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The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)
In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in American history, we have seen a spectacular resurgence of the indictment against white
The accusation of racism is so transparently false in this case that conservatives (and even some liberals, such as the editors of the New York Daily News) have been far more willing than usual to refute it. For the most part, however, the attitude of whites and responsible mainstream opinion makers has not been to condemn the racism charge as the corrosive lie that it is, but simply to ignore it or point out that it's not helpful in the midst of this crisis. As a result, even as many blacks and liberal whites were outrageously charging racism, other whites were uncomplainingly organizing the biggest disaster relief in American history, including bringing hundreds of thousands of black evacuees into their communities all across America.
To the extent that most whites think about the issue at all, they seem to imagine that acting decently is a sufficient response to being called a racist. But if past experience is any guide, such a passive and uncomplaining attitude on the part of whites, far from clearing them of the racism charge in the eyes of blacks, leaves them looking guiltier than ever. Why else—as blacks see it—would whites not defend themselves against such a damning accusation? Why else—unless whites really are racists—would they not indignantly strike back at people who are saying such terrible things about them? Thus whites' unprecedented outpouring of generosity, far from acquitting them of racism, merely continues the familiar psychodrama of white liberal guilt, in which whites are forever trying through conspicuous demonstrations of compassion and good will to shield themselves from a racism charge against which they appear to have no real defense.
The charge of white racism remains, as it has been for the past 40 years, a sword hanging over our society, paralyzing rational discourse and obstructing sensible action in areas ranging from crime prevention to education to anti-terrorism measures to immigration control. For example, the Center for Immigration Studies, a very moderate immigration reform organization that takes no interest in the cultural or ethnic aspects of immigration, has been smeared as "repugnant" by the Wall Street Journal, based on the conventional belief—conventional even among many mainstream conservatives—that any serious concern about the scale and social effects of immigration is motivated by racial bigotry and must be avoided. Similarly, despite Islam's manifest nature as a warrior religion devoted to the spread of totalitarian sharia over the whole earth, respectable society shies away from frank discussion of this extremely important fact, out of fear of being called racist.
However, of all the factors that serve as a pretext for the racism charge and make intelligent discussion of race- and culture-related problems impossible, the most important is the black differential in academic achievement and socioeconomic outcomes. While the liberal media have routinely published articles since the early 1990s showing that black students score below whites on basic skills tests, and that even upper middle class black students score lower than poor white students, the explanations offered for this phenomenon always come down to some sin or failure on the part of whites. Thus in a September 28 New York Times story about the black achievement gap among middle-class black students at Princeton High School in Princeton, New Jersey, a gap that has caused the elite school to be declared as "failing" under the No Child Left Behind Act, Times reporter Samuel G. Freedman presents the following theories to account for the problem: Princeton schools were segregated until 1947; teachers have "low expectations" of black pupils; and there are unspecified "inadequacies in the system." This is a completely typical treatment by the Times. Any suggestion that the causes of blacks' low scores lie in blacks themselves is never considered, and anyone who raises that possibility is attacked as a racist. If rational discussion of the possible causes of the problem is forbidden, how can rational responses be found?
A handful of conservative black thinkers, such as John McWhorter, have argued that it is up to blacks to help open up a more honest discussion about race. This approach harks back to Booker T. Washington's idea—roundly rejected by the modern civil rights movement—that blacks' condition in America can only be improved by blacks themselves, through the effort of building up their own capacities as individuals and communities; and, further, that it is folly to expect whites, or government, or the society as a whole, to do for blacks what only blacks can do for themselves. As Frederick Douglass said in 1865:
What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... . I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury. [1]
The thought that today's blacks, following in the tradition of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, might liberate whites from the strictures of racial correctness, including the deadly notion that whites are responsible for the well-being and progress of blacks and are guilty of racism if blacks do not succeed, is appealing for a number of reasons. But given the vested interest that most blacks and virtually all black organizations have in the existing racial preference system, it is highly unlikely that such a transformation in racial discourse will be initiated by blacks. Further, since it was the white majority that actually created the current system of black racial spoils and white racial guilt, it is the white psychology about race, not the black psychology, that holds the key to turning this problem around.
The most likely reason for whites' intellectual paralysis regarding racial issues in general and the charge of racism in particular is that whites do indeed experience sincere guilt—and a sense of their own moral illegitimacy as a group—as a result of America's history of discrimination against blacks. Whites therefore feel that they have no right to assert themselves as the historic majority people of America, either in promoting moral and educational standards for the whole society, or in defending the majority culture and national identity from the forces of mass immigration and multiculturalism. As an example of the latter attitude, a prominent neoconservative journalist and author wrote to me some years ago that "America's harsh history of racial discrimination" required America to keep its borders open to non-European immigrants. In other words, America's historic guilt toward blacks makes it guilty toward all non-white peoples in the world, a guilt it can try to palliate, but can never eliminate, by allowing itself to be transformed by non-European immigration.
One problem with the notion of a historic white guilt is that many other nations have oppressed their ethnic or religious minorities in the past, yet did not ever afterward feel that they were deprived of the right to preserve their majority culture or to exist as a distinct society. This suggests that white America's susceptibility to the charge of racism does not derive from its past treatment of blacks, but from blacks' current condition, namely their lagging intellectual and economic performance relative to the rest of the population, and the backwardness, incompetence, and moral disorder that characterize so many inner city black communities. Yet because of the egalitarian, oppressor/oppressed model that has informed the civil rights movement at least since 1966 when the black left pushed liberal integrationists like Martin Luther King aside, it has been totally unacceptable to the white left as well as to blacks to believe that the cause of persistent black deficiencies lies in the black community itself.
Instead, black achievement deficits in education, income, family formation, law-abidingness and so on must be due to some artificial factor, which in the end always boils down to white racism, or, alternatively, to a white indifference that is tantamount to white racism. Among these explanations is the liberal theory that whites are unconsciously sending demoralizing messages to blacks about blacks' intellectual capacities. Ironically, if anyone is doing this to blacks, it is the liberals themselves, since they constantly insist that without racial preferences blacks will be unable to achieve at an acceptable level and will be forever relegated to second class status as a group. Conservatives reinforce this perverse view when they speak of the black achievement gap as America's number one "civil rights" issue. The implication is that if blacks, despite ever-renewed efforts at amelioration, still remain behind whites in any respect, they are being deprived of their civil rights. But by whom are they being deprived? The answer can only be—by whites.
In all cases, whites avoid the sinful thought that the responsibility for black inequality lies with blacks as a group, by placing the responsibility on whites as a group.
Just as whites accept the ultimate blame for inadequate black achievement, they accept the blame for the universal phenomena of ethnocentrism, ethnic separatism, and ethnic conflict. In fact, these behaviors and phenomena are not unique to whites and can reasonably be characterized as normal human responses to inter-group relations:
- It is a fact of life that people of all races feel more socially comfortable with people of their own race than with people of other races, and so tend to gravitate to the company of people like themselves. This natural behavior doesn't mean that people are hostile to those of other races, only that they feel more at ease and cooperate better with people like themselves, and so tend to form communities and social networks with people of the same racial and ethnic background. This is true of blacks and Asians and other ethnic groups as well as whites.
- But only whites—partly because it is whites who pioneered the very idea of human rights and also because their civilizational achievements are historically so great—suffer from guilt and exaggerated moral qualms that make it impossible for them to admit, even to themselves, these normal and unobjectionable facts of life.
- Whites therefore compensate for their natural preference for whites by turning people of other races, particularly blacks, into abstractions, symbols, totems—sacred objects upon whom they can project their idealism and demonstrate their compassion. It is a modernized version of the romance of the "noble savage" that provided the well-spring of the modern left in the writings of Rousseau.
- As a result, society's continuing failure to realize complete social integration of all races, particularly of blacks, is preposterously blamed on the idea of whites' supposed hateful resistance to blacks, or on whites' negative "stereotypes" about blacks, or on whites' unconscious enjoyment of white skin privilege, or on whites' failure to "try hard enough" to bridge the racial divide, or (a theme developed at great length in a ludicrous New York Times series on race relations several years ago) on whites' silent refusal to share their true feelings about race relations with their black co-workers—even though, as everyone knows but can't say, if whites did share their suppressed feelings about their black co-workers—e.g., their resentment at the unearned privileges routinely awarded to blacks—they would instantly become the subjects of an inquisition.
To sum up: the prohibition against acknowledging the racial facts of life—that only blacks can raise the aspirations and conditions of blacks, and that people naturally prefer the company of people who are racially similar to themselves—drives whites toward a systematic indictment of their own race, which leads to white silence and passivity in the face of vicious black and leftwing racial attacks. And this in turn leads to white submission to the tyranny of political correctness across the whole range of cultural issues touched on earlier.
The crucial question then becomes, how did this false belief—that white racism is responsible for all distinctions and inqualities between races, and particularly for the ongoing black achievement gap—arise in the first place? From the Emancipation Proclamation to the mid-twentieth century, blacks lived under far worse conditions of inequality than exist now, without whites bending themselves out of shape over perceived racial differences. Both the race differences in performance and the naturalness of social separation between the races were taken for granted by most whites, including Northern liberal whites, until the mid 20th century (and were also accepted by black leaders like Booker T. Washington, who famously declared: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress"). But the war against Hitler, by pushing America to define itself in diametrical opposition to the Nazi race ideology, gave America an extremist ideological mandate of its own: the total elimination of all forms of white racial discrimination. This in turn implied the total elimination of all forms of white solidarity, since the normal preference of whites for other whites was now defined as bigoted discrimination. Further, if white solidarity or identity was discriminatory and wrong, then so were the cultures and nations that had been historically created by whites and that were still completely or overwhelmingly white in their ethnic composition.
Initially, this ideological re-casting of America and the West was an elite phenomenon, and did not transform the American psyche and culture generally. It was not until America attempted to put this radical liberal ideology into practice, through the historically unprecedented attempt to raise black Americans to full legal and substantive equality with whites, that the neurosis of white guilt was born. The transformations of the 1960s lie at the root of our current racial neurosis, and we have no hope of untangling ourselves from it without understanding what transpired in those years.
In Losing Ground, Charles Murray's landmark account of the 1960s poverty programs, the author describes several changes in the thinking on blacks and urban poverty. [2] From 1961 to 1964, the announced purpose of welfare was to get people off the dole by getting them to change their behavior. This "give a hand, not a hand out" approach was abandoned when it was realized that both the jobs programs and the community development programs were not having the desired effect. For example, a $23 million community development program for Oakland, California, which received much favorable national coverage, ended by creating a total of 20 jobs. This was representative, not exceptional, according to Murray. In 1967 the Johnson administration announced that only one percent of the 7.3 million people on welfare were capable of acquiring the skills and training they needed to become self-sufficient. While there may have been a certain amount of liberal exaggeration in this statement designed to keep welfare spending flowing (we should also note that the qualified success of welfare reform since 1996 throws the dire implications of the 1967 announcement into doubt), the problem was nevertheless real and substantial. It was concluded that the only thing left to do about the poor was to provide them with permanent income transfers. As Tom Wicker wrote:
[L]arge numbers of the poor are always going to have to be helped. Whether for physical or mental reasons, because of environmental factors, or whatever, they cannot keep pace.... Thus the aim of getting everyone off welfare and into 'participation in our affluent society' is unreal and a pipe dream.... a decent standard of living ought to be made available not just to an eligible few but to everyone, and without degrading restrictions and policelike investigations.
Poverty was to be ended by giving everyone a guaranteed income. As two social critics put it, "[I]n a nation as rich as the United States, it is an utter moral scandal that even the slightest remnant of poverty should remain."
The proposal to give poor people lifetime sustenance—no matter what the reason for their poverty, and with nothing expected from them in return—would never have gotten off the ground without a radically revised view of the causes of poverty. This was provided by the socialist writer Michael Harrington in his influential book, The Other America. Harrington argued that there were 50 million poor people in America, and that their poverty was not caused by laziness or vice or lack of ability. "It was produced by conditions that had nothing to do with individual virtue or effort," as Murray sums up Harrington. "Poverty was not the fault of the individual but of the system." Therefore the elimination of poverty required nothing less than radical surgery on society itself, namely the massive redistribution of income. In the aftermath of Harrington's book, these notions, formerly subscribed to only by the left, became the mainstream consensus virtually overnight.
Complementing the new understanding of poverty was the new attitude toward underclass violence that emerged in the aftermath of the 1960s race riots. The general response was not to condemn the riots but to condone them. Respectable white opinion, as reflected by the National Commission on Civil Disorders, agreed with Martin Luther King that rioting was not a violation of law that should be punished, but an understandable response to centuries of oppression—even though the nation had passed a revolutionary Civil Rights Act just 15 days before the first riot broke out in Harlem on July 18, 1964, followed by riots in several other cities that summer. Since blacks already enjoyed legal equality in the North where the riots occurred, it became part of the conventional wisdom that legal equality was not enough. "The moral agonizing among whites was strikingly white-centered," Murray observes. "Whites had created the problem, it was up to whites to fix it, and there was very little in the dialogue that treated blacks as responsible actors."
But why, the reader may wonder, was all the focus on poor blacks? What about poor whites, who, after all, made up a majority of welfare recipients? Several related factors accounted for the stress on black rather than white uplift: as President Johnson emphasized in his June 1965 Commencement speech at Howard University, poor blacks, unlike poor whites, were the victims of historic racial prejudice in this country and so required special help; the revolutionary Civil Rights Act had been passed for the sake of blacks, not whites; poor whites were not rioting in cities throughout America; various social pathologies (e.g. unwed motherhood, endemic violence, lack of useful skills) were not as profound and extensive among poor whites as among poor blacks; and, most importantly, the problem of poor whites was not seen as a threat to the social order itself. Reflecting the sense of urgency on the latter issue, the lead article in the January 1967 issue of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, a sober academic journal, said:
[W]e are creating a monster within our midst, a people being alienated from the mainstream of American life .... [We must] cease thinking of racial relations as a nice and good thing, as one important national and local task—among many others—to do. American race relations today, like religion and basic ideologies historically, must have an absolute priority or we are as a nation lost!
To summarize the stages of this epochal transformation in America's attitudes on poverty and race:
(1) The early poverty programs were based on an appeal to American virtue and optimism.
(2) Social engineering to lead poor blacks out of poverty utterly failed.
(3) That failure engendered the idea of providing poor blacks with permanent income maintenance, regardless of individual deserts.
(4) The only way to justify this radical proposal on moral grounds was to claim that the system, not blacks' own behavior, was the cause of black poverty.
(5) Since the system (a.k.a. white America) was responsible for black poverty, it followed that the system, even in the absence of legal discrimination against blacks, was responsible for black violence.
Thus was born a theological belief in white guilt, which became the indispensable condition for the exaggerated solicitude toward blacks, as well as the poisonous alienation from pre-Sixties America, that has characterized post-Sixties America.
Murray's account, summarized and interpreted here, has helped us locate the precise historical and psychological moment that gave birth to whites' loss of confidence and even self-loathing. It was the moment when the incapacity of liberal social engineering to end the dysfunction of many poor and inner-city black communities first became manifest to the white liberal consciousness. Having embarked on an unprecedented attempt to raise the condition of blacks, white liberal America suddenly found itself faced with two horrifying realizations it had not contemplated before: that black poverty as a whole could not be cured by government efforts, and that, given the depth of black racial hostility as shown in the riots, racial integration along liberal, "I have a dream," lines was impossible.
Shocked to its core, white America lost its nerve. White America could not blame black poverty on the black community's own failures, since that would imply that whites were not responsible for blacks' problems. Nor could white America attribute black racial animus (as Thomas Jefferson had famously done in his Notes on the State of Virginia) to the co-existence of two such different races under the same government. To adopt either explanation would be to blame the very race whom whites now viewed as their own historic victims. For whites, the only psychologically acceptable response to the revelation of persistent black functional inadequacies and black racial anger was to place the onus for these problems on themselves.
Whites' belief in white America's inherent badness, their compulsion to abase themselves before "oppressed" and "disadvantaged" minorities of all kinds, became an organizing principle of American politics—a principle that was soon extended to every conceivable "victim" group. Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, women, homosexuals, the physically and mentally handicapped, the elderly, juveniles—all now became recipients of an ever-expanding system of official group recognition, government entitlements, and relief from normal societal standards. This relief included the license to attack whites and America for all possible social ills and even to side openly with America's enemies in time of war.
But, once again, where did this belief in white society's fundamental wickedness come from? It came (1) from whites' sickening realization that the grandest government projects and the best intended laws did not heal the dysfunction and racial animus that characterized many black communities; and (2) from whites' urgent moral need to attribute those black ills to some agent other than blacks themselves. White racial guilt was born of whites' inability to end black inequality, combined with whites' refusal to confront any causes of that inequality outside their own agency. This is the experiential and historical root of white America's self-condemnation and of the destructive attitudes and behaviors, so harmful to our country as a whole, that have resulted from it. These include the blatant or subtle anti-Americanism that now dominates much of our culture; the passive acceptance of this ubiquitous anti-Americanism even by those who don't actively support it; and the inverted morality of modern liberalism, which requires that the worse blacks and other designated minority groups behave, the more this non-white failure must be blamed on white racism.
Sadly, even President Bush has climbed on the blame-whitey bandwagon, declaring at the National Cathedral that the poverty that left so many New Orleans blacks vulnerable to the Katrina disaster "has roots in generations of segregation and discrimination that closed many doors of opportunity. As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality." As though it were 1962 all over again, as though Harrington's The Other America had just been published, as though we had not already lived through four decades of prodigiously expensive and wasteful efforts to alleviate poverty which had only encouraged the very behaviors that create poverty and the attendant social disorder, as though none of these lessons had already been so painfully learned, President Bush, to the applause of more than a few benighted conservatives, declares that he wants to start up the Great Society all over again. Such is the enduring power of white guilt, and the compulsion on the part of many whites to attempt to clear themselves personally of the racism charge by indicting white America as a whole.
While liberal guilt and leftist anti-Americanism have many causes, it was black inequality above all other factors that sparked the explosion in America's conscience that made America turn against itself. For the same reason, Americans, particularly whites, will be unable to turn back the forces that are weakening our nation unless they first uproot their false racial guilt, their undeserved sense of their moral illegitimacy as a people, that arises from their mistaken belief in their responsibility for black inequality. If whites finally dropped the liberal expectation that all groups be fully integrated and perform equally in all walks of life, if they accepted Booker T. Washington's sensible notion of encouraging each group to develop in its own way according to its own talents and qualities, they would stop attributing to their own imaginary racism every failure of blacks to achieve economic parity or social integration with themselves. The entire structure of thought by which whites and America have been demonized would collapse. But if whites continue to believe that there are no differences between groups in their abilities and qualities, and that the black achievement gap can only be explained by white racism or white indifference, then the blaming of white America, and the resulting diminishment of our culture and civilization, will continue. More than any other factor, facing the truth about race and race differences could help re-moralize our society.
Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at his weblog, View from the Right.
1. Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants," address delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, January 26, 1865, reprinted in 4 The Frederick Douglass Papers 59, 68 (J. Blassingame & J. McKivigan eds. 1991) (emphasis in original).
2. Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950‑1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984), Chapters 2 and 3.
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Old Engine Character Revamps
Naruto Arena > Main > News >
Old Engine Character Revamps
Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 08:25 by Luapman
That's right. While Mark and GT are off working out all the bugs and glitches in the engine I am revisiting the older characters (with player feedback) and in some cases the older characters will see minor, but likely not major, changes. This is partly to bring the old engine characters more in-tune with the new engine and in some cases for balance. The first change is to Naruto's Shadow Clones. I do not plan to make a news post for each revamp that occurs so be sure to regularly check the Character Revamp section of the forums. It can be found in the Latest Balance Changes section which is in the News and Announcements section.
Have Fun,
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old engine character revamps
NARUTO © 2002 MASASHI KISHIMOTO. All Rights Reserved.

subset: commoncrawl


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U.S. Press Freedom Dropped To 47th
America gone Fascist usually leads to the recent law empowering the Pentagon to arrest and imprison citizens without regard to the Constitution but theres another aspect getting less attention. Three current reports paint the picture: FBI Seeks Social Media Monitoring Tool is self-explanatory; the government police peering over everybodys shoulder at their personal affairs is historically only present in totalitarian societies.
Another report tells of: Twitter Announces It Will Censor Some Tweets: Activists Worried. Again, the media and communication systems indulging in censorship of this stripe has only occurred in the absence of such rights as we have taken for granted heretofore. The deafening silence from the major media is an additional, negative warning for those paying attention.
The final straw was heaped on the camels back by: U.S. Falls To 47th In Press Freedom Rankings, a report that makes increased sense when taken in the context of the previous two.
Add to these, the government has been repeatedly attempting to find an excuse to control the Internet, currently with SOPA and PIPA in Congress.
What do you suppose it all means?


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A week after authorities launched an awareness campaign about sexting, investigators have charged a 15-year-old boy over sexual and threatening text messages sent to an ex-girlfriend.
The boy has been charged with making child pornography and criminal harassment after allegedly using a parent's iPod to send the written messages.
Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team Staff Sgt. John Guigon said police arrested the teen Friday, and said the messages crossed the line and became a crime because of the written descriptions, the threats and because the victim did not consent.
Guigon said he could not talk about the specific messages, only that they were written descriptions of child pornography.
"Any, basically, written material that describes sexual acts between or involving a person under the age of 18 is considered child pornography under the Criminal Code," said Guigon.
Guigon said the messages also "involved an immediate member of the family."
The case came to the attention of police in late May when the principal of a northeast school contacted officers after a girl said she was receiving text messages of a sexual nature from an unrecognized phone number.
She also received more than 25 calls from the same number but did not respond to either the calls or messages. She then told someone at the school and police began an investigation. Police later learned that in February the victim had received dozens of messages from the same number but did not report it to anyone.
Investigators tracked the messages and said they were coming from an iPod account that belonged to a parent of the victim's ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend has been charged with making child pornography and criminal harassment.
Police say they have received more than a dozen sexting complaints this year.
"There are likely many more that go unreported to police that are dealt with in other ways," said Staff Sgt. Mike Bossley of the Community and Youth Services Section.
Police say they work closely with school boards to educate young people about sexting, and recently warned the public about its potential consequences.
"Even if images, videos and explicit messages are deleted, there is no telling where they may wind up on the Internet. Every online interaction leaves an electronic footprint, and it can be tracked to either the sender or the receiver," said Bossley.
The name of the accused cannot be released under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.


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I have no photos, no personal memories, nor even memories of others, of my great-great-grandmother, Rebecca Smith Bartley, and so I know very little about her. Her birth date comes from a cousin's research and I haven't been able to confirm it's source--yet.
For the years 1850 through 1880, the official census date was June 1. The official census date was to have been used for all information given to the census taker. For example, if the census taker didn't arrive until July 1, and a child died or married between June 1 and July 1, but the child was alive and living with the family on June 1, he should have been recorded in the census with the family. Whether census takers and the people being recorded adhered to that it's often not possible to know.
In Rebecca's case, she was recorded as
-- 30 years old in the 1850 census which was taken on September 16, 1850
-- 40 years old in the 1860 census which was taken on June 17, 1860
-- 50 years old in the 1870 census which was taken on July 22, 1870, and
-- 59 years old in the 1880 census which was taken on June 2, 1880
If the census information was recorded based on the actual date the census was taken instead of the official census date of June 1, then the above information could suggest a birth date for Rebecca after June 2 and before June 17.
Rebecca was born and lived in Butler County, Pennsylvania throughout her life. According to a golden wedding anniversary newspaper article, she married Dixon Bartley on July 10, 1838, and was the mother of 13 children. Rebecca died on December 29, 1899.
I'm looking forward to learning more about this great-great-grandmother of mine. Happy Birthday, Gramma Bartley.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Remembering Rebecca Smith Bartley's Birthday
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PRINCETON — The Princeton City Council continues to work on annexing properties into the city limits to get the city map in better shape.
At Monday's meeting, the council had a first reading on the annexation of three properties, with one property owner addressing the council with her concerns.
Dana Dickens said she doesn't want to have her taxes raised by the forced annexation if she isn't going to receive any benefits from the city. She has never received any city utilities at her rural Princeton property, located on 2100 East Street, and doesn't see the benefits of being annexed into the city limits.
Dickens also wanted to know how the council decided which properties would receive tax abatement with their annexations.
As she understands it, a neighboring property was voluntarily annexed into the city limits several years ago but received a tax abatement, as did properties within the Bailey Subdivision when it was annexed into city limits.
She bought her property because it was rural, Dickins said. If the property had been within the city limits at that time, then that would be a different matter, she said.
Dickins asked the board to consider her concerns before making its decision.
Mayor Keith Cain said the council would take her concerns into consideration. The council had no questions of Dickens at that time.
Also included in the annexation ordinance was a property located on Backbone Road, between the former Lay's Furniture Store and the Bailey Subdivision, as well as another proposed annexation involving properties on South Main Street.
There were no other objectors at Monday's meeting to address the city council.
On Tuesday, Princeton Zoning Officer Pete Nelson said the Dickins property sits between Interstate 80 and the John Deere Road, north and in line with the new Princeton water tower. The proposed annexation property on Backbone Road includes a warehouse building. The South Main Street annexation includes about a half dozen properties which are wholly surrounded by properties already annexed into the city limits. The South Main properties include one home and the rest are fields.
Nelson said the city of Princeton has been working on annexations since about 2004, especially looking at properties which are wholly surrounded by properties already within the city limits. The properties currently under consideration for annexation will be the last properties needed to fill in the open spaces in the city's map, he said.
As far as tax abatement benefits for property owners, each situation is unique, based upon how desirous it is for the city to have the property within the city limits, Nelson said.
The city council will consider the proposed annexations with a second reading at its next meeting. If approved by the council following the second reading, the annexations would go into effect immediately, affecting taxes based on the 2013 year and payable in 2014. The properties will be considered individually when it comes time to vote upon them.
Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.


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DOWNINGTOWN Ś A section of the Struble Trail is still closed until next month for safety reasons while a gas pipeline is being replaced.
Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Company, LLC (Transco) is replacing an existing steel gas pipeline with a larger diameter pipeline. The work for the pipeline replacement will cross a section of the Struble Trail.
The Struble Trail, from Norwood Road to mile marker 1.25 closed on June 16. It is expected that this section of the trail will reopen by August 15.
Access to the trail at the Dorlan Mill Road parking area remains open. This section of the trail continues approximately for 1 ╝ miles south. Access to the trail at the Dowlin Forge Park and the Shelmire Road parking areas have both remained open.
Transco will restore the Struble Trail and the Brandywine Creek to its existing conditions when the project is completed.
The trail was named after Robert G. Struble in 1979. A sewer line was proposed to run from the Marsh Creek Reservoir and State Park to the Downingtown treatment plant, following along the old rail bed for the New Holland Line.
Struble and others suggested creating a hiking and biking trail over the sewer line as a way for the public to enjoy recreational activities. Officials saw it as a way to take advantage of the construction. Struble continue to work on the idea after he was elected as a Chester County commissioner in 1976.
The Struble Trail connects to other trail systems, including Kardon Park, Dowlin Forge Park, Shamona Creek Park and the Uwchlan Woods.
Transco obtained local, state and federal permits to complete the work. For more information regarding the project, contact Frank Stramowski of Transco at 717-208-6019.
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Equipment Inc., Donates Forklift to Longview Habitat for Humanity Foundations for the Future Capital Campaign
August, 16, 2013 - Longview, TX. ---Equipment Inc. of Longview delivered a big gift to the Longview Habitat for Humanity ReStore today-a forklift! The equipment was donated by the business as part of the Foundations for the Future Capital Campaign for use in the planned ReStore facility.
"We are a Longview owned and operated business and are so excited to be able to contribute to Longview Habitat," said Jason Dutton, Area Manager. "We know that this forklift is being put to good use for a great cause."
The 1998 Yale Forklift is equipped with a 187'' mast, side shift; LP powered, 1550 hours and has a retail value of $10,500. ReStore Manager, Raul Zapata, said, "It is a great day here at the ReStore! This forklift is a tremendous blessing. Until now, we have been forced to load and unload large trucks and trailers by hand and if we didn't have enough manpower on hand we were just stuck or had to rent equipment. Now, we can work quickly, save money and provide a safer environment for our employees!" he said.
Equipment, Inc. is a Nissan forklift dealer specializing in materials handling and construction equipment and has been locally owned and operated in Longview since 1972. The company includes seven branches serving Longview, Texarkana, Shreveport, four locations in Mississippi and one in Mobile, AL. For more information visit www.equipmentinc.com.
The Foundations for the Future Capital Campaign goal is $1,085,000 and includes the purchase of property, the remodel of an existing structure and the construction and furnishing of a new ReStore. The organization has raised almost half the total amount needed and plans to complete the new facility sometime in 2014.
Longview Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit agency dedicated to eradicating housing poverty in Longview. The organization partners with low income families to provide a hand up and out of poverty through volunteer home construction and a low down payment, zero interest mortgage program and makes critical repairs in the homes of the elderly and disabled. Founded in 1985, the organization has built 82 homes in Longview. To learn more about the campaign, to volunteer or to donate call 903-236-0900.


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Jordan Zimmermann tossed a one-hitter for his first career shutout and second complete game of the season and Washington rode the righty en route to edging the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0, Friday in the second test of a four-game series at Nationals Park.
Zimmermann (4-1) walked one and had four strikeouts. Washington has won two straight after snapping a four-game losing streak with a win on Thursday.
Jayson Werth collected two hits and drove in the game's lone run, while Bryce Harper added a triple and scored on Werth's single.
"It was just a phenomenal game," Washington manager Davey Johnson said. "It was really fun for me to watch. He was going to keep going unless he couldn't walk out there."
Cincinnati, which has lost two straight and three of four, was limited to just one hit versus Washington starter Gio Gonzalez on Thursday. It's the first time since 1900 that the Reds have been held to just one hit in back-to-back games.
Reds starter Homer Bailey (1-2) tossed seven solid innings and allowed one run and struck out six. Xavier Paul had Cincinnati's only hit, a single up the middle in the third.
Zimmermann, who threw just 91 pitches, didn't allow the visitors to put a runner in scoring position. The righty tossed 60 pitches through the first six innings and retired 12 of the first 13 batters he faced.
"I love getting hits, don't get me wrong," Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki said, "but this is the type of thing I take pride in."
With one out in the fourth, Harper roped a triple into the right-field corner. Werth followed with a single to right, plating Harper for eventual game- winner.
Game Notes
Cincinnati activated pitcher Sean Marshall from the disabled list Friday and placed pitcher Manny Parra on the 15-day DL with a strained left pectoral muscle ... It was the 10th 1-0 victory in Nationals history ... Bailey's only victory of the season came against Washington in season debut on April 5 ... Nationals' starting pitchers have allowed four hits over their last 23 combined innings ... Zimmermann is a perfect 8-0 in his last 14 regular-season starts at home ... The Reds last were held to one hit in consecutive games from July 5-6, 1900 versus Brooklyn.


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According to a new report, historically black colleges and universities are attracting more Asian and Latino students than ever before. Host Michel Martin discusses that and other findings with the report's author, Marybeth Gasman, and Morgan State University President, David Wilson.
All Races Attracted To HBCU Campuses
By editor • May 13, 2013


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On September 4, 2007, Screen Actors Guild joined film industry unions, small businesses and the Film & Television Action Committee (FTAC) to file a petition under Section 301(a) of the Trade Act of 1974 with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The petition argues that Canadian film subsidies violate trade law, and that American entertainment industry workers have been significantly harmed by incentives designed to lure media production from the United States to Canada.
The outsourcing of American film and television production has lead to a decline in U.S. film industry jobs, (an estimated 47,000 per year), and the loss of tens of billions of dollars in U.S. revenue. These numbers are so devastating, 35 states have implemented film incentives in order to stop the loss of American film industry production. It is time for the United States Federal Government to step up and join the fight to save American jobs.
The Screen Actors Guild national board of directors voted in October of 2006 to allocate $50,000 towards the effort to file this petition. SAG National Legislative Committee Chair Gretchen Koerner recently stated, "We are committed to exploring every method we can to bring film and television production back to the United States. For decades we have watched as American producers head north to produce movies, television series and commercials. The vast majority of SAG actors do not get hired to work in Canada—so our jobs are lost."
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) now has just 31 days remaining to evaluate the 301(a) petition and to determine whether the U.S. government should conduct a formal investigation of the Canadian subsidy programs. Please take a moment to email your U.S. Senator and member of congress to urge them to call the United States Trade Representative and let her know they support the 301(a) filing.
Below you will find links to locate your federal representative and a sample email you can modify to make your feelings known.
Find your Senator:
Find your Congressional representative: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Sample letter text:
September 21, 2007
Honorable _____________
United States Senate / United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator / Representative ________________:
As a proud member of Screen Actors Guild, I am writing you in support of the Section 301 Petition against Canada's subsidies for non-Canadian film and television productions that was filed on September 4, 2007 with the U.S. Trade Representative. As an actor and a union member, I believe it is vital to protect one of our nation's premier industries, which is suffering the loss of 47,000 jobs a year and billions of dollars in federal revenue due to these subsidies.
Since Canadian subsidies for film and television production have been established, I have watched more and more American production leave the U.S. taking middle class entertainment industry jobs along with them—my jobs. These subsidies are designed specifically to lure U.S. productions out of the country and to replace our workforce with Canadian labor. Jobs that have traditionally been done by American actors and other entertainment industry professionals are lost - co-stars, guest stars, day players, stunt performers, background actors, stand-ins, dancers, singers and puppeteers – we stay at home, and our families, communities, unions, local businesses, and our government suffer.
I urge you to call Susan Schwab, the United States Trade Representative, and ask her to support the 301 Petition. Stop these unfair subsidies, and this unnecessary outsourcing of American jobs. Help us rebuild our industry.
Note: Use the same letter for your Senator and Congress member; just
revise the heading.


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Mary Ann travels to the "Green Heart of Italy," Umbria, where she teaches her eager culinary students the fine (and tasty) art of Strangozzi Pasta Spoleto Style, Stuffed Guinea Fowl, Farro with Vegetables and for dessert, a fabulous, custard-like Umbrian treat, Crescionda. Viva Italia!
Visit the Website: http://www.ciaoitalia.com/
Episode #2212 / Length: 29 minutes


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Multichannel's new back-to-school look
Multichannel's new back-to-school look
The back-to-school season is the second largest shopping season in the US, making it a critical sales period for retailers. To capitalize on it, retailers are gearing up to deploy this year's integrated marketing efforts.
Andrew Koven, president of e-commerce and customer experience at fashion shoe retailer Steve Madden, underscores the importance of integrated marketing to create a cohesive campaign, no matter the channel.
"We have to make sure that one message we deliver through one channel is being deployed through several," he says. "So if I send out an e-mail, or run a re-targeting campaign or an affiliate program, certainly, we are leveraging those messages on our Facebook page. We are letting people know what we are doing across all channels."
Staples, the year-round office and back-to-school supplier, has several moving parts for its integrated campaign. It launched its back-to-school campaign July 11 and employed a two-prong strategy: one is an annual back-to-school promotion, while the other speaks directly to a particular segment of customers with specialized offers, says Don LeBlanc, SVP of marketing.
Its annual back-to-school "Penny Deals," is an example of one of its mass promotions. It allows a customer to go into a Staples store and get a specific item for a penny, or a quarter, on some of the core back-to-school items. "[We use this] as a way to draw people into our stores," says LeBlanc.
Back-to-school spending to rebound in 2010
Record highs of unemployment for both teens and their parents have hurt retailers' earnings over the last few years. June retail sales fell 0.5%, according to the US Department of Commerce, but this year's back-to-school spending is expected to show improvement over last year.
The National Retail Federation predicts that 2010 back-to-school spending will jump 16% over last year's prediction, though more shoppers will purchase generic brands and seek out sales. The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) expects more modest growth of 5.4%, but calls it "potentially the strongest season since 2005."
Staples reinforces back-to-school special offers through its e-mail marketing, reaching 15 million recipients each week, LeBlanc notes.
Steve Madden, meanwhile, doesn't utilize traditional print or radio advertising for this time period, but focuses its efforts in-store. The footwear company will introduce its back-to-school campaign in mid-August and use in-store concerts and signage as well as video display boards, which will cater to its teen to early twenties female demographic. Koven says its concert series, the Steve Madden Music initiative, has grown significantly since the company introduced it two years ago. The Constellations is one band that is highlighted in its program this year.
French Toast, a company that has been manufacturing children's clothing for more than 50 years, will showcase its catalog in its integrated marketing campaign. The first was released during the July 4 holiday, with three more — specific to going back to school — to be distributed over the coming months, says Michael Arking, president of the retailer. They are standard size — 8½ by 11 inches — featuring core items, such as its new stretch knit polos or skinny placket polos.
The French Toast brand of school uniforms is produced by the LT Apparel Group and is sold in more than 2,000 retail locations as well as online, and through its catalog since 1999. Arking says that French Toast conducts e-mail campaigns several times a week, with a higher frequency during the back-to-school season.
This year, social media will play a larger role in all three of these retailers' integrated back-to-school marketing plans.
Koven notes that Steve Madden increased its digital ad spending by 10% to 15% this year, while also becoming more active on Facebook, including through contests and promotions. These added dollars also account for an increase in staff dedicated to social media. The retailer also recently added a mobile site. Koven points out that Steve Madden didn't utilize Facebook for back-to-school promotions last year.


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2009 Softball
Bluffton sweeps Spartans at Manchester
Beavers improve to 7-1 in HCAC with sweep of Spartans
April 9, 2009
NORTH MANCHESTER, Ind. - The Bluffton University softball team plated a run in the ninth for a 3-2 game one victory before completing the sweep of Manchester with a 7-2 win on Thursday, April 9, 2009. The Beavers upped their season mark to 22-8 overall and 7-1 in the Heartland Conference, while Manchester slipped to 9-16 with a 1-5 record in the HCAC
Bluffton 3, Manchester 2 (9 innings)
It took seven innings to put any runs on the scoreboard, but Bluffton plated a single run in the seventh, eighth and ninth frames to finally finish off the Spartans by a 3-2 count. With two down and nobody on in the top of the seventh, Jessica McDonald (Mechanicsburg) drew a free pass. Pinch runner Torrie Wilson (Delphos/Jefferson) went to third on Emily Manahan's (Columbus/Bishop Watterson) single. A Manchester error allowed Bluffton to score the first run of the game.
The Spartans put together four hits in the bottom of the seventh, but baserunning errors kept Manchester from putting the game away in regulation as Bluffton went to the eighth tied 1-1. Both teams scored a run in the eighth, but the Beavers converted again in the ninth and Brooke Babcock (Findlay) slammed the door with two strikeouts in the bottom of the inning to clinch the 3-2 victory.
A Kellie Kenney (Toledo/Emmanuel Baptist) RBI double that plated Jayme Marbaugh (Ohio City/Parkway) in the ninth was the difference in Bluffton's win over the Spartans.
Marbaugh and Kenney both smacked two hits while Wilson, Marbaugh and Allison White (Lima/Shawnee) all scored runs in game one.
Brooke Babcock continued her stellar pitching, improving to 11-4 with a nine strikeout performance in which she did not walk a batter and was perfect through the first three innings. She gave up two runs, one earned, and allowed seven hits.
The Beavers eliminated any thoughts of another nail-biter by crossing the plate four times in the top of the third en route to a 7-2 win over the Spartans.
After Manchester scored a run in the first and Bluffton tied it in the second, the Beavers put the contest away with four runs on four hits in the top of the third inning. A Marbaugh single and Lindsey Miller (Wapakoneta) two-bagger put runners in scoring position for Kellie Kenney who picked Marbaugh up with a groundout to third. Babcock's double knocked in pinch runner Allison Radomski (Fairfield/Cincinnati Christian) for a 3-1 advantage. Babcock scored when Manahan reached on a Manchester error and McDonald finished the damage with an RBI double.
Miller singled in Marbaugh in the fourth and Manahan drove Tiffany Buckmaster (Lima/Bath) home in the fifth to complete the scoring in Bluffton's 7-2 game two victory.
Babcock led the hit parade with a 3-of-4 performance that included two doubles. Wilson, Marbaugh, Miller and Jessica McDonald all ripped two hits in the second contest. McDonald, who has been instrumental in Bluffton's last six wins, drove in two runs and Marbaugh scored twice.
Kenney improved to 9-3 after holding the Spartans to just three hits and one run in four innings of work. Freshman hurler Kristin Agauas (Bloomfield, Mich./Andover), who worked five superb innings a day ago at Heidelberg, struck out four batters in three innings of one-run relief.
Bluffton travels to Anderson University for its last away games of the 2009 regular season on Thursday, April 16. The first contest is slated to start at 3 p.m.


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Where's the surprise in this? No news here.
Moreover, he notes that some drug-safety trials did not publish their findings, or did not do so early enough, such that they could inform subsequent trials. This practice is not likely to continue, he points out, since new federal rules will fine investigators who fail to post outcome data for all trials getting money from Uncle Sam. Moreover, for cancer trials, NCI will require that researchers begin reporting outcome data â" treatment successes and failures â" throughout the course of the trial
Anyone doing this should get put in jail for a long, long time. It may not be fraud in the sense that they're publishing fraudulent results, but by not publishing results they're creating fraudulent overall data, with possibly deadly results. This needs to stop.
That's a bit simplistic - often nobody is directly responsible for not publishing results, it comes about because major medical journals are not interested in pubishing negative findings. There are of course exceptions, when the negative findings come as a big surprise or there is a lot of anticipation about them, like the reports of the Alzheimer's disease vaccination not working earlier this year.
The medical journals themselves know this is a problem, but they aren't sure what to do about it. One suggestion has been the journals should make a 'commitment to publish' for a trial based on its design and importance, and then publish the findings whatever they are, but that would of course mean they'd be publishing a lot less interesting stuff.
Also scientists can't be bothered to write up negative findings, because there are proportionally so many more of them than positive ones.
There is a problem of pharma companies suppressing bad findings or writing misleading journal articles, but that's a wholly independant issue and should be dealt with by the schemes in develpment for enforcing results to be left in public databases after the trials are finishsed. The problem with that is that not many GPs will be searching through these databases
The real solution is probably for doctors not to rely on scientific journals for information (which they often don't really understand), but to wait for advice from bodies like the National Institute for Clinical Excellence [nice.org.uk] or the Cochrane Collaboration [cochrane.org] who do very thorough searches and synthesis.
There's a wide assumption that the researchers themselves really want to publish all results.
Unfortunately, as in almost the entire field of "science" nowadays, it's not the case.
Researchers themselves have a tendency to hide failures - given that most experiments result in failure, they tend to focus on reporting the ones reporting success.
This use of time simply makes most sense - they don't have the time to report all the failures, and reports of failures not as valuable as reports of success only makes it worse - think about what kind of views your peers will have towards you if most of your publications are negative results.
Sadly, this thinking is parasitic and is very prevalent across all research fields.
Journals are very selective given the limited number of pages they have. If I were a journal, I'd pick reports of success first. It's the evil of centrally-controlled publication, and the mindset that, "if a research is of any good value, it must appear on some journal".
Granted, peer review is a good thing, but there must be a way to give researches credibility without getting published on some journal.
Compounded with big-pharma-sourced funding with very fine strings attached...we have a really screwed up system.
Even if only half of the unreported studies were because of poor results, that's enough to skew things very, very badly.
The basic idea is that you should only use drugs or drug combinations for which there is evidence that they work and are not harmful. If there's nothing published, don't use it!
but by not publishing results they're creating fraudulent overall data, with possibly deadly results. This needs to stop.
There's nothing "fraudulent" about it. Studies often fail for many reasons completely unrelat
Scientific experiments are usually one-sided: a positive result tells you something, a negative result tells you nothing.
That is soooooo wrong it hurts.
This sounds reasonable. From now on I'll be emailing my pals every time I don't get laid.
It would be a lot more efficient if you just had a cron job that sent out an email every night.
Whoever modded that down as overrated clearly didn't know enough to judge. You don't publish negative results because of the time and effort it takes to write it up.
The reasons vary for different fields. A lot of times, researchers don't bother doing proper controls until after the experiment works or doesn't. If the trial run works, you do the controls afterward to verify your result was real, if you don't get the result you expect you might try it again, doing some troubleshooting, but at some point you have to make a choice between a control that would be particularly onerous or expensive, or giving up on the experiment entirely. If you get a negative result that you're not interested in, you generally don't do the controls to prove to others it was a valid result because you don't care and have better things to do. But that's what you would have to do to publish it.
A negative but true result can also be even more difficult to prove than a positive result would be. If you are expecting one protein to interact with another one, and you get no result, it could be that they are and your test just isn't working. If you do the experiment a different way and still show no interaction that makes it a little more convincing, but doesn't prove that both systems are working. You can't say for sure they don't interact in real cells.
In clinical trials you could think of additional reasons why someone would not care to publish the negative results. The most obvious is that the drug company doesn't want to make it known that they're working on drug X. Not sure how that works, but you could imagine that they might have to patent it to keep others from using it, and then the clock on the patent starts before they actually get it working. They could spend 5 years refining it before it actually works, then more years before it gets to market, and they only have a few years before the patent runs out. If they don't patent it and aren't sure it's a complete dead-end, another company might take the results and make a working drug from it, effectively stealing the expensive work to get up to that point.
Not a lawyer or an expert on the pharmecutical industry obviously, but publishing means making it known, and they're only going to do that if they're sure they're done with it, if then.
It makes sense that they're not going to be published, and while it's less than ideal, I think it would be worse to force the pharmecuticals to publish negative results of trials. If you make the clinical trial phase that risky, companies would be more reluctant to develop new drugs that haven't already proven effective, and advances in cancer treatment would slow.
The most obvious is that the drug company doesn't want to make it known that they're working on drug X. Not sure how that works, but you could imagine that they might have to patent it to keep others from using it, and then the clock on the patent starts before they actually get it working.
Except clinical trials are not required to attain patent protection. Any drug company with good patent practitioners is going to have a patent application filed *before* clinical trials. You can always abandon it later if the clinical trials don't work out. It's much cheaper to file and then abandon an application on a drug than to miss the opportunity to get a patent on a successful drug.
Ah. Well then, nevermind. Maybe it's just the innate "Keep secret all that you possibly can," attitude.
I have been told by someone who would know (psychiatrist) that drug trials (maybe just here in Australia) have to be announced before the trial begins otherwise the outcomes can't be published. The idea is that you have to announce a trial before you begin, and so if the outcomes are bad and you don't publish, the bad outcome can be inferred from the lack of publication, even if the specifics remain unknown.
Summary? You're practically forcing me to read TFA
Cancer patients are already vulnerable to cancer.
Not sure what the point of this story is. Sometimes things don't work out the way everyone wishes they would. Apparently every decision to say something or not say something always has to be second-guessed by third parties who have no responsibility or accountability -- but they get to demand things anyway.
I'm sure a lot more of these failed trials would be published if there was a financial incentive. The complainers should start a foundation and start pa
Do you realize how hilarious it is for you to complain about a study for complaining about studies? If you think it's wrong for third parties to second-guess studies and demand things with no responsibility or accountability, maybe you should stop doing it yourself.
I didn't demand anything. I suggested that the people demanding things start paying for the work they are demanding others do. Or they could just start minding their own business and stop demanding something for nothing.
If they're going to complain, why shouldn't they should expect complaints in return?
There is no difference between a suggestion and a demand when the person making it has no power over the target.
It's not about expecting complaints. It's about you saying that these complaints are bad, while doing the exact same thing yourself. What makes their complaints bad but yours legitimate?
There is no difference between a suggestion and a demand when the person making it has no power over the target.
Yes there is. There may be no difference in the results, but there is a difference in the method.
As for your second point (and your sig), quit trolling with weak pseudo-logic. He wasn't complaining that they were complaining: he was complaining at where their complaints were directed. You're allowed to complain about complainers when the original complaints are moronic!
He's complaint was about studies complaining about other studies. He was also complaining about a study. I don't see any difference between the two other than that he has a whole lot less funding and, I'm guessing here, expertise. Otherwise they look the same to me: both of them are people telling other people that their efforts would be better applied in a different way.
He's complaint was about studies complaining about other studies. He was also complaining about a study.
Fuck y'all.
Now we see the fallacy of your argument. Go back and read what he said again. He wasn't complaining about the study. He was complaining about the story and the author's complaining based upon their study. Possibly might be also referring to people commenting here complaining, but then he never said that specifically.
Oh - and - a heartfelt "fuck you" back at ya.
It's not just cherry picking - which wouldn't matter so much in itself. Drugs are very hit and miss you expect lots of things to just not work.
The problem is they study drugs X, Y, and Z in combination and find that not only does it not help it makes the patients worse. They don't bother publishing since they didn't get anything useful out of it and no one is going to cite them...
A year later another group decides to study X, Y, and Z in combination. So a pointless study that harms patients is done because this second group never found out about the previous study in their literature search.
From the article... there is a registry of all of these trials (from the US, at least). Any group that decides to run a trial is going to check this registry first. If they find that a trial was registered, but no paper was ever released they would probably: a) assume the trial was not a success or b) contact those involved with the trial and ask for more details.
Medical journals are as much for practicing MDs as they are for researchers. Flooding them with failed trials would only dilute the valuable mater
As somebody who was previously in the academic medical field, this is not just a problem with cancer drugs. "Positive Outcome Bias" or "publish bias" is a huge problem.
http://www.ama-assn.org/public/peer/7_15_98/jpv71042.htm [ama-assn.org]
A negative study should be just as important as a positive study. If done well... obviously.
Published negative studies dissuade doctors from using certain offlabel treatments. Published negative studies prevent other docs from wasting time and money to discover the same results.
More importantly, many clinical changes are based on meta-studies... which as basically studies which combine all the available data. If negative studies are not published, it throws off these metastudies... and thus bad care occurs.
More importantly, many clinical changes are based on meta-studies... which as basically studies which combine all the available data. If negative studies are not published, it throws off these metastudies... and thus bad care occurs.
How does the positive publication bias "throw off" metastudies? Please, feel free to use statistical terms. I do not see how this is possible off-hand unless the metastudies use seriously flawed methodology.
Presumably, they aggregate "like-typed" (in the sense that they have "
The point of the story is that companies publish the successful trials on a drug, but don't publish failed trials on that same drug - i.e. they cherry-pick the results.
This (almost certainly) has nothing to do with drug companies cherry-picking results. It's extremely difficult to get negative results through peer review, and as a result there are very few studies of any sort that report "X doesn't have an effect" or "Y is not involved in Z."
Part of this is because of the statistical modeling associated with these studies. It's relatively easy to be certain, and to prove, that the observations from two groups are different: this is the type I error [wikipedia.org] everyone loves. We'
Maybe try reading the article?
"Of particular concern," they argue, is the especially poor showing by industry-sponsored trials, since they tended to probe the value of patented drugs -- "many of which are in clinical use."
I would say that's newsworthy if not all that surprising. Just another case of big drug companies screwing over the general population to make a buck. They run studies to test their drugs and if the results are unfavorable they just bury the study while keeping the drug in circulation.
Cancer patients are already vulnerable to cancer.
So it's better for them to be vulnerable to cancer plus ineffective, expensive treatments, often with nasty side effects, that substitute for more effective ones?
I'm sure a lot more of these failed trials would be published if there was a financial incentive.
These failed trials would be published if the researchers were actually doing science. If they're not, let's call it what it is: product development. And let's remove the fiction that what they are do
The ideal product will lessen the symptoms, but not cure the disease, at least until a 10-year-course of expensive treatment is over.
This is how you fellow humans view you: as a potential walking dollar sign, in exchange for their goods and services.
I hear horse urine cures cancer. I have fresh horse urine for only $9 per ounce. Do you want to be cured, or not?
I hear horse urine cures cancer. I have fresh horse urine for only $9 per ounce.
Many of the older anti-drinking crowd in these parts, and others, commonly refer to beer as horse's piss so I guess I will just stick with beer. Though its price has risen absurdly in my lifetime, it isn't quite to $9/oz yet.
I have fresh horse urine for only $9 per ounce. Do you want to be cured, or not?
No, they'd much rather have those 10 years worth of payments up front, so they can invest or re-invest it.
You seriously don't think people would pay more for a week-long cure than for a week's worth of "treatment-in-perpetuity?"
The "cure for cancer" is just the beginning - at that point you can begin to think seriously about directing research towards the anti-aging drugs, the rejuvenation techniques, that have been stuff of epic myth, science fiction and fantasy since the beginnings of human history.
Horse urine can't cure cancer, although it is used in hormone replacement therapy. I suppose some cancer patients driven to early menopause due to radiation and chemotherapy do use it, though...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarin [wikipedia.org]
The obvious reason is that it takes time and money to publish study results, neither of which are recouped currently if the study showed negative results.
The obvious fix is to reward pharmaceutical companies financially for publishing all results. Form a subentity within the NIH with the power to purchase study data and results that can be published by the government or a peer-reviewed journal.
The obvious fix is to reward pharmaceutical companies financially for publishing all results.
Or simply compel them by law to publish all study results for any drugs under consideration for active use at any later stage. Their excuse for the enormous advantages they gain through patent protection and the like, and the borderline ethics of a lot of their business practices, is that R&D in a regulated industry is expensive. The cost of publishing failed tests as well would be absolutely negligible if the R&D costs as much overall as they keep telling us.
You can only publish if you can find a publisher. The most obvious solution is to expand the role of the (inter)national trial register to be a place to go to find out results as well.
> reward pharmaceutical companies financially for publishing all results
What a brilliant idea. If that actually occurs, I'll immediately buy large amounts of stock in these companies. And then read their reports:
"Report on whale pee on cancer: unsuccessful"
"Report on heavy wishing on cancer: unsuccessful"
"Report on digital watches on cancer: unsuccessful"
The three reports above will already pull in a couple of ten thousand bucks...
The pharmaceutical industry HAS been caught doing some sinister things with their studies. They do ten studies and publish the three that can be interpreted positively. The seven that can't never see the light of day. Unless of course they accidentally get published on the company web page. Then the sinister part: the drug is approved and sold to treat the condition. The clinical trials registry was formed to try to clean up that particular mess.
This particular story doesn't seem to describe anything sinister. The trials were all in the registry (that's where the authors got the data for the study). Sure, the journals tended not to publish the negative results, but they were all available in the registry.
As far as I can tell from the article they didn't even look at the actual worrisome situation where there are a few published positive studies and many more unpublished negative studies, for the same treatment.
My impression from the article was that nobody checks this registry (aka file drawer). I didn't mean to give pharma a free pass -- the article suggests they have a greater rate of "file drawer" than non-industry research.
The article highlighted the problem perfectly -- only 20% of the studies in the registry are reaching publication. Since publication is where many people (doctors) learn about what's new, 80% of the data is never seen.
They are trying to do something about it, such as require results to be
If that's happening (which the study didn't seem to address in any way), then it's the physician's fault, not the researchers. All the data were published in the appropriate places. You can't ask the mainstream journals to publish everything, or they will become "The Journal of Studies That Found Nothing New." I would certainly hope that my physician would check for published negative studies before using some off-label experimental treatment on me.
Realistically, most physicians hear about treatments the
I thought it was pretty clear they don't consider the registry to be effectively disseminating results: "Data from fewer than one in five research trials are ever published. Findings from the vast majority of human trials become buried for reasons that may never come to light". If blame is to be placed, I agree it's always on the reader -- researchers don't bother publishing failed studies because nobody wants to publish them. They don't sell subscriptions. But that hardly means we can expect doctors to
"Published" in a major journal. ALL of the studies were published in the registry. As I said, you can't ask the major journals to publish every failed study.
If you want to try and standardize trials, go for it. I wish you luck. Speaking as someone who actually does them, it won't happen. There are all sorts of reasons why trials are difficult to compare. Different centres, different technology, different standards of care. Ethics committees in different places demand different things. Not to mention you rarely have a situation where many trials are testing exactly the same thing. Most meta-analyses look at trials that are designed to look at slightly different things and then try to compensate for the differences in study design.
"If that's happening (which the study didn't seem to address in any way), then it's the physician's fault"
Oh reeeeeeally?
"I would certainly hope that my physician would check for published negative studies before using some off-label experimental treatment on me."
Have you spent any time in a doctors office? I mean from the backend? Examine how the physicians time (let alone that of their staff) is allocated.
60% or more is tied up in administrative tasks that:
The reason: Data from fewer than one in five research trials are ever published. Findings from the vast majority of human trials become buried for reasons that may never come to light, according to a new study in The Oncologist. It's published early and online September 24.
It's called publication bias and it exists in most fields. Publisher want to break significant results, so even if your research was extremely well designed, and the fact that you found negative results could be extremely important, they
I'm not at all surprised that findings don't get published. The only way to force them to be published would be to make it a condition of doing the study or a legal requirement. The pharm companies couldn't care less that patients die - they prefer the competition wastes time repeating the same tests rather than taking advantage of the work they've already done.
The entire way that the medical system works really needs a shake up. Other industries with less at stake have more stringent quality control proces
Some scientists are interested on getting all data published, even if it didn't result in big news. They call this the "dark data".
My mother went through a 6 week series of trials of epsom salts against colo-rectal cancer.
The mixture was ineffective.
My, how very useful this information is for cancer patients!
Would my mother have received the quality of the care she eventually did get if her doctors had missed relevant articles in medical journals thanks to the massive signal to noise ratio?
If every failure were published, the cancer research community would suffer the same "eternal september" the usenet community did.
My mother went through a 6 week series of trials of epsom salts against colo-rectal cancer.
The mixture was ineffective.
My, how very useful this information is for cancer patients!
Yes, because that is exactly the same thing. *sigh*
Would my mother have received the quality of the care she eventually did get if her doctors had missed relevant articles in medical journals thanks to the massive signal to noise ratio?
If every failure were published, the cancer research community would suffer the same "eternal september" the usenet community did.
What if the researchers developing new drugs and treatments had access to the failures of others so that they knew what *not* to try. Outside of your pathetically childish and facetious example about Epsom salts, this information could be invaluable. Would you have wanted your mother to die because scientists working for Pfizer didn't tell the community about a failed treatment that they had already tried which GlaxoSmithkline then spent 2 years replicating, at the expense of another possibly more fruitful avenue of research?
I wouldn't have been able to see so far had I not been standing on the shoulders of giants applies to stuff that doesn't work as well. Some things, Like medicine, are too important not to have companies and researchers work together on. This is just an example of how legislature is created by money. The Golden rule: those who have all the gold, make all the rules!
I THINK MAN INVENTED THE CAR by instinct. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.


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Celebrating the 21st Aloha Classic Wave Championships
September 21st , 2006
Celebrating the 21st Aloha Classic Wave Championships
Maui, Hawaii (USA) ? Time flies, the summer is here and soon it will be fall with one of the longest-running wave sailing events in the world returning to Maui for it?s 21st Anniversary, the ?Aloha Classic?, the crown jewel of windsurfing events.
Since it's creation in 1984, the Aloha Classic had been the traditional final event of the Pro World tour for many years. The top ranking international competitors are invited to the 21st Aloha Classic along with top Hawaii athletes to compete side by side. November is historically known to have the best wind and wave conditions, with trade winds blowing side shore at 15-20 knots and waves that can reach up to 10 -15 feet, the consistent trade winds and seasonally large surf make the Aloha Classic the most popular destination of the windsurfing media, spectators and athletes. Many luminaries of the sport have competed in the Aloha Classic from Robbie Naish, to Pete Cabrina, to Bjorn Dunkerbeck, to Rush Randle, to Jason Polakow for the men and Kelby Anno, Dana Dawes, Jennifer Henderson, Anne-Marie Reichmann and Angela Cochran for the women to name a few.
An exciting media package will ensure the worldwide coverage of the 2006 Aloha Classic in Print, TV, internet and radio, with a TV distribution to over 800 stations worldwide! The Aloha Classic will also be featured in a special feature in the October issue of STUFF magazine which has an approx. 1.3 million circulation.
"This event is an important part of windsurfing history. It has been the world stage for the best in wave sailing as well as promoting Maui as a premier windsurfing destination. Last year?s Aloha Classic saw great action on the water, and showed the passion everyone here has for this traditional event. We want to bring the momentum back to Maui; it will be good for the sailors, good for Maui and for the windsurfing industry as a whole.? says Event Director Marc Lefebvre.
?Through the decades, the Aloha Classic has become a key player in our sport, and it is a fantastic vehicle to showcase sponsors and the sport?, says Inga Stracke, Aloha Classic PR and marketing Director, ? the Stuff Magazine article is a major example of that, and we are working hard on getting the event and therefore the sport itself even more exposure with (water-)sports and lifestyle media. We are thrilled to welcome you all to Hookipa Beach Park this fall!?
In an effort to honour past winners of the Aloha Classic for Men and Women, all will be given free entry into the Amateur portion of the event, from Alex Aguera in 1984 all the way up to Alex Mussolini in 2005.
The historic 21st Anniversary of the Aloha Classic brings much needed focus and attention on the youth and amateur market and will be the show case for up and coming talent around the world. The Aloha Classic will include a menehune (kids) and junior division, kids starting at 9 years old windsurfing, jumping etc. and we will have a masters and grand masters competition.
The 2006 Aloha Classic will be held November 6-17th 2006 at Hookipa Beach Park, Maui, Hawaii.
Coming up soon, watch this place for more exciting news about the Pro Division at this years Aloha Classic!
The Aloha Classic is one of the longest-running wave sailing events in the world. Since it's creation in 1984, the Aloha Classic has been the traditional final event of the Pro World tour. The top ranking international competitors are invited to the Aloha Classic along with top Hawaii athletes to compete side by side. The consistent trade winds and seasonally large surf make the Aloha Classic the most popular destination of the windsurfing media, spectators and athletes. The Aloha Classic is the crown-jewel of wave sailing events.
Event Director Marc Lefebvre has been an event organizer since 1995 and is the creator of the 'WD-40 Downwind Classic'(with Skip Dennis), 'Cape Cod Racing Series', 'Wind Fest Cape Cod', and the 'King of the Cape Freestyle Pro-Am', an International Freestyle event on Cape Cod, a PWA event, before moving to Maui in 2002. In 2004 he revived the Aloha Classic with focus on Amateur wave sailing. For the first time the event introduced a kids and junior division, which proved to be a huge success. The grand masters is already much anticipated for this year's event. He has also has organized on Maui the 'Maui Speed Challenge Series' (with Tom Hammerton), "Molokai Ocean Challenge' (with Claire Seeger), and the '2006 US Windsurfing Nationals' (with Linda Stott).
Marketing and PR director Inga Stracke, of Pole Position Reports, has been successfully involved with international events and clients such as Maui Kite Fest, Maui Time Weekly, Red Bull, Mobil1, Ford, Toyota, www.f1total.com, Malaysian Tourist Board, CCTV China, Puma, Hugo Boss etc?
We thank our supporters and sponsors:
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.alohaclassicwindsurfing.com/
EVENT DIRECTOR: Marc Lefebvre
MARKETING/PR DIRECTOR: Inga Stracke
MEDIA PRODUCTION: Paul Ehman
RACE DIRECTOR: Doug Hunt
For more information about the event, please email us at: firstname.lastname@example.com.
To join our mailing list and keep up to date on the Aloha Classic, please send a SUBSCRIBE message to firstname.lastname@example.com.
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1. "Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."I easily got all these answers right, but not because I think only Colbert is trying to be funny. Coulter is trying to be funny too, as the NY Magazine guy seems to concede:
2. "There's nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell."
3. "I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law."
4. "Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'Kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and answer to the name Muhammad.' "
5. "I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior."
6. "[North Korea] is a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world."
7. "Isn't an agnostic just an atheist without balls?"
Of course, I'm not trying to equate Coulter with Colbert. For starters, Coulter is a shrill, abusive demagogue and Colbert just plays one on TV. But with Coulter, there's always been a sturdy suspicion that she is playing a character (like Colbert) and amping up the obnoxious rhetoric for maximum effect (like Colbert). When I mention the comparison to Colbert, though, he seems surprised, even unnerved. "I don't really think about her much," he says. "She's a self-generating bogeyman. She's like someone who wants attention for having been bad." Given that he's hosted right-wing true believers like Joe Scarborough before, and has often said he'd love to have Bill O'Reilly on the show, would he ever invite Coulter as a guest? "My sense is that she's playing a character," he says. "I don't need another character. There's one character on my show, and that's me."A sturdy suspicion? I should hope so. "I don't need another character"? Ha, ha. He's right, and he knows his limits. He needs a willing straight man/woman on the other side of the table to do his act.
You know, when we first noticed Coulter doing various political shows -- I think it was back in the mid-90s -- we were always saying "Why is that woman laughing?," "She's always laughing," "There's that woman again who's always laughing," etc. No matter what she said, she'd be laughing, as though every damned thing that happened in politics was hilarious to her and everything comment she made completely cracked her up. You might not think what she is saying is funny, but I think she's motivated by comic energy, and the people who like her are picking up on the fun.


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Between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Monday morning residents on the southern edge of Garden of the Gods woke to sporadic, rapid gunfire. Some hit the floor. Others peered out windows at the constant muzzle flashes as they pleaded for the police to arrive.
Colorado Springs police swept in with body armor and assault rifles and emerged from the brush with Brandon Bougades, a 31-year-old decorated, two-tour Army sergeant who is in the last stages of medical retirement after being hit by multiple bomb blasts in Afghanistan. Police ticketed Bougades for reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct for firing approximately 150 pistol and shotgun rounds in the park, then released him.
Tuesday, Bougades told The Gazette he was diagnosed by the Army with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
He also said he thought he was allowed to shoot in what he called the undeveloped area, and said the whole thing was "a big mistake on my part."
But neighbors say they are troubled that a man they feel endangered the area was released with just a ticket.
"He freaked the crap out of us. We thought there was a mass shooting," said Theresa Brands, who lives on West Bijou Street just steps from where Bougades was apprehended. "I wrote to the mayor saying this is not normal behavior, maybe this guy should be held and evaluated."
Bougades joined the Army in 2006 and served 15 months in Iraq, then four in Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division based in Fort Campbell, Ky., and earned three Army commendation medals for heroism.
While patrolling the mountains of Khost province Afghanistan in 2010, he said, he was hit by three roadside bombs in three months. The second blew the front off a heavily armored vehicle he was riding in. Later that day he posted a photo of himself posing next to the mangled truck and crater with the comment "taliban- you cant kill me!!!!"
A week later he was hit by another blast. It was his 28th birthday and he had chosen that day to sign reenlistment papers. While on a mission, hours before he was scheduled to reenlist, his vehicle struck what he later estimated was a 300-pound homemade bomb. Shrapnel pierced the truck and tore through Bougades' legs, breaking two bones. He was airlifted to a hospital in Afghanistan where he signed his reenlistment papers from his recovery bed.
"I love this job," he told Army public affairs at the time. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I don't want to be doing anything else."
Originally from West Virginia, Bougades moved to Colorado Springs in mid May while in the final stages of being medically discharged from the Army, to attend Colorado Technical University. When a reporter knocked on the door of his small basement apartment Tuesday, Bougades was polite and welcoming. He has tattoos with "bad guy" spelled across his knuckles and demon faces emerging from his hands and merging into flames on his arms. He stepped out to smoke next to a pickup with a Purple Heart license plate and a "Wounded Warrior Project Alumni" sticker.
Asked about Afghanistan he said, "We went through a lot over there. They threw everything at us."
A close friend in his platoon was killed by Taliban gunfire two weeks after Bougades was wounded, and on Facebook he still marks the anniversary.
On Facebook he showed photos of pills he takes for pain, sleeplessness, nightmares and other issues related to PTSD and brain injury.
But he said his war injuries had nothing to do with the late-night gunfire in the park.
"I just thought I was going off into the woods to shoot a few rounds," he said. "Yeah, I have PTSD, I get depressed sometimes, but I have no history of violence. This was just a mistake."
Neighbors say they are torn between wanting to help the veteran and wanting to hold him accountable for recklessness.
Until Monday, neighbors said they knew Bougades only as a quiet, friendly man with a black knee brace who walked his two dogs in Garden of the Gods twice a day.
"It wasn't until all this happened that we learned he was a decorated veteran," said Audrey Jacobs, who stood in her yard Tuesday inspecting her house for bullet holes.
After waking to the gunfire, she watched as police entered the park and Bougades ran down a little-known trail in the opposite direction. A police officer blocked the veteran and yelled for him to stop, she said. Bougades dove under Jacobs' fence, she said, breaking one of the rails, before an officer tackled him, held him down, and led him away in cuffs.
Neighbors say they heard Bougades tell police he had been drinking. Bougades told The Gazette he had not. Neighbors were surprised to hear later that the hours of gunfire ended in only a ticket.
"We want to be supportive, but this can't go on," Jacobs said. "The consensus in the neighborhood is he did all that and just got a ticket?"
Colorado Springs police commander Pat Rigdon said in an email to a resident that Bougades was not jailed because he did not damage property or threaten anyone, but that police did take his weapons.
"I certainly don't want folks to think that this situation is taken lightly. As you can imagine it got our heart rates up pretty high. However, legally I believe that we did what we could."
Reporter Tom Roeder contributed to this report.
Contact Dave Philipps


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- Premier League
Arsenal target Diego Costa wants Madrid stay
Reported Arsenal target Diego Costa says he hopes to stay and continue his development at Atletico Madrid.
Costa, who made his senior Brazil debut against Italy in March, is contracted to Atletico until the summer of 2014. but speculation in Spain has recently linked him with a €25 million switch to the Premier League.
After scoring the first goal in Wednesday's 3-1 Primera Division win at Celta Vigo, the 24-year-old said he was not planning to move onto pastures new.
"I am working so that I grow and improve every day," Costa said. "There are great players here and I want to fight to be in the first XI. I hope to keep growing here. At Atleti."
The result at Balaidos plunged 19th-placed Celta further into relegation trouble, while ensuring direct qualification for next season's Champions League for Atletico.
Colchoneros coach Diego Simeone said this was the result of the hard work put in by all at the club in the 18 months since he arrived.
"To get into the Champions League was one of our objectives," Simeone said. "I want to highlight the work of everyone at Atletico. When we arrived in December [2011] we set out to become one of the best in Europe, and after six months we were close to fourth place.
"Then we won the Europa League and the European Super Cup and we worked hard to achieve this objective. What the players do is incredible. We must look at the huge amount of points that we have achieved which, possibly, has only been bettered when we were champions. This is a very important day for Atletico."