegaards ideer den opfattelse, at eksistentiel fortvivlelse fører et individ til en bevidsthed om Guds uendelige natur.

Efter Kierkegaard udviklede hans individualisme sig senere ind i den velkendte eksistentielle filosofi hvor bl.a. Nietzsche, Sartre og Camus var store tænkere, som bibeholdte ideen om personligt valg og ansvar, men kasserede den personlige forbindelse til Gud.

Kierkegaard mente også at ethvert menneske eksisterer på et af tre "eksistensens stadier": det æstetiske, det etiske og det religiøse. De fleste mennesker han lagde mærke til levede et æstetisk liv hvor intet betød noget ud over udseende, fornøjelser og lykke. Det er i overensstemmelse med dette plan at folk følger sociale regler. Kierkegaard betragtede også overtrædelsen af sociale regler af personlige grunde (f.eks. for at søge berømmelse, et ry for oprørskhed) som værende et personligt æstetisk valg. En meget mindre gruppe er de mennesker som lever på det etiske stadie, som gør deres bedste for at gøre det rigtige og se bort fra samfundets flade høfligheder og ideer. Det tredje og højeste stadie er det religiøse stadie. For at være på det religiøse stadie siger Kierkegaard at man skal overgive sin helhed til Gud.

Se også
 Kristen anarkisme
 Ateistisk eksistentialisme
 Dialektisk teologi – Tidehverv – Eksistentialisme

Eksterne links
 Blog om eksistentialistisk kristendom
 Hvorfor kristen eksistentialistisk humanisme?

Kristen filosofi
Eksistentialisme


Coordinated Land Use/Transportation Action Committee � 4:30 p.m., Next Stop Center, West 11th Avenue and Olive Street. Analysis of proposed West Eugene EmX routes.
Eugene Rural Fire Protection District Board � 4:30 p.m., 85969 S. Willamette St. 541-343-1610.
Lane Education Service District Board � 5 p.m., District Office, 1200 Highway 99N. Work session on board goals. Regular meeting, 6 p.m. Approve budget committee members; policy on layoff and recall of licensed staff; equity and diversity; home-schooling and attendance/truancy report. 541-461-8213.
Human Rights Commission Education and Outreach Committee � 5:30 p.m., Saul Room, Atrium Building, 99 W. 10th Ave. Developing community task groups, public meetings law, public outreach strategies. 541-682-6378.
Whiteaker Community Council Board � 6 p.m., Whiteaker Community Center, Clark/North Jackson streets. Eekley@efn.org.
Neighborhood Leaders Council � 7 p.m., Sloat Room, Atrium Building, 99 W. 10th Ave. Alan@churchillareaneighbors.org.
City Council � Noon, McNutt Room, City Hall, 777 Pearl St. Work session: Triple bottom line, food security scoping and resource plan. 541-682-5882.
Housing and Community Services Agency � 9 a.m., Harris Hall, Public Service Building, 125 E. Eighth Ave., Eugene. Strategic plan. 541-682-4203.
Board of Commissioners � Following above, same location. Charter Review Committee; executive (nonpublic) session. At 1:30 p.m., Eugene Airport Master Plan; Envision Eugene; executive (nonpublic) session. 541-682-4203.
Lane Transit District Human Resources Committee � 4 p.m., Conference Room, LTD, 3500 E. 17th Ave., Glenwood. General manager selection process. 541-682-6100.
Community Health Council � 5:15 p.m., Room 201, Lane County Mental Health, 2411 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Eugene. 541-682-3798.
Lane Rural Fire and Rescue Board � 6 p.m., Station 51, 29999 Hallett St., Eugene. Pplanning; policy adoption. 541-688-1770, Ext. 500.
Housing and Community Services Agency � 9 a.m., Harris Hall, Public Service Building, 125 E. Eighth Ave., Eugene. Budget. 541-682-4203.
Board of Commissioners � After above, same location. Stormwater policy; executive (nonpublic) session. At 1:30 p.m., Area Commission on Transportation; transportation projects; executive (nonpublic) session. At 6:30 p.m., Meeting Room No. 1, Lane Events Center, 796 W. 13th Ave., Eugene. Fairgrounds future. 541-682-4203.
Siuslaw Watershed Council � 6:30 p.m., Mapleton Grange, East Mapleton Road, Mapleton. 541-268-3044.


A San Antonio police officer is in the clear after slapping a 14-year-old across the face during an altercation, My San Antonio reports.
Officer Gary Tuli was caught on camera using force against a minor on May 20th in the parking lot of the Crown Palace Event Center in San Antonio.
After the altercation went viral, a local news source requested the use-of-force report, body camera footage and dash cam video of the incident, invoking the state open records law.
Gary Tuli's police department ruled that the officer was justified in using force. The report states Tuli used de-esclation techniques and verbally tried to stop the suspect before using force.
The report also noted that she was not inured, contrary to her lawyer's account of her condition.
The teen was arrested and taken to Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center but was later released because she had no prior history of violence.


Organizations need to be aware of unconscious biases, says Jobvite chief people officer Rachel Bitte (pictured).
• HR expert Rachel Bitte says that there's a potential downside to hiring for culture fit.
• The hiring strategy can lead to a more homogeneous workplace.
• Research also indicates that interviewers sometimes look for "potential friends" rather than qualified candidates.
Hiring for cultural fit sounds innocuous enough.
It makes sense to want to employ people who gel with the culture of your organization.
But Rachel Bitte, chief people officer at recruiting software company Jobvite, says that there's an unexpected dark side to the practice.
"I think companies really have to be careful," Bitte, who has over 20 years of HR experience working at Apple and Intuit, tells Business Insider. "What do you mean by a 'fit' for your company?"
It's easy enough to say that you're hiring based on certain personality traits that match your organization's stated values. But Bitte says that it's also easy for hiring managers to allow unconscious biases to seep into their definition of "fit."
"There are unconscious biases around, 'Hey this person went to the same university that I went to,'" Bitte says. "There's a gender bias. There can be a race bias or a language barrier."
Left unchecked, a warped understanding of culture fit could prompt organizations to justify hiring people who look, think, and act just like everyone else in the office.
Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management professor Lauren Rivera's research found that relatively untrained interviewers often look for "potential friends and 'playmates' rather than those with the best work experience or job-relevant skills."
A warped understanding of culture fit can bring about problems in the office.
A potential result is an increasingly homogeneous workforce when it comes to socioeconomic background, race, and gender.
This vague focus on culture fit also typically gives wealthier, more privileged candidates an edge.
Rivera's findings indicate that, when it comes to "elite professional services" firms, the playing field is usually "skewed in favor of applicants from the most privileged backgrounds."
For example, Rivera found that recruiters looking to delve into a candidate's passions are often favorably inclined toward candidates who played "sports that had a strong presence at Ivy League schools as well as pay-to-play club sports," like lacrosse, squash, and crew, according to the Atlantic.
Such a hiring strategy can also cause a company's more toxic elements to become entrenched.
If you're hiring people to fit into what's actually an unscrupulous, harassment-ridden "bro culture," odds are you'll be alienating many prospective employees who don't fit into the demographic boxes of young, white, and male — or those who simply prefer to work in a more professional environment.
But when you're dealing with a traditional application process that involves résumés and interviews, it can be difficult to address the issue, according to Bitte.
"We've been trained for years to look at someone's résumé and talk to them," she says.
Bitte says that some companies now use programs that redact information like names, pictures, and alma maters, and start out with skills tests instead of interviews.
Companies like Facebook have also set up unconscious bias training programs to help employees become more aware of potential pitfalls.
When it comes to hiring for culture fit, it's a good idea to train interviewers to identify and move past their own unconscious biases.
"I'm wondering if that might be the future of where we're going," Bitte says. "Companies are starting to play with this idea and what it means to hiring for skills vs. hiring for background."


From my desk in the north of England, the grass seems considerably greener–or the poppies redder–across the water in Europe. Here in Britain political look-alikes compete frenetically for the center ground, and politicians of the radical left are sidelined by a grossly disproportionate electoral system. In contrast, Norway's Left Socialist Party is part of the government; Italy's radical Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation Party, or PRC) is a key player in L'Unione, the coalition that could well defeat Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in this April's elections; Germany's Linkspartei (Left Party) potentially provides a new voice on the left; France's historically fissiparous left united to give the EU constitution a resounding European "No!" Ripples from this defeat of an arrogant political elite are evident in the confident way that young people presume they can block Prime Minister Villepin's attempt to neoliberalize the French labor market.
It's not all onward and upward. In last year's Spanish elections the United Left lost all its seats in the Madrid Parliament, partly because it was insufficiently nimble in the face of the move left by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's victorious Socialist Party, lifted into office on a wave of antiwar opinion. The Swedish Left Party is in disarray, while in Greece the relatively innovative Synaspismos is numerically overshadowed by the dogmatic and sectarian Greek Communist Party. But the political landscape of Western Europe is changing as disillusion with neoliberal policies grows.
Parties coming from varying combinations of Communist, Trotskyist and independent green-left traditions have long acted as a magnet for popular disillusion with mainstream politics. But the constituency for an alternative to neoliberalism, whether Berlusconian or Blairite, is now far greater than any electoral support for the parties of the radical left. This constituency is reflected in opinion polls indicating majorities against both the Iraq War and privatization, in the popularity of muckraking films like The Constant Gardener and most of all in the continual eruption of resistance to governments pursuing neoliberal agendas, the French protests being the latest example.
Many of Europe's radical left parties are still struggling to develop new projects for social, economic and political change. Increasingly self-conscious about their own limitations, they are seeking to refound themselves by working with the radical social movements, organizations and networks that have gathered momentum in recent years. They face a Catch-22, however, because their efforts to innovate are in constant tension with the organizational imperatives of electoral politics. Yet without a more fundamental renovation–including giving way to the creation of entirely new political projects–they will remain in the minority.
The most successful parties on the European left are those that have immersed themselves in social movements, especially the movements for global social justice, while at the same time using electoral footholds to open up political institutions. What is happening across Western Europe is that significant swaths of public opinion have far more radical expectations than social democratic parties can meet, but most of these voters are slow to shift party loyalties. Consequently, it is through radical movements independent of the political system, from antiwar groups to trade union and community alliances against privatization, that this opinion is gaining organized expression. As a result, left parties that have strong links with these movements are able to punch way beyond their electoral strength, making gains for political ideas that the movements and parties share. "Social movements are the engines of transformation," says Fausto Bertinotti, leader of Italy's Rifondazione and the Mediterranean maestro of this strategy for outflanking conservative political institutions. Political parties must recognize that they are "but one actor among many," he insists.
Norway, with its uniquely proportional electoral system, provides a laboratory for the radical left's experiment with a pluralist approach to power. (By "pluralist," I mean a break from the idea that the party has a monopoly on the process of social change, and recognition of a plurality of sources of transformative power.) "The changes we have achieved would have been impossible without the pressure and initiatives of the movements since Seattle," commented Dag Seierstad of the Norwegian Socialist Left Party (SV), which split from the Labor Party in 1961. The SV provides the best Northern European example of this dialectic between party and movement.
The SV's twin-track strategy of working with a global justice movement closely linked to trade unions and campaigning electorally for a coalition of leftist parties, including a reluctant Labor Party, first bore fruit in 2001. The electoral consequences were ambiguous: The SV won 12.5 percent of the vote and twenty-three seats in Parliament, while Labor crashed to 24.3 percent and forty-three seats and actually lost the election to the Conservatives. But Labor's electoral collapse led the unions to start pushing for a coalition with the SV, rather than the center-right. When the left coalition won in 2005, the SV–a party committed not only to defending public services and public ownership but also to withdrawal from NATO–actually found itself in government, even though its share of the vote had dropped significantly, to 9 percent and only fifteen seats. The SV's presence in Norway's governing coalition has already stopped in its tracks the outgoing Conservative government's deregulation and privatization program. The SV can also claim credit for the reallocation of Norway's oil surplus as development aid, the commitment to withdraw Norwegian troops from Iraq and the actual withdrawal of Norwegian special staff from NATO's Afghanistan operations.
The SV remains powerful because its presence provides a channel into government for movements that have their own social, economic and cultural strength. "Every day of the three-week-long negotiations, there were demonstrations outside that could be heard as we talked," says Seierstad. The demonstrators symbolized why the government must listen to the SV.
This is the kind of dynamic that the PRC is attempting to reproduce in Italy. It has had some successes at the local level, gaining both confidence and skill in this new kind of socialist politics. Isadora D'Aimmo, a PRC representative in the coalition government of the Left Democrats (DS) in Naples, describes how "the presence of Rifondazione forces the whole government to open the door to movements and to people's direct expression of their needs. Take a small but typical example: The regional government intended to build an incinerator in the town of Acerra. We disagreed and insisted on ecological ways of recycling waste. The people of Acerra revolted. They were supported by the mayor, who is a member of the PRC. It has been a revolt involving every citizen: men, women, boys, girls, priests. No incinerator has been built. That's how we work, with the movements to change the decisions of government and also the way they take those decisions." The parliamentary weight of the PRC on its own could never have achieved such changes in regional policy.
In the last national elections, the PRC won only 6 percent of the vote, but by opening the political process to popular participation it is trying to shift the balance of forces in favor of radical change. At the national level the aim therefore is not simply to form a united front against Berlusconi but also, through working relationships similar to those achieved locally, to keep constant pressure on any new government to break the logic of neoliberalism and find an alternative way out of Italy's deepening economic crisis.
An equal partnership with the movements becomes a necessary condition for radical social change. "We want to be a resource for the movements without trying to dominate them. It involves giving up on the sovereignty of the party," says Nicola Fratoianni, regional secretary of the party in Puglia, Southern Italy, where the PRC's gay Catholic Communist candidate won election as regional governor last April through a campaign whose momentum depended on the creativity and energy of local gay, youth and other social movements.
The European Left Party (EL) was founded two years ago to bring together leftist parties across Europe. So far it is still a loose federation rather than a united political grouping, but it has been a catalyst in the chemistry of the reviving European left. "We learned a lot from the Italians," says Christiane Reymann, a feminist in the leadership of the German Party of Democratic Socialists (PDS), now the dominant partner in the Linkspartei. "Their influence was vital to setting up the Linskpartei." Members of the French Communist Party (PCF) express similar enthusiasm for the EL: "The support of our partners in the EL was crucial to the success of the European 'No,'" says Elisabeth Gautier of Espaces Marx, a think tank associated with the PCF.
In France (and Germany too) the conservative institutions that movement activists, including many party members, have to outflank are those of the parties of the left. In Germany the crisis of politics following unification has presented the anti-globalization movement and the anti-neoliberal trade unions with a political opportunity for a radical political voice but also with a tough challenge. The Linkspartei is to some extent a very precarious marriage of convenience: The PDS, though popular in the east, faced a slow death as long as it remained in its eastern ghetto lacking any representation in the Bundestag. Meanwhile, in the western part of the country, a significant group of regional trade union leaders and engaged intellectuals led by former economics minister Oskar Lafontaine split from the Social Democratic Party to form the Election Alternative for Employment and Social Justice. They came together initially as an electoral alliance and surprised themselves by winning 8.7 percent of the vote and fifty-four seats in the Bundestag in last year's elections.
The leaders of the Linkspartei talk the talk of working with the movements, but I doubt if many of their leaders would really accept the proposition that they are just "one actor among many." There is, however, a significant minority who have been genuinely influenced by their involvement in the new movements, including the networks that are spreading through the European Social Forum. They complain of the overly "managerial" approach of the party leadership, who patronize the movements and curb open discussion and autonomous initiatives inside the party.
The strategy of opening parties and political institutions to social movements seeks to release new and powerful forces for political change. Three current trends support it: First, the continuing, though fragmented, resistance to various aspects of neoliberalism, whether privatization, deregulation, bureaucratically imposed development plans or war. Second, the failure of sclerotic and often corrupt political institutions to represent or debate this widespread popular feeling adequately. Third, the European context itself, which produces a rich cross-fertilization of ideas and political cultures. Who knows, someday it might even shake the institutions of the British establishment. Indeed, with the Scottish Socialist Party now eight years old–with six seats in the Scottish Parliament and strong roots in Scotland's radical movements–the politics of pluralist transformation already has a foothold even here in Britain.
Hilary WainwrightHilary Wainwright is the co-editor of Red Pepper, Research Director of New Politics at the Transnational Institute. Her updated Reclaim the State; Experiments in Popular Democracy is published next month by Seagull.


text:
package ohi.andre.consolelauncher.commands.main.raw;

import java.io.File;

import ohi.andre.consolelauncher.R;
import ohi.andre.consolelauncher.commands.CommandAbstraction;
import ohi.andre.consolelauncher.commands.ExecutePack;
import ohi.andre.consolelauncher.commands.main.MainPack;
import ohi.andre.consolelauncher.managers.FileManager;
import ohi.andre.consolelauncher.tuils.Tuils;

public class open implements CommandAbstraction {

    @Override
    public String exec(ExecutePack pack) {
        MainPack info = (MainPack) pack;
        File file = info.get(File.class, 0);

        int result = FileManager.openFile(info.context, file);

        if (result == FileManager.ISDIRECTORY) return info.res.getString(R.string.output_isdirectory);
        if (result == FileManager.IOERROR) return info.res.getString(R.string.output_error);

        return Tuils.EMPTYSTRING;
    }

    @Override
    public int helpRes() {
        return R.string.help_open;
    }

    @Override
    public int minArgs() {
        return 1;
    }

    @Override
    public int[] argType() {
        return new int[]{CommandAbstraction.FILE};
    }

    @Override
    public int priority() {
        return 4;
    }

    @Override
    public String onNotArgEnough(ExecutePack pack, int nArgs) {
        MainPack info = (MainPack) pack;
        return info.res.getString(helpRes());
    }

    @Override
    public String onArgNotFound(ExecutePack pack, int index) {
        MainPack info = (MainPack) pack;
        return info.res.getString(R.string.output_filenotfound);
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The portion of the site along Albemarle Road would be developed with a neighborhood shopping center including offices and possibly a continuing care residential community with up to 230 units.
The project would be built in the unincorporated area of Mecklenburg County. The Charlotte City Council could make a decision as early as January on a request to change several zoning categories and on the site plan.
John Morgan of Kolter Homes said if the rezoning is approved and permits are issued as expected, the company could start construction in summer. The first phase would consist of a sales center and 12 to 15 model homes. He expects the first resident to move in the summer of 2017.
Morgan said he expected construction to follow the path of the Myrtle Beach development, which sold about 100 homes a year, meaning an eight-year build out for the total project.
He said the homes will range in size from 1,500 square feet to 3,000 square feet with a price point beginning in the lower $300,000s.
Melinda Johnston is a freelance writer: m.johnston@carolina.rr.com.
To see the site plan, community meeting notes and other correspondence related to this project, visit www.rezoning.org and search for 2015-101.


Deby Debo was launched in 1996 by Deborah and Cedric Allouche. This French brand provides answers for women who want to be feminine, individualistic, serene, and sensual. Deby Debo quickly catapulted into a full clothing collection, with their designs worn by many French socialites and celebrities. Today, the brand is distributed globally and has five free standing shops in Paris.


text:
Easter in Uzbekistan: newly baptized and a vigil in four languages
Msgr. Jerzy Maculewicz describes the Easter celebrations of Tashkent Catholics. Adults and children were baptized. National television stations broadcast the ceremony. The story of a woman over age 60, who converted when she fled the civil war in Uzbekistan. "She saw around her only death and turned to God".
Tashkent (AsiaNews) - When "we believe in God and trust in Him, even if we are in a situation with no way out, like when the people of Israel were in front of the waters of the Red Sea, God hears the cry for help of His people. God hears the cry and opens the way. If we believe in Him, He will also open our way and save us as he saved the people of Israel". This was the message that Msgr. Jerzy Maculewicz, apostolic administrator of Uzbekistan's Catholic Church, gave the new believers baptized on Easter night in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Tashkent. The ceremony took place in 4 languages, according to the composition of the faithful.
Before the liturgy, which began at 8pm, the faithful brought eggs, meats and other foods to be blessed by the parish priest.
The Catholic Church of Uzbekistan began to flourish in the nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of the country. The Christian community is divided into five parishes, located in the major cities. The majority of the population, over 95%, is made up of Muslim faithful. Christians represent 2.3% of the inhabitants, of which 0.1% are Catholic. In Tashkent the community has about 400 faithful.
The Easter vigil drew the attention of four national television stations, who wanted to film the whole ceremony. "I have spoken to reporters and I sent a message of joy and peace to the entire population of Uzbekistan". The bishop said: "It is important that the TV channels aired our liturgy, because in this way the country has learned that Catholics celebrate Easter".
Later the real celebration began, which lasted for over four hours. "This ceremony is very long - he explains - because of the readings in the four languages representative of our community: Russian, English, Korean and Polish". It must be said that there is still no liturgical book in the Uzbek language. Although the Mass was long, "no one was tired. Indeed, at the end of the liturgy some of the faithful stayed to exchange greetings".
The apostolic administrator reports that two groups of believers were baptized: during the vigil 12 adults between 15 and 65 years of age; On Sunday morning another children's group. He says: "It was a beautiful moment, while we felt that the risen Jesus was with us, in our midst. I told the new Catholics: 'For you today a new life begins, you receive new pure hearts. You can start a good life. Of course, it will not be without problems, but God will be with you".
In particular, the bishop tells the story of a lady of 60 "who was very emotional before her baptism and cried. Then the next day she came to me to tell me that she was really happy, that the ceremony of her entry into the Christian community had been the best thing that had ever happened in her life. " "An adult convert – he continued - marked by a deeply painful episode".
Msgr. Maculewicz tells that the lady had no religious affiliation, but decided to become a Christian as she fled from her country of origin, Kyrgyzstan, at the outbreak of civil war after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. "While the soldiers were firing on her group, killing some of her friends, she turned to the Lord and vowed to become Catholic if he saved her life. So it was, and after a long process of education, she is now overjoyed at having become part of the Christian community".
Uzbekistan Easter Tashkent Msgr.
Maculewicz four
languages vigil blessing
eggs baptisms woman
For Fr Tom, abducted in Yemen, Holy Thursday prayer and adoration for the martyrs
Two young Uzbeks also attend World Youth Day
Uzbek Church serves everyone, hopes for the arrival of new priests
Custos of the Holy Land: a "normal" Easter, overflowing with pilgrims
EU delegation in Central Asia talking human rights and oil


text:
Q: racket hangs at sleep when racket/gui is imported On Linux and Racket v5.3, next program runs as expected,
#lang racket

(let loop ([i 0])
    (printf "~a\n" i)
    (sleep 0.01)
    (loop (add1 i)))

But this hangs after printing up to around 200,
#lang racket
(require racket/gui)

(let loop ([i 0])
    (printf "~a\n" i)
    (sleep 0.01)
    (loop (add1 i)))

This problem does not arise when running inside DrRacket.
Is this a bug or am I missing something? If a bug, is there a workaround?

A: It looks like a bug -- do you mind filing a bug report using the web page, or preferably using DrRacket?

A: This has now been fixed in the latest development version, see this commit.


text:
Westminster Detectives
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1. Flipboard's CEO Mike McCue spoke to us about how the company will be "cash flow positive pretty soon." He said the key to making money is "class not mass" advertising.
3. The modelling industry is experiencing one unprecedented change. There is now far more acceptance about different body types, plus-size model Jennie Runk told Business Insider.
4. Yahoo could beat ESPN at its own game this week with one of its "best assets." Yahoo's star basketball reporter Adrian Wojnarowski is live-streaming the NBA draft for the first time.
5. Eric Schmidt gave us a glimpse of the strategy he's using to persuade the EU to not declare Google a monopoly. On Monday, at the Cannes Lions ad festival in southern France, the Alphabet chairman answered questions onstage about the "anxiety" Europe feels about Google's dominance on the continent.
6. Microsoft slammed Google Chrome's biggest problem. In a blog post published Monday, Microsoft boasts that the Edge browser that comes with every copy of the new Windows 10 operating system gets you as much as 70% more battery life than Google Chrome and 43% as much battery than Firefox on a laptop.
7. There's one huge difference in attitude among boomers, Gen X, and millennials. One major difference between these generations? Millennials want to be special.
8. Facebook's fast-loading, immersive Canvas tool, which combines video, text, and photo slideshows in an interactive, scrolling format, isn't just for advertisers anymore. The company is letting any business with a Page create Canvases for free.
9. Black cab app Gett launched a billboard campaign that mocks Uber for being expensive. "You didn't know what surging meant until you knew what Uber meant," reads one of the billboards.
10. Cable TV and digital ad spend jumped in May, according to Adweek. Standard Media Index data shows a 16% increase in the scatter market.


After a close battle for most of the day, Robin Lyons ran out the winner of the Midland MC Hewison Autotest Championship round at Longford on Sunday.
Lyons finished five seconds ahead of defending title holder Ian White, with his main challenger Guy Foster in third position, less than three seconds behind.
Meanwhile, Derry pair Marty McCormack and Barney Mitchell dominated the Willie Loughman Memorial Rally, with their Skoda Fabia taking the lead on the second of the six stages and staying there for the rest of the day to head the points table in the Valvoline National Forestry Rally Championship.
Former Tarmac champions Garry Jennings and Rory Kennedy were the first stage leaders, but their Impreza slipped to third at the finish, behind the Fiesta of last year's winners Andrew Purcell and Mark Wiley.


Complete vintage bed frame with headboard and footboard, all made to fit a Full mattress. No mattress or box spring included. Needs restoration. Also missing some little plugs in the top of the headboard and foot board. Designed to fit a full mattress and box spring that is 54 inches wide and 75 inches long. The outside of the bed is 57 inches wide. The headboard is 39 1/2 inches high the footboard is 25 inches high.


text:
Mon., January 06, 2020
CES trade show spotlights big tech trends
High-res TVs among key products
Tim Alessi, head of home entertainment product marketing for LG Electronics USA, unveils a GX series of OLED TV during a LG news conference ahead of the CES show, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in Las Vegas. (Associated Press)
A model stands next to the LG Signature Wine Cellar during a LG news conference ahead of the CES show, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in Las Vegas. (Associated Press)
A person holds the Technics EAH-AZ70W earbuds during a Panasonic news conference ahead of the CES show, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in Las Vegas. (Associated Press)
Some technology trends for the New Year are easy to predict, such as the continuing hype around faster, more reliable 5G cellular networks.
Others, however, are harder to forecast. What new artificial intelligence service will blossom to become the next Amazon Alexa or Google Home?
Can self-driving car technology take a meaningful step forward?
The International Consumer Electronics Show, the sprawling consumer electronics trade conference that opens today and runs through Friday in Las Vegas, may provide a clue when it serves up a first look at the hot technology trends for the year.
Will the rise of video streaming services accelerate following the successful launch of Disney Plus late in 2019? Are high resolution 8K TVs ready for prime time?
What does the future hold for e-sports and smart cities?
"The technology trends that are driving a lot of what is happening at the show is the rollout of 5G as well as artificial intelligence — be it in transportation, health care and a variety of other industries," said Karen Chupka, executive vice president of CES for the Consumer Technology Association, which puts on the show. "Those two trends are showing up in almost all categories across the show."
CES is expected to bring 170,000 attendees to the Las Vegas Convention Center and nearby venues — 60,000 of whom come from outside the United States.
It is the world's biggest circus tent for consumer electronics — some 4,500 exhibitors will take over 2.9 million square feet.
Over the course of the show, CES spotlights hot button issues in tech. This year it's privacy.
Apple, which hasn't directly participated in CES for more than 20 years, has made privacy a focal point of its marketing. Apple's senior director of global privacy, Jane Horvath, is scheduled to join Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Eagan, U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and others today in a roundtable discussion on what consumers can expect in terms of privacy with their electronics.
TVs are among the most eye-catching products at CES. This year, a top story line will be whether manufacturers try to push super high-resolution 8K televisions into the mainstream market.
8K TVs are available today from Samsung, Sony and others. These ultra-vivid screens are expensive, however, and they typically come in large screen sizes of 55 inches and above. That makes them a niche product.
For now, there is very little that can be viewed in 8K, so TV makers would be trying to convince consumers to upgrade based on 8K content coming sometime down the road, said Paul Gagnon, executive director for Consumer Electronics Research and Analysis for IHS-Markit.
Another thing to watch is how the popularity of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Disney-Plus plays out for TV makers.
"Streaming services are one of the most important reasons why people buy new TVs," Gagnon said. "If you have a six- or seven-year-old smart TV, it might not necessarily work with the new streaming services. So a lot of people are upgrading to get access."
In addition, 2020 could be a pivotal year for OLED TVs, which serve up very crisp picture quality on ultra-thin screens.
OLED TVs remain expensive, especially when compared with LCD TVs that sometimes are one-third the price for the same screen size.
For example, where an OLED TV currently can be purchased in the range of $1,500 to $2,000, an LCD set in an equivalent size can be had for $500.
"There has been a slowdown in OLED sales worldwide because of how fast LCD prices have fallen in 2019," Gagnon said. "It is not unreasonable to say that for the OLED TV category, it is a make or break year in 2020. There has to be some significant movement on pricing."


Every year approximately 73 students graduate with a degree in political science from South Dakota schools. If you too are interested in a career in political science, South Dakota has 6 political science schools for you to choose from. You can expect to pay an average of $11,527 per year in tuition for a degree in political science in South Dakota state.
Located in Vermillion, University of South Dakota is the largest political science school in South Dakota, based on student population. In 2009, a reported 24 students graduated with a political science degree from University of South Dakota. This was 33% of the total political science graduates in South Dakota for that year. If you decide to attend University of South Dakota, you can expect to pay approximately $6,468 per year to earn your degree in political science.
Political Scientist is the most popular career choice for those who graduate with credentials in political science.
As a political scientist in South Dakota you can expect to earn anywhere from less than $NaN per year to more than per year. But the median salary for political scientists earn per year, in South Dakota.


The Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group (CDG), a Main Street Iowa Organization, hosted a volunteer recognition celebration on Monday, August 28, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon. The "Volunteer Prom" celebrated the 472 registered CDG volunteers who cumulatively have logged more than 47,620 volunteer hours since the organization began in 2008.
« Have you taken the survey?


Whenever someone makes a change in Plesk CP, when plesk talks to SM its crashing.
the service is still running, if we restart the MailService.exe process it starts working again.
We originally thought this was a Plesk issue and opened up a ticket with Parallels, however they have said its an issue with Smartermail and I should contact smartertools.
As its a Bank holiday i thought i would post on the forums to see if anyone else knows the fix to this, as likely no support available until next week.
nothing is in event viewer about this, ie a crash log as the service does not stop to log anything.
I've contacted the SmarterMail support and solved this issue. Just kill the mailservice.exe process and restart the service. That should solve this issue.