text:
Old TunesStephen Sedley
Vol. 42 No. 14 · 16 July 2020
Old Tunes
Stephen Sedley
The poet and songwriter Sydney Carter – remember 'Lord of the Dance'? – wasn't the only observer to notice that the 1950s British folk song revival was being accompanied, and occasionally drowned out, by the clang of cash registers. His song 'Man with the Microphone' began:
As I roved out one morning
I was singing a country song
I met a man with a microphone
And oh he did me wrong.
He sat me on a grassy bank
Took out a reel of tape
And had my country ditty down
Before I could escape.
In 1957 Vera Lynn, who died last month at the age of 103, recorded a song called 'Travellin' Home'. Within a few days the record had sold 27,000 copies and the sheet music more than 3500. This attracted the attention of J. Curwen & Sons, which in 1939 had published a strikingly similar song, 'Westering Home', by Sir Hugh Roberton (1874-1952), the founder and director of the celebrated Glasgow Orpheus Choir:
Westering home, and a song in the air,
Light in the eye and it's goodbye to care.
Laughter o' love, and a welcoming there,
Isle of my heart, my own one.
When, with Roberton's executors, Curwen sued Lynn and her record company, Decca, for breach of his copyright, their counsel explained that although Roberton hadn't composed the entire song he had written an accompaniment to a traditional air and 'done a certain amount of original composition', sufficient to give him copyright in the melody.
There was no question that the words were Roberton's, or that 'Westering Home' as a song was his work, but it wasn't disputed that the same tune was used in other traditional songs – 'The Mucking o' Geordie's Byre', 'Bonnie Strathyre' and 'Eilean mo Chridhe'. All of these were played at a stately pace for Mr Justice Cross by an articled clerk, Gerald Pointon, on a piano squeezed into the courtroom. If Curwen was to win, the tune used by Roberton had to be separately capable of being copyrighted and pirated.
Since the war, 'Westering Home' had become well known as a concert piece. It was pretty obvious that the authors of 'Travellin' Home' had used most of the melody of Roberton's song and set their own not very good lyrics to it. The question was whether it was possible now to treat Roberton's score as an original musical work and whether, as his publisher's counsel breezily put it, 'the fact that part of "Westering Home" closely resembled a traditional air was wholly beside the point.'
The consequent lawsuit, pitting Roberton's executors and publisher against Lynn, her agent, the A&R man and Decca Records, didn't come to trial until 1960. By then specialist solicitors had moved into Soho, correctly judging that the newly prosperous inhabitants of Denmark Street would prefer to have their lawyers on hand. The solicitors for the plaintiffs instructed K.E. Shelley, a specialist QC with a reputation for belligerence. F.E. Skone James, the editor of the leading textbook on copyright law, was his junior. Lynn's team went into battle with a single junior counsel, Joseph Penny, and it was from him some years later, when I was briefed with him in an unrelated case, that I learned about the turn of events that had won him the case.
Although the judge had announced at the start of the hearing that he didn't read music, his concluding judgment showed a shrewd comprehension of what, musically speaking, had been going on. He recounted that Decca's A&R man, Richard Rowe (who was to become twice famous, once for signing the Rolling Stones and once for turning down the Beatles),
made a number of journeys to Scotland in the years following 1950 and became impressed with the financial advantages which might accrue from giving a modern treatment to old Scottish tunes – 'bagpipes with a beat' as a reviewer of the defendants' song put it … He was very vague as to when and where he had first heard the tune which he called 'Westering Home' … In the early part of 1957 he met the third defendant, Alex Masters, who is commonly known as Jack Fishman, and is a song writer, and told him of his idea, humming a few bars of each of the three tunes … Mr Fishman … considered that 'Westering Home', which he knew himself perfectly well, was the most suitable for the purpose in hand, and he wrote a new lyric for it which he called 'Heading for Home'.
Fishman, the judge pointed out,
cannot read music, so having composed the new words and having the music of the song in his head, he went with Mr Rowe to see a mutual friend of theirs, Mr Stanley Butcher, who is a musician … Mr Butcher took down the music note by note. He then played through the music to Mr Rowe and Mr Fishman. Mr Rowe suggested various changes in the words, including a change in the title from 'Heading for Home' to 'Travellin' Home', and a few changes were also made in the music. The version of the music as it emerged in its final form after the meeting was, as might be expected, very close indeed both to the voice line of 'Westering Home' as published and to the published version of the music played by the Scots Guards Band.
In other words, it was not disputed that the immediate source of the tune of 'Travellin' Home' was the tune associated with 'Westering Home', wherever Rowe and Masters had picked it up. However, Curwen needed to establish not only that it had been taken from Roberton's adaptation, but that the tune of 'Westering Home' was itself an original composition. On both rocks their case foundered.
It did so because the hearing, which was spread over three days in May 1960, attracted news coverage which came to the notice of a number of former regimental pipers. From what Penny told me years ago, and from what I recently learned from Gerald Pointon (a graduate in music and law, then the newly hired articled clerk to the defendants' solicitors, now retired after a career in international arbitration), the pipers were last-minute witnesses who had been put in the witness box without even making formal witness statements.
The judge was not satisfied that Rowe and Fishman's knowledge of the tune could be traced to Roberton's published score:
It is true that the printed voice line of 'Travellin' Home' is substantially identical with the printed voice line of 'Westering Home', but it is not enough for the plaintiffs to show that the two printed records of the old tune are identical; they must go on to show that in producing their printed record of it, the defendants made a direct or indirect use of the plaintiffs' printed record of it. On the evidence there can be no question of any direct use by the defendants of the record of the tune made by Sir Hugh. Mr Fishman cannot read music and gained his knowledge of the tune exclusively from hearing it played or sung. The plaintiffs, therefore, have to establish that Mr Fishman's knowledge of the tune was derived indirectly from the record of it made by Sir Hugh.
The plaintiffs' counsel had proposed a linkage that went from Roberton through an HMV recording and the repertoire of the band of the Scots Guards to Fishman. 'In my judgment,' the judge said, 'none of the links in this chain of causation will bear very much strain.'
By contrast, the defendants, the judge said,
called no fewer than six pipers, who all gave evidence to the effect that the whole tune, not only the refrain but also the verse section, was well known to them as a piper's tune before the publication of 'Westering Home' … They knew the tune as a whole either simply as an old Highland air, or as a different arrangement of 'Bonnie Strathyre'. One of these witnesses, Mr Mathieson, first heard the tune … when he was a small boy. The others appear to have learned it when they were pipers in the Scots Guards in the years between the wars, but they agreed that the tune had not been played by the Scots Guards band at that time, and that they had only played it at dances, as a waltz, or at pipers' meetings, or privately for their own pleasure. Clearly knowledge of the whole tune was confined to a comparatively narrow circle of pipers.
'In 1954,' the judge noted,
a volume containing a number of standard settings of pipe music used by the Scots Guards was published and in it the tune appears … as a slow march entitled 'Westering Home', with the name 'Eilean mo Chridhe' in brackets after it. When the pipers who gave evidence for the defendants were shown the music of this tune in the book they identified it as the old tune which they had played on the pipes years before the song was written.
According to the daily Times law report, Pipe-major Robertson, formerly of the Scots Guards, said he had played the tune 'for many years on village greens and at debutante dances'. Pipe-major Marshall said he had first heard it 'before he transferred from the Guards in 1924' and knew it 'as an old Highland air. It was his favourite, and when he felt depressed he used to go away on his own and play it.' Pipe-major Mathieson, who was 'born in the Highlands and started to learn the pipes when he was seven', said he had first heard it in 1910, played by his cousin, who told him it 'had no name but was an old Highland air'.
It seems that the six pipers had come forward because early in the trial the plaintiffs had called the queen's piper, Pipe-major Crabb, to testify that he had never heard the tune before 1949. In response, Pipe-major Marshall gave an unforgettable account of going alone into the hills in full regalia to play the tune as his regiment, which was stationed abroad, was preparing to leave for good (a Larkinesque moment: 'Next year we are to bring the soldiers home'). He had learned it long before 'Westering Home' was composed; Pipe-major Mathieson had first heard it before the Great War. The emotional impact of the older pipers' evidence transformed the character of the case from an attempt to protect an original composition into an attempt to appropriate the Highlands' musical heritage. Penny was in no doubt that their evidence clinched the case for Vera Lynn's side. Yet who now sings 'Travellin' Home'? It is 'Westering Home' that has lived on, its lyric Roberton's, its melody common property.
Stephen Sedley, a former appeal court judge, is co-editing an anthology of folksongs about crime and punishment.
Short Cuts: Equality Legislation
Short Cuts: Labour and Anti-Semitism
Confidence and Supply: Confidence and Supply
More by Stephen Sedley
Vol. 42 No. 18 · 24 September 2020
In his account of a copyright infringement action involving the Vera Lynn song 'Travellin' Home', Stephen Sedley quotes from the judgment of Mr Justice Cross, which refers to 'the third defendant, Alex Masters, who is commonly known as Jack Fishman, and is a songwriter' (LRB, 16 July). This will have been an embarrassment to Fishman, who was at that time a political journalist with a particular interest in intelligence work. He feared that if people found out that he was a successful Tin Pan Alley songwriter he wouldn't be taken seriously as a journalist. Alex Masters was one of the pen names he used. Another was Larry Kahn, but that cover was blown when he won the inaugural Ivor Novello Award in 1955 for the song 'Everywhere'. He had to send a stand-in to collect the award.
A few years later Fishman was responsible for exposing Kim Philby as a Russian agent. English libel law prevented him from identifying him in the UK so he persuaded two American journalist friends to break the story in the US. The matter was then raised under parliamentary privilege in the House of Commons, which made reporting in the UK possible.
After the 'Travellin' Home' trial Fishman stopped writing songs for a while. He wrote a number of successful books including The Seven Men of Spandau, a Life of Joseph Stalin and a bestselling biography of Clementine Churchill. In 1964 he acquired the literary tie-in rights to the US television series The Man from UNCLE and was responsible for editing and co-publishing its many related books. At the end of the 1960s he returned to songwriting and was responsible for several hits, including 'If Paradise Is Half as Nice'. He collaborated with a number of composers, including Ron Goodwin, Ennio Morricone and Maurice Jarre, and worked with Roy Budd on the theme songs for Soldier Blue and Get Carter.
When I met Jack in the 1980s, he was working as music supervisor for the Cannon Group, a big player in the British film industry. He was a canny operator. In the opening scenes of Superman IV, a Russian cosmonaut is floating in space, struggling to repair the outside of his spacecraft. As he works, he sings a Russian version of the Sinatra classic 'My Way'. The cost of acquiring the rights to one of the most famous lyrics of all time far exceeded the sum available in the music budget. But Jack knew that the American lyrics were a cover version of the French song 'Comme d'habitude'. He suggested that instead of buying the rights to use the American lyrics, it would be cheaper to make a new Russian-language cover version to accompany the original French music. He figured that so long as the words weren't a translation of 'I did it my way' it didn't matter what they actually were, since any English-speaking viewer would automatically infer the words to 'My Way' from the tune alone.
London SE15
Stephen Sedley's piece reminded me of another contest over copyright just a few years later. On Led Zeppelin's first album, released in 1969, 'Your Time Is Gonna Come' fades straight into 'Black Mountain Side', an acoustic guitar number by Jimmy Page with an Eastern feel. The melody, however, is clearly that of 'Black Waterside', a traditional folk tune recorded by Bert Jansch less than three years earlier. His record label, Transatlantic, wrote to Atlantic Records to complain, but was rebuffed.
Transatlantic didn't sue, however. Its barrister, John Mummery QC, advised that while they might well be able to prove that Page copied the tune from Jansch, it could hardly be said that Jansch had any cognisable copyright in the song. He had learned the tune from Anne Briggs, who in turn had learned it from the folklorist Bert Lloyd. In the 1950s another folklorist, Peter Kennedy, had made two field recordings of rural Irish women singing it, which were stored at the BBC and at Cecil Sharp House.
The story is told in Colin Harper's excellent biography of Jansch, Dazzling Stranger (2006). Harper quotes Nat Joseph, who founded Transatlantic: 'Almost any "traditional" song that somebody does an arrangement of, somebody will have done something vaguely similar before. The difficulty appears to be one of really establishing, among hundreds of arrangers, who it was that made the arrangement "original".'
Charles Siegel
Vol. 42 No. 20 · 22 October 2020
Charles Siegel writes about Jimmy Page's appropriation of Bert Jansch's arrangement of 'Black Waterside' (Letters, 24 September). He reports that in 1969, Transatlantic Records' barrister, John Mummery, advised that while Page had probably copied the tune from Jansch, 'it could hardly be said that Jansch had any cognisable copyright in the song – he had learned the tune from Anne Briggs, who in turn had learned it from the folklorist Bert Lloyd.'
In fact, original and distinctive musical arrangements have long been protected by copyright, as Mummery himself explained many years later in a leading case on originality, Sawkins v. Hyperion Records Limited (2005), concerning arrangements of French Baroque string music:
The essence of music is combining sounds for listening to and intended to produce effects of some kind on the listener's emotions or intellect. There is no reason to regard the actual notes of music as the only matter covered by musical copyright. Elements other than notes, such as performing directions or ornamentation, can [be] protected by copyright, provided they are sufficiently original.
Jansch's arrangement of 'Black Waterside', the product of his own experimentation with Indian raga modes and complex time signatures, was indeed highly original in 1966. Anne Briggs had sung the song to him, about a young man's cynical abandonment of his lover, freely and unaccompanied. Jansch arranged his guitar accompaniment in a brisk 4/4 and underpinned the main theme with a heavily syncopated, falling ostinato with a flattened seventh, adding much quasi-raga ornamentation. He also introduced into the second line of each verse an extra half-bar of skipping semiquavers, adding to the sense of the lovers' agitation.
In his instrumental version, Page copied virtually every detail of Jansch's arrangement, added some tablas à la Sgt Pepper's, called it 'Black Mountainside', and claimed the whole thing as his own composition. It was plagiarism at its most shameless, up there (or down there) with George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord'.
Paul Mountain


Parking in the Parioli neighbourhood of Rome can seem impossible for those who are unfamiliar with the area. However, now you don't need to know the neighbourhood, all you need is to know the Garage Parioli and with Parclick, book your parking space, for your car or van!
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If you're not here for visiting Rome, keep in mind that the Garage Parioli car park will allow you to park near the Euclide railway station. From this train station, you can reach towns like Civita Castellana and Viterbo. The possibilities are endless, but the number of car parks in Parioli are not, so... Book your place in the Garage Parioli now!


Use as many organic ingredients for optimum flavor.
Rinse rice in a sieve under cold water. In a medium heavy bottom pan, cover rice with cold water (or organic chicken stock). Simmer until al dente or almost tender about 35-45 minutes (rice will be partially open). You don't want water or stock completely absorbed.
Meanwhile chop celery, onions, and mushrooms. Heat butter in medium size heavy bottom sauté pan and sauté vegetables until tender. Salt and pepper to taste.
Stir vegetables into rice. Generously butter a baking dish. Transfer rice and vegetables to buttered dish. Bake rice, covered, 20 minutes or until tender and open.


Falanghina IGT is a white wine typical of the province of Avellino, produced by the Winery Azienda Agricola Torricino, located in zones most suitable in Tufo. The grapes that produce this wine are 100% Falanghina.
Its color is straw yellow with greenish reflections. The aroma is fruity with notes of apple, pineapple and citrus. The palate is fresh and fruity with floral references.
Serve in goblets of medium width at a temperature of 8 - 10°C. Excellent as an aperitif or try it with buffalo milk mozzarella and pizza.


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13 Dating Apps, Ranked By Likelihood Of Sex
By Jeremy Glass
Published on 11/7/2014 at 12:23 PM
America is thirsty, and I'm not talking about sugar-free carbonated soft drinks. We live in a fluff-free era—people know what they want and aren't afraid to express their opinion in ALL CAPS, followed by a series of passive-aggressive emojis. Dating is the same—we've reached critical mass, and that critical mass is critical on getting their mass touched. Gross. Anyway, with the act of dating living solely on a mobile platform, the dating app reigns supreme.
But which apps reign most supreme? Good question. In hopes of answering your burning questions, here are 13 dating apps ranked (lovingly and subjectively) on how likely you are to end up takin' old one-eye to the optometrist. Hey, gotta quench that thirst somehow—what's that famous Mother Teresa quote? Oh yes: "Get it girl, get it get it get it, girl."
13. Twine
Hey, you've heard of Twine—right? Oh, no? It's a good idea in theory...in theory. A dating app that allows people to meet based on their intellectual capacities rather than their looks! Amazing! But, you know what happens when two smart people meet? They engage in hot, sweaty, intellectual conversations about Proust. Do you know where Marcel friggin' Proust is not situated? Between the sweaty, writhing bodies of two Proust fans.
12. Revealr
Some people stick to their guns when they say they don't care about looks—and bless their hearts. Unfortunately, we're literally engineered to gravitate towards attractive individuals who smell like redwood trees and caramel. If a phone sex hotline and Tinder drank and had a baby, it would come out as Revealr. You can talk to a person, but can't see what they look like. Even if you have a great conversation with a person, you're not going to want to bone them if they look like Rex from Toy Story. The likelihood of getting out of your house and into a restaurant is high, but—face it—this isn't You've Got Mail. You're not going to find your Tom Hanks with this app.
11. Blendr
Blendr is so, so close to getting it right—the one thing they didn't anticipate: charging money kills erections faster than, I dunno, bees? The sole review on the app's page summarizes it nicely: "You buy points to promote yourself, and to view/ message other ppl, and to see who liked you. Don't waste your money like I did. $15 down the drain."
10. Plenty of Fish
The transition from desktop to mobile for websites is a bit like the great change from silent films to talkies during the late 1920s. Some film stars made it and some didn't—take Buster Keaton, for example, he tried singing. Didn't work. Yada yada yada, now he's dead. Unfortunately, POF seems to be succumbing to the same fate. People want sex and they want it now—from the moment the app is downloaded to the moment of the actual date, the number of steps is, frankly, too high. You have to sign up, write a profile, sift through other profiles—the average millennial's attention span is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
9. Mixxxer
Mixxxer takes the carefree sentiment of casual swiping and infuses it with the high-octane close-up shots of vulvas that you see on sites like LiveJasmin. It's a no-nonsense approach to dating apps with its "I'm here to f*ck" mentality," but when you see that most of the users may/may not (but definitely are) legit prostitutes, the fun is lost. Unless you like prostitutes—I mean, that's guaranteed sex right there. Are you into prostitutes? You can tell me, I'm not a cop*
*or am I?
8. OkCupid
Let's face it, after Tinder took off, the appeal of OkCupid started to wane—much like the flaccid penises who were getting ignored by the instant gratification swipe of Tinder. OkCupid became less of a hookup app and more of a—ew—relationship app. OkCupid is no longer for one-night stands, thus the chance of instant sex is rare. However, you will be getting LAID EVERY SINGLE NIGHT (of the first Monday of the month when it's convenient) when you're married. Up top, braaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.
7. Hot or Not
Like Beanie Babies were supposed to do in the 21st century, Hot or Not made a legit comeback with its app. What's especially satisfying is the taboo-free interface that, frankly, allows you to get as taboo as you want. What's more sexy than finding sex on a sex-free app? Nothing. Except maybe the actual act of sex itself.
6. Luxy
Let it be known that Luxy only ranks high in this list because hundred-dollar bills are a straight-up aphrodisiac in America. We support our prior statement that "Luxy is a dating app for giant rich douches," but we generally hope that everyone on Luxy loses all their money in a Ponzi scheme. How is Bernie Madoff these days? Are you running a Ponzi scheme? You can tell me, I'm not a cop*.
5. HowAboutWe
There's a palpable seed of evil within all of the aforementioned apps on this list— but HowAboutWe is different. It seems like they actually care about the users and, more specifically, the users' genitals. Now, they don't come out and say: "this app is for f*cking," but by giving date ideas right off the bat, a huge weight is lifted off the shoulders of those on said date. So, when the pressure of finding a date location is off, you can focus on more important things: like P in V.
4. 3nder
In the spirit of love, harmony, and unbridled passion, 3nder brings people together for the sole purpose of participating in a threesome. I mean, you've got to know that people are down to clown if you match on 3nder—no one's on this app in hopes of finding a meaningful relationship with two dudes named Brad. This isn't Utah.
3. Grouper
Grouper is reminiscent of that episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns is told that he has literally every disease in the world, but they've all balanced themselves out within his body and are keeping him alive. Grouper has taken every part of a bad date and stuck them together until a good date is formed: rich tech kids, strangers, bad wingmen, and micromanagement.
You're set up on a foursome with a friend and two anonymous people and are told to go into a restaurant until sparks fly. The thing about rich tech kids, though? They're horny and love drinking. So when four aroused like-minded individuals are in an enclosed environment under the guise of bragging about their startup until someone's pants come off...well, that leads to a new sexual move called "The Steve Hand Job."
2. Tinder
Tinder is about as 21st century as it gets. It's literally shopping for people. Sickening, right? At first, yes—now people Tinder at work, in meetings, maybe during lunch, and DEFINITELY during Bar Mitzvahs. Tinder has become tricky in the sense that some people have caught on and realized there are decent human being on this app...however, if you swipe right on a Saturday at 2 a.m., you're not going to wake up alone—OR ALIVE. Just kidding, you probably won't get murdered.
1. Grindr
When you have a successful business and a whittled-down user population, you're going to have one successful hookup app. Grindr actually predates Tinder by three years and absolutely nailed the dating game by simply giving people what they want: nearby folks who want to take the scenic route to the bone zone.
Jeremy Glass is the Vice editor for Supercompressor and often wonders why people don't utilize the fax machine more for sexting.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The award underscores the importance of the collaboration among the project Principals (Amtrak, Brandywine Realty Trust, Drexel University, PennDOT and SEPTA) in developing the Plan, with guidance from a coordinating committee and input from members of the public.
The District Plan is a comprehensive vision for the future of the area surrounding 30th Street Station in the year 2050 and beyond. In the near term, Amtrak and its partners are strategically advancing key projects to activate all four sides of the station and build a foundation for future growth and development. In November 2016, Amtrak issued a Request for Proposals to lease and develop a roughly 32,500 square foot tract of land and associated air rights adjacent to 30th Street Station.
The Plan ultimately envisions 40 new acres of open space and 18 million square feet of new development, including an entirely new mixed-use neighborhood anchoring the District atop 88 acres of rail yards along the western bank of the Schuylkill River. With a proposed $2 billion investment in roads, utilities, parks, bridges, and extension of transit services, the Plan has the potential to unlock $4.5 billion in private real estate investment with robust and widespread economic benefits. An estimated $3.8 billion in City and State taxes and 40,000 new jobs would be created.
This is the second of Amtrak's major development projects to receive recognition from the American Institute of Architects in the past several years. In 2014, the Washington Union Station Master Plan received honorable mention in Urban Design/Master Planning from the AIA Washington Chapter.


text:
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const pathDefault = {
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  return chrome.browserAction.setIcon({
    path
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};

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: ASP.Net SQLServer Session State Versus Direct Database Access On the website I am developing, I have a number of "user preferences" that I keep stored for my returning, registered users (for example, the number of product summaries per page to display).  I am curious if there is any performance benefit to storing/retrieving this data in an ASP.Net SQLServer Session State versus retrieving it as-needed directly from my database.  Many thanks in advance!

A: Its always better to store Data in Session State (performance point of view), as long as the data isn't too Huge. This way, you Production Data Database (where you persist your UserData) Hits would reduced. Just make sure that User Wouln't change his preferences which are cached in session.
Only potential problem with session is that Session is maintained per User. so, if there are too many users on your website, session state grows but since you are using SQL Server as you Session Store, you are good on that. Had you been using InProc SessionMode, your Session would have been in memory (a critical resource on production servers!)

A: You are taking the hit going to sql server anyways. So you shouldn't have a noticeable performance impact and also if using sql server for session state - you don't have to worry much about the implementation details - hence could be a 'bit' easier to use. But no - there is no main benefit. one could argue it depends on how you store/lookup your information but for most apps the difference here is absolutely negligible - it's up to you how you want to implement. Now if you ever move away from sql server session state then you have another set of issues to be concerned over (app resets, etc) but thats not in the scope of what you asked : )

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Discussion in 'Clan Recruitment' started by Radu, Jan 19, 2019.
Looking for a good clan to join. I am level 61 with ~30-31k team playing daily with 3.7k in arena.
Hi. If you are still searching..: Coo coos Clan is recruiting a rookie right now.
Clan level 22, at the arena we are #162.
And the best: there are no clan rules! Just be active (or tell us before you are planning to be offline for a few days) and contribute from time to time (at least once in a week). That's it. No discord, no limits, no maximum rank... we are just having fun together, playing the game as a team.
Interested? The just give me a Note!


"A/B testing. That's way too scientific for me! I just want to grow my business by gaining more traffic." That is an actual quote from one of my friends who is working on growing his business.
What's worse is I know that he is not alone in his thinking. There are tons of people out there that don't bother with A/B testing (also known as split testing), because it sounds difficult.
Let me tell you something though – growing your traffic by 1000 visitors a day won't do anything for your business if you're not converting any of those visitors!
And how do you increase your conversion rate? By constantly testing your pages in order to improve it!
Think about it like this, if you have 1000 site visitors and you are converting at 1% you will have the same number of conversions as someone who gets 100 visitors a day, but is converting at 10%.
Now think about the potential for a site that has optimized its conversion rate AND is gaining 1000 visitors instead of 100 visitors. That site will be converting ten times as many people as the site with 1000 visitors and no optimization.
Before we get into the steps to optimization success, let me just give a quick explanation of A/B testing.
As the name suggests, an A/B test compares to options (option A and option B) to see which option is more effective.
For example, a website might test out whether the "contact us" button should be on the bottom right of a page, or if it should be on the top as a part of the header.
Through tests like this businesses are able to scientifically determine which variation performs better. Based on the results of these tests businesses can improve their conversion rates.
Sound like something you might want to do on your site? Cool! Let's get started.
First things first, you need to know how to choose the best page to test. You can't possibly test all of your pages at once. On top of that, you might not even need to test some pages (quite yet).
So, when it comes to choosing the best pages to test it's all about the potential!
Which page should you choose?
As a general rule you are looking for the page that gets the most visitors, but has the lowest conversion rate. That is the page with the greatest potential.
Pages with high conversion rates are hard to improve drastically, and pages with low levels of traffic, even with a tremendous improvement, still won't get you as many conversions as an improved page with a lot of traffic.
In our case page 3 is the ideal candidate.
Let me demonstrate with some numbers.
Pages 2 and 4 already have high conversion rates, meaning there probably won't be a large increase in conversions. So, if you manage to raise the conversion rates from 20% to 25% you will only be raising conversions from 40 and 400 to 50 and 500 respectively.
Now, Page 1 looks good, because it has a low conversion rate, but let's compare it to Page 3. Both pages have conversion rates of 5%, meaning 10 and 100 conversions respectively. If each page's conversion rate could be increased to 20% then the conversions would now be 40 and 400 respectively.
Now I think it is quite clear that Page 3 is the one that has the most potential to grow your business.
As a side point, you should also realize that each of your pages will probably have a different definition of a conversion.
For example, a conversion on your homepage might be a user clicking on your "Shop Now" call to action, whereas a conversion on your checkout page would be a sale.
Now that you've decided which page requires the most work the next thing you need to do is to take a step back and see where in your sales funnel the actual problem is arising.
Option 1: The previous page depicted the product or deal differently than it is described on the product page itself, so the user leaves immediately after seeing that they were misled.
Option 2: The previous page was good, but your price is too high.
Option 3: The previous page was good, the price is good, but your product page itself is not good.
So how do you figure out exactly what is causing the drop off in conversions?
Step 1: Take a look at the Google Analytics report for the page. If there is a low average time on page and a high bounce rate (meaning users enter and leave quickly), then it's safe to assume that your users saw something they didn't like when they entered the page.
If on the other hand users stay on the page for a while, but don't add an item to their cart it could be that your page is not built well. Your customers could not find the information they needed, they don't trust the page, or they found some other problem.
You can also use heat map tools like Crazy Egg to try to see what your customers are clicking on, and how they are interacting with your pages.
At the end of the day though you can only really make inferences from your analytics. It is impossible to really know what the problem is. Which brings us to step two.
Set up a support button or survey on the page to see if your customers have any product questions.
Ask customers who did purchase what made them purchase from you.
Ask customers who did not purchase what their reason for not purchasing was.
You can use a survey tool like Qualaroo or and in app messaging tool like Intercom to start a conversation with your customers.
Between the information you can see in your analytics and the answers you receive in your surveys you should be able to determine what the issue is – first, which page is the problem page, and second, which element of the page is causing the problem.
Ok, so now you know which page isn't converting, and you know more or less why it isn't converting, but that's not enough. Now it's time to figure out how to improve the faulty element.
Let's say in step two you determined that people were not adding products to their cart on your product pages, and your research suggests it is because they could not find out enough information about your merchandise.
At this point there are any number ways of addressing that concern. This is where your brain storming comes into play. Perhaps adding more images will help. Or maybe additional product details is what will serve as the deciding factor.
Step 4a: Time to Test!
You've got your hypothesis, now it's time to start testing!
In order to run your test you should look into one of the many excellent site optimization and testing tools available. Tools like VWO or Optimizely can help you make your changes, run a test of the new version against the original version, and track the results.
Ok, this is where things might get a little bit complicated, but stick with me.
What the heck is that Zack??
First of all, let me just tell you that your split testing tool will calculate this for you – so don't worry, you don't have to figure it out on your own! But, it is important that you understand what it means so that you will understand its importance.
It's actually a pretty simple concept. When running a test sometimes you can see results that look pretty conclusive – it's been a week and your new variation of the product page has outperformed your old page by 5%, but these results might not actually be as conclusive as you think.
Think about it like flipping a coin. You know that the probability of getting a heads or a tails is 50%, but if you were to flip a coin right now 10 times in all likelihood you would not get five heads and five tails.
The same exact thing can happen with your website. You can see results that look good, but in fact they are simply chance results.
Statistical significance means the level of confidence that you can say that the results you have seen occurred because of your change, rather than due to chance.
In order to reach statistical significance you need to let your test run for a little while so that your test can be exposed to enough people to draw conclusive results.
Statistical significance is measured in a percentage of "confidence." Generally, 95% confidence is enough to be considered significant, and I suggest letting your tests run until you reach this level of confidence.
However, if you have tests that have been running for a while and you are only seeing small increases in conversions, and you are still far off from significance, you can usually conclude that your test was not effective, and that it is time to move on to a new test.
Remember our example from above? We had a product page that needed to be improved by adding information about the product itself. In the end we decided to test the effect of adding more detailed images to the page, but what about our other ideas?
Because it can be complicated to track the effects of a change when you change too many elements at once, it is a good idea to start by changing one element, and then testing from there.
At this point you can run any number of tests. You can check the effectiveness of added textual information vs. added image details, or you can test both added images and added text vs. just added images, or even added text and images vs. the original page.
The idea is to confirm your hypothesis, in this case – that more information will improve the customer's experience and lead to higher conversions, and then from there to continue building towards the ultimate page.
Option 2: The other option for running a test would be to take all of the changes that you thought of in the first place and implement them all at once and compare the fully updated page with the original page. In this case you could see if this whole page performed better or not, and then test the elements individually.
So you can work top down (full change and then elements), or bottom up (partial changes working towards the complete change). As a starter I'd suggest making small changes, but once you get into A/B testing, sometimes going straight for the big change helps you see larger results faster.
At this point you will hopefully have a winning variation – awesome work!
That is not the end of the test though. You should now take a look at your hypothesis, your test, and your results and summarize the experiment. This way you can have a log of all the tests you've run, and next time you want to run a test you will have a reference point.
This will help you to avoid making the same mistakes twice, and to remember what worked in the past.
What we did up until was to take care of the major reason for a leak in your conversion funnel. Now that you've fixed that, you should certainly not just leave your page as is. There are all sorts of things that you can optimize on your pages to increase your conversion rates further.
How do you know what elements to test?
The first thing you should do is to read up a bit on conversion rate optimization in order to learn about what elements might need changing, and how to change them.
Next you should compare your test page to your more successful pages to try to determine what your better pages have that it is lacking.
To keep your observations organized you can create an Excel sheet where you compare all of the aspects of the page to see which elements are different. In your sheet you can mention what is different, and what you think could be causing the difference in conversions.
Once you've finished comparing your test page with your own successful pages, it is a good idea to check what your competitors do. Be careful here, because even if you think your competitors are successful, you don't know which of their pages are most successful like you do with your own.
Add in your new observations to your spread sheet.
Now that you've got a nice long list of elements to test out, get to work! These little changes can help you bring up the conversion rates of your pages bit by bit, and can really add value to your business.
Get Scientific With Your Site and Cash in on the Rewards!
The method is laid out for you. Put on your lab coat, break out your goggles, take a look at your website under your microscope, and start optimizing!
P.S. If you're looking for an expert to conduct these tests for you, we recommend WebScience.pro, straight from the 'Startup Nation' (Israel) – they got us great results.


SPX's Anhydro brand spray dryers can be used for a wide range of applications, and more than 3,500 have been installed worldwide.
In a recently published editorial, SPX reviews several areas of safety and environmental regulations that apply to the construction and operation of spray drying plants. Based on many years of experience working with companies around the world, SPX offers an overview of the need to assess risks and design spray drying processes to ensure safety requirements are met to protect employees, equipment and the environment.
Spray drying is a highly cost-effective method of obtaining powders from liquids while retaining valuable nutrients, aromas and flavors in heat-sensitive products. It is a continuous process that can convert most liquids into a free-flowing powder. Examples of products made through this process include food additives, milk powders, plant extracts, pharmaceuticals and various chemicals.
Risks associated with spray drying include organic powder dust explosions, solvent vapor explosions and exposure to hazardous or toxic products. For example, an organic powder may explode if there is an ignition source (oxygen and a spark) within the plant.
SPX's editorial presents several designs for spray drying plants that can be used to reduce these risks. Among these designs is one for producing synthetic flavors. The design includes a suppression system that has quick responding detectors and suppression bottles for inert powder injection. The system is designed to suppress an explosion before it can develop. Plants producing organic powders also typically have automatically controlled fire extinguishing nozzles for additional protection.
Click here to review SPX's editorial about safety and environmental protection for modern spray drying plants.


text:
Sigle
 Magyar Rádió – ente radiofonico ungherese
 Materiale di riferimento
 Mercury-Redstone – missioni del programma Mercury
 Midland Railway – compagnia ferroviaria britannica
 Missale Romanum o Messale Romano – messale in lingua latina pubblicato da papa Pio V nel 1570
 Mouvement Réformateur – movimento politico belga

Codici
 MR – codice vettore IATA di Air Mauritanie
 mr – codice ISO 639-2 alpha-2 della lingua marathi
 MR – codice ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 della Mauritania
 MR – codice ISO 3166-2:AL del distretto di Mirdizia (Albania)
 MR – codice ISO 3166-2:LT della contea di Marijampolė (Lituania)
 MR – codice ISO 3166-2:YE di Al Mahrah (Yemen)

Informatica
 .mr – dominio di primo livello della Mauritania

Altro
 Mr. – abbreviazione dell'inglese Mister
 Mr – abbreviazione del francese Monsieur (alternativa alla più diffusa abbreviazione M., o MM. al plurale)
 MR – targa automobilistica di Marburg-Biedenkopf (Germania)

Altri progetti

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Race matters: Northampton Police Department checks data annually for racial bias, Here's what the numbers – and people – have to say
by Amanda Drane | Jun 30, 2015
JERREY ROBERTS Margaret Martin, 56, shares her thoughts Monday at her home at Hampshire Heights in Northampton.
JERREY ROBERTS David Andrews, 46, shares his views Monday at his home at Hampshire Heights in Northampton.
CAROL LOLLIS Russell P. Sienkiewicz in front of the Northampton police station.
DAN LITTLE A man walks his bicycle through the Hampshire Heights neighborhood Sunday in Northampton.
My boyfriend, who is not white, returned home from a shift bartending down the street from our Northampton apartment. Still shaking, he explained he'd just been interrogated by two police officers during his walk home.
They questioned where he had been and what he was doing, and asked him to show them his tattoos. They were looking for someone, they told him.
After a few minutes, the officers were satisfied he wasn't their guy and sent him on his way.
This happened about a year ago and was his only run-in in Northampton, though throughout our five-plus years together in Western Mass, I can't count the number of times this has happened. I've seen police officers veer up curbs as he walks down the sidewalk in order to have a terse, unfriendly conversation that typically goes like this: Where are you coming from? Where are you going? You fit the description of someone we're looking for.
It's these kinds of interactions — ones that leave a wake of uncertainty and mistrust — that Massachusetts lawmakers are pushing to address in bills now being debated at the Statehouse. In the wake of police killings of black suspects and the unrest they stirred nationwide, lawmakers here want to identify biased cops and build public trust.
Some communities in the Pioneer Valley have put themselves ahead of the curve. For the past 15 years, the police departments in Northampton and Amherst have kept track of how frequently officers arrest and write motor vehicle citations for people of different races. The UMass police department also compiles that information, although it's unclear how long they have.
*Some of the totals do not equal 100 percent due to people who are of more than one race or ethnicity. (Federal policy defines "Hispanic" not as a race, but as an ethnicity.)
In those departments, officials said, the stats show no evidence of systemic racial bias. In recent years, the figures show that the percentage of non-white people arrested or cited by police is generally close to their percentage of the general population.
One exception came last year in Northampton, where black suspects accounted for 9.6 of the total arrests, compared to blacks' 6 percent share of the general population. Russell Sienkiewicz, who recently retired as Northampton chief, told the Advocate he was initially alarmed by that figure. But then he looked more deeply and learned that some "frequent flyer" subjects accounted for a large share of those arrests, skewing the figure.
"That skews the percentages to make it look high for the year," said Sienkiewicz. "They were just repeat offenders."
The Brattleboro Police Department doesn't compile the information on a regular basis, but was able to gather their data in response to a request from the Advocate.
There, black suspects accounted for nearly 11 percent of arrests in 2013, compared to just over 2 percent of the population. Police Capt. Mark Carignan said that spike was "noted and monitored," but said officials were reassured when the percentage of arrests dropped to 6 percent last year — a figure he said is the city's "statistical norm."
Police officials said that statistics provide a useful tool, raising awareness and prompting important conversations.
"It's important to just annually evaluate the numbers with regards to demographics," said Sienkiewicz, who retired June 14. "I've chosen over the years to make sure [officers] are held accountable."
Other large area police forces — Springfield, Holyoke, Greenfield, and Westfield — said they do not regularly analyze such information.
Some police leaders said they see no need to keep data on police encounters with minority residents and visitors.
"I'm thinking: why would we?" said Capt. Michael McCabe of the Westfield Police Department, who said his officers deal mostly with white people. "Our demographics are such that it doesn't appear to be an issue for us."
McCabe, also an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Westfield State, says a lot of the attention given to the issue of police showing racial bias is "driven by emotion and not by data."
McCabe says law enforcement officials are trained to generate profiles of subjects, that it's part of their job. He instructs me to close my eyes and picture a pedophile.
He asks, "What comes to mind?" I say, a middle-aged white man, a tad overweight, balding. "That's racial profiling," McCabe says. "But the facts support that profile." McCabe says to profile by race, ethnicity, and appearance is sometimes part of the territory.
"Racial profiling is only reprehensible when it's used to discriminate," McCabe says.
Springfield officials said they are unable to crunch the numbers due to the volume of police work in the city. That goes for criminal arrests and traffic citations alike. "I don't even know if our systems could do that," said Springfield Sergeant Stephen Wyszynski, noting that his department issued about 13,000 motor vehicle citations in 2013 and nearly double that in 2014.
In Greenfield, Deputy Chief Mark Williams said the city department does not analyze demographic data, but has the ability to amass racial information if needed. Greenfield was unable to produce information about arrests, citations, and race before deadline.
David Andrews, 46, of Northampton — who is black — said he hasn't "experienced any bullshit, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen." Compared to the police officers in his former home of Chicago, Andrews said Northampton is a paradise. "It's like hot water to ice," he said.
Andrews has lived in Northampton for 20 years and said it's changed in that time. When he first moved here, Andrews said more officers came in contact with him than they do now. Things have gotten better. He recalls a time when a cop pulled up to him and his brother while they were walking by Green Street. Andrews said the officer asked, "Where are you boys going?"
"I would've answered him if I'd seen any boys around," Andrews said. Instead, he just stared at the man with the badge.
Over the years, the black population grew and police behavior improved. "Twenty years ago you could count the black people here on one hand," he said. "Now, they're not just running up on people anymore."
Sienkiewicz said he began compiling demographic statistics for the department about 15 years ago, when racial profiling was employed as a tactic to bust drug traffickers in New Jersey, sparking national debate. During that time, Massachusetts officials discussed ways to ensure officers were held accountable for discriminatory behavior. Though the statewide discussion "fell by the wayside," Sienkiewicz said, he decided he wanted Northampton to stay ahead of the issue.
Sienkiewicz said that the data collection sets a tone. Supervisors are on the lookout for any patterns of bias and officers know this. "Someone could like to pull more women over," said Sienkiewicz. "Someone could have an inherent bias. That's why the data collection is important."
Sienkiewicz said he's never seen someone with bias make it through the academy and into the ranks of his department, and he's happy he has the numbers to back that up.
"I can show clear, unequivocal data that we don't [show bias]," he said. "It's not what you look like — it's what you do."
Sienkiewicz said the department compares its racial statistics to the demographics of the greater Springfield metropolitan area, checking to be sure arrest counts fall in line with census-based racial percentages — 83.5 percent white, 6 percent black, 11.15 percent hispanic, 1.74 percent Asian, and 0.25 percent Native American.
He chose those demographics over the Northampton information, which shows notably lower racial diversity, because Northampton is often host to visitors from surrounding towns. The majority of arrests in Northampton, he said — 66 percent — are of people who are not Northampton residents; 19 percent of those arrested in Northampton, he said, identify as homeless or transient.
Of the 5,885 motor vehicle citations issued by Northampton officers in 2014, 86.1 percent of those who got tickets were white, 4.5 were black, 7.5 percent were Hispanic, and 1.6 percent were Asian. Of the 869 arrests made in 2014, 88 percent of the subjects were white, 9.6 percent were black, 12 percent were Hispanic, 0.9 percent were Asian, and 0.35 percent were Native American.
Northampton's new police chief might find her predecessor's statistics useful. At a public meet-and-greet during the vetting process for the job, Jody Kasper fielded questions from some residents who said they felt people of color are unfairly targeted in Northampton. Kasper, a veteran of the force who most recently served as second-in-command, was surprised to hear it.
"We're well aware of the national conversation, of a lot of groups feeling a rift with police and not feeling understood, but this is the first time I've heard that about Northampton," said Kasper. "But of course, if people have concerns, we need to hear that. We need to address that — that's not good."
Residents of Northampton's Hampshire Heights said the neighborhood is no stranger to visits from the police.
"I don't think you're going to get much positive response from the people in here," said Andrews, as I take a stroll through the neighborhood asking for thoughts on NPD.
Do the police come through here a lot? Andrews looks at his watch in response. "Is it 8 o'clock yet?" His girlfriend, Toni Dolan, 33, who lives next door, said her children are scared of the police. She said officers are often responding to calls, but also frequently prowl the neighborhood for signs of trouble. Dolan said she understands they have a job to do, but the neighborhood of lower income residents struggles enough.
"No one's here because they want to be," she said.
Dolan said she fled her abusive husband about five years ago and public housing is all she could afford on her own. Dolan's daughter, Kiara Badillo, 16, heard us talking and came outside to join in. Badillo said looking out her window night after night and seeing police cruisers is oppressive.
"To them everyone is the aggressor," she said. "They make me feel uncomfortable. I'm more scared of them than I am walking down the street in Springfield."
David's son, Djon, 22, walked up to the apartment and heard us talking about the police. "I hate them," he said. He said he was recently riding his bike through town and rode up onto the sidewalk for a stretch. An officer saw him and made him walk his bike rather than ride it, while he said a white man behind him on a bike went unstopped.
Another Hampshire Heights resident, Margaret Martin, 56, said there's tension between neighborhood residents and police officers. But she said that's because some of the residents are "criminally active" and the rest don't like to talk to the police officers about it for fear of retaliation.
"I've seen a lot, but now I've learned to keep my mouth shut," said Martin. "And it makes their job harder, the police."
"I haven't had any complaints and I've lived here all my life," said Luis Rivera, 25, of Northampton, while walking to his car in Hampshire Heights. "I'm kind of glad I live in Northampton, because cops everywhere else are starting to act up." Others say seeing officers in the neighborhood so frequently sends a negative message, especially for the many children growing up in that environment.
"We do routinely drive through lots of places," Kasper said. "Some people like to see an officer drive through their neighborhood because it offers a sense of safety."
Fatima Salaam, 53, of Northampton, said she hasn't trusted the police since an officer allegedly shot and killed her father in Brooklyn, New York, in 1989 for selling loose incense on the street. So she wasn't surprised when Northampton Police officers detained her last year when a fellow shopper at CVS said Salaam had called in a bomb threat to the store. She said the woman only accused her because she was wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf.
"I don't trust them," Salaam said of police.
Though she doesn't recall this specific incident, Kasper said, it's considered good practice to detain someone accused of something dangerous so they don't go running off while officers get to the bottom of it.
Kasper said every police officer in the state receives four hours of diversity training at the academy, though fair and impartial policing methods are woven throughout the academy program. This diversity training, along with the department's anti-discrimination policy, is reviewed on an annual basis, she said.
Additionally, several members of the department have taken an elective 32-hour course dedicated to equipping officers to safely get help for those with mental health issues.
Kasper said she'd like to supplement existing training with a cultural awareness course, but unfortunately, she was surprised to find, they're not easy to track down.
"It's hard to find, but certainly I think it's valuable," she said. "I think that with everything that's gone on in the past year we'll probably see an uptick in those types of courses," adding that she'll be watching for those that do crop up. "When I first came on I remember a lot more diversity training," she said, recalling how racial profiling was a burgeoning issue when she joined the city department in 1998.
Down the road in Springfield, Sgt. John Delaney said there's no need to compile racial data. "There's no red flags in our department in regards to things of that nature. We get along very well in the community — with all races and genders."
Some people in the Springfield neighborhood known as "The X" have a different perspective.
Ishmael Peña, 26, said he was shocked by the way Springfield Police officers arrested his friend on June 8.
"They roughed up my boy," Peña said. He said that he understands why they arrested his friend, who is not white, but he wishes he had a camera out to document the way they did it. "They had no reason to do that. They nearly ran him over. Maybe that's just how it is out here in Bangfield."
Delaney says officers arrested Peña's friend, Ishmael Ramos, because they caught him selling heroin on Worthington Street. He says Ramos already had an existing warrant out for heroin distribution. Reports from the night show no record of a fight between Ramos and the officers.
"I don't know what this person saw," said Sgt. Delaney. "[Ramos] wasn't picked on because of his race, he was picked on for selling heroin. And the second time at that."
Delaney says he's not surprised to hear some shared a different opinion of police — they have a tough job that too often involves taking away someone's freedom.
"If some officer is having a bad day then that person's perspective of police officers is not good, but overall police officers are caring individuals," Delaney says. "Are there bad police officers? Yeah, just like there's bad reporters — we hire from the human race just like everybody else does. But 99 percent of us do a really good job serving the public."
Capt. Michael McCabe of the Westfield Police Department says that Westfield has so few people of color that racial data collection doesn't make sense for the department.
When the question of racial bias surfaces, McCabe said it's a tricky subject to navigate, especially when people who have done wrong don't want to admit it.
"Nobody really wants to come out and have that conversation," said McCabe. "It's easier to blame law enforcement for what appears to be racial bias against a certain demographic." He said the tension between officers and black people is such that black subjects are instantly on the defensive.
"It's an interesting demographic that you can't really have a conversation about," said McCabe. "As sure as I am sitting here, 100 percent of times I've stopped a person of African-American descent, their way of thinking was that the reason I was stopping them was because of the color of their skin. That's a cultural issue."
When it comes to motor vehicle stops, McCabe said radar guns don't discriminate. "I don't know if they're black, white or purple when I'm pulling them over."
While analyzing arrest and traffic citation records for racial bias is illuminating, it doesn't tell a complete story.
Tracking motor vehicle searches by race can often be more revealing, said Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern's Institute on Race and Justice.
"Police will often tell you that frequently they don't know the race of the person they're pulling over," McDevitt said. "But once you've pulled someone over you know what their race is" — and at that point, officers make choices about whether to conduct a search.•
Contact Amanda Drane at adrane@valleyadvocate.com
Currently, state law requires police departments to note a subject's race on records of arrests and motor vehicle citations. However, there is not currently a requirement for police to document the race of people involved in motor vehicle stops that do not result in a warning or citation, or in searches and interactions on the street.
Two state bills proposed by Second Suffolk District State Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz would change that by requiring officers to document race in their less formal interactions with citizens. The bills are still in the preliminary legislative phases.
"It's an issue that we've long been hearing about from our constituents," said Chang-Diaz, who said that people of color often feel targeted by police officers. "I think the core philosophy is you can't manage what you don't measure. The data probably will reflect that in many parts of the state police are doing great work, that they've made great improvements, and we also want to be able to see where there are problems."
Lorie Fridell, CEO of Fair and Impartial Policing — a Florida based organization that travels the country to train police departments in the art of recognizing bias — said her organization is increasingly in demand. She said the organization, partially funded through the Department of Justice, is expanding since President Obama's task force on 21st-century policing recommended more departments seek training.
Fridell said the training program includes education on implicit bias. Explicit bias is often what comes to mind when someone brings up the topic of bias — the kind of bias evidenced outright and consciously acknowledged.
Implicit bias is much more common, she said, and it "can happen outside of conscious awareness." Fridell said legislators should set aside issues of data collection and instead spend time and energy on funding training, leadership, outreach. She said implicit bias is a pervasive issue that data collection alone can't fix.
"If you hire humans to do policing you have to be proactive," said Fridell. "There's no department that doesn't have work to do on this issue."•


Newton attended a press conference following the championship game, but walked out of it about three minutes later. He answered most of the questions that were thrown his way with just one or two-word replies and sulked in his chair. Newton also told the press, "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." He also added that he thinks the whole situation has been overblown and there's not really anything to it.
Most fans, players and coaches expected Carolina Panthers' 26-year-old quarterback to be named this year's NFL most valuable player and they were right. Newton, who led his team to a 15-1 record during the regular season received the honour on Feb 6th, but was then disappointed with his performance during the Super Bowl the next day as the Panthers dropped a 24-10 decision to the Denver Broncos at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
Newton of Atlanta, Georgia wasn't a unanimous winner of the award, but came close to it. He was named on 48 of the 50 ballots while fellow quarterbacks Tom Brady of the New England Patriots and Carson Palmer of the Arizona Cardinals received one vote each. Newton threw 35 touchdown passes during the regular season and was intercepted just 10 times. He also ran in another 10 touchdowns on the ground. Newton was successful on 296 of 495 passing attempts for a 59.8 completion percentage and 3,837 yards and had a 99.4 rating. He also rushed the ball 132 times for 636 yards for an average run of 4.8 yards.