text:
Q: Pressing a physical button, but digitally using an Arduino in an existing circuit I have a pair of speakers that by default select their input as bluetooth and I have to press a physical button (every time I power them up) to switch their input to auxiliary.
So I'm thinking of a small arduino based project where every time the arduino starts up (I will wire it to get 5V when the speakers start) it will simulate a button press.
The software part is easy, when the arduino starts, just output the correct voltage on one of the pins, connected to the switch.
Trouble is that I need to press the switch just once (if I press it more than once, the inputs will cycle) and I cannot really understand the electrical schematic.

So as you can see there are 5 switches, all connected to the pin 45 of the MCU.
I want to simulate a single press of the SW10/INPUT button.
Conceptually I think the pin 45 measures the voltage (since every button is series with a different resistor) in order to find out which button was pressed.
So, is the AD_KEY line connected to the MCU between pin 45 and the 3,3K resistor?
Just like a voltage divider?
If yes, does this mean that on startup, and only on startup, it is sufficient to output 1.2V [a] from the arduino to the AD_KEY line (which leads to pin 45, where the speaker's MCU will read) in order to simulate a button press?
Electronically, is there a way I can do this just once at the beginning, without wasting an mcu/arduino (even if just a micro arduino) here?
[a]: If we're talking about a voltage divider then when SW109/INPUT is pressed we have:
$$
V_{pin45} = V_{in}\frac{R80}{R80 + R1} =>
$$
$$
V_{pin45} = 3.3V\frac{2K\Omega}{2K\Omega + 3.3K\Omega} = 1.24V
$$

A: Even simpler is just to have the Arduino or any other chip to connect the AD pin via 2k2 resistor to ground momentarily, just like what the button does.
You only need to have an open-drain output, which can be implemented in Arduino software, or with a suitable logic gate or comparator that has an open-drain output, or even with a transistor.
The timing circuit can also be an Arduino, or a 555, or simple RC time constant with schmitt trigger inverter gate or comparator.

A: I think it would be better to use a 2N7000 MOSFET in parallel with the switch rather than trying to use the Arduino output directly.
Otherwise accidentally setting the output high would put 5V on a 3.3V chip, which could damage it. Cheap insurance for a single part. The output voltage will also be closer to zero when on, so probably more noise/drift margin.
Arduino Nanos from China are around $2 and the transistor is almost free, so it's a fairly cheap and easy solution.

A: To simplify it you need a 3,3 volt Arduino (There are many variants to choose from) and a 2k ohm resistor.
Connect the 2k ohm resistor to a digital port and the other end of the resistor to "AD KEY" and also connect Arduinos GND to the amplifiers GND. And I believe you could supply a Arduino from the Amplifiers 3,3 volt rail.
Remember to set the digital pin to "floating state" when its not used, otherwise will it influence the voltage on "AD KEY".
pinMode(7, INPUT);

And to make a program that only run once:
void setup(){
 // Code you want to run once
}

void loop(){
 // No code
}

And take a look at ATtiny MCUs for your project, they can be programmed with Arduino IDE and the smallest is just a 8pin MCU = small, not power hungry and cheap.
Ref.: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/arjun/programming-attiny85-with-arduino-uno-afb829
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXXdoeu7yWw

A: A simple window comparator/inverter solution:

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
The LM393 is an open collector device; both comparators must be off for the transistor Q1 to be turned on. The voltage thresholds \$V_\mathrm{L}\$ and \$V_\mathrm{H}\$ are set to \$\frac{1}{3}V_+\$ and \$\frac{2}{3}V_+\$ respectively. As the voltage across C1 rises between those two thresholds, both comparators are off. The voltage now applied to Q1's base allows it to conduct, pulling the switch connection to ground, simulating your button press. You can alter C1/R4 time constant, \$\tau\$, and/or the threshold levels to tune your inital delay, and pulse width. With the values given here, the initial delay before the pulse is 40 ms, and the pulse width is 70 ms. These can be calculated as follows:
\$t_\mathrm{delay} = - \tau \ln (1 - \frac{V_\mathrm{L}}{V_+})\$
\$\mathrm{Pulse\ length} = \tau \ln (\frac{V_+ - V_\mathrm{L}}{V_+ - V_\mathrm{H}})\$
Not as flexible as a microcontroller, but might just be cheaper..!

A: Don Lancaster's CMOS Cookbook may have the simplest most elegant solution.  A cmos 4093 plus a capacitor  PUR, power up reset circuit.  Fast, cheap and lovely.

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Nobody prepares for a Diamondbacks game like you do. Hundreds of jumping jacks followed by a few sets of fifty bicep curls? Please - that won't even break a sweat! Rather than preparing physically you amp up your mind plotting every possible move you can in order to distract the opposing team from the stands. Keep up the good work little lady ?cause the D-Backs are one of the finest teams in the MLB and it's all thanks to dedicated focused fans like you. The Opal Synthetic top by Majestic features an embroidered team logo on the left chest old school team-colored sleeves contrast color mesh ventilation panels and a sewn-on woven jock tag at the left hem making it the perfect look that'll keep your blood pumping for victory time and time again!


Chef Andrew Carmellini, first an acolyte of Daniel Boulud, and then a chef with a half dozen restaurants in his culinary arsenal, has definitely made a name for himself in New York City. This Robert De Niro–backed restaurant is still one of his best. The space at Locanda Verde is warm and welcoming, with accents of brick and wood and large windows that open to the street, weather permitting, while the menu is full of inspired Italian comfort food that hits the mark. Standouts include small plates like blue crab crostino with jalapeños and the pumpkin agnolotti in brown sage butter that diners reminisce about. Several draft beers, along with more than a dozen wines by the glass, make an already hopping bar scene even more of a draw.


text:
Cuba's Upcoming Communist Party Congress: Moving Away from Socialism and Workers' Democracy
The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has set April 2011, the 50th anniversary of the revolution's victory over the US-Cuban exile mercenary force at the Bay of Pigs, for its 6th Congress. I follow this process with special attention, in part, because I participated in the PCC's 4th congress preparatory discussion, in 1991.
Like millions of others around the world, I feel the Cuban revolution was (and is) fought for me too. Cubans, including their leader Fidel Castro, help make us feel so. For instance, as recounted in the book Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel Fidel told Lee Lockwood: "Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are our enemies… Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers."
Although I was not a Party member, and not a Cuban citizen, I was permitted to participate in the PCC discussions because I was working as a volunteer on an oil tanker in Santiago de Cuba, one of five I sailed on. (My experience was recounted in the article "Cuba at Sea" in the London journal Socialist Resistance.)
After hours of discussing ideas, including my own about the need for greater journalist freedom and citizenry participation in the media, the seamen passed two motions: my proposal, and democratization of decision-making generally. After the meeting, most said these discussions were a waste of words. In the end, they saw no results from their motions, but the Party did listen to some of the one million complaints and proposals.
Several times in the last half-century of revolutionary Cuba citizens have been allowed to discuss national policies (not international ones) but the results have been consultative rather than binding—with the exception of adopting a new constitution in 1976, and modifying it in 1992. Three years ago, shortly after Raul Castro took over the presidency, the Party launched a national discussion about the future of the revolution. Millions contributed ideas, but there was no real mechanism to implement anything debated.
Last November, the leading members of the PCC, several of whom hold key government positions, announced 291 proposals for reforms in 12 areas of economic and social life Cubans. A burning question is if the 800,000 Communist Party members' discussion, plus that of non-members, will actually affect the policies to be taken at the forthcoming PCC VI congress.
There is no proposed mechanism to assure this happens in the 32-page document. Nor is there any procedure for introducing other matters.
Cuba's Communist Party Congress meets this April
The aim of the proposals is to increase production, decrease the budget deficit, balance exports-imports, and pay off the country's $20 billion foreign debt. The guidelines call for reducing the state's role by delegating more authority to local governments and some work sites, increasing taxes and other revenues, while cutting back on social benefits and subsidies.
While it calls for more private enterprise and foreign investments, the document maintains that "only socialism is capable of overcoming the difficulties and preserving the conquests of the Revolution".
Some of the proposals for discussion have, in fact, already been made into temporary laws by the "interim" policy-making body, the Council of Ministers. The Parliament of unpaid elected delegates meets once or twice a year for two days. One of its tasks is to make the temporary laws permanent, which it always does.
The PCC wants the state to continue as the central economic planner, using the budgetary method, but it will permit more farmland as usufruct property, greater self-employment (in 178 areas) and small businesses which, for the first time, will be allowed to employ people outside the family.
In Overall Terms
I find positive and worrisome some aspects in the guidelines.
Positive goals are those aimed at becoming self-sufficient in foodstuffs; uniting the two currencies into one which all Cubans posses; some decentralization of decision-making and use of more finances by local governments and companies. They affirm that Cuba is too dependent on foreign capital and imports, that Cuba must cut back on excessive costs and waste, strengthen the desire to work and eliminate companies operating at a loss, which often leads to producing less than a company spends.
On the downside are several proposals which would continue mono-culture dependency for exports, a dual economy and class inequalities generally viewed as necessary tactical setbacks in the early days (1990-2000) of the Special Period austerity program following the fall of eastern European socialism. Many analysts, including myself when working for Cuba media (1987-96), expressed the fear that these retreats could become permanent (see my book, Cuba at the Crossroads, Infoservicios, Los Angeles, 1994). Our fears proved warranted. as concessions to capitalism have deepened and become entrenched.
The greatest shortcoming in the proposals is the failure to plan for a transfer to workers' power, in which workers actually manage the state and the economy—in other words real democracy. Because workers do not have authentic decision-making power, and because the majority have sufficient foodstuffs and essential consumer items due to low wages and little supply, there is rampant demoralization, apathy, cynicism and alienation. This results in epidemic thievery of needed items from workplaces and warehouses and an omnipresent black market. Thievery and corruption among many government officials and bureaucrats exacerbate the situation.
The Cuban media refuse to publish critiques of this nature, other than by Fidel and Raul. (See especially Fidel's "Self-destruct" speech at Havana University, November 17, 2005, and Raul's speech, July 26, 2007.) Recently, however, Esteban Morales, a prominent Cuban Communist and researcher on race relations in Cuba, wrote a critical article from a left socialist perspective, titled "Corruption, the True Counter-Revolution" (published abroad but also allowed on the website of Cuba's writer-artists association-UNEAC), for which the PCC expelled him, affirming the widely held view that ordinary Cubans are forbidden to have any real influence. (4)
Another problem is that many of the state's economists propose "market socialism", believing that the solution to scarcity is more capitalist investment and supply-demand pricing. This leads to petty-bourgeois production relations and an individualistic mentality—worker-capitalists. If one is to be paid according to what one produces and sells, as proposed, then nickel and sugar cane workers, for instance, would be poorer than workers in citrus farming when global capitalist pricing favors oranges, in the inevitable speculation cycle, and mining nickel becomes unprofitable. Thus the basic principle of solidarity and equality is in serious danger.
Why can't prices be based on socialist relations of production, taking into account worker incomes in relationship to their necessary consumption?
Furthermore, the proposals do not call specifically for greater barter trading with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of America) countries, although there is a vague statement that the eight progressive ALBA countries are a priority. There is little trade with ALBA, with the exception of Venezuela. Most trade is with major capitalist countries. Ironically, the US is Cuba's number one food supplier (25-30% of all foodstuffs; Cuba imports 80% of its food). Overall it is the fourth leading importer—6% of all imports are from the US. Officially, the US continues a blockade of Cuba, but since 2000 US businesses have been selling foodstuffs and medicines on a cash-only basis in US dollars. This one-way trade places Cuba at a security risk, by making the country increasingly dependent for food upon the imperialist whims of its main enemy.
Reliance on an export economy plays into the hands of a vulnerable world capitalist market. Cuba industrializes very little, something Che Guevara, before he left to promote revolution in South America, had endeavored to change without serious results. But with what little industrial development there is, current proposals call for orienting it toward export production while reducing the domestic component. How can Cuba meet its people's own industrial needs by exporting more and importing less? It is nearly impossible already to find new clothes for sale in national pesos, for instance.
Cubans have never had sufficient housing. Many people live under the same roof—three generations is not unusual. But young people, especially those wishing to marry and have children, are discouraged by this "custom". Nor will they be enthralled by a proposal calling for more tourism-based construction–golf courses, aquatic parks, spas–all of which divert scarce labor and materials needed for housing.
Another proposal calls for diminishing state financing of social security by extending the contribution of workers in both state and private sectors. One of the pillars of social welfare brought about by the socialist revolution is now to be conditioned, in part, on taxes paid by already underpaid workers. Until now part of one's "income" had been free access to health care and education, and subsidized low prices for foodstuffs and clothing. The ration book has guaranteed some basic foods, albeit fewer and fewer. The party-state now wants this basic rationing eliminated. That means that real wages will decrease. The food sold in farmers markets, even the state controlled ones, are too costly to provide enough food for most people for the entire month. Proposed cutbacks will result in greater frustration, thievery and remittances reliance. Will more people flee to capitalist countries, in order to send their families some money just so they can eat?
The party-state offers a promise of increased wages, particylarly in the $ equivalent (CUC, which is valid only in Cuba) economy, and farm workers once production increases. But hungry, frustrated workers will not work harder before they are better paid and treated. They will be angrier and more open to corruption.
Besides my critique, another major reason for Cuba's economic crises is the weather. Between 1998 and 2008, Cuba suffered over $20 billion in losses due to 16 hurricanes. Three of them, in 2008 alone, caused half that damage.
Workers Power is the Only Future for Socialism
I am not alone in maintaining that without workers' power real socialism cannot be built, and even half-real socialism will fail—as we have witnessed in the other countries that made attempts.
Workers power should include oversight committees staffed on a rotating basis by actual workers across the country. I firmly support what James Petras wrote:
"A new income policy in itself can contribute to greater incentives for productivity if it is combined with greater direct participation of all workers in the organization and administration of the work place as well as the opening of multiple spaces to discuss the restructuring of the economy.
"What especially requires reform is a new system of public accountability based on independent accounting authorities, consumers' and workers' oversight commissions with the power to 'open the books'. Workers and professional control will not eliminate corruption altogether but it will challenge the authorities through independent periodic reviews…Greater accountability within the leadership is necessary but not sufficient. There must be control and vigilance by authorized commissions from below and by a parallel independent general accounting office…a new system of elected representatives to oversee the allocation of the budget to the various ministries and the power to summon responsible officials to televised hearings for a strict public accounting."
When revolutionary organizers are engaged in workers' struggles under capitalism, one of their best arguments, when confronted by management claims that their demands are not economically possible, is the demand: "Open the books." So why can't the workers see the books in proletariat-led Cuba?
I close with a sober quotation from Fidel Castro:
"Capitalism tends to reproduce itself under any social system because it is based on egotism and on human instincts. Human society has no other alternative but to overcome this contradiction; otherwise, it would not be able to survive."
RON RIDENOUR, who was a co-founder and editor with Dave Lindorff in 1976 of the Los Angeles Vanguard, lives in Denmark. A veteran journalist who has reported in the US and from Venezuela, Cuba and Central America, he has written, Cuba at the Crossroads, Backfire: The CIA's Biggest Burn, and Yankee Sandinistas, and is an occasional contributor to ThisCantBeHappening!
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William Butler:
Geographical and biographical exercises, designed for the use of young ladies, by William Butler, . The second edition. - Paperback
[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale ECCO, Print Editions], WILLIAM BUTLER,WORLD, This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 46 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.1in.The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: British LibraryT227616London : printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Pauls Church-Yard, 1799. viii, 31, 1p. ; 8 This item ships from La Vergne,TN.
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Geographical and Biographical Exercises, Designed for the Use of Young Ladies, by William Butler, . the Second Edition. (Paperback) - Paperback
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[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale Ecco, Print Editions, United States], Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****. The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT227616London: printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Paul s Church-Yard, 1799. viii,31, [1]p.; 8
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[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale Ecco, Print Editions, United States], Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****.The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT227616London: printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Paul s Church-Yard, 1799. viii,31, [1]p.; 8
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Geographical And Biographical Exercises, Designed For The Use Of Young Ladies, By William Butler, ... The Second Edition. - new book
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT227616London: printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1799. viii,31, 1]p.; 8 Books List_Books
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[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale ECCO, Print Editions], WILLIAM BUTLER,WORLD, This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 46 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.1in.The 18th cen… More...
[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale ECCO, Print Editions], WILLIAM BUTLER,WORLD, This item is printed on demand. Paperback. 46 pages. Dimensions: 9.7in. x 7.4in. x 0.1in.The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: British LibraryT227616London : printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Pauls Church-Yard, 1799. viii, 31, 1p. ; 8 This item ships from La Vergne,TN.<
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[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale Ecco, Print Editions, United States], Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****. The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, … More...
[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale Ecco, Print Editions, United States], Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****. The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT227616London: printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Paul s Church-Yard, 1799. viii,31, [1]p.; 8<
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[EAN: 9781170659359], Neubuch, [PU: Gale Ecco, Print Editions, United States], Language: English . Brand New Book ***** Print on Demand *****.The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Rich in titles on English life and social history, this collection spans the world as it was known to eighteenth-century historians and explorers. Titles include a wealth of travel accounts and diaries, histories of nations from throughout the world, and maps and charts of a world that was still being discovered. Students of the War of American Independence will find fascinating accounts from the British side of conflict. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT227616London: printed for the author, by S. Couchman; and sold by T. Conder, Bucklersbury; and E. Newbery, corner of St. Paul s Church-Yard, 1799. viii,31, [1]p.; 8<
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Butler, William
Geographical And Biographical Exercises, Designed For The Use Of Young Ladies, By William Butler, ... The Second Edition.
Details of the book - Geographical And Biographical Exercises, Designed For The Use Of Young Ladies, By William Butler, ... The Second Edition.


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Home >Camera Enforcement > Revenue from Cameras > Louisiana: Redflex Appeals Court Loss In Lawsuit Against Sheriff
Louisiana: Redflex Appeals Court Loss In Lawsuit Against Sheriff
Redflex appeals its $8 million lawsuit loss against former client Jefferson Parish, Louisiana.
Redflex Traffic Systems is appealing its failed effort to sue a former red light camera client for $8 million in federal court. Redflex last week asked the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Judge Eldon Fallon's December 20 ruling that dismissed the company's demand that Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Sheriff Newell Normand pay up.
Automated ticketing firms have a history of taking their claims to federal courts, sometimes even forum shopping to exploit personal connections for a favorable decision. Here the standard tactics backfired, as Judge Fallon refused to allow the Australian company to argue Jefferson Parish and Sheriff Normand violated their automated ticketing contract.
Redflex became infuriated on January 27, 2010, when local officials decided to suspend the red light camera program after serious ethics concerns were raised about the company's practices. Documents revealed Redflex had paid a 3.2 percent cut of the firm's profit on each ticket to lobbyist Bryan Wagner, a former New Orleans city councilman, who in turn shared the funds with the wife of District Judge Robert Murphy. Wagner was set to earn an estimated $90,000 a year from this deal. Jay Morris Specter, the lobbyist who hired Wagner on behalf of Redflex, was released from federal prison on October 21, 2010 after serving time on unrelated fraud charges. The parish placed $4.7 million in payments to Redflex in a lockbox pending resolution of the ethics concerns.
Redflex sued for that amount, plus damages, for breach of contract. Unfortunately for the firm, the same contract specifies that state courts, not federal courts, are the proper venue for a lawsuit.
"Any dispute arising out of or in connection with this agreement shall be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana and both parties specifically agree to be bound by the jurisdiction and venue thereof," Section 10.17 of the Redflex contract with Jefferson Parish stated.
Redflex argued that the language specifying "courts" included the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana because its jurisdiction includes Jefferson Parish. Redflex is only entitled to sue for $20,000 in a parish court. In his ruling, Judge Fallon suggested Redflex would not likely succeed in any appeal.
"The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is careful to distinguish the concepts of physical location and geographical extent of jurisdiction; where a clause defines the forum in terms of one, courts must not imply the other," Judge Fallon concluded. "Here, the cited language clearly refers to location, employing the phrase 'the courts located in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana,' as opposed to geographical extent of jurisdiction. Therefore, the defendants' motion to dismiss is well-founded and must be granted."
A copy of the December ruling is available in a 90k PDF file at the source link below.
Source: Redflex v. Normand (US District Court, Eastern District Louisiana, 12/20/2012)
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Review: The Shape of Water
Guillermo del Toro's new feature is a waterlogged romance set above a dingy cinema: it's murky as much as it is vibrant. Eliza Esposito (Sally Hawkins) falls for an amphibious man imprisoned as a lab specimen. She teaches him sign language, and executes a plan to free him from the lethal scalpels of science. As a janitor at the Occam Aerospace Research Centre, Eliza sleeps during the day to earn during the night. Hawkins plays the role with a charming grace: Eliza is a mute woman whose sole companion is her gay neighbour, Giles (Richard Jenkins). Giles is reliant on Eliza's home-cooked meals, and is often the downbeat struggling artist unable to sell his Norman Rockwell-esque paintings.
Another of Eliza's allies is her colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer). Spencer engages with her fiery presence, as seen in Hidden Figures (2016) and The Help (2011). In The Shape of Water, however, she mostly complains about her good-for-nothing husband, and re-enters the action of the break-out plan too late to really help. A profound friendship is lost in the narrative; emotional investment is missing in this respect.
The Shape of Water is a firm example of how del Toro effortlessly combines the soft with the gritty, the whimsical with the tragic. It's Beauty and the Beast (1991) meets Free Willy (1993). Cinematographer Dan Laustsen adds obsidian ink droppings, creating visuals saturated with a shadowy oppression (apt for Cold War Baltimore). As alluring as it is, The Shape of Water cannot surpass the indelible impression left by del Toro's signature Pan's Labyrinth (2006). Its narrative struggles to reach past familiar story constructs. Once the formula is found, no event comes as a surprise. The fish-out-of-water metaphor extends a little too far, verging on the predictable and unoriginal. It remains charming, but remains safe. Attempts to humanise the creature and anchor the romance jolts the narrative into a dream scene: an incongruous and unnecessarily indulgent La La Land dance sequence. Instead of inspiring as muses should, influences have smothered The Shape of Water.
Strickland (Michael Shannon), is the film's villain. He's brilliantly vicious but devoid of any complex audience judgement. Strickland is too obviously constructed for anything other than indifference. Shannon's gripping performance however, like Hawkins', works in the film's favour. Strickland is the contemptible working father and husband, habitually crushing candy pieces between his canines, sweaty and manic with electrified cattle prod in hand.
Although the Oscars took the bait, del Toro does impress with his effective amalgamation of genres. The Shape of Water would make an impressive Venn diagram with its relations to a prisoner-of-war film, but also to romance, and to fantasy. It does exist as a homage to classical mythology and folklore, but one does question: would it have fit better alongside the releases of King Kong (1933) and E.T. (1982)?
Review by Anisha Jackson


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Gracy Olmstead
How to Save the Post-Industrial Town?
By Gracy Olmstead • July 6, 2016, 7:30 AM
dustin77a / Shutterstock
How do we save America's dying towns? This is a question of increasing importance in today's society: though some U.S. cities (such as Detroit) have experienced upheaval over the past several years, it's post-industrial and rural towns that seem to be suffering most. Binyamin Applebaum illuminates many of these struggles in a July 4 New York Times story about a former factory town that's fallen into decay:
Thirty years have passed, almost to the day, since the last blasts of the steel furnaces that were the reason for this city's existence. The steel mill is gone — used to film "RoboCop," then demolished. Most of the people are gone, too, and those who remain are struggling to find a new purpose for this place.
Last week, Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came here to declare that as president, he would revive the fortunes of the American steel industry — and, by implication, Monessen.
"We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country," Mr. Trump told 200 invited guests at an aluminum recycling facility that occupies part of the old mill complex. "This alone will create massive numbers of jobs."
In fact, about 71 percent of the steel used last year in the United States was made in the United States, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. The mills in Monessen and other cities along the Monongahela River were not replaced by Chinese factories but by smaller, more efficient factories in other parts of the country.
Having lived through that transition, the people here surrendered hope of a Trump-like revival long ago.
But that hasn't stopped other similar towns from rallying behind Trump, in hopes that the nostalgic dream he presents of revivified commerce may, in fact, come true. J.D. Vance notes for The Atlantic that many of these places have been trampled, broken, and disenchanted: "A common thread among Trump's faithful, even among those whose individual circumstances remain unspoiled, is that they hail from broken communities." He continues,
These are places where good jobs are impossible to come by. Where people have lost their faith and abandoned the churches of their parents and grandparents. Where the death rates of poor white people go up even as the death rates of all other groups go down. Where too many young people spend their days stoned instead of working and learning. … There is no group of people hurtling more quickly to social decay. No group of people fears the future more, dies with such frequency from heroin, and exposes its children to such significant domestic chaos.
This is something Kevin D. Williamson has written about for National Review in the past. He's noted the "welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy" pulling these communities apart. "The culture of the white underclass in America is horrifying," he says. "It's brutal. And its products are obvious."
Is this just the way America is going to progress (or more accurately, fall apart) in the next decade—or is there some way to breathe a vision and telos back into crumbling buildings and deserted downtowns?
Trump's popularity stems from nostalgia for the strong blue-collar community of yesteryear. But in his excellent new book The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin points out that putting one's hopes in reviving the past is romantic at best—disastrous at worst. "Whatever the argument being advanced about America's challenges in our politics in recent years, it is a pretty good bet that it has been rooted in an understanding of [a] lost era of American greatness," he writes. For Democrats, it's the Great Society years in 1960s America. For Republicans, it's the golden years of Ronald Reagan's presidency. But regardless, Levin argues, people "are focused less on how we can build economic, cultural, and social capital in the twenty-first century than on how we can recover the capital we have used up." And that presents some very considerable problems for towns like Monessen or Middletown.
Levin suggests that we need "a modernized ethic of subsidiarity," which would bring "incremental revival" to America's broken communities. In a Tocquevillian appeal to the importance of local, mediating institutions, he suggests that deconsolidation and federalism would add substance and telos to the hollowed-out towns filling our country. "A decentralized approach to social and economic policy would not only recognize the limits of our knowledge but also speak to the particular problems we now confront," he writes. "It embodies not just an epistemic humility but also a commitment to subsidiarity—to empowering institutions at different levels of our society to address those problems for which they are best suited."
But what sorts of institutions could possibly breathe life back into these communities? Here are a few Levin lists: families, schools, churches, local civic groups, nonprofits, charities, fraternal groups, and unions. Local libraries and community colleges can also play significant roles, and many local businesses have an institutional impact on their communities.
Levin's overarching point, one that can't be emphasized enough, is that nostalgia for midcentury America's admitted strengths will not save the towns now suffering from a collapse of economic and cultural capital. Rather, an honest and clear-eyed understanding of the post-industrial trends rocking our nation—along with a healthy appreciation of the diversity and localism sprouting in their wake—will help us move forward in a healthy way.
We must also note the toll "brain drain"—especially brain drain of the young—has had on these communities. Something must be done to draw them back, if we want rural towns to survive. In a recent story for The Atlantic, author Alana Semuels writes, "Kids and grandkids move to the cities, coming back on holidays, inheriting their parents' homes and leaving them empty, wondering what will happen to the towns their parents say used to thrive."
Part of the problem seems to be a generational disconnect, re: what makes a place livable and appealing. As Applebaum notes in his New York Times piece, "[Monessen's] younger residents are frustrated that the older generation still dreams of factories. They want to replace some of the old mills with waterfront homes and restaurants. They would like to see the city and the river meet, instead of being almost entirely separated by the old industrial strip."
The suggestions made above are not radical—they actually seem to echo the work of New Urbanists (chronicled and considered at length here at TAC on our New Urbs blog). This vision attunes itself to pre-World War II urban development, eschewing some of the excesses of midcentury America (the time that most baby boomers in these communities are pining away for). It calls for greater walkability, mixed-use neighborhoods, and vibrant parks and city squares where people can congregate, as well as a renovation and preservation of (as opposed to demolishing and replacing) the old buildings and blocks that make up historic districts and downtowns. These are just some of the puzzle pieces that fit into a larger New Urbanist blueprint for revitalizing America's cities.
But in Monessen, these young people haven't made much leeway, says Applebaum: "Mr. Mavrakis, the mayor, has little patience for these dreams. A blunt and forceful man who spent much of his life as a union organizer, he would like to demolish much of the remaining downtown and offer the land for new development."
Emphasizing the historic and human-scale neighborhood may take some time to catch on. But trying to spread this vision will help knit together some of the fraying threads that are damaging U.S. towns and communities. Good urban planning will not, by itself, redeem a dying factory town. But it may help stimulate and foster the other important strands of community growth necessary for a flourishing place.
There are other ways we can consider saving America's towns. One I have been mulling over lately is the role wealthy individuals can play by boosting local commerce via their patronage (providing microloans, sponsoring vocational programs, providing grants and endowments, et cetera). I also wonder what recent trends and changes in agriculture might do to boost commerce and congregation in small towns and cities.
One thing's for certain: there's no cure-all, no single way to transform and resurrect towns like Monessen. And the belief that a presidential candidate (be he orange-haired or socialist) can solve all our societal ills will only serve to exacerbate the problems we face. As Vance puts it,
The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they'll realize it.
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Hide 20 comments
20 Responses to How to Save the Post-Industrial Town?
Brooklyn Blue Dog says:
Where is it written that any town has a right to survive forever?
It seems to me that a lot of this misunderstands how towns in general — and these towns in particular — came into being. If they were rural towns, they grew up because that was where people gathered to market their crops and trade them for other things they needed. Later, perhaps a factory developed there to take advantage of the supply of labor. Or some industrial towns grew up around a factory that was built there because of the access to water power.
But once the economic function of the town ceased to exist, because either market or factory was no longer necessary, who says the town needs to exist?
The world is littered with towns — and even great cities — that lie in ruins and have been forgotten by the world because they were no longer able to support themselves.
The history of the world has been the free movement of people following economic activity. It was only in the late 19th century that the free movement of people was halted, starting in the US with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Prior to that, if you wanted to go somewhere else to follow the economic activity, you just went. Or perhaps your whole village went. Or perhaps your whole people went en masse.
The solution to these towns' problems is for them to die off. That's what will happen. No amount of riverside restaurants will save them if they have no other source of high-paying jobs to support the restaurants.
It's not just happening here. Look at Japan to see the future of the US. Entire towns in the countryside consist of old people, because these the only economic activity in these towns is local stores, which don't really provide much of a living. Children go to the cities to work, because that is where the jobs are — and the potential mates are. Their parents die and their parents' houses are abandoned. The children don't want to live there — and could not support themselves even if they wanted to live there — and the houses cannot be sold, because no one wants to live there. So, they are just left to rot.
SteveM says:
Re: Brooklyn Blue Dog, "No amount of riverside restaurants will save them if they have no other source of high-paying jobs to support the restaurants."
Re: "[Monessen's] younger residents are frustrated that the older generation still dreams of factories. They want to replace some of the old mills with waterfront homes and restaurants."
A town cannot exist in an economic vacuum. Unless a town produces goods and services tradable with the larger economy it will collapse. In Gracy's ideal vision of those towns, what would those goods and services be?
In Youngstown Ohio and hundreds of other small cities in the U.S., the price of a legacy house is cheaper than a new car. Same thing in Northeast PA, the old steel towns around Pittsburgh, Upstate New York, Western Massachusetts, to say nothing of the rotting carcass that is Appalachia. All of those towns formerly produced something. Now they produce nothing. They essentially subsist on government handouts.
The U.S. is a Ponzi scheme post-industrial economy. What cannot go on forever – won't. At this stage so late in the game, Trump's promises are probably illusions. No other candidate even has those.
Parenthetically, the United States, the largest economy in the world with thousands of miles of coastline, scores of major ports and a thriving cruise industry has essentially no commercial ship building apart from what is required to comply with the Jones Act. All of the cargo ships that off-load Chinese goods in Long Beach and all of the high tech cruise liners leaving Miami were built someplace else. Imagine that.
Yet what is a priority for Barack Obama is granting men in dresses access to women's facilities, not enabling the reconstitution American commercial ship building. The Republicans too just sat back and watched it happen.
The Cronies have sold out the American worker over decades and the condition is terminal. No amount of idealized Urbanism is going to fix that.
trapper says:
Ms. Olmstead is still chasing the post-industrial unicorn. I suppose she is in good company, as I expect most college courses probably still teach the "post-industrial service economy" myth. Unfortunately the real world does not wait for academic theorists to wake up and smell the decaying wreckage of the American economy.
Just to make it clear: the "post-industrial" economy does not exist. It will never exist without a strong manufacturing base to support it. Sold as a successor to manufacturing, it was never anything more than a fairy tale used to justify the decisions already made by stateless corporations to abandon America for greater manufacturing profits elsewhere. The following NY Times article from 1987 is now particularly prescient:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/17/business/business-forum-can-services-survive-without-manufactoring-myth-post-industrial.html
Keep reading, Ms. Olmstead. Much of what we were taught and told is nonsense.
Fran Macadam says:
"It embodies not just an epistemic humility but also a commitment to subsidiarity—to empowering institutions at different levels of our society to address those problems for which they are best suited."
That certainly is some mystifying mumbo-jumbo.
None of the above deals with or offers any way for the economic support that is missing – a viable economy of employment that is both meaningful and is paid in accordance.
All it does is dismiss the idea of putting people back to work as "nostalgic."
Not helpful in the least, to say that we don't know what to do, but that Trump's concern to genuinely create real paying work for all of us disenfranchised is clearly not going to work.
My immediate viscreal reaction is that this is along the lines of Bill Clinton's telling us we have to accept being doomed, and not try to reclaim what we once had, or what our children could have. It would be more believable if he weren't successfully doing just that himself, trying to reclaim the White House.
Why does this article make me want to say to the intellectual prevaricators who tell us Trump isn't the answer, because there really isn't any answer, "Go to Hell"?
John Ainsworth says:
One thing I've consistently seen missing in all discussion of small town survival is the role that ESOPs could play.
ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program) allows the employees of the company to hold shares of the company in their retirement accounts. ESOPs are the closest approximation in US law of distributism – they allow the workers to (fractionally) own the means by which their wealth is produced.
Additionally, ESOPs have some interesting tax benefits. A 100% employee-owned ESOP pays no federal income tax!
Here's an example of a small town that is thriving because its owner chose to invest in the employees and the community rather than seeking a price-maximizing exit strategy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryjosephs/2015/03/30/improbable-schweitzer-engineering-esop-story-growth-company-that-stayed-put/#7173e55c2ed5
Kurt Gayle says:
You quote Benjamin Applebaum (New York Times): "The mills in Monessen and other cities along the Monongahela River were not replaced by Chinese factories but by smaller, more efficient factories in other parts of the country."
That's partially true — that "smaller, more efficient factories" in other parts of the US led to some of the earlier Pittsburgh area closures. But as Neil Irwin wrote in the New York Times on June 28 following the Trump speech, "The culprit in that era was both international competition [international competition that Mr. Applebaum fails to mention] and the introduction of mini-mills, which allowed the production of steel with far fewer man-hours."
The right kind of tariff protection could have helped the Pittsburgh-area plants to retool, stay open, and fight off international competition.
But "[Donald Trump] is right," continues Neil Irwin, "that the number of steel industry jobs — more precisely 'iron and steel mills and ferroalloy manufacturing,' in government data-speak — is down by 44 percent in the Pittsburgh area since 1990, a span in which the United States entered the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] and engaged in much more extensive trade with China."
Trump said in his speech: "It was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA in 1993, and Hillary Clinton who supported it. It was Bill Clinton who lobbied for China's disastrous entry into the World Trade Organization, and Hillary who backed that terrible agreement. Then, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stood by while China cheated on its currency, added another trillion dollars to our trade deficit, and stole hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property. The city of Pittsburgh, and the State of Pennsylvania, have lost one-third of their manufacturing jobs since the Clintons put China in the WTO."
In May, 2014 research paper entitled "Surging Steel Imports Put Up To Half a Million U.S. Jobs at Risk," the Economic Policy Institute reported:
"The U.S. steel industry is facing its worst import crisis in more than a decade. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, steelmakers in other countries, backed by aggressive government support, continued to add production capacity as demand stagnated. The open and large U.S. market became the prime target for the massive excess supply stemming from this excess capacity, and, since 2011, U.S. steel imports have surged…"
http://www.epi.org/publication/surging-steel-imports/
The US steel industry can be revived by putting in place tariffs that protect American steel and American jobs from unfair trade, currency manipulation, and foreign dumping of steel on American markets.
Will Harrington says:
In response to Brooklyn Blue Dog
Who says a town has a right to exist? Those of us who live here and want it to exist! You quote history as if to say it is the fate of a town to prosper and die. I will quote history back into prehistory and tell you there is no such thing as fate. Jericho, the oldest town in the world, despite having been destroyed several times, is still there. Frankly, our wishes count for a lot more than your indifference. It's up to us to find ways to save our towns, and the best way I can think of is to have the best schools and invest in connectivity. Let them telecommute and they will come home to raise their kids.
Thrice A Viking says:
Good article, Gracy, I enjoyed it, but I'm afraid that Brooklyn Blue Dog is right: you typically have to have jobs to survive. More specifically, unless you plan to give autarky a try, you need vocations that bring in money from outside the locale. These can be manufacturing, agricultural, mining, fishing, tourist, medical (as with Rochester, MN's Mayo Clinic), or governmental, DC being the best example. There may be others of which I haven't thought, and I said "typically" above, as a retirement community within a somewhat larger town might well work, pensions and SS payments serving the same purpose as the various jobs. Your and Levin's ideas sound charming, but by themselves only seem to ensure that a dying town will have a relatively painless death. Sorry.
I often wonder about the effect of concentrated economic power on these towns.
Our economy has become more and more dominated by a relatively small number of companies that dominate the national economic landscape. The majority of profits from these enterprises are funneled back to cities into the pockets of their owners (who hold stock) and their white-collar employees in centralized offices (who hold college degrees in business and the like).
Smaller towns don't see that money recirculate through the community as it travels back to the cities in exchange for cheap imported goods and payments on interest-bearing debt. In this sense, many of the urban / suburban areas extract resources from rural ones almost as if they were colonizers.
Even the backbone of rural economies—agriculture—increasingly involves extracting profits and sending them to owners and white-collar employees as factory farms continue to replace small farmers. The lack of money circulating in the local economy decreases the amount of decent-paying jobs, which increases the amount of money people spend at big-box stores on their credit cards, which decreases … etc., etc. in a nasty cycle.
Ms. Olmstead, you propose the following:
One I have been mulling over lately is the role wealthy individuals can play by boosting local commerce via their patronage (providing microloans, sponsoring vocational programs, providing grants and endowments, et cetera).
This sort of solution might be helpful in the short run (if you could find some truly beneficent billionaires), but it's not self-sustaining. Decentralizing the economy to promote competition by smaller companies would be better for local communities in the long run (not that I know how to begin that process—perhaps it will start when gasoline supplies drop and transporting goods long distances becomes more expensive).
Or, hell, there's always the conventional solution: just tell the laid-off factory workers and bankrupt small farmers to learn computer programming!
@John Ainsworth
I was going to include something about that, but my post was already long enough.
You are exactly right about the possible effects of ESOPs. They can spread the benefits of capital widely. If you've not read "The End of Illth" by Eric Reece, I suggest you have a look. He discusses those.
One hitch: convincing a company owner to use an ESOP instead of selling to venture capitalists or a larger firm isn't going to be easy.
FL Transplant says:
Am I the only one who remembers the Reagan "golden years" as the time when the then-existing existing steel industry collapsed–that's when the mills in western PA/eastern OH closed?The auto industry went through a huge contraction, closing many of the assembly lines and factories of the suppliers who fed them–so many people from MI migrated to TX they became known as "black tag folks" (after the MI back license plates)? The domestic consumer electronics disappeared–no more TVs, radios, stereos, were made domestically? The textile industry which had moved South from New England migrated overseas? Billy Joel's "Allentown" was a style on the radio?
These developments weren't strictly a function of Reagan's policies–but his "Golden Age" was far, far from that for the white working class everyone is so suddenly concerned about.
Even the most thoughtful comments here don't cover the complexity or span of steel's decline. For steel to really come back, we would have to find foreign markets, for example. Not something a tariff can accomplish.
In the South you can see a lot of empty manufacturing plants in small towns. Those plants were the only things keeping many small towns alive. But the real killer of small towns was the agricultural revolution which made it possible for one man to farm six hundred acres by himself. The land is still rich, but there are far fewer stewards to share the wealth.
I can't help adding, since no one else is connecting small towns to agriculture, that we have had probably eighty years at least of politicians of both parties singing the praise of the small farmer and the "family farm" and voting for farm bills more or less dictated by corporate agriculture.
DrTorch says:
Much truth here. These towns are equilibrating back to the Gibbs Free Energy level defined by the law of supply and demand.
What's sad is the loss of construction, history and community. All of those cost society.
So there is some worth to saving those towns, and the author is absolutely right to point out that it requires "an honest and clear-eyed understanding of the post-industrial trends rocking our nation." And those trends are far deeper and insidious than simply technical evolution.
JonF says:
Your comment (@ 10:12) starts out right, but then it falls apart when you call the US "a big Ponzi scheme." No, that's not the problem. The US still produces plenty of stuff, but it's being done in different places, by different people (as the article points out) and crucially, by fewer people, than 60 years ago. The big gorilla in the corner is the "fewer people" part. We love to kvetch about offshoring– and I've done some of that myself– but the real job killer has been automation. We simply do not need the legions of workers to produce all the stuff we want. And no one has really grappled with that reality.
oldlib says:
FL Transplant–As a former steelworker from Pittsburgh who lost his steel job in 1982, you're hit the proverbial nail on the head.
Forget about NYT articles and analyses. By 1990, steel was gone from the Monongahela Valley and Pittsburgh had moved on.
Tariffs would have been meaningless. Our steel mills were ancient, built in the 19th Century, and company management just wasn't interested in investing or "retooling." The steel companies got millions of dollars in tax incentives from local governments but spent the money elsewhere. They would only have invested in the old mills if the government forced them but that's socialism, right? Can't have that!
And I can't ever forget that the WWC voted for free trade, voted for the financialization of the economy, voted against organized labor, etc. They let themselves get so diverted by cultural issues and racial resentments, they never noticed that their pockets were getting picked.
Tony D. says:
"Trump isn't the answer, because there really isn't an answer." Beautiful, Fran. I want that on a bumper sticker, even though I don't drive.
DirtyJobsGuy says:
New England is full of mill towns that are fading. They were company towns built around water power (it's amazing how much 20-100 horsepower driving belts was worth then). This resulted in many industrial towns scattered on rivers and streams in hilly or mountainous valleys. Today no industrial or commercial business would consider such a site with a cramped multi-floor building. Today however a good highway is essential as is access to electric power and gas service.
One thing these towns had was that the mill owner did live in town, perhaps up on the hill. He supported the local schools, churches and showed up at the town festivities. Today this may still be the case but often the management is a bit farther away. If you want to keep these towns as a place to work you have to keep the planners, urbanists and others far away. Roads, utilities and a tolerance for industry is necessary. Too often urbanites really have tin ear to what makes smaller cities work. A town with busy shops, mines and mills is a healthy town socially even if it is not cute or quaint. Often these are one-business areas supporting lumber, ranching or mining and can be crushed by a single change in policy from Washington.
Jess1 says:
I'd say yes, FL – you're the only one recalling that, as you're off by a decade (including the song, which was released at the start of the 80s, penned in the 70s).
Carter ring a bell?
Winston says:
"I have spent the last 20 years seeking to understand how the cities of Europe's industrial heartlands backed away from the brink of ruin and recaptured their former glory. I discovered a strong common thread of industrial collapse, reinvestment and pulling through in spite of austerity."
https://theconversation.com/how-europes-industrial-cities-bounced-back-from-the-brink-of-ruin-59776
How Europe's industrial cities bounced back from the brink of ruin
@JonF
Exactly. Most manufacturing jobs were lost to automation, not to the Chinese. I grew up in an auto manufacturing town. Many of the factory buildings dated back to the 1920s. The newest ones were from the 1950s. Further, there were constant uproars every time the manufacturer tried to install a robot to do anything. So, they just built automated factories elsewhere, and shifted the work there.
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Building better search is essential to helping users navigate the global space supply chain (Credit: JanBaby / pixabay).
Following on from my introduction to our tech stack last week, I wanted to share some insights into the work going on behind-the-scenes to improve the core part of our platform: the search engine. Search algorithms have come a long way since the days of the original Yahoo!, Lycos, and AltaVista. The history of search engines is quite fascinating, and charts the way the internet itself has changed. With Google dominating the search engine landscape, you might be wondering why search is even worth working on. Well, although Google has come to dominate general search, niche search engines can cater to very specific queries that Google can't. Effectively, we're building a niche search engine that caters to specific needs of users in the space industry.
With that in mind, we've spent a lot of time talking to users, trying to understand what they're looking for and how to map their expectations to fantastic user experience. This led us to abandoning our original "Google-like" interface (a largely empty page with just a simple search bar in the middle), to a richer environment that allows users to navigate the global space supply chain through a search bar, supplier map, and product categories & tags.
One bit of feedback that we consistently heard from users was that we were serving too many results for simple queries. Our immediate thought was to wonder how too much information is a bad thing? The fact of the matter is that the typical satsearch user has a pretty clear idea of what they're looking for and they come to our platform to find the shortest path to the answer. Presenting users with hundreds of results only serves to create frustration.
Hence, we've started to rethink the way our search engine works. The fundamental question that we're trying to answer is: how do we serve the right answer to the user in the fewest number of steps? This turns out to be more complicated than it seems. Primarily, the information we serve through satsearch.co today consists of metadata, i.e., high-level data that characterize other data. The "other data" in our case is our corpus of product datasheets. Currently, we serve over 5000 PDF datasheets that contain details about space products offered by suppliers all over the world. Ultimately, our goal is to do away with these PDF documents, and replace them with something much richer, but that's a topic for another day.
Our user research led us to realizing that a lot of space engineers think of space systems in terms of a traditional product tree, which is often hierarchical and based on functions of different subsystems. An example of this is the ESA generic product tree, which classifies space systems through a hierarchy that runs from system level down to equipment level.
The product metadata we store in our database includes categorization based on a 2-tier hierarchy. Since users typically know which product category they're interested in, we decided to change our search algorithm to leverage the knowledge of the user. I'm happy to announce that at the start of this week, we shipped our new 2-step product search. The goal of this 2-step product search is to utilize the user's a priori knowledge to reduce the number of steps that it takes to present him/her with relevant results.
An example of Step 1 for the new 2-step product search, triggered by a search for "cubesat".
To highlight how this works, let's consider an example. Previously, if a user searched for "cubesat", they'd be presented with a long list of products that are in some way associated with cubesats. Now, if a user searches for "cubesat", they're taken to an interim results page that presents a list of product categories that contain products associated with cubesats. This allows the user to narrow down their search by selecting the product category that they're interested in, yielding a shorter, more relevant list of results.
I'll be sharing more insights into how our search evolves in future. If you have thoughts about our new 2-step product search, or if you're generally interested in how our technology stack works, feel free to join our Slack community, or email me.


Cameron and Adam discuss the past months Satar Wars News. In the TV section of the show, we cover the announcement of Cassian Andor getting his own Live-Action tv spy thriller show on Disney+, the Lego Star Wars: All Stars shorts, and Jon Favreau's Behind-the-Scenes photos from The Mandalorian set. In the book section we discuss the rise of Droid independance and the newly announced Droidography book. In the toys section we cover the new Pop! Clone Wars figures and the new Black Series figures. We end the show with the video game section and the announcement of General Grievous arriving in Battlefront 2 and some Episode IX speculation.


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NHL team dentist champions mouthguards
Dr. Long
Raleigh, N.C. — Dr. Thomas Long, a lifelong ice hockey player, didn't rise to the ranks of the National Hockey League as an athlete, but he still contributes to professional hockey players' success because he's a dentist.
Since 1997 Dr. Long has been one of the team dentists for the Carolina Hurricanes, providing players with cleanings, mouthguards and even responding to tooth loss after injuries on the ice. Many nights, after a day at his practice in Raleigh, he showers and dresses for his second gig at the PNC Arena downtown.
"For me just being at a professional hockey game 41 times a year is great. I just love it," he said.
Dr. Long, who played ice hockey in college, believes widespread mouthguard use by the professionals is one of the reasons he has seen fewer dental injuries among athletes in recent years when compared to decades ago.
"I think the athletes are more aware of the importance of taking care of their mouths," Dr. Long said.
April is National Facial Protection Month, making mouthguards and sports injuries on the mind for some in the dental profession.
Athletes should wear a mouthguard any time they're engaged in an activity where their face can come into contact with something hard, whether it's a player, ball, the pavement or any hard object, according to the organizational sponsors of National Facial Protection Month, which includes the ADA, the American Association of Orthodontists, the Academy for Sports Dentistry, the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and the Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.
Dr. Long said dentists can help young patients resistant to wearing mouthguards understand their importance.
"Anyone that has teeth knocked loose or broken badly will likely eventually have dental problems, even if it is years later," he said. "It's just a whole lot easier to protect yourself — and it's easier on your parents too."
Dr. Long said his training in trauma, which he gained during his time in the military in the 1980s, along with a deep familiarity with the sport helped him prepare for his sometimes arduous, and sometimes gruesome, work with the NHL team.
"A background with some trauma training really helps," he said about the skills necessary to be a team dentist. "Having good relationships with the specialists in your area is also a good thing. I also played hockey all my life, so I am used to what is going on in the sport — and I can sometimes anticipate what may happen."
Sometimes the worst does happen. In a recent phone call with ADA News, Dr. Long recalled an injury in which an NHL athlete's mouthguard was cut in half and four of his anterior teeth were "knocked to the back of this throat."
"They weren't broken," Dr. Long said. "So we put them back in and reimplanted them."
Dr. Long responded to an athlete whose neck was stepped on, causing a cut "from his chin all the way down the side of his neck. You could watch the carotid artery pulse." Dr. Long was among the responders who treated the man, helping cut sutures on the spot. The athlete eventually recovered and returned to the ice.
Despite the stress and sometimes-late hours — Dr. Long is required to be present at every home game and provide necessary treatment for both the Hurricanes and the opposing team — it's a gig he's not planning to step away from soon.
"I love it," he said. "I'm tired out the next day, but I get through it. I just love being there."
Dentists can direct patients to the ADA consumer website, MouthHealthy.org, for updated information about mouthguards.
The ADA Council on Access, Prevention and Interprofessional Relations and the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs encourage patient education about the benefit of mouthguard use.


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Q: The titles of the bibliography, nomenclature and index are not showing up I have a tex file in which I use bibtex and the packages nomencl and imakeidx
Weirdly, the titles of the bibliography, nomenclature and index show up in the table of content but there is no title showing up over the bibliography, nomenclature and index themselves.
This problem does not appear for the list of figures or the table of content.
Had anybody such problems at one point? I am using TeXShop if this is relevant.


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The Deputy High Commission of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka in Southern India is the mission of Sri Lanka in South India and represents the interests of the Sri Lankan government in the region. It is located in Chennai. The other missions are Consulate General of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Mumbai and High Commission of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, New Delhi. The Chennai Mission is responsible for the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala and the union territory of Puducherry. The current deputy high commissioner is Doraisamy Venkateshwaran. He succeeds Vadivel Krishnamoorthy, who held the office for the second time.

Location
The Deputy High Commission of Sri Lanka at Chennai is the closest Sri Lankan mission to the homeland in geographical terms. The chancery premises of the deputy high commission, which is its own premises, is located at 56, Sterling Road, Nungambakkam. The chancery was moved to its own premises on 20 August 2012. Previously, the chancery was located at 196, TTK Road, Alwarpet. The deputy high commission has an honorary consul office at Bangalore.

History
The Sri Lankan Mission in Chennai (Madras) was established in 1957 and is one of the oldest missions of Sri Lanka. The mission office in Chennai was established as the passport and information office under the supervision of the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi. In 1959, the passport office was upgraded as the Office of Assistant High Commissioner and subsequently to that of Deputy High Commissioner in 1966, with the mission playing an increasingly important role in the Southern region of the Indian Subcontinent due to the geographical proximity of Chennai to Sri Lanka and its ethnic commonality with the island nation.

In order to reduce the cost of rentals being paid to mission premises in foreign countries, a new chancery building for the Chennai Mission was built in Nungambakkam. The land for the proposed building was purchased in 2000, and the foundation was laid on 21 January 2009. The foundation stone for the new building was laid by P. M. Amza, the then Deputy High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in Southern India. The construction is being handled by the Central Engineering and Consultancy Bureau (CECB) and will include the Deputy High Commission and two apartments while a separate construction within the same premises will house the official residence of the Deputy High Commissioner.

As part of revamping the diplomatic presence in India, the Deputy High Commission decided to post two additional Tamil-speaking officers from the public service at its chancery.

List of deputy high commissioners

 A. Sumith Nakandala (2001–2006)
 P. M. Amza (2006−31 July 2009)
 Vadivel Krishnamoorthy (1 August 2009–March 2012)
 R. K. M. A. Rajakaruna (9 March 2012–May 2013)
 Ahamed Lebbe Sabarullah Khan (15 May 2013–30 June 2015)
 Vadivel Krishnamoorthy (July 2015–2020)
 Doraisamy Venkateshwaran (12 April 2021–present)

Security
Following threats from various organisations and political parties in 2010, the deputy high commission has been provided with security by the Tamil Nadu government.

Trade between India and Sri Lanka
In February 2013, the Sri Lanka Export Development Board (SLEDB) established a trade centre in Chennai at a cost of  17 million as a permanent gateway facilitating trade between Sri Lanka and India. Handled by a Sri Lankan state-owned organisation, the trade centre was aimed as an economical alternative to road shows and promotional activities. The trade centre display products such as apparel, artificial flowers, confectioneries, footwear and leather products, gems and jewellery, herbal products, light engineering products, porcelain, tableware, tea and transportation.

See also

 Attacks on Sri Lankans in Tamil Nadu
 Sri Lanka Maha Bodhi Centre, Chennai
 List of diplomatic missions in Chennai
 India–Sri Lanka relations
 List of diplomatic missions of Sri Lanka
 Foreign relations of India
 Foreign relations of Sri Lanka

References

Further reading

External links
 Official website of the Deputy High Commission of Sri Lanka in Chennai
 Homepage of Ministry of External Affairs, Sri Lanka

Diplomatic missions in India
Chennai
India–Sri Lanka relations
Sri Lanka
Organisations based in Chennai
1957 establishments in Madras State

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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INFOSEC 101: Breaking Down Scary Terms and What They Mean
I am not a hacker. But I understand the information security world. It's a scary place, unfortunately, to people who have no exposure to it. Yesterday, WordPress 3.0.4 was released as a critical release… and it was. Matt explained the reason for the release in this way:
Version 3.0.4 of WordPress…is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon as possible because it fixes a core security bug in our HTML sanitation library, called KSES. I would rate this release as "critical."
Simple enough. He goes on to refer to the vulnerability as an XSS vulnerability which caused a bit of angst on Twitter about what that means and if non-technical users should be given more information due to the terminology.
So, as a public service, I give you some basic definitions and concepts of web security and what we mean. These concepts are rightly scary, but the names tend to be scarier to those who don't understand them.
XSS means cross site scripting. Cross site scripting attacks are generally attacks that occur because something is injected into a URL or "event" on a site to make the site do something else. Do something else can mean "hijack" a site so all visitors are sent somewhere else, or special HTML is injected into a site (often in the form of hidden links that diminish Google search results for the site, etc). This was the nature of the vulnerability fixed in WordPress yesterday.
XSS attacks are almost always carried out because of JavaScript injection. WordPress does have security API that makes dangerous characters (that is, special characters that make JavaScript do things) and it is encouraged that all plugin and theme developers use these APIs. [Docs]
CSRF means Cross Site Request Forgery. With CSRF attacks, browsers (and sometimes other things) are hijacked to "do" things to a website without a user knowing. It's the proverbial trojan horse where there is an inherent trust from a site that the user/browser is doing something trusted and so attacks riding the coat tails of such trust are given the same trust that the user would also get.
A simple example (does not actually exist) would be that an authenticated user in WordPress with admin privileges is tricked into clicking a link (as the authenticated user) and then admin privileges are transferred to the attacker. We've seen this kind of attack on Facebook and Twitter before where DMs or messages are spread across Facebook walls or via Twitter DM).
SQL Injection is an attack that, without going into the technical details, allows an attacker to send special queries to the database that can alter, modify or even delete a database altogether. You don't see many of these anymore because most apps are built on frameworks or platforms (like WordPress or Drupal) that have built in routines and APIs that prevent this. In WordPress, there is a prepare() function in the database class which ensures that no SQL injection is possible.
0Day Vulnerabilities
0Day (that is Zero, not "Oh") is a vulnerability that is exploited before it has been disclosed. Many security researchers work closely with web application developers to alert them to newly discovered vulnerabilities before they are publicly disclosed. They then work with the developers to close the hole before disclosing the vulnerability. The term 0Day comes from the idea that the web app developer knows about the exploit on the 0th day after public disclosure (it hasn't been disclosed yet).
Denial of Service/(D)DoS
(D)DoS is a (Distributed) Denial of Service attack. These attacks are carried out by flooding a site with traffic/requests to the point where the site can no longer handle the traffic and collapses. If the attack comes from a single source, it's a DoS but if it comes from more than one, it is a DDoS.
Obviously, there are many aspects of security. We could go way complicated on terminology and concepts, but these are some of the basics you should know when you see something about a vulnerability.
Photo Credit: heathbrandon
0day, csrf, ddos, dos, Security, sql injection, WordPress, xss


I liked it so much more than Eat, Pray, Love partly because there was more I could relate to, and partly because it was the exploration of a concept - marriage - from a variety of perspectives. And possibly because in between reading the two books I had watched that video, and warmed to the author.
There was lots to make me smile in this book. I loved her recounting of the description of a Hmong second wedding as the same as a first wedding, but with slightly fewer pigs. (The Hmong are a Vietnamese hill tribe.) The cultural aspects of her exploration really interested me, and when she described contemporary Western thought as a battle between 'Greeks' and 'Hebrews' I found myself hoping that might be the subject of her next book. Alas it only got a couple of pages this time.
Probably my favourite passage in the book is where she talks about not wanting children. It amused me.
Anyone else identify with this? I like children, especially between the amusing ages of two and, say, eightish. I just have no particular compulsion to produce any. And that is all I am going to say on that subject today, because it usually results in misunderstandings and virtual lynchings and I am too busy to be lynched. I need to go to the post office, for starters.