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Chris Lemonis introduced as MSU head baseball coach
His hiring was announced on Monday.
Posted: Jun 26, 2018 5:34 PM
Updated: Jun 26, 2018 5:40 PM
Posted By: Jim Holder
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WTVA/MSU Athletics) – After arriving in his new home on Monday, Mississippi State head baseball coach Chris Lemonis began a new era with an introductory press conference on Tuesday at the new Dudy Noble Field.
The 18th head coach in MSU baseball history, Lemonis was joined by his family, MSU President Dr. Mark Keenum and Director of Athletics John Cohen at the morning press conference.
Photo: MSU Athletics
"It's been a whirlwind for the last, probably, 48 hours for me and my family," Lemonis said. "I took notes – I had to takes notes because my head has been going in different directions, calling recruits or players or everything else – but I can't tell you how excited we are to be here."
Lemonis takes over a roster of talented returners coming off a trip to the College World Series and one win short of reaching the championship series. The Diamond Dawgs have reached the NCAA Super Regional round in each of the past three NCAA Tournaments (2016-18).
Below are quotes from the press conference:
MSU Head Coach Chris Lemonis
"All I could think about was 'Does it get any better than this?' I didn't realize it was so hot in Mississippi, but if I was the AD, I'm showing off this park. It's the nicest facility in the country. We spent some time last night, and I know John (Cohen) probably thought I was quiet, but it was hard to talk as you walk through facilities and realize what an opportunity you have to coach and work in this unbelievable ballpark that was built.
It's been a whirlwind for the last, probably, 48 hours for me and my family. I took notes – I had to takes notes because my head has been going in different directions, calling recruits or players or everything else – but I can't tell you how excited we are to be here.
As a college baseball coach, Mississippi State is a pinnacle job.
We're so excited to be here. You don't get here without people. I had a chance to meet with Dr. (Mark) Keenum this morning, and we had a great breakfast and a great talk about what makes Mississippi State great. I'm picking his brain. I did learn how to use the cowbell, that was part of our teaching, but I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and everything else has been great for us.
John, we've spent a lot of time on the phone the last couple of days talking, the opportunity to be here is very appreciated. I promise you we're going to work hard and take advantage of that opportunity. And his wife, Nelle, has been awesome. Everybody has put their arms around my family since they've been here, and we really appreciate it. That's one of the hardest pieces when you take a new job, is your family and moving, and we really appreciate that from you.
My mom and dad -- you know, I'm the only Greek coach in the country so I'll probably get emotional. It's good and bad. I'll yell at umpires, but then I'll get emotional with our guys. My dad was a State grad. He was an engineer here, and I went to school on an engineering scholarship. About three weeks in, I said, 'Dad, I don't want to be an engineer,' and he wasn't real happy, because you had to give the scholarship back. So I went from 'E-E' to 'P-E' real quick – and I'm sure he was real proud – but I wanted to be a coach. I loved the game, and my dad's really happy now because he comes to all of my games and watches all of my games. If I would have been an engineer, he wouldn't have anything to do but sit on the couch with my mom. But, man, I love them, and they'll be here a lot. They're so excited that we're down here, they were in tears when I called them.
I haven't been back to Starkville in probably 46 years. They were here, married, going to school, and I was probably one or two years old at the time. It's nice to be back, and it's a big piece because my mom just got done talking about what an experience they had here and what a neat part of life. As a parent, when you have young kids it is a neat part, and they are just ecstatic to be part of the community again.
My wife here, my beautiful wife, I couldn't do it without her. Anybody who knows the coaching business, your wife is the rock. She's raised two beautiful daughters. My oldest, Marissa, she's a Gamecock but she looks good in our colors. And you'll appreciate this, even though she went to another SEC school, she told everyone she wanted SEC football and palm trees. She got that in South Carolina. And then my youngest daughter, Mackenzie, she's a senior in high school
Just a few quicks one, and I know 'thank you's' take a while. I had a chance to play for two great head coaches, Chal Port, who is in the (ABCA) Hall of Fame, he's no longer with us, and Fred Jordan, who was my mentor. I played for him, coached for him, and he was there for me. He just recently retired from The Citadel, and I'm just so thankful to play with him.
I've learned at every spot. The Citadel was my grinder spot. You'd recruit ten kids, and you wouldn't get one. You'd ask them where they were going, they would say, 'Coach, we don't have any offers, but we're not going there.' But you just had to learn and keep working. You had to keep grinding, you had to keep moving forward, and it was a great place. I'm so thankful for my time at The Citadel.
I did get to coach at Louisville with an awesome staff. My best friend's the head coach, that was a mentorship for me. All of the guys on the staff do an unbelievable job, and when we jumped in there and took that job over, they had been to like one regional, I think. You look up and see where that program's at now, and building that program was one of the funnest times of my life.
And my last piece is Indiana. Fred Glass, the AD there, gave me all the support, gave me my first head coaching job, which I'll never forget, and all the staff and administrators and players and coaches. The four years there were huge for me to be a head coach and to be in this position because the Big Ten is not an easy league. Maybe not SEC, but you deal with weather, you deal with travel, you deal with a lot of different things that as a head coach I think it really matured me over time and prepared me.
But lastly, and I am a recruiter, John spoke about it. It's about the kids. I've had a chance to coach a lot great kids over time. My phone has blown up over the last few days like you can imagine, and so many old players have reached out. You're not standing here in my job if it wasn't for the players, and that's a big piece and I'm looking forward to building that relationship with our group that we have here.
I spoke to the team last night. It's a different dynamic. I don't know if anybody's ever taken over a team two days after they got eliminated from the final four in Omaha. And man, our guys they've had a rough year, but they had an unbelievable finish and they attracted the nation like I told them. We're going to celebrate those guys, and we're going to celebrate that team.
Gary Henderson and that staff, to keep that team together, and keep them playing, was a remarkable job. What happened that last month of the season will help us as we move forward in the future as we build tradition, and that experience, those guys will help us next year.
We talked about going to Omaha, and I told them I know the feeling. You get back, you have the Omaha hangover. You're pissed because it's over, and it was such a magical ride, but the reality is, you're waking up and the 2019 season has already started. Our guys will get a couple of days off and then they'll start heading out to summer baseball, or jump in the weight room and get going. I tried not to be too 'rah-rah' or do too much, I know these guys have heard a lot. My goal is to build that relationship with those guys one day at a time. I feel like I'm a good relationship coach. I enjoy coaching my guys. They're never perfect, so we'll deal with things. I'm just looking forward to that part as much as anything of joining this team.
As a recruiter, we will jump out there and try to find the best players for us. I've found that most of the high draft picks I've had weren't the five-star recruits. I've never recruited with something like this [stadium]. I've recruited as a Big Ten school and a Big East school.
I'm glad to be in the SEC, because I haven't liked the SEC as a coach on the other side. You have the opportunity to recruit, but baseball is one piece. The make-up is the other piece.
I talked to coach (Jake) Gautreau, who is staying on with us, that it's a big piece for me to get the right fit. The second piece of the program is player development. Their development is the most important thing to me. They want to play pro ball, and I want them to play in the big leagues. I like the minor leagues, but we are preparing them to be a big leaguer. There's not a guy in that clubhouse that doesn't want to play professionally. As a coaching staff, it's our job to help them get there. I challenge them. When I say player development, I know they are thinking about their swing. My piece of development is the whole man. It's about being great in the community, being a great teammate and being great in the classroom. I think those are all related. I take a lot of pride in it, and they will hear it from me every day.
I am coaching men who will be future husbands and fathers. Baseball will be over at some point. These guys will have impacts all over the world, and I want to make sure that I don't cheat them. I want to make sure they get the best experience there.
We will put them in a system for success at the highest level of college baseball. We are playing baseball. Baseball is a working man's game. You show up every day, punch the clock and play hard. John sent me numbers today that looked like an NL All-Star team of people who played here before. You play for the respect of that tradition. When you put this jersey on, you play hard for the guys that came before you.
I had to get on one of my players in the very first meeting. Elijah MacNamee told everyone after the last game that we would win a national championship next year. I told him thank you. As the new coach, that's the expectation, and we won't be scared to talk about winning a national championship. It's a tough grind in the SEC, but that's what we're gearing for. Our dreams are big. I want our kids to dream big. I joked with him, but he was sincere and passionate. I want our guys to be passionate.
I asked our guys a question in the meeting. I said, "Why Mississippi State?". One guys said, "It's the SEC." Another said, "These are the best facilities in the country." One player said, "This is home." That hit me right between the eyes because I was listening for "national championship". That's what it is here at Mississippi State. It's home. I just thought it was a huge statement from the kid. These guys take so much pride in playing for their fans.
We will do everything we can to play hard and make you all proud. We will get after it to put a great product on the field. My family is happy to call Starkville home."
On reaching out to current and prospective draftees…
"We are working on it. It's a big piece right now, but it's been such a whirlwind. We will be on the phone all afternoon. That's item No. 1 once we finish today."
On installing a new system…
"I want some continuity with the staff, but I will bring in some new staff. We will jump out in the fall and put our system in place. We may call some things differently, but it'll be baseball. We have a good team coming back. I'm excited for them, as we will figure out a couple things. It's the game of baseball. I want to make them feel like a million bucks. Confidence is a big key in this game."
On why it was the right time to come to MSU…
"It was tough. I enjoyed my time at Indiana, but I compare this to Indiana. Indiana has basketball. This is Mississippi State baseball. I wake up every day, my feet hit the floor and I want to go to Omaha. I am motivated, and that's my reason. You have a better opportunity to go there from here."
On keeping assistant Jake Gautreau on staff…
"I spoke to Cohen, watched the games and you could see it in the buy-in from the players. I've known Gautreau for years as a recruiter. I felt like that continuity would be huge for us. Recruits get nervous during a process like this. I'm joining a team today that is probably nervous. My goal is to reach out and start building that relationship."
Junior – Jake Mangum – OF
On the team's response to meeting Coach Lemonis…
"We were excited. His message was great. I'm sure it has been a crazy couple of days for him. His track record speaks for itself, and we are excited to work with him."
On getting over the "Omaha hangover" …
"It took us a day or two to get our sleep back, but other than that we are ready to go. Some guys will be going to play summer ball and will have a short turnaround because of us making such a deep run in the postseason. Some of us other guys will be staying here taking summer classes, working out and getting ready for next year."
On having his fourth head coach in four years and finding stability…
"The consistency has been there. In three straight years, we have competed no matter who we have played against. It's not that we've been inconsistent, but I do think Coach Lemonis will be the right guy to lead the way."
On his meeting with Coach Lemonis…
"It went great. He gave me a game plan of what his goals are here at Mississippi State. He asked me a few questions about the past couple of years, and we went back and forth on a few other things."
On the feeling now that the season is over and the desire to get back on the field…
"Yeah, we're sad that it is over. We all wish we would have won three more games and brought the national title back to Starkville, but we are excited. This fall will be a lot different than last fall. We will actually have somewhere to practice this time. We are going to put our work in."
On the drive for the team after making it to Omaha…
"The goal for every team is a national championship. We've won the SEC, made three Super Regional trips and a trip to Omaha in our time here. It is time for us to take that next step at Mississippi State. We are all looking for that first national title here at Mississippi State.
On what stands out about Coach Lemonis…
"His positive attitude. He understands that he is stepping into something that is really good here. We are excited to welcome him in and see what he can do to make us a better team."
MSU names Chris Lemonis as head baseball coach
Lemonis names Scott Foxhall as MSU's next pitching coach
UPDATE: Houston introduces new head baseball coach
Ricketts officially introduced as MSU head softball coach
Amory High head baseball coach Cade Hoggard introduced
Chris Woods named MSU track and field head coach; April Thomas promoted to associate head coach
Former MSU baseball coach lands new job
McFatrich resigns as MSU volleyball head coach
Darty named MSU head volleyball coach


It's that time of the year: Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the story of the Exodus, has arrived. Many Passover traditions—avoiding leavened bread, serving matzah and other symbolic foods, retelling key aspects of the Passover narrative—are more or less constant around the world, but as these photographs show, the traditions can vary wildly in look and feel depending on where they occur. Here's a gallery of Passover celebrations worldwide.


Her stats went from 1 out of 40 to 1 out of 12 – how did she do it?
Posted in Uncategorized by Tim Sales.
There's a lot of interest from people in how they can get a lot more people to respond back to them. I thought about it and realized that you could probably benefit from this short clip from my Professional Inviter Training.
Hope this helps you today and every day!
One Response to "Her stats went from 1 out of 40 to 1 out of 12 – how did she do it?"
I am using both of these videos through your capture page on your system. They are an excellent way to educate people who don't understand.
I call the prospect, talk for a few minutes, they typically always agree for me to send them an email with the link to those videos, and then set a time to call them back. I am working with several prospects in this way and am following up with them. This gives me a solid process and a plan to help prospects understand and as people do join, I plug them into the same simple process I am using.


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Q: How to get visited routes Array I have a single page multistep form which is using a hash router. There are two things which I want to achieve:

*

*If the user hit a direct URL of my route and if that particular route is not visited before redirect to home page route

*In order to implement save progress in multistep form. How can we control browser back in the same sequence in which I visited the routes? ex. I completed the form till 20 steps (dynamic steps not sequential) and I saved the progress for the future. I came back and resume the application but there is no history of previous routes?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


In 1950, Jacques Adnet formed a partnership with the French fashion house, Hermes, where he developed a collection of leather-covered furniture and interior accessories. Accordingly, he made a round leather mirror with brass buckle details named the Adnet Circulaire Mirror.
The Adnet Mirror is an elegant design made from either black or tan leather and finished with brass detailling. It is a luxurious product that will look great in any interior.
Available in three diameters: 45cm (height: 90cm), 58cm (height: 116cm) or 70cm (height: 140cm).
In black Italian leather. Supplied with brass wall fitting.


Welcome to the Manchester Water Works section of the FOMBA website. This area will be used for important messages and information from our friends at MWW. Please check back often for the latest news.
Trails marked with FOMBA Trailhead Signs and fire roads are open for bikes unless otherwise marked. All other single track trails are off limits to bikes. Yellow Posted Signs will mark the OFF LIMIT areas as No Trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted. RSA 635:2 Criminal Trespass.
Thank you for your cooperation in these matters and please continue to enjoy the areas that are open for your enjoyment.
The Manchester Water Works will begin removal of red pine plantations on the Massabesic Watershed Properties in the winter of 2015. Red Pine Scale is an exotic insect that was first detected in Bear Brook State Park in 2012. Many other outbreaks of infestations have caused swift decline and mortality in plantations in Merrimack and Rockingham Counties.
Red Pine Scale outbreaks were first detected in NY and NJ in the 1950's and 1960's and have slowly crept north virtually eliminating red pine in RI and CT. Over the past decade it has covered most of MA. Early signs of infestation include bright "flagging" of the lower branches followed by a swift decline of the entire crown and eventual stand wide mortality.
The Manchester Water Works has over 50 red pine plantations totally over 400 acres. There are no known effective controls for plantations. Infected sites experience complete mortality in as little as 3-5 years. Working with NH State Forest Health Specialists, the Water Works has developed a plan to slowly remove red pine plantations and release young saplings and seedlings in the understory to reforest the sites. The target is to remove 40 - 80 acres of red pine per year.
Any risk to water quality through widespread tree mortality, forest fire danger, and associated erosion is not acceptable to our mission for healthy forests and clean water on the Massabesic Watershed.
For additional information regarding red pine scale or if you have a red pine stand you suspect may be infested, contact Forest Health Specialist Kyle Lombard at (603) 464-3016.
For additional information regarding red pine harvesting at Manchester Water Works properties, contact Watershed Forester John O'Neil at (603) 496-5836.


Whether you're looking to put up a simple training route or create a climbing wall for the kids, the Bouldwall's clean lines and attractive textures make it an intriguing addition to any space. Choose from three different patterns to match your style.
Have your wall up in less than 30 min. Arrange the panels, find the studs, and screw them in place.
Made from aircraft grade aluminum and high strength composite materials, Bouldwall panels are engineered to provide a highly rigid, reliable platform.


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Tags: A Case of You, Cinema Blend, Continental Drift, emmy, entertainment weekly, evan rachel wood, firehouse, fox, Fox 5, game of thrones, garden state, golden globes, Grove Street, HBO, hoboken, house, Hugh Laurie, Ice Age, Jenni Farley, Jerramiah Healy, jersey city, jersey shore, Justin Long, jwoww, Knights of Badassdom, Mercer Street, mtv, My Dinner with Herve, new jersey, nicole polizzi, Peter Dinklage, plainsboro, princeton, princeton-plainsboro teaching hospital, ryan kwanten, snooki, the star-ledger, true blood, University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro
It's already Thursday, and it's time for another edition of Only in Jersey!
Hugh Laurie and the "House" cast: Say farewell./Photo credit Fox
Fox has pulled the plug on its hugely popular series "House." The show, currently in its eighth season, takes place at the fictitious Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. According to Entertainment Weekly, the series will wrap up the end of this season. The mag also reports that star Hugh Laurie said in November that he planned on retiring from television acting once the show ended. Meanwhile, the real Princeton-based hospital is flourishing: it is scheduled to move to a new, state of the art facility in May and officially be renamed University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro. Who says life doesn't (at least partly) imitate art?
Tags: academy awards, Arizon, damon salvatore, entertainment weekly, garden state, hollywood, ian somerhalder, kelly ripa, Kodak Theatre, Lackawanna County, Live With Kelly After Oscar Show, marlboro, Michael Sorvino, Mira Sorvino, new brunswick, new jersey, nina dobrev, oscar, Paul Sorvino, paul wesley, pennsylvania, red carpet, regis philbin, Sedona, Slim-Fast, stefan salvatore, the cw, the hollywood reporter, The New York Daily News, The Trouble with Cali, the vampire diaries, vampire, Voorhees
It's Wednesday, and I'm back with another edition of Only in Jersey!
Yes, they do grow 'em like this in the Garden State./Photo credit EW
The very definition of "Sophie's Choice."/Photo credit EW
Forget about country boys – thank God for Jersey boys!
That's what I'm sure millions of women will say when this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly hits the stands and they feast their eyes on Paul Wesley, star of The CW hit series "The Vampire Diaries." Paul, who was born in New Brunswick and raised in Marlboro, graces the magazine with (depending on which one of three covers you pick) costars Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder. Paul's character, Stefan Salvatore, the show's resident "good" vampire, went rogue this season while his brother, Damon (Somerhalder), has taken over the hero vampire role. Don't expect it to last.
Tags: abc, Andre Braugher, assassination, atlantic city, boardwalk empire, Bobby Cannavale, dallas, Deadline Hollywood, entertainment weekly, game of thrones, garden state, Gary Oldman, HBO, jersey shore, Jimmy Darmody, jimmy kimmel, jimmy kimmel live, Last Resort, Men of a Certain Age, meredith vieira, Michael Pitt, Mimi Alford, monmouth county, nbc, new jersey, New Jerseyan, Newfoundland, nucky thompson, nuclear submarine, Once Upon a Secret, Peter Dinklage, President John F. Kennedy, Rock Center with Brian Williams, Rumson, South Orange, Steve Buscemi, Texas, the star-ledger, The Station Agent, tnt, Union City, west orange, White House intern
Welcome to another edition of Only in Jersey!
Bobby Cannavale: I'm not sure that handgun existed in the 1920's.
While "Boardwalk Empire" is technically filmed in New York, the Atlantic City-based series is Jersey, through and through.
This terrific HBO series is so dedicated to the Garden State that it's replacing one Jersey actor with another! The departure of West Orange-born Michael Pitt, whose much beloved character Jimmy Darmody bit the bullet at the end of the second season, is tempered by the announcement that Union City's Bobby Cannavale is joining the third-season cast. Entertainment Weekly reports Bobby will be a major stick in Nucky Thompson's (Steve Buscemi) craw as far as the bootlegging business is concerned. Bobby also starred in the 2003 film "The Station Agent" alongside fellow New Jerseyan Peter Dinklage (star of fellow HBO series "Game of Thrones") and was filmed in Newfoundland and surrounding N.J. areas.
9/11: Wake me up when September ends
September 4, 2011 at 4:43 pm	(Uncategorized)
Tags: 2001, 9/11, 9/11: Heroes of the 88th Floor, bio channel, cancer, central jersey, chris noth, cranbury nj, death, emilie de ravin, entertainment weekly, green day, i survived..., jerry driendl, let's roll, middlesex county, minoru yamasaki, mr. big, new jersey, new york city, pentagon, remember me, robert pattinson, september 11, sex and the city, shanksville pennsylvania, statue of liberty, tlc, todd beamer, twin towers, united flight 93, wake me up when september ends, world trade center
I've never looked forward to September. I love the summer, so it's always meant the end of warm – OK, frequently hot – days. And for 17 years it also meant the beginning of another long school year, and that was never a good thing.
But in 2001, September took on a whole new meaning.
Words fail me.
To say September 11, 2001, was a defining moment in my life is an understatement. It brought horror, disbelief, and an unrelenting sadness home on a magnitude of nothing else I had experienced until then. (Since, I've endured the death of my father, the loss of a longtime job, the death of my eldest cat, and my mother's cancer diagnosis – grief-filled to the last.)
Its scope was ceaseless, too. If you lived anywhere in the Tri-State area, the signs of 9/11 were unavoidable no matter where you went. It was nigh impossible for me, because at the time I was working for a daily newspaper in Central New Jersey.
My "Jersey Shore" birthday
August 4, 2011 at 12:40 pm	(Uncategorized)
Tags: Boardwalk, Britney Spears, Bubba's Dog House, Deena, DJ Pauly D, Duomo, entertainment weekly, Escalades, Florence, Garden State Parkway, Island Beach State Park, italy, j-woww, jersey shore, Mike Sorrentino, mtv, new jersey, Pauly DelVecchio, ronnie, Sallyan Salsano, sammi "sweetheart", Sammi Giancola, seaside heights, Seaside Heights police, Shore Store, Situation tuxedos, snooki, the situation, UK Daily Mail, Vatican, vinny
MTV may be premiering Season 4 of "Jersey Shore" tonight, but I've already caught a glimpse of Season 5!
Move over, Florence: The kids are back in Seaside!/All photos by Ava Gacser
I was down the Shore last Tuesday, July 26, to celebrate my birthday at Island Beach State Park, which is adjacent to Seaside Heights, the home of "Jersey Shore." On a whim, I decided to drive by the infamous den of iniquity just to see what it looked like in person. Seriously, I had no expectations other than that.
Well, guess what? I drove (then walked) right into the middle of filming for the show! Happy birthday to me!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Should Tesla carry the burden of teaching the public about artificial intelligence?
Image: Unplugged Performance
By Dacia J. Ferris
Welcome to a FREE preview of our weekly exclusive! Each week our team goes 'Beyond the News' and handcrafts a special edition that includes our thoughts on the biggest stories, why it matters, and how it could impact the future.
You can receive this newsletter along with all of our other members-exclusive newsletters, become a premium member for just $3/month. Your support goes a long way for us behind the scenes! Thank you.
In a recent podcast discussion Elon Musk had with AI expert Lex Fridman about artificial intelligence, consciousness, and Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink, an interesting question arose about Tesla's role as an educator in that realm. Referring specifically to the Smart Summon feature that's part of the company's Version 10 firmware, Fridman asked Musk whether he felt the burden of being an AI communicator by exposing people for the first time (on a large scale) to driverless cars.
To be honest, Musk's response wasn't really, well, responsive. He deferred to the more commercial-oriented goals of the company: "We're just trying to make people's lives easier with autonomy." The long-term goals of Neuralink are pretty scary for mainstream humans, so to me, this question really deserves a long sit-and-think. After all, we're talking computer self-awareness and capabilities well beyond what we'd consider superhuman and beyond the ability of humans to control after a certain point. Neuralink wants the type of AI connection implanted in our brains.
On one hand, the evolution of Autopilot with each iteration and the evolution of Smart Summon with each new release exposes people to the process of how humans teach computers and how computers teach themselves. In other words, it shows people that AI is somewhat similar to how people learn. However, I don't know that it gives everyday people a full picture of what Musk is really talking about all the time regarding the pace of AI learning and how that leads to doom scenarios.
If anything, is Tesla lowering expectations for AI's future? If a Tesla is the first "robot" people see, and then they see years of functionality that's sub-par to an attentive human at the wheel before seeing the full promise of the Tesla Network, what picture is being painted? Then, what about the wake of uncertainty it will leave behind?
In the interview, Musk described our minds as essentially a monkey brain with a computer trying to make the monkey brain's primitive urges happy all the time. Once we start letting computers take over what little functions the monkey brain enjoyed or needed to keep in check (driving, painting, laboring, etc.), how is the AI eventually going to decide to deal with what it will just see as…the monkeys? Right now, we're seeing robot cars driving into curbs and highway dividers, making us feel pretty superior to them despite the fact that humans do this much more frequently. What happens if the car one day decides to do that on purpose because its calculations factor out that humans need to exist?
Okay, I know I'm getting a touch ridiculous here, but it just brings me back to Fridman's original question about whether Tesla carries the burden of educating the public on these matters with their push for self-driving. Perhaps if they were just focused on moving the world to sustainable energy and production, their driver-assist features would be just as Musk describes them – a convenience or value-added feature. After all, most other self-driving companies and auto manufacturers working on self-driving just have the customer in mind, not so much a robot overlord future.
But that's not the future Musk is working towards. He's both warning us about the future of AI while actively developing our defense against it. Should his car company then play a big role in acclimating and teaching people about what AI will really be able to do beyond getting them to work and back? Hosting 3-4 hour long "Investor Day" presentations are part of this educational effort, I suppose, but 99% (or more) of the general public is not going to be interested or even able to understand what Tesla's genius developers are talking about, much less understand how it might apply to their lives beyond their cars one day.
I don't really know what Tesla's teaching could or would or should look like, but it's an interesting question given the acceleration the company is making in bringing AI into our lives on a scale much bigger than harvesting our data to sell us ads.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon parachutes are almost ready for NASA astronauts
Tesla builds up Model 3 inventory in China ahead of official green light to sell
Tesla quietly completes Giga Shanghai's battery and powertrain factory shell


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Glymour at the PSA: "Exploratory Research is More Reliable Than Confirmatory Research"
Posted on November 19, 2016 by Mayo
I resume my comments on the contributions to our symposium on Philosophy of Statistics at the Philosophy of Science Association. My earlier comment was on Gerd Gigerenzer's talk. I move on to Clark Glymour's "Exploratory Research Is More Reliable Than Confirmatory Research." His complete slides are after my comments.
GLYMOUR'S ARGUMENT (in a nutshell):
"The anti-exploration argument has everything backwards," says Glymour (slide #11). While John Ioannidis maintains that "Research findings are more likely true in confirmatory designs," the opposite is so, according to Glymour. (Ioannidis 2005, Glymour's slide #6). Why? To answer this he describes an exploratory research account for causal search that he has been developing:
(slide #5)
What's confirmatory research for Glymour? It's moving directly from rejecting a null hypothesis with a low P-value to inferring a causal claim.
MAYO ON GLYMOUR:
I have my problems with Ioannidis, but Glymour's description of exploratory inquiry is not what Ioannidis is on about. What Ioannidis is or ought to be criticizing are findings obtained through cherry picking, trying and trying again, p-hacking, multiple testing with selective reporting, hunting and snooping, exploiting researcher flexibility—where those gambits make it easy to output a "finding" even though it's false. In those cases, the purported finding fails to pass a severe test. One reports the observed effect is difficult to achieve unless it's genuine, when in fact it's easy (frequent) to attain just by expected chance variability. The central sources of nonreplicability are precisely these data-dependent selection effects, and that's why they're criticized.
If you're testing purported claims with stringency and multiple times, as Glymour describes, subjecting claims arrived at one stage to checks at another, then you're not really in "exploratory inquiry" as Ioannidis and others describe it. There can be no qualms with testing a conjecture arrived at through searching, using new data (so long as the probability of affirming the finding isn't assured, even if the causal claim is false.) I have often said that the terms exploratory and confirmatory should be dropped, and we should talk just about poorly tested and well tested claims, and reliable versus unreliable inquiries.
(Added Nov. 20, 2016 in burgundy): Admittedly, and this may be Glymour's main point, Ioannidis' categories of exploratory and confirmatory inquires are too coarse. Here's Ioannidis' chart:
But nowadays, to come away from a discussion thinking that the warranted criticism of unreliable explorations can be ignored, is dangerous. Hence my comment.
Thus we can agree that compared to Glymour's "exploratory inquiry," what he calls "confirmatory inquiry" is inferior. Doubtless some people conduct statistical tests this way (shame on them!), but to do so commits two glaring fallacies: (1) moving from a single statistically significant result to a genuine effect; and (2) moving from a statistically significant effect to a causal claim. Admittedly, Ioannidis' (2005) critique is aimed at such abusive uses of significance tests.
R.A. Fisher denounced these fallacies donkey's years ago:
"[W]e need, not an isolated record, but a reliable method of procedure. In relation to the test of significance, we may say that a phenomenon is experimentally demonstrable when we know how to conduct an experiment which will rarely fail to give us a statistically significant result." (Fisher 1935, p.14)
"[A]ccording to Fisher, rejecting the null hypothesis is not equivalent to accepting the efficacy of the cause in question. The latter…requires obtaining more significant results when the experiment, or an improvement of it, is repeated at other laboratories or under other conditions." (Gigerenzer et al 1989, pp. 95-6)
Glymour has been a leader in developing impressive techniques for causal exploration and modeling. I take his thesis to be that stringent modeling and self-critical causal searching are likely to do better than extremely lousy "experiments." (He will correct me if I'm wrong.)
I have my own severe gripes with Ioannidis' portrayal and criticism of significance tests in terms of what I call "the diagnostic screening model of tests." I can't tell from Glymour's slides whether he agrees that looking at the posterior predictive value (PPV), as Ioannidis does, is legitimate for scientific inference, and as a basis for criticizing a proper use of significance tests. I think it's a big mistake and has caused serious misunderstandings. Two slides from my PSA presentation allude to this[i].
Moreover, using "power" as a conditional probability for a Bayesian-type computation here is problematic (the null and alternative don't exhaust the space of possibilities). Issues with the diagnostic screening model of tests have come up a lot on this blog. Some relevant posts are at the end. Please share your thoughts.
Here are Clark Glymour's slides:
Clark Glymour (Alumni University Professor in Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) "Exploratory Research is More Reliable Than Confirmatory Research" (Abstract)
[i] I haven't posted my PSA slides yet; I wanted the focus of this post to be on Glymour.
Blogposts relating to the "diagnostic model of tests"
(11/9) Beware of questionable front page articles warning you to beware of questionable front page articles (iii)
03/16 Stephen Senn: The pathetic P-value (Guest Post)
05/09 Stephen Senn: Double Jeopardy?: Judge Jeffreys Upholds the Law (sequel to the pathetic P-value)
01/17 "P-values overstate the evidence against the null": legit or fallacious?
01/19 High error rates in discussions of error rates (1/21/16 update)
01/24 Hocus pocus! Adopt a magician's stance, if you want to reveal statistical sleights of hand
04/11 When the rejection ratio (1 – β)/α turns evidenc0e on its head, for those practicing in an error-statistical tribe (ii)
(08/28) TragiComedy hour: P-values vs posterior probabilities vs diagnostic error rates
Fisher, R. A. (1947). The Design of Experiments, 4th ed. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krüger, L. (1989). Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ioannidis, J. (2005). "Why most published research findings are false", PLoS Med 2(8):0696-0701.
Categories: fallacy of rejection, P-values, replication research	| 20 Comments
20 thoughts on "Glymour at the PSA: "Exploratory Research is More Reliable Than Confirmatory Research""
Lucy Maloney (@sciyuk)
Some people say that the same data set cannot be used to discover an effect and then validate that same effect. Mayo and Glymour seem to dispute that view? Hence, Glymour suggests that, in exploratory research, positive casual claims can be "tested or assessed multiple times, against multiple competing hypotheses in multiple subsamples of the data." And Mayo says "there can be no qualms with testing a conjecture arrived at through searching, using new data," …and I think she implies that the "new data" can be from the same data set? So, for example, in psychology the new data could come from the same research participants?
I think that a completely independent data set (i.e., a new study with a new sample of participants) often provides a better test of validity of a newly discovered effect than further exploratory tests using the original data set. However, that does not dispute the point that I take away from Glymour and Mayo here – that exploratory research (or "exploratory inquiry") can be done well or poorly, and that good exploratory research can involve corroboratory tests that are based on relatively independent ("new") data that is derived from the *same* data set.
I like Mayo's point that "if you're testing purported claims with stringency and multiple times, as Glymour describes, subjecting claims arrived at one stage to checks at another, then you're not really in "exploratory inquiry" as Ioannidis and others describe it." But I'm not sure others would agree with this. Some hardliners might argue that if you use the same data set to (a) discover an effect and then (b) validate that effect then you are being "exploratory". I personally think this sort of argument is too black and white, and that the more moderate and realistic position takes into consideration how "independent" and "new" your corroboratory tests are compared to your discovery tests. The more independent your corroboratory tests from your discovery tests, the less exploratory you are and the more confirmatory you are? Makes any sense?
Lucy: Thanks for your comment; I agree with your sentiments. There's been a lot of confusion about when the "same" data can be used both to arrive at and test a hypothesis. That's why I've written so much on "double counting" and violations of "novel data". In reliably testing assumptions of a statistical model M, for example, the data to be used in testing M's assumptions aren't really the "same" as used in testing a claim within M. The data are remodeled to ask a different question, e.g., one looks at residuals. What really matters is whether you've done a good job probing the way the given claim may be wrong. That this doesn't preclude "double counting" is essentially how I arrived at the notion of "severity". However, despite many clear-cut cases, there are, in the end, vague cases, still needing attention. For an early paper of mine (from 25 years ago!) on novel evidence: the controversy as to how to define it, and when and why it should matter, in philosophy of science, see:
http://www.phil.vt.edu/dmayo/personal_website/(1991)%20Novel%20Evidence%20and%20Severe%20Tests.pdf
Also search "double counting" on this blog.
I think the desire for "new data" is borne out of a feeling that exploratory work can be pulled into spurious interpretations by random artifacts in the first data examined. The risk of mistaking noise for signal must be addressed by rigorous examination of methods used and results. It is possible to have a severe test during the course of an exploratory study. The key is to address that explicitly, since every interpretation/conclusion follows from methods used to arrive at them. In my opinion, some of the literature on this topic stumbles in precisely this area. (As when a paper cites numbers of replication failures without drilling into what should have been proper interpretation according to the statistics used. If 20 papers employed cherry-picking to obtain stat significance, this does not point to a deficiency of significance tests. )
clark Glymour
A tweet and a retweet from Maria Glymour, the second with a link to Gelman's blog:
Mayo commenting on one of Senior Glymour's more surprising (and quite nifty) claims critiquing Ioannidis & embracing "exploratory" research. https://t.co/MxPXmry7uw
— Maria Glymour (@MariaGlymour) November 19, 2016
Good advice on designing exploratory studies from Andrew Gelman: https://t.co/bP3SWGgnu2
— Sam Harper (@sbh4th) November 18, 2016
What an excellent paper Deborah. Thank you for the link. It provides much needed nuance to the other discussions I've read on exploratory vs confirmatory research and the idea that you can't use the same data set to (a) discover a new hypothesis and (b) then test that hypothesis. If I understand your paper correctly, you are saying that whether or not hypotheses are corroborated using exploratory or confirmatory (pre-registered; "use-novel") data is a bit of a red herring. What really matters is the quality (severity) of the tests used to investigate your hypothesis, and although pre-registration can help to increase the quality (severity) of those tests, high quality tests can also be conducted in the exploratory domain. Two questions if you have time:
1. Would you argue then that the crisis of confidence in psychology and elsewhere is not due to the lack of confirmatory (pre-registered) research per se but rather due to the lack of severe tests?
2. I suppose that some would argue that tests cannot be adequately severe unless researcher degrees of freedom are pinned down via pre-registration; something you touch on in the section on "biased interpretation of evidence"?
Lucy:
I appreciate your comment, glad you liked that paper on novel facts. I would agree to your #1, and deny that literal preregistration is necessary for severity, however, it's obviously important for people used to cherry picking and p-hacking.
philosophicalcurmudeon
I would argue for 1. As for 2, no one knows the "degrees of freedom" an investigator uses in selecting hypotheses to test; in contrast, one can know exactly the degrees of freedom a search procedure has.
Curmud:
How do you know the degrees in searching? One would still like to know how it influences the overall reliability or severity. It might be good to use a term like "constrained search" rather than lump it under exploratory, which definitely has the connotation of just shopping and not self-testing in any way. Are you familiar with Glymour's work?
A draft of the paper associated with Glymour's presentation is here:
https://errorstatistics.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/a-million-variables-and-more-2016-proofs.pdf
Mayo writes: "I have my problems with Ioannidis, but Glymour's description of exploratory inquiry is not what Ioannidis is on about. What Ioannidis is or ought to be criticizing are findings obtained through cherry picking, trying and trying again, p-hacking, multiple testing with selective reporting, hunting and snooping, exploiting researcher flexibility—where those gambits make it easy to output a "finding" even though it's false. "
To the contrary, it is exactly what he is on about. To the contrary again, he begins his Plos Medicine paper with a little calculation for when the probability of false "positive relationships" is greater than the probability of true "positive relationships." That calculation depends on assuming the choice of hypotheses to test is independent of their truth or falsity. Yes, he goes on to denounce cherry picking, bias, etc. but Mayo is wrong about the initial argument. And that is the argument Colquhoun takes up.
In my opinion, boh Ioannidis and Colquhoun mislead us (unwittingly) by their use of priors for truth of nulls. Muddies the water unnecessarily.
Curmud(g)eon: I am not sure where you think we're disagreeing. I agree with you as to what's wrong with (what I call) the diagnostic screening model of statistical tests (in science). Even if "the choice of hypotheses to test" is not independent of their truth or falsity, Colquihoun insists the probability of their truth can't be more than .5. Further, the tests must be two-sided. The computations are very old: a 2-sided test of point null Ho with spiked prior, the remaining prior on a hypothesis H' that, together with the null, does not exhaust the space. The power against H' is supposed to be high, and then that number is used as if it were a conditional probability in a Bayesian computation (which it isn't). The #'s are usually attributed to Berger and Sellke (1987) but go back at least to Edwards, Lindmann and Savage from~1962. The main problems are listed on my 2 slides.
See the Berger and Sellke chart & links on this post:
https://errorstatistics.com/2016/01/17/p-values-overstate-the-evidence-against-the-null-legit-or-fallacious/
My point (in relation to your slides)wasn't that they rely on the high prior to the null–unwarranted as that is– it's that your "exploration" doesn't seem to be the kind of exploration that Ioannidis is criticizing., that's all. He requires the searching to increase the probability of a type 1 error (e.g., due to selective reporting, p-hacking, and the like). His numbers depend on that. I took you to be arguing that a finding that survives your analysis has passed a reasonably severe test.
Steven McKinney
Glymour's presentation, like Colqohoun's Royal Society paper, derives pop culture value by presenting headlines with a catchy twist. "Exploratory Research is more reliable than Confirmatory Research" starts a presentation with a "pop", because on the face of it, it appears to contradict common sense.
I recommend that people take a step back, and get out their thinking caps, when such contradictory statements lead off a discussion. Such constructions are designed to get our attention by being contrarian, rather than to demonstrate proper handling of a complex situation.
How can an initial foray into unknown territory, an initial exploratory analysis, be more reliable than follow-up studies following other follow-up studies, Fisher's "a phenomenon is experimentally demonstrable when we know how to conduct an experiment which will rarely fail to give us a statistically significant result" scenario?
I do find the term "exploratory analysis" to be useful, precisely in the initial phases of study in new territory, where previous data is nonexistent or lacking. In such situations, we can not perform power calculations generally because we do not yet know what sizes of measured effects have any scientific, economic, biological, or medical relevance. In such circumstances, when we fail to reject a null hypothesis, we can not then accept the null hypothesis. We necessarily are left still in a state of ignorance as to whether the null, or some alternative, better fit the newly derived data. Even if our initial test does end up rejecting the null hypothesis at some given type I error rate, we still do not know if the effect we have uncovered has any scientific relevance, since a statistically significant difference is not always scientifically relevant.
Once we have gathered several sets of data to address the phenomenon under scrutiny, we enter into the confirmatory realm, where (if indeed anything is going on) repeated experiments rarely fail to give us a statistically significant result, and we have a better understanding of what sizes of measured effects have relevance.
Of course in any situation we can always gather several large data sets, and orchestrate repeated statistically significant findings, but if we do not conduct the exercise of hashing out what effect sizes really have any scientific or economic or medical relevance, a set of statistically significant findings can end up being of no real scientific relevance.
Severity calculations on initial exploratory data can certainly aid in understanding what effect sizes are sufficiently severely tested with the data at hand, but the exercise of assessing what measured effect sizes mean something scientifically, or biologically, or medically, still needs to take place. Such exercises are generally challenging – how much extra survival makes a course of radiation or chemotherapy for a cancer patient worthwhile? What level of up or down regulation of cellular proteins yield beneficial or problematic biological outcomes? The challenge of such evaluations leaves too many researchers all too ready to simply apply formulaic statistical procedures in cherry-picking and p-hacking forays. It is our job as statisticians to encourage such conversations, to force researchers to come to some understanding of what sizes of measured effects have relevance in the context of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Only then can we conduct meaningful power calculations, or assess whether relevant measured effect sizes have been severely tested.
I disagree with Glymour's slide 2 statement "If null [A and B are independent] is rejected, H [A and B are causally connected] is confirmed". Stating that A and B are causally connected is generally used in fallacious arguments that A causes B, or B causes A. Rejecting the null hypothesis of independence of A and B only demonstrates that some sort of association is present, but does not prove that A causes B or vice versa. Uncovering associations is an important first step in developing understanding of causal pathways, but additional reasoning based on physical or other principles of the phenomenon under study are generally necessary before solid causal relationships can be declared. Presenting statistical tools with labels such as "causal" just starts the problematic resultant writings now in the spotlight.
Glymour concludes with another contrarian statement: "Almost everything said and written in statistics about the superiority of 'confirmatory' research and the evils of data driven hypothesis search is wrong, very wrong". I find it challenging to believe that the thinking of heavyweights from Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher through Eric Lehman, David Cox, Bradley Efron and other Stanford heavyweights, and Deborah Mayo have yielded nothing but a mountain of wrong, which Clark Glymour has now set right.
Steven:
It may be that much of the apparent disagreement here is semantical. Today's world of alarming pronouncements (most findings are false, science is in crisis, is broken, has lost its self-correcting ability) might provoke one to a rival surprising claim (as with my "beware of questionable front page articles warning you to beware of questionable front page articles".
https://errorstatistics.com/2013/11/09/beware-of-questionable-front-page-articles-warning-you-to-beware-of-questionable-front-page-articles-i/).
However, there's too much danger that people will think bad exploratory practices are being condoned if they're waved away, even though I know that Glymour has a much more self-conscious program in mind, designed to avoid common sources of unreliability. That's mostly what I meant to highlight by my response.
Reportedly, medievals cited Aristotle to determine the number of teeth a horse has. Mr. McKinney uses the same strategy for issues of causal inference. He does not recognize when a slide is stating a viewpoint other than authors. I can only urge, likeliy in vain, that he put aside his a priori contempt and read the arguments and proofs that have emerged in the last quarter century, starting with Spirtes, et al. Causation, Prediction and Search.
Clark: The number of teeth a horse has? I'd heard of the # of deaths through horse kicks in some army being modeled with the Poisson distribution.
On your point, suppose we agree that a correct description of a "confirmatory" or "corroboratory" test wouldn't be the howler described by Ioannidis (as per your slide #2), but something more like a stringent experimental test. Then is it still true that exploratory is better than confirmatory?
With all of Ioannidis valuable later work on method, it's too bad this early paper has led to a widespread tendency to confuse the probability of a type 1 error with a very different animal: the prevalence of true nulls among those randomly chosen from an urn with k% true and rejected with p=.05. The prosecutor's fallacy is more common than ever as a result, and p-values are thought to "exaggerate" the evidence against a null because they differ from this erroneous prevalence computation.
phaneron0
You do seem to be following Fisher's advice for analyzing non-randomized studies – make your theories complex – and try very hard to displace a hoped for theory with another ho-hum theory that can explain almost just as well.
With limited data I tried to do something similar here – found the minimum adjusted effect estimate for all possible adjustments for measured covariates http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/4/800.full.pdf
I am guessing with a well designed and executed randomized study you likely would do a confirmatory analysis.
Keith O'Rourke
This is very interesting, although I'd have used the term "exploratory" in a somewhat different manner, following the John W. Tukey tradition. The major difference to what is discussed here is that when I analyse data in an exploratory manner, I don't aim at "significance" claims. I may occasionally use formal significance tests but don't take the results literally because these tests are embedded in a flow of steps that is not formalised and therefore doesn't allow for proper adjustment of p-values. Rather these tests are there to highlight some issues for further investigation, besides many other techniques, particularly graphical.
There are attempts to test outcomes of such an analysis (e.g., "Statistical inference for exploratory data analysis and model diagnostics", Buja, Cook, Hofmann, Lawrence, Lee, Swayne, Wickham, 2009; Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society, A, available on Andreas Buja's homepage http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~buja/), but the interpretation of a significant result is quite unspecific, "the data are not compatible with the null model" without inference to any specific alternative (although of course it is possible to give a "qualitative" interpretation of the findings).
The methods alluded to in Glymour's slides seem to be somehow between Tukey-style exploratory analysis and confirmatory analysis in that procedures need to be sufficiently formally defined and restricted and the same holds for the considered model classes.
By the way, while these methods probably work well in situations in which there are few true effects but those are big, in more common situations in which there are many effects and the vast majority of them is pretty small, and there is a smooth transition between the smallest and the biggest effects, the power of these procedures may be too weak ("biased against positive findings") to find anything.
Christian: Thanks much for the reference!


Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for holding this important hearing today to discuss document security in the context of international air travel.
On March 9, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) confirmed that two of the passports used by passengers to board Malaysia Airlines flight 370 had been recorded in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database. INTERPOL's Secretary General, Ron Noble, noted that very few countries systematically query the SLTD database for the purposes of verifying whether a passport has been reported as lost or stolen. INTERPOL has said that in 2013 travelers boarded flights more than a billion times without having their passport numbers checked against the SLTD database. This number does not include any flight to the United States, but it is striking nonetheless. Even more troubling is the poor rate at which countries outside the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP) are contributing information on lost and stolen passports to the SLTD database.
At the moment, our thoughts and prayers are with the missing passengers and crew who were on Malaysia Airlines flight 370. DHS appreciates the opportunity to discuss the important steps that we—in coordination with our partners at the Department of State and the U.S. National Central Bureau (USNCB)—have taken to mitigate vulnerabilities associated with persons attempting to travel on lost or stolen passports, which has been highlighted by the recent tragedy, and to talk about the importance of information exchange to the homeland security enterprise.
INTERPOL is the world's largest international police organization with 190 member countries today. INTERPOL's primary goal is to ensure that police around the world have access to the tools and services necessary to do their jobs effectively. Among the services INTERPOL provides to the law enforcement entities of every member country is access to the SLTD database. The SLTD database is maintained by INTERPOL, and it contains over 40 million records provided by nearly 170 of the organization's members.
It is important to note that when an individual seeking admission to the United States, presents a passport, whether by land from Canada or Mexico, by commercial air, or by sea on a cruise ship, that passport is screened against the SLTD database prior to admission—in fact in many cases, they are screened against the database on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, most countries in the INTERPOL community do not screen travelers against the SLTD database as thoroughly as we do in the United States. The ability to screen travel information in advance – be it against the SLTD database or a national watchlist that included, for example, terrorist information – is an important element of effective border and transportation security.
More disturbing is the alarming number of countries that report very little—and in some cases no—lost and stolen passport data to INTERPOL for inclusion in the SLTD database. As a condition for participation, VWP countries are required to provide lost and stolen passport data to INTERPOL for inclusion in the SLTD database or to make such data available to the United States through other means as designated by the Secretary, and DHS continuously monitors that data to ensure compliance by our partners. The United States, Canada, and Europe, as well as our other VWP partners have provided the vast majority of the 40 million records in the SLTD database.
Alarmingly, some of the most populous countries in the world including China, India, and Indonesia, have contributed few—if any—records to the SLTD database. Despite the incredible development of the SLTD database since its inception following the September 11th attacks—40 million records added in the past twelve years is a truly noteworthy accomplishment—the lack of data provided by many INTERPOL member countries remains significant.
We firmly believe, based on DHS's operational experience since 9/11, that the automated and depersonalized screening of traveler data against derogatory administrative, counter terrorism, and law enforcement records is an essential part of the future for homeland security efforts around the world. The INTERPOL SLTD database is the quintessential example of one way countries can collaborate in preventing fraud and subsequent criminal activity. There is no reason why a passport should not be scanned every time an individual boards a plane to verify that the document provided is valid. These sorts of queries can be done almost instantaneously, occur completely automatically, and provide a first indicator of suspicion that can guide a law enforcement response in concert with the relevant passport issuing authority. The process provides significant confidence in the legitimacy of the document (assuming of course that the participating countries properly and accurately report their data into the SLTD database).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses the SLTD database and data from the Department of State's (DOS's) Consular Lost and Stolen Passport (CLASP) and the Consular Visa Lookout and Support System (CLASS) in the air, land, and sea environments to verify the validity of both U.S. and foreign passports. For VWP travelers, CBP vets all Electronic System for Travel Authorization applications against the SLTD database. In the land environment, when a traveler arrives at a land border port of entry, CBP officers will query the document in TECS1, which includes Lost and Stolen U.S. Passports and the INTERPOL SLTD for foreign passports. If CBP receives a hit, it refers the individual to secondary inspection for questioning. During the secondary inspection, CBP determines if the individual is a mala fide traveler or if the individual is the true bearer of the reported lost or stolen passport.
In the air and sea environments, when CBP receives inbound and outbound carrier advance passenger information system (APIS) data for travelers with a foreign passport, it queries the INTERPOL SLTD database for any matches to the document type – passport, number and issuing country. For U.S. citizens utilizing U.S. passports, CBP queries TECS for matches to lost, stolen, and revoked U.S. Passports. In the air environment, if CBP detects lost, stolen, or revoked passports prior to boarding through CBP's pre-departure vetting or through the Immigration Advisory Program (IAP), CBP would make a recommendation to the air carrier not to board the passenger. If CBP notified the carrier, but the traveler was still allowed to board with the document that was the subject of a lost or stolen passport lookout, the carrier would be subject to a fine for violation of Section 273(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
CBP has also developed the Carrier Liaison Program (CLP), which enhances border security to the airlines and their security companies by identifying improperly documented passengers destined to the United States. CLP training enables participants, including airline check-in personnel, boarding agents, and security company staff, to receive hands-on instruction in fraudulent document identification, passenger assessment, impostor identification, and traveler document verification. When carriers encounter a lost or stolen travel document, CLP training instructs the carriers to contact CBP's Regional Carrier Liaison Groups (RCLGs). The RCLG offices are 24/7 operations maintained at the airports in New York, Miami, and Honolulu, with each RCLG maintaining responsibility for specific areas of the world to respond to carrier concerns. The RCLGs will respond in real-time to carrier inquiries concerning the validity of travel documented presented. After an RCLG determination of the lost/stolen travel document has been made, the RCLG will make a recommendation to board the passenger or to deny boarding. To date, the CLP has trained 33,600 airline and security personnel.
1 TECS (no longer an acronym) is a key border enforcement system supporting the vetting of travelers entering the United States and the requirements of other federal agencies used for law enforcement and immigration benefit purposes. TECS supports the sharing of information about people who are inadmissible or may pose a threat to the security of the United States through the creation and query of "lookout records." TECS is used by more than 70,000 users, including users from more than 20 federal agencies that use TECS in furtherance of their missions. TECS receives and processes traveler manifests from carriers and supports primary and secondary inspections for almost a million travelers and almost half a million vehicles at United States ports of entry each day.
The I-24/7 global police communications system, which our colleague Mr. Shawn Bray, the Director of the USNCB, can speak to at great length, is a marvel in today's world, and it is one that has largely gone unnoticed. Each of INTERPOL's 190 member countries has a National Central Bureau (NCB) that is typically housed within that country's national police agency. And most significantly, each of these NCBs is connected to the I-24/7 secure communications system. By using the INTERPOL network, the U.S. law enforcement community can exchange information in real-time and in a secure manner with our police counterparts in every other INTERPOL member country around the world. This is an exceptional capability, and we have only begun to tap the potential it embodies.
To be sure, there are real and current challenges to this vision. Despite the fact that DHS and the USNCB have worked to incorporate recommendations for data reporting and response times into INTERPOL's approved SLTD standard operating procedures, INTERPOL does not require its member countries to implement them. With regard to screening passengers against the SLTD database, many countries do not have advance passenger information capabilities to screen travelers prior to arrival, or they have been unable to connect their immigration agencies to their NCBs in order to screen documents at the time of arrival. Many countries have been unable to connect their agencies that record lost or stolen passport information to their NCBs, so reporting that data has been a challenge. This may be due to a lack of the proper information technology systems within the country, internal restrictions on data-sharing between agencies, or simple bureaucratic complexity (for example, some countries record lost identity documents at local police stations). These are all best practices that we employ here in the United States that we shall continue to encourage our partner countries to adopt.
To help address these challenges among its member countries, INTERPOL—with assistance from DHS—has recently established the Integrated Border Management Task Force (IBMTF). The IBMTF is charged with assisting member countries in their approach to border management, and how to utilize the tools and services INTERPOL offers to that end. The project has included, for example, trainings for immigration officials on using the SLTD database to screen inbound passengers. The intent is to help member countries move toward more systematic approaches to the use of the SLTD database in daily operations. DHS remains supportive of INTERPOL's efforts in this regard.
INTERPOL understands, as we do at DHS, that sharing data on lost and stolen passports is an essential and fundamental part of protecting people against crime and terrorism. Whenever you are pulled over by state or local law enforcement, your driver's license is vetted to verify its validity and to determine any derogatory information for you. The SLTD database operates on the same principle, just on a global scale, and all countries should be encouraged to adopt similar measures. INTERPOL's SLTD database provides them with that opportunity. It is already built, already in use, and the U.S. has already proven it is a reliable repository for lost and stolen passport data that can effectively be used during border screening. The task ahead is encouraging our partners to more fully utilize it, which will in turn only further add to its value.
DHS has instituted procedures to vet all U.S. inbound and outbound international travelers against the SLTD database. Any person with a travel document that has been reported lost or stolen to INTERPOL, who attempts to board a plane to or from the United States, will be denied boarding until he can verify his identity.
The ability to screen for lost or stolen travel documents, however, hinges upon foreign countries reporting their data to INTERPOL. This is why DHS has invested significantly in ensuring that all VWP countries report lost and stolen passports to INTERPOL, since the SLTD database is only as valuable as the data it contains.
DHS's engagement strategy going forward is based on "Three P's": Populate, Process, and Promote. We will continue to ensure that all VWP countries populate the SLTD database effectively, and we will emphasize to our other foreign partners the critical importance of populating the SLTD database with their lost and stolen passport data. We will work closely with INTERPOL to ensure that effective processes exist to coordinate an appropriate law enforcement response when a lost or stolen passport is encountered. Lastly, we will work bilaterally and multilaterally to promote effective use of the SLTD database based on DHS's experiences. As the "Three P's" are implemented, DHS hopes to be even more effective in helping to secure the global aviation system, and U.S. citizens will have greater confidence in their safety abroad.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, for your continued support of the Department, and for your attention to this important issue. We would be pleased to answer any questions at this time.


This is one of the two reasons why governments have any interest in regulating marriage – because the welfare of children is at stake. But it also requires a unique commitment (called 'a covenant') between the child's wedded parents. It is a life-long, exclusive, commitment between a man and a woman. These two factors of a marriage are intimately linked due to the overwhelming evidence that children fare best when raised in a loving home by their married biological parents (cf Children In Three Contexts in the Journal: Australian Children Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 23–31).


My college life consisted of six weeks of intensive learning. There were twenty or so adult students; all looking to get a class course during the hot season. We were all getting refresher courses in public speaking & supplier law because we were competing for a task. Whoever got the most ideal grade was the lucky person who got the task. We ended up living in the dorm rooms while we were there & then, we were college students. We were those crazy wide-eyed students that had never been away from our properties before. My parents were watching my youngsters, & I was free for a couple weeks. The one wild weekend it was so warm that we couldn't breathe & the humidity was incredibly high. They had tornado watches up all over, & no one was allowed to leave the campus at all. I called my youngsters & they seemed satisfied to be with grammy & pop. As I hung up, the lights went out, & so did the HVAC equipment. We lost our air conditioner & the air was totally warm & stifling. We were all led down to the storm shelter. The air conditioner equipment wasn't working here either & all we could do was kneel in the hot, humid air & listen to the campus shaking like crazy. One of the ladies began to sing an aged Partridge song & soon everyone joined in. It was getting hotter without any AC equipment, however we were laughing & singing as the storm blazed on. Soon, the lighting came on & we could hear the AC equipment droning. There were broken buildings all around however we were perfectly safe, & now we were cool, out of that room. I called my youngsters & said I was coming back home to the property.


text:
Q: Elasticsearch Test Container time out I am pulling ES 7.15.2 for writing tests from within java application
    private static final DockerImageName ELASTICSEARCH_IMAGE =
          DockerImageName
                .parse("docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch")
                .withTag("7.15.2");

The docker starts up fine. Logs
astha.gupta@P-TQ-MAC-AGUP Quinn % docker logs 61fe3dcd2dba -f
2022/01/12 23:17:11 Pinging Docker...
2022/01/12 23:17:11 Docker daemon is available!
2022/01/12 23:17:11 Starting on port 8080...
2022/01/12 23:17:11 Started!
2022/01/12 23:17:11 New client connected: 172.17.0.1:56948
2022/01/12 23:17:11 Received the first connection
2022/01/12 23:17:11 Adding {"label":{"org.testcontainers.sessionId=8d6280af-d612-4186-90e2-29aae1c4101f":true,"org.testcontainers=true":true}}

But seems like the application hangs and then errors out
22/01/12 15:20:03 INFO  [docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.15.2]: Container docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.15.2 is starting: f7fe3708ec5fac3d557685fd650e172ce9146f4ea3159e586bde0ff30acb0238
22/01/12 15:20:03 INFO org.testcontainers.containers.wait.strategy.HttpWaitStrategy: /elated_lewin: Waiting for 120 seconds for URL: http://localhost:58934/ (where port 58934 maps to container port 9200)
22/01/12 15:22:03 ERROR  [docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.15.2]: Could not start container
org.testcontainers.containers.ContainerLaunchException: Timed out waiting for URL to be accessible (http://localhost:58934/ should return HTTP 200)

Any clue what could be happening?
EDIT:
The test https://github.com/testcontainers/testcontainers-java/blob/d0c4ced72ddca93838c1107b66913b5141872906/modules/elasticsearch/src/test/java/org/testcontainers/elasticsearch/ElasticsearchContainerTest.java#L88 with the wait works for me.

A: Try using Elasticsearch container instead of a generic docker one


text:
Q: Mixpanel: Distinct id is disregarded by Mixpanel I track an event from my rails backend with this:
tracker.track(user.email, "Signup Success")
as expected, user.email contains the user's email address
But the event shows up in Mixpanel with this type of distinct id:
"14f13d5681xxxx-02558bcc3-797exxxx-fa000-14f13d5681xxxx"
Why is Mixpanel disregarding my specified distinct id (the user's email), and substituting its own? Any ideas?

A: Have you tried:
# This call will send a request to Mixpanel to
# associate all future events with new_internal_id
# with existing events associated with
# original_anonymous_id
tracker.alias(new_internal_id, original_anonymous_id)

A: I have similar problem with distinct id. Try to concatenate any string to your email. Example:
String distinctEmail = "email: " + user.email;
tracker.track(distinctEmail, "Signup Success");

I get same situation as you described. When hardcode distinct id everything work, but when pass email there is a problem. My solution is not "by the book" but at least in mixpanel show email plus added sting.
Let me know if this solution work for you.
I was in contact with MP Support and I will update my answer if I found proper solution.

A: When you want to show your events in mixpanel with email address as unique id then use the Following code to solve your issue:
mixpanel.identify(user.email);
mixpanel.track("Signup Success");

A: The new Mixpanel Identity Merge concept behind this. Here is the explanation from the mixpanel dev.
https://community.mixpanel.com/data-management-10/interchanged-values-for-distinctid-and-distinct-id-before-identity-5606


text:
Q: Javascript object member function: "Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ," (Chromium) I have this code block:
var Function1 = function (argument1) {
    // ...
};

var Function2 = function (argument2) {
    // ...
};

var MyObject = { "somekey": {}, Function1, Function2 };

This works great in every Windows/IOS browser.
On Android when MyObject is instantiated in Chromium it throws "Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ,". I suspect my syntax is a bit loose somewhere. Why is , reported as out of place?

A: I suspect, you need an older syntax, pre ES6, with key/value pairs.
var MyObject = { somekey: {}, Function1: Function1, Function2: Function2 };


When I was a young boy I took pictures with a Kodak Brownie box camera. While attending broadcasting technical school in Washington D.C. in 1972, I tried my hand at shooting transparencies (slides) with my dad's old Agfa 35mm rangefinder with a bellow lens. I had some success with it, during daylight hours anyway. When the first Panda Bears arrived from China at the Washington National Zoo, I attended the acceptance ceremony, hosted by Pat Nixon. I was up in the press stands snapping away. I still have those pictures.
A few years later I found myself high in the mountains above Nogales, Arizona. As a network news cameraman (videographer), I was there to tape the assembly of one of the first network broadcast satellite dishes built in the southwest. I was running around with a heavy shoulder mounted portable video camera, with a battery belt strapped to my waste and carrying a three quarter inch video tape recorder. I taped the building of the dish, which was mounted on a platform overlooking a five hundred foot drop. The techs building the dish, one was my brother, had to strap themselves to the dish legs to keep from falling to the rocks far below. I captured on tape a number of beautiful sunsets and sunrises. My brother did the same with his Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR film camera.
Later, after watching my recordings and knowing what was on his exposed film, I decided that I had to get my own 35mm camera. A few months later I visited a catalog showroom in Norfolk, Virginia where I purchased a Minolta XG-1 SLR along with an accessory package that was composed of a bag, a cheap 135mm lens, a flash, and a lens cleaning kit. This purchase started a long love affair with photography which would include many more cameras, and lenses, lots of reading, including the 16 volume Time-Life photography library (which I still own), and one day a complete color darkroom set up in my wife's laundry room. I stored mixed chemicals and boxes of paper in the refrigerator. This was not always popular with all members of my family.
I became a semi-pro photographer. I use the term semi-pro because I did not do it to make a living but I did make money at it. I made money shooting weddings, portraits, and other special events. I also made money selling my pictures at art shows. I was one of the photographers at the PBS television station I worked at. My function as video engineer, both in the studio and on remote locations, gave me an opportunity to shoot still shots behind the scenes. These shots were displayed in bank lobbies and libraries around this area and I sold copies to various people who saw them. My pictures were also published a few times in the local paper. The money I made went to feed my habit of taking pictures. It paid for film, chemicals, paper, and new equipment. I also entered a number of photo contests sponsored by local camera shops and cities. I won a few prizes, none of great monetary value, but winning meant a lot to me. The contest gave me the chance to meet other shooters, some of which became friends, and I learned a lot from them.
I had my darkroom for about four years and then the opportunity to start my own phone business presented itself. I then had to make a decision about what was going to get most of my time and energy. I thought about what the head photography curator of the Chrysler Museum said to me when he was judging the photography at one of the local outdoor art shows where my work was on display. He asked me if I really took the pictures. He was pointing to one in particular when he asked this. Taken a bit back I answered with an emphatic Yes. He then told me I did good work and to keep at it.
To make a really good picture took two shots, one in the field and one in the darkroom. To give up my darkroom meant giving up my ability to make the kind of finished art I wanted to make. However, I needed to make money to take care of my growing family, so it was a sad day when I sold my easels, large darkroom timer, trays, color developing drums, really good Saunders C760 dichroic color photo enlarger and watched them go out my back door.
I went into film withdrawal. I threw myself into the phone business and didn't touch a camera again for months.
Eventually I did get back into it. I purchased a new Minolta 550si Auto Focus camera. I took pictures with that camera as my telephone business took me around the world. I shot pictures of my kids, of the mountains, the sea. Not having a darkroom, I concentrated more on making a better picture inside the camera. I intensified my study of light, depth of field, the capability of different lenses, the best techniques for using a flash. I purchased a Minolta Dimage digital rangefinder camera when that technology was new. I was disappointed. I liked the instant picture, but I found the quality to be very lacking compared to film, so I stayed with that medium for quite a long time. I did scan many negatives and slides for posting on various picture hosting sites. I did post production work on some of those scanned images using different software programs including PhotoShop and others. In other words I was dabbling into the world of digital photography. I dabbled around the edges anyway, but I still could not see a real compelling reason to buy a DSLR.
One day about seven years ago my daughter Jeri called me and said she was getting married. Jeri and her fiancé Tom would be hosting the event at the Little Switzerland Lodge and Resort on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Marion, North Carolina. The lodge had a staff photographer and as part of their wedding package, he would take pictures during the ceremony. She wanted me to take all the before and after and some during the wedding before I walked her "down the isle". She wanted my shots, like the staff photographer's, to be digital. She then informed me she would buy the camera for me. This presented me with a very interesting opportunity.
I purchased the ten mega pixel Sony Alpha 100 DSLR. This camera had just hit the market a few weeks before Jeri's call. The bundle included the camera body, 18-70 zoom lens, battery and charger. It cost one thousand dollars. I had a hard time with that price, but considering all my Minolta AF lenses would still work with the new camera, the cost was worth it. However, I could not allow Jeri to spend that kind of money so we split the purchase. I had a few days to learn the ins and outs of the camera. It wasn't that hard. I took a couple of classes at the Ritz camera store where I bought the camera. I tried, but I found the classes to be a waste of time. I could have taught them, plus I got tired of hearing that the only camera you should own is a Nikon. That is a most silly untrue thing for someone who works in a camera store to say.
Jeri and Tom were married on October 7, 2006. I took some shots before the ceremony started, then sat aside my camera (and my cell phone) to walk my daughter down the stone pathway to the side of her soon to be husband. I wished I could have been in two places at once. I really wanted to shoot her walking down the isle. Maybe I needed a small drone to hover in front of us and I could have used a remote control? Just kidding.
My daughter Christine recently took a digital photography course at Thomas Nelson Community College in Newport News, Virginia. Christine enrolled to pick up some, what she thought, would be a few easy credit hours on her way to a nursing degree. She found out the class was not that easy and she also found out that she liked it. She liked taking pictures with my borrowed Sony Alpha 100, a camera that met the class requirements. She now has her own cameras, a Sony SLT a58 and the Sony A99v pro DSLR. The two of us have spent quite a bit of time on the phone discussing photography, including the various parts of a DSLR, lenses, and how they all work together. We have also talked about techniques, how to develop an "eye" for a good shot. Christine grew up around photography; it was a part of her life just like computers and telephones. Now, as a professional, and now working towards a digital imaging degree, photography is a part of her life again and I have enjoyed helping her.
Working with Christine started me thinking.
I thought I could provide a few lessons in digital photography, specifically Digital SLR photography here. If you want to get into taking really good pictures, something a lot more than a snap shot, then I can help. I will provide lots of information, both basic and advanced, about choosing and using a DSLR. To make it really interesting I may provide some tasks for you as well, that all depends on the responses I receive here of course.
Shall we begin? Today's lesson is a bit of an introduction.
In order to become a better photographer you need to know two main things.
1. How to use your equipment.
2. How to use your eyes.
What is a DSLR? It is a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. It combines the optics and mechanics of a Single Lens Camera with a digital sensor instead of film. The term SLR or Single Lens Reflex, refers to the fact that light, passes through the lens, hits a mirror which turns the image right side up and displays it on the viewfinder focusing screen. When the picture is taken the mirror flips up (reflex) as the shutter opens, the iris in the lens closes, and the sensor is exposed. The final image looks very close to what was seen in the viewfinder.
A DSLR with interchangeable lens provides you with almost total control over the image you want to capture. You can adjust the exposure of the shot. Exposure is a combination of the sensitivity of the sensor to light, the speed of the shutter, and the aperture or opening of the iris of the lens. These three things all work together.
Take a look at this chart, it illustrates how each part of the exposure effects the image, including depth of field (focus), movement (blur) and noise.
Exposure starts with the ISO setting. ISO is also known as ASA or DIN. These acronyms are so old no one remembers what they stand for anymore. They are the acronyms of the original folks who set the standards for film. What does this have to do with digital photography? Digital photography still uses those standards. Those standards are used to determine how to set the camera to capture a correctly exposed image.
A DSLR will set all the above for you automatically or you can decide for yourself. You do have control. You can set the camera for shutter priority meaning you choose the shutter speed; the camera sets the correct lens aperture or F-stop for you. You can reverse that and set the aperture yourself and the camera sets the shutter speed. The third choice, and it is the one that most photography instructors want their students to use, is full manual. You set it all using the camera's meter.
Let me give an example. The camera is set for an ISO of 200. The f-stop of the camera is set at 5.6; the shutter speed will be at 125 hundreds of a second. How do I know that? Because the meter in my camera tells me. Now if I want to set it myself then there will be an indicator in the viewfinder to let me know when I have the correct exposure. Each manufacturer or camera has its own way of doing that. There might be a vertical or horizontal scale with an arrow or pointer that needs to be set on zero. Older film cameras used a ring and a needle… you adjusted the shutter and F-stop until the needle was in the ring and then take the shot.
Typically film cameras had an ISO setting as low as 25 to as high as 6400 or more. These settings matched the speed of the film which was on the canister. For example: Kodak Kodachrome daylight film could have an ASA of 25. This was a great film for taking bright colored and very sharp slides in bright daylight. Kodak Ektachrome 400 was good for taking pictures in low light without a flash.
The higher the ISO the less light you need to expose the picture. The lower the ISO setting the more light you need. So why not use a high ISO all the time? Well that sounds reasonable, but because of the way the other parts of the exposure process work the final picture may have results you don't want.
Film has an emulsion consisting of fine grains of silver halide salt particles suspended in a gelatin. These salts based on size determined the sensitivity of the film to light, the more sliver particles the less light, the less light the higher the ISO. The more particles the film contains the grainier the film. This translates to a grainier picture from the developed negative or slide. The bigger the picture the more noticeable this grain becomes. Digital photography experiences the same thing only the grain is called noise. (take another look at the chart). The higher the ISO setting the less light you need but the noise, or digital grain, increases. Some cameras produce more noise at higher ISO than others. The older Sony A100 is noticeably noisier at ISO 400 than my newer A57 SLT which creates more digital noise than my A77II SLT.
Now the question changes to: why use a higher ISO if it increases noise? The answer is because it increases the shutter speed as well.
Simple answer is that a faster shutter speed makes it easier to hold the camera steady and capture the shot. In other words, a faster shutter speed reduces or eliminates a thing called blur. (see chart above) With a fast shutter speed you can freeze your subject. You can catch a bird in flight; freeze a baseball pitcher's curve ball in the air. With a fast shutter speed you can take multiple pictures per second as you pan and follow a track star or a horse racing with its neck outstretched as it passes the winning post.
A high ISO setting allows for hand held shooting in low light…to a point anyway. I love shooting in low light. I prefer the term available light. If the light is really low then your exposure setting could require a slow shutter speed and as I said that could make it hard to hold the camera steady during the exposure. One way to reduce camera movement is to hold it properly. Elbows tucked in against your body, left hand under the lens with palm up and cradling the lens. This type of hold also helps to keep your fingers from getting in the shot. Another way to reduce camera movement is to take advantage of DSLRs that have built in anti shake. Sony has named this function Steady Shot. Sony built this function into the camera body, some camera makers build it into the lens. I prefer Sony's method because it reduces the size and weight of their lenses.
The best way to avoid camera shake when shooting a long exposure is to use a monopod or even better a tripod. Both of these pieces of equipment are essential to the serious photographer.
I think this is a good start to our online photography course. Next time I will discuss in further detail the relationship between lens settings and focus range also known as depth of field. Controlling DOF is a great advantage that DSLRs provide over the conventional point and shoot camera.