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35.0°, Shallow Fog
The Racism Around Us
A question of race and 'birth justice'
Why babies of color are more likely to die in state's second-healthiest county
Posted Thursday, October 3, 2019 11:35 am
Sharelle Allen, 31, pictured at STRONG Youth in Uniondale, where she is a case manager, said she believes her severe pain when she gave birth suddenly to her second child in 2017 was ignored by her nurse and midwife. According to experts, medical professionals often overlook pain felt by African-American patients, believing that black people have a higher tolerance for pain than white people. Implicit bias and racism in the medical field help explain the disparity in the infant mortality rate between communities of color and white communities, experts say.
Scott Brinton/Herald
Dr. Martine Hackett, a Hofstra University professor of health professions, is studying the wide discrepancies in health outcomes in communities of color and white communities. While Nassau County is overall healthy, in communities of color, she said, the story is very different. Through Birth Justice Warriors, she is now working to raise awareness of the disparity in maternal mortality, including infant mortality.
Source: New York State Department of Health's Perinatal Data File
Illustration by Christina Daly/Herald
The objective is to "build a community of concern so we know what our rights are, so we can birth the way we want to in the most healthy way.""
Sharelle Allen
"Why are a baby and a mother in Elmont more likely to die than in Garden City? It's a huge difference . . . These are communities that are within a mile of each other.""
Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages
Levittown, constructed by Abraham Levitt & Sons in the late 1940s to meet the accelerating demand for housing after World War II, was the nation's first planned suburban community.
There were neat rows of Cape Cods, with white picket fences and freshly paved roads. It was seemingly an idyllic community. Racism, however, was part of the business plan.
At the start, Clause 25 of the standard lease agreement placed a restrictive covenant on Levittown residents, requiring, in bold letters, that only "members of the Caucasian race" be allowed to live in Levitt homes.
After the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision in Topeka, Kan., in 1954, racial integration was allowed in Levittown. In 1960, however, it remained an all-white community, according to census records. Now it's 89 percent white.
To this day, Nassau is among the most racially segregated counties in the country, despite its widespread diversity of residents. And structural, or systemic, racism can be found in all corners of the county, according to ERASE Racism, a Syosset-based nonprofit organization that formed in 2001 to fight for racial equality in housing and education.
Structural racism is insidious, built quietly into our medical, education and housing systems, placing people of color on an unequal footing with white people, who account for 73 percent of the county's population. Unless you look closely, and unless you know what to look for, it can be hard to identify.
Having an honest conversation about systemic racism might be uncomfortable for some, even many people, but here at the Herald, we're having it. Over the coming months, we'll publish a series of investigative stories examining the many ways that racism is part of the very structure of Nassau, beginning this week with my piece on the disparity in infant mortality in communities of color and white communities.
—Scott Brinton, Executive Editor
By Scott Brinton
Part one in a series.
When Sharelle Allen gave birth to her first child in 2014, the now 31-year-old wanted a natural experience — no monitors, no pain medication, no epidural, no C-section. Those were her rules.
"I wanted to be just free," the mother of two said. "I wanted to eat and drink. I wanted to breastfeed." She was in labor 44 hours — six in active labor.
When she gave birth the second time three years later, the experience was very different. Labor came on suddenly, in what is known as a "precipitous birth."
"I was experiencing a lot of pain," she said recently at STRONG Youth, the Uniondale-based nonprofit gang-prevention and community-development organization where she is the lead intervention case manager. "It was very abrupt on my system. I was screaming for pain medication."
She peppered her nurse and midwife with questions. "Why is this happening so fast?" she wanted to know.
No one answered, she said. During birth, she suffered a vaginal tear and received four stitches without pain medication. Twelve hours later, Allen said, she was given the pain reliever she had begged for during the birth.
Her experience — the sense that no one was listening and responding to her concerns — led Allen, who is African-American, to join Birth Justice Warriors, a growing group of two dozen black and brown women who are working to raise awareness of the wide disparities in maternal care received by women of color and white women.
Dr. Martine Hackett and Dr. Nellie Taylor-Walthrust, both women of color, started the group in March 2018. Hackett is an associate professor of health professions at Hofstra University, and Taylor-Walthrust, a pastor, is director of outreach services for the North Shore Child Family Guidance Center, a nonprofit mental health agency with offices in Roslyn Heights, Manhasset and Westbury. They get the word out through small group discussions and community forums.
The objective, Allen said, is to "build a community of concern so we know what our rights are, so we can birth the way we want to in the most healthy way."
When infants die
Among the central issues that Birth Justice Warriors is working to address is infant mortality, which is a leading indicator of a community's well-being, according to the Nassau County Department of Health's 2016-18 Community Health Assessment and Community Health Improvement Plan. When children are dying in high numbers at birth — the start of life — there are probably myriad other health concerns in a community.
In the majority of white communities across Nassau, the infant mortality rate ranged from 0 to 3 in 1,000 births in 2014-16, according to the New York State Department of Health. Meanwhile, in most communities of color, the infant mortality rate was three to nine times that.
In its annual rankings of healthiest counties in New York, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, working with data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ranked Nassau the second-healthiest of 62 counties in the state this year. When that data is broken down into individual zip codes, however, a disturbing pattern is made clear in communities of color, Hackett said: Babies there are significantly more likely to die during or shortly after birth than in predominately white communities.
When "looked at as the aggregate," she said, the county's "health outcomes are great." That, she said, "creates this illusion that everything is fine here."
But, she added, "there are health conditions that are worse here in Nassau County than New York City."
Three calls to the county health department were not returned. Its own 2016-18 assessment, however, supports Hackett's assertion that there is a wide gap in health outcomes between communities of color and white communities locally.
County officials identified nine communities of color and communities with large minority populations — Elmont, Freeport, Glen Cove, Hempstead, Inwood, Long Beach, Roosevelt, Uniondale and Westbury — each with measurably greater health concerns than nearby white communities.
Nassau is the 13th-wealthiest county in the U.S., with an average annual household income of around $93,000, according to census data. "The affluence of the county as a whole masks the needs of these severely underserved selected communities," the county's report states.
Taken as a whole, the infant mortality rate in these communities is "nearly double that of the rest of the county," the report continues.
The knee-jerk reaction to explain the discrepancy is to blame it on a discrete factor like income level, according to Hackett: Women with fewer financial resources are unable to afford the same level of care that women of greater means can. But statistics tell a more complicated story.
How, for example, does one explain Elmont, a solidly middle-class community of color with an annual average household income of $94,353, slightly above the county average? It has the second-highest infant mortality rate in Nassau.
Access to health care alone "is not sufficient" to explain the disparities in health outcomes, Hackett said. Bias and systemic racism also play their parts, she believes.
Among many subjects, Hackett studies "implicit bias" in her research — assumptions that people make about others, particularly those who are perceived as different. Implicit bias "doesn't just live in our brains," Hackett said. "It presents in our day-to-day actions."
Implicit bias, she said, is why a white police officer might be more likely to pull over a person of color for a possible traffic violation — or why a white doctor, nurse or midwife might be more likely to ignore the insistent pleas of a woman of color enduring birth pangs.
There is a long-held belief in the medical community, spoken and unspoken, that African-Americans have a higher tolerance for pain than white people, Hackett said, and so black people are less likely to receive pain relief, even when they demand it.
African-American women, Allen said, are accustomed to being ignored. "It's the way I walk through life," she said. "My voice doesn't matter."
That black women's concerns are often overlooked, even when voiced vehemently, helps explain why maternal health outcomes in many communities of color are significantly worse than in white communities, according to Hackett.
She was careful to note that there are several reasons for the discrepancy in outcomes, but implicit bias, even racism, in the medical community is among them.
"It has to do with the way women are treated — black people are treated — in the clinical setting," she said.
The role of 'microaggressions'
Te-Ana Souffrant, 36, who is African-American, is another member of Birth Justice Warriors. She grew up in an upper-middle-class family. She earned a master's degree in health administration from Hofstra. She lives in affluent Baldwin Harbor. She is, by profession, a doula, a woman, usually without obstetric training, who provides guidance and support to pregnant women, even in the delivery room.
Souffrant, a mother of three, said that medical professionals often demonstrate their biases through "microaggressions," seemingly small quips with much larger racial implications. When offering her and her husband a test for sexually transmitted diseases during one of her pregnancies, a doctor "joked" that "you better hope the result is negative . . . You better hope nothing comes back," she said. Souffrant and her husband, a New York City corrections officer, were shocked. She was taken aback that a doctor would offer the test to a long-married couple, and she saw deeper racial implications in the so-called jest.
"There's an assumption about black women having multiple husbands," she said. The doctor, she added, "thought she was being funny in that moment," but, Souffrant noted, "I know that she has never said that to a white client."
"You're already dealing with stressors as a black or brown person in this country that white people can't even understand, on a daily basis," she said. "I've had doctors who have made me feel less than."
Because women of color are often made to feel that way, Souffrant said, there is "mistrust between black people and the medical community." Distrust, in turn, leads many women of color to "not seek care" when they need it.
"There are multiple things happening all at once," she said. "The root of it is racism."
At the same time, Hackett said, many women of color live in segregated neighborhoods. Schools in such communities are perennially underfunded. Crime rates may be higher. Family incomes are lower, so affording life's necessities is harder, particularly in an expensive county like Nassau, where the cost of living is 1.5 times higher than the state average.
"Conditions of structural racism have an effect on individual bodies," Hackett said. The daily stress that many women of color must live with, she said, "has a physical manifestation" that, in part, explains the discrepancies in infant mortality rates.
A 2017 study by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, "Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity," backs Hackett's assertion.
"The impact of structural inequities follows individuals 'from womb to tomb,'" the 558-page study states. "African-American women are more likely to give birth to low-birth-weight infants, and their newborns experience higher infant death rates that are not associated with any biological differences, even after accounting for socioeconomic factors."
On Aug. 1, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation to create a Maternal Mortality Review Board, tasked with analyzing the reasons for the alarming discrepancy in maternal mortality between communities of color and white communities. "Racial disparities in maternal mortality is a national crisis," Cuomo said at the bill signing, "and with the creation of this expert review board and advisory council, we are tackling the problem head-on."
The 15-member board will comprise experts from the state and New York City departments of health, and doctors, nurses and health professionals. State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, a Democrat from Elmont, who is Haitian-American, championed the bill to form the board.
The board, she said, must address critical questions: Why are women of color "not getting access to prenatal care? Why are they not getting good nutrition? How can we combat implicit bias?"
"Why are a baby and a mother in Elmont more likely to die than in Garden City?" asked Solages, a 34-year-old mother of two. "It's a huge difference . . . These are communities that are within a mile of each other.
"We really need to ensure that we're getting the information out there that women can receive the support they need," she continued. "We really need to talk about what's going on in our community."
"Hopefully," Allen said, "we create a culture where it's not birth justice. This is just the way we birth."
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Until It Fades
K.A. Tucker
Digital Audiobook (6/26/2017)
Compact Disc (5/14/2019)
"Touching and complex…Tucker unerringly hits all the high notes of romance—the spark, the emotional depth, the mental and physical struggles—while creating a couple who seem perfectly attuned even when they are in conflict." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Twenty-four-year-old truck stop waitress and single mother Catherine Wright has simple goals: to give her five-year-old daughter a happy life and to never again be the talk of the town in Balsam, Pennsylvania (population three thousand outside of tourist season).
And then one foggy night, on a lonely road back from another failed date, Catherine saves a man's life. It isn't until after the police have arrived that Catherine realizes exactly who it is she has rescued: Brett Madden, hockey icon and media darling.
Catherine has already had her fifteen minutes of fame and the last thing she wants is to have her past dragged back into the spotlight, only this time on a national stage. So she hides her identity. It works. For a time.
But when she finds the man she saved standing on her doorstep, desperate to thank her, all that changes. There's an immediate connection, and it's more electric than the bond of two people who endured a traumatic event. It's something neither of them expected. Something that Catherine isn't sure she can handle; something she is afraid to trust.
Because how long can an extraordinary man like Brett be interested in an ordinary woman like Catherine...before the spark fades?
Praise For Until It Fades: A Novel…
Praise for Until It Fades:
"Touching and complex…Tucker unerringly hits all the high notes of romance—the spark, the emotional depth, the mental and physical struggles—while creating a couple who seem perfectly attuned even when they are in conflict."
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A fantastic contemporary romance featuring dysfunction, lies, regrets and illicit transgressions. Set in a small, gossipy Pennsylvania town, with intense and intriguing plot twists and formidably engaging characters, she keeps readers on their toes. But it's definitely her knight in shining armor and flawed heroine with trust issues, plus an impressive pint-sized costar, who rule every page of this unforgettable story."
— RT Book Reviews
"Lovely, sexy, and well-written, with a great cast of finely-drawn characters. This is a modern-day Cinderella story that will make you hope again. I enjoyed every page."
— Amy Harmon, New York Times bestselling author
Praise for Surviving Ice:
"Surviving Ice has it all: suspense, romance, forgiveness, and second chances all rolled into one."
— San Diego Book Review
"Entertaining and enthralling, lovers of suspense titles will be captivated by the suspenseful plot of this story. At the same time, the romance between this--somewhat unlikely and yet equally explosive--pair is sure to keep your romance lust sated."
— The Romance Reviews, TOP PICK
Praise for Chasing River:
"A gripping addition to the Burying Water series…Tucker's fans will tear through this passionate, fast-paced tale and be ready for more."
"Tucker masterfully keeps the reader wondering about how the story could possibly end…[writing] a compelling tale about fighting for love and exploring the need to walk away."
— New York Journal of Books
Praise for Becoming Rain:
"A smart and sexy thrill ride...Tucker's best writing yet."
— Karina Halle
Praise for Burying Water:
"Another addictive triumph for the impressively prosaic Tucker."
— Globe and Mail
"Tucker deftly steers the damsel-in-(serious, nearly fatal, possibly mob-related)-distress-rescued-by-a-knight-in-shining armor storyline, making these star-crossed lovers compelling. A sexy romantic, gangster-tinged page-turner."
— Kirkus Reviews on Burying Water
"Unique, engrossing, and heartbreaking. Burying Water is a mesmerizing read that will keep you captivated until the very last page."
— Rachel Van Dyken
"Dark, ominous, and sexy...compelling from beginning to end."
— Laura Kaye
Atria Books, 9781501133381, 368pp.
K.A. Tucker writes captivating stories with an edge. She is the bestselling author of the Ten Tiny Breaths and Burying Water series and the novels He Will Be My Ruin, Until It Fades, Keep Her Safe, and The Simple Wild. She currently resides in a quaint town outside Toronto with her husband and two beautiful girls.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Sixth-seeded Latvians Janis Smedins/Aleksandrs Samoilovs sewed up their second FIVB gold medal of the year, denying Brazilian duo Alison Cerutti/Andre Loyola Stein 21-18, 21-13 in the title match of the Moscow Four Star on Sunday.
The gold was the duo's first since winning the Espinho Four Star on July 8, and marked the 10th FIVB title for the pair, which has played together since 2013. The medal was their fourth on the FIVB World Tour in 2018 and fifth overall including a runnerup finish at the CEV European Championships (July 22). The Latvians earned bronze medals at the Warsaw Four Star (July 1) and Fort Lauderdale Major (March 4).
No. 13 seeded Alison/Andre teamed up in June after splitting with partners Bruno Schmidt and Evandro Goncalves Oliveira. The pair had finished as high as fifth at the Warsaw Four Star on July 1, but had not been able to break onto the podium until now. The Brazilians were looking for their first medal in their sixth tournament as a pairing.
Top seeded Igor Velichko/Oleg Stoyanovskiy rounded out the podium with the bronze medal, topping Brazilian pair Vitor Felipe/Evandro Goncalves Oliveira 21-12, 21-10.
The podium finish is the third of the year for the Russians, who won the Xiamen Four Star on April 22 and were runners up at the Doha Four Star on March 10. Stoyanovskiy won bronze in Moscow in 2017 with then partner Artem Yarzutkin.


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Amy I. Pandit
Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP
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Q: Authentication and authorization frameworks for java GUI applications We are programming a three tier application with a rich GUI client using swing and we need to add some authentication and authorization control.
I'm completely new in this topic so I made a bit research in the web. My first intention was to use JAAS for this feature, but as far as I can see, JAAS only contains functionality to execute privileged methods/actions, but there seems to be no functionality to determine whether the access is granted for some "Actions" to control the GUI. e.g. hide/disable some menus etc.
Do I understand this wrong or is my approach wrong? Are there any alternatives to JAAS? Does any "best practice" exist to add authentication and authorization to GUI applications?
Thanks for help,
Eny

A: A rich GUI client is no different from a standard website. Both are client side, and in control of a potential attacker. So no matter what security you think of, a determined person can break it. Remember that the whole idea of hiding/disabling buttons on UI is Usability, not Security.
To start with, show all buttons to all users, but make sure that if a normal clicks on the admin button, the server doesn't allow it. Once you get your server side authentication right, add shims to hide/disable buttons on the UI. For this, you can write a service that returns the roles/priviliges the logged in user has.
JAAS is a perfect technology for server side authentication. You should be able to find a lot of documentation to protect server resources.
Your users will have to login to the Swing GUI, and must be authenticated by the server. This is the most important step. If you don't authenticate the user with the server, then its no security at all.
Thereafter, every button click, ever user action goes to the server which authenticates if the user has permission. If he doesn't, throw an exception back to the client. This way, if someone enables your buttons by some trickery, the server will catch it.

A: While @sri's answer makes some good points the advice to 'just pass a session identifier/token' is dangerous because it's too easily spoofed.  You need establish a common context that is verified by a trusted source.  Take a look at org.ietf.jgss.GSSContext for details on this.
In order to get a GSS context working you'll come into contact with the concept of a Key Distribution Center (KDC), which normally lead to Kerberos and normal some sort of directory server - sorry I'm being a bit vague but without knowing just what you have in place it's hard to be specific and even then I've only done this with Active Directory.
Once you've got everything authenticating you can return to your original point of protecting certain functions.
The authentication process will provide with a javax.security.auth.Subject, which will contain one or more java.security.Principals.  These principals can be used with JAAS to create a policy file that uses the principals as described here.  Typically you use a principal to represent the roles a user has which are loaded from a directory server.  In the past I've specialized the login module to do this, although there may be a better way.
That has everything locked down, so the final step is to make it look pretty to the user and here, to the best of my knowledge, you're on your own.  You could simply leave everything enabled and warn the user if the operation cannot be performed or, as you've got the subject do something more sophisticated based on group membership.

A: Use JAAS
JAAS is a generic framework and would not give any application specific features such as disable/enable buttons etc.
you will have to embed that authorization logic into your application, JAAS provides you a handle to the authenticated/authorized Principal object that comes handy in such scenarios.

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"Boston Kids", "Fall Show.", "Family Activity", "PuppeTree", "Shadow Puppets", "Vermont", "Workshop", "premieres", "puppet workshop."
Puppet Showplace welcomesThe PuppeTree on November 6th and 7th!
This weekend, Puppet Showplace Theatre welcomes a NEW company to our stage! The PuppeTree was founded by Ann Legunn and tours widely from its home base in Vermont. They will be presenting their fabulous piece "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." This shadow spectacle uses three puppeteers! We are excited to see the show come to life on our stage.
The PuppeTree's mission is to promote an appreciation of the performing arts, with an emphasis on children's theater and puppets, among diverse audiences. Rather than start a traditional puppet or theater company that just performs theater pieces before an audience, founder Ann Legunn created a "touchable" theater--one in which members of various community groups could become active participants in all aspects of theater arts. The Puppetree is unique in that the participants not only build puppets, but are encouraged to handle those made by Ann--something usually forbidden by most puppet companies--the way they would handle other props, costumes, and scenery.
To this end, the PuppeTree will kick off Puppet Showplace's children's workshop series with a great hands-on workshop! Immediately following their 3:00 pm show on November 6th, members of the troupe will lead a hands-on shadow puppet construction and manipulation activity at the theater. Tickets are $5, or just $3 if purchased in conjunction with a show ticket. Don't miss this exciting event! Buy Tickets Online or call the theatre for reservations at 617-731-6400.
"Brad Shur", "Shadow Puppets", "Showman Badge", "Webelos", "Workshop"
On March 31st, 2010 a group of 13 Webelos earned their Showman Badge at the Puppet Showplace Theatre.
PST Artist in Residence Brad Shur led a Shadow Puppet Making Workshop for this group of young men from Wayland. The Webelos were able to fulfill all of their Showman Badge requirements, and best of all, have FUN!
Webelos is a 20 month program for 4th and 5th grade boys to prepare to join a Boy Scout troop while learning outdoors skills and participating in 20 different activity badges. A group of Webelos is a gradual change from being an 'adult-run' den to being a 'boy-run' patrol ready to fit right into an adventurous scouting troop. This migration requires the parents and den leaders to give the scouts more and more control, decision-making power, and responsibility as they progress in skills, abilities, and maturity.
If you would like more information about group workshops and other educational opportunities led by our Artist in Residence, call our Box Office at 617-731-6400. We are able to host groups in our lobby and theatre, or come to you!


Vote: Who Should Win PopCrush's Alt Grammys Award for Best Pop Solo Performance?
Check out the nominees for Best Pop Solo Performance below, which include Dua Lipa, Rita Ora, Harry Styles, Demi Lovato and Carly Rae Jepsen, and be sure to vote for your favorite until January 24. Then, check back with PopCrush on January 25 at 12 p.m. EST, when we'll announce the winners for each category. And don't forget to tune in to the 60th annual Grammy Awards on January 28 on CBS!
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Dear Father, our child is engaged. Wow. He or she is so happy. I love seeing the joy on their face. I love seeing the twinkle in their eyes. They are beaming with delight. I could cry. As a parent, we live for seeing our children feeling so wonderful. However, as excited as I am, this is certainly a time to come before You in sober prayer. - Are they emotionally and spiritually mature enough to handle marriage? - How will their relationship handle differences of opinion? How will their relationship handle those petty annoyances that can cause conflict in a relationship? What will happen on those days when their spouse doesn't seem attractive or fun to be with? Will they both be faithful? Do they understand that love is a choice, a choice to love devotion even more than the other person? Do they understand that true love is unconditional, that no matter what happens they are to keep loving each other? - What will happen when the inevitable adversity and hardship come into their marriage? Will either of them run away? - Do they understand that they are essentially pledging to be godly parents till their last breath? - Do they understand that their marriage is intended to be an illustration of the love of Jesus Christ for His church? The ring is beautiful. There are exciting plans to put together. Yes, I know the happily-ever-after thing. However, half of all marriages end up in divorce and many marriages that don't end up in divorce are miserable. Getting engaged is serious business. Father, help my child to understand that the only way for a marriage to blossom is when it is Christ-centered. Both people must surrender their lives to You. It is only from that place that they will have the fruits of the Holy Spirit required to make the marriage work. Drive this point home in both of their hearts today. Amen.


As many of you know, our Receptionist/Admin Assistant extraordinaire Evie Pinkerman has retired. We are now trying to fill her shoes. We are looking for someone who has great people and organizational skills and would enjoy working in a vibrant Parish environment.
Don't forget to set your clocks back an hour Saturday night!


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Q: New command window quickly appears & disappears when typing 'gcc' command/gcc compiler not working properly I'm learning C and just installed MinGW which contains the GCC compiler. After installing and setting the path, anytime I type the 'gcc' command:
C:\Users\user>gcc palat.c -o palat.exe

or even just
C:\Users\user>gcc

another command window appears and quickly disappears. I'm using Windows 7. Your help will be really appreciated.

A: USE getchar(); so your box will appear and you see your result properly.
in return 0; box will gone immediately but in getchar(); is stuck there , if u want to see code with return 0; u need to run exe in cmd , so getchar(); is best for us if u use gcc or any compiler.


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Home Editorial
Editorial: A roof over our heads
in Editorial
The Web site of the Union for Reform Judaism informs us that "Sukkot, a Hebrew word meaning 'booths' or 'huts,' refers to the Jewish festival of giving thanks for the fall harvest, as well as the commemoration of the 40 years of Jewish wandering in the desert after Sinai. Sukkot is celebrated five days after Yom Kippur, on the 15th of Tishrei, and is marked by several distinct traditions. One tradition, which takes the commandment to 'dwell in booths' literally, is to build a sukka, a booth or hut. A sukka is often erected by Jews during this festival, and it is common practice for some to eat and even live in these temporary dwellings during Sukkot."
In addition to the commandment to dwell in huts, we daven during Sukkot with the "four species," lifting and shaking a lulav, a palm frond, branches of myrtle and willow, and an etrog, a yellow citron, an aromatic citrus fruit. This prayer has always reminded me of American Indian rituals, in respect to shaking the lulav and etrog to the earth and sky, and to the four directions.
Editorial: Jew hating makes a comeback
Editorial: Minnesota's pro-Hitler senator
(Please check out the JTA story on Page 3 of the print edition, about Matt Bycer, a 33-year-old attorney who grows etrogs in Scottsdale, Ariz.)
Another parallel to the lifeway of American Indians can be found at the conclusion of Sukkot, during Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth Day of Assembly), when a special prayer for rain, Tefilat Geshem, is recited. I have seen rain dances on the Tohono O'odham (formerly known as Papago) reservation, on today's Arizona-Mexico border. In 1982, I camped out in a desert wash for a week, reporting on an international conference of Indians from North and South America. Sometime during the event — amid the broiling heat, dust devils, scorpions, tarantulas and diamondback rattlesnakes — two groups of rain dancers from the reservation performed the traditional ritual. A rain dance made sense, as there was no water near our camp — water was trucked to us in small tankers.
It's somewhat the same story in Israel.
"For those living in the Land of Israel, [Tefilat Geshem] was a logical extension of the praise and thanks for the harvest, since rain is needed during the winter months," writes Rabbi Wayne Dosick, in Living Judaism. "For those who came to live outside the Land of Israel, the prayer for rain established a bond to the Land and its needs that linked the Jews of the diaspora to the Jewish Land throughout the centuries of exile. Now, on Shemini Atzeret, in addition to all the special festival prayers, the Yizkor memorial prayers are also recited."
I should add that Minnesota also needs rain. If you go to Minnehaha Falls lately, there is a weak trickle where the rushing waters usually can be seen. You can walk down the middle of the dry creek bed in some stretches of Minnehaha Creek in South Minneapolis. Pray for rain!
Sukkot is also known as z'man simchateinu, the season of our joy; and the Torah tells us: "You shall rejoice in your festival… you shall have nothing but joy" (Deut. 16:14-15).
However, at the same time as we are rejoicing, we are mindful that the sukka also symbolizes the transitory nature of our existence here. The Jewish experience over several millennia is one of wandering, dispossession and cruel repression in many lands.
The sukka is a temporary structure, which reminds us that we are fortunate to have food on our table and a roof over our head. Many — in the United States, and more in less developed countries — do not have enough food for their families. Our society is plagued by homelessness, housing that is unaffordable for many, underwater mortgages (where the amount outstanding on a loan is greater than the home value) and foreclosures leading to blight in some neighborhoods.
"Foreclosures devastate families and neighborhoods and hamper economic recovery," the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) points out. "Experience and research have revealed that the foreclosure crisis affects more than homeowners. As landlords have defaulted on their mortgages, renters in good standing have been evicted from properties in foreclosure with little or no notice. In fact, NLIHC research shows that renters make up as many as 40 percent of the households facing foreclosure."
The NLIHC lobbies Congress to promote housing programs that serve low-income people. This work entails monitoring the federal budget process and advocating for the highest level of appropriations for HUD and USDA Rural Housing programs, "while assuring sufficient funding to preserve all existing low income housing resources and prevent loss of units affordable to, or rental assistance for, extremely low income households."
The rhetoric during the current political season has been dominated by jousting over Medicare and Obamacare — housing issues, including the foreclosure crisis, have gotten short shrift. It's something to think about in the sukka.
In this vein, the Pioneer Press published a story last week about working families struggling to keep things together during the ongoing economic downturn.
"Housing is one of the biggest challenges," the article noted. "People who have lost their homes to foreclosure are now renting, causing apartment vacancy rates to plummet and rents to skyrocket." The story quoted from a report issued by the Minnesota Housing Partnership: "The ranks of people on the edge of homelessness are rising as a result."
In its discussion of the housing piece in the Great Recession, the Pioneer Press reported: "The American Community Survey data shows about 60 percent of renters in Minnesota are 'cost-burdened,' meaning they pay 30 percent or more of their income in housing costs. That's up from 45 percent in 2006."
Occupy Wall Street, a belated movement protesting the perfidious investment banks that wrecked the global economy, recently marked its first anniversary with demonstrations in New York City and other cities around the country. In the Twin Cities, a branch of the Occupy movement, Occupy Homes MN, has focused on the foreclosure crisis, and has met with some success in getting lenders to renegotiate mortgage loans with families on the verge of eviction. The group's civil disobedience tactics have also resulted in dozens of arrests; and the city of Minneapolis has taken a harshly punitive approach to the protests, piling on the charges for participants in nonviolent actions meant to draw attention to the issue.
The former home of the Cruz family on south Cedar Avenue (a few blocks from my house), for example, was the site of a number of demonstrations, and about a dozen Occupy activists (including renowned local rapper Brother Ali) are facing criminal charges in Hennepin County court. Alerted to arrests one evening at the end of May, I went to the Cruz home as protesters were being transported downtown in police squad cars. After the police raid, two dozen Minneapolis cops stood guard for hours on the front lawn of the abandoned house. (The $50,000 that the city spent on police overtime pay would have gone a long way toward squaring up the mortgage loan.)
As we go to press with the paper this week, I am thinking about Kol Nidre, and the beginning of the Yom Kippur fast. In the liturgy we will read about the nature of the "fast" that God truly desires of us (Isaiah 58:6-7):
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin."
The editors and staff of the Jewish World wish our readers "Chag Sameach!"
— Mordecai Specktor / editor@ajwnews.com
Berlin today
Editorial: Elections and Trump's big lie
Editorial: Three remarkable lives
Coming together


Till now, electromagnetic structures needed to be either etched or precision milled. Lately, printing of such structures becomes more accessible to a larger audience, but it is not very clear yet what the limitations induced by this process mean.
On the other hand, printing allows to design free form structures, and free the designer from many realization limitations that were otherwise unavoidable. One example is the use of fractal structures to downsize filters, transmission lines and antennas used in microwave applications.


Technology leaders are making a name for IT on social media.
IT departments are often early adopters of new technology, but that hasn't necessarily been the case for social media. However, it has become abundantly clear that social media is a vitally important platform for communication, networking and marketing, and CIOs have joined the movement.
Read Social Media for the Innovative CIO on The Wall Street Journal.


Today His Excellency Hailemariam Desalegne and Sir Bob Geldoff met to discuss the future of Ethiopia, the drought and to indicate their support of Verde Beef Processing.
The meeting was very positive and focused on the benefits of foreign investors establishing for-profit companies in Ethiopia. Particularly the Agribusiness sector has much room for development as it will have the largest possible positive impact on rural poor populations when operated profitably and sustainably.
Very fruitful discussion took place during which Bruce Hamilton, the Managing Director of Verde Beef, outlined the vision of the business and thanked the Prime Minister for the high level of support of the business.
The Prime Minister in turn thanked Sir Bob Geldof for his investment in Verde Beef and reiterated his governments support for the project.
Verde Beef Processing Plc is a world-class operation with current capacity to produce premium corn-fed beef ready for export global distribution. We are a fully integrated facility with irrigated feed production capacity and a new state of the art production facility underway. We will become the largest cattle feedlot operation in Northern Africa with a targeted capacity to feed, process and export more than 130,000 carcasses per year. Verde Beef Processing Plc: working together to create a bright future by building a thriving beef export industry in Ethiopia.


Washington Attorney General, Bob Ferguson negotiated with seven major fast food franchises including; McDonalds, Arby's, Carl's Jr., and Jimmy Johns to delete franchise agreements with parent companies which include a no poach clause. The no poach clause provided a way for individual franchisee's to keep managers from other same brand franchisees from hiring their workers. Two Princeton professors, Krueger and Ashenfelter published a study last year that estimated that no poach clauses affected about 70,000 individual restaurants in the U.S. or about 25 % of all fast food outlets. The professors noted that the clauses were primarily to keep turnover down, limit competition and job mobility with other same brand franchises. As a result workers had limited options to negotiate higher wages, work schedules or conditions.
With only 3 % margin to work with it is difficult for a franchise owner to raise wages. Workers also mention in surveys the need to have more scheduled hours with more notice on the hours they work. With the no poach clauses gone from contracts workers can move to a same brand restaurant and negotiate for better hours and schedules.
We are pleased to see Attorney General Ferguson successfully negotiate with major fast food chains to delete the no poach clause to give workers more negotiating power and flexibility in their job situations. It seems to us that major chains should have figured out that at least keeping the worker in the same chain was a plus, and the deleting the clause may force owners to treat workers better in order to reduce turnover. Better managed franchises would rise to the top and have lower turnover rates. Now on to raising low wages, increasing wages to a livable level is a complex issue that will require all involved; the owners, corporate franchise executives and workers to come up with a plan that will give workers the wages they deserve.


One of the five sections of OSTP Director John Holdren's December 17, 2010, scientific integrity guidelines for federal agencies covers Public Communications. Media policy is what most concerns journalists, and is one area in which the Bush administration engaged in a pattern of political interference with climate science communication. This second of a four-part series by environmental journalist Joseph A. Davis provides a critical examination of how the Public Communications section of the new guidelines does not nail down essential requirements for reforming federal agency practices.
The following is the second in a series of posts on the White House Scientific Integrity guidelines memorandum issued December 17, 2010.
Part 2: Can Scientists Speak Freely With Journalists?
The Bush administration drew some journalists' ire because it tried to suppress, distort, and alter government scientists' findings — for example, editing climate change science to support the don't-regulate policy it had adopted at the behest of coal and oil industry contributors. President Obama campaigned and took office vowing to change such practices.
Obama decreed a return to "scientific integrity" in a March 2009 memo to all agencies. That memo gave his science adviser, John P. Holdren, 120 days to consult with all agencies and come up with new "recommendations for presidential action" that would achieve transparency and integrity.
On December 17, 2010 — some 21 months after the President's memo and 17 months past the deadline — John P. Holdren, who as chief science adviser heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), finally issued another memo to the agencies on science integrity. That memo was supposed to be the fulfillment of President Obama's statement of principles on science integrity.
Some groups welcomed it cautiously as a step forward. With vague and general language, it left largely to the agencies the job of implementing the President's principles. It recommended, rather than ordered, the agencies to follow the 2009 decrees. It contained no "recommendations for presidential action." Nor did the president himself publicly endorse it or implement it with an executive order of his own. And it left intact the secret, politicized process by which the OMB illegally subverts and ignores science findings and orders agencies to set whatever regulations the White House wants. It also left intact OMB's current de facto authority to clear or edit any science testimony agencies present to Congress.
During both the Bush and Obama presidencies, many journalists had been frustrated by agency public affairs offices (also called public information, press, or media affairs offices) when they tried to interview scientists about science crucial to public and environmental health or important subjects like climate. Typically, scientists would tell reporters who called them that they were not allowed to talk without Press Office permission.
Or they might be told the agency did not think the scientist they requested was the right person to talk to about the subject they were interested in — even when the journalist wanted to talk about research conducted by the scientist requested. Instead, they might be sent to another scientist whose views were more pliant to administration policies. Or — this actually happened — reporters with science questions were set up for interviews with a political appointee who knew almost nothing about the subject and had to keep whispering questions during the interview to the scientist the journalist actually sought. The bottom line: quite often a journalist is simply not allowed to talk to the scientist they specifically need to talk to.
Or the journalists very likely might be told that they would only be permitted to talk to the scientist if somebody from the Press Office sits in on the interview. If the interview is on the phone, the press officer would have to be in on it as a conference call. Sometimes, the press officer might merely observe and audit the interview — but on other occasions, press officers have been known to jump into the interview to officer policy interpretations of a scientist's statements.
Some agency press officers — such as ones at the Environmental Protection Agency — denied that any policy existed requiring press office permission for scientists to speak with journalists. In EPA's case, this was technically correct, as no written or formal policy requiring minders or permissions existed on paper. Yet scientists continually told journalists that the policy was ironclad and that their jobs were at risk if they granted an interview.
The December 17, 2010, science integrity guidelines potentially authorize and legitimize these practices — if only by not explicitly forbidding them.
1. In response to media interview requests about the scientific and technological dimensions of their work, agencies will offer articulate and knowledgeable spokespersons who can, in an objective and nonpartisan fashion, describe and explain these dimensions to the media and the American people.
2. Federal scientists may speak to the media and the public about scientific and technological matters based on their official work, with appropriate coordination with their immediate supervisor and their public affairs office. In no circumstances may public affairs officers ask or direct Federal scientists to alter their scientific findings.
A few points stand out in the above statement.
First: it will be the agencies who are developing their own press policies, not the White House, and they will be doing it without the White House formally approving the policies. While the White House says agencies "should" develop policies, it falls just short of explicitly requiring them to do so. Many agencies — EPA, for example — have until now found it convenient NOT to have an official written press policy. That makes it a lot easier for them to deny their actual policies of political interference. The new guidelines do not actually state that the policies must be written down.
Second: openness is sought only as long as it is "practical" — a term which is not defined and leaves much wiggle-room. The guidelines do not state who determines what openness is "practical." Does the Obama administration support openness when it might be impractical or inconvenient?
Fourth: the policy seems to say that scientists are only permitted to talk to the media "with appropriate coordination with their immediate supervisor and their public affairs office." That makes not one, but two Mother-May-I's. What is "appropriate"? What does "coordination" mean? Could it be construed as meaning "clearance," i.e., pre-approval? Under this clause, it would be fine for agencies to prohibit scientists from talking to journalists without Press Office permission. There is nothing in the policy that actually forbids as inappropriate a press officer's attaching electrodes to scientists during interviews to remind them when they stray from the party line.
Fifth: the policy says rather clearly (or can be read to say) that scientists are only allowed to talk to the media about science. And not just any science. They are restricted to talking about research they have conducted as part of their official job — about "about scientific and technological matters based on their official work." Agencies can put discussion of any other subject off limits, under President Obama's policy.
That may mean that scientists may not be allowed to talk about the implications of their research findings in the context of a larger field of scientific inquiry. They may have found that abrupt climate change occurred in some past geological era, but they could be prohibited from discussing whether it could occur at some future time. Nor, it seems, are scientists allowed to talk to the press generally about their field of study. A microbiologist might be studying a particular strain of bacteria — but he/she would not be allowed to talk about progress in microbiology or needed microbiological research. Nor could scientists comment to the press about the work of their peers. Often the first thing a journalist does when one scientist publishes is to ask for comment from another scientist who works in the same field. One could say that agencies almost seem encouraged to prohibit this under the White House memo.
Finally, the policy makes it possible for agencies to forbid scientists to discuss at all the policy implications of their work. If a scientist finds that a particular pesticide is likely to cause excess cancer deaths, the policy allows agencies to forbid that scientist from discussing whether or how the pesticide should be regulated.
Sixth: while the policy clearly states that press flacks can not order scientists to "alter" or revise their published or unpublished research findings, that has rarely been a problem (other than perhaps former NASA PIO George Deutsch's orders to revise the Big Bang Theory). By setting up the most egregious past abuses as a straw man, the memo leaves ordinary abuses untouched. While public-information-office-ordered "alteration" of a scientist's findings is frowned on, what about the much more common problems of obscuring, downplaying, spinning, distorting, counterbalancing, discrediting, muddling, misstating, or misinterpreting those findings? Nothing in the memo would necessarily prevent a Press Office from doing these things.
Seventh: the memo urges agencies to adopt policies that "ensure" that "mechanisms are in place to resolve disputes that arise from decisions to proceed or not to proceed with proposed interviews." That is a laudable goal, particularly since no such mechanism appears to exist at any agency today. Since the decisions on whether to grant interviews will be made by the political appointees running each agency, it is hard to imagine who would review and resolve disputed decisions. Perhaps this would be done by political appointees at a still higher level. It seems unlikely that any appeal could be resolved quickly enough to help a journalist on short deadline. This laudable dispute-resolution goal may be unrealistic and impractical.
One Response to On the White House Scientific Integrity guidelines – Part 2: Can Federal Scientists Speak Freely With Journalists?


text:
Die Trichodontidae sind eine Fischfamilie aus der Gruppe der Barschverwandten, die mit nur zwei Arten im nördlichen Pazifik vorkommt. Sie wurden traditionell den Drachenfischen (Trachinoidei) zugeordnet, gehören aber nach neueren Analysen zu den Groppenverwandten.

Merkmale
Beide Arten der Familie werden maximal 30 Zentimeter lang. Sie haben einen seitlich zusammengedrückten, hochrückigen und schuppenlosen Körper und ein großes, obenständiges Maul. Die Seitenlinie liegt hoch am Körper und folgt dem Lauf der zwei Rückenflossen. Die Brustflossen sind groß. Eine Schwimmblase fehlt.

Flossenformel: Dorsale 1 VIII-XVI, Dorsale 2 0-I/12-20, Anale 0-I/28-32.

Lebensweise
Die Fische sind nachtaktiv und tagsüber meist halb in den sandigen oder schlammigen Bodengrund eingegraben. Sie halten sich in Tiefen bis 400 Metern auf. Trichodontidae ernähren sich von kleinen Wirbellosen.

Gattungen und Arten
 Arctoscopus Jordan & Evermann, 1896
 Japanischer Sandfisch (Arctoscopus japonicus (Steindachner, 1881)), Japanisches Meer, Ochotskisches Meer, Aleuten.
 Trichodon Tilesius, 1813
 Trichodon trichodon (Tilesius, 1813), Küste von Kamtschatka, Aleuten, Alaska bis Kalifornien.

Literatur
 Joseph S. Nelson: Fishes of the World, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN  0-471-25031-7.

Einzelnachweise

Weblinks

Groppenverwandte
Cottales

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


This is the "everything but drum" kit to make your very own Hunsaker Vortex Smoker clone!
Includes shipping to most zip codes. Available in unpainted steel parts, powder coated black parts, or brushed stainless steel parts. We do our best to ship quickly. If you have any questions, please give us a call at (573) 443-6117.


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On Sale!! Normally $4.99, currently only $2.40! – Amazon Link!!
Ohhhh Emmmm Geeee!! This has to be one of my all time favorites! Typically I hate stories that start in the past when characters were really really young but I will say it was written so brilliantly well I just wanted to start slow clapping…or crying… my body was confused!


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Host Sage 100 ERP with Ace Cloud Hosting and access to the application will be available for you wherever you want. Our solutions are compatible for cross-device operations, allowing your staff, clients, vendors, and others to work freely over their desktop, smartphone, laptop, or tablet.
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I cannot say enough good things about this company. We switched servers and they helped us perform a Sage 100 ERP upgrade from 2014 to 2017 and they have done an all around fantastic job! They have been extremely responsive, helpful, and kind in their dealing with me as the Administrator as well as our individual users. So far I would say that their services are amazing and that the pricing is phenomenal as well.


Andrew Namminga is the founder of ANDesign, an industrial design firm.
Writing a business plan can be fun ... or it can be stressful. It's usually the latter.
But a detailed business plan can take you a far way out. The more refined, the easier it is to move forward, as opposed to creating your goals along the way. But fine-tuning and a whole lot of adjustments must happen daily. That's the important part -- that's what pushes any threshold.
This is coming from someone who runs a full-service design firm, meaning we do everything from concept-design to mass-manufacturing. Development takes time. I recently read Elon Musk's step-by-step manual on how Tesla will develop products and realized something: His plan was simple — sort of.
Tesla's "vertical integration" can be universally applied, and here are several takeaways for your building your business plan.
Start with low volume production, and sell at higher price points.
Consider this: Your revolutionary idea may compete against big corporations. Don't give in to investors right away! Sell your idea in low amounts so they are exclusive, more refined and harder to own. Exclusivity is your bargaining chip here. A low volume product means a much smaller factory, meaning more things will have to be done by hand.
How had they managed to stay on track? By consistently staying on top of their goals. It's not like the market they're in is easy to win over. As Musk mentions in Tesla's Master Plan "Part Deux," there are only two car companies in the world that haven't gone bankrupt once: Ford and Tesla. Ford created the highway. Tesla is working on autonomous vehicles. They'll both be around for some time.
Grow slowly, but leverage your successes.
Here's where you scale up production! Great foresight will help build your business plan. But it's how you continue to advance your work that makes you great. Once you've figured out how to sell your revolutionary idea, it's time to create more production from it. In other words, growing your company entails more dimension and more responsibility. Now that you have a growing audience, you have a bigger consumer funnel to fill. A bigger pool of consumers means you can develop a new product that scales your new business size -- i.e., scaling up your production line. Figuring out your process is still key here more than ever, so it's important to create a routine.
At this point, hire in-house talent so you don't have to rely on outsourcing. It's great for getting things done faster and keeping things in your control! For example, business-minded executives tend to hire creatives and vice versa. Find mutually beneficial strategic partnerships.
Musk explains that none of the steps can happen if Tesla and its subsidiaries are different companies — that they were separate at all is an "accident of history," and it's time to bring them together.
This is where most companies lose their sight of things! Once you've made it past your production scaling and have found where you stand as a company, you figure out which market space suits you best. That means figuring out whether selling at high price points makes sense or if selling at high volume is the best move for your company.
Figure out how to sustain.
The ultimate goal is autonomy and sustainability. Sounds like creating new companies by vertical integration, which Musk defines as "the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies" or other aspects of a business, flourishing in conjunction and on their own as well.
Now that Tesla's battery pack and solar energy subsidiary were each self-sustaining, it was time to bring them together. Musk knew that by following this plan and building a sustainable business model from the start, that the possibilities would grow and happen on their own. Tesla just needed to make all production processes viable, stand-alone businesses, which is a common characteristic seen in successful companies.
The key to a sustainable future is scaling production volume. Of course, that's a challenge of its own, but it's why Tesla focuses on designing "the machine that makes the machine," turning the factory itself into a product.
In today's age, a service can be the product, however. The way that technology advances, there is little need for everyone to need everything at once. Meaning, if you learn to segment your business, you will be able to succeed more, creating more outlets and avenues for success.


text:
Gibson comeback…
Gibson Guitars is set to emerge from bankruptcy, and I wish the company well. Its stellar instruments have been played by practically every rock star in the world. I own a very old one myself and it is still a pleasure to play it.
Competency of management still matters in the corporate world, doesn't it…
Tagged with finances, Gibson Guitars, music
10 most overrated…
You'll realize I am not a huge music aficionado when I confess I have never even heard of a few of these songs. Unfortunately a couple of them I heard so often on the radio that their lyrics are bouncing round in my brain as I write this. Do you agree with Chris Queen's assessments? I think he's right on some of them, but other tunes may have had good lyrics and terrible music, or vice versa. Now I have to go listen to something to clear my head…
Tagged with hits, music
Ed King, R.I.P.
You didn't have to be a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan to like "Sweet Home Alabama". You didn't even need to be a rock 'n roll fan, strictly speaking, to be grabbed by the chorus and rough edges. The co-writer of that hit tune was Ed King, who was with other well-known bands before joining the group in 1972.
Tagged with Lynyrd Skynyrd, music, rock and roll, Sweet Home Alabama
Aretha Franklin, R.I.P.
Like so many of the Motown artists, she led a rather chaotic life and made a host of very bad choices, but the woman was a fantastic performer.
Tagged with Aretha Franklin, entertainment, Motown, music
Alexa house party…
A German man's Alexa device created its own party, blasting music so loudly that neighbors called the cops, who broke down the door only to find no one home.
Ain't modern technology wonderful?
Tagged with Alexa, music
Prager sells out…
The Santa Monica Symphony had a fundraising concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its guest host was conservative radio host Dennis Prager, who is absolutely passionate about classical music, and who has been a guest conductor for various orchestras.
With boring predictability, liberals called for a boycott of the performance, supported by the mayor of Santa Monica and a city councilman who said they wouldn't attend. Just as easily forecast, some of the musicians refused to perform, with two of them penning an open letter saying "Dennis Prager is a right wing radio host who promotes horribly bigoted positions," which naturally served to point out their own left-wing bigotry. And all the extra attention drove sales up, so the event was a sell-out!
Read what Dennis himself had to say about it, here.
Tagged with Dennis Prager, media, music, politics, Santa Monica Symphony
Glen Campbell, R.I.P.
Entertainer Glen Campbell has died at age 81, after a six-year battle with Alzheimer's. Like Ronald Reagan, he went public with his health, and allowed a documentary to feature his struggles. He deserves kudos for that, but he will probably be best remembered as a country singer with a voice so easy to listen to that people who didn't like country music suddenly found themselves liking country music a whole lot.
Parts of his life were tumultuous, and his behavior often less than stellar, but his fifth and last wife appears to have been one of the best choices he ever made. He was known not merely for his smooth singing voice and a vocal style which moved easily from pop to country and back again, but also for his ability as a musician, which put him high on everyone's list. He never learned to read music, but he had the ear and a phenomenal memory, so he could listen to a piece once and then he had it. You don't get asked to fill in for an ailing Beach Boy unless you're really, really, good, you know., and Campbell most certainly was.
I will play my Glen Campbell albums this weekend in his honor.
UPDATE: Have a bit more of the man, flaws and genius, from people who knew him well.
Tagged with entertainment, music


text:
@interface UIImage (JHCategory)
- (UIColor *)mainColor;
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


On Travels - The Greek Islands - Paros.
Okay, I've been pretty damn slack lately, and I haven't written much on the whole travel thing much at all. So, before I completely forget what I got up to, I should probably get something down. I don't know how detailed its going to be, but I'll endeavour to make it understandable at least.
But, right now, I'm sitting on a train, heading into London again, for the second time in two days, heading to a pub. Again. Ahhh, but I'm having a good sociable time though, so I can't complain too much. /Matt suppresses the tiny whimper of complaint that comes from his liver.
Anyway, I'm supposed to be writing about travels in Greece, not travels into London.
So, I'm pretty sure that the last thing I wrote about was Santorini, so, that means its about time to write about Paros.
Paros is a pretty quiet and small place, and didn't grab me too much. Could've had something to do with the fact that we caught a 6.30am ferry there... But, once again, we managed to find some cheap accommodation - a little kid was waiting at the ferry, trying to convince people to go to his dads hotel - Amy got sucked in, but it turned out to be okay. Not really a place where it was easy to meet other people though.
There were some absolutely cool views up at the north end of the island, and we managed to find some some dirt roads to have a bit of fun with . But then daylight savings sodded off to sunnier climes, and it got dark pretty early - pretty disconcerting, and annoying to. So, ended up having a quiet evening, and didn't do a heck of a lot. Not that there was much to do, as it was past the end of the season, so not much open.
The following day we headed off on the bikes again, and explored the rest of the island. We'd heard there were some ancient quarries that were pretty cool, but, they'd also seemed to have taken a holiday, and joined daylight savings on its cruise in the south Pacific. We did however, find a monastery at the top of a hill, which really wasn't that exciting, and also a few cool small villages, but really, they weren't that exciting either. We found a small village with a cool harbour, and sat on the pier and ate lunch.
But then we had to take the bikes back, so it was back to the main town (not that I can remember what it was called). Went in and checked out the 'church of a thousand windows' (I think it was called that at least), which is apparently pretty famous. Was pretty cool, but had that 'overdone' look that Greek Orthodox churches seem to go for.
Did a bit of random wandering through the backstreets, which was quite enjoyable. Some pretty cool houses there. Found the public toilets, which were those lovely squat toilets - not good . I point-blank refuse to use them - I don't know how anyone can.
Then, it was onto the ferry, heading back to Athens, where we stayed again in our friendly HI hostel - a hostel that we saw waaay to many times on this trip. Which I believe, leaves us on November 1st.


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With a total of 228 reps this leg routine has all the volume you need to pack on some muscle! Your goal is going to be to progressively overload each set if you can, even if it is only by 5lbs. Keep track of your weight so you can set a goal to lift more the next time you perform this routine! It takes hard work to build muscle so focus on full range of motion and staying in control during the exercises.
(0:50)- Routine Sets & Reps!
(4:18)- LINK TO BOX JUMP VIDEO!


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Q: Conditional logistic regression on matched data with replacement I'm using 1 to 5 matching on my data with replacement, where each treatment is paired to at most 5 control units with the possibility of one control unit being assigned to more than one treatment.
What is the correct way to do conditional logistic regression in this case?
Can I just plug my matched data into clogit (I'm using R), or should I use some kind of weighting first? In case of weighting, am I right to think that only the control units should be weighted, with a weight of 1/(number of times assigned)?
Thanks in advance!


www.downloadslide.com Chapter Thirteen Designing Organizational Structures 367 global connections 13.1 BBC Further Flattens the Hierarchy The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has one of the lowest overhead costs among public-sector and regulated companies in the United Kingdom. Overhead (management and administration) represents less than 8 percent of total costs. Yet, with declining television license fee income, the BBC is further reducing management numbers and flattening the corporate hierarchy. "In some places there are currently 10 layers of people and management and this will be cut to a maximum of seven in the future," advises BBC Director-General Tony Hall. Lord Hall warns that in addition to being a source of overhead costs, hierarchy "slows down decision making." He suggests that reducing management layers will improve the BBC because it excels with "as few barriers as possible to creativity, allowing people, teams and ideas to come together to do their best work. It is not one which allows bureaucracy, layers, and box-ticking to get in the way." 21 © david pearson/Alamy make the decisions and monitor employees to make sure they performed their tasks. In contrast, the best-performing manufacturing operations today rely on self-directed teams, so direct supervision (formal hierarchy) is supplemented with other coordinating mechanisms. Self-directed teams coordinate mainly through informal communication and various forms of standardization (i.e., training and processes), so formal hierarchy plays more of a supporting role. Managers can often accommodate a wider span of control because staff members are self-managing and coordinate mainly through standardized skills. For example, more than two dozen employees, ranging from project specialists to sales support staff, report directly to Amy Geiger, director of sales operations at Sunrise Identity. "Amy is a big proponent of letting her employees be self-led," says one of Geiger's direct reports at the Bellevue, Washington, marketing and merchandising agency. "She is against micromanaging and wants her employees to grow from their own learned experiences." 22 A second factor influencing the best span of control is whether employees perform routine tasks. A wider span of control is possible when employees perform routine jobs, because they require less direction or advice from supervisors. A narrow span of control is necessary when employees perform novel or complex tasks, because these employees tend to require more supervisory decisions and coaching. This principle is illustrated in a survey of property and casualty insurers. The average span of control in commercialpolicy processing departments is around 15 employees per supervisor, whereas the span of control is 6.1 in claims service and 5.5 in commercial underwriting. Staff members in the latter two departments perform more technical work, so they have more novel and complex tasks, which requires more active supervision. Commercial-policy processing, on the other hand, is like production work. Tasks are routine and have few exceptions, so managers have less coordinating to do with each employee. 23 A third influence on span of control is the degree of interdependence among employees within the department or team. 24 Generally, a narrow span of control is necessary for highly interdependent jobs because employees tend to experience more conflict with each other, which requires more of a manager's time to resolve. Also, employees are less clear on their personal work performance in highly interdependent tasks, so supervisors spend more time providing coaching and feedback.


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With the growth of online marketing, business owners and marketers depend a lot on the marketing strategies for increasing their brand visibility. An SEO or Search Engine Optimization plan can do great things for your brand. Right from promoting the ranking of your website on a search result to finding out the audience's reaction, a brand success is determined by an SEO. A highly effective SEO depends a lot on many aspects including a content-rich and a well-designed website besides the hosting service which you are using. Find out more about it on http://richerornot.com/.
NextSEO- A magic in the world of marketing!!!


An unbeatable, pocket-sized guide to Corsica, packed with insider tips and ideas, colour maps, top 10 lists and a laminated pull-out map - all designed to help you see the very best of Corsica.
Explore the chic seaside resort of Calvi, discover the island's wilderness in the Parc Naturel Régional de Corse or visit the lively capital Ajaccio, surrounded by some of the most pristine Mediterranean beaches. From Top 10 boat trips to Top 10 wineries - discover the best of Corsica with this easy-to-use travel guide.
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Based on a REAL analysis, I am leading the incumbent Elizabeth Warren by 11 points in the latest head-to-head poll conducted by Suffolk University. The analysis of the polling data was conducted by one of the world's leading and reputed statisticians, Professor Devavrat Shah, Director, Statistics & Data Science Center at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Earlier reports had an error in calculation which has now been corrected by Dr. Shah. The numbers in my favor are despite the fact that the polling was done among voters who had in the past voted for Elizabeth Warren or the Massachusetts Republican Party.
The number of voters without party affiliation in Massachusetts far outnumber those who are either registered Republicans or registered Democrats and this poll is a reflection of those numbers. Additionally, the Shiva 4 Senate campaign has captured the imagination of voters all across Massachusetts and yard signs in my support can be seen all over the state.
The organizers of the three debates have coordinated their actions and kept me out from the debate stage despite inviting Whites who polled in single digits to previous debates. Several newspapers in the state have condemned this act of racism by Elizabeth Warren and the organizers who include Jon Keller of WBZ, Boston Globe, and the University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan. Major newspapers that have condemned the organizers and called for my inclusion on the debate stage include the Lowell Sun, the Eagle Tribune, Salem News, Sentinel & Enterprise, and the Daily News of Newburyport.
The detailed report is below. Please be patient while it loads. The report is 55 pages long.


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Two Points of View on Purpose
Apr 8, 2010 7:50:00 AM
I listened with interest to Tim Kelley's teleseminar on "Finding Your True Purpose" and then bumped into Po Bronson's article in Fast Company on "What Shall I Do With My Life Now?" The first asserted that everyone has something that they are "meant" to do and that they can find out their true purpose through an inner dialogue (between self and soul or some other source).
On the other hand, Po Bronson, author of bestselling books and most recently, "What Shall I Do With My Life?" says, "There is no one thing each of us is meant to do on this planet." He goes on to say there are dozens, even hundreds of jobs that might satisfy someone's need for "meaning and goodness." He says that one can evolve on the job into work that is deeply satisfying.
Where the two authors converge is on the importance of doing work that is meaningful to the person doing it. I think our experiences dictate how we come down on the question of uncovering our particular work choice(s). From my point of view, finding what one is is going to do next comes from an inner place, from a place of insight, and varies according to the time or stage of life.
Where do you come down on this question? What have you learned about finding out what work you really want to be doing?
Topics: executive resumes, career management, career planning, Working


Yes, we have a fully stocked warehouse on hand from 9-5 Monday through Friday. If we don't have it, we can order it.
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Please fill out our contact form and we will have someone get in touch with you promptly.
Q. How do I strip a floor?
Download this PDF with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to strip a floor.


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Welcome to Strikelimit! This is the second third, incarnation of this site, its second incarnation in WordPress powered blog form. If for some reason you happened to chance upon this blog before, you will notice that, for now, I am using the same theme, but the tag line has changed – to nothing, this is because I am not exactly sure where this blog will go in the long term, so I am leaving it open!
At this point I envisage the blog as mostly being used for my adventures in programming, but other random things of choice will probably find there way in here. At the moment I program in the C#, using the the very slick XNA framework, so far I haven't really created anything major, but I will be posting the details of the main project I am working on later today, as well as something interesting I made a few weeks back.


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Q: Extracting Data from URL and using it in JSF I have this URL
http://localhost:8084/somesite/leaveHTML.xhtml?id=somestring.

Now i am able to extract the id from the URL using jquery but i am not so sure, how can i use this string to retrieve the data from the database and populate the fields onload of a JSF page.

A: I don't really understand why you need to retrieve URL using jQuery. If you just need to populate you web page with data from database based on the URL parameters, you can just use JSF <f:viewparam> tag for that purpose.
<f:viewParam id="id" name="id" value="#{myBean.id}" required="true" />

It will retrieve parameters and assign them as bean values. If you really need to send it from your view you can use something like Seam remoting and use it to send URL parameters via ajax to your server. Or maybe even easier, create a servlet and communicate to it via ajax to retrieve info from database via ajax.


WHY WE WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU TO GO ON A CAMP OR SUMMER SCHOOL ABROAD?
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The EduSmart International team can advise students and parents as to the most appropriate camps or courses to attend depending on your preferences and what you really want to gain out of the experience.
GET READY FOR YOUR VACATION LIFE EXPERIENCE !!


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package org.neo4j.cypher.internal.compiler.v2_3.commands.expressions

import org.neo4j.graphdb.{Node, PropertyContainer, Relationship}
import org.neo4j.helpers.ThisShouldNotHappenError

final class PathValueBuilder {
  private val builder = Vector.newBuilder[PropertyContainer]
  private var nulled = false
  private var previousNode: Node = null
  def result(): PathImpl = if (nulled) null else new PathImpl(builder.result(): _*)

  def clear(): PathValueBuilder =  {
    builder.clear()
    nulled = false
    this
  }

  def addNode(node: Node): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(node) {
    previousNode = node
    builder += node
    this
  }

  def addIncomingRelationship(rel: Relationship): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(rel) {
    builder += rel
    previousNode = rel.getStartNode
    builder += previousNode
    this
  }

  def addOutgoingRelationship(rel: Relationship): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(rel) {
    builder += rel
    previousNode = rel.getEndNode
    builder += previousNode
    this
  }

  def addUndirectedRelationship(rel: Relationship): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(rel) {
    if (rel.getStartNode == previousNode) addOutgoingRelationship(rel)
    else if (rel.getEndNode == previousNode) addIncomingRelationship(rel)
    else throw new ThisShouldNotHappenError("pontus", s"Invalid usage of PathValueBuilder, $previousNode must be a node in $rel")
  }

  def addIncomingRelationships(rels: Iterable[Relationship]): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(rels) {
    val iterator = rels.iterator
    while (iterator.hasNext)
      addIncomingRelationship(iterator.next())
    this
  }

  def addOutgoingRelationships(rels: Iterable[Relationship]): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(rels) {
    val iterator = rels.iterator
    while (iterator.hasNext)
      addOutgoingRelationship(iterator.next())
    this
  }

  def addUndirectedRelationships(rels: Iterable[Relationship]): PathValueBuilder = nullCheck(rels) {
    val relIterator = rels.iterator

    def consumeIterator(i: Iterator[Relationship]) =
      while (i.hasNext)
        addUndirectedRelationship(i.next())

    if (relIterator.hasNext) {
      val first = relIterator.next()
      val rightDirection = first.getStartNode == previousNode || first.getEndNode == previousNode

      if (rightDirection) {
        addUndirectedRelationship(first)
        consumeIterator(relIterator)
      } else {
        consumeIterator(relIterator.toSeq.reverseIterator)
        addUndirectedRelationship(first)
      }
    }
    this
  }

  private def nullCheck[A](value: A)(f: => PathValueBuilder):PathValueBuilder = value match {
    case null =>
      nulled = true
      this

    case _ => f
  }
}


In early March, 2014, award-winning actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth announced publicly that she's been suffering from asthma for more than 10 years, but wasn't correctly diagnosed until a few years ago. In light of her diagnosis, Chenoweth has partnered with the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) to raise awareness about the seriousness of asthma.
With spring right around the corner, Chenoweth's announcement is an important reminder that asthma sufferers need to arm themselves with strategies to reduce their exposure to seasonal triggers that can make their allergies and asthma symptoms worse.
Minimize dust by dusting and vacuuming your home regularly. Change the air filters in your cooling and heating systems every 30 days.
Avoid down bedding; use a hypoallergenic pillow and comforter instead to reduce your risk of wheezing and sneezing when you sleep.
Use a humidifier every night. Clean it regularly with white vinegar to prevent the growth of mold.
Wash your pillows regularly in hot water to minimize allergens and pollen build-up.
Wash your hands frequently especially if you have pets. Touching your face after touching your pet may transfer pet dander onto your skin that can easily trigger symptoms when inhaled.
Keep well-hydrated by drinking at least 8, eight-ounce glasses of water every day. Drinking plenty of fluids helps neutralize triggers that may have made their way into your blood stream.
Steer clear of non-natural artificial sweeteners and food dyes. Although more studies are needed to confirm this link, food dyes and artificial sweeteners like aspartame have been associated with causing asthma.
Be prepared; always keep your rescue inhaler nearby. You never know when you'll come in contact with an airway irritant that will trigger your asthma symptoms. Always keep your rescue inhaler nearby so you can use it when you feel an attack coming on.
Take your symptoms seriously. Many people don't realize that asthma attacks are among the leading causes of death in this country. Call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room if your usual asthma treatment doesn't relieve your symptoms.
Currently, actress Kristin Chenoweth is spokesperson for Know Your Count, a national awareness campaign that aims to raise awareness about the seriousness of asthma and educate patients about the importance of keeping track of the remaining doses in their asthma inhalers. For more information about asthma or to learn more about Kristen's story, visit the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.