text:
What "Not Specifically Targeted" Means for Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
May 24, 2013 /9 Comments/in Drones /by emptywheel
A number of people are discussing the killing of Abdulraham al-Awlaki as if the government has claimed he was accidentally targeted.
That's not what the government has officially said. In his letter declassifying American drone deaths the other day, Eric Holder said Abdulrahman, Samir Khan, and Jude Kenan Mohammad were "not specifically targeted." Which is quite different from saying it was an accident.
Administration officials were quick to offer an explanation about one of these deaths, that of Mohammad: he died in a signature strike, officials said anonymously, but a former consultant also suggests he was on the kill list.
American officials said on Wednesday that Mr. Mohammad had been killed with about 12 other insurgents in what the C.I.A. calls a "signature strike," an attack based on patterns of activity, such as men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the sharpest divisions inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.
While Mr. Mohammad was not directly targeted, he had come under increasing scrutiny by American counterterrorism officials, who said he was involved in recruiting militants for Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, as well as making videos on YouTube to incite violence against the United States.
"He had risen to the top of the U.S. deck," said Seth G. Jones, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and former adviser to the military's Special Operations Command. Mr. Jones said that while in Pakistan, Mr. Mohammad had made contact with five young Virginia men who disappeared from their homes around Thanksgiving in 2009 and turned up seeking to join militant groups. Instead they were arrested and remain in Pakistani custody.
But officials have been a lot more squirmy about Abdulrahman's death.
At a pre-speech briefing yesterday, a senior Administration official was asked about Abdulrahman specifically. Between an unbelievable number of "ums," he first tried to generalize about all three "not specifically targeted" individuals and then provided two possibilities: presence at "al Qaeda and associated facilities" or civilian accidents (neither of which incorporates the explanations provided the NYT for Mohammad's death).
I don't want to get into the details of each of those instances. What I will say generally is that there are times when there are individuals who are present at al Qaeda and associated forces facilities, and in that regard they are subject to the lethal action that we take. There are other instances when there are tragic cases of civilian casualties and people that the United States does not in any way intend to target — because, again, as in any war, there are tragic consequences that come with the decision to use force, including civilian casualties.
The first of those — presence at an al Qaeda "facility" — is closer to what the Administration has said about Abdulrahman's death in the past, when they have claimed they were targeting Ibrahim al-Banna. Though AQAP reported that he was never at the site.
But here's what a former Obama official told Jeremy Scahill about Abdulrahman's killing.
A former senior official in the Obama administration told me that after Abdulrahman's killing, the president was "surprised and upset and wanted an explanation." The former official, who worked on the targeted killing program, said that according to intelligence and Special Operations officials, the target of the strike was al-Banna, the AQAP propagandist. "We had no idea the kid was there. We were told al-Banna was alone," the former official told me. Once it became clear that the teenager had been killed, he added, military and intelligence officials asserted, "It was a mistake, a bad mistake." However, John Brennan, at the time President Obama's senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, "suspected that the kid had been killed intentionally and ordered a review. I don't know what happened with the review."
In other words, it sounds like some in the Administration suspect that someone within the targeting chain of command may have invented the Ibrahim al-Banna presence as a way to get at Awlaki's son. (Note, elsewhere Scahill suggested that the Awlaki family suspects a teacher may have been trying to recruit Abdulrahman to help hunt down his father, which might give those recruiters reason to want to silence him after they did kill Awlaki.)
In a piece on the drone program yesterday, Daniel Klaidman revealed that some people within the Administration were trying to keep mention of Abdulrahman and the two others out of Holder's letter from the other day.
Officials tell The Daily Beast the original plan was to name only Anwar al-Awlaki, while referring to the other three anonymously. That changed when some officials at the Department of Justice argued that withholding the names would defeat the purpose of Obama's much-touted call for more openness.
If Abdulrahman was killed deliberately, via some kind of deceit, I can understand why the Administration was reluctant to make its role in his death official. John Brennan's report about it is presumably out there somewhere (though as a White House report, it would be harder to FOIA than a CIA IG Report).
Clearly, the Administration has made some effort to gain a greater understanding of how Abdulrahman was killed than the hemming and hawing official admitted to yesterday. Which suggests "not specifically targeted" might not even rule out "targeted in deceitful fashion."
Tags: Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Eric Holder, Ibrahim al-Banna, Jim Risen, John Brennan, Jude Kenan Mohammad, Samir Khan
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png 0 0 emptywheel https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png emptywheel2013-05-24 11:15:082015-05-26 08:26:58What "Not Specifically Targeted" Means for Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
"Not specifically targeted" is newspeak for "We killed him but don't want to be accountable for it." It can also mean he was killed because the US acted with reckless disregard about his safety when he was within the blast radius of a weapon used intentionally to kill someone else.
It could be that no one was "intentionally" killed, though they died, because they were part of a group, identities all unknown, who had assembled in a way or in a location or at a time that, thousands of miles from nowhere, the US deemed an existential threat to its survival, or its economic or political interests. Or it could be that he's dead because we could and we did, in the manner that imperial states have acted since they nailed people to trees.
What Constitution says:
And the next level of explanation to be offered appears likely to be that he may have been killed, but we must have loved him alot — because, of course, if "love is never having so say you're sorry", there's confirmation in the fact that nobody seems to be offering any apology for killing these people.
Democracy Now! had an imformative segment on Jude Muhammad today.
@What Constitution: Apologies? We don't need to offer no stinking apologies! Besides, it wasn't personal; it was strictly business.
Any discussion that takes away from the unjustified murder of a US citizen, supposedly protected by the US constitution, and the thousands of non US citizen drone kills and the hundreds of thousands of killed via other means must be good for the deciderer.
lefty665 says:
Someone can be targeted and killed, but just because someone is not specifically targeted it does not make them immune from being targeted and killed.
It's Catch 22. Yossarian would understand it immediately.
thatvisionthing says:
@earlofhuntingdon:
It could be that no one was "intentionally" killed, though they died
When there's no there there behind orders and law, when questions need not be answered and reality cannot be checked and conscience does not apply, the word "intentionally" is just as much idiocy as "imminent" and "Constitution" are now — but it keeps us occupied. They're all empty suits.
Bitter Angry Drunk says:
"(Note, elsewhere Scahill suggested that the Awlaki family suspects a teacher may have been trying to recruit Abdulrahman to help hunt down his father, which might give those recruiters reason to want to silence him after they did kill Awlaki.)"
Killing the kid because they didn't want known that he was lured there to draw out his father sounds about right…
Though the Administration gives lip service to the "law of war", it either does not seem to understand, or it purposefully misapplies it.
Guantanamo, Drone Strikes and the Non-War Terror War: Obama Speaks; Marjorie Cohn, TruthOut; 5/24/13
[…] Because, he said, "we are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first," Obama concluded, "This is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort and in self-defense."
Obama understands that not all wars are just wars. He was referring to, but misapplied, three principles of international law that govern the use of military force. […]
The same could be said for most members of Congress.
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text:
O Rio Ciurgău é um rio da Romênia, afluente do Slătioara, localizado no distrito de Suceava.

Rios da Roménia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: Storing result of Web API call into Generic type class I have this simple model class which is defined like this:
public class CountryLanguage
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string ShortName { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

I have this Web API which return an IEnumerable of CountryLanguage:
[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<CountryLanguage> Get()
{
    List<CountryLanguage> list = new List<CountryLanguage>();
    list.Add(new CountryLanguage());
    list.Add(new CountryLanguage());
    return list;
}

I have this class where I want to store the result of the Web API call:
public class ResponseResult<T>
{
    public HttpStatusCode StatusCode { get; set; }
    public string Message { get; set; }
    public T Payload { get; set; }
}

And finally, here is the code calling the Web API :
HttpRequestMessage request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, actionToCallWithParameters);

var response = httpClient.SendAsync(request).Result;

ResponseResult<T> responseResult = new ResponseResult<T>();
responseResult.StatusCode = response.StatusCode;
responseResult.Message = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
responseResult.Payload = response.Content.ReadAsAsync<T>().Result;

return responseResult;

If the web API return a CountryLanguage object, I got no problem of storing this object into my generic type property payload.
But if the Web API returns an IEnumerable, I get this error :

Cannot deserialize the current JSON array (e.g. [1,2,3]) into type 'CountryLanguage' because the type requires a JSON object (e.g. {\"name\":\"value\"}) to deserialize correctly. To fix this error either change the JSON to a JSON object (e.g. {\"name\":\"value\"}) or change the deserialized type to an array or a type that implements a collection interface (e.g. ICollection, IList) like List that can be deserialized from a JSON array. JsonArrayAttribute can also be added to the type to force it to deserialize from a JSON array.

My question is: Is it possible to "normalize" this code so I can store either an object or an IEnumerable into my payload property of type T?

A: With this change I was able to fix the issue but I don't think it fully answers your question.  I will give a solution to your answer below but here is what I added to fix the runtime issue and it would return your list.
var responseResult = new ResponseResult<IEnumerable<CountryLanguage>>
{
    StatusCode = response.StatusCode,
    Message = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result,
    Payload = response.Content.ReadAsAsync<IEnumerable<CountryLanguage>>().Result
 };

Basically just turn your T into IEnumerable if T is defined as CountryLanguage in the class or method then you can set it to IEnumerable but your code does not show the full class or method.
Now to your other issue, returning either object or list of objects from one generic method. The first response was right you would just need to return object and box/unbox and use reflection and other very unpleasant code which could be encapsulated but is still a bit yucky.  So if your goal is to use this returned payload for things other than CountryLanguage you could try the following.  Create a new class called PayloadWrapperthat contains two properties like so:
public class PayloadWrapper<T>
{
    public T Item { get; set; }
    public IEnumerable<T> Items { get; set; }
}

Then you can set on or the other in your webapi and on the client side check which is set.
public PayloadWrapper<CountryLanguage> Get()
{
    var languages = new List<CountryLanguage> {new CountryLanguage(), new CountryLanguage()};

    var payload = new PayloadWrapper<CountryLanguage>();
    payload.Items = languages;
    payload.Item = null;
    return payload;
}

And on the client:
var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, "http://localhost:34213/api/values/");
 var httpClient = new HttpClient();
 var response = httpClient.SendAsync(request).Result;

  var responseResult = new ResponseResult<PayloadWrapper<CountryLanguage>>
  {
       StatusCode = response.StatusCode,
       Message = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result,
       Payload = response.Content.ReadAsAsync<PayloadWrapper<CountryLanguage>>().Result
   };

Your Payload is now a single object that either contains one item or a list of the same item.  Can be used to send back anything that fits this pattern.

A: Actually your logic is not right. If at runtime your T type is acting as the type 'CountryLanguage', your Payload property is acting as a CountryLanguage property. That's why it throws an error when you try to assign a IEnumerable value to the property, because your assigning an IEnumerable object to a non-enumerable property. Basically, at runtime, the system is doing this:
CountryLanguage Payload = IEnumerable<CountryLanguage>(variable);

It's obviously going to throw an error.

A: Ok, it is possible to store an IEnumerable into a variable of generic type T.
If I expect the returned data to be one object, the call I need to make is:
ResponseResult<CountryLanguage> response = serviceConnector.GetData <CountryLanguage>(actionToCall);

If I expect a IEnumerable from a call:
ResponseResult<IEnumerable<CountryLanguage>> response =
                serviceConnector.GetData<IEnumerable<CountryLanguage>>(actionToCall);

So my error was the fact that I was not specifying the IEnumerable type when calling the code.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


strenee sims – Page 6 – Tasteful clothing for discriminating sims.
These pajamas are a bit of a tribute to those fun, innocent days of my childhood when I would dress in my underoos and play superheroes with my brother. I know Harley Quinn isn't actually a hero but I think she's cool & that's all that matters. The outfits are base game compatible. You can download it in two packages or in one package.
I'm a girl from the 80s and that Lacoste crocodile was all the rage back in my day. Yes, I am too old to be playing The Sims! Anywho… there are 24 polo shirts in 6 different styles. I hope you enjoy!


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Get an email notification for any Results For Sale in Pet Food and Accessories in Durban North when they become available.


text:
Last week we looked at West Basin Water District in Southern California and examined how the District is charting its future amid historic drought and water supply challenges exacerbated by climate change. This week we are looking at another water district in Southern California, Yucaipa Valley, a muni with both drought and wildfire risk. We'll look at the history of wildfires in the area and how the District is addressing worsening hazards.
This week's focus:
Yucaipa Valley Water District Financing Authority, Revenue Bonds ($60,745,000)
About the District and the Bonds
The Yucaipa Valley Water District's service area straddles San Bernardino and Riverside Counties and serves approximately 52,000 people with its water and wastewater system. The proceeds of this series will be used to finance certain capital improvements projects benefiting the Water System and to refund outstanding debt; the bonds are in turn secured by Net Revenues. Page 3 of the POS lists the District's projects which include upgrades to their recycled water and filtration systems as well as water storage systems.
Wildfire risQ
Yucaipa Valley's service area ranks remarkably high in terms of property value-at-risk (VaR) from wildfire, ranking 100th percentile nationally and 98th percentile statewide for expected property losses from wildfire events. Its Wildfire risQ Score of 4.8 is largely driven by the area's topography as Yucaipa Valley is surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest. Many residential homes in the area extend into the wildland-urban interface, which is one of the reasons we see dramatic wildfire risQ here; we project that a 100-year fire would drive losses to 66% of property within the service area boundaries.
"The majority of the District's service area, including areas where District facilities are located, are considered by the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection of the State of California ("CalFire") to have an elevated risk of wildfires and have been mapped with the California Public Utilities Commission Fire Threat Map as either 'Elevated' or 'Extreme'." (pg 20)
Table 10 in the District's Hazard Mitigation Plan names 19 fires that have occurred within Yucaipa Valley since 1987, with 4 occurring since 2019 (pg. 36). For example, the Apple Fire in 2020 burned over 30,000 acres and forced thousands in the region to evaluate while the El Dorado Fire in 2020—started by the infamous gender reveal pyrotechnic disaster—burned more than 20,000 acres near the District's northeastern border.
Map showing Yucaipa Valley's service area outlined with a red line and fire perimeters outlined in varying shades of orange and brown for years 1984 – 2019.
"To help address this [wildfire] risk, the District has aggressively pursued wildland fire fuel reduction projects across its service area for many years in close partnership with local, state, and federal fire protection agencies to reduce the risk of wildfire to communities, and more specifically District facilities subject to wildfire risk." (pg. 20) In terms of preventative measures, the District seeks to mitigate wildfire risk by creating a 25 foot vegetation clearance zone surrounding its facilities and retrofitting critical infrastructure with fire-resistant coating. (Hazard Mitigation Plan, pg. 57).
Water Management amid Drought Concerns
Unfortunately it's not only wildfire risk that the District faces, but also drought risk. Under 2030 RCP 8.5 climate conditions — a greenhouse gas emissions scenario where emissions remain business-as-usual — we project 63% of months over a 30-year period will be classified as mild, moderate, severe, or extreme drought conditions; this percentage of months in drought ranks in the 94th percentile, nationally. We project that 13% of those months would be classified as severe drought and 23% would be extreme drought conditions.
"On April 1, 2015, for the first time in California's history, the State Governor directed the State Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory water reductions in cities and towns across California to reduce total water usage in the State by 25%… such restrictions applied to the District. There can be no assurance that prolonged drought conditions will not impact the District's service area, leading to decreased usage of the Water System resulting in a decline in Net Revenues." (pg. 20)
Unlike West Basin Water District (which, as we discussed last week, gets almost 90% of their water from imported sources), Yucaipa gets almost 60% of their supply from local sources: 40% from groundwater wells, 16% from recycled water, and the remaining ~44% is delivered via imported surface water (pg. A-12). The District's ability to be self-reliant insulates them when drought conditions engender water restrictions on regional distribution, however, even the District's local supply has come under threat recently.
"District has traditionally met the bulk of its service area customer needs from groundwater through the District's primary water wells. Most of these wells pump from the Yucaipa Groundwater Basin (the "Yucaipa Basin")…Two sub-basins in the Yucaipa Basin area, which are experiencing overdraft, are shared with other local water purveyors. The District and such local water purveyors are currently working to establish groundwater extraction rules to manage such over drafted groundwater sub-basins in the Yucaipa Basin." (pg. A-13)
In 2021, building on an inter-governmental relationship formed in 2007, Yucaipa Valley along with thirteen other agencies adopted the Upper Santa Ana River Watershed Integrated Regional Water Urban Management Plan (the "IRWUMP") to meet the challenges of sustainability managing the water basin. The IRWUMP seeks to improve water supply reliability in the region by managing demands, increasing local supplies, increasing overall water storage, preparing for potential disasters, and managing climate change impacts (pg. A-17). Through this agreement, the agencies formed the Upper Santa Ana River Watershed Infrastructure Financing Authority (the "USARWIF Authority"), which is tasked with developing and implement infrastructure projects to modernize aging infrastructure and address issues facing the region and its Members, such as the impacts of climate change, drought and the need for cooperative water management. As of July 2021, the USARWIF has submitted letters of interest to the EPA to borrow up to $171 million to begin work on the proposed Watershed Connect projects.
Beyond regional efforts to increase water supply resiliency, Yucaipa Valley is undertaking local measures as outlined in their Hazard Mitigation Plan section on drought. Among the strategies, the District intends to use: construct more water storage capacity, drill more wells to increase groundwater capacity, and develop ways to capture rainwater from the higher elevations during flash flooding events and divert these waters to retention ponds to recharge the underground aquifers (Hazard Mitigation Plan, pg. 39). Aside from proactive measures, the District also has reactive measures in place through its Drought Contingency Plan which outlines different responses to water conservation under varying levels of drought conditions.
It's clear that Yucaipa Valley Water District faces severe challenges stemming from wildfire and drought. The District ranks near the 100th percentile in terms of wildfire risk and has a lengthy rap sheet of wildfires in the area. It is also currently facing water supply challenges and we project that the region will face drought challenges in the future. To address the multitude of hazards in the short and long-term, the District has developed Hazard Mitigation Plans and partnered with regional agencies to develop solutions to complex regional water challenges. While the challenges this District faces truly are formidable, we give them credit for working to take them head-on.
Louisiana Local Government Environmental Facilities and Community Development Authority (City of Crowley), LA (risQ Score 3.4, Hurricane risQ Score 2.8) $6,000,000
The Louisiana Local Government Environmental Facilities and Community Development Authority (LCDA) helps political subdivisions finance environmental projects. The bond will finance the construction, repair, and expansion of street and drainage improvements in the City of Crowley (pg. 1). Crowley's Sewer Revenue Fund will be used to refinance the bonds. However, the City has struggled to adequately finance this Fund in the past, prompting an increase in user fees (pg. 113 of Appendix C). The City faces significant flood and hurricane risk, ranking in the 92nd percentile nationally for expected property losses from combined risks. The POS notes that Hurricane Delta in 2020 caused severe damage and flooding in the region and cost the City around $300,000 for cleanup efforts (pg. 14). Additionally, by 2040 under RCP 8.5 the number of days with a max temperature above 90°F is expected to increase 75-100 days while the percent of months in the 30 year period with moderate drought ranks in the 97th percentile nationally.
Urban water infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change as flooding may overwhelm sewer systems. This presents not only physical but also health hazards to the community—which already exhibit high social vulnerability (Social Impact Score of 92). Across the US, deteriorating water infrastructure burdens low-income and minority communities. However, access to state and federal funding for infrastructure improvements proves challenging for less affluent communities like Crowley (Poverty Concentration Score of 90). Though Louisiana recently voted to allocate $275 million to community water and sewage systems, governments that could cover more of the cost were more likely to receive funding (the City nor its County were recipients). The State is expected to receive more than $100 million for water infrastructure through the EPA's State Revolving Fund, though the allocation of this funding to local governments is still uncertain.
Oakland Park, FL (risQ Score 4.0, Flood risQ Score 4.2) $14,000,000
Located in Broward County, Florida, Oakland Park is home to ~42,000 citizens within the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach Metropolitan Area. The $14 million in proceeds will be used to facilitate improvements to several buildings and recreation areas citywide, including renovations and new constructions to fire stations, parks, and the City Park Library (pg. 15). Oakland Park is experiencing a boost in redevelopment projects alongside its neighboring city, Wilton Manors. In recent years, climate change has dealt a heavy hand to the area. November 2020 brought Tropical Storm Eta and record flooding that left many residential and recreational areas submerged. Last year, The City (Flood risQ Score 4.2) was met with more rainfall that left behind flooded infrastructure and stranded motorists. Oakland Park is 97th percentile nationally for property losses from combined physical perils and 98th percentile for GDP impairment. Hurricane risk is very high as well, with hurricane flood ranking 98th percentile nationally and hurricane wind at 99th percentile. Investors should consider the VaR metrics along with historical context. In 1926, damage from a hurricane forced the City into bankruptcy. Luckily, the POS mentions the Climate Action Plan proposed by Oakland Park and Wilton Manors (pg. 17) that present two overarching goals: reduce GHG emissions by 1% each year through 2028 and increase resilience of communities while minimizing climate impacts to business operations.
Oakland Park faces socioeconomic stressors (Social Impact Score 80) alongside climate risk. Poverty and health issues affect a large portion of its population, disproportionately those in Black and Latin communities (Nonwhite/Minority Population Score 87). 18% of Oakland Park live below the poverty line, with the working poor ranking 76th percentile nationally. Safe drinking water violations rank 81st percentile nationally, while unhealthy mental days are 96th percentile and drug overdose deaths are 78th percentile nationwide (Persistent Health Obstacles Score 85). Addressing social and economic equity for the City's most vulnerable communities is paramount for sustainable redevelopment and growth.
Santee Cooper, SC (risQ Score 3.0, Flood risQ Score 4.2)
As one of the largest public utilities in the country, Santee Cooper provides and distributes wholesale and retail utilities to customers across the state of South Carolina. The System serves ~2 million people in all 46 counties. In 2020, kWh energy sales were 65.5% to wholesale customers, 18% to industrial customers, and 16.5% to residential, commercial, and others (pg. 32). Given its presence, it is disheartening to see Santee Cooper's inability to disclose climate vulnerabilities to investors and customers within their 200-page POS. The word "climate" is mentioned only once in a boilerplate paragraph (pg. 51). For perspective, "biblical" amounts of rain fell across S.C. for 4 days in September 2015. The damage totaled ~1.5 billion. September 2018 brought Florence and ~57,000 power outages. According to the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, a typical year sees over 5,000 wildfires, which burn around 30,000 acres. If you're familiar with recent wildfire seasons you are aware that we are no longer in typical times. Again, only one mention of the word "wildfire" in the same surface-level paragraph in the POS. Their website has plenty of buzzwords on investing in "Green Power," but doesn't define why.
Santee Cooper has been criticized for not addressing climate change and pollution in the past. Fortunately, they highlight emission reduction and the importance of energy diversity. As of today, sustainable resources account for only 5% of the Utility's fuel diversity (pg. 42). According to their 2020 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP 2020), they want it to be 18%, with coal usage at 20% instead of 52% currently. At 96th percentile nationally for per capita emissions, responding to Carbon Transition Risk could be the make-or-break decision for the Utility as a national leader.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The chairman of the House committee on capital market, Hon Herman Hembe has stepped down and the committee relieved of the probe duties following allegations by the DG SEC that she was being victimized because she refused to offer a bribe of N39 million to the Chairman of the probe committee.
Hon Hembe while stepping down denied the allegation of soliciting for any financial gratification but said instead that it was the DG of SEC, Ms Oteh that tried to induce him with a bribe of N30 million.
The House of rep has set up an Ad hoc committee to complete the probe within 21 days, and also asked the house committee on ethics to investigate the allegation against Hon Hembe.
The Security and Exchange commission in a release yesterday denied that the commission tried to induce to committee.
Hon Hembe on friday 23rd march 2012 honoured the invitation of EFCC over the allegation that he demanded for bribe from SEC.
The anti-graft agency interrogated the chairman house committee on Capital market for several hours.


text:
Cupola hit by minor MMOD strike, shutter closed for evaluations
by Chris Bergin June 12, 2012
written by Chris Bergin June 12, 2012
Window 2 on the Cupola module has been hit by a minor MicroMeteoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) strike. With the window's protective shutter closed, per flight rules, ISS managers are evaluating photos of the damage – downlinked from the International Space Station (ISS) – before they are expected to give the crew clearance to reopen the shutter.
Cupola Window:
After arriving at the ISS with Node 3, during Endeavour's STS-130 mission, the European Space Agency (ESA) built Cupola has provided Station crews with a stunning view of the planet, often shared with the public via downlinked photography.
The module also hosts a Robotic Work Station (RWS), allowing crewmembers to actually see Visiting Vehicles (VVs) – such as SpaceX's Dragon and Japan's HTV – arrive for berthing, complimenting the camera views of their displays, allowing for increased situational awareness when operating the Station's robotic assets.
The Cupola's seven windows were exposed to space for the first time during STS-130's EVA-3, following the removal of the module's MLI blanket insulation by spacewalkers Bob Behnken and Nick Patrick.
After the spacewalkers removed the launch locks on the windows, the ISS crew cycled the window shields/shutters one at a time, providing them with the first view of the Earth from their new observation deck.
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All of the windows weren't open at the same time, with the task simply used to check the shutters opened without a problem. A few hours later, all of the windows were opened together, an event that is now commonplace on the ISS.
The module has hardly suffered from any issues during its tour of duty with the orbital outpost, with only a minor temperature issue noted ahead of Dragon's arrival last month.
Through no fault of its own, the MMOD strike is a risk all spacecraft have to deal with, although exposed windows are built to withstand such impacts.
This latest strike, to Window 2 on the Cupola, looks more dramatic via close up photos, but is in reality very small and probably would not have been instantly obvious to crewmembers entering the module.
"Cupola Window MMOD Strike – On June 10, the crew reported an MMOD strike on Cupola window 2 and downlinked photos (full set available on L2) of it," noted L2 level ISS Status (LINK). "The shutter for window 2 is closed now, as required by flight rules, until the MMOD strike has been evaluated.
"Teams are working to determine the structural implications of the MMOD strike and clear the window 2 shutter for re-opening if possible."
The flight rules are naturally cautious, in order to ensure a large amount of margin for crew safety. It is highly likely this will be cleared as an issue after the evaluations are completed.
Recent ISS Articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/iss/
It is understood that this MMOD srike is the first to be suffered by a Cupola window.
In the event of the damage being more serious, on-orbit replacement of an entire window is a design feature. Such a replacement would require an EVA to fit an external pressure cover to allow for the changeout, with a pressure cover requiring a flight up to the ISS.
The window is made up of four panes – an inner scratch pane to protect the pressure pane from accidental damage, two pressure panes 25mm thick to maintain cabin pressure, and finally an outer debris pane. The debris panes can be replaced individually, via EVAs.
MMOD:
Strikes of these tiny pieces of debris are relatively commonplace and are only immediately noticeable when they impact on areas such as windows.
Recent MMOD related articles: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/mmod/
Such strikes were observed on a large amount of Space Shuttle missions, especially late into the mission when the orbiter had undocked from the protection of the ISS and was preparing to head home. However, they are taken seriously, given they are the third biggest threat to losing a vehicle during a mission – second only to launch and re-entry.
Extensive evaluations took place ahead of each shuttle mission, not least Atlantis' STS-125 flight into space, a mission that provided one final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
This mission held the largest risk to the orbiter, given it was the only post Return To Flight mission that did not have the "safe haven" option of docking with the ISS, ahead of a rescue orbiter being flown to pick up the crew.
STS-125 would also see an increase in the concentration of MMOD, due to the region of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Atlantis flew in for the majority of her mission.
The Program Requirements Control Board (PRCB) results – which took into account satellite breakups and a variety of other components evaluated to be in Atlantis' orbital neighborhood – showed that the overall risk of a Loss Of Crew and Vehicle (LOC/V) scenario due to MMOD impact(s) to the Thermal Protect System (TPS) was 1 in 185, with an error factor of 1.35 based on MMOD distribution, velocity, and density uncertainties.
As noted, most of the risk was associated with impacts on the TPS, as opposed to the windows. In the end, Atlantis completed her mission successfully and without any MMOD related concerns.
Examples of Mission Management Team (MMT) evaluations into window damage during a mission can be seen via STS-126's flight, where then MMT Chair LeRoy Cain discussed the Mission Evaluation Room (MER) report into an impact on Endeavour's Window 6 (Pilot Window).
"MMOD Window 6 Impact – crew reported 0.5" diameter to the PLT right window to the thermal pane, 1/32" depth," noted the MER report. "Based on analysis the window should have no issues for peak heating M=8.0, but could form cracks but remain intact during peak loading M=0.7. Pilot visibility should not be hindered by this location if it cracks.
"No concern for orbit thermal cycles. Dynamic loading on the pane takes into account for the window frame thermal response."
Meeting notes showed Mr Cain asked if there was a need to mitigate heat loads on the window – had it been determined that could have been a problem during entry – with his team reporting back that the thermal pane of the window would be able to handle peak heating.
Clarifying the impact showed no signs of risking a LOV/C during re-entry, it was noted that only a hole through more than just the thermal plane of the window would raise concerns "we might have to not come home," which would have resulted in calling Discovery to provide a LON (Launch On Need) rescue.
Endeavour landed safely with no propagation of the MMOD damage during her reentry.
Both Endeavour and Atlantis would also receive a flesh wound from MMOD strikes to their radiator panels, a danger in its own rights, given the potential of an impact to one of the Freon-22 coolant plumbing inside the radiator panel. Such an impact could cause an entire coolant loop to be shut down and be declared as 'failed'. This would have forced an immediate landing on the earliest US landing opportunity.
An example of the risk was seen during STS-109, when a small piece of debris was lodged in Columbia's coolant loop 2 and restricted the flow of Freon-22 in that coolant loop. The amount of Freon-22 in the coolant loop was slightly below the flight rule red-limit, but after exhaustive analysis by the engineers on the ground, they decided to press on with the mission.
Usually spotted during post flight processing, Endeavour's radiator damage showed as a "bullet hole" on her left hand aft radiator number 4. Engineers repaired the area during her Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) flow.
Atlantis' damage during STS-115 was the second largest debris strike in Shuttle history, causing a .108 inch diameter hole at entry point, with one-half of an inch thick damage to the honeycomb structure.
Interestingly, United Space Alliance (USA) engineers discovered a piece of circuit board embedded into the radiator panel during repairs, showing the MMOD strike originated from a piece of another vehicle, likely an Upper Stage from an expendable vehicle or a satellite.
(Images: L2 Content (all MMOD content), and NASA)
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text:
Q: WCSessionDelegate: sessionDidBecomeInactive and sessionDidDeactivate have been marked unavailable, but are required I just converted a Swift 2 app to Swift 3, using the convert function of Xcode 8.
My code has a class marked as WCSessionDelegate.
In Swift 2 it compiled without the methods sessionDidBecomeInactive and sessionDidDeactivate.
If I compile the Swift 3 version, the compiler complains that my class does not conform to protocol WCSessionDelegate, which is apparently correct.
It then offers to insert stubs for both functions:
public func sessionDidBecomeInactive(_ session: WCSession) { }
public func sessionDidDeactivate(_ session: WCSession) { }

After these stubs are inserted, these errors are reported:
Cannot override 'sessionDidBecomeInactive' which has been marked unavailable
Cannot override 'sessionDidDeactivate' which has been marked unavailable

How can I fix this problem?

A: Because the delegate methods sessionDidDeactivate and sessionDidBecomeInactive are marked as unavailable on watchOS you will have to make the compiler ignore those pieces of code in the shared class. You can do so using the following preprocessor macro:
#if os(iOS)
public func sessionDidBecomeInactive(_ session: WCSession) { }
public func sessionDidDeactivate(_ session: WCSession) {
    session.activate()
}
#endif

Please also note I added the activate call in the sessionDidDeactivate call. This is to re-activate the session on the phone when the user has switched from one paired watch to second paired one. Calling it like this assumes that you have no other threads/part of your code that needs to be given time before the switch occurs. For more information on supporting the quick watch switching you should take a look at the Apple sample code


text:
Josie is a diminutive of the female given name Josephine.

People
 Josie Aiello, American singer-songwriter
 Josie Arlington (1864–1914), American brothel madam
 Josie Bassett (1874–1964), American rancher associated with outlaws
 Josie Bissett (born 1970), American actress
 Josie Carroll (born 1957), Canadian Thoroughbred horse trainer
 Josie d'Arby (born 1972), Welsh television presenter
 Josie Davis (born 1973), American actress and producer
 Josie DeCarlo (1923–2012), inspiration and namesake of the fictional Josie of Josie and the Pussycats (see below)
 Josephine Earp (1861–1944), American actress and dancer called Josie by her common law husband, Western legend Wyatt Earp
 Josie Gibson (born 1985), British media personality and winner of Big Brother 2010
 Josie Ho (born 1974), Hong Kong singer and actress; daughter of Macau gambling magnate Stanley Ho
 Josie Lawrence (born 1959), British comedian and actress
 Josie Long (born 1982), British comedian
 Josie Loren (born 1987), American actress
 Josie MacAvin (1919–2005), Irish set designer
 Josie Maran (born 1978), American model and actress
 Josie Rourke (born 1976), British theatre and film director
 A ring name of professional wrestler Josette Bynum (born 1977)

Fictional characters
 Josie, lead singer and guitarist of the comic book band Josie and the Pussycats
 Josie McFarlane, in the BBC soap opera EastEnders
 Josie Moraine, from Ruta Sepetys book Out of the Easy
 Josie Packard, in the television series Twin Peaks
 Josie Pye in Anne of Green Gables
 Josie Russell (Home and Away), in the Australian soap opera Home and Away
 Josie, heroine of the 1967 Western film The Ballad of Josie, played by Doris Day
 Josie Jump, a character in the children's show Balamory.

See also
Jo
Joseph
Josephine
Josey
Jossie

English feminine given names


text:
Home Canada Hockey News Canada's Men take home silver at the 2017 Pan American Cup
Canada Hockey News
Canada's Men take home silver at the 2017 Pan American Cup
Despite a strong performance from David Carter, named 2017 Pan American Cup goalkeeper of the tournament, the Men's National team were defeated by the world's number one team and reigning Olympic champions, Argentina, by a score of 2-0 in the finals.
Their matchup was a repeat of the 2013 Men's Pan American Cup Final, which Argentina won 4-0, and Argentina adds this year's Pan Am Cup title to their 2004 and 2013 championships.
Argentina came out strong in the first half, forcing Carter to make numerous high pressure saves, but it was a turnover in the fourth minute that saw Argentina make it initially onto the scoreboard, capitalizing on the opportunity with a diving deflection that got past Carter.
"It was a really tough match for us," Carter said following the game. "We came out a bit slow, when you're facing a team that's as good and as classy as Argentina – world's number one, they were just so much sharper in their skills than us in the first quarter and we got behind the 8-ball."
The first half saw more of the same, with some fleeting chances for the Men's National team, but mistakes on turnovers, botched penalty corners (for both teams), left it up to Carter in the back to save the team from a barrage of Argentinian shots.
In the 25th minute, Argentina managed to get one through off an incredibly quick one timer shot, with Carter having no time for a view, leaving Argentina to double their lead 2-0.
The second half kicked off with new vigour. Carter said that the team came out and "played with that Canadian grit that we're known for, upped the physicality a little bit and never quit."
So, Canada was back, recharged and more aggressive. Brad Logan came out early with a deep pass going just wide of the post and Keegan Pereira worked his way into the Argentinian circle. But Argentina came back to see Carter again all over the net working for Canada's Men to remain in the game.
As Canada was showing their strength, Argentina rose to the physical challenge and play got increasingly scrappy, escalating to a yellow card moment following an Argentinian player intentionally snatching Canadian forward Floris van Son's stick out of his hands has he was beating him on the ball.
Van Son wasn't stopped by the drama of the game, and worked up and down the field both defensively and offensively for Canada's men. A couple of Canadian flicks off penalty corners were denied as Canada knocked on Argentina's door, making their solid mark in the third quarter.
The fourth quarter saw chances from both sides, Floris van Son seeing the majority of them for Canada, but all were deflected or denied disappointingly, by Argentinian players.
In the last two minutes of the game, Canada took the risk of pulling goalkeeper Carter for the extra attacking man. But, as the final seconds disappeared off the clock, Argentina took the 2017 Cup, and the win, 2-0.
Moving forward, Interim Head Coach Paul Bundy said the team is going to take notes from their third quarter today. "We're going to be a little more aggressive in the way we play. We're not going to be on the back foot…so we'll be looking to score goals."
Also chatting post game, Carter eluded to the ambitious future of the Canadian Men's team. "It's been a long time since we've beat Argentina," Carter said, "it's a rivalry that eventually we're going to get one…"
Until then, Canada's Men earned a well-deserved 2017 Pan American Cup silver medal and continued their record of appearing in every final of the Pan American Cup since it's start.
Team USA earned bronze after they finished the tournament winning their last game versus Trinidad and Tobago.
SOURCECourtesy Source : Field Hockey Canada
Previous articleNew Zealand Men confirmed for World Cup
Next articleRamandeep Singh Completes 100 International Caps For Indian Hockey Team
🇨🇦 Field Hockey Canada : 2022 Men's Pan American Cup squad announced
🇨🇦 Field Hockey Canada : 2022 Women's Pan American Cup squad announced
🇨🇦 Field Hockey Canada : Mark Pearson calls time on his impressive career


text:
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}
\indent Overcomplete sparse coding as a model of the primary visual cortex (V1) is a pillar of computational neuroscience \citep{ofsc}. Training on natural image\footnote{http://www.rctn.org/bruno/sparsenet/IMAGES.mat} patches via a Hebbian learning rule produces filters that are spatially localized, bandpass, and oriented to a select range of rotation angles. These filters are similar to those observed in the mammalian cortex \citep{catcells}, which are well-described by two-dimensional Gabor functions. However, the properties of Gabor filters fitted to the simple cell receptive field (SCRF) estimates produced by sparse coding have been shown to misalign with filters fitted to rhesus macaque responses to drifting sinusoidal gratings \citep{ringach}. In particular, the original sparse coding (SC) model overpredicts and underpredicts the number of well-tuned and broadly-tuned cells, respectively. Well-tuned cells maintain several (more elongated) subfields than the ``blob-like'' broadly tuned cells, as shown in Figure 1.\\
 \begin{wrapfigure}[11]{r}{0.38\textwidth}
\centering
    \includegraphics[scale=0.65]{ringach_data.png}
    \caption{Broadly-tuned (left), well-tuned (right) macaque SCRFs \cite{ringach}}
    \label{fig:img1}
\end{wrapfigure}
 \indent A number of models have been subsequently proposed as a result. Of particular interest, \citep{hardsparse} limits the number of active neurons rather than the average neural activity, which significantly improves diversity of shapes. \citep{sail} develops a spiking network based on synaptically local information to overcome this discrepancy. Hypothesizing that explicit image reconstruction is not a biologically relevant task, \citep{lld} proposes a novel contrastive objective, Local Low Dimensionality (LLD), that minimizes the dimensionality of encodings of spatially local image patches relative to their global dimensionality.

\begin{wrapfigure}[13]{l}{0.55\textwidth}
\floatconts
  {fig:subfigex}
  {\caption{The weighted-$\ell_1$ penalty begets more of the ``blob-like'' SCRFs that are missing from the original model.}}
  {%
    \subfigure[WL]{\label{fig:image-b}%
      \includegraphics[scale=0.55]{kds_filters.png}}%
      \qquad
      \subfigure[SC]{\label{fig:image-a}%
      \includegraphics[scale=0.52]{sc_filters.png}}%
  }
\end{wrapfigure}

While LLD diversifies SCRF shapes compared to sparse coding, \citep{recon} uses deep methods to reconstruct the brain's perceptions of images from functional magnetic resonance imaging data, showing the relevance of generative models of the visual cortex. In addition to past success of the reconstructive framework, we therefore investigate a deep recurrent autoencoder architecture with additional regularization constraints to enforce a similar flavor of locality: namely, a weighted-$\ell_1$ penalty (WL). While the hierarchical setting is left to future work by LLD, this architecture naturally learns a hierarchy of representational units when trained with an additional discriminative loss term \citep{drsae}. The reported findings motivate the need for \textit{spatial regularization} of neurons and necessitate more precise arguments against reconstructive frameworks like sparse coding.
\section{Previous Work}
\label{sec:geom_models}
\noindent The general neural coding framework can be formulated as:
\begin{align}
    \mathcal{L} (\mathbf{A,X}) =  \frac{1}{2} ||\mathbf{Y} - \mathbf{AX}||_F^2 + S_{\lambda}(\mathbf{X}) \label{eq1}
\end{align}
where $\mathbf{Y} \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times n}$ is a set of $n$ stimuli of dimension $d$, $\mathbf{A} \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times m}$ is a learned set of $m$ basis functions, $\mathbf{X} \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n}$ is a set of $n$ latent representations of inputs, and $S_{\lambda}(\mathbf{X})$ is a regularization penalty. \citep{lca}, among other advances, associates sparse coding with $S_{\lambda}(\mathbf{X}) = ||\mathbf{X}||_1$ (columnwise). However, while neurons fire sparsely, they are also specialized to certain types of visual stimuli in the input space. As formulated, (\ref{eq1}) makes no explicit assumptions about the structure of this sparsity in neural latent space. \\
\indent LLD discards the reconstruction loss and encodes natural image stimuli to local ensembles of image patches $\{(\mathbf{x}_1^{(1)}, \ldots, \mathbf{x}_n^{(1)}), \ldots, (\mathbf{x}_1^{(B)}, \ldots, \mathbf{x}_n^{(B)})\}$, with superscipts denoting local ensembles and subscripts denoting ensemble members. LLD is a shallow network where $\mathbf{s}_i^{(j)} = \text{ReLU}(\mathbf{W}\mathbf{x}_i^{(j)} + \mathbf{b})$. A covariance matrix $\mathbf{\Sigma}_l^{(j)} = \text{Cov}\left([\mathbf{s}_1^{(j)}, \ldots, \mathbf{s}_n^{(j)}] \right)$ is formed on the $j^{th}$ ensemble. The LLD loss is formulated as:
\begin{align}
    \mathcal{L}(\mathbf{W}, \mathbf{b})= \frac{\mathbb{E}_j [\text{tr}(\mathbf{\Sigma}_l^{(j)})]}{\text{tr}\left(\mathbf{\Sigma}_g \right)}
\end{align}
where $\mathbf{\Sigma}_g$ is the response covariance to all patches in the batch. Due to the algebraic connection between trace and singular values, the numerator pushes the local ensembles to low dimensional subspaces, while the denominator pulls the ensembles to as many different low dimensional subspaces as possible. By exploiting this tradeoff between local and global subspaces, the LLD model is able to better replicate the diversity of SCRF shapes, which exhibit a phase symmetry in rhesus macaque data. These phases are obtained for each learned filter by fitting a two-dimensional Gabor function, and their distributions for the learned set of filters are shown in Figure 3. \\

\begin{figure}[H]
\floatconts
  {fig:subfigex}
  {\caption{Gabor spatial phases of rhesus macaques are largely bimodal, but SC phases are highly skewed due to the absence of ``blob-like'' fields in Figures 1 and 2.}}
  {%
    \subfigure[Neural Data]{\label{fig:image-a}%
      \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{ringach_preferred_phases_col_2.png}}%
      \qquad
       \subfigure[LLD]{\label{fig:image-b}
      \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{lld_preferred_phases_co1_2.png}}%
      \qquad
      \subfigure[SC]{\label{fig:image-c}
      \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{sc_preferred_phases_co1_2.png}}%
  }
\end{figure}
\section{Locality-Constrained Reconstructive Frameworks}
\indent Can we incorporate additional structure into the reconstructive framework to better match the experimental data? The weighted-$\ell_1$ constraint penalizes neural encoding activity based on the distance between the natural image stimuli and the basis functions $\mathbf{a}_j$, where:
\begin{align}
    S_{\lambda}^{WL}(\mathbf{X}) &= \mathbb{E}_{i \in [n]} \left[ \sum_{j=1}^{m} x_j ||\mathbf{y}_i - \mathbf{a}_j||_2^2 \right]
\end{align}
\indent Here, neurons are specialized to certain types of input as large neural energy requirements will limit the strength of the firing rate $x_j$. In contrast to the original sparse coding alternating minimization scheme, we solve this through algorithm unrolling \citep{unrolling} into a deep recurrent autoencoder, which projects the encodings onto the probability simplex through a nonlinearity $\mathcal{P}_S$.
\begin{figure}[H]
\centering
    \includegraphics[scale=0.55]{dae.png}
    \caption{The unrolled architecture that learns $\mathbf{A}$ and $\mathbf{X}$, where $\mathcal{P}_S = \text{ReLU}\left(\mathbf{x} + b\left(\mathbf{x} \right)\cdot \mathbf{1} \right)$ and $Q\left(\mathbf{y} \right) = \sum_{j \in [m]} ||\mathbf{y} - \mathbf{a}_j||^2$ is a quadratic neuron. See appendix for details \citep{kds}. }
    \label{fig:img3}
\end{figure}
This penalty can be mathematically interpreted as a bipartite graph Laplacian on the $m+n$ basis functions and inputs (vertices), whose edge weights between the $y_i^{th}$ and $a_j^{th}$ vertices are $x_{ij}$, and $0$ otherwise. Thus, the stimuli can be easily clustered by performing an eigendecomposition on this constructed Laplacian. In a discriminative classification task, this will allow for a more rigorous analysis of a given neuron's sensitivity to various class types. \\
\indent We have also explored an iterative Laplacian scheme \citep{lap} where:
\begin{align}
    S_{\lambda}^{LAP}(\mathbf{X}) &= \text{tr}(\mathbf{X\mathcal{G}X^T}) \label{eq2}
\end{align}
for a pre-constructed (or iteratively updated) graph Laplacian $\mathcal{G}$. The penalty (\ref{eq2}) is typically used in addition to an $\ell_1$ penalty. Here, however, $\mathcal{G}$ is built on the stimuli space to preserve local pairwise distances in latent space, whereas the weighted-$\ell_1$ penalty essentially interpolates the manifold in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with the set $\mathbf{a}_{j \in [m]}$ and then uses as few basis functions as possible. Thus $S_{\lambda}^{LAP}$ only constrains firing rates, while $S_{\lambda}^{WL}$ constrains both the firing rates \textit{and} the learned basis functions, which we refer to as ``spatial regularization.''
\begin{wrapfigure}[12]{l}{0.6\textwidth}
\centering
    \includegraphics[scale=0.12]{weighted_ell_1_preferred_phases_col_2.png}
    \caption{Spatial phases of the weighted-$\ell_1$ (WL) autoencoder. Locality-regularization is able to shift the original sparse code distribution of spatial phases}
    \label{fig:img1}
\end{wrapfigure}
\indent In our experiments, we find that the additional weighted-$\ell_1$ regularization technique shifts the spatial phase distribution to a more diverse range and vastly improves symmetry. The weighted-$\ell_1$ penalty makes the general sparse coding framework competitive with other local frameworks like LLD in terms of symmetry while maintaining the core ideas of the original model.

\section{Conclusion}
The improved spatial symmetry warrants further exploration into deep recurrent autoencoders (with varying flavors of locality constraints) as a model of the primary visual cortex. Is \textit{explicit} image reconstruction biologically plausible? This assumption may be loosened in future work by considering a distribution of codes instead of a point estimate \citep{bayesianbrain}. However, given previous work showing the intrinsic hierarchical structure of discriminative recurrent sparse autoencoders \citep{drsae}, the findings presented here offer a potential path towards rigorously describing the differentiation of receptive fields that match experimental data. \\

\section{Acknowledgements}
Jonathan Huml would like to acknowledge support from the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science, and Demba Ba would like to acknowledge support from NSF DMS-2134157.

\newpage

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Through our joint venture partnership with The Arker Companies, in 2014 NEBHDCo implemented a new services program at Richmond Hill Senior Residence, in Richmond Hill, Queens, to provide aging in place supports in this senior independent living building. This beautiful new construction property with funding sources including NYS Homes and Community Renewal/HCR and low income housing tax credits, consists of 65 residential units for persons62 and older, with 11 units set aside for special needs and frail elderly residents. Property amenities include a large and well-appointed community room, with space and furnishings for activities, resident community events, parties, meetings and meals. The community room also has a 60" TV monitor and a four-station computer lab. An onsite senior services manager provides services coordination for all residents for referrals to local community services and assistance with transportation assistance, insurance, benefits and other paperwork. For special needs/frail residents, case management services are also provided, to ensure that all activities of daily living/ADL needs are addressed. A wide range of activities and programming is provided to address the breadth of needs and interests of the tenant population. Using a person-centered approach, programs focus on active living, wellness, social interaction, addressing isolation and depression, cognitive issues and physical impairments. Resident leadership is encouraged, and Richmond residents are active contributors to the curriculum and the life of the building. They have developed their own newsletter, have planning committees for various activities, and designated captains for each floor. Program schedules include health, wellness and fitness workshops and activities, current events discussions, motivational hour, computer assistance, arts and crafts, games, book club, ESL, basic Spanish, movie night, men's and women's groups, caregiver supports, regular tenant meetings, potlucks and holiday events. Tracking and documentation of resident needs and outcomes, services provision and program activities is managed with AASC Online software. AASC Online was originally developed by the Pangea Foundation for the American Association of Service Coordinators/AASC, for use by HUD Section 202 senior housing service coordinators.


text:
Savila Surf
Writing about surf trips, ocean conservation, and Santa Cruz lifestyle by Aloe Driscoll.
A week prior to my departure on the ferry from Mazatlan, Shannon and I made plans to meet at a Ley grocery store in Southern Baja and travel back to California together. The ferry was scheduled to arrive in La Paz at 9:00am. From there, I could catch a morning bus leaving at 9:30am, or alternatively, an afternoon bus at 1:00pm. We figured that the four-hour bus trip would put me at the store by 5:00pm at the latest. I neglected to account for the fact that I was dealing with Mexico time. When the ferry finally pulled into the dock at 12:30pm, three and a half hours late, I was concerned that I might miss the afternoon bus.
On the upper deck of the ferry, I met a man named Lalo who was headed to deliver equipment to some mines. His route passed by the Ley grocery store and he offered to give me a ride, if I needed it. But when the ferry finally pulled into the harbor, drivers were called to disembark first, and I quickly lost track of Lalo as I was ushered onto a shuttle. After I collected my luggage and passed through the agricultural inspection, I waited on the side of the road in the unforgiving midday sun, hoping that Lalo hadn't forgotten about me. About 20 minutes later, he pulled up smiling, and opened the back door of his work truck so that I could load up my boards.
The passenger seat was covered with a Mexican blanket, and a tiny statue of Jesus adorned the dashboard. Ranchero music played cheerfully on the stereo as the air conditioning blew a cool breeze on my sunburned, sweaty skin. We set off on the coastal highway, heading north through La Paz along the Sea of Cortez, which separates Baja California from the mainland of Mexico. The landscape shone like polished gold under the blazing sun, a picture frame of sand, rock, and cactus for the portrait of ocean below. Even after a lifetime of ocean, the Sea of Cortez is a masterpiece. The shallow water at the shore is a neon turquoise that manages to be both full and transparent, like the voice of a soprano. Farther out, the deep water is a crystalline indigo that sparkles like a rich dark gemstone, the tenor in the opera of the sea.
Lalo and I arrived at the Ley grocery store sometime around 4:00pm. I unloaded my boards, waved to him as he drove off, and went inside to use the restroom. I had scarcely stepped back out when I saw Shannon's van pulling into the parking lot. We had each travelled over a thousand miles, with no opportunity to communicate for days, and arrived within 10 minutes of each other. It made me wonder if all of the calling, texting, emailing, messaging – everything that allows us to constantly reschedule, rework, revise and rescind our plans – causes us to lose touch with some deeper level of connectedness, a sort of intuition that enables us to operate on the same wavelength.
Baja had been on my bucket list for years, and it was worth the wait to go with Shannon, who has the place dialed. The roads were a tangle of detours and intersections, a skeleton of highway whose fractured bones told a story of flash floods, scouring sand. The cracked clay lowlands were baked into a splintered mosaic of dry mud. And running down the center, a spine of sand buttered with pavement that melted off in rough chunks and splattered on the ground below. At one point, the asphalt ended abruptly, a perfect line of blacktop giving way to earth. As if the road crew ran out of materials, or simply gave up and said, "This is it. No more."
A few hours later, the faint outline of a town began to take shape on the horizon. Shannon pointed out the tiny general store that supplied a scant selection of produce – bins of onions and potatoes, brown freckled bananas and softly decaying green apples, swathed in an aroma of over-ripeness, guarded by a cloud of circling fruit flies. Continuing past the town, as we wove along the bluffs bordering the ocean, I began to see a glimpse of the famous bay that I had been wanting to visit for so many years.
My opening vision was of First Point, a spectacular sandy bay with long, gentle lines filing in lazily – a longboard paradise, truly a sight to behold, in and of itself. But there was more. Dipping back into the cactus and sand dunes, we traced the edge of the cliff and emerged at Second Point, another bay. A more traditional, high performance setup, the waves wrapped in and broke over a rock shelf, peeling with near-perfect shape and consistency.
It would be a full day before I made it to Third Point, another long, lined-up wave that occasionally barrels on the take-off – and again on the inside – a relatively faster, more powerful break well-suited for shortboarding. It would be two more days before I walked all the way up to Fourth Point, curious as to why the Australians described it as a 'bombie.' Fourth Point breaks relatively far from shore, requiring a long paddle or a painful hobble over razor-sharp lava rock, making it less hospitable to beginners, and oftentimes less crowded than the more easily accessible First, Second, and Third.
After we'd been camping in Baja for nearly a week, the swell dropped, so we finally drove out to check Fifth and Sixth Point. Each had all the components of a good break, but I can't attest to the quality of the waves, since I didn't see them on a particularly good day, or surf them firsthand. The sheer number and magnitude of world-class right point breaks was overwhelming. The fact that they were so far apart was a blessing; I needed to digest them in pieces. Even after all the places I had travelled, all of the waves I had surfed, it was hard to wrap my head around so many good points, right there, in proximity to one another.
On that first day, we parked the van at Second Point and went out for a quick surf as the sun began to set. The waves were only knee high, but Shannon had brought a spare longboard, so I pulled it out and began to make my way down the cliff to the beach. She advised me to bring my sandals, as the burrs and spines were abundant along the bluffs, and to shuffle my feet when wading out in the shallow water, to drive away stingrays.
Even at a diminutive height, I could feel the potential of the wave at Second Point. People claim that the last hurricane stripped the break of its sand, that the wave isn't as good as it once was. But I had nothing to compare it to. It was good enough for me. As the light faded I practiced catching tiny waves and moving my feet along the length of the longboard.
From the time I first started to surf, I gravitated toward shortboarding, with a focus on bigger waves and rail-to-rail turns, a totally different experience than longboarding. I never learned the longboard tricks – cross-stepping, nose riding – and tackling them felt like a bright, new challenge. Second Point is perfectly suited for longboarding, with an easy takeoff and a wave that peels for endless, not to mention an inviting sand bottom that negates the need for a lease. If you lose your board, you can simply stand up and wade in to get it.
As darkness set in, we made our way back up to the bluff and set up camp, nearby the bathrooms that were included in our camping fee of 150 pesos (about $10) per person, per night. It seemed like a lot for camping, compared to what I'd been paying, but worth it for a shower. Plus, you couldn't beat the view. We parked right on the edge of the cliff, facing the waves. I was amazed that the oceanfront was still so rugged and undeveloped. And grateful, that I got to experience it, because it probably won't be like that forever.
Despite the remote location, there were still many takers. Undeterred by the rough roads, scorpions, mosquitoes, and lack of amenities, hordes of surfers are game to make the drive, which takes two full days from San Diego, and even longer from anywhere else. After endless hours winding through a monotone landscape of cactus and rock, stuck in the window like a song on repeat, one would expect to find some solace. But oftentimes, one arrives to find crowds.
The silver lining was that I liked many of the people that made up the crowd. There was Chloe, who I knew from Santa Cruz. And Jordan, her rad partner in crime. I met the Diamond Surfboards crew from Oceanside, who gave me access to their quiver of boards as the swell picked up, and Third Point began to turn on. Randomly, Shannon and I were camped next to Jed, whom I'd met in El Salvador three years before, and his family.
Another surprise was seeing Julian and Joaquin Azulay, the Gauchos del Mar, whom I'd met on a road trip to Baja in 2010. At the time, they were embarking on a trip from California to Patagonia. They may have even planted the seed of my Costa Rica to California trip. Or at least watered it. Then in 2014, when the idea of my trip was still gestating, I went to see a surf movie called Tierra de Patagones. As I listened to the story of two brothers travelling through Patagonia, I had a nagging feeling that I knew them from somewhere. Halfway through the film, it hit me. It was Julian and Joaquin. Having produced a film, secured distinction and sponsorship on their initial trip, they were living the dream, surfing and making movies around the world. It gave me pause. And inspiration.
In Baja, I felt like I was closing the loop, coming around full circle on hopes that I'd cultivated for years. Reconnecting with so many people who had touched my life and inspired me over the past decade reminded me that my dreams had come to fruition. Everyone who had led me to this point was coming back to visit, to check in, to cheer me on, to confirm that I had finally gotten it right.
For the first time, I was able to see clearly how much I had changed and how far I had come. I drew joy and challenge not only in big waves, but also in small ones. I knew what I wanted, was able to make decisions without doubt or hesitation. I communicated what I felt and needed without unnecessary emotion or expectations. I looked to myself for happiness, motivation, direction, comfort – and found it.
"How does Baja compare to other places you've surfed on your trip?" Shannon asked at one point.
The typical response to such a question would generally involve detailed evaluation of the height of the wave, the shape of the wall, the length of the ride, the power and consistency of the break. I'm usually more than happy to dissect it all the way down to a difference of one foot in the swell size, one degree in the angle, one second in the period; the subtleties of different conditions, which combinations I prefer at a particular break. But not that day.
"It's epic." I said simply.
Throughout my trip, and upon my return home, there has been one question that's inevitable in conversation. It's usually the first thing people ask. There are different forms, but the same gist. It goes something like:
"What was your favorite place?"
"Where did you get the best waves?"
"What was the best part of your trip?"
There's no simple answer to that question. Through writing and pictures, I've attempted to capture remnants of the spectacular beauty that I've witnessed, the remarkable people that I've met, the awe-inspiring waves that I've surfed, the magic glimpses I've seen of the transcendental forces in the universe. And I've tried to make sense of the effect that it's all had on me, how I've changed. But it's impossible to convey. After the warm pulsing skin of reality, my attempt at recreating it is like a cold marble statue. It holds the shape, but not the spirit.
An odyssey cannot be broken up into fragments. It is an entire being. The trip was conceived in me long before I got on the plane to Costa Rica. It was born, and it grew. In odd ways, it continues to grow. It is part of me, though not entirely mine. It is something whole, with value greater than the sum of its parts.
I can't separate my experiences nor distill them into tiny cups with units of measure. There was pleasure and pain, there were miracles and disappointments. But you can't truly appreciate a peak without the perspective of a valley. You have to take the bad with the good, and realize that when it comes down to it, they are constituents of the same being, of life.
So in answer to that question about what was the best, what was my favorite, I say:
"I loved it all. It was epic."
And that's the truth.
Me and Shannon at the Ley grocery store after our amazingly synchronized arrival.
The real deal desert, with cactus abound.
Shannon and the van.
If you look closely, you can see me doing downward dog in the desert.
Shannon hula hooping at our campsite, Second Point.
Home sweet home, Shannon's all wheel drive van, with penthouse and ocean view.
Camping in style, which felt like the Ritz after my hammock and mosquito net setup.
The swell starting to pick up at Third Point.
Shannon, Chloe, Jordan and me.
Jed and his daughter.
Milford (the guy) and Sol (the puppy).
Party night at the cantina.
Chloe's 21st birthday, a great excuse for chocolate cake!
Chloe, paying birthday dues with a cake in the face.
Since there weren't any candles, we improvised with a cigarette. Make a wish.
Jordan and Chloe, aka "Joey."
Chloe demonstrating the cross step
Me, stoked.
Jordan, surfing a retro single fin.
Me, longboarding.
Shannon, the smile says it all.
Chloe, pure style.
Spiky stairway to heaven.
On the road.
October 4, 2015 October 8, 2015 Aloe Driscoll	Leave a comment
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Showing Collections: 11 - 20 of 20
Hong Kong University Students' Union Records
The HKUSU Records are comprised of minutes, publications, photographs, and slides from the clubs and associations that make up the Hong Kong University Student Union as well as the Union Council.
Found in: The University of Hong Kong University Archives
Murray Groves Papers
The Murray Groves Papers are composed of Groves' lecture notes, research materials and newspaper clippings about Hong Kong, teaching materials--including lecture notes--, and various administrative documents.
Music Department Records
Collection — Box: 02728
Collection consists of the Department of Music's Undergraduate Handbooks, concert programs, and flyers for the annual Rayson Huang Lecture from the 1990s and 2000s.
Patricia Aldridge Marshall Letters
26 letters written by Patricia Aldridge Marshall during her time as a lecturer of Zoology at Hong Kong University. These letters mostly detail Marshall's daily life in Hong Kong and provide insight into the life of an expat in the early 1960s. Marshall touches briefly on the topics of wet markets, Hong Kong wildlife, refugees from Mainland China, and contact between people in Hong Kong and people in Mainland China.
Pre-War Files: General Records Closed Files
This collection contains a total of 171 files from the General Records section of the Registry. The files are from the year before the University shut down in 1941 due to World War II. These files are topical and cover many subjects relating to the academics, faculty, students, and University administration. Originally the files were titled "Closed Files" since after the Japanese occupation the Registry decided stop adding material to them.
Registry Re-Establishment Files
This collections contains files from the Registry that relate to the the re-establishement of various parts of the University. Most files pertain to physcial aspects of campus.
Royal Asiatic Society Photographs
Photos of Hong Kong from the Royal Asiatic Society, mostly documenting architecture. Eight photos are HKU related.
Dates: Majority of material found in undated
Sir David Todd Collection
Materials related to Sir David Todd, HKU Alumnus and faculty member. Materials include articles, editorials, and in memoriam pieces written by Todd, photographs of Todd, publications of societies and professional organizations he was a member of, his calendar, notes, and the gown worn when he was bestowed an Honorary Doctorate of Science.
University of Hong Kong Museum Society Records
The University of Hong Kong Museum Society Records are comprised of administrative documents from the organization, including meeting minutes, correspondence, and circulars.
Vice Chancellor's Unnumbered Files
This collection includes 283 files of from the office of the Vice Chancellor. The files cover a wide variety of topics relating to the academics and administration of the University of Hong Kong.
These files are called "Unnumbered" to differentiate them from later Vice Chancellor's files which were each assigned a file number.
Subject: University of Hong Kong X
University of Hong Kong -- History 12
University employees 5
University buildings 4
Hong Kong (China)--History. 3
Universities and colleges -- Alumni and alumnae 3
University Graduates 3
University of Hong Kong 3
Current events -- Periodicals 1
Hong Kong (China) 1
Hong Kong Academy of Medicine 1
Japanese-Chinese War, 1937-1945 1
Museums -- Societies, etc. 1
University of Hong Kong Museum Society. 1
University of Hong Kong. Department of Fine Arts 1
University of Hong Kong. Department of Music 1
University of Hong Kong. Faculty of Architecture 1
University of Hong Kong. Faculty of Engineering 1
University of Hong Kong. Faculty of Law 1
University of Hong Kong. Faculty of Medicine 1
University of Hong Kong. Students' Union 1
David Todd, Sir 1
Faculty of Architecture 1
Groves, Murray Groves , Professor 1
Hong Kong University Press 1
Lugard, F. D. (Frederick Dealtry), Sir, 1858-1945 1
Marshall, Patricia Aldridge 1
Ride, Lindsay Tasman, CBE, Sir 1
Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch 1
Sun, Yat-sen, Dr., 1866-1925 1
University of Hong Kong Museum Society 1
University of Hong Kong. Faculty of Arts 1
University of Hong Kong. Registry 1
University of Hong Kong. University Libraries 1