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How Politicians Capitalized on the Orlando Shooting to Take Away Your Rights
Conspiracy Constitutional Rights Domestic Policy Government Police State Politics Social Change Top News
Posted on June 27, 2016 Author Claire BernishComment(0) 1234 Views
Politicians now typically respond to major tragedies with an outpouring of … opportunistic agenda-pushing. This disgusting penchant for capitalizing on the public's grief and fear — evidenced in the nefarious USA PATRIOT Act following the attacks of 9/11 — has, of course, surfaced on multiple fronts after the massacre in Orlando.
While the nation mourned and attempted to parse how, exactly, a shooter had pulled off the slaughter of 49 people while pledging allegiance to the so-called Islamic State — despite national domestic surveillance measures, previous FBI scrutiny of shooter Omar Mateen, and a gun store owner/DHS poster child who 'saw something and said something' — politicians plotted to see just how many of your rights they could disappear.
In fact, their varied assaults on your liberties share an undeniably laughable common thread: each proposal would rob you of yet more freedom while doing nothing at all to prevent another attack.
But that doesn't mean politicians and government agencies won't employ the logically fallacious appeal to emotion, as in fears roused by Orlando, as a weapon to get what they want — indeed, they count on all of us to succumb to such scaremongering so we'll willingly sign over the precious few rights we have left.
Proposing gun control legislation might not be shocking in itself following a slaughter in a public place, but guns only constitute the guise for these pernicious policies with distressingly Orwellian consequences. As the public erupted in ire on either side of the classically American issue of firearms, a number of Congress members constructed several pieces of legislation that would unite the opposing sides — were they not exploitative of people's worst fears.
While one piece of legislation comes wrapped in the tidy pretense of gun control, its details sent a chill down the backs of even the normally left-leaning ACLU. Democrats seek to deny the most fundamental of rights by removing due process from the equation — linking the ability to legally purchase a firearm to the government's opaque and notoriously flawed terror watch list.
Superficially, the premise a person suspected of having ties to terrorist groups thusly shouldn't be permitted the right of gun ownership would seem justifiable, if not noble. However, pushing for gun control dependent on the error-wracked, secretive, and constitutionally-questionable terror watchlist opens potential floodgates for additional legislation to be propped on the same nefarious list in the future.
"In this country," House Speaker Paul Ryan cautioned at a press conference Thursday, cited by the Intercept,
"we do not take away people's constitutional rights without due process. This is not just Republicans saying this. It's groups like the ACLU who are saying this."
Rightly so. Though the ACLU remarked in a letter to Congress members pushing to pass the legislation that it doesn't oppose regulatory measures in regard to firearms, the group's stance against the Democrats' proposal reiterated the blacklist "is error-prone and unreliable because it uses vague and overbroad criteria" and offers little in the way of redress for individuals wrongly designated.
As possibly the most pointed evidence of such flaws, Mediaite resurrected a CNN report from 2004 detailing Rep. John Lewis' — who spearheaded a laughably misguided, fully catered Democrat sit-in on the floor of the House while pontificating on the need for "courage" — mistaken placement on the dubious no-fly list.
If one of the politicians responsible for this egregious legislation doesn't grasp its treacherous future implications, it's no wonder vast swaths of the populace haven't, either. While the ACLU, the media, and countless others denigrated the latching of gun control to blacklists, the public debated the oft-maligned right to bear arms — evidencing precisely how deftly the government can sneak away virtually any right or freedom when the circumstances provoke an emotional gut-check.
But if this measure weren't maddeningly atrocious in its own right, the Democrats' "supremely authoritarian Terror Warrior," as Glenn Greenwald described Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Intercept, unleashed an insufferable bill to "give the attorney general the discretion to block a sale to a given individual suspected of involvement in some kind of terrorism."
Somehow, the Democrats in Congress, asserting arrogant ignorance of, if not blatant disdain for, the Constitution, sought an updated, secondary, and highly secretive terror watchlist that even Huxley couldn't have conceptualized — adding potential terrorists to the ever-expanding list of farcically-mischaracterized unfortunates the government deems bad people.
Though her dystopic bill didn't garner sufficient support to pass, the country came chillingly close to taking an unrecoverable step in the exact wrong direction.
Indeed, by wielding the tragedy in Orlando, the Democrats "started at the beginning, and are making their way down the Bill of Rights, with the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. The Second Amendment holds that 'the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,' while the Fifth provides that no one may 'be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' These are what are known as civil rights, meaning the rights associated with citizenship, rights having to do with the relationship between people — or 'the People' as the Constitution puts it — and their government," the National Review, an admittedly conservative-leaning outlet, aptly described the attack on our putatively protected rights.
On Monday, incidentally, the Supreme Court struck down a challenge to the Lautenberg Amendment, which sought to revoke the prohibition of the purchase of firearms by those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.
But the right to keep and bear arms isn't — by far — the sole target of rights-squandering governmental programs.
Courtesy of a critical report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), we now know the FBI abuses its facial recognition technology — so much so, the agency stores, collectively, more photos in its database than there are people in the United States: 411.9 million. Not criminal mugshots, but driver's license and passport photos of wholly innocent people comprise the bulk of the FBI's contentious biometrics database.
Without so much as a court order, the agency performed searches of the database some 36,000 times between 2011 and 2015, despite its highly questionable accuracy. As noted by Vanity Fair, without publicly available information concerning false positives — in part due the FBI's failure to audit the Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation (FACE) program — there exists no means for affirming its efficacy in investigations by the agency.
According to the ACLU, Vanity Fair reported, determining whether or not FACE and the FBI adhere to privacy protections and rules has been impossible, in part because "for five years [the agency] did not publish a legally required Systems of Records Notice (SORN) informing the public about its use of face recognition."
According to the scathing report from the GAO, the FBI blatantly undermines privacy concerns by keeping such a sweeping log without disclosing how it has been or will be employed.
"To wit," Vanity Fair explained, "the driver's-license photos of the residents of 16 states and some additional 30 million photos from a biometric database are available for the F.B.I. to search at will. Another 18 states are reportedly negotiating with the F.B.I. over the use of driver's-license images. The F.B.I. hadn't sufficiently notified the public of the technology's use."
Of particular note, the agency is seeking to exempt both FACE and its chillingly extensive parent, the biometrics database, from protections afforded by the Privacy Act.
"Specifically," the Intercept reported, "the FBI's proposal would exempt the database from the provisions in the Privacy Act that require federal agencies to share with individuals the information they collect about them and that give people the legal right to determine the accuracy and fairness of how their personal information is collected and used."
Such dogged commitment to secrecy over transparency and disclosure,Vanity Fair cautioned, solidly indicates a move by the FBI similar to the broad and indiscriminate domestic surveillance programs employed by the National Security Agency, as were valiantly exposed by Edward Snowden. Lending credibility to that theory, a response to the GAO report by the Department of Justice — which oversees the FBI — chose an argument based in semantics to justify sweeping usage of the database.
Because FACE, the DoJ retorted tellingly, seeks 'potential threats,' as opposed to confirming "positive identification," inaccurate leads don't equate with false positives and thus do not violate safety and privacy protections. Though the GAO strongly disagreed — and encouraged public transparency, an investigation into lack of audits, and greater measures to protect individuals' stored biometric information — there cannot possibly exist any guarantee the FBI and DoJ aren't, essentially, exploiting the database similarly to how the NSA opportuned vague language in the Patriot Act to enact mass, dragnet-style surveillance.
In fact, a bill sponsored by John McCain seeking the warrantless trawling of people's browser histories, metadata, and emails — opportunistically introduced by invoking fear following the mass shooting in Orlando — narrowly avoided passage by the Senate on Wednesday.
"In the wake of the tragic massacre in Orlando," McCain unsurprisingly asserted in a press release, "it is important our law enforcement have the tools they need to conduct counterterrorism investigations and track 'lone wolves,' or ISIL-inspired terrorists who do not have direct connections to foreign terrorist organizations but who seek to harm Americans."
Expanding on the hotly-contended use of National Security Letters (NSLs) — already given broader leniency through the Patriot Act — the legislation raised suspicions as several members of Congress and privacy advocates pointed out its redundancy in connection to emergency measures already in place allowing for that exact surveillance.
But even a full investigation of Pulse nightclub mass shooter, Omar Mateen, rightly ended with the FBI's dismissal of him as a potential terrorist or extremist. While questions regarding Mateen's motivation for slaughtering nearly 50 people remain as-yet unanswered, an investigation by the CIA attested the FBI had been justified in dropping the old probe into Mateen as he had no tangible ties to either the so-called Islamic State or any other terrorist group.
Considering that evidence in conjunction with the previous dead-end investigation, the FBI's employment of the Orlando premise to implement further insidious surveillance powers only highlights the government's appetite for no-holds-barred access to our private lives. Indeed, the FBI's rapacious quest for access to information as was proposed by McCain, according to Trevor Timm at the Guardian, is rumored to already be underway — despite repeated advisements by the DoJ the agency must first obtain a warrant.
Such cautions ring hollow, however, as the Justice Department continues testing limits and pushing for the removal of strictures to the FBI's ability to hack into computers around the world.
"Using the obscure process for amending the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure," Timm explained, "the department has convinced the courts that they should be able to get one warrant to potentially hack thousands of computers, and shouldn't have to comply with the normal rules involving getting the court order in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred."
This measure would further allow FBI hackers to hack even those who have been victimized by other hackers — a thwarting of the democratic process the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) called a "recipe for disaster." On Thursday, a Virginia Federal Appeals Court officially put that disingenuous recipe on the menu.
"In a dangerously flawed decision unsealed today," EFF announced, "a federal district court in Virginia ruled that a criminal defendant has no 'reasonable expectation of privacy' in his personal computer, located inside his home. According to the court, the federal government does not need a warrant to hack into an individual's computer."
Whenever a tragedy occurs, the utmost vigilance must be trained instead to the government's penchant for capitalizing on public fear and mourning to further discard our few remaining rights — and the massacre in Orlando, as these alarming examples prove, has been far from the exception to that tendency.
While the public mourned and scrambled to come to terms with the mass shooting, the government initiated a multi-fronted assault on Americans' privacy and personal sovereignty — and no indication can be found these various agencies intend to stop anytime soon, if ever.
Tagged 9/11, FBI, Orlando shooting, Patriot act, politicians, rights, surveillance, warrantless
Claire Bernish
Born in North Carolina on the first of March in a year not so long ago, Bernish currently resides in San Diego, California. Educated at University of Cincinnati and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she finds interest in thwarting war propaganda through education, the refugee crisis & related issues, 1st Amendment concerns, ending police brutality, and general government & corporate accountability.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/author/clairebernish/
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Stephen Redwood:
Organizational Design:
Stephen Redwood
Our guest today is Stephen Redwood, who has been a Partner in the Organization practices at PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey & Co., Oliver Wyman, and Deloitte.
He is now running his own firm, Redwood Advisory Partners, where he helps clients develop a high performing organization and an exceptional employee experience.
In today's discussion, Stephen explains what an organizational design project is all about, and he also discusses his other business, Tri Endeavors, where he coaches elite triathletes.
To learn more about Stephen's triathalon coaching practice, visit http://triendeavors.com/
And To learn more about Stephen's consulting practice, visit https://redwoodadvisorypartners.com/
Will:	Hello Stephen, welcome to the show.
Stephen:	Hi Will, thanks for inviting me along, great to be part of this.
Will:	Stephen, what is a common misconception that people have about what an organizational consultant does?
Stephen:	It's an interesting question because I think when people think about an organization design consultant they tend to think about boxes and lines on a chart and so the core structure of the organization which really represents in solid form something that's much more complex than what it looks like on paper. Organizations are dynamic sense of connections between people and things they do, and the effect of the organization is to essentially provide a skeleton around which the organization hangs.
Stephen:	I think the common misconception is that it's just a simple question of boxes and lines on charts, but of course how well the organization operates depends on a whole range of factors because essentially, you're redistributing power across the organization when you change the structure. Our leaders operate through the structure, how people respond to their place in the structure is all part of the dynamic and how work is linked up and flowed across the structure as well is another important component. To think only in terms of boxes and wires means if you focus on it in that way it's kind of a simple job, but to knock on consequences of where you get to in terms of what you put in place are much more complex than that.
Will:	Give me a list of the types of things an organizational consultant would get involved. You mentioned and referred to the boxes and wires, so defining roles, defining responsibilities and reporting relationships, but it's so much more than that. What are some of the other elements that you as an organization consultant would assessing and helping to design?
Stephen:	I think at one end is a simple checklist and then there's complications around it. But on the simple checklist side of things there's the roles and responsibilities. There are the spans of control that people have at different points in the organization. There is the set of metrics and goals that you set up for roles within that organization. There are considerations about what is the value of a particular job at a different point in the organization, how do you reward it. Then there is the overall cost of the organization as well. That's maybe not all but it's probably like 80% of the things that are on the checklist that you have to think about in terms of the structure because what you're doing in going through those different activities is thinking, A, what is a particular role in the organization and then how do I weight it in terms of its importance, and therefore, how do I value it in terms of that I provide to the individual, and what skills and capabilities are going to be required ideally to fill that position. That's the simple side of it I guess.
Stephen:	I think the less simple, more complex side is the politics of organizations because as I said earlier, you're kind of redistributing power across an organization both within the employees in terms of how they operate within it individually and collectively, as well as you would expect in terms of leaders and how much control and responsibility they have too. What interests me a lot about these kind of situations is these kind of projects is how much power is not taken into consideration, is basically devolved down through the organization depending on how engaged and motivated employees are because you could have, theoretically, a great organization in place and you could, theoretically, the power structures of most leaders in place, but if you haven't taken into consideration what the nature work and the environment that people operate in down through the organization looks like you could well have a situation where people are not either giving you the best or worse, actively disenchanted, disengaged. You end up with an inefficient structure with overhead that's probably not adding much value if it's not encouraging those employees to feel like they want to do their peace.
Will:	When you first become aware of a potential need at a client, what are the types of reasons that someone is calling you to have an initial discussion? In some cases, perhaps they have something very explicit, but in some cases, I can imagine CEOs might be saying that the organization we've grown and it's just not working quite right, I don't know what the answer is or I don't even know what the exact problem is, tell us a little bit about the types of reasons that you'll get called in.
Stephen:	It tends to be event focused. If I can cast my mind back through projects I've done in the past, in many cases, there's been a change of leadership, a new CEO, or a new head of business unit. In that kind of senior role there's only so many levers that you can actually pull in the organization before you run out of options and have to just rely on the organization doing their piece. You think about it as a new CEO, you can redeploy resources and budgets, and allocations, things like that, and change your leadership team. You can change your strategic direction, you can change the structure and then you're out of options beyond that, beyond hoping that people will do their piece. Structure is one of the easiest things, at least conceptually, for a CEO or a new business leader to utilize as a technique to put their stamp on the organization, to redirect things and the flow of work, and the priorities that they give to the organization. That kind of event is very common.
Stephen:	Other events like a new acquisition where a new substantial chunk is brought into the organization and the question often is do we keep this as an adjunct or do we fold it in and how would we make up our mind one way or the other. Recently a less kind of event focused reason might be just appointing growth. I recently did some work with a company where they just reach a point in growth where they felt like they were still operating under the structures that they'd been using since they started out as a company almost and things had grown over time, new things had been put in place. They all made sense at the time, but when you stepped back and looked at them collectively they were thinking well maybe it's not as efficient and effective as it might be, so let's just step back and have a look at how we should organize ourselves for the next phase of growth.
Stephen:	Then of course, you've got the all too sadly common situation which companies are struggling and they're on the other side of the curve, and they have to think about how do we deal with the fact that this structure is just carrying too much cast for the organization. How can we reorganize to make it fit better with where we see our particular market going and the economics of the business.
Will:	What are some mistakes that leaders make when they think about making changes to an organization?
Stephen:	It's always a challenging one. I think the single biggest mistake is to believe that you're one and done, that you're putting in place a structure and that's the structure that is going to work for you going forward and it will solve all of your problems. Of course, it's just one component of that dynamic that I was talking about earlier. I think oversimplified, over-expecting the structure to sort things out across the board is a big mistake.
Stephen:	Perhaps a bigger mistake is that I'd say in pretty much 100% of the projects I've worked on over the years not unreasonably you design an organization that you think is the right target structure to be heading for, but then the reality of well what about the people we have in place and where do they fit in this. Or are we able to attract the kind of skillsets into this organization, what's the reality of our ability to attract the level of talent we need comes into play.
Stephen:	Then there's the question of what about it doesn't matter how senior you are in the organization, there's two or three people you maybe have a close connection to and you think I don't want this person to suffer or perhaps they have more leverage over you for some reason and so you start to make compromises and you kind of step by step end up not really having moved the needle very much and compromising your way back to almost where you are starting from. That is perhaps the biggest issue that I think organizations face. I hope bringing my experience to bear and my willingness to speak up, and their expectations indeed that I will do, can steal them and give them more backbone in terms of just not allowing all those compromises to come into play and undermining the quality of the thinking that's gone into planning where they should be getting to.
Will:	What can go wrong in an organizational project?
Stephen:	There's so many things which can go wrong. There's a ton of things, of course, which can go right. For any one of those components that I talked about earlier, I guess they can go right or they can go wrong. You can have false expectations about your ability to recruit. You can in your strategy or in your financial planning you may have got it wrong in terms of your targets and expectations about where the business is going to go and therefore, what weight you can carry in terms of the organizations. You can, as I alluded to before, make compromises in terms of putting people in positions that because you want to keep them in the organization, which is perhaps laudable, but they're just not the right person for that role, so personnel choices can go wrong. But I think probably the main thing which can go wrong is it's pretty commonplace to say communications are important, but the way in which you make the changes happen in the organization, for better or worse, in terms of the impact they have on particular individuals, can have a massive impact on the workforce at large. The process of change is as important, I would say, as the process of determining what the organization actually is going to look like.
Will:	For someone who's not an expert in organizational consulting, like me, what the word, serving senior leadership of a company on some other matter, strategy let's say, or operations, or marketing, what are some questions that we should have at the ready to be asking the senior leadership to help, questions related to organization that we should be asking just to help understand the organization but also to identify potential challenges in the current organization.
Stephen:	I think top of the list it what's not working now that needs to be working, so you hone in on what's the problem set that you're trying to solve for, which may lead you down a path which says this has actually got nothing to do with organizations, but to do with maybe something else. What's the problem you're trying to solve is one question. Second question is what is changing about the business going forward that you need to accommodate so that we can better understand what new activities and skills are needed within the organization going forward.
Stephen:	A third question is what level of change both in terms of cost, but also in terms of impact on the organization can you accommodate over what period of time so that you get a sense of this is something where the load needs to be spread over a longer period, or this is more of a big bang, needs to happen in the short-term, and also get a sense of what's the scale of change you should be planning for.
Stephen:	Maybe a fourth big question is what is the level of engagement going to be of senior leaders in taking this forward, because setting something like this off and running, and then not staying engaged just means that people will not give it the important significance that perhaps it deserves. As we all know far too well, if the senior person isn't paying attention to something then other people will pay less attention to it. The level of involvement of senior executives, and the CEO in particular, if this an enterprise wide change in the exercise, really gives it the power and the momentum to keep it going, and to ensure that people give it the attention that it deserves.
Stephen:	I think probably those are the big questions. I think I'd add one more though as a consultant. I always ask what is so complex about this problem that you need to bring someone in from the outside, so I get a sense of what they're struggling with and where I can as a consultant and advisor sit there and bring the most value. For me, that's a really crucial question to understand. That way you'll know where you can add the most value, but you'll also get a sense of am I just being hired as extra hand or am I being hired here as a change agent that's really being asked to help guide and advise them on something in a really important way.
Will:	That question is so useful, not just for an organization type effort, but for almost any type of consulting project, so powerful to ask. It almost seems like we're arguing against bringing in expert advice, but it's saying why are you looking outside the organization, what have you tired already internally and what happened, and what made you decide what's the catalyst to go and look for some outside advisor because no one likes to spend money on some outside advisor if you can do it in-house, and you shouldn't, so what's special about now?
Stephen:	Yeah I agree. It's been interesting in my career the different roles I've had to see how easy or difficult it is for me to ask that question. I've got my own business now and it's very easy for me to ask that question. Clients appreciate it because they can see I'm trying to find the way which I can be most helpful to them and it's not that I'm trying to just bring a scale of the project, what's the biggest scale I can bring to helping you here. It's more about how can I be most targeted and most valuable in the belief that, A, that's a great outcome for the client and, B, that it will strengthen the relationship that I have with them as well and they'll be more appreciative of it, and it will more sustainable. In so doing, for me, a very important component of my work is I always ask myself is this a client I want to work with, are these people that I will get some development from myself by experiencing working in an environment and will I forget about the financial side of it.
Stephen:	But what I feel is a rewarding quid pro quo if you like in the relationship so that I'm not getting myself trapped in a testy relationship with the client where they begrudge having to bring in a consultant, but rather, a relationship where they see it as much more than a collaborative partnership. Those are the kinds of consulting situations I try and hold myself to and try and foster.
Will:	You've been a partner at globally known top firms leading their organization practices. You've also spent several years as an independent consultant. Talk a little bit about the differences in your approach and what it's like for you in those two different roles.
Stephen:	Yeah, it's been a fascinating journey for me. I've been a consultant now for I think 31 years, I guess. I guess in year 2 I probably thought I'd got it, in year 5 I probably that I'd got it, and realized in year 1 I didn't, and here I am in year 30 thinking, "Do I really understand fully how to do this as effectively as I should be?" One of the great things about being a consultant is the fact that it's a continually evolving experience because the business marketplace keeps changing, and the experience of working with different clients, every client has something slightly unique about them.
Stephen:	It's been a fascinating journey and I think the difference between big firm consulting and small firm consulting is as much as anything it's about the nature of the relationship you have with the client. In the smaller firm world that I'm operating in now I feel a lot more of an intimate relationship, a much more personal responsibility in a way to the client and it's a much more authentic relationship, not to say it's not authentic when you're in a big firm world, but it's that much closer to you. It's much more about you as an individual, and therefore, there's that responsibility you feel incumbent on you to really deliver for the client. It makes you face the need to be really close to what they need, what they're doing. Whereas, in a big firm I guess there's always the added difference of the fact that you're carrying a bigger brand name. The client looks at the brand name when they look at you often they're looking for something different when they go to a big firm, and that often takes the form of this is a big hairy problem that needs a team of people working on it that's going to be big and we're willing to pay for it. But also, we want to feel the confidence of a big brand name behind it and also the ability to have some comeback as well.
Stephen:	There are different dynamics at play and I think the great thing that I've learned from playing in both pools is that there's a huge range of different ways in which clients want to interact with consultants and use them. They need all types, individual, small firms, big firms, for different reasons. The smaller it gets, I think the biggest difference, as I said, the smaller it gets the more intimate it gets and for me at this stage in my career that's a great feeling to have because you feel as though you can really bring your experience to bear without having to mix it with a ton of other alternative views that you might have to bring to the table when you're in a much bigger partnership or organization.
Will:	In addition to your career as an organization consultant you are also an endurance athlete and you serve as a coach to endurance athletes, tell me about that side of your life.
Stephen:	It's been a really core part of my identity I guess since I was a young kid. I was a rower in my younger days, or in the U.S. you can say I did crew. I've always been doing endurance sports. Then a few years ago now I guess, maybe 8 or 10 years ago, with one of my daughters who was a great runner she needed a bit of change of direction because she was getting injured so much from all the run training and needed something that would spread the low more and so she and I said let's give triathlon a go. It was really just a continuation of a life of doing endurance sports for me and I got into triathlon and I've been really deeply involved in that for the last 10 years or so. Along the way I've done a ton of Ironman distance races. I've done I think 16 or 17 now, and a similar sort of number of half-Ironman distance races.
Stephen:	It's been a great experience for me because the nature endurance sport is that it really tests your resilience, your persistence, tests the limits of usually goes beyond what you think you can do. It's hard for it not to be rewarding when you experienced having taken on something that is a massive challenge and then getting through it.
Stephen:	In the last few years I've also got into coaching others as well which in itself is super rewarding. I found there's a relationship between what I do in the endurance sport world and what I do in organizations as well. It's interesting to think about it because the big challenge for people individually is if I want to do this thing that's going to be very demanding on my time, on my body in endurance terms, how do I make the time for it, how do I do the training, how do I structure it so that I could do this amongst the rest of the demands of my life, stay healthy, avoid injury. That brings into question a whole range of things around recovery, nutrition, the volume and intensity of the training you're doing, and how you stay motivated. You step back for now and say, "Well, didn't a lot of this relate to what happens in organizations as well in terms of how do we keep people motivated. How do we be sure we're not overworking them so that there is sufficient recovery built into the way things operate and as there's sufficient level of individual identification with what it is they're trying to do to perform. I love to think about that crossover between the two fields and I think it's hugely relevant.
Stephen:	Just to go off on a little bit of a tangent, one of the tough things people find is in fitting an endurance sport into your life the challenge if you're new to it is because it takes quite a volume of hours is to structure your time differently so you fit it in and to get through the early months of finding it really hard to get up in the morning say or to fit it in an evening, or at whatever point in your day on a regular basis because consistency is king. That's really about working your way through to the point where it becomes a habit. When I think about habit formation in the organizational context I think it's a super big problem that companies have when they're trying to bring about changes because all too often leadership will set in play an organizational change, say a restructuring.
Stephen:	After a few months the leadership's attention will drift away from this onto the next thing they're looking ahead to. The people who were given responsibility for driving things forward feel out that lowered sense of focus and the energy flips out of the system. Before you know it, things have lost stem or things have started to fall back into old habits in the organization because they haven't given enough persistence, enough attention to get through to that point where the organization has established new habits of how they work.
Stephen:	I think that's a massive issue in organizations and it really I think comes down to how they organize around being persistent to chase after the goals that they are looking to achieve organizationally. That looks very like how do you do that as an individual when you got a hobby that you're trying to achieve something big in because it requires some of the same sorts of mental outlooks. Does that make sense?
Will:	Can you give an example of how you've helped coach an organization to build that organizational habit?
Stephen:	I don't think that it's rocket science, but I think coaching an organization to build habits really revolves around how you hold influences and leaders in the organization to a pattern, which is reinforcing where you're trying to get to. That's about working with them often enough or putting in place structures in meetings or in their schedules, which mean that time is put aside to continue focusing on this over the long haul. It can be around how you put in place communication structures and system, which keep the themes alive and keep driving them forward. It should also I think involve … I mentioned the word influences, it's not just about leadership, it's about identifying people in the organization who can have influence and shape the way in which people think about things and engaging them in helping to move things forward and giving them the tools. Then if you're around those kinds of activities, building in checkpoints, which are planned way out so that you really can step back and say are we still bringing the same energy to it, have we achieved the progress we need to. You'll know about that through I guess a number of things.
Stephen:	I'm digging way back in time to some of the early work I did in this space around what do we measure in order to know if we're making progress. Well, one is to have performance goals, there are performance metrics delivering what we expected them to deliver. Secondly, are people completing the activities we expected of them in terms of moving this thing forward, so have the communications been happening, have the meetings been happening, have the changes that we planned for been happening. Then the third is, is the culture shifting and you can measure culture, employee engagement, things like that to determine if you've been making progress. You put those three things together, is the culture shifting, are people doing the things that they said they would do, the activities happening, are the metrics improving, and you've got a pretty good way of triangulating around the way in which the organization is operating, so you can track those things over time. I think all of the above are the kinds of things that you could do in order to try and drive habit formation into the organization and get yourself to a new place.
Will:	Tell me a little bit more about how you actually work with endurance athletes when you're coaching them. I imagine you're not out there running alongside them as they do their 15 miles. How do you interact with people, what do you help them with, what's the whole process look like?
Stephen:	It's kind of interesting because coming out of a crew environment, a rowing environment when I was younger where you would literally have a coach in a launch alongside you watching what you're doing because you're trying to sink up a whole crew of people. It's a lot of close personal attention. The endurance sports world is very different, and so a lot of it enabled by modern technology enables you to use software platforms to develop plans for how to train people. If I have an athlete, the starting point will be for me to figure out in discussion with them what's their history, what are they trying to achieve, what's their capacity, and to map out a schedule of training which will take them from where they are now to hopefully a peak performance in the event that they are targeting. Along the way to build in the right kind of increases and the loading on them, and the recovery periods so that they're not overstressed, they're just hitting the right kind of level of physical stress, which is increasing over time, so it's driving up their fitness levels and fitness for purpose without overdoing it.
Stephen:	There's a kind of planning side of it, then there's another side of it which is collecting data. These days sport is becoming incredibly data focused, and so we're in a world now where there's all sorts of wearable technology that can give you a massive amount of information. I'll be collecting from then, from devices they have things like the amount of power output they have on a bike so I can see what they're capable of sustaining over time of mapping how their heart rate responds to different loads and whether or not their capacity to operate at a higher level of heart rate is improving or not, and indeed, if they're sized from heart rate indicators that maybe they're overdoing it on the other hand.
Stephen:	Then there's sweat rates to determine how much fluid they need take in as nutritional information about what are they doing in terms of helping to ensure that they're optimizing their internal system to provide the best possible performance. There's a whole raft of data import that I collect from athletes which comes into the platform that gets mapped against the training that I've set for them and I can see then is this helping, is it not helping, do we need to tweak it or not.
Stephen:	Then the third leg of it is just direct communication. These are human beings, not machines, and so regardless of what their data is telling you they may be feeling good, they may be feeling bad, they have things going on in their life beyond the training that needs to be taken into consideration. They may be finding certain parts of the training that's going well or not going well, adjustments need to be made, so I have regular communication with them both through the platform where they can write things, or they can send me messages, but also just regular check-ins by phone or by video conference, things like that, along the way so that there's this sense of relationship there because it's a very personal thing that they're doing. It's very important to them. You want to feel like you're really in tune with all aspects of their life in helping them to achieve their goals. It's quite a process I guess, but it's also hugely rewarding when somebody really makes progress and achieves a personal goal it's massively motivating for them and also hugely rewarding for me.
Stephen:	It's the same in that respect in achieving some kind of personal goal in an endurance as actually it can be in an organization by saying I just did this thing and I've been trying to do this in the organization for a long time and it's happened, and you get this huge rush of energy. Again, there's crossovers in terms of organizational life and personal life in thinking about what you can take from the endurance world into organizations in that respect as well.
Will:	We've spoken some about habits, what are some habits that you have incorporated in your own life, either a long time ago or recently that have really worked well for you.
Stephen:	Well I think one thing I've done in my work life, which has really worked well for me, is I've looked at my calendar every week and said where do I need to be in the world on any particular day of the week, particularly this is important if you're traveling a lot and so what adjustments do I need to make in order to ensure that I can get my training down. That might involve instead of flying out early one morning or getting on a train early one morning I would go stay the night before so that next morning I can get up and still get my training in and then do the work of the day. One is just that we can look at an adjustment so that I'm ensuring that my habit of doing my training is not adversely affected more than absolutely necessary.
Stephen:	Secondly, as I've gotten I guess older I've had to think a little bit more about how I build a resilience in my body and also in terms of just mental outlook. I do much more stretching in the form of yoga or other types of stretching activities on a regular basis, like most days. I also do some meditation. I have my ups and downs with that, but I've been meditating on and off since I was a teenager. That's a great mechanism I find for keeping my mind in the right place.
Stephen:	Then I think in one of my other strategies in life is that when I'm at my most busiest is when I'm most planful, so when I've got a ton of things baring down on me I will sit down and I'll say, "Okay, number one, let's break down each of those challenges into small steps so I don't get overwhelmed by the size of the thing that I'm trying to get to." Secondly, let's really map out time in my calendar for those things. When I've got the least done I'm the least planful I guess and when I've got the most done I'm super planful. Those are a few things that I do.
Stephen:	Just one other thing maybe that I've found instructive to me many years ago when first time around I was running my own show, I sat down and I thought I should take this opportunity to figure out what's important to me in life and what really brings me pleasure in life. I drew up a list half expecting I'd half a list of things which were impossibilities. I looked at the list and I saw that's a very simple set of things which really bring me deep pleasure and satisfaction. I can do any one of them if I want to. It's just a question of making time for them.
Stephen:	That's carried forward in my life and I guess it's a simple idea, but for me it was really instructive, so I give attention to my life in terms of am I doing things which I want to do and that bring me satisfaction. If not, then I need to make some adjustments. Along the way I stop and I'm quite reflective about that, and I do some journaling which helps me enjoy writing and so it helps me to work things through and think about them. But I found that a constant reminder to me that I've got the opportunity, I've been very lucky in life and really when it comes down to it the things that bring me satis fication don't require huge resources, they just require me to do those things, and reading, making music, things like that, doing sport.
Will:	Stephen, where can people go to find out more information about your practice?
Stephen:	Thanks for asking. Well, a few places, one is my consulting website, which is redwoodadvisorypartners.com. The other is my triathlon coaching website, which is triendeavors.com. Then of course, there's all the usual stuff, Linkedin, social media, although I'm super patchy on that, Twitter, pretty much Twitter actually. Instagram I'm really bad on. So really, my websites and to some extent, social media, Linkedin, et cetera.
Will:	We'll include those links in the show notes, redwoodadvisorypartners?
Stephen:	Yeah.
Will:	… .com and triendeavors.com. I'll include those links in the show notes.
Stephen:	Great.
Will:	Stephen, it was great catching up with you and hearing about your work with endurance athletes as well with organizations. Thanks so much for joining today.
Stephen:	Thanks Will, always a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for inviting me along.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"We ran out of $2 oil in 1973," said Henry Groppe of Groppe Long and Littel, at 79 the oldest active oil consultant (and one of the most respected) in the business. " Then we ran out of $8 oil, then $15 oil. Now we're running out of $40 oil." It's a different way of looking at what is happening to the price of oil, and a much more useful one.
Last week the price of a barrel of oil reached $65. Oil has doubled in price in the past eighteen months, and oil industry experts freely speculate that the price might hit $80, even $100 a barrel before year's end, hugely depressing world economic growth.
But here's an interesting fact. Oil companies still decide whether a new field is worth developing by calculating whether they would turn a profit from it when the price per barrel falls to only $25. Do they know something that the rest of us don't?
Not really. They just know that prices always fluctuate, that swings in commodity prices tend to be much wider than in other goods — and therefore that "running out of $40 oil" doesn't mean that the oil price will never fall below $40 again. It won't stay down there for good, but as John Maynard Keynes once remarked, "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." You have to be able to make a profit from your new field when oil drops to $30 a barrel (even if it is for the last time) and stays there for a couple of years.
The price of oil may hit $80 or even $100 this year, but if it does it will be an extreme market fluctuation, not a new average price. It will eventually fall back towards the $40-$55 band — but "eventually" is the key word as far as the current global economic boom is concerned.
Despite low growth in Japan and most of the eurozone, the global economy as a whole grew at an unprecedented annual rate of 4.5 percent over the past eighteen months. The rule of thumb says that $20 on the oil price means a drop of one percent in global growth six months to a year later, so we aren't in bad trouble yet.
Oil prices have gone up around $30 in eighteen months — one and a half percent off the growth rate — but some of that lost growth is already accounted for in that remarkable 4.5 percent figure. If the oil price stabilised now, the world economy would still be growing at a comfortable 3 percent after the rest of the damage feeds through.
If, on the other hand, oil goes up to $100 and stays there for a year or two, that's another 2 percent off the growth rate, and then everybody hurts. The current growth spurt is bound to end sooner or later — they haven't abolished the economic cycle yet — but sharp swings in the oil price don't necessarily mean that we are headed for an especially severe recession. Nor have we any reason to think that the oil price will stay up in the stratosphere forever.
This is not like the two "oil shocks" of the1970s, when a sudden constriction in the oil supply drove the price sky-high. THIS price peak is driven mainly by rapidly rising demand in the emerging Asian economies and in the United States, so their people are still spending and the impact on the global economy is much less.
Moreover, the big oil producers now have much more developed economies than in the 70s, so they are also able to spend their extra income and keep the wheels turning, rather than letting it pile up as surplus "petrodollars". And developed economies are much less "oil-intensive" nowadays — it takes only half as much oil as it did in the 70s to produce the same amount of Gross Domestic Product — so oil price rises no longer lead to runaway inflation.
After all the current turmoil is past, the important thing is that the median oil price for the next half-decade, say (until we run out of ALL the $40 oil) will be in the mid-$40s. That is good news in terms of the real crisis, climate change.
It's high enough to encourage energy conservation and drive people towards alternative, preferably non-carbon energy sources, but it doesn't actually paralyse the economy. We will need more pressure from a higher price later on if we are to avoid a global climate disaster, but the economy can only respond so fast. And we are practically guaranteed a higher price later on — another doubling of the average price by 2010 or 2012, say — because we are probably at peak oil production right now.
Seventy percent of the world's oil comes from big fields that were discovered before 1970, and they are almost all in decline. The new discoveries are mostly smaller and more expensive to develop, and Henry Groppe recently predicted that oil production worldwide will decline by a million barrels a day each year from now on.
We can take no credit for it, but maybe we are on the best available glide-path for a soft landing on climate change. Whether that will be good enough is, of course, another question.


Get PDF Comprehensive And Incredible Diabetes Health Solutions: Learn Factual Diabetes Information With This Handbook And Discover Different Diabetes Treatments, Diabetic Symptoms, Diabetes Diets And More!
Comprehensive And Incredible Diabetes Health Solutions: Learn Factual Diabetes Information With This Handbook And Discover Different Diabetes Treatments, Diabetic Symptoms, Diabetes Diets And More!
Jean met his pictured approach with a little smile of welcome.
Especially not in the middle of the bloody night. Willow was patient, and the wait did not disturb.
Nana Divines Precious Pets and Animal Friends!


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Armenian composer John Ter-Tatevosian's symphony performed in London to standing ovations
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Iran Armenian singer Andy Madadian has been honored with Hollywood Walk of Fame star. At age 22, Andy Madadian fled…
The Armenian State Symphony Orchestra (ASSO) performed at the Barbican Hall in London on Tuesday, 14 January with its 2019-20…
Iranian-Armenian singer Andy Madadian to be honored with Hollywood Walk of Fame star
Iranian-Armenian singer Andy Madadian will be honored with Hollywood Walk of Fame star on January 17. At age 22, Andy…
Dresden Opera shrugs off reports Azerbaijani singer refused to share stage with Armenian soprano
The Semperoper Ball in Dresden has put out a statement in regards to the accusation that Yusif Eyvazov would not…


Süsstrunk, Sabine ; Fredembach, Clément ; Holm, Jack ; Finlayson, Graham D.
We present a method to calculate sets of RGB primaries that are white-point independent and have suitable gamut properties when evaluated with regards to surface colors. These primaries can be used as a basis for defining an output-referred color encoding intended for print applications. The resulting RGB sensors are sharp, i.e. decorrelated, emphasizing again that for imaging applications, the choice of a chromatic adaptation transform based on sharp sensors might be most appropriate.


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HomeBeing a CatechistCatechists in ActionCatechists in Action – Chris Brett Tells His Students About His Calling to be a Catechist
Catechists in Action – Chris Brett Tells His Students About His Calling to be a Catechist
Joe Paprocki Catechists in Action
In this segment of Catechists in Action, 8th grade catechist Chris Brett is discussing with his recently confirmed class about how they can use their gifts to serve the community. Watch for the following:
one of the students states, "become a catechist" as one way to use your gifts to serve others
Chris asks the kids if they know how much money he makes each week serving as a catechist! 🙂
Chris asks the kids why they think he serves as a catechist with no pay and they respond with "because it's fun!" and "because you love us!" which Chris jokes about. Great banter with his students!
One student explains that he does it because he wants to share what he knows with others.
Chris tells the story of how he became a catechist and tells the students this will happen to them some day.
Chris concludes by talking about receiving the Body and Blood of Christ at Confirmation.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uby-1NGjF5c
Body and Blood of Christ
Catechists in Action: Chris Brett
Permit Me to Introduce You to Leo's Gift!
Name That Song (aka Name That Sin/Virtue/Gift)
40 Ideas for 40 Days – Lenten Activities: Declaration of DEpendence – Photos and Directions


Province newspaper photo, Vancouver Public Library VPL 44496.
Flood havoc. Working to get their vehicle unstuck and to higher ground, these farmers were caught in the midst of the great Fraser River flood of 1948. Cutting Vancouver off from the rest of the country by wiping out the railways and highway, the flood also killed 10 people, caused $20 million in damages (in 1948 dollars), and led to more than 16,000 people losing their homes.


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Garth McVicar and Susan Couch's hope
This Stuff report on Susan's Supreme Court success does not mention the vital role of Garth McVicar and the Sensible Sentencing Trust in Susan's recovery and her case which has now inched forward.
Garth was there when the families of Bell's three victims were reeling under the revelations of Corrections' indifference to the threat posed by Bell. Inside tip-offs were telling them of complete administrative chaos, and staff certainty that Bell would comit grievious harm again, the only question being when and on whom. Someone was going to be Bell's victim.
Garth gave the practical help they needed. He found them lawyers willing to lift them from despair at their helplessness, with prospects of 'accountability' from those who wronged them, including the government that was more keen to display its 'compassion' to Bell, than to save his next victims.
Garth asked me to help him evaluate first the case for Tai Hobson, who lost his wife Mary to Bell's cruelty. I thought the odds were against us, but that they were enough to make it worth a try. It's not just for Tai. The case was essential to confront with the evidence of its callousness, a hypocritical government that liked to stigmatise victims and Garth for their demands that criminals pay for their crimes.
Garth found Brian Henry to run the case. Though Tai, as a mere lifelong husband of the woman bludgeoned to death, was found to be too remote for the courts to extend the liability of the Crown, Susan as a direct victim could overcome that hurdle.
I had several weeks travelling with Tai and Garth last year. It is inspiring to see the dignity of these survivor victims after they come to feel that they can do something constructive, that their suffering might be turned to some use.
Victims have to rebuild their sense, against all the evidence, that they are not just helpless targets of capricious or even malicious fate. "Moving on" doesn't happen while every passing day shows them their assumptions about the world were fiction, that justice is not done, that talk about fairness and reciprocity is empty, that the modern justice system largely excludes the victims as unfortunate discards, while preaching at them forgiveness.
They learn that the criminal's welfare and fate are the central concern of the self-important actors in the justice theatre.
They are instinctively searching for ways to perform the age old cleansing and re-balancing procedures of vengeance before reconciliation.
Every long-term culture has them, as explained in Beyond Revenge – the evolution of the foregiveness instinct. This just published work by Prof Michael McCullough is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the centrality in any effective justice system of both assured retribution, and scope for forgiveness and reconciliation. The book summarises the evolutionary psychology behind the comunity's interest in ensuring satisfaction of the revenge need (among other things, victims must re-establish status vis a vis the aggressor who is otherwise left in a more powerful position) and the conditions that encourage foregivenss and reconciliation.
The more simple its objectives and decision model, the better it works over the long term. Ensure that reciprocity is seen to work, both ways. Return harm for evil after giving some latitude for one-off mistake (a second chance but not the 9th, 10th or 109th given to Bell), and return good for good. Do unto others as you would be done by.
Filed under Criminal Justice, Reviews
Judy Ashton
Hearing of Susan possible success has once again sent me on a roller coaster of emotions. I was privileged to attend the last SST victims conference and was a little in awe at such an amazing woman, and the many others victims who attended. It's been 17 months since my daughter was killed by a drunk disqualified drive who was on the Police Witness Protection Programme . He was also on parole and had offended twice within 4 months but still remained free. For the last 5 months we have been struggling to get the Ministerial Report released."Moving on" how I wish I could but until there is some sort of accountability and some sort of justice over Debbie's death that is almost impossible. Without the support of the SST and all of its committed workers the path I am presently treading would be so much harder. Thank you for caring
Stephen Couch
I think myself an unnamed police officer may have had something to do with the Dept of Corrections having to come clean on the parole matter, not so much Garth McVicar, although I do like some of the copy after the event in which he used some of my quotes as his own.
You people need to think more about the family members involved in these things.
and the sacrifices we have all made.
I'm not sure evolutionary psychology is much help. Firstly I don't think evolution is true, and secondly even if it is true, it doesn't seem to offer much in the way of moral reasoning. "The survival of the fittest" doesn't leave much room for justice or forgiveness or indeed any recognizable system of jurisprudence.
With regard to William Bell we can see that great mistakes were made by the authorities. However we must also accept that the responsibility for the murders lies with William Bell and William Bell alone. He did the murders and no one made him do it.
I actually believe that the way forward is to restore capital punishment. It is biblical, it is part of our traditions and it is shown to be effective. Capital punishment was abolished when murder rates were very low. If we restored capital punishment for murder I predict that the amount of murders in New Zealand each year would plummet. The sight of the likes of William Bell and his ilk going to the gallows or to the needle would have an immensely salutary effect on the criminal mind.
to debbie ashton i want to express my symapthy for you and your family and understand how you will not have closeure until this man is treated like a normal person …do you have your own webpage or something
The Saints go marching
Magna Carta seminar on 29 June in Wellington


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Q: Efficient way to check if an attribute name exists in the master list? Hello I am trying to check if column names in the uploaded dataframes have any sensitive elements. Like so...
uploaded_csv_files = [['emp_ssn','emp_phone','emp_name'],['worker_phone', 'worker_credit_card','worker_name'],['vendor_ssn','vendor_credit_card','vendor_phone']]

sensitive_list_master = ['ssn', 'credit', 'phone']

for df in uploaded_csv_files:

  for column in df:

    for each in column.split("_"):

      if each in sensitive_list:

        print(f"{column} has a sensitive element")

As you can see I am using nested for loops which could become computationally inefficient when a lot of columns are involved. Is there a better way to do this ?

A: Assuming you must check each column, this is slightly more efficient:
for df in uploaded_csv_files:
  for column in df:
    for s in sensitive_list:
      if s in column:
        print(f"{column} has a sensitive element")

The fact that you have to check each column means that there is a linear amount of work to be done. So you're stuck with that constraint.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Geek Culture	• 17 Mar 2016
Goosebumps movie review: a fantastic family horror for fans
By Graham van der Made: Staff Reporter
Read nextWhy China is in the middle of a mobile payments boom
The Goosebumps series of books played a large part in many a childhood. The books were not only a way of introducing horror to children, but also some crazy and interesting plotlines. Author R.L. Stine did a fantastic job of charming readers the world over. While the series has already received the small screen treatment in 1995, how would a feature movie work out?
Goosebumps the movie was released theatrically in 2015 and has finally made its way to DVD and Blu-ray.
The movie starts off with a small family moving to the 'suburbs' of an American small town, leaving their old lives behind them. Already, that's a very Goosebumps thing to do. Son of the family and main protagonist, Zack Cooper (Dylan Minnette) discovers that while next door neighbour Hanna (Odeya Rush) appears normal, her father (Jack Black) is somewhat of an asshole. When Zack suspects the father may be keeping his own daughter locked up, he breaks into the house to save her.
He soon realises Hanna's father is none other than author R.L. Stine and proceeds to accidentally knock over original manuscripts for the book series. This releases monsters trapped inside of tomes who begin to attack the town and its inhabitants.
The plot not only manages to capture the essence of the books that came before it, but also incorporates said books into the story. Many of the creatures appearing throughout the movie, such as a scarecrow, the abominable snowman, or Slappy the Dummy, are a real treat for those who poured through the series of novellas.
The overall story is enjoyable for both children and adults alike and views should get a few laugh or surprise fights out of the movies. Yes, it's somewhat of a silly movie.
Some of the filler cast seem as though they're pulled out of a made for DVD movie with stilted lines or over acting. You could consider this a self-aware parody of the low-production TV show.
Aside from them, the most of the main cast do a stellar job in their roles and a special kudos goes out to Jack Black for his portrayal of R.L. Stine. The role isn't supposed to be a perfect mimic of the prolific author, but rather a darker, tortured version of the man.
All of the monsters are brought to life with excellent CGI and costumes, though don't expect The Lord of the Rings levels of production.
Verdict: Goosebumps is an excellent companion to the book series and recommended to anyone who enjoyed them as a child. While it won't appeal to everyone, especially those who don't enjoy "silly" movies, it will entertain those who do. It was never going to be a Hollywood blockbuster.
Graham van der Made: Staff Reporter
Posted in Geek Culture, ReviewsTagged goosebumps, movie, review
Why China is in the middle of a mobile payments boom
Mobile • 17 Mar 2016


Don't you love it when the physician puts on the rubber gloves with an authoritative "snap" and then lubricates doctor's fingers to intrusively test your vitals? It's something we loathe, but we put up with it because we have a doctor-patient relationship of trust. The physician practices medicine to help you and you trust the physician to talk to you and treat you for healthier living.
That relationship of trust is jeopardized in some of the health insurance reform bills churning in Washington. After getting an ear full from their constituents Congress debates again. If they dared to listen, they will have to be persons of character to resists the "bribes" and pressure from the administration and choose to represent the American people who sense this is the wrong legislation at the wrong time. Certainly, there can be found some good parts in almost any bill.
One thing is for sure. No one wants to suit up in that open back hospital gown and have Dr. Barry and his "medical" team practice on them. Far from the professional relationship you have with your doctor, the Chicago-style "doctor" and his associates want not only the say with your body but your personal tax information published for people in every state of the Union to see. Not every person, but a lot of people.
The Health Insurance Reform legislation specifies in 431A that the IRS must publish your tax return to the agencies in Washington, DC that would oversee your health care as well as provide a copy of your returns to 50 states for monitoring! Somehow that sounds more intrusive and a violation of privacy than the exam by one's doctor. Frankly, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, tax law or public health law that gives Barry along with his Czars, officers and bureaucrats by whatever title the right to probe you personally or financially and make the results known to your state or anyone elses.
Do you think it's time for you to stand alone, if necessary, and refuse to "assume the position?" Now, when the pressure intensifies, be the patriot and stand for your choices in health care and health insurance.


This year the Aachen-Dresden-Denkendorf International Textile Conference chose as topic 'Turning Fibers into Value'. This international event is taking place in Aachen on the 29th and 30th of November 2018 at the Congress Center 'Eurogress Aachen'.
The Plenary Talks and Special Symposia will focus on Functionalization and New Materials, Textile Machinery and New Technologies, Trends and New Markets, Textile for Medecine and Health Care, Textiles for Building and Construction.
Enterprise Europe Brussels @hub.brussels is promoting the Matchmaking Event organised – during the two days of the Conference – by Enterprise Europe Network and NRW International to help you find potential cooperation partners with prearranged b2b-meetings.
Textiles for Building and Construction.


Serves 4 300g paglia e fieno ('flattened spaghetti') 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh sage or 1/2 teaspoon dried sage, plus fresh sage leaves to garnish (optional) 120 g gorgonzola 3 tablespoons mascarpone cheese 5 tablespoons milk 1/2 cup walnut halves, ground 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese freshly ground black pepper Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water, according to the instructions on the package. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large skillet or saucepan over low heat, add the sage and stir it around.
Serves 4 3 cups farfale ('motylki') 180 g gorgonzola cheese, any rind removed, diced 2/3 cup of heavy cream pinch of granulated sugar 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh sage, plus fresh sage leaves to garnish salt and ground balck pepper Cook the pasta until al dente: 8-10 minutes or according to the instructions on the package. Meanwhile, put the gorgonzola and cream in a medium saucepan. Add the sugar and plenty of ground black pepper and heat gently, stirring frequently, until the cheese has melted. Remove the pan from heat.
Serves 4 1 tbsp corn oil 2 garlic cloves, crushed 1 red pepper & 1 green pepper, deseeded and diced 1 celery stalk, diced 1 tsp hot chilli powder 400g can chopped tomatoes, 325g can sweetcorn, drained 215g can kidney beans, drained and rinsed 2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander salt and pepper tomato and avocado salad, to serve Topping: 125g cornmeal 1 tbsp plain flower 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp baking powder 1 egg, beaten 100ml milk 1 tbsp corn oil 125g grated mature Cheddar Heat the oil in a large frying pan and gently fry the garlic, peppers and celery for 5-6 minutes or until just softened.


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List of Green Bay, WI permanent and temporary employment agencies, recruitment consultants, staffing firms and headhunters offering support for the employers and provides employment for the job seekers.
As part of one of the world's biggest recruiting and placement organizations, MRINetwork, Management Recruiters of Green Bay partners with over 1,100 offices worldwide and utilizes the network's proprietary Accelerated Recruitment approach to find the key personal who can create a positive impact on an entire staff.
To be a valuable service to others in a friendly, effective and straightforward manner. And to be sought over and over by those who are in need of our services. Since 1983, the team at Superior Resource Group. has been finding nice jobs for engineering and technical candidates and helping our customers get the work done.
Connexions Staffing SM is an expert permanent placement agency serving customers and candidates throughout the US. Our customer focus includes middle market and emerging growth firms across diverse industries, specializing in accounting and financial services, information technology, manufacturing and sales. We do more than merely match candidates to job openings.
Our vision as a staff services firm is to improve the quality of life for everyone we serve. As the PeoplePeople we'll give back to them what they value most whether it is: Time, a Hassle Free Environment, HR Expertise, Money Savings or a more comprehensive Benefits Package for area businesses so they can attract and retain nice employees.
Jeffrey - Illinois Jeffrey is a welder/fabricator with over 5 years of direct experience. He has warehouse capabilities and MIG speciality with blueprint reading. He is a great hands-on worker and can be counted on to go a great job. Jeffrey is very motivated and would make a great addition to your firm.
Since 1971, MRI-NEW/SC of Green Bay, an award winning office, has had as its focus this basic principal: We will do whatever it takes to ensure our partners receive the highest possible solution for their mutual employment objectives. A proven methodology, consistently delivered. While some recruiters try to slow the process, others move too speedily.


When I was little I was a huge fan of Ed Emberley's drawings. I used to borrow all of his books from the library and draw every single project in them. To be honest, I'm still a huge fan so I decided to make the very first set of symbols that I'm sharing with you.
or use them to make lots of things including greeting cards, images for digital scrapbooking, website graphics, fabrics, and wrapping paper (just to name a few)!
Copyright Sarah Bradberry, May 9th 2013. All rights reserved.


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Q: Reading  style to Canvas (html5,js) I have a canvas where the user make interactions, then a <img> for the final "product". The <img> tag has the style properly filled with the data URI of the first canvas.
I now need to fetch this  "canvas" as a element then transform it into a canvas object. Example:
var canvas = parent.document.getElementById('canvas_holder');
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
context.strokeStyle = '#f00';
//etc...

*canvas_holder* is the <img> tag with style set to real canvas data URI. How would I go to make this thinking work? I can not change the structure of the <img>, unfortunately.
Appreciate any help!

A: You don't need to mess with the base64-encoded version of the image. Just use
var img = document.getElementById('myImage'); // your <img>

var can = document.getElementById('myCanvas'); // your <canvas>
can.width = img.width;
can.height = img.height;
var ctx = can.getContext('2d');

ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0, img.width, img.height); // draw the image onto the canvas

This should draw the image onto the canvas.

A: I think the OP wants to tell us that the image is a combination of a foreground image transparent.png and a background image which is represented by its base64 encoded version. The only way I see is to grab the background image from
var image = new Image();
image.src = $('#canvas_holder').css('background-image').match(/url\("?'?(.*)"?'?\)/)[1];
//  If you don't want to use jQuery, you could get the background-image as
// image.src = document.getElementById('canvas_holder').style.backgroundImage.match(/url\("?'?(.*)"?'?\)/)[1];

and paste it onto the canvas.
var canvas = document.getElementById('yourcanvasid');
var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
ctx.drawImage(image, 0, 0);

and then get the foreground image and paste it onto the same canvas
var foreGround = document.getElementById('canvas_holder');
ctx.drawImage(foreGround, 0, 0);


This is a placeholder page for Dave Grimes, which means this person is not currently on this site. We do suggest using the tools below to find Dave Grimes.
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Archive for the 'Samuel Gale' Tag
Cleveland's First Residential Commission in Minneapolis?
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Lost Minneapolis Parks, Minneapolis parks | Tags: H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Minneapolis Farmers' Market, Oak Lake, Samuel Gale
Today I'm reposting an article on the creation and demise of Oak Lake Park as a pricey residential neighborhood on the near north side of Minneapolis in the 1870s. Oak Lake itself sat exactly on the site of today's Farmers' Market on Lyndale Avenue. I wrote it in 2011 when the Minnesota Vikings were thought to prefer the Farmers' Market site for a new stadium. Of course that new stadium was eventually built on the site of the old Metrodome, so that focus of the article is outdated. But the historical information on the site as one of Minneapolis's first upscale residential developments is still accurate. Not many people know of the ritzy history of the site where the market now stands.
I had set this post aside originally because I had intended to make the case that Horace William Shaler Cleveland was likely the man who advised Samuel Gale on the layout of the new neighborhood. The curving streets adapted to the topography are certainly hallmarks of Cleveland's work–as are the parcels of land set aside for parks. It is also clear that Cleveland and Gale knew each other. Cleveland's participation in the Oak Lake development is informed speculation on my part; I have found no documentary evidence of his hand in the project.
The most intriguing part of this post is my surmise that what killed the upscale Oak Lake neighborhood was the creation of the Minneapolis park board. With the acquisition of shores on larger lakes as public park land, wealthy Minneapolitans suddenly had even more attractive sites for their new homes. Without buyers for the larger homes built at Oak Lake, they were eventually divided into rooming houses in a neighborhood that gradually became inhabited by arriving immigrants.
Oak Lake itself was eventually filled in by the park board after it became an unsightly and odiferous hazard.
Lost Minneapolis Parks: Highland Oval
Filed under: Lost Minneapolis Parks, Minneapolis parks | Tags: Charles A. Tenney, H. W. S. Cleveland, Highland Oval, Oak Lake, Samuel Gale, Stone Arch Bridge
The elegant neighborhood on the hills surrounding Oak Lake—now the site of the Farmer's Market off Lyndale Avenue—has been gone for decades. Oak Lake itself was filled in 100 years ago. You can read the whole story here. The latest news: I finally found a picture of one of the five small parks in the Oak Lake Addition. I give you Highland Oval.
The title on the photo is "Highland Avenue, Oak Lake Division", but the open space in the middle of the photo can only be Highland Oval. The view is looking northwest. Tiny, isn't it? But the effort to preserve any open green space in rapidly expanding cities was a novel concept. (Photo by Charles A. Tenney)
The photo was probably taken in the mid-1880s, before the park board assumed responsibility for the land as a park. The land was designated as park in the 1873 plat of the addition by brothers Samuel and Harlow Gale. Although I have no proof, I believe it likely that H.W.S. Cleveland laid out the Oak Lake Addition, owing largely to the known relationship between Cleveland and Samuel Gale. The curving streets that followed topography and the triangles and ovals at street intersections were hallmarks of Cleveland's unique work about that same time for William Marshall's St. Anthony Park in St. Paul and later for William Washburn's Tangletown section of Minneapolis near Minnehaha Creek. It was also characteristic of Cleveland's work in other cities.
Photographer Charles A. Tenney published a few series of stereoviews of St. Paul and Minneapolis 1883-1885. He was based in Winona and most of his photos are of the area around that city and across southern Minnesota.
Highland Oval was located in what is now the northeastern corner of the market.
As happy as I was to find the Highland Oval photo, my favorite photo by Tenney tells a different story.
10th Avenue Bridge. (Photo by Charles A. Tenney)
At first glance, this image from Tenney's Minneapolis Series 1883 was simply the 10th Avenue Bridge below St. Anthony Falls, looking east. The bridge no longer exists, although a pier is still visible in the river. What makes the photo remarkable for me are the forms in the upper left background being built for the construction of the Stone Arch Bridge. (See a closeup of the construction method here.) The Stone Arch Bridge was completed in 1883 — the same year the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners was created.
Nearly 100 years after the bridge was built, trains quit using it and several years later the park board, Hennepin County and Minnesota reached an agreement for the park board to maintain the bridge deck for pedestrians and bicyclists, thus helping to transform Minneapolis's riverfront—a process that continues today.
Note also the low level of the river around the bridge piers. This was long before dams were built to raise the river level to make it navigable.
© 2015 David C. Smith
Horace Cleveland Hated Rectangles
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis parks | Tags: Forest Heights, Glen Gale, H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Oak Lake, Samuel Gale
Oak Lake Addition was a rare real estate development in Minneapolis because the streets followed the contour of the land instead of a grid pattern. While I've found no evidence of who was responsible for the layout of the addition in 1873, it is reminiscent of Horace Cleveland's work in St. Anthony Park for William Marshall at about the same time and later in Washburn Park or Tangletown near Minnehaha Creek. Although I find no reference to the project in Cleveland's correspondence, it is plausible that he was involved in the layout of Oak Lake Addition.
Oak Lake Addition, platted in 1873. 1892 plat map (John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota)
Samuel Gale, the man who platted the Oak Lake Addition, had his hands in nearly everything in the young city: School Board, Athenaeum and Library Board, Academy of Natural Sciences, Society of Fine Arts, Board of Trade, City Council, the public lecture series, he even sang in the city's most celebrated quartet along with his brother, Harlow, and it was later claimed that although nearly everyone speculated in real estate in those days, he was the dean of realtors in the city. Given his wide interests and involvement in civic affairs, it would be incredible if Gale hadn't been one of those who welcomed Horace Cleveland to the city during his first visits in 1872.
In July, 1873 Gale was the chair of the Board of Trade's committee on parks, which reported that several "public-spirited citizens" planned to devote considerable time to the issue of parks with "Mr. Cleveland, well-known landscape gardener" before the next Board of Trade meeting. (Minneapolis Tribune, July 18, 1873.) I think it is safe to assume that Gale himself was one of those who planned to meet with Cleveland. So it appears almost certain that Gale and Cleveland knew each other and had likely discussed park issues before Gale produced his plat for the Oak Lake Addition.
Absent information on who designed Oak Lake Addition, it's fun to speculate that Cleveland may have had a hand in it, or at least influenced it through the book he published in early 1873, Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West. In his classic of landscape architecture, Cleveland expressed his distaste for the grid pattern of streets in so many cities, because it ignored "sanitary, economic and esthetic sense."
"Every Western traveller is familiar with the monotonous character of towns resulting from the endless repetition of the dreary uniformity of rectangles," he wrote.
While he singled out western cities — it was his book's theme — it takes only a glimpse of a map of Manhattan to know that rectangularism was not a sin peculiar to the frontier. For New York, however, it was already too late to do anything about that "dreary uniformity"; the West still had a chance to get it right. Cleveland added that "even when the site is level" the rectangular fashion of laying out cities "is on many accounts objectionable."
He suggested that if blocks had to be rectangular at least they should be Continue reading →
Lost Minneapolis Parks: Oak Lake, Two Ovals and Two Triangles
Filed under: Lost Minneapolis Parks, Minneapolis parks | Tags: H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Loring Park, Oak Lake, Samuel Gale
Another convergence: the season of farmers' markets is upon us and so is a decision on whether the Minnesota Vikings get a new tax-supported stadium. The site favored for a stadium by some Hennepin County commissioners is the Minneapolis Farmers' Market on Lyndale Avenue just west of downtown and Target Field.
You'd never know by looking at it today, but the site is rich in history. The current market sits in the middle of what was once Oak Lake, one of the attractions of a semi-exclusive and progressive residential neighborhood late in the 19th Century. It was Minneapolis's second-oldest park. A bandstand near the lake was built in 1881 to host some of the earliest outdoor concerts in the city. The gracefully curved streets of the neighborhood filled with the carriages of wealthier concert goers, while residents of the neighborhood and music lovers without carriages sat on the sloping hillside in what was called a natural amphitheater near the lake.
Some people say the Oak Lake Addition experienced gentile flight, then white flight, as the neighborhood went from mostly white Protestant to Jewish to black before it finally gave way to industrial and market uses. And it happened fast. But the trendy little neighborhood was probably doomed by something much more benign than ethnic, religious or racial bigotry; the creation of the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners helped kill the Oak Lake Addition.


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IBBI grants recognition to two registered valuers organizations
ANI | Updated: Dec 28, 2017 19:12 IST
New Delhi [India], Dec 28 (ANI): The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) recognised two registered valuers organisations, said the Ministry of Corporate Affairs on Thursday.
"The Institution of Estate Managers and Appraisers will handle one asset class of land and building while the IOV Registered Valuers Foundation will handle three asset classes of land and building, plant and machinery and securities or financial assets, according to an official statement.
This move is in pursuance of the Companies (Registered Valuers and Valuation) Rules, 2017 and these registered valuer organizations will help in determining the value of assets.
These registered valuers organisations will conduct educational courses in valuation, grant membership and certificate of practice to individuals.
They will also conduct training for its members and lay down and enforce the Code of Conduct for the registered valuers, who are its members.
IBBI was set up on October 1, 2016, under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (Code). It has regulatory oversight over the Insolvency Professionals, Insolvency Professional Agencies and Information Utilities. (ANI)
Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code


Self-publishing - or independent publishing, or author publishing, call it what you will - is a partnership, says Orna Ross, Founder and Director of the Alliance of Independent Authors. "No writer is an island," she told delegates at the London Book Fair's latest Tech Tuesday session on 'the rise and rise of self-publishing,' chaired by LBF Director Jacks Thomas and held in fashionable Hoxton in east London. "We can't do it by ourselves. Writers need support - editorial, production, promotion, design...Very few people can do all those things themselves. Writers need to take advice and need to invest, especially in editorial, typically £3,000 to £5,000."
Floating somewhere between both was ghostwriter Andrew Crofts who has written for publishers large and very small. He took things right back to basics with a neat summary of the whole history of storytelling and the book industry. "We went from storytelling around the fire where the audience were the most important people, to a situation where storytellers forgot about audiences, forgot about readers and began to concentrate on pleasing publishers..."
This is where the rot set in, he believes (although he was overstating it, one feels, giving "good panel," as it were), and eventually created the conditions for self-publishing to emerge, once the tools were there.
What self-publishing has done is to relight the campfire. The glow of the tablet, mobile or laptop screen may have replaced the flames, but the direct engagement with the reader that the storyteller had in the cave has come back in ways that no one would have imagined, thanks to social media. The warmth of these digital flames can now be felt around the world - we're all in the cave again, only now it's both enormous and intimate.


A consultation on the Strategic Transport Technology Plan which will act as a framework for future transport research and innovation has been launched. It is based on a vision to achieve an integrated, efficient and environmentally friendly transport system by 2050. The consultation can be completed online and closes on 28 May 2011.


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Spotlight: Turkey
by UK NARICPosted on December 18, 2012
Turkey is situated at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Bordered by eight countries, Turkey is a major regional power and is becoming increasingly integrated with the West through its membership of NATO, the Council of Europe and the G-20.
Turkey is a candidate country for EU membership: it began full membership negotiations with the European Union in 2005, having been an associate member of the European Economic Community since 1963 and having joined the EU Customs Union in 1995.
Closer ties with the EU, which may or may not lead to membership, are driving educational redevelopment in many forms, including a qualification structure, professional qualification recognition and VET reform. Turkey has also been heavily involved with the Lifelong Learning Programme, and it has been estimated that, between 2007-13, almost 250,000 Turks will have benefitted from EU education and training programmes.
However, it still retains close ties with the Middle East, the Turkic States of Central Asia and African countries. The population is roughly 80 million, with a relatively young age profile: 26.6% are under 15 years old (as a comparison, 18% of the UK population is below 15).
In the last decade, Turkey has enjoyed robust economic growth, per capita GDP rising more than fourfold (in 2011, for instance, the growth figure stood at 8.8%). At the time of writing, Turkey is the world's 16th and Europe's 6th biggest economy.
UK NARIC data
Turkey has been one of the most popular country files on the International Comparisons database in recent years. In 2011, Turkey received 9,921 views. This figure represents a 3.2% fall on the 2010 figure (10,240), but is an increase on 2009 (9,778).
"The figures for Turkey are intriguing. We see a lot of traffic to the relevant pages on International Comparisons and we get a lot of individuals coming to us with Turkish qualifications; but there aren't that many applications coming through UCAS. The most recent figures show that there were only 450 applications and the country doesn't feature in their top 50 countries." commented Tim Buttress, Deputy Director Policy and Communications at UK NARIC.
Visa data may demonstrate why. According to the UED (Association of International Education Counsellors, in Turkey), there are now more than 55,000 Turkish nationals studying abroad, with 55% of these relating to language courses. English language courses in the UK have always been particularly popular (and likewise constitute the bulk of visa applications), although recent visa restrictions and costs have led to an increase in interest in other study destinations such as Malta.
Traditionally at higher education level, the most popular destination is the USA. According to UNESCO, Germany, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and the UK make up the rest of the top five study destinations.
Higher Education in Turkey
The higher education sector is currently experiencing considerable expansion. There are now roughly 170 universities, about 75 of which are run by private foundations. In terms of student numbers, there are now more than 2 million higher education students, of which more than 1 million are in undergraduate programmes and ½ million are in higher vocational schools. Only 9% of students are enrolled at the private, foundation universities, indicating the increased specialisation of these institutions.
An increasing global view and focus on quality assurance within higher education is beginning to pay dividends too: in terms of reputation, Middle East Technical University featured in the top 100 ranked universities in the 2012 THE study.
Nonetheless, this provision does not meet domestic demand for education and helps to explain the high numbers of students seeking to travel abroad to study each year. In 2009, for instance, 1.65 million university applications were made, but places for only 330,000 (20%) were available.
Turkey as an International Student Destination
Turkey is itself fast becoming an established destination country for international students. Statistics from the ÖSYM (Student Selection and Placement Center) show that there were 16,000 international students at Turkish universities in 2005-06 and that the number had increased to almost 27,000 by the 2010-11 academic year.
The admission of more foreign students has been stimulated by a governmental drive to play a greater role in the Islamic world, with offers of low tuition fees and generous scholarships. Additionally, in 2010, TUPA (Turkish Universities Promotion Agency) was formed to promote Turkish universities across the world and to attract international students. The Foreign Economic Relations Board's (DEK) Business Education Council aims to increase the number of international students to 100,000 by 2015.
Official language(s) Turkish
Other language(s) Kurdish and other minority languages
Population 79,749,461 (Jul-12)
Population (world ranking) 17 (Jan-12)
GDP (purchasing power parity) $ 1,053,000,000,000 (Jan-11)
GDP (per capita world ranking) 107 (Jan-11)
Compulsory education Eight years, covering primary and basic education (ages 6 to 14). However, see Education Reforms below.
Academic year School begins in late September and extends through to early June, with some variations between urban and rural areas. Universities usually organise the academic year into two semesters, usually between October – January and between March – July.
Education laws New "4+4+4" Bill, proposing an extension of compulsory school education to 12 years and a reintroduction of more progression pathways at 'middle school' level – which has proved controversial as it will re-open progression at age 10 into imam hatip (religious-oriented) middle schools.
Total (foreign students) 47,275 (2009)
Percentage of world total 1.4% (2009)
Top Destinations USA (12,612), Australia (7,648), France (5,803), Russian Fed. (3,518), Japan (2,895) – 2009
Number of Member Enquiries 2011 73
Member Enquiries 2011 rank 48th
Number of Individual Assessments 2011 237
Individual Assessments 2011 rank 32nd
Number of database page views 2011 9,921
Database page views 2011 rank 24th
Number of database page views 2010 10,240
Posted in Immigration, Spotlights, UK NARICTagged Economic Migration, Europe, Immigration, Middle East, NARIC, Qualification equivalence, qualifications, recognition, study in UK, Turkey, work in UK
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